Chapter 11

Before

Hiei ran for hours.

Like one of the Wanderers for whom the Woods were named, he had no destination, no goal. All that mattered was putting as much distance between him and that accursed inn as he could manage. His gait was unrelenting, his footfalls cat-like in their grace. Midnight bled into dawn, and dawn morphed into full-blown day.

The poison still ebbed in his blood, dulling his senses, but he knew this forest better than he knew his own soul, and though he'd run irrationally through the night, when his steps at last slowed, he still recognized his surroundings.

A rushing river. A roaring waterfall.

And a massive, centuries-old tree.

Summoning the dredges of his strength, Hiei leapt into the branches, darting up, up, up, until he sat within the crown of the sprawling giant. Below, the Woods rippled outward, a sea of swaying limbs and rustling leaves, the canopy of each tree a unique burst of green or gold or auburn. He nestled into a knot in the trunk, ignoring the twinge of protest in his injured shoulder.

Then, and only then, did he replay his last moments with Nozumi. His utter and complete idiocy.

He was a fool.

A dumbass.

A doddering moron of a creature.

"Fuck."

He knotted his hands in his hair, yanking at the roots until his eyes watered. (It was the pain that brought the moisture. Nothing else. He'd swear that to his grave.)

He'd taken the one good thing in his life, the one precious, steadying presence, and he'd cast it aside like so much nothing. Crushed it beneath the heel of his boot as if it were a cockroach to snuff out. He had run to Nozumi, let her save him, and then spat in her face.

Was it any surprise she'd lashed back? Was it anything less than he deserved?

A choked breath wormed past the tightness in his throat. In doing so, it opened a flood gate. A sob attempted to follow, but he caught it against his teeth, tipped his head back, and roared to the heavens instead. Birds burst from the forest canopy, winging toward the horizon, a cacophonous racket of twitters and chirps drifting in their wake.

Disgusted with himself, Hiei jerked the Hiruseki stone from his throat. The leather thong snapped, leaving the stone unmoored in his palm. It was a stupid bauble. A useless treasure. One he had flaunted for years in front of the Brotherhood, daring any fool with a death wish to challenge him for it. Until recently. When exactly had he stopped wearing it openly? When had he become more cautious amongst his brothers, less willing to put his life on the line?

He couldn't pinpoint the moment.

But it had come in the last year.

At some point between his first night at the crossroads inn and now, his world had shifted on its axis. The things that mattered (his pride, his reputation, his cutthroat ability to kill) had taken on new shape. That he live, that he survive to see each new dawn… That goal had become his guiding star—the beacon around which he structured his every choice.

Because of her.

Because another day on this plane was another day he might spend with Nozumi.

So now what? If she did not want him to return, what then?

He fell still and silent, listening to the trees, hoping they might whisper guidance to him.

They'd didn't.

(Of course, they didn't.)

Technically, Hiei decided after hours of rumination, Nozumi hadn't forbidden him from ever returning. She'd been more specific than that. It was if he was dying, that he wasn't welcome. But if he weren't verging on death, if he kept himself whole and hale, he could visit the inn.

Was it what she meant? Maybe. (Likely not.)

But it didn't matter. It was his interpretation, and it would have to do.

To abide by her rules, he remained in the ancient tree by the waterfall for two full days. His body was slow to purge the poison, but it burned away bit by bit, until at last his chest cavity ceased strangling his heart and breathing came easy.

Though his fit of disgust had tempted him to hurl it into the forest, he kept his Hiruseki stone. With the clasp that had once held it in place broken, he had to knot the leather cord around his throat. His work was clumsy but sufficient. With that settled and his body healed, he climbed down the tree, one handhold at a time, and retraced his steps through the Woods.

Sometimes, he walked. Sometimes, he ran. Always, he kept his course as straight and true as the crow flies, cutting a path along the shortest route between himself and the inn.

He reached it at dusk, three days after he departed. It sat as it always did, a hundred paces from the crossroads. Light spilled from its open windows, accompanied by the plucky notes of a shamisen. There was no glow in the upstairs window he knew to be Nozumi's, but that didn't mean she wasn't inside, serving drinks and clearing tables.

