The Shadow of Issu

From Which the Unseen Blade is Drawn

A painted map lay across the table, boring through it were the eyes of a man who knew opportunity. These were Shida’s eyes, and there was something in them that burned far much greater than passion. It was subtler than contemplation, yet it radiated greater than interest. A passion to enact his plans in swift motion, catalyzed by the presence of a Kinu. 

Akane lifted her gaze from the map and turned towards Akha, who seemed to have something brewing in mind. Somehow she knew what this is, what his reason was, and what entailed this entire journey.

“I was promised the safety of the young lord.” Akha finally spoke after all this elongated period of silence.

Shida tilted his head, as if his memory had returned to him. He nodded, and his eyes that have seemed to have seen better days, closed as he took in a deep breath.

“I am aware, that the proposition the ministry has offered you was the safety of the young lord, but without these interventions, who can say that all of Issu is safe, much less… your own master?” Shida answered.

Akane stirred in her seat.

Akha’s tipped the hilt of the sword in his strap. “This was not part of anything I agreed to.”

“Maybe, but you have to look at the bigger picture here.”

The swordsman stayed silent, the spirit of something malicious course through his veins as his hand gripped the shaft of the sheathe much steadier, and deadlier. 

“Swordsman, you should know that the Teyan will not hesitate to opt to any means that will enable this insurgence, no matter how dissenting such means may be.”

“Do you believe the saying— the means do not justify the ends?” Shida asks.

Akane glanced to witness the swordsman’s inner conflict. She subtly placed her hand above his leg. The hand that gripped the sheathe just below the guard of his sword began to loosen, and like a fire that has died down, the shadow that was cast over the Kinu’s face lightened a shade.

“You ask aid from a dishonorable man...” Akha replied.

“Desperate times must call for desperate measures, and when new problem arise, old sayings are made obsolete. There are new ones that will reveal in its own perfect time. If we do not resolve to things that allow us leeway from a compromise between Issu’s question of integrity, and this war now, we are all but dead men.”

“Heresy.”

“Tell me, should one who is living, when his life should have ended, resemble something of a heresy in the code of the Bladesworn?”

There were no answers, only a condescended look of the swordsman that knew his worth.

“Yet you are not one dishonorable, though failure should have marked you one, and failed you have, your duty as a Kinu has not ended yet. Your master lives and breathes, and his life is upon Issu’s next course of action.”

Shida’s words seemed shallow, as Akha thought, like the hollow ringing inside a shell, or an empty pot that harbors no life but weed in its soil. The Kinu never interfered with the affairs of politics, and never questioned when one’s duty was imposed upon, yet here he was, one strange thing after another. He is not the first Kinu who had been mingled into the state’s dirty work, but he was definitely not going to be the last. When he hears how proficiently one speaks in the façade of properly acquainting one’s self to the matters of state, Akha realizes how much a person could only harbor so many lies.

But Akha was not accusing Shida, nor anyone. For motives remain motives unless taken action. But for now, he stayed silent, realizing how much he should have paid more attention to details rather than just walking hundreds of miles from Kobeka, only to be tangled in the war that has engulfed Issu for seven years.

“Where is Lord Yuko,” Shida asked not in a tone of a question.

“If I should allow you the knowledge of where your lord is held captive, then it is only normal that you allow yourself to submit to the Ministry’s demands.”

“Master Akha, this is for Lord Yuko’s sake.” Akane stepped in, though it was a mystery if such words reached Akha, for his eyes were devoid of anything but hesitance.

Upon hearing those words, he stood up, unwinding the knot that ties the Kuratashi to his hips. He holds it up in his left hand for brief moment, before placing it before him on the ground. The swordsman then followed, kneeled and lowered his head to the floor. With no statement to speak louder than his action when he was a Bladesworn.

The room was filled briefly with an awkward silence. An appeased look radiated from the young minister, which stemmed from the prospect of a powerful swordsman taking the side of Issu. 

Though in Akha's mind, there existed no side. 

A blade takes none, and its value speaks only when rested upon the hands of a competent master. Akha knew what his first priority was, and he knew that he had to determine the code into actions that speak for the betterment of his endeavors, by which in this situation, was to rescue the young lord.

Shida holds his palm to Akha in acknowledgement, a pleased smile bearing on his face. “Your loyalty is evident.”

Akha sits up, his eyes still cast downwards.

“Now then, before anything else, I should at least accommodate my guest to some sweets and refreshments. I hope you would find a measly recess to compensate for your year-long journey favorable.” Shida snaps his fingers, awkwardly, but his face shows that he was confident. Akane smiles to the gesture, the chamber maids who were waiting just outside the auditorium listened and came in just as quickly as Shida had requested with everything in hand.

“You’ve grown.” Akane spoke.

“Have I now?” Shida replied in a rakish smile.

“I certainly hope that you have also improved in your decisions at the battlefield as well.”

Shida replied with a laugh, but I had died out sooner than what Akane had expected. 

Shida seemed to have mature from, and to see him grow from a once untroubled young man to someone who had almost taken the likeness of his father within just a year’s time was surprising as that it was unsettling. 

