The Continent (The Continent #1)(85)

I get to my feet, my chin quivering. “I hope one day you’ll see that I’m trying here, that I’m really trying.”

He points to the long, winding path.

I go.

Even after the long walk back to Hayato, I’m still trembling with anger—and with fear, for I was truly afraid that Shoshi might kill me right there on the farm, in the shade of the old oak. I make my way to Yuki’s, for I can’t bring myself to go home just yet.

“Do you think it’s my fault that the Topi have come?” I say, when she answers the door. “Will the Aven’ei die because of me?”

Yuki, ever practical, ushers me into the washroom and puts water on to heat for a bath. I forget sometimes how bad I smell.

“Vaela Sun, how can you ask such a thing? What’s happened?”

“Shoshi,” I say, and that is explanation enough.

Yuki sighs. “We have been at war for a long time. You know this.”

“But the heli-planes…they could have led the Topi into the south. Shoshi believes it. Others believe it. You said yourself the villagers think I’m some kind of evil harbinger.”

“The Topi have come because they wish to surround us. With their warriors in the north and in the Kinsho mountains to the west, the south has always been our only retreat. It is only logical that they have come, now that our numbers have dwindled so greatly. They are on the verge of triumph.”

“There won’t be any more tours of the Continent,” I say. “Now the Spire decides to withdraw.”

“It wasn’t the planes, Vaela.”

She pours water into the washtub, some cold, some hot, and turns away while I undress and step inside. There are flower petals floating at the surface and a bar of soap on a tray beside the basin. I begin to scrub away the heat and exhaustion. I rub the flowers against my skin, wishing I had said something kind to Shoshi, rather than having allowed myself to be provoked. Childish. Just like him. You’re no better.

Yuki stirs beside me. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“Well, I don’t have a job anymore—he told me never to come back.”

“What angered him?”

I laugh. “Who knows? The sight of me, the smell of me, the very fact that I exist? I stopped for a drink of water and he just…snapped.”

“He is the most ill-tempered man I’ve ever met.”

“He called me a…a takaharu, Yuki. What does that mean?”

She sucks in her breath, her lips pursed together. “He didn’t.”

“What does it mean?”

She chews on her lip for a moment. “It is…no. It is an insult, a reference only. It implies an Aven’ei who would lie with a Topi—a wanton, promiscuous person—man or woman—who revels in the sexual company of the enemy.”

“I…I have never…I would never! Noro and I have not even—”

“You are no such thing, and Shoshi knows it well.” Her eyes narrow. “Did he strike you?”

“He did not,” I say. “But nearly.”

Yuki frowns. “Noro would see him dead for less than that.”

“I will not keep this from Noro, and I will not tolerate any violence. The trouble is between Shoshi and myself—it is no one else’s concern.”

“You would stay Noro’s hand in defense of a man who knowingly slanders your honor?”

“Oh, honestly, you Aven’ei!” I say. “My honor is intact, whether Shoshi slanders it or not. I don’t need his good opinion to know myself. Noro and I, we love each other. Not that Shoshi could ever understand such a thing.”

“Oh, he understands it. He had a love of his own once, you know. He was a different man then.”

“He…Shoshi?”

Yuki wraps a toweling cloth about my shoulders, and I rise reluctantly from the tub. “He had a wife once,” she says. “They were very happy for a time.”

“And she was killed by the Topi?”

“Oh, nothing so bearable as that,” Yuki says. “We expect to lose those at war; we are hardened to it, though it hurts nonetheless. But Shoshi’s wife, she killed herself. We guessed it was because she could not bear children, but truly, no one knows why. Shoshi came home from a skirmish at Uematsu to find her hanging from the beams, two or three days dead.”

I hear myself shouting at him on the farm: It’s no surprise that you’re alone, that everyone despises you… Oh, if I could take those words back, if I could take them all back, I surely would. But a word spoken can never be unsaid, and so I have scraped at the wound of a warrior whose scars run far deeper than his skin.





CHAPTER 32





I SEE SHOSHI IN THE MARKETPLACE FROM TIME to time, but he turns his back whenever I approach, and will not acknowledge me. I stew with shame over the words I spoke, for I no longer see this man as horrible—only broken. I’ve even come to miss my days on the farm, as impossible as that might seem—those quiet mornings alone with my thoughts on the way to work, and the splendor of the summer sunshine on my face, turning my skin from ivory to bronze.

The council is far too busy to place me with another work assignment, so I spend my oka frugally, and do odd jobs for the few traders who are friendly to me. This typically involves deliveries or fetching supplies, and the pay is low, but it’s better than nothing.