Bloodline, 1/10
Title: Bloodline
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Nino-centric with eventual Ohmiya
Summary: In a kingdom where water is more precious than gold, Ninomiya Kazunari discovers that his whole life has been a lie. At the royal court, he learns that deception lies around every corner. Blood equals power. And love comes at a cost.
Notes/Warnings: Gods and mortals/fantasy AU with some inspiration from N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (no need to know the book, just giving credit for the inspiration). Contains heavy angst, violence and cruelty, blood, bad language, sexual content. This story includes characters that are enslaved.
Toyone-mura was one of the smallest villages they’d visited in a while, but at least it wasn’t one of the poorest. They’d set up camp just on the village outskirts, thankfully upwind from one of the fenced goat enclosures. By now their human herd of followers had dwindled to less than twenty since the steaming heat of late spring was growing more relentless by the day. Fewer people to account for and thus fewer mouths to feed.
The big show would come tomorrow morning, and it would be Nino’s job to lead the call along the village’s main dirt road. His mother had chided him as a boy for speaking loudly, but as an adult the skill served him and his family well. “The Water Finder is here!” he’d shout, “the Water Finder has come!”
Of course there was no disguising a cluster of mismatched but colorful tents at the edge of town. Anyone with functioning eyes could see that the Water Finder and his entourage had arrived. But villagers from one end of the kingdom to the other seemed to love the ceremony of it all. Nino was just grateful to be off the trail for a few days, in a fixed location, no need to keep his head wrapped and mouth covered to avoid the sand and the dust blowing about.
Ninomiya Seitaro, his father, was a Water Finder and healer. Practitioners of folk magic were officially outlawed in the Sun Kingdom, but enforcement was lax the further you got from Amaterasu, the capital. And Seitaro had made a decent living staying away from Amaterasu. They’d been traveling for as long as Nino had memories, moving from one village to the next through the dry, lifeless desert terrain that dominated the Sun Kingdom’s landscape.
Seitaro was from a long line of Water Finders, had been born to hold the gnarled wooden Fortune Stick in his strong, sun-baked hands. The Water Finders visited places with shortages, places where wells had gone dry or streams had slowed to a trickle. Fresh water was hard to come by no matter where you lived in the Sun Kingdom. In Amaterasu or the small villages and communities that ringed its high stone walls, water was rationed out by the Kingsguard. Beyond the capital lands, the people were largely on their own to support themselves.
Fortune Stick in hand, Nino’s father would trudge through the sands near a village, barefoot and eyes squeezed shut. They usually stayed in a village until he found something, and if the gods failed to instruct him, he refused pay and they moved on just the same.
When he wasn’t waving that silly stick around, he was healing. Though Seitaro had spent years trying to instill a love of water finding in his son, Nino had never gotten the hang of it. He could walk around with his eyes shut until the sun went down, but he’d never once found a new water source. It was apparently a blessing that hadn’t been bestowed upon him, but healing…Nino felt that healing was much more practical than a divine gift from the God of the Waters. Grinding up herbs and making poultices and creams and things, that at least Nino had been able to learn.
He would be thirty-four years old in two weeks, and all he’d ever known was the next village, the next town that needed Seitaro’s skills. He knew the sturdy yellow canvas of his tent, dotted with the poorly-stitched patches he’d added as years went by rather than relying on his mother to fix it for him. He knew the malnourished faces of children that would light up as soon as he called out that the Water Finder had come to save them. He knew the somber heartbreak in a village elder’s eyes when his father confessed to her that he couldn’t find anything this time.
He wasn’t sure what his future held. The more they traveled, the more Nino wanted to settle down. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to succeed his father as a Water Finder, so maybe it was best he left the caravan and the nomadic life. Maybe he could find a village or town in need of a full-time healer. Even if what he possessed wasn’t proper folk magic, wasn’t a gift from the God of the Waters, it was a useful skill. His father would object, his mother would too. But Nino had already been an adult for many years now. He was nearly fifteen years older than his parents had been when they’d married and started traveling the Sun Kingdom together, a young itinerant Water Finder and his pregnant wife. Didn’t he deserve a chance to start a life of his own?
He swatted at a fly, dusting off his hands on his linen trousers and lifting the flap to his parents’ tent. He’d grown up in this tent, knew every inch of canvas. Knew the tang of the incense his father burned in offering to the God of the Waters. Knew the scent of the oils his mother applied to her dry, windburnt skin after days of desert travel. Nino had slept under this canvas the first sixteen years of his life until finally he’d earned the money to buy a tent from a town craftsman, to have something at last that was private and his own.
Like always on the day before the Water Finding ritual, Seitaro was in one corner of the tent, sitting with his legs crossed, muttering prayers under his breath as the incense burned in the tiny brazier. He was in a world of his own. It was over this past winter that his father’s hair had finally lost its last bits of black. The gray hair just made him look wiser, Nino supposed. A good thing. Meanwhile his mother Kazuko was still unpacking, unraveling bedrolls and shaking sand out of his father’s white robes.
“Looks like everyone has settled in,” he declared. “I’ve fed the camels.”
“Thank you, Kazu,” his mother replied, not even looking up, preoccupied with ensuring the bedrolls were insect-free.
He had been born Ninomiya Kazunari, but over the years “Kazunari” had lost favor with repeat visits to some towns. Even as a child, the Water Finder’s son had often been called “Little Ninomiya,” then “Little Nino,” and finally just “Nino” had stuck to him like a stubborn grain of sand under one of his toenails. Even his father called him Nino in mixed company, if only so people knew to whom he was referring.
Nino’s mother, however, did no such thing. He remained Kazu in most things, Kazunari when he had done something to earn her displeasure.
With Ninomiya Seitaro mostly preoccupied with Water Finding, with his healing, it had fallen to Ninomiya Kazuko to manage just about everything else. Until Nino was twenty, she had managed all the money and related transactions for Seitaro’s services. She’d trained him to take over, helping him hone his skills as a negotiator, as a haggler. Since most villages couldn’t pay in coin, it had fallen to Nino to learn what the equivalents might be. How much cloth could be accepted and traded for something else in a larger town. How many goats. How many sacks of grain.
Kazuko managed the entourage as well. Even as a boy, Nino could remember that there was his family and then there was the entourage. Wanderers without homes or wanderers who chose to leave their homes. People who believed that Seitaro was blessed by the gods and thought it wise to follow him in hopes that they might too be blessed. And others who knew that following a successful Water Finder and being part of his camp meant they might be able to feed themselves or their hungry children for at least another day. Some brought their own camels. Some were willing to come along on foot.
In the colder months when the deserts were more manageable, the entourage might swell to fifty or more. Most of them contributed to earn their supper, whether it was providing handyman services for villagers or keeping watch on the camels or even providing child care while village residents watched the Water Finding ceremony. Thieves were not permitted, nor were those unwilling to lend a hand when needed. And there were no second chances.
“Nagara has the night watch for the animals,” Nino explained, sitting beside his mother to rest his weary feet. He ran his fingers over one of the bedrolls, helping Kazuko with her vermin hunt.
It had been a long afternoon getting everyone settled in. As his mother’s right hand man, Nino helped get the other tents set up, offered greetings to village elders, and generally looked for ways in which he might be useful. It was another thing that made him long for a life of his own, a more settled existence where he needed to only worry about himself.
Was it selfish? Probably, but Nino still did his part from sun-up to sundown every single day, so he wasn’t all that ashamed of his secret wishes.
“And we have been offered a goat,” Nino continued, wrinkling his nose. He had long ago tired of goat meat, especially when the goat herder told Nino the poor animal’s name before turning it over. “I said we would be happy to accept it tomorrow when Father has completed the ceremony.”
“Good,” Kazuko said.
Just like his father, Kazuko would not accept anything that could be construed as a gift or payment until after Seitaro had done his Water Finding. Nino knew that other Water Finders were more than happy to be pampered, to be showered in gifts. It wasn’t the Ninomiya family way, and it never would be.
He filled his mother in on the state of the camp as well as some gossip. For all that Ninomiya Kazuko was a forthright and upstanding woman, she loved gossip as much as anyone else. Rumor had it that Minako, the current laundress among the entourage, was thinking of going back to Yamazoe-mura since she had fallen for the blacksmith there.
“I think it’s a good idea for all involved,” Kazuko remarked with a wry smile. “She’s very lax when it comes to stains.”
Now that he’d completed his report, he was dismissed. The days were longer now that summer had just about come. It had been a journey of nearly two weeks before their arrival that morning in Toyone-mura. He was exhausted, physically and mentally, after days spent watching the shadowy sway of the camel before him in the moonlight. He headed for his own tent, lying on his back with a sigh.
Tonight they’d eat simple fare. Nuts, dried strips of meat, dried fruit if his mother felt like digging into their stores for such an indulgence. Tomorrow his father would do his best to find water for Toyone-mura. They’d eat Happy the Goat for supper (because surely the stupid goat would have a name like that to make Nino feel even more guilty). They’d spend another day seeing if their healing services were needed. And then they’d pack up all over again for the next village that had sent a messenger to find their camp. No matter how far, they would pack up and go.
He stared up at the familiar yellow canvas, frowning at the prospect. Just to punctuate his sour mood, he heard the bleating of a goat in the distance. Nino chuckled bitterly, pulling his blanket up and over his sore, tired body and waiting for the quiet pleasures of a nap to come claim him.
-
It was a festival night in Toyone-mura, and it would have been a festival night even if Seitaro hadn’t come. It was a cleansing ritual dedicated to one of the local gods here in the southeast region of the Sun Kingdom. Yatagarasu, the crow god, apparently offered guidance to wayward souls.
Nino almost felt like giving an offering of his own to Yatagarasu as he wandered to the village square, drawn in by the heat of the towering bonfire. He felt like a wayward soul, although not in the usual definition of the term. Unlike his wandering parents, he longed to settle. He wondered what advice the crow god might give.
It seemed like everyone in Toyone-mura was out, villagers mingling cheerfully with members of the Water Finder’s entourage. People were always hopeful on the nights before the ritual. How could you not be? The crueler side of Nino’s heart liked these nights for other reasons. Villagers with hope in their eyes and perhaps a little alcohol in their bellies, nights like these often helped Nino find some companionship.
It was lonely in the caravan, traveling the sometimes perilous trails between villages. They mostly moved along after dusk or in the hours before the sun rose too high in the sky. It wasn’t exactly easy to hide such things from your parents in broad daylight, but village festival nights and pitching his tent at a distance from his parents’ tent sometimes brought him good fortune.
