that night—we could only hope a decent business was being run there, and that there were no fleas between the sheets—and, more than that, I knew, he wanted a bowl of rice. Yet he also wanted to do what was most practical. It was better that I make the decision for him, so that it would not be his to regret. If I was treating him like a child, then I would allow him to grow resentful at my actions—but better that than to resent himself.
After a long pause, Mamoru made as if to speak, then shook his head. “If you think it wise to stop,” he said, “then you know full well I would not argue against it.”
“Then it’s settled,” I said.
We saw to the horse—or rather, I saw to the horse while Mamoru stroked its nose and murmured wordlessly to it; he was gifted with the creature in ways I was not. It was a slow night, with few travelers. When we entered the rest house, there were only two men sitting at one of the homely tables and the shop owner serving them. The latter was glad enough to see us there, and as I haggled, Mamoru kept close by my side.
The other two travelers ate and watched us to the point of staring. Just as I thought I would have to better inform their poor manners, one of the men broke into a wide smile and waved us over.
“Lonely night,” he said, “isn’t it?” I nodded. “Jiang and me were beginning to think we’d stumbled into a ghost story.”
The one named Jiang shrugged, arms folded over his chest. “The old man,” he said, nodding toward the shop owner, “keeps talking to himself. You never know, on a night like this.”
It was, as I understood it, as much of an invitation to join them for dinner as we’d ever get from people like them. Mamoru and I sat with them as we waited for our rice—and if the shop owner took longer with it, I thought, then he really would be a ghost; I’d see to it.
“Traveling long?” the man—not Jiang—asked, looking pointedly at the dust that had gathered on our clothes and settled, it would seem permanently, in our hair. Of the two, he was clearly the more outgoing. I wished that he were not so friendly, nor Jiang so laconic, and I wished that both of them would stop staring at Mamoru.
“And farther still to go,” I said.
“Your wife?” Jiang asked, nodding this time at Mamoru.
I swallowed my temper, forcing it back down into my chest, and balled my hands into fists under the table. Mamoru patted one of my hands; I could feel how nervous he was simply by sitting beside him.
“Not your wife, then,” the friendly one said, breaking out into a wide grin. “No need to explain to me, friend. I see how it can be. Times are changing, eh? The name’s Inokichi, but they call me Kichi for short.”
I offered up our predetermined aliases. After that, the rice was finally brought, and they paused, almost respectfully, for Mamoru and me to eat. I saw him try not to wolf his food down, but it was a struggle, and he was finished quickly enough that it was plain how hungry he had been. I offered him what was left in my bowl, but he refused, even if he was sorely tempted to accept it. I ate it as quickly as I could after that, so he would not have to sit and watch me eat longer than was absolutely necessary.
“Hungry, eh,” Kichi said. It wasn’t entirely a question, and he looked too amused by it for me to feel any traveler’s companionship for him at all. Besides which, he’d said it to Mamoru more than to me, and I didn’t like the tone of voice he was using, or the slant of his mouth.
I edged closer to Mamoru on the bench. “We’ve been riding hard,” I said, trying to find some comfortable medium between too vulgar and too polite. I was a common merchant, if that; I was dressed in a servant’s clothing, and it was better that I spoke like one. Yet to embrace the coarser speech Jiang and Kichi so readily employed, or to speak of Mamoru the way they did, was also a poor option.
“Riding hard, eh,” Kichi said. “Heard about the young prince, have you?”
“Gossip, mostly,” I said. “Have they caught him yet?”