Farlander (30 page)

He bowed his head. ‘That is all.’

*

‘It is a bad business,’ announced the head of the R
shun order, the next morning, from the padded chair in his study at the top of the monastery tower. He spoke in their native Honshu, its syllables harsh and short-lived, as he always did when they were alone together.

Ash, sitting on the window seat at the other side of the room, did not respond.

‘We take on an entire empire by pursuing this one vendetta,’ continued Osh
. ‘I pray it will not prove our undoing.’

‘We have stood against powerful enemies before, master,’ Ash reminded him softly.

‘Aye, and lost all.’

A muscle in Ash’s jaw flinched at that remark.

‘Perhaps we had no other choice then,’ he replied. ‘As we have none now. What else can we do but honour our pledge, and act from our Cha?’

It was an interesting word, Cha. In the common language of Trade, many words would be needed to describe it, like ‘centre’, or ‘stillness’, or ‘clear heart’.

‘Cha? . . .’ mused Osh
, irony evident in his vague smile. ‘My Cha seems always clear to me, my friend, when I slice cheese or drink chee or fart in my old pine bed. But when I sit and ponder such things as this, affecting the future of the monastery itself, and the many hazards I must be aware of for the sake of
all
our futures, my Cha muddies itself with uncertainty. And then I wonder if perhaps I have not lost my way.’

‘Nonsense,’ snapped Ash. ‘Last night you stood and explained to us why we must pursue this vendetta, regardless of the consequences. Your actions decided the issue. What more certainty can you expect?’

Osh
sighed. He responded quietly, as though talking only to himself. ‘And all the time, I wondered if my words were not leading us to yet another massacre, or at the very least, another exile from our home.’

Ash returned his gaze to the window. He felt tired today, like on every other day since his return to the monastery, for his head pains had grown more common, and he had been sleeping poorly. Ash had been expecting this to happen. Often, when intent on a vendetta, his body would wait until it had reached a safe haven again before allowing any sickness or injury to run its natural course.

He had always tended to keep his own company while living here in the monastery. Since returning, though, he had become even more secluded than before. When he felt well enough, he trained outside the monastery walls, or undertook long walks through the mountains, avoiding others he spotted on their own hikes, his young apprentice amongst them. Mostly, though, he stayed alone in his cell, sleeping when he could manage it, or reading poetry from the old country, or just meditating. He did not wish the other members of the order to perceive that he was ill.

‘It is not that kind of certainty I ask for,’ Osh
pressed. ‘I have been more in my life than merely R
shun. I have led armies in the field, you recall? I have commanded a fleet across the great ocean of storms. My dear Ash, I once slew an overlord in a chance encounter that lasted for the entirety of three seconds. ‘No, it is not certainty in my actions that I am lacking, or have ever lacked. I think perhaps it is Chan that I have lost, and I fear it makes my decisions weak.’

Another interesting word, Chan. Like Cha, in Trade it could mean many things:
passion, faith, love, hope, art, blind courage
. Sometimes, it could mean the mysteriously clever ways of the Fool. It was, in actuality, the outer manifestation of Cha in action.

‘I grow tired of this business, that is all. Too much of my life have I spent as R
shun; soldier, general, nothing more. It has become a life hardly worthy of breath. When the time is right I will hand over the reins to Baracha. He is much more the scheming politician than I, even if his Cha is unclear.’

‘
Phff
, if he were in charge now, he would have us parlaying with the Mannians and discussing a pay-off in return for the young priest’s life.’

‘Then perhaps Baracha is wise beyond his years. Who is to say he would be wrong, if it resulted in our survival?’

Ash felt the blood rush to his face, but kept silent.

‘You were never R
shun; back in the old country, Ash, as I was,’ continued Osh
. ‘You do not know how it was – not truly. Our patrons there wore a simple medallion for all to see and if they were slain, we gathered what information we could that might lead us to the killer. It was a messy business, I assure you. Sometimes we killed the wrong person. Often we were never able to track down the true culprit at all. Even today, here in the Midèr
s, with our seals and our mali trees imported all the way from the Isles of Sky, we have sometimes failed to finish vendetta.’