Blood of Tyrants. Naomi Novik

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      Laurence could not make sense of it. If his presence had meant some great burden for the household, he might better have understood, but Kaneko need not have picked him up from the ground if so, and in any case the largesse which had been shown him, so far, scarcely seemed of a kind which would have troubled the finances of such a house.

      But a full understanding was not his present concern: the meat of the matter was that they did not mean to aid him to get back to his ship. “I remain grateful for your master’s hospitality,” he said, “but my health is recovered, and I will trespass on it no further: I would ask you for the return of my clothing, and my sword, and to show me the way to the road.”

      Junichiro looked at him with an expression briefly startled, as though Laurence had asked him for a pair of wings. “What would you do?” he said, with sincere confusion. “You cannot speak the language; you are a foreigner and a barbarian—”

      “And,” Laurence said, cutting him off short; he could not have said how he knew the word had the flavor of an insult, but he did, “if I mean to go to the devil, that is my business, and surely no concern of yours.”

      He would indeed have been glad of help, but not of the sort which would keep him penned in a room and plied with food and drink. So far, he seemed to figure at once as an unexpected but welcome guest, and a piece of highly inconvenient baggage: Junichiro plainly wished him gone—or never come at all—but even the servants eyed him with sidelong worried looks that required no translation.

      At the very least, Laurence hoped his demand to leave might draw out some response which should illuminate matters, and let him know how better to proceed: and indeed Junichiro hesitated; he left and in a little while returned and said, “My master will see you.”

      Laurence hoped to make a better show of himself, at this second meeting; he had asked for a razor, and conquered the disquiet of looking at his strangely unfamiliar face in the glass long enough to clear away the several days’ growth of beard. The servants had brought him to a bathing room, peculiarly divided with a wooden-slatted floor on which they insisted on scrubbing him in the open air, surely unhealthy in the extreme and inviting a chill, before permitting him to step into the large bath, itself excessively hot; at least, he had thought it so, but on emerging he could not deny it had done splendidly to ease his aches.

      When ushered into the office this time, he was able to fold himself down in a better imitation of what was evidently the polite kneeling posture; his legs still complained of the position, but he was not so weak he was at every moment in danger of tipping over and having to reach out a hand to steady himself awkwardly against the floor with his fingertips.

      Kaneko was frowning, however: Laurence’s sword lay on the desk before him, unsheathed, and in the sunlight coming through the open window looked even more splendid than Laurence had recalled: jewels gleamed from the dragon’s-head of the hilt, and the blade shone. His fingers itched to hold it again. “Where did you have this from?” Kaneko asked, touching the hilt.

      Laurence could not bring himself to make the fantastic if honest answer that he did not recall: in any event, he did not feel himself compelled to answer such a question, personal and unjustified. “Are you proposing, sir,” he said, “that I have stolen it? The sword is mine, as are the coat, the shirt, and the trousers you found upon me; I am sorry to be equally unable to provide you with the bills of sale for any of them, if you should require the same to restore them to me.”

      Kaneko hesitated. “This is a very fine blade,” he said, finally.

      He seemed to want something more, but Laurence could not provide it. “Yes,” he said, unyielding, as he could not be otherwise. “I am a serving-officer of His Majesty’s Navy, sir; I rely upon my sword.”

      He waited; he did not entirely understand what concerned Kaneko so about the blade. Finally, Kaneko said bluntly, “It is of Chinese make,” and Laurence inwardly flinched not with surprise, but with the absence of surprise: he realized he knew as much, and had not even thought it strange, before.

      “I have another of Spanish,” Laurence said, swallowing his confusion, “and one of Prussian. Do you mean to keep it?”

      Junichiro twitched as if with indignation, but Kaneko did not answer, only looking down still at the sword: Laurence had an impression he was dissatisfied with the answer, but why he should have cared where the sword had come from, Laurence could not say. “If not,” he added, “I would be glad for its return.”

      “Ah,” Kaneko said, and tapped his fingers once upon the desk, before stilling his hand. “The bakufu has directed that only a samurai may bear a long sword.”

      “If that is, as I suppose, a knight,” Laurence said, “I am the third son of the Earl of Allendale and, as I have already said, a ship’s captain: I must consider both my birth and my rank adequate to my arms by any reasonable standard. I will speak plainly, sir: if you mean to pillage me, I should be hard-put to prevent you under the circumstances, but I will thank you not to dress it up with justifications as ungentlemanly as they are unwarranted.”

      “How dare you speak so to my master?” Junichiro flared up, half-rising on his knees. “You should have died, but for his intervention—”

      “I did not request your aid,” Laurence said flatly, to Kaneko rather than to his squire, “and should rather have had none of it than a pretense at the same: I consider it no favor to be fed and clothed, and held against my will. If you are making yourself my jailor, sir, I should care to know on what grounds I am to meet with such treatment. So far as I know there is peace between our nations, and a shipwreck has in every civilized society all the claims to human sympathy which any man should care to receive, himself being the victim of such a disaster.”

      “One who breaks the law may desire sympathy and yet not deserve it!” Junichiro said, and then subsided: Kaneko had raised his hand a very little.

      “If a man may break the laws of your nation merely by being hurled unwillingly upon your shore,” Laurence said dryly, “then they seek to constrain not the will of man, but of God.”

      “Enough, Junichiro,” Kaneko said quietly, when the young man would have answered hotly again. “The objection is just: I have not been of true service to you, as I vowed to be.”

      He sat in silence a moment, looking down at his desk, while Laurence wondered at vowed: he had done nothing to earn any promise of service himself; was Kaneko under some sort of religious obligation?

      “The obligations of honor are many,” Kaneko said at last, “and often contradictory.”

      Junichiro made a violent motion of protest, a hand chopped across the air, outstretched as if he meant to catch the words even being spoken. Kaneko glanced at him, and with affection but sternly said, “Enough, Junichiro.”

      “Master,” Junichiro said, “not for this. Not—”

      Laurence watched them, disturbed: the young man’s voice was breaking, though Kaneko seemed as placid as a lake; he felt abruptly as awkward as though he had wandered into a stranger’s house, and found it full of family quarrels addressed only obliquely, through hints.

      “I must write to Lady Arikawa,” Kaneko said, “and offer her my apologies. I see now that I have acted wrongly: I did not have the right to undertake an oath which might expose her to charges of disobedience to the bakufu. I regret that you must endure a delay in my answer,” he added to Laurence. “It must be her will, and not mine, whether I am permitted to fulfill СКАЧАТЬ