“You are the bearer of your predecessors’ wisdoms. Your thoughts, your actions, your responsibilities—even your visage is a reflection of all the faces that came before.”

  It was well into the night when Kotora finally reached Yusov. It was a modest town, primarily full of family residences and a handful of commercial businesses, and it had two separate inns. Kotora went to the cheaper of the two. What little money he’d hoarded and hidden with the horses would not be enough to get him all the way to the isle, so he was sparing with it, though the room he was given was drafty and frigid.

  “Enlightened Yoriake,” he murmured when he id her down before him. He sat straight and rigid on his knees on the floor beside the bed, facing the door. His head was bowed. His eyes were closed. From his fingers dangled a brass bell on a vermillion string. Intended to be worn on a hawk’s tarsus, the trinket had once belonged to his te master and been used in his prayers. “This disgraced samurai, humble in his service, prays upon you that a gift of your wisdom might be imparted upon his heart. Within, he invokes the soul of his master, and the bearers of the bde before him, and he offers his audience an imodaki. Prithee, spirits of the sword: hear this prayer and speak on he who is called Engel.” He tapped the bell with the nail of his index finger and it released a light, airy ring.

  He let it resound into the room’s emptiness. The sword, which sat unsheathed on the floor in front of him, shimmered with living incandescence. Opaline iridescence gleamed in shades of abaster and abalone. Colors surged in his mind’s eye: an overpowering, abstract phantasmagoria of flowing fmes, molten metal, smoldering embers dying underneath the serene patter of rain. Sweet, sodden petrichor filled his nostrils. He felt as if there was a light wind tugging at his fingertips.

  In, two, three, four. Ting. He tapped the bell again. Hold, six, seven, eight. Ting. Out, seven, six, five…With each ring he allowed the sensations of his corporeal body to become distant. Dull. The constant sense of suffocation; the pressure, the pain; the nausea and vertigo and the throbbing headache which existed perpetually, now. He left it behind in favor of a vivid waking dream. It cked concrete form, for she—the sword—was not a being with human perceptions. She knew the world only through her soul-sense and thus, so, too, was the knowledge she imparted.

  “Engel,” he whispered again.

  Engel, the voices of the bde recited back. The name came with the honeyed notes of edelweiss once more. He knew the fragrance because, as a boy, he’d often collected the mountain-borne flower for his father while he watched the grazing kine. He felt pressure on his shoulder, as if someone pced their hand there, and he heard a voice through the haze of semi-forgotten memory. It was as if the voice spoke from very far away, or else through a wall: it was muffled and difficult to understand.

  “Is that why you think I love you?” The timbre of it was familiar yet the accent—guttural, rhythmic, with sharp consonants softened by a calm and tender intonation of the vowels—was not. It was simir to Cuán’s but this was not his voice. Whoever he asked answered but Kotora could not decipher the words. Then the first voice spoke again:

  “No, Cuán. I love you simply because I do. I’m not in love with your order, your lord, your way. I’m not in love with your prowess nor potential. What happened today was not a failure—no matter what your master would say. I, for one, am honored to call you ‘friend.’ I am honored as I was yesterday, and as I will be tomorrow. You don’t have to earn that. Indeed, you cannot; for it is mine to give freely, and mine alone.”

  The bde rarely showed the same visions twice. She had little sense of linear time, for she did not age, nor mature. She was the sum only of her experiences and those of her bearer and his predecessors. What she revealed was as much a result of her master’s mode of meditation as it was his biases, his desires, and what the fragmented souls within her dreamed of in their solitary eternities. One day—when this illness finally took him—Kotora’s spirit would join his master’s, and his master’s before him, and so on and so forth until her genesis. What sentience she had was simply because her heart shared countless generations of samurai’s hearts, too, in the vast annals of her supernatural understanding.

  But this vision—this vision recalled a memory of Kotora’s own. “I am as proud to call you my apprentice today as I was yesterday and as I will be tomorrow.” These were words Cuán bestowed upon a teenage boy on the day he left for war, a demon-touched boy whose face was marred bck and blue by his father’s shame. They were words which lived on in this grown warrior’s chest as a mantra of comfort. Because, once, long ago, his mentor thought he was worth it. Someone thought he was worth it.

  “Hey, uh, you awake in there?”

