At dusk the children began to gather, trickling in from the streets by ones, twos and threes. They were of all ages, these homeless war orphans. Some of the older ones carried the littlest ones at their hips. Grubby, scrawny and leery-eyed, they slinked about like alley cats, ever cautious of their surroundings and those within them—though Sumire liked to think they’d grown to trust her, just a little.

From the goods unfit for sale, she’d been feeding and outfitting them. Just the orphans who hung about near the shop at first. But rapidly the word had spread. Now a sizeable group visited her daily with their hands outstretched at a safe distance, ready to snatch a meal and run. 

She asked them their names as she gave them what she had to spare. Each day, more of them answered back. Each day, more of them seemed to draw closer. They started not to run away from her so much. They started to stick around her as they ate their meager meals, even to linger for a time beside her after they’d licked their fingers clean.

They spoke to her more, listened to her more. She urged them to watch out for one another, and did her best to watch out for them herself, beating off a brothel scout with a broom when she saw the woman trying to lure one of the little girls away. 

A few began to call her grandmother, and soon they all did. The younger ones greeted her with hugs, and the older ones with smiles. When she was in town, she saw them trailing her around like second shadows. She let them sleep in the storerooms when the nights were chill and damp. On days when the leavings of the shop weren’t enough to go around, she’d pawn the trinkets Tanaka gave her to make up the difference.

Still she felt their lack like an ever present gnawing within her. No matter what she scraped together to give them, her heart ached that she could not give them more.

“Oh Mother,” Shurei sighed. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’ve done more for those poor children than anyone else has, but you can’t be content with that. I wish you’d listened to me when I warned you not to become so attached. You can’t possibly care for them all as if they were your own.”

Sumire smiled. “So say you, Shurei, with your army of strays. I’ve never known you to turn away a single one.”

Shurei blushed. But it was true she’d coo and cosset even the meanest and mangiest of toms that came skulking around. Within a week they’d have joined the ranks of cats lounging and prowling all about the shop and its grounds.

“That’s different!” Shurei said hotly, crossing her arms. “Those mousers pull more weight around here than some of my kin do.”

“That may be,” Sumire said wryly, “but if you’ve never fed them scraps from your own plate, then I’m the emperor.”

With a huff, Shurei turned on her heel and stormed away.

A few days later, as Sumire was fetching water from the well, a gaggle of orphans ran up to her, red-faced and panting. Their clammy little hands grabbed at her with an urgency that made her drop the rope and pail back down the well shaft with a nasty, sloshing clang.

“Baa-chan! Baa-chan!” they cried, tugging her along. “Come quick, it’s Kenichi-kun—he’s in trouble!”

Sumire’s heart raced as they led her in haste toward the city square. The children were too breathless with exertion to tell her more. With his penchant for street brawling, she imagined her grandson must have injured himself or someone else.

But it was far worse than she could have imagined.

When she arrived at the square, the sight that met her eyes sent the pit of her stomach plunging through her toes. A group of city guardsmen stood over Kenichi, who lay on his stomach in the dirt. His hands were bound behind him. A boot was to his back. Beneath it, he thrashed and snapped like a wild animal, causing such an uproar that a crowd had begun to gather round.

Pushing through the growing throng, Sumire tried desperately to reach him, but a guardsman pushed her back. She held to the arm that repelled her in a panicked, white-knuckled grip.

“Please,” she cried out, “that boy is my grandson!”

The guardsman eyed her frantic face. Lowering his arm, he let her pass. She fell to her knees before the frenzied boy, crying out his name as she reached for him to still him.

Kenichi stilled, looking half-crazed as his eyes roved over her where he lay. “…Baa-chan?” He started to struggle fiercely again. “Baa-chan! I didn’t do anything wrong, I swear—”

“Quiet, you,” the guardsman above him growled, grinding his heel into Kenichi’s back so hard the breath went out of him. “I told you no more of that shouting. It won’t do you any good anyway.”

“Please!” Sumire begged, clasping at his boot. “Please let him go—he’s only a boy!”

“We caught this boy of yours red-handed in the act of high theft,” the leader of the group said, “and now he must pay the price.”