His first love was a long-legged carpenter’s daughter from Kijimadaira, a town in the west. They’d spent nearly a month there resupplying the caravan when he was nineteen, and after a week of pursuit and another week of long kisses behind a stable, Nino had finally shared his tent with another. He knew it wouldn’t last and so had she. They’d been to Kijimadaira a handful of times since, and his first love was now happily married with two cute children. She always winked when she saw him, and it made him smile.
His second love was a shoemaker’s apprentice from a village not far from the one where he’d been born. He’d been a few years older, strong and serious, and Nino had enjoyed getting an opportunity to compare the man’s hard kisses and rough skin to his memories of the carpenter’s daughter and the way her soft skin had felt under his fingers. The shoemaker’s apprentice had asked Nino to stay, but at twenty-two such an idea had been impossible to consider.
Most other encounters had been shorter. Often only a night. As a rule, he didn’t sleep with people who were part of his father’s entourage. The last thing he wanted to be was a source of gossip that got back to his mother. Instead they were always strangers along the way. Women he’d healed who paid in full and then asked if he would stay a bit longer. Men who wanted to write poems about Nino’s “romantic” wandering life and men who couldn’t even write their own names. He’d been inside strangers, and strangers had been inside him. He’d experienced pleasure and pain alike depending on the experience (or nervous inexperience) of his partner. But everything was short-lived. Nothing serious. Nothing lasting. Nothing real.
In his observations, having spent his whole life moving from town to town, he envied those who’d found another. For as much as he enjoyed his rare private moments, cherished his time without company, he still longed for the possibility of love. Real, enduring love. Even his parents had each other, so wouldn’t they understand?
A girl with her hair done up in an elaborate knot handed him a crude cup, nearly filling it to the brim with whatever particular poison the villagers here liked to drink. It burned down his throat but he didn’t mind, sipping slowly as he lingered at the edges of the crowd. The bonfire was aided by some old wood, and the smoke would surely cling to his clothes, coming along even after they left Toyone-mura behind.
Away from the flames, a few young women were improvising a shamisen tune while a boy of perhaps ten years smacked eagerly at a drum. Villagers and entourage members partnered up, trying to match the odd rhythm as the flames stretched and leapt up into the sky. Nino had never been one for dancing, and he figured his best bet was to find a lonely man or woman who shared similar values.
He was on his second cup of mystery alcohol when someone happened to find him first. He was a bit strange for a villager, approaching without a cup in his hand and dressed in rather fancy red robes. He almost looked like a temple priest, although Nino wasn’t aware of any temples where they wore red. He had dark hair, darker than Nino’s which tended to lighten a bit in the sun. He had large, handsome eyes and a round face that spoke of a lack of hunger.
This person, Nino realized as soon as he came closer, was likely not from Toyone-mura. Perhaps just someone passing through, the same as Nino and his father’s entourage. But no matter. He found it was best for both parties in these situations if questions about origins were kept to a minimum.
The man approached, his shoes scuffing along in the dirt. When he spoke, his voice was warm and comforting, the same as the alcohol.
“Are you the son of the Water Finder?” the man in red asked, Nino’s focus sliding from his dark brown eyes to the plumpness of his bottom lip. It had been months since he’d last been presented with such a golden opportunity.
“Yes, I am…the son of…yes,” he muttered, still a bit lost at the sight of the man’s fancy robes and darkened skin. Sunburnt, Nino was nearly convinced, even in the light of the bonfire. Like this man had traveled in the desert without a bit of common sense.
“May I speak with you alone?” the man asked, leaning forward so that his hot breath tickled along Nino’s neck. Certainly he was only speaking closely so he might be heard over the clamor of the music and the dancing and the fire, but Nino was a few steps ahead in his thinking about what this man really wanted from him. The usual side effect of going months without a warm body beside him for a night.
Spying his parents sitting on the other side of the bonfire with the Toyone-mura elders, Nino decided to seize the chance before him.
“Come,” he said to the man in red. “My tent is in the camp just outside of town.”
He downed the rest of his drink, blinking a bit in regret as he set his empty cup down on a short stone wall for one of the villagers to find and reclaim. He could hear the calm footsteps of the stranger at his back as they left the celebration behind and headed back to the stink of the camels and the bleating of the goats.
Nagara was the only one who’d stayed behind, and his back was to them as Nino led the man in red back to the camp. Navigating among the tents, he held the flap aside so his guest could duck his head and come inside.
“Let me just light a lantern,” Nino murmured, wondering how far he might be able to go with this stranger before the rest of the entourage returned. Thankfully in one of the pouches of his pack he had the special oil necessary to make the experience a pleasurable one for both involved. It didn’t look like the stranger had any pockets or places among his robes where such an erotic thing might be stashed.
As soon as the small flame of his lantern left the tent awash in flickering light, Nino saw that the man in red had knelt down before him, a rather deferential gesture. Nino knelt down to match him and leaned forward eagerly, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder. Their lips had only just grazed when the stranger moved back in shock, holding up his hands in a pleading gesture.
Nino was left there, uncertain, lips still pursed for an exploratory kiss as the man in red bowed his head low to him.
“I apologize! I’ve given you the wrong idea!”
Nino didn’t bother to hide his disappointment. He’d really wanted a chance to kiss those perfect lips. “The apology should be mine. I should have asked…”
The man looked up, and his face really was red from sunburn. At least it seemed to be masking his embarrassment. “I’ve spent weeks looking for you.”
“For my father’s camp?” he mumbled.
“No,” the man said. “For you.”
Nino tried to remember. He’d never seen this man before in his life. There was no chance he’d have forgotten someone this attractive. “I’m sorry, friend. I don’t believe we’ve met before.”
“We haven’t,” the man confirmed. But then he inclined his head again. “Your Highness, it is imperative you return to Amaterasu with me.”
Your Highness?
Nino stared at the man’s bowed head, his stomach starting to get a little queasy from the unfamiliar alcohol. “I…I believe you have the wrong man. Please. Lift your head.”
The man did so, his brown eyes searching Nino’s face. “You don’t know.”
“What don’t I know?” Nino murmured uncomfortably. His tent seemed small, confining. He needed air. Sure, his father’s camp attracted strange sorts of people, even some who proclaimed Ninomiya Seitaro a god in his own right. But those strange sorts never sought out Nino before. Not once.
“Your mother is Terajima Kazuko?”
Nino leaned back, crossing his arms protectively. There was a lot Nino didn’t know about his mother. Before meeting his father, before the caravan, Nino knew only that she’d lived in Amaterasu. Seeking her fortunes elsewhere, she’d traveled away from the capital, had met Seitaro and fallen in love. He knew nothing of the family she may have left behind or what her life had been like in the capital. The only other thing Nino knew was her name before she’d married.
Terajima Kazuko.
“How do you know that name?” Nino asked cautiously.
“You really don’t know,” the man said again, a fidgety, panicked look in his eyes that made him less handsome.
“What don’t I know?” Nino asked, raising his voice a little. “You’ve been looking for me? Well, you’ve found me. Now tell me plainly. What don’t I know?”
The man bowed his head again despite Nino’s earlier admonishment. He bowed low, the way one did in stories about the capital, about kings and queens. The man in red bowed so low that his forehead touched the bedroll Nino had stretched out on the floor of his tent.
“Your mother is Terajima Kazuko,” the man said quietly as the lantern light bathed the tent in its warm glow. “Your father is Matsumoto Yukio, the heir to the Sun Kingdom.”
Silence descended on the tent. The music played on in the distance, the revels continued.
Nino narrowed his eyes. “I think you should leave.”
The man did not move from his deferential posture. “Rather, I should say that your father was Matsumoto Yukio, the heir to the Sun Kingdom. While I journeyed to find you, he passed away.”
Nino stretched out a hand, his fingers coming under the man’s chin. A bit rougher than necessary, Nino lifted the man’s head, met his serious eyes. The news had greeted the caravan at the last village they’d visited. News that the heir to the throne, Prince Yukio, had passed away. King Kotaro was approaching his 90th year, still holding power as he had for almost fifty years. Some grandson, Yukio’s son, would likely be the next king now.
But what did that matter? That was the business in the capital, that was Amaterasu business, and whatever happened there mattered little to those the Sun Kingdom forgot or simply ignored. Amaterasu was only the place where tax money was sent, money that never seemed to find its way back to the distant villages. Amaterasu was unimportant, a place that seemed almost unreal save for knowing it as his mother’s place of birth.
“If you came all this way to question my mother’s loyalty to my father, I will have this caravan’s bodyguards slit your throat.”
The man held up his hands in surrender. “Let me speak to her. Please. Ask her to deny my words.”
Nino took a deep breath, was astonished by the sincerity, the pleading in this strange man’s eyes. Had the time under the unforgiving sun addled his brains?
“Please,” the stranger begged again. “I will explain it all.”
His whole life Nino had felt as though he was merely floating along. He had his place in the caravan, his wandering life. A life only as the son of the Water Finder. He now had two choices. Dismiss the crazy man and his red robes, continue his wandering as though the man had never arrived. Or summon his mother and hope she might sort things out, offer an explanation.
Your father was Matsumoto Yukio, the heir to the Sun Kingdom.
What a ridiculous claim, and yet the man before him wasn’t wavering. And the man before him knew his mother’s name.
He made his choice.
-
Though Nino had quietly and calmly gone to fetch his mother, his father had followed at her heels. Perhaps they’d seen through him, seen the confusion in him.
The four of them were now seated in his parents’ tent, Seitaro and Kazuko, Nino and the man in the red robes. His mother hadn’t hesitated when the man in red asked her if she was Terajima Kazuko.
She only inclined her head politely. “That was once my name.”
“Forgive me for this sudden intrusion on your camp,” the man in red continued. “My name is Sakurai Sho, I work in the Royal Palace of Amaterasu.”
“Sakurai,” his mother mumbled, nodding. “That is a name I’ve heard…”
“Perhaps you knew my father. He was an advisor to the king when you were in the capital.”
Nino saw the spark of recognition in his mother’s eyes. How would she have known some royal advisor? She was a commoner. “Yes,” she replied, “you do resemble him.”
Nino looked instead to his father, waiting for him to show some reaction to this stranger. And yet he remained placid.
“Madame. Sir,” Sakurai said gently. “I was sent to find you by Prince Yukio.”
At that, Nino saw the slightest twitch of his mother’s lips. “I see.”
“The prince wished to meet with his son,” Sakurai admitted. “The matter was indeed urgent.”
“But the prince has died,” Seitaro said, although Nino was growing more disturbed by how calmly his parents were behaving.
“Yes,” Sakurai said. “Not long after I departed Amaterasu. But he entrusted me with this mission, and I intend to fulfill it. I was told to bring Kazunari back with me.”
