Chapter Text
The heavy heat of summer was coming to an end, the green leaves of the trees were just beginning to crisp, and Kagami was sitting beside Jiromasu and Goro on at the end of the dock, wriggling her toes in the cool water as the two men cast into the slowly eddying water of the river. The quieter currents created by the breakwater of tumbled boulders that protected their dock were popular with the river’s piscine population and several ayu already graced the dock’s rough wooden boards. She looked around at the sounds of footsteps on the dock to see their major-domo, Yuki, walking towards them, her face a careful neutral that told Kagami that the woman was worried about something. She felt a sudden tension through her link to Jiromasu as her cousin glanced over his shoulder and he, too, noticed the woman’s carefully blank expression. Not true worry, just a heightening of alertness.
“Yuki-san,” he said quietly, keeping his voice low to stop from spooking the fish. He jerked at the rod he held, flicking the line and its lure across the surface of the river. “What brings you down to find us?”
“Forgive me, Jiromasu-sama, but there is a heimin woman at the door requesting to speak to Kuni Goro-sama. She says she has a message for him.”
Goro grunted as his line jerked and he began to pull his catch in. “Bring her down here, then,” he said.
“Yes, Goro-sama,” Yuki said. She bowed to Goro’s back - he had turned back to the task of dealing with the fish he had caught - and walked back up to the house. Kagami twisted around to watch her go, her eyes narrowing at the woman’s slightly stiff back. Something about this visitor had their housekeeper uncomfortable and Kagami was now eager to see the woman and, for the sake of her curiosity, hopefully learn of this message she was to deliver.
Kagami dithered for a moment, then pulled her feet out of the water and rose, stepping back away from her cousin and her friend to open the painted parasol that had been lying on the dock beside her to shade herself from the sun’s hot rays. Yuki had said it was just a heimin who had arrived, but it wasn’t one of her heimin and sitting on the dock, kicking her feet in the water like a child, was not quite dignified. Her kimono skirts, which she had hiked up to stop the hems trailing in the water, dropped down to camouflage her bare feet.
Yuki was returning from the house, the stranger following after her. Kagami’s curiosity rose further. She was a youngish woman, probably several years older than Kagami herself, and was dressed in a plain but sturdy kimono in the rusty orange that was common among the Phoenix heimin, with a few thick red cords forming a criss-cross pattern across her torso. She looked uncertain, a letter clutched in one hand.
The sound of Yuki’s feet on the boards of the dock pulled the men’s focus from their fishing and they gathered in their lines, turning to face the two heimin women, who had halted a respectful distance away. Kagami glanced at Goro, but his face showed no recognition of the stranger. He scowled.
“Kuni Goro-sama, Kakita Jiromasu-sama, Asahina Kagami-sama, this is Meiko from Mura Mura,” Yuki said, then stepped to the side slightly. The young woman bowed respectfully to the samurai.
“Meiko-san.” Goro’s voice was clipped. “I was told you have a message for me?”
The woman swallowed. Her face had lost what colour it had had at the sight of the Kuni’s scowl and his impatient tone. Kagami felt a surge of sympathy. She knew that the scowl and the tone likely stemmed from the Kuni’s immediate assumption that any unknown communication directed to him reflected some reemergence of Shadowlands creatures or influence. The Kuni’s ire was not directed at the messenger - at least not yet - but at the potential dangers to be found in the letter she carried; all the woman saw, however, was an irritated samurai whose day she was interrupting. She watched as the woman took a fortifying breath.
“Yes, Kuni Goro-sama,” she said, stepping forward and holding out the letter towards him in a hand that only shook a little. “I have been asked to deliver this letter to you.”
Kagami noted that the letter was written on coarse, low-quality paper as Goro glanced briefly at the plain seal - no clue to the sender in the letter’s presentation - and unfolded it. The man quickly scanned the message penned there - Kagami restrained her curiosity and did not move to peek around his shoulder at the message’s contents, but it was a close thing - then his scowl deepened and he reread the letter again, more slowly this time. He looked up, turning his scowl on the woman before him. “You know what this letter contains?” he asked.
The woman’s eyes were on the ground. “Yes, Kuni Goro-sama,” she said.
“And you believe in its truth.”
