Shun and I both got up, trying to straighten our Andalaf suits and clear our faces of the wreckage. Shun wore no face paint, so there were no smears there, only the natural smearing that weeping brings to anyone, face paint or not.

“Well, I suppose it is my turn now that we’ve had our … tea,” Akio said, smiling at us and flicking a tear off his cheek. “I am not … Ai’s true father. And by true, I mean biological. I believe I am her father, and so does Ai. I only make the specification because it is part of the story I’m about to tell.

“I was a captain in Andalaf’s military. I wore a black suit.”

Hinote drew in a sharp breath. “Did you … sell her out?”

Akio laughed. “Hardly. Just listen. You may find we have more in common than you think. I was on duty, as most of us were then, on the northern continent of Aselvay. After the enormous reserve of dragon bones was found by archaeologists on a dig, everyone headed up that way. We fought day in and day out. Andalaf had an abundance of Sachi, so we were destroying the other countries that tried to contest us until the battle of Barustock. We were surprised. They lured us in at night. A squadron of maybe twenty-seven. Confident that we could not be defeated, being the strongest military in the world, we went in, my squadron and another captain’s, thinking we were gonna have an easy day. The bombs didn’t register on our scanner. I still don’t know how they managed it. There was a lot of whacky tech up there that was different from ours. A lot of laboratories, too. Many of those scientists who had holed up in the frigid wastes work for Andalaf now; who knows if it’s consensual. Anyway, I lost my whole squad that day and half of the other captains.

“Bombs going off, fire, shrapnel, my uniform torn, my ears ringing. It still hits from time to time, that ringing, and I can hear the explosions in my sleep.”

I shifted uncomfortably, and it did not go unnoticed by Akio, but he continued.

“After the initial shock, when my ears stopped screaming, I heard another type of screaming. ‘Mamamamama!’ It was almost unintelligible, the babbling of a baby. I stumbled to the sound of it, the awful, heart-wrenching sound, hoping the child wasn’t maimed in some way, though all I could picture was a child crying for their mother while they were missing limbs or torn in half, limping or crawling their way through the snow. I came through a large cloud of black smoke to the remains of a building surrounded by ruined walls of brick. Some of the walls still stood, closer to the base surrounding the building. Inside was what looked like a research facility. It was big, with lots of large vats and tubes like they use for Chudo Sachi baths, some still intact. There was a stairway built into the floor, going down to a basement. Never saw what was down there. I think they lived in the facility. The floor plan was too … residential, and I saw beds and couches.” He paused for a moment, a haunted expression in his eyes. “Baby dolls powdered with snow …. There was a man and a woman. They were the only three there. I think they were together, and I think Ai was their daughter, though I have no way of knowing for sure. The woman looked … more Sallis-Faint than Ai. I think Ai is half-human. The man had on a lab coat, like the one Ben Nejirita always wears, so looking back, I believe he was running tests on his wife and on his daughter. There is no way to know for sure. After Andalaf came and cleaned everything up, they wiped any of that shit away. Ai was tucked into her dead mother’s arm, babbling that ‘mamamamama’ over and over, sobbing. The man was dead, too, but Ai only cried for her mother. I’d never seen Sallis-Faint before. The red hair, the ashen-grey skin … and her mother’s nose was truly like a reptile’s, all nostrils, unlike Ai’s which can somewhat pass for a human nose, if a bit upturned.”

He took a drink of his tea. This scientist … he couldn’t have been. Akio could not have been the one who discovered him.

“Dr. Itzak Olimav, the one and only. But I didn’t tell anyone. It wasn’t until Nejirita came and poked around that they found out his name and used him as their poster child for the Sallis-Faint. Nothing like an old dead guy to give your purpose a stamp of approval from the masses. After all, old people are on their way out: impotent, harmless, wise. If I had to bet, I’d say Olimav would have spit at the idea of Andalaf using his research, let alone his daughter. Back to me, though. I looked at this child crying for her dead mom. My whole squad was dead. I had no one to come home to, and I was pretty fucked up after being in the North for so long. When I joined up, I thought it was all an easy ride, glory-filled, and that I was part of the good guys. After spending a while there as a captain in the Great Northern Sachi War, I was convinced that there was nothing good in the world, but what was I going to do besides my job now? And the darker question, the one that haunted me at night, was … what do I do when it’s over? I scooped up the little girl with red hair. I didn’t care that she looked strange. I actually thought that she had been burned somehow, and that’s why she looked that way. I know things like that can happen in labs from time to time. I picked her up, screaming all the while and writhing in my arms. She couldn’t have been any older than two at the time. She was hitting me and scratching me all the way back to camp. The remainder of the other squadron was already there when I got back, and from the look on my face, everyone left me alone, and I spoke to no one until I got to my commanding officer’s tent.