“Hold on a moment,” Nino interrupted, heart racing. “How do you know my…”
“I did as I was told,” his mother said, hands folded tightly in her lap. “I did everything I was told, and yet here you are.”
Nino moved, sitting at his mother’s side, resting a hand on her arm. “What were you told? What is going on here?”
His mother ignored him. Her eyes glimmered as she stared down the stranger, Sakurai Sho from the Royal Palace of Amaterasu. “I have protected him. All this time, we have protected him. If Yukio sent you, then you know this.”
Yukio? Nino’s eyes widened. His mother had always been respectful, and yet here she was referring to the late prince and heir to the kingdom by his given name.
Sakurai looked apologetic. “I’m sorry. Truly. Prince Yukio wished for nothing more than to leave you alone, but things have changed and…”
“I say again,” Seitaro interrupted. “The prince has died. And with him dies any authority over what happens to Kazunari. Isn’t that so?”
Nino shrank back, looking between his parents and Sakurai Sho, an ache growing in his belly. Your father was Matsumoto Yukio…your father was…
“Father,” he said sharply, waiting until Seitaro met his eyes. “Tell this man to leave. He’s spreading lies about Mama. You’re my father, and what happens in Amaterasu is no concern of ours. You have the ceremony tomorrow, and we don’t have time for the words of a madman.”
His parents said nothing. Sakurai Sho said nothing.
“This stranger waltzed into our camp and called me the son of the dead prince. He called me the son of Matsumoto Yukio. He’s calling Mama a whore!”
Nino watched, confusion mounting, as Kazuko’s fingers entwined with Seitaro’s. It was Seitaro who seemed to be offering comfort.
“Father, why aren’t you doing anything?!”
“It’s not a lie,” Seitaro said. “Your father is….”
Nino got to his feet instead. “You are!” he said, pointing rudely at the man before him, the man he knew like no other. The man who’d protected him. The man who’d taught him so many things. “You are my father. I am Ninomiya Kazunari. I am a member of this family! This is…this is my family!”
He watched his parents exchange a long, sad look.
“Please sit, Kazu,” his mother pleaded. He’d never heard her sound this upset, this fragile. Ninomiya Kazuko had no patience for liars and cheats. His mother was the strongest person he knew. “Please sit so we might explain it.”
And over the next hour, Nino sat there and learned that his entire life was a lie.
The words came softly, gently. From Kazuko. From Seitaro. They came softly and yet each one felt like a knife in his gut. He faded in and out, each uncovered truth making him wish for the life he’d known only hours ago. When he’d had only to think about goats and water finding, about a future that might someday be his away from the caravan.
Thirty-four years earlier, Terajima Kazuko had been an orphan who’d been hired on as a chambermaid in the Royal Palace of Amaterasu. She’d lived at the center of the Sun Kingdom, at the center of everything. At eighteen, she’d caught the eye of King Kotaro’s only son and heir, Prince Yukio. The young prince had been betrothed at the time. In fact, his wedding had only been a month away. And yet he pursued Kazuko, begged for her to be his.
“When you’re eighteen and working for a pittance, it’s hard to say no to a prince,” was the matter-of-fact way his mother phrased it.
A brief but consensual affair resulted in a pregnancy. Fearing the king’s wrath and fearing reprisal from his future wife’s home kingdom as well, Prince Yukio sent Kazuko as far from the capital as he could manage. He sent her to a tiny desert town. Prince Yukio had visited the town once, overseeing a tax collection effort. There he’d met a young practitioner of Water Finding. It was the most sensible place to send the mother of his unborn child - as far from Amaterasu as possible and to a proven healer who could care for her.
Kazuko gave birth to the prince’s bastard son in that desert town and only a few months later, Yukio’s wife gave birth to a boy of her own. Once Kazuko was well enough to travel, Seitaro invited the young mother and her baby to join him on the road. A life constantly on the move would protect Kazuko’s son from Yukio’s supporters and enemies alike, would protect Kazuko’s son from being used as a political pawn or as a means to embarrass the royal family.
Along the way, Seitaro and Kazuko fell in love. And they’d married. That part, at least, was true. As they traveled from town to town, nobody questioned that the small boy was anyone but the son of the Water Finder.
Nino wanted to wake from this nightmare. Did he want his independence? A life of his own away from the caravan? Of course. But he loved his parents. He loved them with a devotion he couldn’t put into words. They were kind and generous, patient and loving. For thirty-four years, Nino had had no reason to doubt that Ninomiya Seitaro was his father. And yet here they were, the both of them, revealing themselves to be liars. Liars for all these years. Liars before he’d even been born. And they’d lied only to protect the reputation of a philandering prince hundreds of miles away.
“No,” Seitaro insisted. “We lied to keep you safe. The capital…the capital is a dangerous place…”
“Must he go?” Kazuko asked, leaning forward, desperately seeking answers from the man in red. From Sakurai Sho, nothing more than a servant of a dead prince.
“Stop speaking as if I’m not here. I’m a grown man, damn it, I’m not going anywhere,” Nino insisted. “This is my home. This is my family. Your master is dead! He has no claim on me! I don’t take orders from dead men!”
“Kazunari,” his mother muttered. She’d confessed to all this madness and yet she was chiding him for being rude and noisy.
Sakurai Sho at least had the sense to look contrite about the whole thing. “Forgive me, Your Highness…”
“My name is Ninomiya Kazunari.”
“The future of our kingdom is at stake,” Sakurai continued. “But you may be able to save it.”
Nino narrowed his eyes. “You’ve all confirmed it. I’m nothing more than an unclaimed bastard, spirited away to the desert sands to be forgotten and ignored. You live in the capital, Sakurai, you have no idea what life is like out here. You’ve clearly never missed a meal. But out here, people suffer and starve. Water is sparse and precious. Save the kingdom, you say? Most of the kingdom lives this way, suffers this way. What exactly would I be saving? I don’t care what happens to the king, secret grandfather or no. I won’t care a bit if Amaterasu is wiped away by a sandstorm tomorrow.”
“Kazunari, mind yourself,” Seitaro chided.
He stood up, knowing he sounded childish. “How can I mind myself, Father? Everything I’ve ever been told is a lie. You just expect me to sit here and accept it?”
His mother reached out, fingers brushing against the fabric of his trousers. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Sakurai Sho. “Yukio wasn’t able to free them, was he?”
Sakurai shook his head.
“And the other boy?” Seitaro asked.
“He is unable to compel them. Thus he is unable to free them.”
Seitaro and Kazuko both looked shocked. His mother spoke first. “Unable? But the tattoos…”
Sakurai looked pained. “He has the marks of the bloodline, and yet Prince Jun has never been able to tap into their power.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Nino interjected. “Tattoos and bloodlines. How much more nonsense do I have to listen to tonight?”
“Kazunari,” Seitaro said quietly. “Take a walk with me.”
“But Father…”
“Take a walk with me.”
Seitaro got to his feet and headed out of the tent without looking back. Nino had no choice but to follow.
-
Ninomiya Seitaro walked for a considerable time, away from Toyone-mura and out into the moonlight. Small rolling hills surrounded the small village, and Nino trudged up one of them after his father. In the distance, he could still hear the goats bleating, carrying on with things as usual. Only Nino’s life had been thoroughly upended tonight.
Eventually Seitaro stopped walking, standing atop the hill. Together they stood side by side, looking down on Toyone-mura, the orange flames of the bonfire visible in the valley below.
“I love you with everything I am,” Seitaro said quietly, and Nino was grateful that the darkness could hide the tears already rolling down his cheeks. He simply let his father speak.
“You are my son. You’ve learned tonight that the bond we share is not one of blood, but still you are my son. It is my hope that you will not forget it.”
Nino stared off into the distance, watching the smoke from the bonfire float off in the wind, carried into the night.
“Do you remember the legends of Queen Emi?” Seitaro asked.
He blinked, looking over, seeing that his father was staring at nothing in particular. “Bedtime stories?”
“Time has molded them, the same as any story. Tell me what you remember.”
He rolled his eyes. His father was a simple man, devoted to his water finding and his healing. But sometimes he really did believe that there were gods who had blessed him, shown him the way to find water. He easily believed in legends and folk tales.
“Queen Emi ruled the Sun Kingdom about…seven, maybe eight hundred years ago,” Nino recalled. These were stories his parents…any parents told their little ones. “There was a bad famine, all the water dried up, and she sent her advisor, the Sorcerer Raku, far off to the east to the Great Sea.”
“And Sorcerer Raku was granted an audience with the God of the Waters,” Seitaro continued. “No human had been granted such a privilege in thousands of years, but Raku was well-versed in the dark arts. He walked into the water without drowning and entered the Undersea Palace of the God of the Waters himself.”
The story was coming back to him, bit by bit. He’d had nightmares as a boy of drowning while trying to find his way to the Undersea Palace. He’d never seen the sea before. He’d never seen that much water before. He had a difficult time believing such a place even existed, but he’d seen maps that proved it.
“And Sorcerer Raku, arrogant son of a bitch that he was, walked right up to the throne and demanded assistance with the famine. He demanded that the God deliver rain to the Sun Kingdom,” Nino recalled.
Seitaro nodded. “The God of the Waters was largely unconcerned with human matters, for the sea has been here long before us and will be here long after us.” His father chuckled. “Hard to imagine the sea, period, given how many years we’ve walked these sands. But yes, Raku came in all puffed up and used his magic to set out terms. And then do you remember the God’s response?”
“He sent two of his sons to the Sun Kingdom where they chose to stay. They used their god-given powers to create water from nothing. The sons are the reason we have water here at all, even though we are a desert kingdom,” Nino said. “But because the sons are so far from the sea, their true home and source of their power, the water here is still nothing but a trickle. I never knew why they didn’t just go home and give up on this place.”
“The story was meant to be about filial piety. It was the God of the Waters’ wish that they go help the Sun Kingdom, and good sons obey their fathers,” Seitaro reminded him.
Nino snorted bitterly, the discussion in the tent not far from his mind. “If Sorcerer Raku was so powerful he could walk into the sea, couldn’t he just create water himself with the same magic? Even as a kid I always thought this story was fishy…but to the point, why are we even talking about this?”
“We are talking about this, Kazunari, because it is not a legend. It is the truth.”
He looked over, trying to gauge his father’s expression. “Huh?”
“Like I said, time had molded things. Was there a Queen Emi? Yes. Was there a Sorcerer Raku? Yes. And did the God of the Waters send his sons to Amaterasu?” Seitaro took a breath. “Yes.”
Nino laughed. “Okay. There are gods in the capital, and I’m the prince’s son. What other revelations will emerge tonight? Will you next declare, Father, that you are withdrawing from Water Finding in favor of becoming a fan dancer?”
