own rough fingers. “If they see you looking like that, they’ll never let any of us across.”
Our eyes met, and she pulled her hand away from mine as though she’d been burned.
“Sorry,” she added. “I’m needed up front.”
The carriage—if it could have been dignified by such a name, held together as much by the will of its inhabitants as it was by craftsmanship—rolled to a stop, and Aiko disappeared into the front. I could hear the sound of guards and Goro’s laughter changing seamlessly into obsequious apologies and formalities.
“We are sorry to have troubled you,” he was saying, and I closed my eyes.
The image of the guards—perhaps they were even men I had known and trained alongside; friends of my brothers; members of the extended family—seemed more terrifying to me than any quarrelsome demon perched in the trees above on a steep mountain pass. I could imagine the border guards in full theatrical regalia, the vivid red makeup denoting the villains’ roles stamped clearly across their white faces. I could even see Goro playing the wicked captain as he drew back the curtain and peered inside the carriage.
I was not ready for the stage, though I did have a moment where I paused to wonder if I would one day be in the audience, watching my own antics being reenacted. Yet in that play, I knew, the villain would not have been any mere captain of the guard. He would have been my brother. Iseul.
The door in the back of the carriage was flung open and one of the guards, a face I was relieved not to recognize, barked out orders in a tone that was familiar. Even Kouje had used it more than once during campaigns.
“Out,” the guard said.
One by one, we filed into the sunlight; before us, the guards were arranged in immaculate order while we, a ragtag group of the commonest caliber, milled together uncertainly.
“I know I’m an awful playwright,” Goro began, but the guard had only to hold up one hand, and all was silence thereafter.
“These?” the guard demanded, nodding toward two jugglers who stood together.
“Brothers,” Goro replied, his head lowered; he was on the verge, I realized, of kowtowing, dragging his brow through the dirt. “We picked them up a year ago, my honorable lord.”
“And these?” the guard continued.
“Actors,” Goro deferred. “Very poor ones. Of no interest to you, my honorable lord.”
“And these?” the guard asked, stopping before us. I lowered my head in a stiff bow, every bone so brittle I knew they were certain to break. Beside me, Kouje was doing the same, both of us hiding our faces by means of simple custom.
“The man’s hired on for the season,” Aiko said, in the smoothest lie I’d ever heard. Even I, for a wonderful moment, believed it. “The woman’s a seamstress. Fixes our costumes, my honorable lord.”
There had been no need to lie, I thought dizzily. At least, not as far as Aiko knew. I didn’t lift my eyes as the guard took me by the chin and lifted my face toward his, inspecting it.
“A fine woman, cast among this lot,” he said, and for a moment, I recognized what I saw behind the steady mask that obscured his finer emotions. He was regretful. He was only a man beneath it all, and it pained him to think that I, “a fine woman,” had been reduced to traveling with such a crowd. No doubt the times troubled him as much as they troubled anyone else with capacity enough to think beyond orders.
I missed home when I saw his face, but in that moment I was equally grateful to be away from it.
“We’ve often said so,” Aiko said, in a tone I couldn’t quite place.
“And these,” the guard asked, moving down the line toward the next suspicious couple. They were the last, and cleared as actors as well. It was, I supposed, just that easy. I almost wished to apologize to the guard—for it was my own fault that he was stationed there, away from his family and the finer life he craved, searching for someone who had just slipped through his fingers.
“There,” Aiko said, once we were settled back in the carriage and leaving the wall behind us. “Told you lot, no problems.”
“He took a fancy to you, princess,” Goro said, grinning as he chewed, somewhat nervously, I thought, on his bamboo pen. “Pity you’ve already hitched your carriage to another horse. He might’ve made a real lady out of you.”