He lingered in the back garden, working up the nerve to enter. Tucked away amongst the greenery, Hideo's grave marker was as well-tended as ever, the grass grown thick atop it, a bouquet of wildflowers resting against the stone. For the first time, Hiei pressed his fingertips to the rock, attempting to imagine the demon who lay beneath his feet. Nozumi had cared for him. Fiercely. So strongly that on the night she'd laid him to rest, she'd taken a stranger into her bed, desperate for any form of companionship to fill the void of her grief. Yet Hiei knew nothing about Hideo. His temperament. His humor. His dreams.

There were so many pieces of Nozumi he didn't yet understand. But perhaps he could. Maybe there was still time.

(He hoped there was time.)

Straightening, he willed his hands to steady, then headed inside. The usuals were present. Asahi behind the bar. Sueko waiting tables. Old Arata snoring into his cups. But no Nozumi.

Still, Hiei claimed a table, ordered a shochu.

Waited.

She never appeared.

Each evening for a week straight, he returned to the inn. During the day, he never roved far, staying always within sight of the road that led north, eyes peeled for any sign of the caravan Nozumi traveled with. Come twilight (sometimes by mid-afternoon), he found a seat in the tavern.

He drank more shochu in that week than he had in his lifetime, mindful that if they didn't feel he was worth his table, Asahi or Sueko might demand he leave. Whether they knew of Nozumi's decree or not was a mystery to him, but he didn't want to push his tenuous luck.

No one made mention of Nozumi. Not Sueko when she waited on Hiei's table. Not Asahi on the nights Hiei claimed a seat at the bar. Not Hiei himself during any of his dozen drink orders. Her name had a power he was too chicken shit to invoke, and though he couldn't guess at the reasons for their silence, he was thankful for anything that allowed him back within these walls.

Sueko… struck him as changed somehow. He couldn't put his finger on it, but all her usual edge seemed to have evaporated. She never cursed at him. Never scowled. In truth, she treated him no different than any other patron. He tried to ignore it, tried to convince himself it meant nothing, but it unsettled him, eating away at his frayed nerves.

After a week, he forced himself to leave the crossroads, trekking back across the Woods to the mammoth tree and the waterfall crashing at its roots. He stayed the night and the following day. It required all his willpower to remain so far from the inn, and he poured his frenetic, uneasy energy into training.

He replayed his fight with Ichiro, practicing each sequence where he had screwed up. It became an artform, a dance with a phantom. When he was satisfied he would never be bested in that scenario again, he moved on to Risako and her bastard allies. That battle was more challenging. He couldn't settle for a clean escape. He had to kill them. All three. A proper sweep. Once he'd mastered that fight as well, his feet drew him back into the Woods—back to the inn.

"So," Asahi said, sliding a glass of shochu across the bartop to Hiei, "when do you return to the Swords? You've been in these parts a while. They must be missing you."

Hiei laughed into his cup, the shochu's surface rippling with the force of his exhale. "Hardly."

The bartender leaned an elbow onto the bar, one hip thrust against the countertop. "They're your clan, right?"

The shochu bit on its way down, Hiei's sip turning into more of a gulp than he'd intended. "Clan or not, they don't miss me. It's not a family. It's not—" he waved a hand at Asahi, the kitchen behind him, the rooms overhead "—this."

"I'm meant to believe they don't care whether you're alive? That not a one of them is your ally? Your friend?"

"Oh, they care," Hiei drawled. This time, he let the shochu burn his throat on purpose, relishing the heart it sent rippling through him. (The question of his clansmen care about wasn't whether he was still out there, somewhere in the demon plane, alive and kicking. It was whether he was dead—and which of his brethren received the honor of putting him in the ground.)

Another patron slung themselves into a seat three stools down, and Asahi lofted a finger to Hiei, then drifted down the counter. The demons exchanged pleasantries. The newcomer tossed a coin onto the bartop and received a frothing tankard in return.

Wiping his hands on a rag, Asahi returned to Hiei. "The words you aren't saying are speaking far louder than those you are."

Hn.

Perceptive old man.

With surreptitious glances, he studied Asahi. Nozumi's uncle shared some of her familial traits. The tapered, snake-like eyes. The patches of scales. The lithe frame. In those ways, he was near identical to his nieces. But his scales were black, not gold and auburn. Likewise, his hair was dark as pitch, and his eyes were a matching set of emeralds.

"What of you?" Hiei asked. In all his time at the inn, he had seen no one else that bore resemblance to the family. "Is it only you, Nozumi, and Sueko who run this place?"