“Tonight is one for truth telling,” his father remarked sharply. “And what I’m telling you is the truth. Raku, the dark sorcerer, could not make water from nothing. Such abilities lie beyond human reach. But blood magic…forbidden blood magic…that can be used to tame the untameable. To claim what wasn’t Raku’s to claim.”
Nino’s confusion grew.
“Raku set a curse upon his own blood. Perhaps he wouldn’t have called it a curse. Perhaps he’d have called it a blessing. Either way, he painfully tattooed forbidden symbols on his skin. The symbols are in the language of the gods. Those symbols, those tattoos, they can be used to compel not another human…but a god.”
Nino’s father relied on instinct and the waving of his Fortune Stick to find water. And in the healing arts, a practitioner relied on plants and herbs to make medicine. Water Finding was, in a sense, an educated guess. Healing was more tangible. But blood magic? That was a fairy tale.
“When the God of the Waters sent his sons to Amaterasu, Sorcerer Raku tapped into the power of those symbols to trap the sons here in the Sun Kingdom, far from the sea. Permanently. To force them to create water whenever he chose. And in the Sun Kingdom, as you know, a person with water has power. He overthrew Queen Emi and crowned himself king. And for centuries, for so many generations, those symbols were carved into the skin of his descendants so they might also compel the gods.”
Nino shook his head. How come he had never heard any of this? He knew only the old legends, the benevolent sons of the God of the Waters protecting the Sun Kingdom, bringing precious water. Even in small amounts, water was a blessing.
“This is a fantasy.”
“This is the truth,” Seitaro insisted.
“Prove it.”
“Your father…I knew him before he was your father,” Seitaro confessed. “Just as we’ve said. He came to my town. He confessed such things to me. He said he envied me my talents as a Water Finder. He said he envied me for being able to find water on my own instead of simply taking it. He showed me his tattoos.” Seitaro lifted the sleeve of his robe, tracing his fingers along his forearm. “One of the gods, one of the sons of the God of the Waters traveled with him. I watched Prince Yukio compel him. I saw a glass fill with water.”
Nino stepped forward, kicking angrily at the sand. “Enough of this!”
“Kazunari, I speak truth to you. The prince was your father, and he sent you away from the capital, sent your mother away so you would not grow up in such an evil place. A palace consumed with forbidden magic, a place that cares nothing for the people outside of its walls. Only their own pleasures and happiness.”
“Do you understand how absurd all of this sounds?” Nino snapped. “Evil sorcerers, blood magic. A tattoo that can overcome a god’s divinity? If there are gods in Amaterasu, trapped here as you say, then how come nobody knows about it? How come the kingdom isn’t overflowing with water? How come Raku and his descendants didn’t go all the way in exploiting the two sons of the God of the Waters? Why not create enough water to turn this kingdom into a giant lake?”
“What I didn’t learn from my brief encounter with Prince Yukio I learned from your mother,” Seitaro said. “She lived and worked in the palace. She witnessed the evil there. Water…more water than you can imagine. They keep it all to themselves, they revel in the power they have, doling out water on their own terms to the people of the capital region. The suffering of the people in the capital or in the remote regions like Toyone-mura matter not…so long as they are perpetually lacking in water and food, they lack the strength to revolt. Such is the status quo.”
He shook his head. “What does any of this have to do with me? You have already plainly said that I am your son, and that means more to me than the words of a stranger who says I’m a prince’s bastard. I have no obligation to a dead man, to a man who never claimed me as his own.”
“You recall Sakurai Sho’s words…in the tent?” his father asked.
“You all had quite a lot to say,” Nino grumbled. “I don’t believe I’ve absorbed it all yet…”
“That Prince Yukio could not free them. And that Prince Jun cannot use the tattoos to tap into the bloodline.”
Nino just laughed. “I don’t understand. You’re not making a bit of sense.”
“Think of it this way, Kazunari. If Amaterasu is an evil place run by evil people, then why in the world would an intelligent, kind-hearted person like Kazuko have consorted with them?”
Consorted. Nino shuddered a little at how easily his father could say such things about his beloved wife.
“She was young. A servant. And he was a prince. Men with power use it to manipulate people who have no power at all,” Nino spat out.
“Prince Yukio was different,” Seitaro said quietly. “He was given the tattoos, he was given the power to control the sons of the God the same as every other king and queen in his bloodline. But it was Prince Yukio who left Amaterasu, who toured the distant villages. The small, dusty towns like mine. All of his own accord. He saw the suffering of his people, and unlike his ancestors, he wanted to do something about it. Prince Yukio was privileged, but he was not an evil man. Your mother…she knew that.”
Nino shut his eyes, shifting his weight from foot to foot. The echoing noise from the village in the valley below was starting to grow quieter. The celebratory bonfire would be extinguished soon so Toyone-mura might sleep. How normal the village seemed, the cluster of buildings, the tents set up on the outskirts of town. How could one think of gods walking among humans? How could anything his father said be true? How could it all be true when life in Amaterasu had no effect elsewhere in the kingdom?
How did people not know about the evil being perpetuated in their capital? How did they not know that the royal family had a means of creating water but refused to share it? His parents knew this and had done nothing with this information for over thirty years.
“Prince Yukio sought to undo the evils his family had committed for centuries,” Seitaro explained. “If the tattoos could be used to compel the gods to do his bidding, could the tattoos perhaps be used to break the binding spell instead? Sorcerer Raku, centuries ago, used blood magic to bind the gods to his family line. Only someone from that same bloodline would have the ability to free the gods once and for all.”
Realization hit Nino hard. Now he knew why Sakurai Sho had come.
“Prince Yukio could not free them,” he mumbled.
“Yes…”
“…and Prince Jun cannot tap into the bloodline.” Nino looked over, saw the grave look on his father’s face. “That’s Yukio’s son?”
“Yes,” Seitaro said again, “…your brother.”
Nino took a deep breath, hands on his hips. In only a night he’d gained far too much. A father. Now a brother. And a family tree with branches soaked in blood, centuries of letting the citizens of the Sun Kingdom suffer, starve, die of thirst. A family committed to maintaining their own power, keeping water scarce, forcing sons of the God of the Waters to do their bidding.
“Prince Yukio left me alone. Left us alone all these years,” Nino said. “But he failed in his goal of freeing them. Now he’s dead and his other son, his legitimate son, can’t control them. Prince Yukio wanted it to stop. He wanted the blood magic, the family’s power over the gods, to stop.”
“Yes,” Seitaro acknowledged.
“That’s why he sent for me,” Nino admitted. “If his son can’t compel the gods, the power of the bloodline dies. But I’m part of the bloodline, too.”
“You are,” Seitaro said.
“But if the bloodline, that blood magic can’t be tapped into, if Prince Jun can’t force the gods to create water, then doesn’t that free them anyhow? Why would he even need me?”
“Your mother told me what Prince Yukio told her before he sent her away,” Seitaro continued. “It all goes back to Sorcerer Raku and the design of the original curse, the specifics of the blood magic. So long as a descendant of Raku lives, so shall the sons of the God of the Waters serve them. And to serve them is to do them no harm.”
“So even if Prince Jun can’t force them to create water, the gods cannot rebel. The gods are tied to the family line, slaves to Raku’s bloodline until it dies out?”
“Think of the legend, Kazunari. The sea has been here long before us and will be here long after us. An immortal like the God of the Waters, he may think nothing of seven or eight hundred years. To him, perhaps it seems like only yesterday that he sent his two sons to help the Sun Kingdom…”
Nino’s eyes widened, and he felt Seitaro’s strong hand squeeze his shoulder.
“You’ve realized it,” Seitaro said.
His words tumbled out. “Even if the gods cannot be forced to create water, they are tied to Raku’s bloodline. They cannot leave the Sun Kingdom. If Raku’s bloodline continues in some way for another eight hundred years. For a thousand. For two thousand…”
“Then perhaps the God of the Waters will realize how Sorcerer Raku and the Sun Kingdom took advantage of the help he provided. It may not affect you or me, it may not happen in our lifetime, but in the future, the God of the Waters will surely retaliate against us, destroy the Sun Kingdom. Perhaps destroy all of mankind for trapping his children. Our descendants will suffer because of one man’s foolish trickery centuries ago. Prince Yukio, your father, could not live with that possibility. Even if he’d be long dead, he refused to envision such a dark future for humanity. So he tried to break the curse himself. But he must have discovered that he couldn’t. And so he sent for you.”
Nino exhaled, slowly moving until he was sitting directly on the ground, watching the fading bonfire in the distance.
“This is…this is a lot.”
“I never thought I’d have to tell you any of this,” Seitaro admitted quietly, still standing by his side. “By the gods, Kazunari, you’re a grown man. Half your lifetime has gone by with not a word from Prince Yukio. Kazuko and I hoped…we truly hoped this day would never come. We watched you grow up, wondering each and every day if it was our last with you. If Prince Yukio would come and take you away from us. But you grew. You turned ten, twenty, thirty…we assumed you were truly free.”
“Prince Yukio sent Sakurai Sho to find me so I might break the curse,” Nino said. “But even if by some miracle I can do that…what’s to stop the gods from destroying the Sun Kingdom anyway? What’s to stop them from immediately fleeing Amaterasu and going to their father and wiping us all out with a flood? What’s been done would obviously anger the God of the Waters whether his sons tell him what happened or if enough time goes by that he starts questioning their absence…” He took a breath. “Father, if I free them now, it might only bring the God’s punishment quicker.”
His father exhaled slowly. “Perhaps.”
He looked up, seeing a look on Seitaro’s face that he recognized easily, even in the sparse moonlight. Resolve. And acceptance.
“You think I should go. To Amaterasu,” Nino said.
“I became a Water Finder, the same as my mother, the same as my grandfather and great-grandfather. Other paths were before me, and yet I chose this one. My calling was to help, to be of use. Water Finding is not your calling, Kazunari. You were meant for bigger things.”
“I might be the same as Prince Jun,” Nino pointed out. “I might not be able to do anything. Then the curse only ends if Prince Jun or I die childless. Or I might have the powers you speak of, the power to break the curse. And when I break it, the God of the Waters retaliates. He wipes the Sun Kingdom out in seconds, and we all die. So either I’m completely useless or entirely too useful.”
He was surprised when Seitaro laughed.
“What’s so funny about our impending doom, whether it comes tomorrow or in centuries?”
He felt his father’s hand on top of his head, ruffling his hair as though Nino was still a boy. “You won’t bring about our doom, Kazunari.”
“You’re a fortune teller now?”
“No, but I know one thing for certain.”
“And that is?”
He shut his eyes, let his father stroke his hair.
“You’re my son. And I know that you will find a way.”
