Chapter Sixty-Three

Caught

To help with the large cast of characters,
I have put together a spoiler-free Dramatis Personae

Dawn spread across the fragile sky, cracks of pink breaking the night blues as Min La made his way down the road to the town of Osenok. He had exchanged his monk’s robes for a golt of green and a heavy coat of dark blue. Despite So Ga’s protestations, Min La had left the knife with him. Without Min La there to protect him, the prince needed something in case their pursuers chose to ignore the sanctity of the River Voyage. So Ga had not liked letting him go unarmed, but Min La felt better leaving him with steel, if nothing else.

Though he moved with caution, he also felt a certain renewed sense of confidence. After all, he could see Osa Gate now. The sharp edges of the fort had squared a corner of the mountain on which it was perched, as if a piece of black crystal had grown from the thick range. In the brilliant, crisp sunrise he imagined he could see it glint, like the edge of a blade.

Osenok was not a large village, but it benefited both from the proximity of the fort and also, more recently, from the proximity of the Koda House. Their work in Sona Gen had made travel, and therefore trade, easier. Osenok was quickly becoming a common stop on the road from Ŭthol Na to the capital, especially those who preferred river travel. And through it moved a great many of the travelers who lived in the Osa Len Mountains, who had become more willing to venture from the security of their House’s villages and into the wider world of Sona Gen. Koda’s influence had been significant, even if they were countered now and again by the meddling of Ŏklo. This thought returned to Min La’s mind the faces of Nŏl and Hino Son. By now the wedding of Ona Lín Ŏklo and Rin Holok So Hoth would have taken place and the two Houses would be joined by this. Min La found himself wondering how Nŏl was faring in his efforts to curtail the corruption that had festered in his House under the reign of the odious Von Ol. In that moment, too, he remembered Sivo Hin Ŏklo, the royal officer at Osa Gate. Glancing up at the mountain, he wondered if Nŏl’s efforts would have been able to extend as far as that.

The gates of Osenok had been open for some time when Min La arrived. He presented himself wordlessly as he always did, as a Houseless man alone in the world. He considered, as the guards looked him over and said nothing, that this was no longer true.

He had not brought all of their gold with him, but only a few pieces, in case he needed to bribe someone over and above the cost of the medicine. Not willing to burden the monks anymore than they already had, he also wanted to purchase food and other supplies, anything they might need as they made the final climb up the mountain. This thought caught in his mind, but he brushed it away.

A young woman at a bakery just inside the village gate directed him to the village’s apothecary. They had two in Osenok, she informed him proudly while two of her children — a boy and a girl in matching ivory golts — clutched at her skirts, their faces more powdered with flour than their mother’s. She was a bright-faced woman with large honey-colored eyes and a unkempt knot of thick red curls. Two tiny blue dots were painted on her cheekbone. Looking again, Min La realized that her children were the same age and were identical. Her first to survive were twins, no wonder her eyes shone with such light.

“Míkoth is good if you’re injured, they say,” she explained as she put steaming rolls into a paper bag for him. “But if it’s an illness that ails you’ll want the Dol Heno brothers.”

“Dol Heno?” he asked, paying her.

“It’s an old House, you’ll not have heard of it. A lot of them become monks, bless them. Not a lot of Dol Heno babies in general. They like their learning, I suppose. Anyway, they’ve got a shop to the east, there, on the other side of the teahouse. The teahouse is new, you should have a look at it. They say it’s just like the ones in Ŏno Soth.”

He thanked her and took the warm paper sack, tucking it into the bag across his chest.

The teahouse was easy enough to find, it seemed to be a popular attraction in the town. Dawn’s pinkish sunlight colored the wooden structure in warm hues, while the crisp lilac awning the shaded doorway shone like a lake of still water. In imitation of the popular custom in Ŏno Soth, little wooden tables and chairs had been arranged in the front of the teahouse and each was occupied by a leisurely visitor sipping tea or coffee, eyes sparkling in wonder at this novel new luxury. It was not as fine as the capital’s teahouses, but Min La imagined that the people of Osenok would continue to be proud of it, regardless. Surveying the people at the tables he saw more than one pale green Koda cloak. But, he noted with relief, there seemed to be no one among the crowd dressed in the recognizable uniform of Táno Gín’s mercenaries.