Asahi chuckled conspiratorially, as if Hiei had cracked a witty joke, but when Hiei didn't join in, his laughter petered out. "You're serious?"

Grudgingly, Hiei nodded.

Asahi straightened, planting his hands on his hips and raking Hiei with a calculating appraisal. "You daft? Or just oblivious?"

Hiei refused to dignify the insult with an answer. Teeth gritted, he swirled his glass, watching a whirlpool form at the center of his shochu.

His surprise fading, Asahi indicated the shamisen player set up by the hearth. "Well, that's my daughter. Niko." Hiei peered at the girl, trying to spot resemblance between her and Nozumi, but bent over her instrument as she was, she was indiscernible from any other Demon World mutt. Asahi continued, "And I'm sure you've seen Makoto about. He tends our lands, repairs the inn, that sort of work." When Hiei indicated no recognition, Asahi sighed. "Big fellow? Horns? Truly ringing no bells?"

"Hn."

"So daft and oblivious both, then. Noted." Asahi tilted his head, scrutinizing. "I hardly dare ask this, but have you not met Mae?"

"Who?"

Asahi outright chuckled, equal parts exasperated and amused. "Impressively unobservant, truly," he observed. "Mae is my partner. And our cook. Hold on." Tossing his rag down, Asahi crossed to the creaky door that led to the kitchen and shouldered it open on its swinging hinges. It whined like a banshee, nearly drowning out Asahi's summons. "Mae, love. Come out a moment, would ya?"

A breath later, a short, delicate demon emerged from the kitchen. Her hair was tied up on a knot (not unlike those Nozumi favored), but that was where her resemblance to Nozumi ended. Her irises were round, her cheeks rounder. She was soft, not a fighter's bone in her body.

"Mae, meet Hiei."

"Ah." She dipped her head in acknowledgement. Her tone was distant—polite but not warm.

Fumbling (and entirely unsure why this introduction had been made), Hiei mumbled, "Your cooking is… excellent." A truth. All his meals in the inn had been fully satisfactory. Yet his delivery had left plenty to be desired.

"Thank you." She clasped her hands neatly in front of herself. Then, with a pointed look at Asahi, she added, "Nozumi is away."

Hiei tightened his grip involuntarily on his glass. It was the first time anyone had mentioned Nozumi in the last two weeks. He'd been starting to think they never would. "I noticed."

Mae's eyes narrowed. "Then why keep coming back?"

At once, Asahi clucked his tongue and shepherded her back toward the kitchen. Hiei caught a snippet of what Asahi muttered as the door swung in Mae's wake. "Not our place…"

Asahi sighed heartily as he returned. He topped off Hiei's glass and announced, "This round is on me." Then he fished in his back pocket and produced a key ring, which he slid across the bar top to Hiei. "Room's yours for the night if you need it. Today, and any day you'd like."

With that, Asahi busied himself with other customers, refilling glasses and calling back food orders into the kitchen. For two hours more, Hiei remained on his stool, sipping his shochu, slurping down a noodle dish, and contemplating the key Asahi had offered. He hadn't touched it, couldn't force his fingers to curl around the notched metal, and so it sat beside his drink, glinting in the firelight.

All the while, he grappled with all that Asahi had revealed to him. Nozumi possessed so much kin—a proper family's worth—and this inn was their collective home. Perhaps she'd grown up here. Perhaps the room they'd shared for so many nights had been hers from her very first days. When he had been little more than a whelp running amok amongst the Brotherhood, maybe she'd been here, growing up amongst siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles.

But not parents, he realized.

There'd been no mention of her parents.

When Asahi announced last call, Hiei at last relinquished his seat. He left a handful of gold atop the bar, heedless of his supposedly free round. As he settled his cloak about his shoulders, he scrutinized the key a final time. He could take it, climb the stairs, rest in that bed—but he didn't.

With two stiff fingers, he pushed it back across the bar.

Without her, it wasn't the same.

Without Nozumi, this inn was just an inn. That room was just a room.

He'd rather sleep in a tree.

After that night at the bar, Hiei stopped venturing inside.

Instead, he prowled the road to the Riverlands, drifting north and south through the marshland, ever vigilant for sign of a caravan traveling south. For two weeks, no such convoy appeared. Travelers did. The occasional lone demon. More regularly, a pair or ragtag group. Hiei never harried them. He never even made his presence known.

