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Ryoma, playing dead under a pile of bodies, waits breathless for a dawn that will never come. Fear has made him cautious. Caution can easily be mistaken for patience. The Hoshido that Ryoma grew into as a child was a country of cold mornings, whispered conversations, and long pauses between words; caution and patience and an aesthetic appreciation for silence all one and the same. This is not a beautiful silence, this is a fear like death.
One might think that the bright pale sun would shine the truth into every corner of the world. Ryoma had found, through the bitter wisdom of experience, not to trust the light itself to do anyone’s work. Light always belies shadow, which Hoshido always has in great supply. The aristocracy loved to gossip. In the absence of facts one might be inclined to share rumour.
“Pay them no heed,” Sumeragi would say, over and over again, finding his son telling off some scandalized courtiers or insensitive soldiers. “They will come to love Mikoto in time, as do you and I.”
And love her he did, with a ferocity and honesty that was characteristic of Sumeragi’s rule: when Ikona died giving birth to a girl, he stepped over every reasonable choice to bring Mikoto and her red-eyed bastard into the royal family. Takumi would come around in time, Sumeragi promised. Hoshido would come around in time. It was their duty as kings and kings-to-be to show open-hearted trust to all things, and leave the paranoia and scheming to their retainers.
Thus the summit in Cheve, a poorly-conceived trap nonetheless caught too late, Sumeragi with his arms thrown wide to protect a child that was never meant to be his. Nobody expects to lose their father at ten years of age.
(Too many stars, his grief-addled mind offers. To a Hoshidan the long night is truly awful -- the hundred thousand lanterns in the sky hang like ghosts, and he feels it as a weight on his chest. He’s been doing nothing but reminding himself to breathe for hours.
Somewhere someone groans, the wretched wail of a soldier passing away in great pain.)
After hours of a silence more still than death, when something bigger than fear like duty blooms in him, a burden or a purpose, he pushes his way out from underneath the corpses. There’s something warm running down the side of his face. Is it his? Something glimmers in the dark. He stumbles through the blood-slicked street towards the source of the light.
His father’s body has vanished. Kamui is gone. Instead, smelling of ozone and charred flesh, is a ring of at least twenty Nohrian soldiers blistered and burnt black, their hands stretched out towards Raijinto.
If only, he thinks, into the endless night, if only they had taken the sword and not my father.
Scarlet has never put much stock in all this hogwash about nobility and common folk; she’d always figured that the folks in their castles were nothing but a bunch of inbred shut-ins content to piss away the days reading old books and debating increasingly unreasonable laws. Sure, there was something about dragons’ veins in the earth and rumours abound about Garon’s middle child being a shapeshifter, but hey, whatever keeps the good people distracted.
Turns out some noble folk were due a little more credit. When Scarlet folds the Chevois Resistance into the Hoshidan crown prince’s army there’s not a single doubt in her mind that Prince Ryoma is a guy worth sticking with.
Ryoma’s a man of habit; he has his schedule and he sticks dutifully to it. The army naturally folds itself around him, knowing that (for example) dinner will be served on the bell after he finishes his evening training, or that preparations for parade and tent inspection should begin as he rounds the fifty-first of sixty forms in his morning warm-up. So when Scarlet finds herself with a report on weapon quality that needs to be read and agreed upon, she knows precisely where to find him: in his tent. He’s not the kind of royalty who’ll have your head for dropping by unannounced, right?
“Yo,” she calls, pulling the tent flap open. Ryoma’s tent sits solid and austere, unremarkable and yet somehow noble, in the centre of Hoshido’s camp. “Ryoma, you --”
Hands are suddenly on her; in a flash she’s been disarmed, her axe nowhere to be seen. Out of reflex she kicks up her right heel, but even the knife she keeps there is gone.
“At ease,” a voice calls, from the tent’s interior.
“That’s Lord Ryoma to you,” something growls from the shadows, and her axe is thrown at her feet.
“Her knife, Saizo.”
The knife clatters atop the axe, and she reclaims both.
She straightens up and dusts off. “Weapons inspection is done. Just wanted you to approve our list before we make any new purchases.” She looks from side to side, sees nothing but shadow. “Your, uh. Your retainer is pretty thorough.”
“Bring it here.”
It’s a small but surprisingly roomy tent, kept with a fastidiousness she’d learned to appreciate about him: weapons and scrolls tucked neatly away, a bedroll that could have belonged to any of his squires, an armour stand with his regalia polished and buffed. He’s kneeling in the corner working by candlelight with a series of tools and oils spread before him, dressed down in a bright red robe, his hair tied back. He’s cleaning his sword.
There’s a distinct smell in the air, sulfur and burnt flesh. In his hands Raijinto hums menacingly, and when she steps closer she finally understands why he’s never caught without his gloves.
“Gods, Ryoma. Is this --”
“Hm?” He looks down. “Ah.”
