On Thin Ice (Prequel to Guild)

Chapter Thirty-One: A Mountain Dyed Crimson

             Gods leaned over their path, their stone eyes vacant and stares unyielding. Fixated. Judging every step up the beaten, bone-shod path. It was almost as if Dai's one-month old son had started his examinations at Mount Shokudai's base instead of its peak. As if the anxiety that came with it had arrived early to plague him, too.

It bore down on his every step as he climbed Hikarishi's sacred mountain for the first time on his own two feet.

Stress turned them into boulders, making every movement too arduous to consider indulging his wife's requests. With dissolving rice-paper for a tongue, Dai couldn't even agree with her complaints.

"This is stupid."

Dai watched his feet struggle to cling to the few wooden-plank stairs all covered in dust. Half buried- just like so many of the sacred mountain's inhabitants.

"And totally unnecessary."

The stairs drowned in sand, completely disappeared. Or perhaps they'd rounded the spiralling path too quickly and had fallen into cloud and mist. Perhaps they'd been carried off by the massive scavenger birds that cleared the way for new candidates by carrying away the old, the rejected, the condemned.

Dai slowed to retie his topknot and glimpsed one at the top of a pine. Wondered if the red cresting its breast was natural for its species... or if it had feasted recently on a Shokudai failure. He hadn't heard of any- but perhaps whoever held the blame for that had done a better job keeping secrets than he and Yuina had.

"And cruel!" she continued, finally catching up. "I gave birth a month ago and now they're making me climb a spirits-scorned mountain!? Are you sure Raia isn't just making this up?"

He managed, "positive," and started forward again. "Everyone has to do it. Candle Town peasants to the shogun himself, everyone has to pass. Their parents... prove their competence... with the climb."

"Really?" she scoffed. "Half of you can't even hold a baby and that makes you worthy?"

"Most of us have nursemaids to do that." He glanced at her over his shoulder, lifting a brow. "You refused to let Naoki hire one."

Footsteps- until he felt her warmth beside him. Yuina halted, looked solemnly down at the woven basket and the child within its cloth nests. His eyes were open, some degree of annoyance and confusion shining within them.

Baby Kimsura always had to be moving to be happy. And he loved being outside.

"We can raise him ourselves."

"We're busy people."

"I can plan balls and greet ambassadors and watch him at the same time. You can make time away from your conquests." Distaste. Such distaste in her tone.

Dai frowned.

Baby Kimsura looked at him and grinned.

It made Yuina's glower soften a little. Made Dai laugh and shake his head. How clever he was. How manipulative.

"I do know how to hold him... now."

She smiled. "But you know what would prove your competence more?"

"Tell me."

Walking again. This time, he kept pace beside her, kept his arm looped around hers- an anchor that would keep him off the edge.

"How about you carry both of us to Chōten Temple?"

Dai rolled his eyes.

"You have such vitality, miizhair, and so much energy! It can't be too difficult to-"