Part Two
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Nino-centric with eventual Ohmiya
Summary: In a kingdom where water is more precious than gold, Ninomiya Kazunari discovers that his whole life has been a lie. At the royal court, he learns that deception lies around every corner. Blood equals power. And love comes at a cost.
Notes/Warnings: Gods and mortals/fantasy AU with some inspiration from N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (no need to know the book, just giving credit for the inspiration). Contains heavy angst, violence and cruelty, blood, bad language, sexual content. This story includes characters that are enslaved.
Toyone-mura was one of the smallest villages they’d visited in a while, but at least it wasn’t one of the poorest. They’d set up camp just on the village outskirts, thankfully upwind from one of the fenced goat enclosures. By now their human herd of followers had dwindled to less than twenty since the steaming heat of late spring was growing more relentless by the day. Fewer people to account for and thus fewer mouths to feed.
The big show would come tomorrow morning, and it would be Nino’s job to lead the call along the village’s main dirt road. His mother had chided him as a boy for speaking loudly, but as an adult the skill served him and his family well. “The Water Finder is here!” he’d shout, “the Water Finder has come!”
Of course there was no disguising a cluster of mismatched but colorful tents at the edge of town. Anyone with functioning eyes could see that the Water Finder and his entourage had arrived. But villagers from one end of the kingdom to the other seemed to love the ceremony of it all. Nino was just grateful to be off the trail for a few days, in a fixed location, no need to keep his head wrapped and mouth covered to avoid the sand and the dust blowing about.
Ninomiya Seitaro, his father, was a Water Finder and healer. Practitioners of folk magic were officially outlawed in the Sun Kingdom, but enforcement was lax the further you got from Amaterasu, the capital. And Seitaro had made a decent living staying away from Amaterasu. They’d been traveling for as long as Nino had memories, moving from one village to the next through the dry, lifeless desert terrain that dominated the Sun Kingdom’s landscape.
Seitaro was from a long line of Water Finders, had been born to hold the gnarled wooden Fortune Stick in his strong, sun-baked hands. The Water Finders visited places with shortages, places where wells had gone dry or streams had slowed to a trickle. Fresh water was hard to come by no matter where you lived in the Sun Kingdom. In Amaterasu or the small villages and communities that ringed its high stone walls, water was rationed out by the Kingsguard. Beyond the capital lands, the people were largely on their own to support themselves.
Fortune Stick in hand, Nino’s father would trudge through the sands near a village, barefoot and eyes squeezed shut. They usually stayed in a village until he found something, and if the gods failed to instruct him, he refused pay and they moved on just the same.
When he wasn’t waving that silly stick around, he was healing. Though Seitaro had spent years trying to instill a love of water finding in his son, Nino had never gotten the hang of it. He could walk around with his eyes shut until the sun went down, but he’d never once found a new water source. It was apparently a blessing that hadn’t been bestowed upon him, but healing…Nino felt that healing was much more practical than a divine gift from the God of the Waters. Grinding up herbs and making poultices and creams and things, that at least Nino had been able to learn.
He would be thirty-four years old in two weeks, and all he’d ever known was the next village, the next town that needed Seitaro’s skills. He knew the sturdy yellow canvas of his tent, dotted with the poorly-stitched patches he’d added as years went by rather than relying on his mother to fix it for him. He knew the malnourished faces of children that would light up as soon as he called out that the Water Finder had come to save them. He knew the somber heartbreak in a village elder’s eyes when his father confessed to her that he couldn’t find anything this time.
He wasn’t sure what his future held. The more they traveled, the more Nino wanted to settle down. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to succeed his father as a Water Finder, so maybe it was best he left the caravan and the nomadic life. Maybe he could find a village or town in need of a full-time healer. Even if what he possessed wasn’t proper folk magic, wasn’t a gift from the God of the Waters, it was a useful skill. His father would object, his mother would too. But Nino had already been an adult for many years now. He was nearly fifteen years older than his parents had been when they’d married and started traveling the Sun Kingdom together, a young itinerant Water Finder and his pregnant wife. Didn’t he deserve a chance to start a life of his own?
He swatted at a fly, dusting off his hands on his linen trousers and lifting the flap to his parents’ tent. He’d grown up in this tent, knew every inch of canvas. Knew the tang of the incense his father burned in offering to the God of the Waters. Knew the scent of the oils his mother applied to her dry, windburnt skin after days of desert travel. Nino had slept under this canvas the first sixteen years of his life until finally he’d earned the money to buy a tent from a town craftsman, to have something at last that was private and his own.
Like always on the day before the Water Finding ritual, Seitaro was in one corner of the tent, sitting with his legs crossed, muttering prayers under his breath as the incense burned in the tiny brazier. He was in a world of his own. It was over this past winter that his father’s hair had finally lost its last bits of black. The gray hair just made him look wiser, Nino supposed. A good thing. Meanwhile his mother Kazuko was still unpacking, unraveling bedrolls and shaking sand out of his father’s white robes.
“Looks like everyone has settled in,” he declared. “I’ve fed the camels.”
“Thank you, Kazu,” his mother replied, not even looking up, preoccupied with ensuring the bedrolls were insect-free.
He had been born Ninomiya Kazunari, but over the years “Kazunari” had lost favor with repeat visits to some towns. Even as a child, the Water Finder’s son had often been called “Little Ninomiya,” then “Little Nino,” and finally just “Nino” had stuck to him like a stubborn grain of sand under one of his toenails. Even his father called him Nino in mixed company, if only so people knew to whom he was referring.
Nino’s mother, however, did no such thing. He remained Kazu in most things, Kazunari when he had done something to earn her displeasure.
With Ninomiya Seitaro mostly preoccupied with Water Finding, with his healing, it had fallen to Ninomiya Kazuko to manage just about everything else. Until Nino was twenty, she had managed all the money and related transactions for Seitaro’s services. She’d trained him to take over, helping him hone his skills as a negotiator, as a haggler. Since most villages couldn’t pay in coin, it had fallen to Nino to learn what the equivalents might be. How much cloth could be accepted and traded for something else in a larger town. How many goats. How many sacks of grain.
Kazuko managed the entourage as well. Even as a boy, Nino could remember that there was his family and then there was the entourage. Wanderers without homes or wanderers who chose to leave their homes. People who believed that Seitaro was blessed by the gods and thought it wise to follow him in hopes that they might too be blessed. And others who knew that following a successful Water Finder and being part of his camp meant they might be able to feed themselves or their hungry children for at least another day. Some brought their own camels. Some were willing to come along on foot.
In the colder months when the deserts were more manageable, the entourage might swell to fifty or more. Most of them contributed to earn their supper, whether it was providing handyman services for villagers or keeping watch on the camels or even providing child care while village residents watched the Water Finding ceremony. Thieves were not permitted, nor were those unwilling to lend a hand when needed. And there were no second chances.
“Nagara has the night watch for the animals,” Nino explained, sitting beside his mother to rest his weary feet. He ran his fingers over one of the bedrolls, helping Kazuko with her vermin hunt.
It had been a long afternoon getting everyone settled in. As his mother’s right hand man, Nino helped get the other tents set up, offered greetings to village elders, and generally looked for ways in which he might be useful. It was another thing that made him long for a life of his own, a more settled existence where he needed to only worry about himself.
Was it selfish? Probably, but Nino still did his part from sun-up to sundown every single day, so he wasn’t all that ashamed of his secret wishes.
“And we have been offered a goat,” Nino continued, wrinkling his nose. He had long ago tired of goat meat, especially when the goat herder told Nino the poor animal’s name before turning it over. “I said we would be happy to accept it tomorrow when Father has completed the ceremony.”
“Good,” Kazuko said.
Just like his father, Kazuko would not accept anything that could be construed as a gift or payment until after Seitaro had done his Water Finding. Nino knew that other Water Finders were more than happy to be pampered, to be showered in gifts. It wasn’t the Ninomiya family way, and it never would be.
He filled his mother in on the state of the camp as well as some gossip. For all that Ninomiya Kazuko was a forthright and upstanding woman, she loved gossip as much as anyone else. Rumor had it that Minako, the current laundress among the entourage, was thinking of going back to Yamazoe-mura since she had fallen for the blacksmith there.
“I think it’s a good idea for all involved,” Kazuko remarked with a wry smile. “She’s very lax when it comes to stains.”
Now that he’d completed his report, he was dismissed. The days were longer now that summer had just about come. It had been a journey of nearly two weeks before their arrival that morning in Toyone-mura. He was exhausted, physically and mentally, after days spent watching the shadowy sway of the camel before him in the moonlight. He headed for his own tent, lying on his back with a sigh.
Tonight they’d eat simple fare. Nuts, dried strips of meat, dried fruit if his mother felt like digging into their stores for such an indulgence. Tomorrow his father would do his best to find water for Toyone-mura. They’d eat Happy the Goat for supper (because surely the stupid goat would have a name like that to make Nino feel even more guilty). They’d spend another day seeing if their healing services were needed. And then they’d pack up all over again for the next village that had sent a messenger to find their camp. No matter how far, they would pack up and go.
He stared up at the familiar yellow canvas, frowning at the prospect. Just to punctuate his sour mood, he heard the bleating of a goat in the distance. Nino chuckled bitterly, pulling his blanket up and over his sore, tired body and waiting for the quiet pleasures of a nap to come claim him.
-
It was a festival night in Toyone-mura, and it would have been a festival night even if Seitaro hadn’t come. It was a cleansing ritual dedicated to one of the local gods here in the southeast region of the Sun Kingdom. Yatagarasu, the crow god, apparently offered guidance to wayward souls.
Nino almost felt like giving an offering of his own to Yatagarasu as he wandered to the village square, drawn in by the heat of the towering bonfire. He felt like a wayward soul, although not in the usual definition of the term. Unlike his wandering parents, he longed to settle. He wondered what advice the crow god might give.
It seemed like everyone in Toyone-mura was out, villagers mingling cheerfully with members of the Water Finder’s entourage. People were always hopeful on the nights before the ritual. How could you not be? The crueler side of Nino’s heart liked these nights for other reasons. Villagers with hope in their eyes and perhaps a little alcohol in their bellies, nights like these often helped Nino find some companionship.
It was lonely in the caravan, traveling the sometimes perilous trails between villages. They mostly moved along after dusk or in the hours before the sun rose too high in the sky. It wasn’t exactly easy to hide such things from your parents in broad daylight, but village festival nights and pitching his tent at a distance from his parents’ tent sometimes brought him good fortune.
