Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two (4 page)

A few of the people Gonji had met at Michael Benedetto’s house the night of the memorable boxing matches passed by and greeted him. Among these were Stefan Berenyi and Nikolai Nagy—he couldn’t recall which man was which, followed shortly by Monetto, the biller; and Gerhard, the hunter and fletcher, a longbow slung over his back. They carried between them a large sack of small game that evinced the latter’s prowess with the bow. Monetto steered them toward Gonji and began to make small talk, but they resumed their course to the stalls at Gerhard’s insistence. His concern over the freshness of the game precipitated the usual argument between them that could be heard long after they had departed.

Then Gonji thought he spotted a blonde head that might have belonged to Lydia Benedetto. He craned his neck to peer into the crowd, but from the spot he watched there emerged two Llorm footmen, who suspiciously returned his gaze. He rose then, his thoughts turning to military concerns...in a manner of speaking.

Let’s see what’s on their minds.

He took Tora by the reins and walked down an alley. Turning into the first intersection, he waited. The pack that followed him approached his vantage a minute later, whispering and muting their stealthy steps.

“Eeyah!” Gonji cried, leaping out at them, his scabbarded Sagami’s pommel pointing into their midst.

The children screamed as one and stumbled backward. Then they laughed with relief, and Eduardo, their leader, came forward, flashing a hand in greeting.

“All right, you scamps,” Gonji said sternly, “what do you want with me?”

A tiny girl clung to the back of Eduardo’s breeches, regarding Gonji with big terrified eyes as the boy spoke.

“We just wanted to see what you were getting into. My papa says that where you go trouble will follow. I didn’t want to miss anything.”

“So?” Gonji replied, affecting petulance. “And he was right,
neh?
Look what’s followed me.” He waved a hand over them, and they tittered.

“You look
molto buono
with your new clothes,” Eduardo said, appending a hand gesture that Gonji took to mean youthful approval.

“Arigato,”
Gonji replied. “Now that I have your seal I can proceed with confidence.” He watched with raised eyebrows and folded arms as the boy walked around him appraisingly, the little girl traipsing behind like a shadow.

“Is that your sister?”

“No, that’s Tiva. She has no mother, and I get paid for watching her.”

“Do you do a good job?” Gonji bent toward the girl and spoke gently. “Does Eduardo watch out for you?”

The boys all laughed. “She doesn’t speak Italian,” someone said.

She was the most adorable child in Gonji’s recent memory and could scarcely have been more than four. When he reached down to lift her up, her large brown eyes seemed to engulf her face. She held a half-eaten roll in one sticky fist.

Eduardo translated what Gonji had asked.

“Nah!” she said in a tiny, piping voice. The boys laughed again.

“He doesn’t, eh?” Gonji said. “Well, we’ll see about that.”

“She says no to everything,” Eduardo explained.

Tiva offered Gonji a bite of the roll, and he pantomimed a full belly, but she persisted. He bowed and smiled, taking a small mouthful. “
Domo
, little blossom.”

He set her down. “You boys take care of her or—” He raised a threatening fist. “Now be off with you.”

“When are you going to teach me the sword? You promised,” Eduardo pleaded.

“I did no such thing,” Gonji said. “I said we’d have to take it up with your father sometime. What would a ragamuffin like you do with a sword anyway?”

“Kill the soldiers who killed Signor Koski,” Eduardo said matter-of-factly, bending to lace a shoe.

The simple poignancy of the statement stung Gonji. “Why would you do that?”

“Because Signora Koski’s been crying all the time since he died.”

Gonji worked his lower jaw thoughtfully, recalling the dead man, struck down by mercenaries on the day of the city’s occupation. “Doesn’t your father teach you that killing is evil?”

“Usually. But he’s not sure anymore.”

Gonji snapped his fingers. “Begone with you now. And watch out for the little one, hear?”

Eduardo bowed, too fast and too deeply, like a bird pecking at seed, and the other boys snickered. Gonji shook his head, corrected him, and sent them packing with a wink to Tiva, who waved her fingers.

He thought about the boy’s words as he watched them run down the lane.
He’s not sure....
Indecision and lack of resolve would be a crippling problem if these people wound up in an armed revolt. Klann wouldn’t be shackled by Christian principles. He shook his head. Ah well, the mercenaries have backed off considerably since Ben-Draba was beaten to death by...
hai....
He smiled thinly.
Our other mystery man....

He leapt astride Tora and rode back into the main street, resolving to check in with Flavio.

Gonji was determined to treat his position as bodyguard to Council Elder Flavio with dignity and seriousness, although he knew that the hiring had been prompted by his own cajoling and Flavio’s desire to dispense the city’s debt to the samurai for having retrieved the body of Mark Benedetto. Yet bodyguard he was, and he would deport himself as a bodyguard. He had promised not to dog the Elder’s steps but had made a point of checking on his well-being from time to time.

He was clattering along easily toward the Ministry building on the Street of Hope when he was halted by the cry of a pedestrian on his left.

“Ho, there! A word with you,
monsieur!
” came the stentorian voice in ringing French.

Gonji pulled up and looked over. It was Alain Paille, the flamboyant and eccentric artist-poet whose revolutionary pronouncements since Klann’s arrival had caused the city no end of discomfiture and the occupying troops no little amusement. He was thin, dark, and willowy, with piercing blue eyes, a sketchy shadow of beard, and an unruly mane that no comb had furrowed in recent days. His paint-stained apron evidenced his current commission: an illustration in progress on the ceiling of Vedun’s chapel. In his hand he carried a furled paper.

“Behold the Liberator!” he shouted, wide-eyed, stopping in front of Tora. “He of whom ballades will be sung!”

