On the mainland of Japan, Ren reinvented himself.

As a lizard sloughs off its dead skin, so too did he shed himself of his native dialect, his scrapping island ways. He elevated his outward habits. He practiced bushido in secret and deepened his skill with the sword. He studied theater to refine his speech, history to learn the art of strategy, and calligraphy to earn his keep. Taking up with a scribe he’d conned, he forged documents of lineage for himself and, traveling to the next province over, became a warrior of the daimyo there.

He was young still, but his martial prowess was unquestioned. True-born sons of noblemen began to regard him with the respect he had always craved.

Yet Ren was not satisfied with this, as once he might have been. He looked at their fine dark hair and eyes and still wanted to smash in their faces like he’d done with his cousin Reichiro years ago.

He would not be content until he had crushed them—until he had brought them as low as the dirt beneath his heel.

…

With women, he was gentlemanly and charming, even to those he most fiercely despised. Nothing rankled him more than a coarse, bawdy whore. He dispensed with them as neatly as any other opponent, and put his coin toward the younger, more innocent-looking ones instead.

This one was quite nice, he decided, as he tipped up her pretty, unpainted face.

Her brown eyes slid downward demurely. She bit her lip, a light blush fanning across her cheeks.

He liked this seeming shyness, this show of modesty from a girl who sold herself nightly. What a divine contradiction, he mused to himself.

When he ripped open her kimono, she gasped like a maid in truth. Shoving his thumb past the soft, rosy parting of her lips, Ren stroked his cock as he leered at the quiver and heave of her breasts.

When he drove hard into her mouth, she stayed kneeling before him. He liked this too—liked the way her eyes streamed with helpless tears, even as her nipples hardened. Plunging deep into her gagging throat, he received her whimpered pleas with the same stony indifference the gods must have received his mother’s.

A whore was a whore, after all.

Ripping out of her before she could end him, he bowed her supple, dewy body to the floor. She retched and she sobbed but he paid no heed to this, either.

“Please, my lord…please…have mercy…”

Clasping her wrists in one hand, he held them to her breast while he ripped up her skirt with the other. “That’s it,” he panted as he thrust into her from behind. At her cry and wounded glare, he smiled sharply and rammed into her again. “Go on, you little slut,” he growled, crushing her down onto her folded hands until they cracked. “Pray.”

In panic, she jerked her neck back to face him. Her lush lower lip trembled like a child’s. Her eyes, so wet and wide, shivered as they gleamed. He could feel the grind of her delicate bones in his fist, scent the copper tang of her blood mixing with the thick heady musk of her sex.

When he bent her back up to meet his cock more steeply, she cried out in earnest. Close enough, Ren thought as he impaled her again, ravishing her from behind like the fiend he was, as she cursed and begged and fell limply silent beneath him at last.

…

Cunning, capable, and charismatic in his charge, it had seemed to Ren that the trajectory of his military career was poised ever upward. Within a few short years, he was among his daimyo’s top commanders.

Lord Nidama Torimasu had no sons, only an unmarried daughter. She was a sweet, lovely girl with unlimited prospects—the sort of girl Ren supposed his mother might have been, before tragedy had befallen her. A lord’s daughter—well, only such a girl would do for his wife, Ren decided.

He sets his sights on this princess, though the girl did not know it. A misplaced trinket of hers which Ren had tasked one of his underlings to swindle; returning it to her with a gracious apology, he ignored her carefully thereafter, and noticed her gaze following him in turn. The occasional glance in her direction, and she would duck her head with a flush.

Smiling to himself, Ren reckoned his vassalhood was eminent. He needed only the opportunity to broach the subject with his lord.

It came upon the heels of a glorious victory. Torimasu was in high spirits, and already deep into his cups, when he summoned Ren forth and clapped him upon the shoulder.

“Well, you wild dog, you’ve outdone yourself again,” the daimyo bellowed out, drinking heartily. “That bastard Shimazu has been routed for the last, I’d wager—and the devil can take me if I’m wrong.”

Ren bowed low to hide his scowl. The crudeness of his master’s address rankled him, but he did his best to shrug it off.

“My lord,” he replied with deference.

Torimasu chuckled, clapping him again near the nape. “A loyal dog deserves his due—so, what say you? Ask me for a boon, and I’ll grant it to you.”

Ren inclined his head again. “To serve as your vassal would be my highest honor, Torimasu-sama.”

“A fiefdom then,” the daimyo boomed as he rubbed his chin, the jewels on his fingers glinting through the dark scraggle of his beard. “Very well—you shall have Inari-chou.”

Artfully, Ren smoothed over his disappointment with another sweeping bow. He’d hoped for better holdings than some backwater mountain town. But Inari had potential, he supposed.

“You honor me, Torimasu-sama.”

The daimyo gave an impatient wave. “Now then, a vassal must have heirs—have you given thought to taking a bride? My wife has a matchmaker she swears by; give me the word, and I’ll have her set the woman to work for you.”

Supposing this to be a hedge—surely hoping that it was—Ren humbled himself again before his lord. In retrospect, he supposed he should have known better.

“Dog of war that I am, if I have found true favor in your eyes, Torimasu-sama, and in those of your daughter Maihime, then unworthy though it would be for me to ask—”

“Unworthy, indeed.” Torimasu frowned heavily, his cup sloshing wine where he slammed it down on the tatami beside him. Ren’s eyes cut up to him as he tensed, ready to evade a strike. “You’ve managed to beguile my ignorant young daughter, but this Torimasu is not so easily deceived. Even were you the man you claimed to be, you would not be worthy of her hand.”

Ren’s jaw clenched. “My lord?”

“A fine forgery, those documents of lineage you produced. Even my scribes could not find fault in your flourishes. But do you think me the sort of fool who takes an unvetted man into my confidences? Something about you made me question—something uncouth in the look of you.” Picking up his sake again, Torimasu glowered at Ren over the edge of his cup. “Tedious though it was, I tracked down this Mizuno clan of yours and sent word to them, inquiring after you. Weeks later, a missive came back to me from across the sea—can you guess what it said? According to the head of the clan, there was no ‘Mizuno Rennosuke’ known to him—only a pirate’s by-blow by the name of Ren.”

Balling his hand into a fist, Ren narrowed his eyes. So his grandfather lived to malign him still—damn the old blackguard to hell…

Taking a long sip from his cup, Torimasu sat back against his throne, his expression circumspect. “I could have had you put to death for such falsity; but in truth, I do not fault you for the attempt to better the fortune dealt you. I do not doubt, either, that there is some noble blood in your veins, but whatever else is in you…well, I cannot have it mixing with any kin of mine. You are a fine commander, and you have done quite well for yourself, considering your circumstances.” Here Torimasu’s look hardened again. “But you must know your place in this world. Now, my samurai, do we understand one another?”

Nothing had changed, Ren realized grimly, from his adolescent days on the island. He thought he’d given himself a blank slate, to re-enter the game with equal standing. But no matter how he proved himself, no matter how hard he tried to rid himself of the shadow of his birth, his dirty blood would not avail him. It tainted him still.

By these fine lords, he would always be seen as lesser. As fodder to be trampled upon.

But Ren would not be trampled meekly.

Bowing again for the last, he smiled his dark wolfish smile to himself as he answered, “Perfectly, my lord.”

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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