awkward to laugh into my palms. Besides which, the latter barely muffled the sound properly.
After that, we rode comfortably enough. Kouje pointed small things out to me along the way to keep us talking—such as the osmanthus trees that grew in a scattered fashion among the hardier trees, and bloomed delicate clusters of white flowers against evergreen leaves. When a bird cawed above us we would play a game to guess which type of bird it was, or if there was a rustle in the bushes that frightened us we’d guess as to whether it was a rabbit or a fox, and so on.
When we stopped at last to give the horse some rest and stretch our stiff legs, I no longer had any idea where we were, nor any idea how Kouje knew.
“How can you follow the sun under so many trees?” I asked him.
“I’ll teach you,” he said, and I agreed. After all, we had the time.
We mounted once again after no more than a brief respite and began the jostling trip anew.
It was senseless, mindless, numbing; we traveled toward a destination I’d only just begun to envision, and one which was farther away than even imagination could calculate. I wondered what the little houses looked like, if they were made of wood or straw or clay, and how the people dressed. I’d never seen a fisherman or, for that matter, a fisherwoman.
When it began to grow dark, the mosquitoes swarmed around us in earnest—whirlwinds of them that whined and stung. Kouje waved them away as best he could while I told the beginnings of the story of the monkey god and his quest to find the setting sun. We, too, were traveling west, and the story was one of Kouje’s favorites.
At last, when it was dark enough that the owls were hooting and my stomach was cramped with hunger, we stopped again by a stream where the sound of running water drowned out the cries of the night birds. Kouje led the horse to drink.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. I sensed that he was not.
“I ate very well at breakfast,” I replied, resting a hand over my stomach in the darkness to quiet it. If I said I was hungry, then Kouje would never have thought twice before he went chasing noises through the shadowy bushes. It was better if we both slept now and ate after the sun rose. “I believe I’m able to manage until morning.”
Whether Kouje believed my lie fully or not, he didn’t press the matter. I lay awake for a long time after that, hearing an errant mosquito flit past my cheek now and then, listening to the water flow over the rocks and to my stomach growling.
For the second time, I woke to find Kouje gone.
Cursing myself, I washed my face in the stream and drank from it, then washed the dust-coated hem of my stolen maid’s costume. There was dust between my toes, so I washed my feet, as well, and did what I could to clean the dirt from under my fingernails.
When Kouje returned, again with rabbits, my own shame was momentarily silenced by my hunger. Matters were less complicated in the woods. I didn’t apologize until after we both ate.
“Next time, you must wake me,” I said, helping him to destroy the site of the fire. “It isn’t a command, Kouje, it’s… it’s a request.”
Kouje looked at me as though the word was something entirely foreign to him. Perhaps it was. Then he bowed his head, but the gesture was more a concession than a display of worship. It would have to suffice, for now.
“My lord—” He stopped himself, looking frustrated and ashamed in equal measures. “Mamoru. I believe we might be best served at passing through one of the villages. We’re far enough away now that there is little chance of being caught out; littler chance still of being recognized. We might barter for better shoes for you there and… if there is any news from the palace, I would like to hear it. Thankfully gossip has more foot soldiers than your brother.”
I twined my fingers together tightly in my lap, doing my best not to betray any weakness at the suggestion of news. It was cowardly of me not to want to know anything, and to want to forget the capital existed at all, now that we’d left it.
Kouje seemed to sense my discomfort, for he stretched a hand across the distance between us and rested