His first love was a long-legged carpenter’s daughter from Kijimadaira, a town in the west. They’d spent nearly a month there resupplying the caravan when he was nineteen, and after a week of pursuit and another week of long kisses behind a stable, Nino had finally shared his tent with another. He knew it wouldn’t last and so had she. They’d been to Kijimadaira a handful of times since, and his first love was now happily married with two cute children. She always winked when she saw him, and it made him smile.
His second love was a shoemaker’s apprentice from a village not far from the one where he’d been born. He’d been a few years older, strong and serious, and Nino had enjoyed getting an opportunity to compare the man’s hard kisses and rough skin to his memories of the carpenter’s daughter and the way her soft skin had felt under his fingers. The shoemaker’s apprentice had asked Nino to stay, but at twenty-two such an idea had been impossible to consider.
Most other encounters had been shorter. Often only a night. As a rule, he didn’t sleep with people who were part of his father’s entourage. The last thing he wanted to be was a source of gossip that got back to his mother. Instead they were always strangers along the way. Women he’d healed who paid in full and then asked if he would stay a bit longer. Men who wanted to write poems about Nino’s “romantic” wandering life and men who couldn’t even write their own names. He’d been inside strangers, and strangers had been inside him. He’d experienced pleasure and pain alike depending on the experience (or nervous inexperience) of his partner. But everything was short-lived. Nothing serious. Nothing lasting. Nothing real.
In his observations, having spent his whole life moving from town to town, he envied those who’d found another. For as much as he enjoyed his rare private moments, cherished his time without company, he still longed for the possibility of love. Real, enduring love. Even his parents had each other, so wouldn’t they understand?
A girl with her hair done up in an elaborate knot handed him a crude cup, nearly filling it to the brim with whatever particular poison the villagers here liked to drink. It burned down his throat but he didn’t mind, sipping slowly as he lingered at the edges of the crowd. The bonfire was aided by some old wood, and the smoke would surely cling to his clothes, coming along even after they left Toyone-mura behind.
Away from the flames, a few young women were improvising a shamisen tune while a boy of perhaps ten years smacked eagerly at a drum. Villagers and entourage members partnered up, trying to match the odd rhythm as the flames stretched and leapt up into the sky. Nino had never been one for dancing, and he figured his best bet was to find a lonely man or woman who shared similar values.
He was on his second cup of mystery alcohol when someone happened to find him first. He was a bit strange for a villager, approaching without a cup in his hand and dressed in rather fancy red robes. He almost looked like a temple priest, although Nino wasn’t aware of any temples where they wore red. He had dark hair, darker than Nino’s which tended to lighten a bit in the sun. He had large, handsome eyes and a round face that spoke of a lack of hunger.
This person, Nino realized as soon as he came closer, was likely not from Toyone-mura. Perhaps just someone passing through, the same as Nino and his father’s entourage. But no matter. He found it was best for both parties in these situations if questions about origins were kept to a minimum.
The man approached, his shoes scuffing along in the dirt. When he spoke, his voice was warm and comforting, the same as the alcohol.
“Are you the son of the Water Finder?” the man in red asked, Nino’s focus sliding from his dark brown eyes to the plumpness of his bottom lip. It had been months since he’d last been presented with such a golden opportunity.
“Yes, I am…the son of…yes,” he muttered, still a bit lost at the sight of the man’s fancy robes and darkened skin. Sunburnt, Nino was nearly convinced, even in the light of the bonfire. Like this man had traveled in the desert without a bit of common sense.
“May I speak with you alone?” the man asked, leaning forward so that his hot breath tickled along Nino’s neck. Certainly he was only speaking closely so he might be heard over the clamor of the music and the dancing and the fire, but Nino was a few steps ahead in his thinking about what this man really wanted from him. The usual side effect of going months without a warm body beside him for a night.
Spying his parents sitting on the other side of the bonfire with the Toyone-mura elders, Nino decided to seize the chance before him.
“Come,” he said to the man in red. “My tent is in the camp just outside of town.”
He downed the rest of his drink, blinking a bit in regret as he set his empty cup down on a short stone wall for one of the villagers to find and reclaim. He could hear the calm footsteps of the stranger at his back as they left the celebration behind and headed back to the stink of the camels and the bleating of the goats.
Nagara was the only one who’d stayed behind, and his back was to them as Nino led the man in red back to the camp. Navigating among the tents, he held the flap aside so his guest could duck his head and come inside.
“Let me just light a lantern,” Nino murmured, wondering how far he might be able to go with this stranger before the rest of the entourage returned. Thankfully in one of the pouches of his pack he had the special oil necessary to make the experience a pleasurable one for both involved. It didn’t look like the stranger had any pockets or places among his robes where such an erotic thing might be stashed.
As soon as the small flame of his lantern left the tent awash in flickering light, Nino saw that the man in red had knelt down before him, a rather deferential gesture. Nino knelt down to match him and leaned forward eagerly, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder. Their lips had only just grazed when the stranger moved back in shock, holding up his hands in a pleading gesture.
Nino was left there, uncertain, lips still pursed for an exploratory kiss as the man in red bowed his head low to him.
“I apologize! I’ve given you the wrong idea!”
Nino didn’t bother to hide his disappointment. He’d really wanted a chance to kiss those perfect lips. “The apology should be mine. I should have asked…”
The man looked up, and his face really was red from sunburn. At least it seemed to be masking his embarrassment. “I’ve spent weeks looking for you.”
“For my father’s camp?” he mumbled.
“No,” the man said. “For you.”
Nino tried to remember. He’d never seen this man before in his life. There was no chance he’d have forgotten someone this attractive. “I’m sorry, friend. I don’t believe we’ve met before.”
“We haven’t,” the man confirmed. But then he inclined his head again. “Your Highness, it is imperative you return to Amaterasu with me.”
Your Highness?
Nino stared at the man’s bowed head, his stomach starting to get a little queasy from the unfamiliar alcohol. “I…I believe you have the wrong man. Please. Lift your head.”
The man did so, his brown eyes searching Nino’s face. “You don’t know.”
“What don’t I know?” Nino murmured uncomfortably. His tent seemed small, confining. He needed air. Sure, his father’s camp attracted strange sorts of people, even some who proclaimed Ninomiya Seitaro a god in his own right. But those strange sorts never sought out Nino before. Not once.
“Your mother is Terajima Kazuko?”
Nino leaned back, crossing his arms protectively. There was a lot Nino didn’t know about his mother. Before meeting his father, before the caravan, Nino knew only that she’d lived in Amaterasu. Seeking her fortunes elsewhere, she’d traveled away from the capital, had met Seitaro and fallen in love. He knew nothing of the family she may have left behind or what her life had been like in the capital. The only other thing Nino knew was her name before she’d married.
Terajima Kazuko.
“How do you know that name?” Nino asked cautiously.
“You really don’t know,” the man said again, a fidgety, panicked look in his eyes that made him less handsome.
“What don’t I know?” Nino asked, raising his voice a little. “You’ve been looking for me? Well, you’ve found me. Now tell me plainly. What don’t I know?”
The man bowed his head again despite Nino’s earlier admonishment. He bowed low, the way one did in stories about the capital, about kings and queens. The man in red bowed so low that his forehead touched the bedroll Nino had stretched out on the floor of his tent.
“Your mother is Terajima Kazuko,” the man said quietly as the lantern light bathed the tent in its warm glow. “Your father is Matsumoto Yukio, the heir to the Sun Kingdom.”
Silence descended on the tent. The music played on in the distance, the revels continued.
Nino narrowed his eyes. “I think you should leave.”
The man did not move from his deferential posture. “Rather, I should say that your father was Matsumoto Yukio, the heir to the Sun Kingdom. While I journeyed to find you, he passed away.”
Nino stretched out a hand, his fingers coming under the man’s chin. A bit rougher than necessary, Nino lifted the man’s head, met his serious eyes. The news had greeted the caravan at the last village they’d visited. News that the heir to the throne, Prince Yukio, had passed away. King Kotaro was approaching his 90th year, still holding power as he had for almost fifty years. Some grandson, Yukio’s son, would likely be the next king now.
But what did that matter? That was the business in the capital, that was Amaterasu business, and whatever happened there mattered little to those the Sun Kingdom forgot or simply ignored. Amaterasu was only the place where tax money was sent, money that never seemed to find its way back to the distant villages. Amaterasu was unimportant, a place that seemed almost unreal save for knowing it as his mother’s place of birth.
“If you came all this way to question my mother’s loyalty to my father, I will have this caravan’s bodyguards slit your throat.”
The man held up his hands in surrender. “Let me speak to her. Please. Ask her to deny my words.”
Nino took a deep breath, was astonished by the sincerity, the pleading in this strange man’s eyes. Had the time under the unforgiving sun addled his brains?
“Please,” the stranger begged again. “I will explain it all.”
His whole life Nino had felt as though he was merely floating along. He had his place in the caravan, his wandering life. A life only as the son of the Water Finder. He now had two choices. Dismiss the crazy man and his red robes, continue his wandering as though the man had never arrived. Or summon his mother and hope she might sort things out, offer an explanation.
Your father was Matsumoto Yukio, the heir to the Sun Kingdom.
What a ridiculous claim, and yet the man before him wasn’t wavering. And the man before him knew his mother’s name.
He made his choice.
-
Though Nino had quietly and calmly gone to fetch his mother, his father had followed at her heels. Perhaps they’d seen through him, seen the confusion in him.
The four of them were now seated in his parents’ tent, Seitaro and Kazuko, Nino and the man in the red robes. His mother hadn’t hesitated when the man in red asked her if she was Terajima Kazuko.
She only inclined her head politely. “That was once my name.”
“Forgive me for this sudden intrusion on your camp,” the man in red continued. “My name is Sakurai Sho, I work in the Royal Palace of Amaterasu.”
“Sakurai,” his mother mumbled, nodding. “That is a name I’ve heard…”
“Perhaps you knew my father. He was an advisor to the king when you were in the capital.”
Nino saw the spark of recognition in his mother’s eyes. How would she have known some royal advisor? She was a commoner. “Yes,” she replied, “you do resemble him.”
Nino looked instead to his father, waiting for him to show some reaction to this stranger. And yet he remained placid.
“Madame. Sir,” Sakurai said gently. “I was sent to find you by Prince Yukio.”
At that, Nino saw the slightest twitch of his mother’s lips. “I see.”
“The prince wished to meet with his son,” Sakurai admitted. “The matter was indeed urgent.”
“But the prince has died,” Seitaro said, although Nino was growing more disturbed by how calmly his parents were behaving.
“Yes,” Sakurai said. “Not long after I departed Amaterasu. But he entrusted me with this mission, and I intend to fulfill it. I was told to bring Kazunari back with me.”