“Yes, Kuni Goro-sama.”
“And you would do as it says.”
“Yes, Kuni Goro-sama.”
“Why?”
Meiko looked up briefly, her eyes flashing with defiance before she dropped them again. “She is my dearest friend,” she said. “And this is what is right.”
Goro’s eyes narrowed as he regarded the nervous young woman. Jiromasu looked intrigued and Kagami was reasonably sure that Meiko’s comment regarding doing the right thing while clearly scared herself had piqued his interest.
There was a brief silence, broken by an angry squalling that made Meiko wince and caused Kagami to startle. The heimin woman twisted around and Kagami suddenly realised that the red bands across Meiko’s chest were the straps to an onbuhimo as she extricated a tiny, well-wrapped infant and bounced it in her arms. To Kagami’s relief, the child settled quickly, its piercing cries quieting to a restless grumbling. The child was clearly very young, probably no more than a moon or two old, and Kagami was surprised that Meiko had chosen to travel from as far away as Mura no Mura so quickly after the child’s birth. It spoke to the urgency of her message. She glanced over at Goro and blinked. The scowl was gone, replaced by something unreadable, his lips folded into a thin line. The Kuni stepped slowly forward and reached out to pull a fold of blanket away and look down into the tiny face. The baby blinked up at the shugenja peering down at him and Kagami’s breath caught as she glanced back and forth between the two of them as they stared at each other, both with one brown eye and one eye an angry red with a golden, goat-slitted iris, the skin around it also reddened and shiny.
Oh.
She shot a startled look at Jiromasu in time to see his eyebrows rising as he, too, made the connection.
“Goro-san?” Jiromasu asked, his voice a carefully calculated level of curious.
The Kuni shoved the hand still holding the letter towards Jiromasu. “Yuki-san,” he said, “Find a room for Meiko-san and Totiro-kun.” He frowned down at the infant and then reached out to touch one thick, scarred finger to the child’s cheek. The baby turned its head towards the contact, opened its mouth, and latched on to the tip of the man’s finger, sucking hard for a moment before opening his mouth again in a wail of disgust. Goro’s expression was startled and Kagami clapped a hand over her mouth, amusement and consternation combining to make maintaining any sort of control over her expression difficult at best. Then she winced as the child’s wail became more pronounced and Meiko shot an apologetic glance at Goro.
“I am sorry, Kuni Goro-sama,” she said. “He is hungry.”
Kagami was moving over towards her cousin in order to read what was in the letter that Jiromasu had taken from Goro’s hand, but she caught the Kuni’s amused snort.
“Go feed him then.”
She reached her cousin’s side and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, pulling downwards until he lowered the letter far enough that she could read it as well. The paper was just as cheap as she had initially thought, the kanji a faded, watery black that indicated equally cheap ink, and the writing was the careful, slightly shaky penmanship of those who were literate but who rarely found the need to practice writing.
Honourable Kuni Goro-sama,
I apologise for disturbing you, but our meeting in Mura no Mura had a predictable but unintended consequence. I had taken the moon tea afterwards, but the Fortunes decreed that a child would be the result of that night we spent together, regardless of my caution. When I recognised that a child had quickened inside me, I had several months to prepare and had thought I was ready for the challenges I would be facing. Then Totiro was born, and his Kuni parentage was unmistakable, and I realised that I was not equipped to raise a samurai child in all that he will need to know to take his rightful place in Chisana Basho.
It turns out that I am not equipped to raise any child, but a dear friend’s grief allowed her to help ensure your son was fed and she offered to bring him to you. Meiko-san is willing to stay with Totiro-kun to ensure he is fed and cared for until he is weaned, should you desire it. And while I am unable to be the mother Totiro-kun deserves, I am sure he will grow up to far eclipse the low nature of his mother’s parentage.
In humble obedience,
Yuriko no Mura no Mura.
Kagami counted back the months in her head. It must have been either just before or at the beginning of Winter Court. She was all but certain he had not had time to… to… for that while searching for her or while they were hunting down Junichiro, so it must have been during the time he and Tetsunotaka had been searching for Reiko. She had not listened all that carefully to the story of that pursuit - she was glad she never had to deal with any of them again, but thinking on it had been uncomfortable - but the name Yuriko was familiar, even if she could not place it.