Tá Nom Koda had whispered to him yesterday that Táno Gín’s men had been seen in the area. He had said that the Koda House could do nothing to check them without calling attention to the fact that they were aware of what Táno Gín hunted. It had troubled Min La to hear Tá Nom again speak to him as if he was the prince. But he had been relieved to know that So Ga was still hidden in this way. Tá Nom had told him as clearly as he could where Táno Gín’s men had been seen. But, he had warned him, they did not stay in one place for long.

“Make haste up the mountain,” he had said. “Ko Gŏth Enlin can protect you in ways that we cannot.”

Yesterday, according to Tá Nom Koda, Táno Gín’s men had been nowhere near Osenok. Still, Min La had to be careful. One of the reasons he had come alone was because he believed that they would, by now, know to look for a pair of young men on the road. Min La alone would perhaps escape their notice even if they were here.

Just as the bakery woman had described, the little apothecary stood on the other side of the bustling teahouse, as if resting in its shadow. A shorter building, also made of wood, but much older, it had recently been painted a wash of white which, together with the brown curtains covering its doorway, presented a calming countenance, like a gentle face framed by a soft hood.

After glancing around one last time, Min La cautiously opened the curtain and stepped inside.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the lantern-lit interior; all was quite black at first, as if the interior of the shop was filled only with darkness. From within the dark a voice spoke: “Good morning, young master.”

The greeting had the hint of a question. Min La blinked several times and then finally found himself standing before a middle-aged man with a trimmed brown beard and short brown hair, in the Srenléthan style. He wore an ivory golt and a coat of pure white. As Min La looked at him, the man bowed lightly and began taking off his coat. Behind him another man, similar in every way, stood near a wall covered in tiny wooden drawers, also wearing an ivory golt, but over it a dark brown apron.

The man in the apron put his hand on his chest and bowed. “I am Nomo Dol Heno,” he said. “And this is my brother In No. Something is ailing you, young master?”

Min La, a little taken aback to find himself the only person in the apothecary and also the subject of such particular service, remembered the glowing praise the bakery woman had given to these brothers and tried to calm the paranoid flutter in his chest.

“I have come to purchase medicine,” he answered simply, with a humble bow. “For my brother, not myself.”

“Ah,” answered In No, tying on his own apron. As he did so his brother took a short candle and went around the room lighting several other lanterns. Before long the large space was brilliantly illuminated. This front room, Min La saw, seemed to be mainly storage and not preparation. Most of the wall space was covered by tiny drawers and cabinets with rich glass doors. He found himself feeling relieved that he had brought extra gold. The far wall was broken by another doorway, framed decoratively by brown curtains, which led, it seemed, to a kind of storage space and also to an open door into the alley behind the apothecary.

“You must forgive us,” In No went on. “You are our first guest this morning.”

Min La bowed his head a little, unsure what else to say.

“Do you know what you need specifically, or…”

Min La had long had So Ga’s medications committed to memory. He recited this long list now while the Dol Heno brothers watched him with growing amazement.

“This is all for your brother?” Nomo Dol Heno asked glancing at In No in what looked like nervous surprise.

Min La nodded.

“His lungs?”

He nodded again.

In No clicked his tongue as his brother turned to the drawers. “It is a difficult condition to manage. Was he born with the ailment?”

Min La hesitated, watching as quantities of herbs and powders were weighed and gathered together upon a large sheet of waxed paper.

“He was sick when he was a child,” he answered at last. “He never completely recovered.”

In No clicked his tongue again and Nomo, still busy with the drawers, joined him.

“Well,” In No said, “at least he has a good brother to look after him.” And patting Min La’s shoulder, he gestured to the counter where the medication was accumulating in a little fragrant mountain upon the paper.