Six years old with eyes full of hope, Ryoma walks dutifully beside Sumeragi; tries to match him stride-for-stride, but he’s still growing into his father’s bones.
“Here,” Sumeragi says, reaches down and offers a hand. With a pout that hides his glee Ryoma takes the arm, climbs up onto the broad set of shoulders, sits on his throne astride his father’s neck. It’s a view he loves more than anything: his kingdom, through his father’s eyes. Together they walk through the narrow, mazelike corridors so characteristic of Castle Shirasagi, and more than once Ryoma has to duck beneath a door frame.
“Father,” he says, once they emerge into his father’s favourite courtyard, the two of them served tea to meet the hot day. “Why’s it when you pick me up, it’s with your sword arm?”
Sumeragi stops, cup of tea halfway to his lips. “Mumbling is unbecoming, Prince Ryoma.”
“Apologies, sir.”
“Speak freely.”
Ryoma clears his throat, puts on the pompous voice of a nobleman. “When you offer me your shoulders, it is your sword arm that you offer. Why would that be, Your Lordship High King Sumeragi, Hoshido’s Shining Sun, Dragon-Man?”
At ‘Dragon-Man’ his father spits out the entire mouthful of tea, roaring with laughter; he shakes so hard Ryoma has to hang on for his very life, clinging to his father’s hair, laughing along. After regaining his composure he hands the empty teacup to a nearby courtesan, who hides her smile behind an elegantly draped sleeve. “A master of irony at his young age! Step down, Ryoma. Let me show you why.”
He does. Sumeragi gestures to the scabbard on his left hip. “Ryoma, do you know what this is?”
It’s his father’s sword. “That’s Raijinto, sir.”
“Hold your left hand near it. -- Not on it. There, do you feel that?”
The fine hairs on Ryoma’s arm stand on end, and there’s a strange tingling at the base of his scalp. Something in him whispers danger and power in equal measure. An errant spark catches his thumbprint; he jolts back, sticks it in his mouth without thinking.
“Remember your bearing.” Sumeragi takes Ryoma’s wrist, draws his thumb off his tongue. “There we are. Raijinto was my father’s blade, and his father’s, the birthright of all the kings before us. It is a powerful blade with a wild temper. Like a summer storm, it would far rather leave a trail of utter devastation than a clean, honourable cleave; it is the duty of Hoshido’s kings to control its brutality. It tolerates only those worthy of wielding it.”
Ryoma scrunches his nose in a futile attempt to stop tears from spilling over -- it hurts, damn the gods -- but he refuses to cry in front of his father. “I’m worthy,” he mutters, behind a sniffle.
(He isn’t, and he knows it. Raijinto had made that astoundingly clear. Then there had been some trouble at the northern border, Nohrian war-golems causing a stir, and Sumeragi had permitted Ryoma to ride into battle with him. He’d thought it an opportunity to prove he could handle himself, but could only watch, awe-struck, as his father strode into the thick of things, glowing in white and black and gold, Raijinto crackling with light and fire…)
Word had arrived in Shirasagi not ten hours later, delivered by a survivor riding a kinshi that gasped its last upon delivering him to Mikoto’s feet. The messenger, chasing consciousness, did not survive the day. By the time the Igasato had returned from Cheve with the half-dead prince the nation was beside itself -- Hinoka with her hair shorn, Takumi in a blind rage, Sakura clinging to her mother’s legs, Mikoto soft and pale and silent in her black mourning kimono.
Ryoma, ten years old and the newly annointed patriarch of his nation, wakes to an anemic Hoshidan dawn and almost insurmountable pain. They’d bandaged his chest; he’s broken several ribs. Beneath that everything is tender as though his insides are soup. There is a strange taste like the smell of silver in his mouth.
“Ryoma? -- Ah, Big Brother!”
It’s Sakura’s voice. He blinks three times to clear his vision. He’s in the Castle Shirasagi infirmary, and behind him a paper screen rasps open. She kneels at his side, wearing thick gloves, brandishing a rod; the pain does not lessen, but her presence is a little heartening.
“Sakura,” he rasps, tasting silver again.
“Big Brother,” she repeats, her voice cracking. Ah -- he’s made her cry. He moves to comfort her, to stroke her hair, but there’s a strange leaden weight in his shoulders that makes moving his arms impossible.
“Sakura, you --”
“-- Big Brother, please don’t try to move.”
The smell of silver in his mouth is blood. The leaden feeling in his arms is from a complete lack of feeling from the shoulders down; and in his right hand, his fingers bone-white from gripping it so hard and for so long, is Raijinto. Something settles on his chest, an overwhelming fear, a crushing weight. He seizes, spitting blood, unable to breathe. Sakura is screaming for help. Her hands are on his chest, pushing up and down, up and down, and darkness drags him back down into hell.
(In those dark days Takumi would sneak into the infirmary at night and watch Ryoma, wondering what to do. It was Garon’s fault. It was Kamui’s fault. It was Sumeragi’s fault, Mikoto’s fault, Ikona’s fault, the Igasato’s fault, his own fault, Ryoma’s fault. And try as he might he could not bring himself to pry Ryoma’s fingers off his father’s blade.