Sumire saw then in a horrified glance the knife he’d been sharpening. Shoving back her sleeve, she threw herself over her grandson and thrust up her bare arm.

“The fault is mine—I should have been watching him. Take my hand instead, I beg you!”

“Baa-chan, no!” 

A chorus of children’s voices echoed Kenichi’s cry. Sumire heard a hail of rocks ring off the guards’ armor and thud in the dirt. Cursing and shouting, the guards threatened the orphans back amidst the rising clamor of the crowd, until a clear, cold voice cut through the commotion—

“What is the meaning of this?”

All froze as one, looking down the avenue toward the man who’d spoken. Richly clothed and armed, he sat astride a great black horse. A company of mounted samurai and foot soldiers flanked him. Though Sumire had never seen this man in the flesh before, she knew him at once by the aura of intimidation that preceded him—even before she saw the infamous scar that twisted red and taut across one side of his face, narrowing his left eye in a permanent glare and fixing the left corner of his mouth in a snarl. 

His right eye glared to match the other. His black hair was bound up high and severe as his look. He might have been a handsome man, once, before he’d been scarred. But Sumire suspected he’d always had a surliness about him.

Judging by the ruthless sort he employed, she held out little hope that this man’s character was any less vicious than his appearance.

At his approach, the crowd receded. Many paled, averting their gazes at the sight of him. Similarly pale, the leader of the guardsmen bowed low before him. 

“Yahiko-sama,” the leader said, his tone more fearful than deferential. “Pardon the disturbance. We were in the midst of punishing a thief we’d caught, when this woman here caused a scene.”

“Leave my grandmother out of it!” Kenichi shouted, grunting when another guard toed him in the ribs.

Clutching her grandson to her, Sumire gazed up into Yahiko’s frightful face with a whore’s unflinching candor. “Please, my lord, he is only a young boy. Before he is maimed for life, let his case be heard.”

Whether it was the boldness of her look, or the pointed choice of her words that had struck him, Yahiko’s agate gaze flickered in consideration. Reining his horse to one side, he let his glare scorch over the crowd.

“Who here accuses this boy?”

It was a sultry feminine voice which replied, “I do, milord.”

“Step forth.”

The woman stepped forward, mincing. She had an indolent, pouting look about her which Sumire would have recognized straightaway as a whore’s affectation, even if the sway of her hips and the cut of her robes hadn’t made it abundantly clear what she was. Brazenly, and with a touch of bemused scorn, she looked up at the lord who’d summoned her.

“Of what crime do you accuse him.”

“Jewel theft, milord,” she said with a purr. “He stole a pretty piece from me while I was sleeping. Another girl happened to catch him fleeing, and called for the guard to chase him down.”

She waved a careless hand toward the city guardsmen, two of whom were sporting a bloodied nose and blackened eye each. Yahiko’s gaze raked over them with undisguised contempt. 

“This boy-thief gave you some trouble, I see.”

The two men lowered their heads, glowering. A few of the others chuckled, before Yahiko turned his glare upon them, and they sobered at once. 

Thrashing in his hold, Kenichi snarled, “I’m not a thief! That necklace never belonged to her—it belongs to my mother, and I was taking it back to her!”

Sumire gasped, touching a hand to her lips as she recognized the jade pendant peeping from the courtesan’s silken collar. Looping the fine golden chain about her finger, she simpered.

“He’s lying, milord. This necklace was a gift to me.”

“No, it’s not! You’re the one who’s lying!”

“Silence, boy,” Yahiko said coldly, and Kenichi fell silent. “That necklace,” the lord said to the whore, “let me see it.”

The whore handed it over to him. Squinting, Yahiko held the heirloom aloft before him, watching how finely it shone in the light.

“This is no common trinket,” Yahiko said. His narrowed gaze shifted from the necklace to its purported owner. “How did you come by it?”

“It was a gift, milord,” the whore said again, demurring.

“From whom?”

She feigned a tragic smile. “From my dear, dead mother.”

“She is lying, Yahiko-sama,” Sumire said calmly. “No madam would let her keep such a thing unless a patron had given it to her.”

The whore’s smile soured as she glared toward Sumire. Yahiko seemed to weigh this as he eyed the necklace again.

“I assume you back the boy’s claim.”