The person that she bears witness in front of her, was not that same person she had once known. Perhaps it is the disquiet of war that echoes in the walls of Imperial Palace, or something else haunting enough to change Shida into this refined, well-controlled, and confident individual.

Golden tea and a few rice cakes skewered on sticks were served, and Shida magnanimously extended his hand for the swordsman to partake first. Akha did not budge an eye to the food, but Akane insisted he take a sip at least of the tea. The swordsman received his cup, and rested it down between his thighs.

Shida placed his cup down slowly after a hot breath, eyes gazing to the ceiling as if they were searching for something, something that only he could see.

“When we were younger, we used to share tea like this back home.”

Home, Akane thought. How Shida said it reminded her of a time before Issu was divided. They were but twelve years, and all the world’s colors had been preserved in all of Katen that time—the sky, the mountains, the trees, the persimmons that grew from them, the streams and the flowers that grew beside it. Shida knew Akane when they were young, and had shared a few dozen moments together, many worth talking over a small cup of tea in a summer afternoon at the Kobeka estate before it had been burned down into ashes.

Just at the other side of the table, Akha takes the first sip of his tea.

Hot. He thought, and it burned his tongue. He gazes to Akane who seemed to be engaged deeply in her conversation with the improvisatory minister, that it did not seem like she was talking to that same person at all.

They conversed like normal people, and it was how Akha exactly imagined normal people would do it. 

But how do normal people do it?  Still, of all the senseless queries he had been asking to this point, he still had not known the answer to one.

All Akha knew was that each question reciprocated, or memory reminisced, brought the tone of familiarity. This was what made the bond between these two evident enough even for someone such as Akha to notice, yet only to some degree.

Akha knew there was more that he needed to learn.

Though something else was bothering Akha. In this moment of time, he wonders fondly as to why his chest had felt heavy to witness such a scene. Maybe the bond that he felt between them was different from his and Akane’s, and though it troubles him triflingly, he still could not shake the feeling off.

There is little to almost none that Akha knew of Akane’s past, where she heralds from, where the Tomoga clan associates with the Kobuke and the Kuzaemon, and Lord Shida had probably known everything there is to her.

When all the rice cakes have been eaten, the agenda was brought back into light. Shida pinned three areas a few farther on to Southern Kobeka.

“The three entities that Lord Tenai had spoken—The City of Goundo Region, an old governor who served under my father, Lord Yukono, severed his ties from Ogana and has relied on his city’s own provisions, and the protection of a vast army that even the Teyan would think twice in provoking. If we can somehow persuade him to recouple with the Ministry, this will greatly improve the Issian army, and as well as having control of the southern regions of Katen.

Going east passing through the diversion road from Katen, you will find the City of Lei. Lei is known to make weaponry and armor of utmost quality far beyond comparable to any in the southern parts of Issu. The Teyan have the Ikura islands now, and it should be best that we must prioritize this. The governor there is an old, though highly skilled, warlord, so it will be most practical that you choose your course of action here very carefully. And as for the third…”

Shida reached his fingers down, farther down almost nearing the border of Atano, Akha’s old home.

“Head further on south, to the Yura Region, in the Shrouded Shrine of Kiori. Though little is known of the Kiori shrine watchers, it is said that the forces that reside there, though minimal, possess the force of a hundred thousand men. Ogana will have a military advantage if this was true.”

Akane’s eyes skimmed through the map like a hawks, and her ears taking in every word from Shida without one leaving her thought.

“I see, if we are to speak of a timely approach, we head to Goundo City first, and head straight to Yura…”

“Wait, you will head to the Kiori second?” Shida asks baffled.

Akane stayed silent for a while, and nodded. “The roads we take will be easier this way, and safer. In these times to avoid conflict is a thousand times better than to invite it. If we divert our way… here… and here, it would lessen any deterrence in our journey, and already securing our alliance with the Kiori going back. We will find our way back to Ogana in three months’ time.”

“I see,” Shida looks to Akha. “And this is where your place will be, master Kinu. You are to protect Akane from danger, for no one else in all Ogana is far much more capable than you. Though this is only one instance for when the blade of the Kinu is drawn, there is more that Ogana plans to request from the skills of a Bladesworn.”

Akha nodded in submission, for he had already prostrated himself before his temporary master—All of Ogana.

“I will give you three days to prepare. I am sorry to ask you of this again. You have only returned, yet I am to see you go again. Stay for tonight, in the palace.”

“You say strange things.” Akane scoffed. “That is quite a favorable offer, but I will have to decline unless Master Akha agrees to it.” 

Shida lowers his head and smiles. “Very well,” He answered. “The door to the palace is always open. Oh and, master Kinu…”

Akha lifts his head and meets Shida’s eyes.

“When the time calls for it, you are to draw your blade, and do what you have to do.” The young minister spoke.

Akha turned his back against him, facing west to where the sun begins to sink at some far distance, just beyond the harbor of Ogana where the sea was draped golden in its afterglow, casting a large dark figure to where Shida stood behind him.

The time of Ogana's shadow has begun.