“‘I’ve found a refugee, Commander. I’d like to take responsibility for her,’ I said. Andalaf was happy to oblige. The fewer refugees they had to find homes for, the better. First of all, it’s bad for PR if you have a whole country’s worth of people fighting for space after you’ve just destroyed their homes. Second, that’s fewer mouths they have to feed on their own dime. If they get some soldiers attached to the local folk, bringing them into their own houses and feeding them their own food, it saves them a hell of a lot of money. So, my commander naturally already had the paperwork ready in a small drawer on his desk. Ai had fallen asleep at some point on our walk back to camp, and I had her face tucked into my shoulder, my coat covering her up, so he didn’t see her face that night, though many others did in the days to come. I filled out the paperwork, and she had a strange birthmark behind her left ear that looked like two small clouds with the letters A and I, so I named her Ai on the certificate of adoption. These papers were but a formality, and so many children were adopted during that time, thankfully, which made it harder for them to find her once they started looking. I was able to keep Ai with me at camp, and I finally got a letter of release for my willingness to take in a refugee. Andalaf wanted the refugees out of the horror of their country as quickly as possible, you know, reconnaissance and all of that, damage control. So, we went home to my apartment on the Upper-Plateau. For a good year, we lived there, adjusting to each other, and Ai started calling me daddy. Then the war ended, and with it, our time in the city. Like I said, I thought she was the victim of some lab accident, and that is what I told anyone who asked. She was a delight, and she wooed anyone who came within six feet of her. She just had an … energy about her.”

I nodded in agreement. She did. She pulled me in, and she pulled the others in, too. And now we were here at her father’s house. This all started with me doing a job and trying to bring Morfran out, and now I’m involved because of Ai’s energy. I almost laughed.

“You’ve seen it then?” Akio asked.

I looked at the others. They both nodded their heads, and it seemed Shun was not upset at my own agreement on this. Perhaps she felt the way I did about Ai. Perhaps it was nothing special because it was special to everyone.

“Well, of course you have,” Akio said, “that’s who she is. Those big ruby-red eyes … has she gotten you to get quiet yet? First time she had me do it, she was three. Three! Anyway, after the war, Andalaf started broadcasting Ben Nejirita, talking about Dr. Itzak Olimav as if he were some genius that Andalaf had discovered. Nejirita would even say that Olimav was working for Andalaf in secret for years, and they blamed his death on one of the other nations in the war, Lyrinica. I have no idea who killed Olimav, but I know it wasn’t like that. We were up there for Sachi, for the dragon bones, and Olimav was up there to stay away from us. After all of these Olimav videos on the endorphinscreens in every home and on the big screens all around the Upper-Plateau—and I’m sure in the rest of the Andalaf-owned territories as well—the ads changed. Nejirita started talking about Sallis-Faint. He would repeat the name as much as possible: ‘Sallis-Faint have red hair, Sallis-Faint have slits for nostrils, Sallis-Faint have slanted eyes, Sallis-Faint have ashen-grey skin. If you or anyone you know knows where any of the Sallis-Faint are, they need our help. Please help us find the Sallis-Faint.’ It was confusing. Then I had a friend who joked about Ai—”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Wait,” I said, “how did you not know about the Sallis-Faint as a captain?”

Akio scratched his chin. “It was different back then. I knew of healing Sachi, but I was just a captain. I didn’t need to understand where it came from. And they didn’t need to tell me. That was for the higher-ups, the Chudo. I used Sachi, but it never healed. Plus, I think they discovered something with Olimav’s research. Something big. Up to that point, I think Andalaf kept Sallis-Faint, but only for healing Sachi, thinking of them as a type of resource that was to be used and up and disposed of when the good stuff was gone. I’m no scientist, but if I had to guess, I’d say there are Sallis-Faint that they’ve had the whole time, but they’re all old or used up, or there just aren’t enough of them to pull off whatever it is they’re planning.”

I thought of the old woman in the dungeons below Keith Smith’s mansion. “Yeah, that makes sense,” I said.

“It does?” Hinote said.

I nodded. “Yeah. If they were using an endangered race of people to make healing Sachi, I mean truly endangered species like the Sallis-Faint, they’d get quite a bit of blowback from the people. It’s something Andalaf takes very seriously, as you can see by today’s events. Andalaf needs the people on their side in order to function. Taking on all of those refugees made them look like good guys while also giving them an entire workforce to exploit. If they said: ‘We have an endangered race of people enslaved in the basement making our special Sachi,’ they’d have a lot of angry people, unwilling to keep working their long hours in unfavorable conditions. It would hit too close to home. They’d start feeling that they themselves were in the same situation as the Sallis-Faint in the basement, held there by cruel masters.”

Hinote opened his eyes wide.

“Right. Gotta throw a dog a bone, or he stops giving a fuck,” Akio said. “But if you show the dog that the bone is used to beat them over the head and does not serve as a treat, the dog bites.”

“And there are a lot more dogs than masters,” Shun said.