Min La understood and began digging through his bag for the gold. But then he stopped and said, “Do you have gindun?”

They both looked at him alarmed. Then In No turned to Nomo, who was folding the large paper into a parcel. “Ah, because it can be—” and he patted his own chest.

Nomo nodded and said. “Indeed it can be.”

Turning to Min La, In No answered, “Yes, but Osenok law states that we cannot sell gindun to someone who is…” He pursed his lips and glanced at the floor.

“Houseless,” Min La finished. With a twinge of embarrassment, he began to fish around with one hand in his bag while he said, more to the floor than to the man, “I have— if it’s—”

But In No reached out and grasped Min La’s wrist. “My boy,” he said, his eyes shining. “Please do not demean yourself.”

Then he went to his brother and leaned close, whispering. Min La felt his chest tighten, he found himself regretting asking for the gindun. Nomo nodded as he listened. He put up a hand, forefinger and thumb extended, an inch or so away from each other. Then he nodded again and dropped his hand.

“A small vial,” In No said, turning to Min La. “Enough for one small dose for one person. That is all I can offer.”

He bowed in thanks.

“We keep it locked in the back. Just a moment.” In No left and Nomo, in silence, finished binding the little package of medication into a parcel, using brown string to seal it. Then he leaned on his counter and sighed, smiling at Min La warmly.

After a moment, In No returned empty-handed.

“You are hopeless,” Nomo observed, looking at his brother’s bewildered expression. “You watched me put it in the cabinet last night.”

“It’s the key I can’t find.”

Nomo blinked several times, then he began patting his chest until, with a barking laugh, he withdrew the key from under his golt where it hung on a string of braided silk.

In No laughed, too, and extended a hand for it. “And you call me absentminded.”

He turned to go back to the shop’s little storeroom, but, standing at the curtained doorway, he froze. Nomo said his name but he did not move. Min La felt his blood cool so quickly that a violent shiver coursed through his body. He clenched his hands into fists.

“In No…” Nomo said again. “In No, we do not—”

Turning, In No put up a hand and silenced Nomo. Then he said loudly, “Brother, you should come and show me where you’ve hidden it. You know I can’t stand it when you rearrange things every other day.”

Nomo blinked several times. Then he clasped his hands before him and nodded, his lips pressed together tightly, his face pale.

In No went to Min La and clutched him by the shoulders. Staring into his eyes with chilling intensity, he leaned close and whispered, “Run.”

Out of habit, Min La reached his hand into his bag only to remember that he had left the knife with So Ga. A sense of calm overcame him. As if he had been holding his breath and now that what he feared most had come to pass, he could finally breathe.

In No dropped a paper on the floor as he and his brother disappeared through the curtained doorway. Without thinking, Min La picked it up. Then he scooped the parcel off the counter and ducked through the curtained doorway after them. The brothers were clutched together in front of a cabinet arguing loudly about the proper way to use a key. They did not turn around.

Yellow light poured through the open back door together with the chill of winter and the sounds and smells of the teahouse next door. Min La went through cautiously, but the alley was empty.

Standing for a moment in the unseasonably warm sunlight, Min La glanced at the paper In No had dropped. On it had been written a list of ingredients, the precise ingredients that made up So Ga’s medicine. A vague understanding of what had happened formed quickly in his mind. With a little exhale of anger, he crumpled the paper and dropped it onto the cold dirt alley.

Behind him, he suddenly heard the voice of Nomo: “You’ve just missed him. Can you believe it: he’s stolen from us!”

The calm that had washed over him immediately gave way to panic. Min La’s heart hammered in his chest. He pressed himself against the back wall of the apothecary and considered his options while he tucked the parcel into his bag.

“Where is he?” spoke a familiar voice, the same he had heard in the temple, belonging, he assumed, to Táno Gín himself. Part of him wanted to peek inside, to look at him, this fabled mercenary captain. All this time running from him and he still had not seen the man who hunted them with his own eyes.

“Didn’t you see him?” asked Nomo Dol Heno. “I assume he just bolted out the front like a common beggar thief.”