“Yes, my lord. That necklace belongs to my daughter, his mother.”

Yahiko’s eyes cut to the whore again. “I will ask you once more who gave this to you. Lie to me again, and you will lose your tongue.”

The whore’s eyes darted about her as she drew back a step and paled. “Milord, please…it was a customer who gave it to me.”

“Name him,” Yahiko demanded, and reluctantly, she did.

The gate guard who’d stolen Shurei’s necklace was summoned, along with his captain. Both men had clearly been promoted since, and both denied he’d taken anything from her, of course.

“I won it in a dice game, off some mercenary passing through,” the former gate guard claimed. “That’s how I come to give it to her.”

“Liar!” Kenichi yelled, despite Sumire’s attempts to quiet him. “I watched you take it from her, you pig-faced piece of shit! My mother cried for you to let her keep it, and you took it from her anyway!”

The guard went red in his piggish face, advancing. “Why, you little…”

The captain restrained him. Looking intensely annoyed at this whole debacle, Yahiko pinched the bridge of his nose. By now the crowd about them had swelled even larger. It was only a matter of time before word reached Shurei at the shop. As Sumire was dreading this, Yahiko looked to her.

“Your daughter, where is she now?”

She told him, and he set off for the trade district with his retinue, the guards, Kenichi and all the rest in tow. As they entered the plaza before the line of shops, Yahiko held up his hand.

“Not a word,” he said darkly to all and sundry who’d followed him from the square. 

Flagging down an errand boy who happened to be one of Kenichi’s cousins, Yahiko sent for Shurei. As she slipped through the shop’s outer door, she stood rooted in surprise at the sight that met her eyes. Yahiko’s good eye widened briefly at the sight of her.

Seeing Kenichi bound and bedraggled, Shurei started toward him, but Yahiko intercepted her.

“Madam,” he said curtly, extending the jade pendant to her by its chain, “do you recognize this necklace?”

Shurei’s gaze flicked to the dangling pendant. Then, with a candor born entirely from her own bold and earnest spirit, she looked to the scarred, scowling man who’d asked her.

“Yes, my lord,” she replied. “It’s the necklace my mother-in-law gave to me on my wedding day. An heirloom of the Inoki clan.”

A hushed murmur rose from the crowd, but a forbidding glance from Yahiko silenced them again.

“And why is it not in your possession?” he asked Shurei.

She hesitated before replying, “It was taken from me at the city gate, some three years ago.”

“By whom?”

“The guards posted there, my lord.” Shurei shook her head. “I do not know their names.”

“Do you see them here among this crowd?”

Shurei looked out. Her dark eyes scanned over the faces of the guardsmen before settling on the former gate guard and his captain.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Point them out.”

As Shurei did so, the captain backpedaled with a grimace, but a katana to his neck halted him in place. The other perpetrator fell heavily to his knees and began to grovel.

“Please, milord,” the captain rasped. The whites of his eyes showed hugely as blood threaded down his throat. “We were only collecting the gate fee, as you ordered.”

“If you took this decree of mine as a license to plunder,” Yahiko seethed, “either you are very greedy, very stupid or you suppose that I am. I do not suffer fools among my ranks. So tell me, which is it?”

The captain’s blood drained from his face. “…The first, milord.”

“As I thought.” Letting the necklace fall into Shurei’s hand, Yahiko looked to his young captive. “Cut the boy loose already and return him to his mother.”

Kenichi was unbound and set upright. His feet had scarcely touched the ground when Shurei crushed him to her, sobbing. In weak-kneed relief, Sumire embraced them both.

On pain of death, the captain gave a full accounting of the events at the gate. The other men who’d been posted there that day were named and fetched. Side by side they stood grimly in a row. Sumire saw that most of them, like the captain and the first man, were of significantly higher rank than they’d been three years ago.

“You stand accused of high theft by Inoki Shurei,” Yahiko said as he rode down the line with his sword unsheathed. His horse’s hooves sounded with sharp finality in the brittle earth that broke beneath them. “I, Tatsumi Yahiko, find you guilty of this crime.” His hard brown gaze swept out over the crowd who watched with bated breath, before returning to the accused. “Kneel, thieves, and lay out your hands.”