“Right. But before we get too far away,” Akio said, “People started to make comments about Ai looking an awful lot like those descriptions, and I should take her into Andalaf to get her checked out. They only wanted to help Sallis-Faint. They were endangered and sick, and … you get the picture. They gave many reasons why the Sallis-Faint needed to come to see old daddy Andalaf. I smelled shit the minute they used Olimav’s face on the endorphinscreens. I saw that man dead in his destroyed lab. He was no Andalaf patriot. He was a scientist trying to stay left the fuck alone in Aselvay. And the fact that they wanted Sallis-Faint so bad, well, I didn’t trust that either, especially since I’d taken this one from the famed scientist’s lab—a friend of Andalaf, Itzak Olimav.”

“So you went into the trash,” I said.

“Came here. It took months to clear it to the point where I could start building. We had to stay at an inn while we did it, and I had to hide Ai’s face under hoods or behind masks back and forth between the inn and the long pipe leading here. I’d say to those who asked that I was just trying to keep her safe from the Sachi poisoning.”

“What happened here? When they took her. How’d they find her?” I said.

“They were here waiting for her. They weren’t exactly forthcoming with their methods of finding us. But they had an endorphincopter parked up in the trash. I thought I was cunning, hiding us right underneath Andalaf’s nose, but I also wondered if it was too bold—if this would happen someday,” Akio said. “She went with the Jonnys on the condition that Toshiko be left with me and that they leave you three unharmed.” He sagged a bit in his chair and itched an area above his brow.

“Well, that makes me feel a bit fucked up that your daughter had to go up to Andalaf to save mine,” Hinote said. “Um … thank you.”

Akio smiled. “Ai is the one you need to thank. She is the reason we are all alive. She bargained for us with her freedom, her life—something she holds very dear. I could never keep her home very long. That’s why I got the Silence outfit you met her in, Ningyo.”

Shun shifted as this new person used my full name.

“So now she’s up at Andalaf Tower, and Nejirita is probably poking and prodding her in his lab,” I said.

“Those mother-fuckers!” Hinote said, slamming his meaty fist on the table. Akio jumped. He was a soldier, yes, but he was no Chudo. But really, spending a few days with someone like Hinote prepared you for unnecessary emotional reactions; Akio just needed more time with the man. “Will you keep Toshiko here a while longer?”

“I planned to,” Akio said. “The endorphinscreen showed your faces, Hinote. All three of you, framing Ningyo as the leader. I think you’d do more harm than good by staying around Toshiko now.”

“Daddy, no! I want to come with—”

“Toshiko!” Hinote said, tears in his eyes. She went silent, looking down at the table and fidgeting with her clothes. “I don’t want none o’ this shit. But he’s right. They won’t have Ai next time to bargain with her life. She coulda ripped ‘em apart with that demon thing she has, but she didn’t so she could save us. By now, they probably ripped that black Sachi outta her hands, and she helpless behind bars somewhere. For your safety—for our safety. Let’s not waste that shit, aight.”

Toshiko’s tears were silent. She nodded her head.

“You sure you up for it?” Hinote said, looking at Akio.

“I raised one girl up. I think I can handle another one for a time,” Akio said, smiling at Toshiko, who refused to lift her head.

“I’m gonna go and get this man’s daughter, Shiko,” Hinote said, “as I would hope someone would do for me. And then I’ll come back for you. And then, we might leave Man'naka for good. Can you make sure you ready?”

Toshiko looked up to him through shining eyes, pulling her golden hair to the other side of her face so she could see. “Leave? Really?”

“Yeah. It’s past time. Shoulda done it long ago.”

Toshiko smiled, her eyes a delight to watch as they shone with the splendor of the outside world. I remember feeling like that.

“I’m going,” I said.

“Me too,” said Shun.

“I want you to take her with you. When you go. If you can get her out that is …” Akio said.

“We’ll get her out,” Hinote said. “But we’ll leave that decision up to her. If she wants to come, she’s free to do so.”

“We’d better go,” I said. “Who knows what Nejirita will try. He’s fucking nuts.”

“Please, take some food with you,” Akio said, jumping up out of his chair and rushing around the kitchen. He grabbed a canvas bag out of a pantry and started stuffing it with apples, pears, and some dried meat. Then he went into another room and came back with three large cloaks.

He handed me one of the black cloaks and the bag. I threw it on and slung the bag over my right shoulder. No sword back there to get in the way now, I thought with some melancholy.

We stepped through the pear-shaped door, Hinote and Toshiko sharing a weepy goodbye. There was an understanding between us all: we probably wouldn’t make it back. Andalaf Tower was heavily guarded, and there were only three of us.

As I watched Toshiko and Hinote, I said to Shun, “We’ve really gotten into a mess over that little boy.”

She smiled. “He was always a bit messy. This would be his kind of thing. If I had to guess, Asahi … went away having the time of his life. Being involved in some big Andalaf, Chudo drama. I hate it. I hate it, Nin. But sometimes, when I can get myself out of the way a little bit, I can see it like that, like he was on a mission with his mother, and that’s what he wanted more than anything else in the world.”

The mist threatened to coat my eyes again, and I willed the tears back. “Thank you,” I whispered. She grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze, then started to let go, but I didn’t let her.