Servants and brothers parted before Saigo like water before an icebreaker. Less out of respect – he was never the life of the party, his aura repelled familiarity – more out of fear.
His burning green eyes seemed to bore straight through a person, and his reputation for ruthless efficiency and icy calm was known to all. But Saigo didn't care. 'Fear means they won't bother me with nonsense,' he noted dryly to himself. Fear was a useful tool for discipline.
The bathhouse complex was a secluded area: a wooden deck surrounding a natural hot spring bubbling straight from the rock under the open starry sky.
Steam drifted over the water, mingling with the cool mountain night air. Glancing around, Saigo noted inwardly: unusually empty today. Even more deserted than usual. Silence.
Shedding his dusty clothes reeking of smoke and sweat, he doused himself with icy water from a nearby bucket – the sharp shock preparing his body for the spring's heat.
Then he took up a rough sponge, scrubbing dirt and the smell of the road from his skin. Cleanliness – the foundation of health. And of not being scented a mile away by a guard dog. This axiom had been hammered into him since his first days in the Clan.
Within minutes, he was sinking into the searingly hot waters of the spring. Muscle fatigue and nervous tension began to slowly dissolve in the healing moisture. He leaned his head back on a smooth stone, closing his eyes, sinking into the rare sensation of peace, watching the shimmering points of stars through his eyelids in the black expanse of the sky.
"Saigo…" A woman's voice, sweet and deliberately languid, sliced through the silence like a knife through silk.
He didn't open his eyes, only the muscles beneath the water tensed slightly. Ayato. The "Seductress Sister." She had approached soundlessly, like a cat, and sat on the edge of the deck very close, violating his personal space with brazen nonchalance.
"How are you, Saigo?" she asked, drawing out the words, a smile playing on her lips promising unknown pleasures.
"Fine," he answered curtly, not shifting his position. Saigo detested these "conversations" of hers. Her manic persistence irritated him more than the dull recruits. Even after direct, blade-sharp refusals, she didn't give up.
Swaying her hips, Ayato edged even closer, almost touching his shoulder. Her near-absent attire added a piquant note to the scene. "Brother Saigo, you're always so cold with me," a plaintive grimace appeared on her face, false as counterfeit coin.
"And you're so annoying I want to climb the walls," he snapped, finally opening his eyes and staring straight into her face. His green gaze was empty, like that of a statue.
Ayato snorted but didn't move away. She knew the boundaries – physically approaching him in the water was lethally dangerous. Saigo leaned his head back again, began mechanically counting stars in a familiar constellation.
'Hope she just leaves. Had enough. The same act, every time.'
"I see you… just so you know," he said quietly, but the words fell on the silence like drops of lead.
The girl yelped and jerked back violently, as if scalded. How she'd ended up behind him without a sound, Saigo could only guess – 'illusion? Mimicry? Doesn't matter, but her intention, thick, sticky as tar, he'd felt it on the skin of his back before she even got close. A strong, cloying scent of danger and lust.'
"You find me every time! How?" Genuine astonishment mixed with chagrin rang in her voice.
"By smell," he replied calmly, not turning. "Your perfume… and ambition. A bit sharp."
Ayato froze, then slowly, with exaggerated grace, approached again and lay on her stomach on the very edge of the deck, propping her chin on her hands. Her prominent breasts loomed threateningly over the water. "So, how are things… with Mari?" she asked, playfully raising an eyebrow.
Saigo merely shrugged, water splashing. "Mari is in perfect health."
"Not that!" she barked, losing patience, the false playfulness gone. "Have you had… it?"
"No."
"Whhhyyy?" she drawled with exaggerated sympathy.
"I've told you why many times," his voice turned dangerous, low.
"Brother Kai is such a grump…" she stuck out her tongue, trying to regain playfulness, but it looked forced. "…but you should be… more serious… or you'll die young?"
"A-ah," she purred cunningly, catching a new idea. "So maybe you could train me? And I'll pay you for it…" She didn't get to finish.
Saigo stood up. Water cascaded off his powerful torso, etched with scars and steely musculature. He stepped out of the spring, utterly unashamed of his nudity, displaying not a body, but armor of flesh and will.
Water droplets ran down his cold skin. He headed towards the stack of clean clothes folded into a neat square.
"Hey! Where are you going?!" Ayato shouted after him, her voice cracking into a shrill note of disappointment and anger.
"To sleep!" he tossed over his shoulder, not looking back, already pulling on black trousers. His movements were precise, swift, devoid of superfluous gesture.
