comfortable with the art of blood magic. I could not confirm what I thought against my lord’s fevered state, however, and it was pointless to think of such things when I could not resolve them.
I felt the sharp pang of guilt again, of having harmed someone I’d sworn to protect. What I’d done had been as wrong as a fish taking flight, and as in all cases of nature’s laws being flouted, there would be a price to pay.
I had only hoped to make that payment with my sworn life. I’d never guessed that the gods would choose to punish Mamoru for such a thing. He was as blameless as a new day, fresh with promise and none of the weight of yesterday’s mistakes hanging over him. He did not deserve such unworthy servants, who were not so blameless as he.
I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I didn’t notice it when we came to the river. It was only the sudden splash of water that caught my attention, as in the dark the horse hadn’t seen it either. Mamoru chose that moment to cry out from the fever, and our horse shied in surprise and confusion. I tugged hard on the reins to keep him from bucking.
“Mamoru,” I murmured, then, since there was no one to hear us, “my lord. We have reached the river.”
He made a noise like an animal in pain, and turned his bright, glassy gaze up toward mine. “It’s hot,” he complained softly, “all over. I can’t…” His head dipped, and fell against my shoulder. “Kouje?”
“It’s fine,” I told him, fighting to believe it myself. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
I helped him down from the horse, his body swaying like a doll’s, limp and pale. He was still dressed like a servant.
“Easy now,” I said, edging us both toward the riverbank.
It was a warm night, I reminded myself, and there was no time to think of myself. I waded in fully clothed, with Mamoru held close against my chest. He thrashed in my hold like a fish for a moment, and then went still again as the water washed over him, cold even in the summertime. The Suijin River was one of the larger ones in Xi’an, so wide that the far bank was nearly invisible in the dark, and so long that it crossed over the Cobalts and into Volstov before it once again met with the ocean. I wondered if they had another name for it there, across the mountains, and if the river god ever became confused at having more than one name for the same body of water.
“It’s cold,” Mamoru said.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Don’t let the fish eat my toes,” he pleaded.
“I won’t,” I promised, and recalled that morning in the forest, when the catfish had so startled him. It seemed an unthinkable length of time when I looked back, though it had been no more than three weeks. Not such a great length of time, though it was long enough for our story to have caught the imaginations and satiric attention of the playwrights. It was as though my lord and I were no longer real people, living and breathing among them, but something lofty and far off, removed from the world and entered into legend.
Had the loyal retainer stood as tall as the mountains when he stood on the bridge to defend his lord against a dishonorable death? Had he truly been the figure worthy of legend that my father had talked about?
Or had he been like me: tired and watchful, always suspicious of a stranger, and even more so of a good turn of luck? Had he ever stood in a river alongside his lord, soaking wet, just praying that the fever might go down, that they might make it safely to their destination with no further complications, no more obstacles to block their path?
I wondered when he’d realized that they weren’t going to reach their destination. Then I thought of Mamoru’s stubbornness, and I wondered how the legendary retainer had managed to convince his lord to leave him there on the bridge in the first place.
Perhaps we weren’t the stuff of legends after all.
“It hurts,” Mamoru whispered, crumpling suddenly as though he’d been struck.
I moved once more to hold him up.
“It hurts all over,” he said, looking up at me with pleading in his eyes. “I can’t bear it. I can’t. It’s too much.”
“The water will help,” I said, willing the conviction into my voice.