The condemned men shuddered, knowing it was hopeless to plea for clemency. Still a few cried out as the samurai behind them shoved them down to the flinty ground. To lose a hand was to lose one’s usefulness in such a life as theirs. As the samurai drew their blades and advanced, Sumire felt sick to her stomach. Despite all the suffering she and her family had endured as a result of these men’s greed, she took no satisfaction in watching them forced to submit themselves to butchery in recompense.

Shurei must have felt the same as she—sick of such misery, sick of such bloodshed, just or otherwise. This hellish cycle of self-perpetuating violence, whose flames she saw burning in the eyes of her son, and which would catch and burn in the eyes of these men and theirs.

Rushing forward, Shurei threw herself down in a deep bow before Yahiko. “Please, my lord, it is only a few pieces of gold and silver. Is a man’s flesh worth so little as this?” She raised her eyes to him. “Have mercy on them, please, I beg you.”

The full force of Yahiko’s glare rested upon her. “You would pardon these men who robbed and humiliated you? Who would have let your son’s blood be spilled in place of theirs?”

His voice was bitingly cold, rebuking in its sear. Shurei squared her shoulders to him, undaunted.

“Yes, my lord,” she said, quietly yet firmly. “I would.”

Yahiko regarded her with the same estimation he’d appraised the rarity and worth of the pendant she bore.

“If you would pardon them, Shurei-dono,” he said at last, “then so will I.” His gaze cut to the kneeling guardsmen. “Get up and get back to your posts, and if you do not wish to lose them, you will return the rest of what you stole from her.”

Dazed with relief, the accused picked themselves up and left the plaza, casting Shurei grateful glances as they went. With that, the trial was concluded. Yahiko sheathed his sword. His samurai followed suit, returning to their horses. The crowd dispersed, some seeming distinctly disappointed that no hands had been severed. 

Leaving his retinue behind him, Yahiko led his horse toward the storefront, where Shurei, Sumire and the Inoki clan still stood about. At his approach, Shurei stepped out to meet him with her mother just behind her.

“That boy of yours may have skipped punishment this day,” Yahiko said sternly, glancing over at Kenichi, who was beheading dandelions with a stick, “but with the path he is on, he is spoiling for trouble. If I hear of him disturbing the peace again, he will find it.”

Shurei bowed her head. “Yes, my lord. I will work harder to keep him in hand.”

“It is not your hand he needs,” Yahiko said brusquely. “Where is his father?”

When Shurei didn’t answer, Sumire placed an arm about her shoulders and answered in her stead, “My son-in-law passed away last winter, Yahiko-sama.”

Yahiko frowned, his expression inscrutable. Glancing back to Kenichi, he said, “Boy, come here.”

Dropping the stick, Kenichi came over. Warily, he peered up at Yahiko. Narrowly, Yahiko peered down at him back.

“How old are you, boy?”

“Nearly eight,” Kenichi said, standing up straight and tall as he could. Already it seemed he’d be of a height with his lanky father, yet he had his maternal grandfather’s wiry strength. “How did you get that scar?”

“Kenichi!” Shurei said, mortified, but Yahiko just snarled a smile in response.

“I got this scar from being careless with where I put my face. Which is why you will listen to me when I tell you that if you wish to grow up to be a respectable merchant like your father, you will leave off playing the vigilante and attend to your duties here.”

Kenichi scowled. “I don’t want to be a merchant! I want to be a swordsman like you.”

Shurei gasped as Sumire stared. In the hard set of her grandson’s jaw, in the steely glint of his eye, she saw that same look of fierce determination she’d seen on that night so many years ago, when Kohaku had soared into her life on the back of a fiery beast with his sickle-blade flashing out before him.

Yahiko gave the boy a level look. “You have the makings of one, but there is more to being a swordsman than slashing around a blade. A samurai does not brawl in the streets. He is disciplined, temperate. He follows his lord’s command.”

“I can do that,” Kenichi said eagerly. “If I do what you say, will you make me a samurai?”

Shaking her head, Shurei looked faint.

“Mind your mother,” Yahiko said as he steered his horse away, keeping the good side of his face to Shurei as he trailed a look to her in passing. “Do that much, and we will see.”

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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