“Hold on a moment,” Nino interrupted, heart racing. “How do you know my…”
“I did as I was told,” his mother said, hands folded tightly in her lap. “I did everything I was told, and yet here you are.”
Nino moved, sitting at his mother’s side, resting a hand on her arm. “What were you told? What is going on here?”
His mother ignored him. Her eyes glimmered as she stared down the stranger, Sakurai Sho from the Royal Palace of Amaterasu. “I have protected him. All this time, we have protected him. If Yukio sent you, then you know this.”
Yukio? Nino’s eyes widened. His mother had always been respectful, and yet here she was referring to the late prince and heir to the kingdom by his given name.
Sakurai looked apologetic. “I’m sorry. Truly. Prince Yukio wished for nothing more than to leave you alone, but things have changed and…”
“I say again,” Seitaro interrupted. “The prince has died. And with him dies any authority over what happens to Kazunari. Isn’t that so?”
Nino shrank back, looking between his parents and Sakurai Sho, an ache growing in his belly. Your father was Matsumoto Yukio…your father was…
“Father,” he said sharply, waiting until Seitaro met his eyes. “Tell this man to leave. He’s spreading lies about Mama. You’re my father, and what happens in Amaterasu is no concern of ours. You have the ceremony tomorrow, and we don’t have time for the words of a madman.”
His parents said nothing. Sakurai Sho said nothing.
“This stranger waltzed into our camp and called me the son of the dead prince. He called me the son of Matsumoto Yukio. He’s calling Mama a whore!”
Nino watched, confusion mounting, as Kazuko’s fingers entwined with Seitaro’s. It was Seitaro who seemed to be offering comfort.
“Father, why aren’t you doing anything?!”
“It’s not a lie,” Seitaro said. “Your father is….”
Nino got to his feet instead. “You are!” he said, pointing rudely at the man before him, the man he knew like no other. The man who’d protected him. The man who’d taught him so many things. “You are my father. I am Ninomiya Kazunari. I am a member of this family! This is…this is my family!”
He watched his parents exchange a long, sad look.
“Please sit, Kazu,” his mother pleaded. He’d never heard her sound this upset, this fragile. Ninomiya Kazuko had no patience for liars and cheats. His mother was the strongest person he knew. “Please sit so we might explain it.”
And over the next hour, Nino sat there and learned that his entire life was a lie.
The words came softly, gently. From Kazuko. From Seitaro. They came softly and yet each one felt like a knife in his gut. He faded in and out, each uncovered truth making him wish for the life he’d known only hours ago. When he’d had only to think about goats and water finding, about a future that might someday be his away from the caravan.
Thirty-four years earlier, Terajima Kazuko had been an orphan who’d been hired on as a chambermaid in the Royal Palace of Amaterasu. She’d lived at the center of the Sun Kingdom, at the center of everything. At eighteen, she’d caught the eye of King Kotaro’s only son and heir, Prince Yukio. The young prince had been betrothed at the time. In fact, his wedding had only been a month away. And yet he pursued Kazuko, begged for her to be his.
“When you’re eighteen and working for a pittance, it’s hard to say no to a prince,” was the matter-of-fact way his mother phrased it.
A brief but consensual affair resulted in a pregnancy. Fearing the king’s wrath and fearing reprisal from his future wife’s home kingdom as well, Prince Yukio sent Kazuko as far from the capital as he could manage. He sent her to a tiny desert town. Prince Yukio had visited the town once, overseeing a tax collection effort. There he’d met a young practitioner of Water Finding. It was the most sensible place to send the mother of his unborn child - as far from Amaterasu as possible and to a proven healer who could care for her.
Kazuko gave birth to the prince’s bastard son in that desert town and only a few months later, Yukio’s wife gave birth to a boy of her own. Once Kazuko was well enough to travel, Seitaro invited the young mother and her baby to join him on the road. A life constantly on the move would protect Kazuko’s son from Yukio’s supporters and enemies alike, would protect Kazuko’s son from being used as a political pawn or as a means to embarrass the royal family.
Along the way, Seitaro and Kazuko fell in love. And they’d married. That part, at least, was true. As they traveled from town to town, nobody questioned that the small boy was anyone but the son of the Water Finder.
Nino wanted to wake from this nightmare. Did he want his independence? A life of his own away from the caravan? Of course. But he loved his parents. He loved them with a devotion he couldn’t put into words. They were kind and generous, patient and loving. For thirty-four years, Nino had had no reason to doubt that Ninomiya Seitaro was his father. And yet here they were, the both of them, revealing themselves to be liars. Liars for all these years. Liars before he’d even been born. And they’d lied only to protect the reputation of a philandering prince hundreds of miles away.
“No,” Seitaro insisted. “We lied to keep you safe. The capital…the capital is a dangerous place…”
“Must he go?” Kazuko asked, leaning forward, desperately seeking answers from the man in red. From Sakurai Sho, nothing more than a servant of a dead prince.
“Stop speaking as if I’m not here. I’m a grown man, damn it, I’m not going anywhere,” Nino insisted. “This is my home. This is my family. Your master is dead! He has no claim on me! I don’t take orders from dead men!”
“Kazunari,” his mother muttered. She’d confessed to all this madness and yet she was chiding him for being rude and noisy.
Sakurai Sho at least had the sense to look contrite about the whole thing. “Forgive me, Your Highness…”
“My name is Ninomiya Kazunari.”
“The future of our kingdom is at stake,” Sakurai continued. “But you may be able to save it.”
Nino narrowed his eyes. “You’ve all confirmed it. I’m nothing more than an unclaimed bastard, spirited away to the desert sands to be forgotten and ignored. You live in the capital, Sakurai, you have no idea what life is like out here. You’ve clearly never missed a meal. But out here, people suffer and starve. Water is sparse and precious. Save the kingdom, you say? Most of the kingdom lives this way, suffers this way. What exactly would I be saving? I don’t care what happens to the king, secret grandfather or no. I won’t care a bit if Amaterasu is wiped away by a sandstorm tomorrow.”
“Kazunari, mind yourself,” Seitaro chided.
He stood up, knowing he sounded childish. “How can I mind myself, Father? Everything I’ve ever been told is a lie. You just expect me to sit here and accept it?”
His mother reached out, fingers brushing against the fabric of his trousers. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Sakurai Sho. “Yukio wasn’t able to free them, was he?”
Sakurai shook his head.
“And the other boy?” Seitaro asked.
“He is unable to compel them. Thus he is unable to free them.”
Seitaro and Kazuko both looked shocked. His mother spoke first. “Unable? But the tattoos…”
Sakurai looked pained. “He has the marks of the bloodline, and yet Prince Jun has never been able to tap into their power.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Nino interjected. “Tattoos and bloodlines. How much more nonsense do I have to listen to tonight?”
“Kazunari,” Seitaro said quietly. “Take a walk with me.”
“But Father…”
“Take a walk with me.”
Seitaro got to his feet and headed out of the tent without looking back. Nino had no choice but to follow.
-
Ninomiya Seitaro walked for a considerable time, away from Toyone-mura and out into the moonlight. Small rolling hills surrounded the small village, and Nino trudged up one of them after his father. In the distance, he could still hear the goats bleating, carrying on with things as usual. Only Nino’s life had been thoroughly upended tonight.
Eventually Seitaro stopped walking, standing atop the hill. Together they stood side by side, looking down on Toyone-mura, the orange flames of the bonfire visible in the valley below.
“I love you with everything I am,” Seitaro said quietly, and Nino was grateful that the darkness could hide the tears already rolling down his cheeks. He simply let his father speak.
“You are my son. You’ve learned tonight that the bond we share is not one of blood, but still you are my son. It is my hope that you will not forget it.”
Nino stared off into the distance, watching the smoke from the bonfire float off in the wind, carried into the night.
“Do you remember the legends of Queen Emi?” Seitaro asked.
He blinked, looking over, seeing that his father was staring at nothing in particular. “Bedtime stories?”
“Time has molded them, the same as any story. Tell me what you remember.”
He rolled his eyes. His father was a simple man, devoted to his water finding and his healing. But sometimes he really did believe that there were gods who had blessed him, shown him the way to find water. He easily believed in legends and folk tales.
“Queen Emi ruled the Sun Kingdom about…seven, maybe eight hundred years ago,” Nino recalled. These were stories his parents…any parents told their little ones. “There was a bad famine, all the water dried up, and she sent her advisor, the Sorcerer Raku, far off to the east to the Great Sea.”
“And Sorcerer Raku was granted an audience with the God of the Waters,” Seitaro continued. “No human had been granted such a privilege in thousands of years, but Raku was well-versed in the dark arts. He walked into the water without drowning and entered the Undersea Palace of the God of the Waters himself.”
The story was coming back to him, bit by bit. He’d had nightmares as a boy of drowning while trying to find his way to the Undersea Palace. He’d never seen the sea before. He’d never seen that much water before. He had a difficult time believing such a place even existed, but he’d seen maps that proved it.
“And Sorcerer Raku, arrogant son of a bitch that he was, walked right up to the throne and demanded assistance with the famine. He demanded that the God deliver rain to the Sun Kingdom,” Nino recalled.
Seitaro nodded. “The God of the Waters was largely unconcerned with human matters, for the sea has been here long before us and will be here long after us.” His father chuckled. “Hard to imagine the sea, period, given how many years we’ve walked these sands. But yes, Raku came in all puffed up and used his magic to set out terms. And then do you remember the God’s response?”
“He sent two of his sons to the Sun Kingdom where they chose to stay. They used their god-given powers to create water from nothing. The sons are the reason we have water here at all, even though we are a desert kingdom,” Nino said. “But because the sons are so far from the sea, their true home and source of their power, the water here is still nothing but a trickle. I never knew why they didn’t just go home and give up on this place.”
“The story was meant to be about filial piety. It was the God of the Waters’ wish that they go help the Sun Kingdom, and good sons obey their fathers,” Seitaro reminded him.
Nino snorted bitterly, the discussion in the tent not far from his mind. “If Sorcerer Raku was so powerful he could walk into the sea, couldn’t he just create water himself with the same magic? Even as a kid I always thought this story was fishy…but to the point, why are we even talking about this?”
“We are talking about this, Kazunari, because it is not a legend. It is the truth.”
He looked over, trying to gauge his father’s expression. “Huh?”
“Like I said, time had molded things. Was there a Queen Emi? Yes. Was there a Sorcerer Raku? Yes. And did the God of the Waters send his sons to Amaterasu?” Seitaro took a breath. “Yes.”
Nino laughed. “Okay. There are gods in the capital, and I’m the prince’s son. What other revelations will emerge tonight? Will you next declare, Father, that you are withdrawing from Water Finding in favor of becoming a fan dancer?”
