Rain cascaded from the low-lying clouds. Makokan looked to the stables. Shikan had to be traveling on horseback. The stall was empty.
“Shall we ride?” he asked, but Sae shook her head.
“Let’s walk. It’s not far to Madoro Street, and if we have to track him from there, horses will only get in the way.”
“In that case, we’ll take the back way. It’s faster.” Makokan pulled his hood over his head and led Van and Sae through a wooden gate behind Hohsalle’s clinic. The wind wasn’t especially intense, but the rain came so heavily that the narrow gutter overflowed and washed into the street. The town seemed deserted. Few people dared to brave the deluge, and the street vendors had moved their wares to the back of their stalls to keep them dry.
Makokan walked briskly as he watched Van, who strode along beside him. Although powerfully built with the lithe movements of a warrior, the man was not particularly large. Makokan found it hard to believe that he’d ripped the chains from the wall in the salt mine.
Makokan’s many years as a stake-fighter had honed his intuition. He could usually tell at a glance if an opponent was someone to fear. It was a gut response, a reaction of the skin rather than logic. However, he could not read this man. He couldn’t tell if he was strong or weak or what he was thinking. It seemed doubtful he could goad him into revealing his well-protected emotions. As Makokan mulled over the exchange with Tomasolle, he realized that Van had betrayed a flash of anger. Without slowing his pace, he said, “May I ask a question?”
Van looked at him and nodded.
“You told Tomasolle that he didn’t understand the Lone Antlers. What did you mean by that?”
Van trained his gaze on the road ahead and did not reply immediately. He only spoke once the three of them rounded a corner. “He seems to believe the Lone Antlers are a band of heroes who chose to die to save their homeland. But we weren’t anything so noble. We became death warriors because we were dead already.”
“Huh?”
“When we joined the Lone Antlers, every one of us was a living, breathing corpse. We longed to die, yet couldn’t take our own lives. That would bar us from the Land of Eternal Spring. We were waiting for permission to die. It was pitiful, really.” His voice carried no trace of self-derision or sorrow. “We never had any wild delusions of conquering the Zolian Empire. What mattered was how we lost. To be honest, when the clan chief asked us to become pawns in their game and help them negotiate better conditions for our people, I was relieved.”
Sorrow touched Sae’s expression at these words. Van resumed his silence, eyes still on the road, and Makokan pried no further. He quickened the group’s pace.
Madoro Street was one block off the main avenue. Paved only with packed earth, it was now slick with mud from the rain. Muttao was a small restaurant on the first floor of an old two-story building. As one of only a handful of establishments in Kazan that served Yukata cuisine, it was usually packed at meal times. However, when Makokan, Van, and Sae entered, lunch was over, and the place was quiet. There were only two customers, and they seemed to be taking refuge from the downpour. The owner spoke with them by the fireplace, but he looked up and smiled at Makokan’s arrival.
“Welcome! It’s been a while.”
Makokan greeted him and said, “Sir Tomasolle was here for lunch, correct? He appears to have forgotten his notebook. Do you remember where he was sitting?”
“It was so busy, I was in the kitchen the whole time, and unfortunately, everyone else is off on their break now. But no one mentioned anything about finding a notebook.”
While they spoke, Van approached a table in the right corner. Sae whispered something to him, and Makokan thought he heard the word “feet.” Van nodded and carefully paced up beside the table.
“There,” he said. Sae nodded and crouched. She stared at something on the floor. After a moment, she gestured to Van, who crouched beside her. They conferred on some unknown point. When Makokan walked over, Van straightened up. “His scent is still strong in here,” he whispered. “But…”
Makokan glanced out the window. “The rain. You think it’ll wash away his scent? That’s poor luck.”
Only now did Sae stand up off her knees. “For me, the rain is good luck,” she said. Turning away from the shopkeeper, she pointed discreetly to a set of footprints on the floor. Wordlessly, Makokan indicated that he understood and stared at the tracks.
So those are Shikan’s? Van must have identified them by their scent. The prints had been left by boots worn by someone of Shikan’s build, but they were hard to discern from among many others on the floor.
“Did you find it?” the owner asked anxiously.
“No, it’s not here,” Makokan answered with an apologetic smile. “Someone must have picked it up. Either that or he dropped it somewhere else. Sorry to have bothered you.”
Sae and Van were already headed for the door. Makokan nodded to them, and they stepped outside. In the deserted lane, Sae peered at the ground, rain dripping from her hood and heavy cape. Finally, she began to walk, her strides unusually long.
Makokan hurried after with a troubled expression. Shikan’s tracks stand out clearly here because of the mud, but… That would change once they reached the main road, which was paved in stone. If it had stopped raining, the mud from Shikan’s boots would have stood out clearly, but in this torrent, the tracks had surely been washed away by now.
When they reached the main road, Sae stopped again, staring at the cobbles. Then she quickly strode on with that same peculiar gait. Makokan supposed that the angle of Shikan’s tracks could have indicated his direction on the stone street, but he was still puzzled by Sae’s confidence. He approached the woman. “Can you see his tracks?” he asked.
Sae shook her head. “No, hardly at all because the road is paved with stone. But I know his gait.”
Ah, so that’s it. Makokan recalled something his father had taught him long ago. “Every person has their own distinct walk. If you can identify the length of their stride and how they bear their weight on their feet, you’ll be able to mimic their gait after losing their trail until you come to the next clue.”