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“Gosetsu.”
The roegadyn’s name echoed a little too sharply in the quiet of the House of the Fierce and Hien winced at his own unintentional awkwardness. He’d let their prior conversation come and go without ever broaching the subject he most wanted to speak on and only found the courage to try again as his mentor began to leave the room. Better late than never, he supposed, but it did little to reassure him he wasn’t behaving with the clumsy foolishness of a lovestruck teenager.
Ever dutiful, Gosetsu turned around to address him directly. There was a question in his eyes, but no impatience. Good. “My lord?”
“There was another matter,” Hien said evenly. “A private one for which I hoped to seek your counsel.”
“Would you like to speak elsewhere?” Gosetsu offered easily. “Above ground, perhaps?”
The newly restored aetheryte dimly rotated nearby, promising anyone might appear at any moment and overhear. Hien nodded and they started, wordlessly, for the surface, stony dirt crunching underfoot.
This was pointless, Hien told himself for the thousandth time. With so many other concerns occupying his mind, this ought to be the least of them, and yet he found that in the quiet hours he could think of naught else. Plans for Doma’s liberation were proceeding apace and without interruption—he was not neglecting his duties. It merely seemed a burden to care about anything else when what he had always longed for was so near to being achieved.
The mid-afternoon sun beat down on them as they emerged from the hidden entrance—warm, though not unpleasantly so. He and Gosetsu wandered a short distance and found a nice patch of shade overlooking Prism lake. A comforting sight that reminded him of his childhood. Hien ought to feel entirely at ease, but his body had gone cold at the thought of the confession he was about to make.
Gosetsu settled on the ground and folded his legs beneath him, perfectly at peace. Hien grew tense and could not bear to look his way any longer.
How to begin? He had often come to Gosetsu with personal matters when his father was not able to address them himself. He knew Hien as well as he might any son of his own and had never scorned him or turned him away. He had always answered him with patience and respect. But this was different. Never in his twenty-seven years had he approached him regarding matters of the heart.
“If I may, my lord,” Gosetsu began after giving him ample opportunity to speak, “Does this matter concern Bram?”
Hien was surprised. He hadn’t been terribly subtle, he supposed. “In a manner of speaking.”
How could he give voice to the thing he’d left unspoken within him for so long? He had little romantic experience, always having been too preoccupied with other matters. His eyes occasionally lingering overlong on the bodies of fellow samurai during training—and slipping away one summer in secret for unattached teenaged fumbling—was the most thought he’d ever given to such desires. He had never dared to speak of the topic with his father, who’d become so singularly focused and distant in his final years. He merely wanted to know if his attentions were a fool’s errand. If he ought to discard them entirely.
“He is… distracting,” Hien said, settling on the understatement of the Astral era. He was ashamed to admit Bram occupied his mind almost as utterly as the liberation ahead. “Doma remains my primary focus, of course, and always will, but of late…”
“You are distracted,” Gosetsu chuckled—a low rumble—and slapped Hien’s back with one large, forceful hand. He startled, lurching forward at the waist with the unintended force. “No heart is immune to want, my lord. Even your father was once a fool in love.”
Picturing his father lovestruck was as unlikely as imagining a tiger with wings. He’d tried, once, to ask him how he’d known he wanted to marry Hien’s mother—in no small part as a means of seeking out answers regarding his own budding interests—and his father met him with the same noble indifference with which he approached everything.
“Wedding and bearing a son was among my duties as Lord of Doma,” he said simply. “Your mother was the daughter of a Nagxian dignitary—an auspicious union.”
But did you love her? Hien didn’t ask. Did you look at her and feel your heartbeat flutter?
“He never seemed the romantic sort,” Hien confessed.
Gosetsu threw his head back and laughed. “On the contrary, Lady Mina often liked to reflect on the letters he wrote to her when they courted. And at times even long after they’d wed!” His eyes sparkled with delighted memory. “He was a very sentimental man. He merely hid it well.”
“Father?” Hien asked in utter disbelief. The information was impossible to reconcile with his own memories. “He hardly spoke.”
“Oh yes,” Gosetsu assured him. “He was the sort of man who required time to consider his words carefully and often misspoke when he did not.” He shrugged. “An unfortunate trait for the leader of a nation, but one cannot help the gifts the kami choose to bestow.”
Agonizing over a brush and parchment sounded a little more in line with what he knew of him. He wondered how many times he’d assumed his father was working, when in truth he was waxing poetic about his mother’s eyes. The thought tugged on his heartstrings a touch.
“Why was I never told of this?” Hien asked, feeling hurt. It was odd to know there was an aspect of his father he’d never encountered in life. “Mother never spoke to me of such things.”
“Your mother passed away when you were yet young,” Gosetsu said. “I am certain she meant to, had she been granted more time.”
He thought of her, frail and withering away just weeks after his fifteenth birthday. Her hopeful smile. Her regret that she would not live to see him come of age in a year’s time. What else could she have taught him if fate had only allowed her to live? It was another of life’s many cruelties.
“It is a shame so many of father’s belongings were lost with the palace,” Hien sighed. “We might have found them, under different circumstances.”
