seemed to work however, as Nesha-tari put her hands on her hips and snapped a few last words at him. He nodded and bowed, then spoke to the room.
“Madame Nesha-tari is not in the service of the Cult of Ged…”
Nesha-tari growled.
“…of the Great Red Dragon. She does not care a whit for the war with Daul, nor for the bickering human nation of Ayzantium.”
“Let her say then who her master is!” Heggenauer shouted, and Nesha-tari drew herself up with her sapphire eyes blazing. She shouted back, words sounding like a proclamation, but the only two that Tilda recognized were Dragon, and the name Akroya.
Now Heggenauer came close to growling. “The Great Blue Dragon. The foulest of the damned Sky Dragons left alive. May they all suffer the fate of Ged-azi and the Winter Wyrm.”
Nesha-tari may not have understood the Jobian, but she had heard him repeat the name Ged-azi, after clearly telling him not to do so. Her face reddened even through her tan skin, and she spat out words with such ferocity that no translation was required to know they were curses that would have peeled the paint off the walls, had their been any.
Heggenauer reddened even more and he snatched up his mace from the floor. Tilda took a long step backward without thinking about it, but Shikashe moved in front of the priest, held up a warding hand in front of his face, and spoke in Ashinese. Amatesu quickly translated.
“Brother Heggenauer, you are a good man, and his lordship Uriako Shikashe-sama has no wish to fight you. But he will not permit you to menace the Madame Nesha-tari, as she is under his protection. Please, Brother. Stand at peace.”
Heggenauer looked between the two Far Westerners. “How can you people be in this woman’s service? How much gold does it take to buy your honor?”
Shikashe shoved Heggenauer hard in the chest, but the priest from Exland was as stoutly built as the samurai and a good deal taller. He grabbed Shikashe’s wrist with his left hand, still holding his mace at his side, and the two butted together like bulls. Amatesu sprang forward and tried to worm between them, shouting please and stop in Codian and probably in Ashinese as well. Tilda felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Blue sparks were snapping between Nesha-tari’s fingers.
John Deskata put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, so piercing and sharp that everyone winced and looked at him.
The one-time Centurion of the Codian Legions shook his head and gave everyone in the room a look of profound disgust, the sort of look that a drill sergeant would level on an utterly incompetent band of raw recruits. He had stood up and was buckling on his breastplate, and when it was secure he sheathed his sword at his side and hoisted his tower shield. He spoke as he walked for the door.
“While you jackasses sort this out, I’ll be on the roof watching for devils, or demons, or dragons creeping up on us. And if any of you harebrained, pigheaded, halfwits are still alive come morning, you might recollect that we have a Duchess to rescue? Anyone? A wizard and a book, the very thought of which almost made a couple hundred wugs and hobgoblins shat themselves? Does any of this ring a bell within any of your thick skulls?”
Deskata had reached the door, which he jerked open. He turned and glared at everyone from the doorway.
“Amateurs,” he growled, as though it were the worst oath in any language. He slammed the door though it did not catch, and his heavy footfalls stomped up the stairs to the roof.
It had been enough to diffuse the immediate situation. Heggenauer and Shikashe had separated enough that Amatesu was between them and keeping them apart at arms length. Nesha-tari’s hands were balled into fists again, and while they still glowed faintly blue she was no longer maneuvering for room to attack.
“Brother Heggenauer,” Amatesu said softly.
The Exlander was flushed and he continued to glare at Nesha-tari, but he did let his mace hang loose in his hand, pointing at the floor.
“I will not cooperate with a woman in thrall to an evil Dragon,” he said. “Her motives for being here are too clouded.”
“Brother Heggenauer,” Amatesu said again, and waited until he looked at her.
“If you will not associate with the Madame Nesha-tari because of the one she may serve, then surely you cannot cooperate with me. I have served evil. As has his lordship Uriako-sama. Both of us have in fact done great evil, in our time.”
Tilda blinked at the shukenja, and Heggenauer frowned down at her.
“I find that hard to believe, Miss Amatesu,” he said.
“It is only true.”
Amatesu looked at Shikashe, who had backed off a step and stood watching Heggenauer. The samurai met Amatesu’s gaze for a moment, and nodded. The woman lowered her eyes to the floor. They exchanged a few quiet words, and Amatesu took a deep breath. She swallowed, and began speaking, and she spoke for a long time.
*
Once upon a time, on the northern-most island of Ashinan which is called Korusbo as it is the place where in winter the Gendji cranes come in pairs to dance on the snow by the rivers, there lived a young swordsman of great prospect. Though his family was of the native Korus people rather than of the overlord Ashinese, the young man’s skill was such that he was accepted as a retainer of the daimyo, that is chief, of the region. The young swordsman was trained in the ways of the warrior that are called bushido, and he became samurai in his daimyo’s service.
When his daimyo made war on his neighbors the young samurai served his master faithfully and well, and for this he was rewarded with the prized fiefdom of Sekibune, through which a great river flows to the sea and where the hills are all covered with tall trees straight as arrows that can be used for many things. It was the finest fiefdom in all the daimyo’s lands and when it was given to the young man of the Korus people, some among the lord’s Ashinese retainers took it hard. These men grew jealous that the daimyo should show such favor to a man who was both young and a foreigner in their eyes, though it was they who had come to Korusbo from Great Ashinan.
With his high reputation and rich fiefdom the young samurai was fit to take a goodly wife, and though his daimyo had a beautiful daughter of the correct age, it happened that the samurai came to be enamored of another. She was an Ashinese noblewoman of great virtue and beauty who came to visit Korusbo from the main island, where her family was high in the Shogun’s court. Her name was Matsuko, and she came to Korusbo in winter to see the dancing of the Gendji cranes by the river in Sekibune. The master of that place took her to see the birds, dancing two-by-two, and there he fell in love with her, and she with him. The two were soon wed.
Then did the jealous retainers of the daimyo whisper to their lord that his favored samurai had affronted him by not asking for the daimyo’s daughter to be his wife. What was more, they said that in marrying Matsuko the samurai sought only to forge a tie to the Shogun’s court in Ashinan, which someday would allow him to become lord beyond Sekibune. The daimyo listened to their poison words and when in due time the couple had as their first child a girl they called Fu-Shora, he made as his gift to them a young woman from the village of Mabinuma. She came to the samurai’s house to serve Matsuko and was welcomed, but the gift was not as it seemed. The people of Mabinuma were of the secret clans known as the ninja, and they spent all of their days practicing the ways of stealth, and of trickery, and of living in shadow. The young woman came not as a simple servant of Matsuko and her new child, but as the eyes and the ears of the daimyo within the samurai’s house.
For a time there was peace in the daimyo’s lands and all prospered, though none quite so much as did the samurai whose fief of Sekibune was by the river and the sea. He was a just ruler and Matsuko was wise, and together they made Sekibune a pleasant place for its people, and in turn they were blessed with a fine son who they named Shikorus. On a high hill in the timber above the mouth of the river with the rocky coast all around, the samurai made a great house in which the family lived. In winter they had only to step out from their front door to see the Gendji cranes dancing by the river in pairs, with the light feet of the graceful birds never breaking the crust of the snow.
In time it came to be that all of the most important visitors to the daimyo’s land, be they Ashinese nobles, representatives from the Celestial Empire on Cho Lung, or even traders from distant Miilark, all alike would come