It was Hinoka who had saved him -- didn’t even bother with the thick protective gloves the medics wore, just strode in wearing her training leathers and declared that enough was enough, tore Ryoma’s hand free, burned black the skin on her palms and the soles of her feet. Raijinto acquiesced to that love and that fear.)
“It was not always glad to be in my company,” Ryoma says, finishing the blade with a flannel cloth and an oil he refines himself -- two parts mineral oil, one part clove oil, one part closely guarded crown secret -- “And in truth, in the days after my father’s death, I was not happy to wield it. It’s a temperamental blade, cuts poorly on a bad angle. Very heavy. I had trained until that day with shinai and wakizashi only. One does not spend their childhood preparing for the death of their father.”
“Is that when…” Scarlet gestures, vaguely, at his hands.
With an absurdly precise movement he sheathes the sword. “-- No, these came with time. Raijinto’s bite is never completely tempered, whether or not that is its intention.” Scars, so many scars, blooming down his fingers and up his forearms in a thousand hues from bright red to dark brown. They form delicate little branches like ferns or fractals, raised against his forearms. He turns up his palms. “These, though, these were Raijinto’s grief, when I first laid my hands on it in Cheve.”
Scarlet finds herself distracted by his hands: the palms are burnt black, scars cutting deep grooves into his lifelines. The whole picture is strangly attractive, the sign of someone who had suffered and risen above so much, though she’d never say that out loud -- not while Saizo and Kagero are listening! -- and when she reaches out to touch them, Raijinto’s wrath, the skin feels warm to the touch.
“Shouldn’t it --”
“--Have defaulted to me? Part of me must have thought as much -- but dragons’ fangs are hardly convinced by mere circumstance.”
“Do they hurt?”
“They used to. In truth I have little feeling left in my hands. Raijinto left my smallfingers, though.” For effect, he wiggles the pinkie on his sword hand. A swordsmaster’s strength lies in his pinkie finger; no doubt it is the most important finger in his kingdom. “A small price to pay for the pride of my homeland.”
Look how the young prince resembles his father, the lesser nobles and harem folk and aristocrats would say, as if a whispered word of gossip can heal a nation in anguish, a kingdom without a king. Surely he will deliver us in these dark times.
There were days when the pain was almost too much to bear. After training sessions spent desperately trying to wrangle the sword to his care he’d retire to his chambers with blood in his throat, nearly doubled over. Those were the days when he missed his father the most, and Raijinto returned the sentiment sevenfold.
On nights like that he’d give up his sleep to feel sorry for himself, lie wide awake listening for his heart beating. The terror of it giving out would in turn cause it to race, until all that was left in the world was the sound of his blood roaring in his ears, and Raijinto’s vile thrumming.
(“It does more than just cut, doesn’t it,” Scarlet says. Out of the shadows someone -- Saizo or Kagero, she can’t tell -- has produced a balm, which Ryoma works into his bare hands. “I met a soldier who’d survived meeting the wrong end of your sword on the battlefield, said she felt her heart stop at the moment of the first blow, the weight of the world on her ribcage. Said she’d felt this -- this outrageous sense of doom. Years later and still she’d seize up every now and then, get these tremors in her hands.”
“I am sorry I could not offer her an honourable death.”
There’s a traitor who was once a Chevois knight who wears his scars like tattoos, and though he is not proud of what he has done, he is proud that he survived.)
And so, into the night, Ryoma says: Saizo.
And the whispered return, from the shadows: I am here, my lord. In Hoshido the shadows speak in deference to their lords.
Bring to me my sister.
There is no movement in the dark but not ten minutes later Sakura ambles in -- Saizo always interprets his wishes perfectly -- still in her sleeping-robe and slippers, carrying her rod. Gods, she’s so young, to have to deal with such a useless lout of a brother and king.
“Big Brother?”
“Sit by me.”
She does, and she produces a handkerchief and gently wipes at the blood on his chin, kneeling on the left side on his body -- the heart side, not the sword side. Raijinto’s anger fades to a hum. She sings him a lullaby, and he sleeps easy.
(“I am not worthy of wielding it, alone,” he says, with gentleness and sincerity. Scarlet knows Ryoma as a forceful, confident man, an impeccable warrior with a sturdy heart and a keen sense of righteousness. Seeing this side of him is disarming. She thinks she likes it. “It is not my blade, it is Hoshido’s, as I am not my own man, I am Hoshido. That is what my father was trying to tell me.”)
Under the intolerable weight of Cheve’s stars Ryoma considers the scene before him, the mangled bodies, the complete absence of his beloved father, his father’s sword lying on the cobblestone shining with menace and rage and a horrible, horrible sadness. He’s alone, and he has to make a decision: is he worthy? No, he is not. But does he have a choice?
He kneels and thrusts out his hands.