Nineteenth Day of the Second Month, Year One Thousand Ten of the Reign of the Ichiya Dynasty

Maiko

The feeling of footsteps behind her was the first thing that Maiko recognized before her world exploded into violence again. She turned suddenly at the unfamiliar steps that thrummed into her own, and in the same motion a knife was removed from her sleeve. This time, however, it wasn’t assassins chasing after her small group.

It was samurai.

She cursed as she deflected a katana aimed right for her throat. As she tried to focus on that feeling, she noted a half dozen pairs of new feet that she hadn’t caught before. In the denseness of the forest, inadvertently running into a patrol like this was tragically inevitable. But she didn’t have time to think of that now. Three of the Samurai were moving towards her fast, and her dagger was going to be hard pressed to meaningfully pierce their armor. As the man who’d already closed on her swung again, she ducked. As the blade flew over her head, she aimed her dagger and stabbed it into the man’s arm. A scream broke the silence of the moment, and she took the opportunity to kick him away and grab his katana in one smooth motion.

As she cut down her opponent, she took a breath to check in on Horobei and Shizuku. Quickly she realized the issue with her positioning. Shizuku was holding her own, but Maiko was cut off by the figures closing on Shizuku and the two Samurai who had engaged her a brief moment later. Her focus returned just in time to suffer only a small slash to the cheek. The katana held in her right and the knife in her left, she slashed back at the offending warrior, her knife only barely being able to block the second opponent’s attack.

“Shizuku-san!” She shouted out. “Take him and go! I’ll take care of things here as long as I can!”

“Don’t be stupid, Maiko-san!” Shizuku’s reply was hoarse from the effort of her strikes. “You can’t take all of them!”

“You two are more important to our efforts than I! You have to go!” She backed up enough to gain an angle to throw her knife into the neck of one of Shizuku’s opponents. As the first person fell forward to his stomach, the other two looked back for only a moment to see what happened.

And fortunately, Shizuku and Horobei took that momentary distraction to run.

Maiko knew she had to think fast to stop pursuit. And so, heedless of her own body, she rushed forward and tripped one of her attackers as he turned to pursue her allies. For a moment, she mentally chastised herself for being so sentimental. This very thing was like to put her entirely out of reach for the actual job she should be doing. But as she leapt to tackle the second opponent, all she could think of was what Himari would do in this exact situation.

To be fair to Himari, of course, she was a far better fighter than Maiko. A fact evident by the fact that once the surprise of the situation passed, she was back on the defensive. The stolen weapon she wielded was only just able to keep the three that had pressed back into her at bay. The remaining soldier had pushed to his feet and started to pursue her allies. She thanked the Kami that only one had pushed on. Shizuku should have far more of a chance.

Nevertheless, it was time to stop the defensive and try to build a path to escape. She threw a feint towards her left most attacker, and as he lifted to block, she launched herself into the air. A spark of hope hit as her hands grasped the tree branch above her. As she caught the branch and pulled up, her heart swelled with excitement. She forced her legs up onto the branch, reaching up to continue climbing.

Her belief was shattered effortlessly with one abrupt pull to the ground. She landed face first with a hard thud. In the daze, the first thing she noted was that she hadn’t been immediately skewered. The second was that, as her vision was starting to return, the sight of a strange figure stood over her. She tried to move her arms to challenge him, but found that in the moments of her daze her hands were bound behind her back. She inwardly cursed her being slow.

“Tisk tisk, Maiko-chan,” Masashi’s voice cut like a knife. “There seems to be someone missing. No matter, let’s take some time to talk.” Even with her impaired focus, she could tell he was turning to address the men. “Set a perimeter around us. Stay out of ear shot. I have some things to discuss with my wayward asset.”

As the trio walked away, Maiko spit at him, just missing his face in favor of a small spot on his kimono. “Of all the things I’ve seen, I must admit sacrificing pawns just to send a message is a new low,” she growled. “But I suppose it makes sense that you wouldn’t want Horobei-sama ruining whatever plans you might have.”

He laughed that awful laugh that Maiko had so long ago come to despise. “Oh, Maiko-chan. You have no idea of my plans. Horobei-sama’s rescue was a potentiality I anticipated, and his escape here is not a burden to me. What is becoming increasingly burdensome is that you continue to not perform the one responsibility that I had assigned to you.” His voice had dipped to just a tinge of anger. She was tempted to taunt him on it just out of principle.

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“Ah, you mean Himari-sama? I’m afraid I don’t know where she is right now. Last I heard she was traveling through a forest full of magical spirits and wandering demons. I’m afraid our contract, so much as we have one, doesn’t quite extend to forests of unknown power.”