“Yuriko. The doshin from Mura no Mura?” Jiromasu asked the Kuni’s retreating back.
“Hai.” Goro did not turn around and, while Yuki led Meiko in through the door to the kitchens, the Kuni turned left to enter the living areas, disappearing from their view.
Her cousin turned to her, one eyebrow raised. “Moon tea?” he asked.
Kagami flushed a little. “It is a medicine that a woman can take if she does not want to carry a child. It changes the body’s elemental balance to prevent the pregnancy. But it is not infallible.”
“So it would seem,” Jiromasu said with wry humour. “We should go find Tetsunotaka-san and warn him. I would imagine that Goro-san intends on leaving as soon as possible.”
“But why?” Kagami asked, brow furrowed. “The child has been brought to him with everything needed.” She looked up at him. “Goro-san told Yuki-san to give them a room. Are they not going to be staying here from now on?” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. There were other children among the heimin servants, but they were all old enough to be quiet and unobtrusive and were helpful for running quick errands. She felt her stomach drop suddenly. “Is he going to take it back to Kuni lands?” She would rather deal with a screaming baby every day than lose Goro’s gruff, good-hearted presence.
“I think he intends to go talk to the child’s mother,” Jiromasu said, patting her hand before untangling his arm from hers in order to gather together the fishing gear. He handed the two poles to Kagami to carry and quickly tossed the fish he and Goro had caught into a bucket, hefting it as he turned towards the house. “But it is Goro-san. Once he has decided on a course, it is best to try and keep up with him, lest you get left behind as he charges ahead. And while I do not feel that you or I have any need to join him on this trip, Tetsunotaka-san would be greatly irritated if Goro-san leaves without him.”
They paused just inside the door to step into house-slippers and to hand off the fish and fishing gear to the heimin servant who greeted them, then turned down the hallways in search of their Daidoji friend.
***
He had a son.
He had not expected to have children any time soon - perhaps not ever, all things considered - and there had been a part of him that had regretted that, even as his current life had been full of the interesting and the unusual. And now the Fortunes had seen fit to grant him a child. Unexpectedly. Without time to prepare. And with the child’s mother being a heimin doshin. He stopped, then reversed course, heading towards the servants’ wing. One of the maids stopped what she was doing to bow to him as he approached.
“Where did Yuki-san put Meiko-san and the baby?” he demanded.
“She is in the servants’ common room while a room is being prepared, Goro-sama,” the girl said. She hesitated. “Would you like me to show you where that is?”
Goro shook his head. He had prowled all over the house on the nights he couldn’t sleep. It was not designed with defense in mind and he had wanted to know it inside and out in case he ever needed to do battle within its walls. “I know where it is,” he said and turned his steps towards the stairs that led up to the small common room.
It was a tidy, cheerful room. The tatami mats on the floor were worn but of good quality - when the tatami mats in the samurai sections of the house were replaced, the old ones were brought here, where the quality of them was appreciated even as their appearance was no longer appropriate for the yoriki’s status - and Meiko was seated by one of the open windows, Totiro latched to her breast as he made hungry little gulping noises. She had been looking down at him, her face a little sad as she stroked one hand over the fine black hair on the baby’s head, and she looked up at the sound of the door pulling open. Her eyes widened when she saw him there and she struggled to try and get up in order to bow.
Goro frowned, waving his hand at her to stay put. “Don’t bother,” he said. His eyes were drawn to the small form cradled in her arms and he couldn’t stop himself from watching the child feeding. The silence stretched out.
“Was… was there something you wanted, Kuni-sama?” the woman asked finally.
Goro blinked, pulling his eyes away from the way that the baby’s hand fisted into the cloth of the woman’s kimono, the ridiculously tiny fingers clenching and releasing against the worn fabric. “Is Yuriko-san still employed as a doshin, or did her being with child cause them to release her?”
The nervousness in the woman’s eyes faded a little. “Oh. No, she is still doshin. Her captain did not want to lose her skills. She was not able to work for the final few months of her pregnancy, but she recovered from childbirth quickly and, when it was clear that she was not going to be able to feed Totiro-kun herself, she returned to her patrols.”