“Tonight is one for truth telling,” his father remarked sharply. “And what I’m telling you is the truth. Raku, the dark sorcerer, could not make water from nothing. Such abilities lie beyond human reach. But blood magic…forbidden blood magic…that can be used to tame the untameable. To claim what wasn’t Raku’s to claim.”
Nino’s confusion grew.
“Raku set a curse upon his own blood. Perhaps he wouldn’t have called it a curse. Perhaps he’d have called it a blessing. Either way, he painfully tattooed forbidden symbols on his skin. The symbols are in the language of the gods. Those symbols, those tattoos, they can be used to compel not another human…but a god.”
Nino’s father relied on instinct and the waving of his Fortune Stick to find water. And in the healing arts, a practitioner relied on plants and herbs to make medicine. Water Finding was, in a sense, an educated guess. Healing was more tangible. But blood magic? That was a fairy tale.
“When the God of the Waters sent his sons to Amaterasu, Sorcerer Raku tapped into the power of those symbols to trap the sons here in the Sun Kingdom, far from the sea. Permanently. To force them to create water whenever he chose. And in the Sun Kingdom, as you know, a person with water has power. He overthrew Queen Emi and crowned himself king. And for centuries, for so many generations, those symbols were carved into the skin of his descendants so they might also compel the gods.”
Nino shook his head. How come he had never heard any of this? He knew only the old legends, the benevolent sons of the God of the Waters protecting the Sun Kingdom, bringing precious water. Even in small amounts, water was a blessing.
“This is a fantasy.”
“This is the truth,” Seitaro insisted.
“Prove it.”
“Your father…I knew him before he was your father,” Seitaro confessed. “Just as we’ve said. He came to my town. He confessed such things to me. He said he envied me my talents as a Water Finder. He said he envied me for being able to find water on my own instead of simply taking it. He showed me his tattoos.” Seitaro lifted the sleeve of his robe, tracing his fingers along his forearm. “One of the gods, one of the sons of the God of the Waters traveled with him. I watched Prince Yukio compel him. I saw a glass fill with water.”
Nino stepped forward, kicking angrily at the sand. “Enough of this!”
“Kazunari, I speak truth to you. The prince was your father, and he sent you away from the capital, sent your mother away so you would not grow up in such an evil place. A palace consumed with forbidden magic, a place that cares nothing for the people outside of its walls. Only their own pleasures and happiness.”
“Do you understand how absurd all of this sounds?” Nino snapped. “Evil sorcerers, blood magic. A tattoo that can overcome a god’s divinity? If there are gods in Amaterasu, trapped here as you say, then how come nobody knows about it? How come the kingdom isn’t overflowing with water? How come Raku and his descendants didn’t go all the way in exploiting the two sons of the God of the Waters? Why not create enough water to turn this kingdom into a giant lake?”
“What I didn’t learn from my brief encounter with Prince Yukio I learned from your mother,” Seitaro said. “She lived and worked in the palace. She witnessed the evil there. Water…more water than you can imagine. They keep it all to themselves, they revel in the power they have, doling out water on their own terms to the people of the capital region. The suffering of the people in the capital or in the remote regions like Toyone-mura matter not…so long as they are perpetually lacking in water and food, they lack the strength to revolt. Such is the status quo.”
He shook his head. “What does any of this have to do with me? You have already plainly said that I am your son, and that means more to me than the words of a stranger who says I’m a prince’s bastard. I have no obligation to a dead man, to a man who never claimed me as his own.”
“You recall Sakurai Sho’s words…in the tent?” his father asked.
“You all had quite a lot to say,” Nino grumbled. “I don’t believe I’ve absorbed it all yet…”
“That Prince Yukio could not free them. And that Prince Jun cannot use the tattoos to tap into the bloodline.”
Nino just laughed. “I don’t understand. You’re not making a bit of sense.”
“Think of it this way, Kazunari. If Amaterasu is an evil place run by evil people, then why in the world would an intelligent, kind-hearted person like Kazuko have consorted with them?”
Consorted. Nino shuddered a little at how easily his father could say such things about his beloved wife.
“She was young. A servant. And he was a prince. Men with power use it to manipulate people who have no power at all,” Nino spat out.
“Prince Yukio was different,” Seitaro said quietly. “He was given the tattoos, he was given the power to control the sons of the God the same as every other king and queen in his bloodline. But it was Prince Yukio who left Amaterasu, who toured the distant villages. The small, dusty towns like mine. All of his own accord. He saw the suffering of his people, and unlike his ancestors, he wanted to do something about it. Prince Yukio was privileged, but he was not an evil man. Your mother…she knew that.”
Nino shut his eyes, shifting his weight from foot to foot. The echoing noise from the village in the valley below was starting to grow quieter. The celebratory bonfire would be extinguished soon so Toyone-mura might sleep. How normal the village seemed, the cluster of buildings, the tents set up on the outskirts of town. How could one think of gods walking among humans? How could anything his father said be true? How could it all be true when life in Amaterasu had no effect elsewhere in the kingdom?
How did people not know about the evil being perpetuated in their capital? How did they not know that the royal family had a means of creating water but refused to share it? His parents knew this and had done nothing with this information for over thirty years.
“Prince Yukio sought to undo the evils his family had committed for centuries,” Seitaro explained. “If the tattoos could be used to compel the gods to do his bidding, could the tattoos perhaps be used to break the binding spell instead? Sorcerer Raku, centuries ago, used blood magic to bind the gods to his family line. Only someone from that same bloodline would have the ability to free the gods once and for all.”
Realization hit Nino hard. Now he knew why Sakurai Sho had come.
“Prince Yukio could not free them,” he mumbled.
“Yes…”
“…and Prince Jun cannot tap into the bloodline.” Nino looked over, saw the grave look on his father’s face. “That’s Yukio’s son?”
“Yes,” Seitaro said again, “…your brother.”
Nino took a deep breath, hands on his hips. In only a night he’d gained far too much. A father. Now a brother. And a family tree with branches soaked in blood, centuries of letting the citizens of the Sun Kingdom suffer, starve, die of thirst. A family committed to maintaining their own power, keeping water scarce, forcing sons of the God of the Waters to do their bidding.
“Prince Yukio left me alone. Left us alone all these years,” Nino said. “But he failed in his goal of freeing them. Now he’s dead and his other son, his legitimate son, can’t control them. Prince Yukio wanted it to stop. He wanted the blood magic, the family’s power over the gods, to stop.”
“Yes,” Seitaro acknowledged.
“That’s why he sent for me,” Nino admitted. “If his son can’t compel the gods, the power of the bloodline dies. But I’m part of the bloodline, too.”
“You are,” Seitaro said.
“But if the bloodline, that blood magic can’t be tapped into, if Prince Jun can’t force the gods to create water, then doesn’t that free them anyhow? Why would he even need me?”
“Your mother told me what Prince Yukio told her before he sent her away,” Seitaro continued. “It all goes back to Sorcerer Raku and the design of the original curse, the specifics of the blood magic. So long as a descendant of Raku lives, so shall the sons of the God of the Waters serve them. And to serve them is to do them no harm.”
“So even if Prince Jun can’t force them to create water, the gods cannot rebel. The gods are tied to the family line, slaves to Raku’s bloodline until it dies out?”
“Think of the legend, Kazunari. The sea has been here long before us and will be here long after us. An immortal like the God of the Waters, he may think nothing of seven or eight hundred years. To him, perhaps it seems like only yesterday that he sent his two sons to help the Sun Kingdom…”
Nino’s eyes widened, and he felt Seitaro’s strong hand squeeze his shoulder.
“You’ve realized it,” Seitaro said.
His words tumbled out. “Even if the gods cannot be forced to create water, they are tied to Raku’s bloodline. They cannot leave the Sun Kingdom. If Raku’s bloodline continues in some way for another eight hundred years. For a thousand. For two thousand…”
“Then perhaps the God of the Waters will realize how Sorcerer Raku and the Sun Kingdom took advantage of the help he provided. It may not affect you or me, it may not happen in our lifetime, but in the future, the God of the Waters will surely retaliate against us, destroy the Sun Kingdom. Perhaps destroy all of mankind for trapping his children. Our descendants will suffer because of one man’s foolish trickery centuries ago. Prince Yukio, your father, could not live with that possibility. Even if he’d be long dead, he refused to envision such a dark future for humanity. So he tried to break the curse himself. But he must have discovered that he couldn’t. And so he sent for you.”
Nino exhaled, slowly moving until he was sitting directly on the ground, watching the fading bonfire in the distance.
“This is…this is a lot.”
“I never thought I’d have to tell you any of this,” Seitaro admitted quietly, still standing by his side. “By the gods, Kazunari, you’re a grown man. Half your lifetime has gone by with not a word from Prince Yukio. Kazuko and I hoped…we truly hoped this day would never come. We watched you grow up, wondering each and every day if it was our last with you. If Prince Yukio would come and take you away from us. But you grew. You turned ten, twenty, thirty…we assumed you were truly free.”
“Prince Yukio sent Sakurai Sho to find me so I might break the curse,” Nino said. “But even if by some miracle I can do that…what’s to stop the gods from destroying the Sun Kingdom anyway? What’s to stop them from immediately fleeing Amaterasu and going to their father and wiping us all out with a flood? What’s been done would obviously anger the God of the Waters whether his sons tell him what happened or if enough time goes by that he starts questioning their absence…” He took a breath. “Father, if I free them now, it might only bring the God’s punishment quicker.”
His father exhaled slowly. “Perhaps.”
He looked up, seeing a look on Seitaro’s face that he recognized easily, even in the sparse moonlight. Resolve. And acceptance.
“You think I should go. To Amaterasu,” Nino said.
“I became a Water Finder, the same as my mother, the same as my grandfather and great-grandfather. Other paths were before me, and yet I chose this one. My calling was to help, to be of use. Water Finding is not your calling, Kazunari. You were meant for bigger things.”
“I might be the same as Prince Jun,” Nino pointed out. “I might not be able to do anything. Then the curse only ends if Prince Jun or I die childless. Or I might have the powers you speak of, the power to break the curse. And when I break it, the God of the Waters retaliates. He wipes the Sun Kingdom out in seconds, and we all die. So either I’m completely useless or entirely too useful.”
He was surprised when Seitaro laughed.
“What’s so funny about our impending doom, whether it comes tomorrow or in centuries?”
He felt his father’s hand on top of his head, ruffling his hair as though Nino was still a boy. “You won’t bring about our doom, Kazunari.”
“You’re a fortune teller now?”
“No, but I know one thing for certain.”
“And that is?”
He shut his eyes, let his father stroke his hair.
“You’re my son. And I know that you will find a way.”
Part Two