They were running now.
He followed her almost blindly, his ankle sending heat through his veins as he stumbled after the girl who moved almost like a mountain goat through the ravine at the end of the gorge.
A single slip could get them both killed, he knew.
He didn't slip.
Not at first, anyway. Not while the gorge still clung around them in wet walls and dim morning light, and not while the sound of hooves and men's voices still seemed to echo off the stone behind them.
Taro did not look back. He did not dare. The one time his shoulder twitched as if to turn, Kishi was already a few feet ahead, picking her way through the narrow cut where the gorge widened and then broke apart into a rough little ravine full of jutting stone and slick soil.
He had no idea how she was doing it.
Her boots found purchase where his eyes found only danger. The rain had made the ground treacherous. Thin grasses had slicked themselves against the mud. Water still crept in tiny paths down between stones, making everything shine just enough that he could not tell where a foothold ended and a fall began.
But Kishi moved. So Taro moved.
His cloak kept snagging. His sword kept striking against his thigh. Once his foot scraped on rock and the shock of it went right through his ankle and up his side, so sharp and white that for an instant the whole world flashed around the edges.
Still he kept going.
He could hear her breathing now. Not loud, not ragged. Just quicker than usual. That frightened him more than if she had seemed exhausted. Kishi Eishi never seemed anything.
Not to him. Not unless she wanted him to see it, he realized.
He thought he heard a stone shift somewhere behind them.
Or maybe it was only the echo of their own feet.
Or–
Taro's stomach dropped, and his pace increased of its own accord. His injured foot landed wrong. A burst of pain tore through him so violently he nearly lost the next step entirely.
He caught himself on a boulder. Kishi was already turning.
She glanced back once, her eyes wide above the mask.
He caught his breath as her hand flew out and wrapped around his. Tight. Urgent.
"Come on," she whispered.
The word came through the cloth roughened by damp and breath and smoke. It was not soft. It was not kind. It was only immediate.
Taro bit back the pain and let himself be half-pulled, half-helped forward.
Her grip was stronger than he expected. Or maybe he was just weaker now than he had been an hour ago. His hand felt clumsy in hers, too warm, too human, while hers felt like purpose itself.
She didn't drag him long, only over the worst of the broken ground where the ravine pitched sharply and the path, if it could be called that, was no more than a jagged line between loose rock and thorny scrub. Then she paused to let him find his own feet again.
Behind him was silence.
Somehow that was worse than noise.
If the soldiers had shouted, he could have measured them. If they had crashed after the fugitives, he could have known where fear belonged. But the silence behind the gorge mouth was like a held breath. Like the enemy had not lost them so much as paused.
They were out of the gorge now. Bits of grass had clawed their way through the rocky soil around it.
The sky above was washed pale after rain, but low mist still hovered in the hollows. The earth smelled of stone and wet roots, with only the faintest memory of smoke now. They had come into one of those broken stretches of land that did not know whether it belonged to cliff or field, where the ground rose and fell unevenly and the only things that grew well were stubborn.
Kishi let go.
Taro nearly fell backwards.
He took one step forward anyway and fell as his ankle decided standing wasn't worth it anymore.
There was no warning this time. No slow tilt, no brief chance to save himself. One second he was upright, trying to drag air into lungs that had not yet forgiven the river and the running; the next, his foot simply failed beneath him.
His side hit the ground, elbow first. The culprit ankle slid deep into the dirt.
Only the ground rushing up to meet his face blocked out the scream that tore from his lungs. Taro lay where he fell, his eyes half-closed, his foot twisted strangely against the ground.
His face shook like the rest of him was afraid to.
Something burned through his veins. Not a scream. Something silent, overwhelming, darkening.
The pain did not stay in the ankle. It shot up his leg like something alive, then spread, black and searing, until his stomach clenched and his hands opened uselessly against the mud. He could not think around it. Could not even properly breathe. His whole body seemed to know only one fact now.
Wrong. Something was wrong.
Taro dragged one breath in. Then gasped it out.
Another.
"Ki…"
Her name slipped from his lips into the dirt still moist from the previous night's rain.
It was cool against his cheek. Comforting, almost. The rest of him was on fire.
For one unsteady second he thought: this is how it ends, then. Not by arrow, not by soldiers, not by the rakhai's sword, but by a foot turned wrong on wet earth while trying to follow someone he had no right to follow in the first place.
The thought did not even have enough dignity to frighten him. It only existed.
Something scuffed the ground near his head. Then another.
His eyes flickered open. Kishi was crouching there, her eyes narrow.
"What."
It was not cruel. It was not gentle, either. Just sharp. Immediate. As if she thought perhaps he had fallen on purpose out of some secret weakness of character.
He rolled his mouth away from the dirt slightly. Somehow the bare movement of his neck shot down to his toes.
His eyes met hers, for just an instant. Then his gaze dropped again.
Too much effort.
He made a sound. Couldn't tell what it was, though.
The noise embarrassed him almost more than the pain. It had no shape. No words. It was simply proof that he was reduced enough to make animal sounds in front of a girl who probably thought him only barely useful to begin with.
She bent over him, the ends of her sheaths scraping against the dirt as she maneuvered herself down. Her hands gripped her tights, somewhere around her knees.
"Are you dying?"
He shook his head. Barely.
He didn't think he was, anyway.
Not unless ankles killed people. Though maybe they did, if soldiers were behind and a ravine was no kind of place to be helpless.
Kishi's lips pressed together tightly.
"My foot," Taro gasped out, his voice louder than he wanted it to be.
His eyes filled with water. He blinked it back.
Not in front of her. The resolve formed somewhere far in the back of his mind.
It was a stupid resolve. Childish. Pointless. But it was his, and he clung to it because the alternative was to curl up and cry like Sakue when she scraped a knee on the brick street. He was not Sakue. He was not seven. He was not even Taro Zayasu anymore, apparently.
He slammed his eyes shut when he realized she wasn't moving to help.
He was breathing more regularly now. Each breath still negotiated with his lungs for space.
His head twisted without his asking it to. Towards the dirt. The coolness landed in his consciousness like a faint reminder that he was still alive, still here.
Somewhere behind his eyelids the old capital rose like rumor. Maki Yoringa. Genjo Masahiro. Decoy heir. Go. Run. Survive. All those words had been thrown at him so quickly that his mind had not sorted any of them yet. And now his body had rebelled in the middle of all of it.
Something brushed against his shoulder. It took him a minute to realize Kishi had touched him, her contact barely making itself felt at all.
"You're hurt," she said.
He didn't try to react. Just pulled his legs in closer as if they could shield him.
The words might have been foolishly obvious, but the way she said them made them sound less like observation and more like accusation. As if his body had betrayed both of them by choosing this moment.
Taro didn't know what he wanted to say.
Go on without me.
Don't leave me here.
It hurts.
Please.
He said nothing.
Her hand tightened on his shoulder.
"Taro," she said.
He looked sideways, up at her. Her eyes were piercing above the mask.
There was rain still caught on her lashes. Mud on one knee. Her short hair was rough and uneven around her face, making her look younger and harsher both at once.
She should not have looked real. She should have looked like a ghost, like everyone said.
Instead she looked tired. Furious. Too alive.
"You can't stay here."