Traveling with his young companions was fun, Gyre learned. Even if they were going in circles. It was rather foolish to be following a sword, but Gyre didn’t object as there was no place in particular any of them wanted to go, and the sword hadn’t steered them poorly thus far. Almost every night they came to a village or town or small city with an inn where they could rest in a comfortable bed. When they did not, they could find a grove with deadwood to build a fire for their camp, or an affable farmer who didn’t mind them bedding down in his loft.
The weather was mostly pleasant, as was the conversation. At least to Gyre, hearing Ita and Baty’s constant back and forth was pleasant. Ita was determined to force Baturya into completing one of the missing rights of manhood that he would need in order to be recognized as an adult to the Kastazee people.
“I am not going to kill a lion for you,” Baturya was arguing. “Just because Kastazee boys are supposed to catch a shark doesn’t mean that continental boys should kill lions! There’d be no lions left if everyone had to kill them!”
“Not all rockmen have to kill lions, just you. I would say wolf or fox or something small if you were weak. But you are strong, so you must kill something strong so that it is fair,” Ita explained.
“You’re just making all of this up as you go, aren’t you?”
“No, I asked my parents before we left them what trials you must take to be worthy of me, and they said--”
“Wait, worthy of you? You’re the one chasing me! Why do I have to be worthy of you?”
“Because my father is Pest Kozi. He is a water walker. Even if I am not a water walker yet, you must be worthy of being my husband for me to choose you,” Ita explained.
“A water-walker? How old is your father?”
“He won’t say. I think he lost track,” Ita admitted.
“Is your mother an immortal too?”
“My mother was not even born Kastazee. My father … I am not his only child. They make jokes that he will marry anyone who chases him. Many of his children are much older, and have married many times among the Kastazee. Many of the children my age are my cousins. That is why I thought I would find a rockman as a husband,” she explained.
“How many kids does he have for that to be such a problem,” Baturya asked.
“He won’t say. I think he lost track,” Ita admitted. “He has not had any other children for a generation or more, however, and warned me that I must go to land to find a husband from the time I was young. I was very happy to meet a strong rockman at Nuriffah – the play fighting with the Sudamans that we do every few years. I thought finding a husband would be difficult, but the winds led me to him.”
“Is finding a spouse a common problem for the Kastazee?” Gyre inquired. “It seems like with your marriage arrangements that inbreeding might be a concern.”
“No, we know who our parents are and our grandparents and our great grandparents, and we always check names before we marry,” Ita explained. “That is the problem for me, though. My father is many other children’s grandfather or great-grandfather, which means that I cannot marry them. It would be very hard to find Kastazee boy to marry. I would have to travel south to where the stars change, maybe. It was much easier to find Baty, and that is why I do not leave him alone.”
“For the last time, we are not getting married!” Baturya shouted.
“Yes we are,” Ita insisted.
“I said no, you don’t get to decide that for yourself!”
“See? You just changed your mind. If you changed your mind that you will never say a thing again, then how can you say you will never change your mind?” Ita challenged.
“What?” Baturya was genuinely dumbfounded by her logic.
“You said that you would say something ‘for the last time.’ Then you said it again,” she explained. “If you can change your mind on that then you can change your mind on anything!”
“That is not how it works!” Baturya shouted.
Gyre did the only sensible thing that an adult could do in this situation and laughed. The conversation was typical for the pair, although he could tell that they were both beginning to miss Sazobo, the third member of the act who would alternate between supporting Ita’s quest and Baty’s refusal based upon how much coin was in his pocket.
When Sazobo’s coin pouch was full, he would support Ita just to give Baty a hard time. When it was near empty, he would cozy up to his wealthy friend. Sazobo was only a student at the first Reformation, after all, and his stipend was insignificant compared to Baty’s who was being treated as a fifth Reformation Master, despite having been forcibly skipped past the fourth Reformation.
Only Shaji was quiet on the journey. He seemed eager every time that the sword led them east, and his spirits seemed to fall whenever it fell to the north or the west.
~~~~~~~~~
They trained and cultivated along the way. They would use the mornings or the evenings for that purpose when they were away from civilization. When they spent the night in a bed, they would instead stop somewhere before eating their meal at noon and spend an hour or two sparring, so as not to spook the unawakened.
The clashes between Gyre and Baturya were particularly violent. Unconcerned about his personal safety, the former Sect master encouraged the boy to go at the training without holding back. Clouds of ki filled with killing intent would pour off of Baturya during these training exercises, making Shaji’s job of caring for the horses particularly difficult. More than once he was mere inches or seconds away from taking a horseshoe to the head or chest or other place which was not designed to take a blow from a horseshoe. Even from a distance, the air would spark and small dust devils formed and dissipated as the ki Baturya released disrupted the local spiritual energy for a few minutes.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Ita would endure it with equanimity, meditating on her own training sessions as she sought to consolidate her gains. Shaji simply could not. The feel of Baturya’s ki during these sessions was frightening, and even though he knew the killing intent wasn’t directed at him, the aura that Baturya gave off was indiscriminate.
Which, to Shaji, was a very good reason to find tasks to do which took him far from the violence. One morning, he led the horses away to keep them from spooking too badly, but mostly it was an excuse to venture out further from the clashing cultivators. He feared Ita would beat him if he did not do other tasks while he was away, such as finding a water source to refill everyone’s canteens, and so he did exactly that. He did not do so happily, grumbling the entire while about the indignity of the tasks he was given. But Ita really would probably beat him if he didn’t work, and he doubted the others would stop her. She never actually had, but when she wanted it to be her aura could be almost as scary as Baty’s.