“Your lord father might well perish at the thought,” he laughed. “I was never given occasion to read them but one can only imagine honeyed words and starry eyes.” Gosetsu nudged him. “Mayhaps you carry some similar affinity, my lord?”
He had to resist the urge to laugh aloud.
“I was never one for prose,” Hien sighed helplessly. He knew his letters well enough, but literature and composition had always been among his weaknesses in school. “Any attempt is like to worsen the matter.”
“Nay, you are in all respects your mother’s son,” Gosetsu agreed. “She always favored action over words, and honesty above all else.”
It sounded like Gosetsu was suggesting he simply be honest with Bram, which was a noble idea in theory, but far more difficult in practice.
“Is it not foolish to be distracted by such senseless pursuits when there are so many other matters requiring my attention?” That was his worry above all else—that wanting more from Bram was an exercise in selfishness.
Most of all, he wondered what his father would say. What he might think not only of Bram, but of the idea of them as a pair. He would never know, now.
“Bram cares as deeply for Doma as you do, my lord,” Gosetsu patted his back. “He will not squander this opportunity. Together you might find strength you would be unable to achieve alone.”
Hien breathed deeply and looked out over the multi-colored waters ahead. A small group of namazu had surrounded a water sprite and were poking it with sticks. Perhaps he had a point. Neither of them would allow themselves to squander this opportunity—perhaps addressing it was the easiest way to deal with it in its entirety.
“Does it seem to you—” Hien began to ask a question but was humiliated at the mere thought of speaking it aloud. He felt fifteen again, overly eager for attention. He shook his head. “Forget I spoke.”
“If you mean to ask whether I believe he reciprocates your feelings,” Gosetsu guessed, “the answer is yes.”
Hien’s face went bright red. He looked away and scratched at his cheek. “Have we been so obvious?”
Gosetsu barked another booming laugh, and Hien shrank and experienced a wash of relief all at once. He felt better, admittedly. “With age comes a wealth of experience. I merely know the look of a man in your state.”
A question suddenly sprang to Hien’s mind and he spoke before he gave himself opportunity to consider the possible pitfalls of such an inquiry. “Gosetsu. Have you ever been in love?”
The question sobered him somewhat, a faraway look claiming his gaze. Hien realized he'd made a mistake, but to his surprise, the old samurai willingly answered. “Once, many years ago.”
He had a thousand questions. Who was she? Where did she go? What sort of woman might capture the heart of a man like Gosetsu? But he could see the pain remained a delicate and fragile thing. “May I ask what happened?”
He frowned. “There have been two great failures in my life, My Lord. My failure to protect your father was the second. This was the first.”
Hien waited in silence as Gosetsu carefully considered his words. He had learned much today. It seemed he would learn more.
“I was not good to my family, and it remains a stain upon my honor,” he confessed. “I loved a woman, Himeko, and had a daughter with her, Ayame. I often left them alone in the name of my duties—I was distant and cold. I did not treat them with the proper care of a husband and father, so consumed was I with dedication to your father’s cause. When the imperials first attacked Doma, twenty-seven years ago, I was not there to protect them.” They had died. There was no need for him to say it, as it was written plainly across his face in an ancient grief tempered to steel. “I asked your father for the right to die. He would not allow it.”
He realized he had tread upon ground where he had no right to trespass. The shame of it colored his face and he bowed, deeply. “My sincerest apologies for conjuring such bitter and difficult memories. I... never knew.”
Gosetsu’s lips curved just a little, a fondness creeping into his tone. “Though I will never be able to right those wrongs, your father did not bid me live without cause. When we were held captive, he called upon me with the news that Lady Mina would soon give him a son. He charged me with your protection, should there ever come a day he was unable to fulfill the duty himself.”
A life lived upon regret, forged anew by duty. Hien sighed softly but forced a smile for Gosetsu’s sake. “Long have I been grateful for your steadfast presence, my friend. Both as a child and now.”
He could not assure him he had atoned—it was not his place to do so. But as he knew him, Gosetsu had always been a kind, patient, and attentive man. Perhaps this was why: in the name of penance for past wrongs, which might hang upon his shoulders even as he shuffled to the grave. How many secrets had those he loved borne around him in silence?
Gosetsu clambered to his feet. “I must thank you as well, for granting me a moment’s reflection.” He bowed respectfully. “Nearly three decades have come and gone, yet my successes and failures remain steadfast companions. In this singular matter, however, I feel I have done well.” They smiled at each other. Hien felt the warmth of it burn in his chest, healing old hesitations and uncertainties. “I must return to my duties.”
“Of course,” he said.
He did not rise as Gosetsu headed back towards the entrance, doubtless to proceed with whatever task Hien had pulled him away from. He was surrounded, it seemed, by men of impossible sentiment who merely hid their feelings well. Would he could do the same, but he had ever worn his heart in plain view of all who sought it out.
He had not decided yet whether he would speak to Bram before or after the liberation. Still, his mind was more at peace. It could be no harder than losing a wife to the ravages of disease or a daughter at the hands of an imperial.
Hien, too, could find strength for those who needed it.