  Ting! The bell fell from Kotora’s fingers and when it struck the floor, his reverie shattered. The sword darkened. The sounds, scents, sights, receded, leaving him gasping in his dying mortal body. He’d thought the voice was a product of Yoriake’s dreams but there was a visible shadow of feet beneath the door. They loitered for a moment and then retreated over a crepitating floor.

  Kotora drew himself up and moved, hastily, to open the door before the person was gone. There, halfway to the stairs, was Kratzer. The blond whipped around when he heard Kotora and he smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t want you to leave before I caught up to you,” he expined.

  “‘Caught up,’” Kotora parroted back slowly. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, uh—well, you see, thing is—ah. Can I come in?” Kotora clearly hadn’t been resting—he was still fully clothed and that bell, Cuán’s prayer bell, was in his off hand.

  Kotora eyed him in suspicious, thoughtful silence. Then he simply stepped aside and, leaving the door open, made to sheathe Yoriake. Kratzer followed him in wordlessly and locked it behind him.

  “Go on, then,” Kotora said, setting Yoriake down on the bed and turning back to face Kratzer. “You didn’t come along on a ten-hour ride into the night, starting well after I did, to catch up for pleasantries. What is it? And I’ll warn you—I’ve little patience for lies tonight, including those of omission.”

  Kratzer hesitated. He had his hands in his pockets, but he kept shifting his weight side-to-side in a nervous, awkward gesture. It felt odd to see social discomfort worn by such an ordinarily confident man. “Look, kid, I don’t mean to step on toes here, but this trip of yours, this quest—it’s a death march, yeah? I’m not saying that to discount your efforts or condemn you to failure, mind, it’s just that you can’t do this alone. You know you can’t do this alone. You’re going to die before you get even halfway there. I know you’re capable but even if predators or highwaymen don’t get you, that lungrot will. How long until you can’t hold your seat on a horse, much less pack one? How many days will you spend sedentary because you simply cannot continue? How many of the weeks thereafter will be slower, because you cannot rest? All this and you’re not even well-resourced—you can’t afford the train, how do you pn on eating for the next year? Surely you can’t think you’re going to hunt for it?”

  “What is your point, Kratzer?”

  “Let me come with you. You need someone, no one else is offering, and Yoriake surely hasn’t said anything terrible about me. And you won’t owe me a thing—I’m indebted to your master, so this my repaying him. See? Simple. Clean. Better than traipsing off alone on horseback to die prematurely.”

  “For how long?”

  “Well, the whole way.”

  “We just met.”

  “It’s not about you, I already said that. It’s about the debt I owe Cuán. A debt his death has deprived me of repaying.”

  “What is it he did for you that warrants such efforts?”

  “He saved me from myself. Please, Kotora.”

  Kotora regarded him for some seconds. He moved his cane and sat down on the side of the bed. “I told you I wasn’t in the mood for lies, Lisrona. If this is what you want, I shan’t decline your offer—but I will not call someone a companion who speaks to me in a voice not his own.”

  “What?”

  “The accent, Kratzer. I know you’re not Nercean. We all have our secrets and that is fine. But please, dispense with the liberal, indiscriminate deceit. Otherwise, it will put a swift and unfortunate end on our newfound partnership.”

  “Oh, this old thing?” Kratzer smirked, but he let the fa?ade fade. “Your master wasn’t fond of it either,” he continued on, and that accent from the dream, the one from the old northern nations, slid smoothly into the metronomic sylbles of his speech. “What time do we leave?”

  “Depends on what time I wake up. Where is your room?”

  “4.”

  “Then I will find you when I rise. I take it you have a horse?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Then I will see you in the morning.”

  Kratzer threw him a mock salute, then turned to open the door and step back out into the hall. “Aye-aye. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, Kratzer.”

  The duo departed at dawn. Kratzer led their pack animals—a mule he’d brought along and curious little Kisho—while Kotora rode point. They passed the morning in companionable silence interspersed with Kratzer humming to himself. He had a deep, rich voice that reverberated with muted melodies as alien as they were evocative. It was a pleasant sound to pass time to and Kotora supposed that, if this was to be any sign of what the rest of their year together would be like, he could easily get used to it.

  It was approaching midday when his quiet tunes moved from his motley of obscure folk music to a decidedly more recognizable set of songs—ones from the Church of Heavenly Dominion (C.H.D.) hymnal.