He was relieving himself into the stream when he felt a sudden presence behind him, and a sharp object pressed against his throat, just beneath the iron collar that marked his station in life.
“Scream and you die,” a woman’s voice whispered in his ear.
Turns out his bladder wasn’t completely empty after all. Adrenaline and fear coursed through Shaji’s bloodstream, and he held very, very still.
“I’m just a poor slave, mistress,” he whispered. “You can take the horses, I won’t stop you or scream. But my masters are powerful cultivators, you should--”
“I don’t want your horses. I want information. The boy and the old man, who the hell are they?”
The tip of the blade pressed firmly against his skin, almost enough to part flesh.
“That’s all? I would have told you without a knife at my--”
“Answer the question! Who are they?”
“Gyre of the Sudaman Sect! Baturya, also of the Sudamans. The girl is a Kastazee!”
“How can the old man stand up to the boy’s aura? He feels like just an old man to me. How is the boy already at the fifth Reformation at his age? Answer me?” the woman demanded.
“I’m not a cultivator, mistress! I don’t understand these things either,” Shaji protested.
“You expect me to believe that a slave hasn’t been eavesdropping on his master’s conversations? Answer the questions, or I’ll move the blade south,” the woman threatened.
Shaji winced at the implied threat; he hadn’t had a chance to put himself away yet. “Baty is unorthodox. I don’t know what that means, but he was always considered a genius, and then something happened and he jumped from the second to the fifth Reformation. That’s all I know!”
“And the old man?” she persisted.
“He’s at the sixth Reformation,” Shaji whimpered. “He’s the strongest cultivator in the Sudaman Sect at present. I don’t know why, but his Aura disappeared when he broke through.”
“Curious, I didn’t know it did that,” the woman said. “Baturya … I’ve heard that name before. What is his family name? Where is he from?”
“He is from the east, but he has no family name,” Shaji spat. “Not really. He was a slave before, but he was set free by a stupid old man and he took the name Etrus in the man’s honor. But he’s really just a whoreson.”
“A whoreson who happens to be an unorthodox martial genius,” the woman whispered, moving the tip of the blade slightly as a threat. “You shouldn’t be talking so poorly about your masters, slave. Especially in your current situation, when he might be the only one to save you.”
“Please, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Shaji whimpered.
“Why have they been following me?” she demanded harshly. “What do they want?”
Shaji blinked in surprise. “Following you?”
“For three weeks I’ve seen your party on my trail. Every time I try to lose you, you turn up a few days later. Why, and how, are they tracking me?”
“But we’re not following anyone. We’re just sort of wandering around in circles,” Shaji protested. “Baty’s got this stupid idea that the gods are talking to him through his sword and everyone else is humoring him. We’re not going anywhere or chasing anyone, I don’t know--”
“Don’t give me that! Tell me or I swear you’ll be singing soprano,” the woman threatened, and her knife began tracing its way downward.
“Um, we really weren’t tracking you, or anybody else,” a voice came from behind them, causing both to jump. The woman spun Shaji about and he saw that Ita had come to check on them. Despite the tension of the situation, Ita couldn’t suppress a giggle that made Shaji blush with shame.
“Don’t give me that! Tell me how you placed the tracking charm on me, or I swear I’ll kill your slave,” the woman threatened.
“That would be a mistake,” Ita said, cocking her head. “Even slave’s lives are protected under the Law. You are not strong enough to murder him and get away with it, I think. Not once the Seekers start looking for you. I do not see why it bothers you so much that we have been traveling in the same direction as you.”
“Ita, please, don’t antagonize the crazy lady with a knife to my neck,” Shajita stage whispered.
“The girl is right, this was a bluff,” the woman said. She kicked the back of Shaji’s knees and he went down. He rolled away from the crazy lady, his hands going to his neck to make certain that she hadn’t nicked anything important. Fortunately, his hands came away dry.
By the time he had reassured himself that he wasn’t bleeding out, Shaji was alone next to the small brook. The woman had run off, and Ita was chasing her. Panicked, he took only a few seconds to compose himself before ran back in the direction of Gyre and Baturya, leaving the horses behind. They were unsaddled, and even if he managed to get on ones back unassisted he wouldn’t stay there when they got close enough to Baty’s battle aura.
“Gyre! Master Gyre! Baty! A crazy lady attacked me, and now Ita is giving chase!”
~~~~~~~~~
Rena cursed her bad luck. She’d had the perfect opportunity to finally get some answers about the group that had been following her, only for the slave’s answers to be worthless and incomprehensible, and then she had been discovered by the girl. Worse, she had underestimated the girl entirely, as she was able to keep up with Rena’s attempts to lose the tail.
The terrain was rocky and uneven, with heavy vegetation, which should have made escape easy. The two sprinted over the uneven ground, deeper and deeper into the wilds. Rena accepted that she would have to turn and face the girl eventually, so she looked for a place to do so on her terms.
It was then that she ran, headlong while looking behind her, into the wild man.
“Jaz?” the wild man asked, as shocked as she was by their sudden encounter. “How did you – what are you doing here? How did you find me? It’s been weeks, I thought I was safe.”
Stunned by the rebound – it felt like she had run into a stone wall – it took Rena a moment to realize that she had been called by her cousin’s name. Unfortunately, before she could ask any of the questions that bounced into her head, the man knocked her unconscious with a blow of a cultivator in the late third Reformation.