Gonji glanced about self-consciously. Few had taken special notice of Paille, from whom such outbursts had long been expected. He was, as it happened, Vedun’s best-known tippler. Those who had heard now watched Gonji for a reaction.

Gonji cleared his throat. “
Ja
, well—what can I do for you?” He had ignored the French, spoke instead in High German.

“I’ve been seeking you. We must speak. I believe we share a dream. You do speak French, don’t you?”

“I speak French...of a sort,” Gonji replied. “But it gives me trouble. It’s a language I—” He groped for an appropriate word, came up with one.

“‘Disdain?’”
Paille repeated with surprise. “But you mustn’t! All men of intellect and breeding speak French! I’ve been inquiring after you, and I believe you
are
such a man. Yours is simply a problem of pronunciation. But be at ease—we shall correct that. Do speak French,
s’il vous plait.
”

“I don’t please,” Gonji said with a wry look, “but I’ll speak it. What’s your business?”

“I think a drink is in order first. Shall we hie us to the
auberge?
” Paille pointed the paper toward the nearest inn, Wojcik’s Haven.

“Not now. I’ve business at the Ministry.”

“Wonderful! So have I,” Paille said, waving the handbill. “We can talk as we walk,
oui?
”

“
Oui
...wonderful,” Gonji said softly, glancing at passersby who were listening in on the conversation.

He dismounted and led Tora by the reins. He had been in a mood to ride alone, frankly hoping to encounter the swaggering Captain Julian Kel’Tekeli, to show him that Gonji was just as capable as he of affecting a display of cleanliness, polish, and poise. But now he stoically accepted the way karma had of laying low the proud....

“I am Alain Paille,” the artist boomed, “a painter, poet, and balladeer, chronicler of the times and tides of men, and soldier of freedom
par excellence.
And you are—no-no, don’t tell me—you are Gonji Sabatake, master of fighting arts from the fabled orient, dispossessed son of Japan’s mightiest warlord—”

Gonji winced and rubbed an itching eye, blew a long, impatient breath. Behind him, Tora nickered and bobbed his head.

“—champion of
égalité
and freedom, fated participant in the coming battle that will secure democracy from the strangling grip of monarchy and aristocracy—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Gonji groaned. They were tramping through a steep-walled lane, and Paille’s words echoed from one end to the other of its tunneling course. “Hold on,
monsieur poète
. Very sorry, but that’s a terribly mixed bag of facts and fancies. And listen, don’t you ever speak in anything but that blaring herald’s voice?”

Paille looked wounded. “Anger, pain, frustration, humiliation—these things are ne’er articulated by the calm and soft voice! But you are right, of course; we must be circumspect. The ears of the enemy are all about us.”

He leaned close and laid a finger across his lips with a conspiratorial suspiration, and Gonji caught a full blast of the artist’s midday pick-me-up. Wine. And a humble vintage.

“
Oui
, that’s best,” Gonji agreed, relieved. “Now...I’m not sure I understood all this—May we have continued in Spanish?” Gonji stumbled over the words.

“May we continue, not ‘May we have continued’,” Paille corrected. He sighed. “But,
sí
, Spanish then, the cutthroats’ language.... Such a shame. French is so elegant. My brother Guy, he always said that it sings to the ear, and Guy should know—he has only one ear, or still had the last I heard. But no matter—”

“Your brother Guy, who has only one ear...,” Gonji repeated blankly. But Paille had already launched into a summation of what he had said before.

Gonji shook his head. “Equality? Democracy? Peasants aren’t fit to rule themselves. There must always be a ruling class to guide them. And a soldiering class to preserve order.”

“Hmm. You’re allowing your politics and training to stand in the way of your destiny. But it is a fact,
señor
, that divine right of kings and governing power by virtue of birth to a privileged class are dying concepts. And it is a further truth that men are equals at birth and as such must be free to choose their own political order.”

Gonji kicked a stone out of his path. “Is that so? And who has discerned these ‘truths’?”

Paille looked surprised. “Why,
I
have, of course!”

Gonji smiled. “Ah, so you are another prophet, like this Tralayn?”

“Nooo! I am a visionary, not a soothsayer,” Paille qualified. “My vision is of an ideal, an earthly, temporal one. Not an ideal muddled by vague religious sentiment—oh! thank heaven my brother can’t hear me speak like this—”

“Your brother Guy, the one with only one ear—?”

“No-no, my brother David, the one who smiles like a nibbling rabbit—he’s a writer, an apologist of Holy Mother Church—”

Gonji looked confused. “Your brother David who—”

“No, I’m not a sleepy Christian like most who live here,” the artist continued. “They choose to cower in wait of a divine Deliverer and wouldn’t recognize one unless he came in a blinding light and on wings of a dove. I think they expect that the Christ has reserved His second coming for the plight of Vedun.”

“You don’t believe in
Iasu
, then—the Christ, the god of the West?” Gonji asked.

“Oh, He is there—somewhere, I suppose,” Paille replied. “He seems to play a hide-and-seek game with humanity, and currently it is His turn to hide. That’s why it is my duty as a visionary to shake these people out of their apathy and fatalism. But I fear my
esprit
and
panache
are misinterpreted. They believe me to be....” He shrugged.

“A madman,” Gonji finished.

Paille scowled. “The ugly lot of genius,” he snarled. “You understand the Christian doctrines? Those that would proscribe violence even when one’s way of life is threatened?”

“That, I have trouble understanding,” Gonji replied thoughtfully. “But I’ve traveled in the West a long time, and before that I was a student of Christian priests in
Dai Nihon
—in Japan. I have found that their beliefs are as reasonable as any other in explaining some of the horrors I’ve encountered...the supernatural things....”