  For the first two, Kotora said nothing. A verse into the third and he turned around in his saddle. “I don’t mind the singing, Kratzer. Indeed, I find it a favorable distraction from the monotony of our travel. But I have no desire to listen to anything spun by the C.H.D.’s tongue.”

  The elder’s brow twitched upwards. “I’m sorry if I’ve caused any offense.”

  “You haven’t,” Kotora responded ftly.

  “...Alright. Anything else to avoid, then?”

  “Just religion.”

  “An atheist, are you?”

  The samurai made brief eye contact, then turned away again, righting himself in his saddle. “I didn’t know you were a follower of the new north’s faith.”

  “Oh, follower might be a strong word. I’m a believer more than I’m not but that’s all.”

  “It is as I said: a follower.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  “There is no problem.”

  Kratzer clicked to his gelding, urging him to catch up and fall in beside Kotora instead of behind him. “If you aren’t an atheist, that makes you—” Kratzer dropped his voice into a dramatic stage whisper and leaned towards Kotora, “—an idoter.”

  “The mere notion of referring to my lord as divine—though he is of heavenly lineage—would be considered idotry by the C.H.D. This renders your conclusion somewhat redundant, I’m afraid.” His tone was even and his features became steely. Though idotry itself was not a serious offense to the C.H.D, there were certain faiths—faiths deemed heretical or occult by the church—whose worshippers, if caught, found their days numbered in a gug. In Nercea, you would wish you were dead if you were unlucky enough to get caught. In Ablon, however, you were hunted like a wild dog on a sheep ranch in mbing season. That is to say—Nercea would torture you if they found you but in Ablon they’d torture someone to find you.

  “I guess. What you guys do isn’t really the same as a church, though, is it? I mean, Cuán still worshipped the Eínyr.” Kratzer invoked the gods of the old north—the betrayed gods of his own people.

  “The way the west approaches spirituality is…different. I find that less interesting than I do the fact that someone with your skin and name and accent sings praises to the C.H.D.’s doctrine instead of the Eínyr.”

  “My momma was one of the earlier people to convert.”

  “Your father allowed such a thing?”

  Kratzer shrugged. “He had other things to do, seems like. For all I run my mouth, I don’t care, though, not really. Cuán’s ways never bothered me. I don’t see why yours should. Though he didn’t mind me so much, either.”

  “He and I serve the same divinity yet differ in the ones we worship.”

  “So you’re not an atheist.”

  “I never said I was.”

  “Alright, alright. Fine. We don’t have to talk about it,” Kratzer relented. He stopped talking only briefly. “Say, I noticed, your swordhand is your left, but you’re also wearing Yoriake on your left hip.”

  “I have no intention of drawing her.”

  “The roads are dangerous, surely you’re the type to be prepared.”

  “It is as I said. I have no intention of drawing her. I’ve not found any need since the war and I don’t believe I’ll find one now.”

  “How do you expect to fight, then?”

  “It’s quite simple, Kratzer. I don’t.” He repeated Kratzer’s words back to him.

  “So, what? You’re a samurai and a pacifist? How does that work out?”

  “You’re certainly feeling interrogative today,” Kotora observed. He cleared his throat and adjusted himself whilst he considered his willingness to answer. It seemed harmless enough to humor Kratzer. “Have I mentioned what kind of work it is I do, in Moudigrav? Since the war.”

  “No.”

  “I’m a physician. And I took a physician’s oath to do no harm.”

  “That so? That’s quite the unexpected turnaround.”

  “Is it? After eight long years of carnage, it seems only human to tire of bloodshed. Though perhaps humanity is where we differ.”

  “Perhaps,” Kratzer answered, decidedly noncommittally. “This oath of yours, though—it seems contradictory to your oath to serve your lord.”

  “It is, but I am far too ill to return to military service, so it should not be a relevant issue. Of course, this in conjunction with my refusal to return to the isle before now may be interpreted as desertion—thus my request for honorable suicide. It would allow me to recim some dignity that execution or exile would not.”

  “And if your lord works a miracle to heal you and compels you to return to active service?”

  Kotora’s face darkened. He dropped his eyes and bowed his head. “I don’t know,” he murmured breathlessly. “I suppose I will be a physician no longer.”

  “That’s it? You’ll just take up your bde and that’s that?”

  “Not quite. I will also pray to God for forgiveness.”

  “Which god is that?”

  Kotora didn’t reply.