His coin purses had begin to run low. Three had become two, and even that would not last long. Soon, he'd need to make a choice. Return to the Brotherhood or strike out on his own. Live amongst the bastards who'd spent a lifetime trying to kill him or forge a new path—alone.

It should've been an easy choice.

He hated the Brotherhood. Always had. Yet… when he lay down at night, tucked within the branches of whatever tree had called to him most, the quiet closed in, the darkness and the solitude, and he thought of nights spent gambling around fires, evenings filled with sword practice against eager brothers, and he wondered if he could truly do it, truly leave them.

If he weren't part of the Brotherhood, what was he a part of?

Where did he belong?

Sleep proved an untamable beast. Most nights, he managed an hour here, an hour there, but nothing more. Always, he'd startle awake, sitting up to peer at the road—as if the caravan might appear in the dead of night and if he slept too deeply, he'd miss it.

In the end, the convoy came trundling through the swamp three and a half weeks after Hiei had last seen Nozumi. At the sight, something coiled in Hiei's chest, something that sped up his breathing and sent jitters tingling through his fingers. A frozen statue, he stood within a massive pine, just off the road, squinting down at the carts and demons meandering past. A few hundred meters farther on, the crossroads inn sat in wait.

But the caravan never stopped.

Nozumi never appeared.

And the thing in his chest—that tiny, tremulous hope—disintegrated.

Hiei flung the door wide.

It banged shut behind him, but it was barely noon, and there was only one soul in the tavern to hear it.

Sueko.

She stood behind the bar, polishing glasses and sliding them onto a shelf, but she froze at the calamity. Mirthless, Hiei watched her draw her knife and turn, leveling it at the intruder—at him. Her grip was as non-threatening now as it been so many months ago. Pathetic.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, the docile facade she'd maintained the last few weeks cracking.

He stalked toward her. "Tell me where Nozumi is."

Without hesitation, Sueko tossed her head, her chin held high. "No."

Anger simmered beneath his skin, the coals of rage waiting to be stoked into flame. He tried to fight it, tried to keep his voice steady, but desperation had its hooks in him, painful and sharp. His demand emerged with the force of a warhammer's strike. "Tell me, and I'll leave you be. I won't come back here."

"Liar." She sneered at him, her fanged incisors flashing. "You're obsessed. You'll never leave us be." With vicious pleasure, she added, "Don't you think Nozumi would've told you where she was going if she wanted you to follow?"

The urge to rip the knife from her grip nearly sent Hiei leaping over the bar, but he forced himself to remain stationary. At his side, his hand curled and uncurled as he grappled for control of his temper. Fighting Sueko got him nowhere. It wasn't an option. No matter how much of an irritation she made herself, Hiei couldn't hurt Nozumi's sister. Ever.

He paced like a caged beast. "I need to speak with her."

"Great. Leave a note." Seeming to realize he wasn't going to attack, Sueko sheathed her knife. With a prim smile, she added, "I'll toss it in the fire, but at least you'll know you tried."

The door to the kitchen opened. Asahi emerged, rolling a keg before him. Ignoring Sueko's taunting smirk, he nodded to Hiei. "Wondered when we'd see you again."

Hiei cut straight to the point. "I want to speak to Nozumi."

Asahi frowned. He glanced sidelong at his niece, a puzzled uncertainty in his gaze, then said to Hiei: "She's not here."

"I know that," Hiei snapped more forcefully than he'd intended. Irked with himself, he softened his stance, attempting to de-escalate. Asahi had never been combative with him as Sueko had. Now wasn't the time to change that. "I… will go wherever she is. If you'd just tell me."

Understanding lit in Asahi's face. "Oh, Sueko," he sighed. Then, to Hiei, he continued, "She moved back to Lakefront to complete her apprenticeship." He rubbed a hand along his jaw, his scales scraping against his flesh. "After Hideo… I'd asked her to come home for a time, as much as she could, but we can't keep her here forever."

Lakefront.

The city four days travel north? Beyond the Riverlands?

An apprenticeship?

Hiei stumbled back a step. Then another. A breath later, he burst outside, back into the noonday sun. The world felt unsteady beneath his feet as he whirled, staring north.

Nozumi had moved to Lakefront. She'd left the inn. Apparently forever.

And in doing so, she'd left him.