Táno Gín began to give orders. When Min La heard him tell someone to check the back, he detached himself from the apothecary wall and broke into a swift walk. He couldn’t run, running would attract attention. But the alley was long and there were no places to hide oneself without ducking into the teahouse. Min La suddenly remembered when he had watched the orphan boys in Rensoth dodge city guards by weaving in and out of a crowded teahouse. The doubling of the situation struck him. As if now that he was near the end he had somehow come again to the beginning. He found himself wondering if Héothenin occasionally looped a path.

“Captain!” a voice behind him called.

He’d been spotted. Without turning, he gripped the bag tightly and broke into a run.

The alley opened onto a street which turned left to lead back to the main Osenok market and right to lead to a courtyard of gravel built around a well. He went right, wove around the well, and then ducked into another alley, this one squeezing between two sets of walls that surrounded what looked like apartments of some kind, both of which were only partly built and otherwise empty. Halfway down the alley, he heard a flurry of boots behind him.

“Here!” called a voice.

They were too fast and the town was too unfamiliar to him. He wondered if the wild would be better. He wondered if he should race them back to the boat. Would the mercenaries of Táno Gín respect a River Voyage? They hadn’t respected the temple of Ávoth. Even if they did, wouldn’t that just trap them on the boat forever?

The alley had become too narrow and he had to turn to the side to squeeze through. The man behind him recognized that he wouldn’t fit and turned back. He was going around, Min La realized. And he paused.

His brother’s voice came then, a welcome sound: “You are small, little shadow, and not particularly strong. Speed is all you have. Hesitate and die.”

Min La slipped as quickly as he could through the last narrow length of the alley. He burst from it as if expelled and staggered into a empty avenue between rows of closely built wooden houses, each bordered by a low wall. A woman hanging her laundry glanced over her short wall at him with indifference, then went back to her work. To his right, he saw the mercenary at the end of the road, running for him at full speed.

“Use what you have, little shadow.”

Twisting the bag onto his back, Min La pulled himself up onto the short wall in front him. The woman gave a surprised yelp and dropped a sopping wet golt. As fast as he dared, he ran along the top of the wall until it ended at the rear of the house. Then he hopped to the adjacent wall and followed it around its house until he had looped back to the street where he had started, the unfinished apartments towering in front of him.

Doubting himself a little, he eyed the distance from his wall to the one surrounding the apartment. That wall was much higher, but he could sense that he would reach it. As he leapt, the world quieted and his focus narrowed. Time slowed, extending the length of a breath to what felt like minutes. He was flying, and the sensation returned memories to him that were at once sweet and overwhelming. But then his hands caught the rough stone and his mind settled. That old familiar feeling of triumph rippled through him when his hands found purchase exactly where he had aimed. With more energy than he was used to, he lifted himself up easily and stood upon the high wall. Cautiously, he made his way along the top of it until he was looking down into the gravel courtyard with the well. The mercenaries were nowhere to be seen.

Using the row of stones that bordered the gate in the wall, Min La eased himself back down to the ground. His best option — his only option — was to hide and then try to sneak back to the boat unseen. Glancing over his shoulder for any sign of his pursuers, Min La decided to go back the way he had come, across the courtyard to the alley. But this time he would turn towards the market in hopes that the crowd would provide sufficient camouflage. As he made his way across the courtyard, he undid his hair, which had come loose, and wondered how hard he could run on his bad knee.

He heard the footsteps behind him before he saw the shapes in front of him. It shocked him how quickly he was surrounded. There were four men, golts of dark gray suede and dark cloaks that looked almost blue in the sunlight. These men moved and hunted as if they shared a mind. More and more it seemed to him that time was repeating. Last time, however, it was one of So Ga’s bodyswords who had fallen in a back alley of Rensoth. And there was no one here to save Min La. Suddenly, he realized that he was also one of So Ga’s bodyswords. As he stood frozen in the middle of the courtyard, one of the mercenaries gestured to the others. It was either a signal to attack or a signal to wait. When they didn’t move, Min La knew which and so, without another thought, he put his shoulder down and ran.