That anger seemed to fade, much to Maiko’s surprise. His expression softened to a smile, like a father staring down at his daughter. It was sickening. “My dear Maiko-chan. Surely you are not so foolish as to think I value your life so much that I wouldn’t expect you to do such things. You are one of my strongest assets, but that only stands true so long as you do what you are told.” His foot slammed down into her leg, and she let out a gasp at the shock of pain. No breaks, but she didn’t doubt the bruise was going to last a while.

“So why don’t you tell me, girl. Why did you leave the side of the one person I expect you to protect with your life?” As if to predicate the question, his foot slammed into her stomach, taking her breath away immediately.

Maiko struggled to catch her breath, sucking in air until she could wheeze out a response. “How do you expect me to protect her when she doesn’t trust me?”

“And whose fault is that?” His foot slammed into her face, bloodying her cheek. “How did you lose the trust you had cultivated?”

“By doing what you wanted!” Maiko cried out, tears streaming down her cheek unbidden. “You told me to keep her life safe at any cost, and I did! The poor girl watched her father die to whatever plans you had, and instead of letting her rush into the throne room I saved her Kami damned life! Now, she doesn’t trust me. She shouldn’t trust me. Now I am here, trying my damned best to repair this damned mess. And if not for this right now, maybe I’d have had a chance to do so.” She braced for yet another strike.

But it didn’t come. Instead, Masashi sat in front of her and studied her for a moment. He slipped a rag from his sleeve and a small waterskin and started to clean the cut on her cheek from the earlier blade. She winced, pulling away, but his free hand simply grabbed her chin and held her attention on him.

“I must confess,” he mused as he cleaned her wounds. “I had thought that you were simply avoiding your responsibility. It had not occurred to me that, perhaps, you had thought this through beyond matters of spite. Perhaps I should have given you more credit. It certainly would have saved me the long trip out here to find you.”

Maiko relaxed, giving up trying to fight his doting. “So you were after me, and not Horobei-sama. Am I really such a valuable asset?”

“On your own?” He chuckled, rolling up her pant leg to assess the damage he’d caused. The black and blue told her that she’d likely be walking with a slight limp for the next few days. “Of course not, Maiko-chan. If you were that valuable, I’d not have let you go those years past. But you are protecting my most valuable asset, and disobedience is not a thing that I can tolerate when the stakes are so high.”

She growled. “What more could she do for you? Aren’t you at least partially responsible for her father’s death? The Emperor’s?”

He set his free hand on her head, smiling a kind smile she refused to believe was genuine. “Oh, Darling Maiko-chan. The works that are occurring now have been in play since before you were old enough to hold that knife you love so much. Of course Himari-san is important. She has a great deal of potential, and I need her to live to see that potential through.”

“Then what are you planning? What in the Hells is so damn important? How am I supposed to help your goals if I’m being treated like a damn child?” Frustration boiled over again. She hated that she cared so much about this man’s approval, after everything he had put her through. She hated that somewhere deep inside, she still cared about his goals. After all the suffering he forced her to inflict… Why did his desires matter?

And as he always did, Masashi waggled a patronizing finger at her. “Ah ah. All things in time, Maiko-chan. Return to Himari-san as soon as you can, and I shall reveal more in five days' time.” A dagger appeared in his hand and he tossed it up. She felt a small gust of wind, and it spun behind her and slashed the rope that held her arms almost faster than she could see.

“Where are you going?” She demanded.

“I must go and play my role as the sniveling advisor,” he answered with a wave of his hand. “You should go play yours.” He disappeared through the trees almost as swiftly as he had appeared. And soon she heard the shuffle of feet following off to the south, away from Shizuku’s eastern path.

Maiko didn’t dare move for several minutes. When she finally dared, it was tentative. Despite his apparently altruistic attempt to fix her leg, it still screamed in protest when she put pressure on it. She grit her teeth and leapt into the trees. Just because her friends would be easy to follow didn’t mean she wanted to lead an extra set of tracks in their direction.

It took the better part of an hour for her to catch up to Shizuku and Horobei. She let herself down gingerly, climbing down instead of leaping like she might do normally. Shizuku turned with a start as she made herself known, her blade pointing directly at Maiko’s throat.

“I wrote you off as dead,” Shizuku stated warily. “How did you escape?”

“Through the trees,” she lied. “Once I led them enough away that I was certain they couldn’t follow you, I used the trees to mask my escape and waited til I was sure it was safe to come back.”

Shizuku stared at her for a long time, then sheathed her sword. Maiko knew it was a matter of necessity rather than trust. The Chosen didn’t trust her, especially not with the last remaining scion of the Ichiya.

And truth be told, Maiko didn’t trust herself.