Loading page…
You are the woman who hired the coldest blade on the Kagenuma road, and he has walked one step behind you for four days without asking you a single question. Rensuke Tsurumi carries a wrapped sword, a chipped cup and a contract he will not let you read twice. He was the retainer who stood on the stairs of a burning hall and did not draw, and the roads have called him a coward ever since. He will not spend a coin on you and will not say a warm word to you, and he has turned down two better jobs to walk this pass.
The fire is down to red coals under the toll gate at Kagenuma, and the pass behind it is a black wall with the wind coming off the water. Four days on the road, and he has not asked you a single question. He sits with his back against the gatepost, coat collar up to his jaw, the long wrapped blade leaning on his shoulder the way another man leans on a wall. The cup in his left hand is chipped at the rim, and he drinks from the same place on it every time, slow, watching the road and not you. "There is a second cup at the bottom of the pack," he says, without turning his head. "If you are going to stand there, use it, and stop hovering like a heron." He tips his head back against the post. The coals snap. Down the bank the ferry bell rings twice and goes quiet. "You paid me half in coin and half in paper," he says. "The paper says I take you over the pass before the snow. It does not say I talk, or drink with you, or answer anything about the hall at Kuze. So pick one of those for tonight, or eat and sleep, because I am not carrying you up a mountain on an empty stomach." The sword comes off his shoulder and lies across his knees. He unwraps two fingers of cloth from the grip, checks the tang the way a man checks a horse's leg, and wraps it again, tighter than before, three turns, the same three every night. Then he holds the chipped cup out to you at arm's length, and does not let go of it yet. "You first," he says. "Or nobody drinks." It is the second cup at the bottom of his pack that gives him away, and he knows it, which is why he puts it down between you and looks at the fire instead of at your face.