He walked away, leaving her alone on the empty deck, with unrealized ambitions and now-useless perfume, mixed with steam from the water and the bitterness of defeat. Another attempt to breach his icy armor had ended in nothing. Like all the previous ones.
Reaching his chambers calmly, Saigo locked himself in his study. Silence, broken only by the scratch of his quill and the steady ticking of antique clocks.
He began the report. Words fell onto the paper clearly, ruthlessly: 'Potential minimal. Risks excessive. Recommend recalling the group for retraining or dismissal.' – He recounted almost verbatim what he'd seen – the failures, the carelessness, the ribs broken due to stupidity.
The truth. Cold and inconvenient. The rest – the Head's business. The fate of those failures depended on his decision. 'So be it.' Saigo set aside the brush. He didn't care. Each man was the smith of his own fate. Or its gravedigger.
He stretched, knuckles cracking in the silence. A light warm-up – several fluid, lethal forms of martial arts – dispelled the residual heaviness. Now he was fresh, focused. Like a honed blade.
Quiet as a shadow, he slipped past the bedroom where Mari slept, listening to her steady breathing behind the door. Even quieter, he navigated the almost-sleeping corridors of Sen-Baz. The guards on his route were forewarned of his silent passage – part of his nightly ritual.
Emerging onto an open section of the fortress wall, he paused. Moonlight flooded the stone giants, casting long, black shadows.
Whoosh-whoosh… Two soundless jumps – and he found familiar handholds in the masonry, invisible to the uninitiated eye. Chiseled notches, barely protruding stones, a narrow crack – created centuries ago, either by forgotten builders or by the Clan's foresighted ancestors.
He descended quickly, deftly, like a spider. Handholds in the fortress wall. From the outside – a glaring flaw. But Saigo knew the truth: an ordinary man couldn't use them, even if found. And if the enemy was already wandering freely at the very walls... then holes in the masonry were the least of your problems, a sign of a far deeper failure.
At a leisurely pace, blending with the shadows, he made his way through sparse bushes and young growth at the foot of the cliff. Moonlight silvered the leaves, turning the path into a patchwork quilt of light and dark. He emerged onto a small clearing, hidden from prying eyes by an outcrop of rock. Here stood not monuments, but simple, smooth marble slabs, grown into the earth. The Cemetery of Clan Kotto. The place of eternal rest for those who had served to the end. And here lay his parents.
Approaching two slabs in the far corner, Saigo halted. Then slowly crouched down. The posture was uncomfortable, unnatural for him – but it was precisely how he felt here.
He remembered his parents vaguely. In his memory – only dim silhouettes, fragments of voices, the warmth of someone's hand. But one thing he knew for sure: they had been worthy members of the Clan. And they died due to their own carelessness. Stupid.
Saigo took a deep breath, and the sound of his exhale was loud in the dead silence of the clearing. According to the Head's accounts: his mother, a talented informant, had uncovered something important. But frivolity, a craving for a normal life, got the better of her.
She broke surveillance and stayed in the city... Her final hours weren't for the faint of heart. His father, upon learning, spat on orders, on logic, on all protocol. Rushed headlong into revenge. Result – two corpses instead of one. Stupid. Insane. Inefficient.
"Stupid," he whispered into the moonlit night, as if expecting an answer from the cold marble. But something stirred inside. Something he couldn't grasp, couldn't name. Resentment? Towards whom? His parents for their weakness? Or the Clan, for failing to restrain them? Anger? No. Their senseless death evoked only shame. A desire for revenge? But those who did it were long dead – the Head had seen to it. So what was it?
He ran his fingers over the smooth, cold surface of his father's slab. Resentment? No. Anger? No. Desire for revenge? No. Something else. Deep and quiet.
Like a crack in the armor he had so painstakingly forged over the years. A feeling that their death had been... pointless? That they were remembered only as an example of what not to do? That their dignity as warriors had dissolved in the shadow of their last, fatal mistake? "Or... am I not making their mistake myself?" – the heretical thought flashed as Shen, his broken ribs, and the wasted elixir surfaced in his memory. Protecting the weak... Wasn't that the same frivolity?
He stood up abruptly, as if shooing away an apparition. Moonlight fell on his face, making it paler still, his eyes two poison-green coals in the darkness. There was no answer in the clearing. Only silence, marble slabs, and cold light offering no warmth.
He turned and walked away, leaving the question hanging in the night air, just as unresolved as the mystery of his own, suddenly faltered heart. He returned by the same path, but the heaviness in his soul was far more tangible than the weight of Sen-Baz's stone walls.