Totiro finished his meal and released Meiko, who quickly adjusted her clothing and then looked at Goro as the babe gave a tiny belch and squirmed a little in her arms. “Would you like to hold him, Kuni-sama?” she asked uncertainly.
Goro could feel his frown deepening. Did he want to hold the child? He had never had much to do with babies, but this one was his. With that eye, passed down from father to son for generations now, there was no questioning the boy’s paternity. His lips thinned and he gave a curt nod. The heimin woman got gracefully to her feet, despite the burden in her arms, and moved over to him. She gave him a quick, assessing look as he watched her approach and then paused in front of him.
“When they are this young,” she said, “they cannot support their heads. It is important that you keep their heads and necks supported either by your hand or your arm. Hold your arms like mine are and I’ll give him to you.”
He glanced at how she was holding her arms - close across her front, bent at the elbow - and tried to mimic it. She smiled and tugged his elbow out just a little before laying Totiro in his arms, the child’s head resting in the crook of his arm. The babe was a small, slight weight, barely noticeable, but was surprisingly warm. Totiro blinked up at him, eyes sleepy, and yawned. His little fist waved in the air and then the baby tucked it up against his side and closed his eyes, dropping immediately into slumber. Goro stood there for a long time, staring down at the sleeping child, his mind too discombobulated to form coherent thoughts. The fragility of the little life in his arms. The trust in its protectors that it fell so easily asleep. The heat radiating from its tiny form. The perfection of its fingers, loosely clenched into a fist and so very, very small. The little snub nose and the thin, fine black hair that covered its head. The angry-looking red skin around its left eye, identical to that of its father’s. Goro found himself once again thankful that his eye had never caused him physical pain. He would not have wished that on a helpless child.
“She changed her mind when he was born,” Goro said, finally. “She was going to look after him herself until then.”
“Yes, Kuni-sama,” the woman said. “But when he was born, it was clear that there was no question who his father was. And no question as to him being a samurai child. And she realised she could not. Not and give him the life he was entitled to. It would have been an insult to the celestial order.”
“And you are prepared and willing to give up possibly years of your life to feed and care for him?” The young woman had said as much, but it made little sense. Unless she was in dire straits that made the possible generosity of a samurai patron towards his son’s wet-nurse enough of an incentive. Though, given her fear when she had brought him Yuriko’s letter, that seemed unlikely.
“Yes.” Meiko looked away out the window, a watery smile on her lips. “I have my reasons, Kuni-sama. They may not make sense to all, but they make sense to me. And I think it comforted Yuriko-san, to know that I would come with him for at least this first part of the journey.”
“And why did she not come?” There was anger there regarding that, he suddenly realised. That she had not come herself. That she had let him know of what had happened via letter sent through this young woman rather than face him herself. Had sent her child - their child - off into the future in this young woman’s arms. The journey was along main roads, which were well patrolled, but it was still potentially dangerous. Especially for a young woman travelling alone.
Meiko blinked, turning back to face him. “She had been unable to work for several months, Kuni-sama,” she said. “And she had been trying to feed three on what little she had saved. There was only enough for one of us to come, and Totiro-kun needed to be fed.”
Goro bit down on the frustration and anger that spiked at that admission. Yuriko could have sent him a letter to let him know her condition. Instead, she had chosen to suffer. Had intended on raising his son alone if he hadn’t been born with so unmistakable a resemblance to his father. And had nearly beggared herself because of it.
He went to turn, to stride from the room, but was brought up short when the initial movement rocked the child cradled in his arms and he was abruptly aware once again of the small, over-warm form. He turned back to Meiko. “Take him,” he said stiffly. She immediately stepped forward to scoop him up, holding him close while she eyed him warily. Goro hesitated again, wanting desperately to just stomp from the room to deal with this flare of temper, but he did not want his child’s nurse to fear him. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath in and releasing it, then he looked at the woman. “You have a place here,” he managed. “Sanctuary here. While you need it. The child is acknowledged.”
She nodded slowly. “Thank you, Kuni-sama,” she said. “I apologise. This must have been a shock for you.”
“No fault of yours,” he said, then turned abruptly and stalked from the room. Yuki and the others could see to the woman and the child for a few days. He needed to get to Mura no Mura.