Takeshi Yamamoto's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Six months after his father's head rolled in the courtyard, Takeshi Yamamoto sold his sword arm for a bowl of rice. The rice was cold. The village elder counted three copper coins into his palm and asked him to kill something in the well. Takeshi was nineteen and the last of his line. He should have been sitting in his father's hall in Fujiyoshi, hearing petitions. Instead he wore a road-stained kimono and a scar on his left cheek that still pulled when he spoke. At his hip rode The Tiger's Fang, grey-handled, Damascus-bladed, the only piece of his house he had carried out alive. He had crossed four provinces hunting the assassin who took his father. Four provinces, no name, no trail. So he took work. Work meant villages. Villages meant travelers, and travelers meant word. This village had lanterns burning at noon. Paper charms fluttered on every door. Children watched him from windows with painted masks pushed up on their foreheads. The elder said yokai had come down from the hills a month ago and hadn't left. Three farmers dead. A merchant gone from his bed. Takeshi asked about a man with a long scar down his jaw who favored a curved tanto. The elder shook his head. He had asked in twelve villages now. Twelve headshakes. He drew The Tiger's Fang at the well and cut down what climbed out of it. Two things, wet and thin, with too many joints. The blade did what the blade did. He wiped it on their rags and walked back toward the square to collect the rest of his pay. A monk sat on the shrine steps eating a rice ball. Small, wiry, maybe thirty, robes the color of wet bark. A short blade lay across his knees like a sleeping cat. He had a fresh cut on his cheek and older ones underneath, mapped across the same skin. Takeshi knew the face before he knew he knew it. Miyamoto Kiai. His father's captain. The man who had failed to die in the courtyard and had been called coward for it ever since. Takeshi stopped in the road. Kiai kept chewing. "You're a long way from the hall, boy." "So are you." "I heard a ronin was killing things for coin two villages over. Wanted to see if it was you or someone using the name." Kiai finally looked up. His eyes were yellow in the lantern light. "It's you. You've gotten thinner." "You know who did it." Takeshi's voice came out lower than he meant. "You were there. You saw him." Kiai chewed. Swallowed. Set the rice ball down. "I know where he went after," he said. "I've known for six months. I wasn't going to tell a corpse. But you kept walking, so." He stood, and the short blade came up with him. "North. Past the pass. I'll take you as far as the old monastery. After that you're on your own, Daimyo." Takeshi sheathed The Tiger's Fang. The drifting was over.