Speed had always been his only real strength. Speed and agility. That he was small afforded him a unique ability to outmaneuver even the strongest armored man. Running at the two men in front of him, Min La ducked and slipped under the outstretched arms of one while driving his shoulder into the chest of the other.

The two behind shifted into action and ran after him. Min La had been slowed by his collision but he had not fallen. Glancing back, he continued to run, certain that they would abandon open pursuit in the crowded market.

But then his momentum was brutally arrested when a boot connected with his leg and sent him sprawling to his side. Despite himself, he cried out in shock and pain. One of the men had managed to land a kick on his bad knee and he lay gasping. Adrenaline and fear pulled him to his feet, but he nearly fell again when he tried to put weight on his leg. There would be no running now.

A familiar fragrance filled Min La’s nose and he saw that the medicine parcel had fallen out of his bag and lay open on the ground, its contents blowing away in the winter breeze, mingling with the cold dirt of the road and the powdery gravel of the courtyard.

His vision blurred as panic sent a hot rush of blood throughout his shivering body. He had no options. His only strength had been destroyed and his brother’s voice was silent. Absurdly, he glanced around for signs of a rescuer. If indeed Héothenin had looped his path back to this point, surely there would be a rescuer, just as he had been the rescuer before. He could not believe that he had been brought here to die. What would become of So Ga if he died? Perhaps he could stay with the monks. But for how long? How would he ever be able to return to his father? So Ga still needed him; he could not have been brought here to die.

When the other figures entered the courtyard he believed, at first, that he was imagining it. They moved so soundlessly, so cleanly, appearing like the Ădol’s attendants from the stories, slipping through the barriers between worlds. Two flashes of steel, two throats slit, then confusion as the other mercenaries tried to figure out what was happening.

Just as Min La was about to take advantage of the confusion to make a hobbling-run for the market, hands grasped him around the shoulders and dragged him inside the walls of one of the apartments. He kicked with his good leg and twisted his hips, but two strong men had him by the arms and he was still dazed from panic.

The gate in the apartment’s wall closed tightly and the hands released him. It was much colder in the shade, this was the first thing Min La noticed as he struggled to catch his breath. The pain in his knee nearly caused him to topple when the hands released him. Clutching his bag tightly, he turned with wide eyes to stare threateningly at the men who had dragged him here, like an animal forced into a corner. But all the men turned away from him, many even turned their backs. They seemed to be going out of their way to avoid looking at him, as if they believed that looking upon his face would cause them to go blind.

It was then that a young man emerged from the shadows.

Within the shaded space inside the quiet yard enclosed by the wall, the man seemed to wear shadow. His face, sharp as a crow’s, was almost entirely obscured even though sunlight spilled over his long brown cloak. When he turned to glance at his men who stood by the closed gate, the light caught his eyes which shone gray and alert. Min La found that he felt no less threatened by the sharp eyes of this stranger than he did by the swords on the other side of the wall.

“They will likely take care of their own dead, my lord,” one of the swords said quietly to the sharp-faced man who turned to glance at him. “We have otherwise escaped notice, they do not seem to know we are here, and we are certain that no one saw you.”

“Our master would not want this much attention drawn to our presence here,” the sharp-faced man said. His voice was different from what Min La would have expected; weaker, perhaps, or restrained. “Do not kill any more of them.”

The sword bowed and offered an apology that seemed more fearful than the man’s weakened tone demanded. Then he, too, turned his back to Min La.

The sharp-faced man, however, did not seem to fear looking upon him. Instead, he put his hand upon his chest and bowed his head.

“I assure you,” he said quietly. “You are quite safe. My men and I mean you no harm.”

“Who are you?” Min La demanded, breathless.

The man lifted his head. Only his lips were illuminated as they formed an inscrutable smile.

“I am Sen Lí Lăsoth.”

---

Or, if you’d prefer to make a small, one-time donation, you can