The Legend of Ki Kura

Part I ~

All he had ever wanted was his own name. One that belonged to him, and not his father. But his family was proud and powerful, and he was given the name Ki Kura, like his father before him, which meant, in the old tongue, the highest house.

The Hasu family was a high house, indeed. Ki Kura the First was the lord of six provinces in the great kingdom of Ezgutashina, and he was feared and respected, and he sat at the king’s table and held the king’s ear.

But from the time he was a boy, Kura the Second wanted none of it. He wanted neither the title nor the trappings of lordship, for he knew too well what dark things were hid beneath all the bright and shining gold.

In the halls of his home, as a boy, he’d seen a servant girl beaten by his father’s advisor. Hidden in a dark doorway, he’d listened to her whimpers and watched as the man spat on the marble floor beside her and walked away.

He was six years old when his father brought him to the trial of an old man who had dared to raise his hand to a roving soldier. The blade was swift and sang over the courtyard, discordant with the screams of his daughters and the quiet murmur of the crowd.

At ten, he saw the dead and decaying body of a boy his age, a peasant boy from one of his father’s provinces, sprawled on the side of the Saninaru Road, a sickly raven picking at his guts.

He watched as his mother turned her face away, pinching her nose at the smell of it. He saw his father flick his hand for the driver to move along, and he felt his stomach catch and sputter, acid creeping up his throat until he had no choice but to tumble out into the mud and heave his highborn breakfast of sausage and grapes and soft bread and warm wine out onto the earth beside the dead boy with nothing on his bones.

There were nights when he woke up screaming, the silk of his sheets clinging to his warm, wet skin. The dead boy came to him in dreams, blood dripping from his crimson and spilling guts, and he spoke to Kura words he could never remember when the morning came.

There were days he could not leave his room. The thought of facing his mother and father, of seeing the emptiness behind their eyes, would plant his feet to the floor like a tree growing roots, and no matter how they pulled at him and dragged him down the halls, he could not go. They called for him, but he did not want them.

He wanted no one and nothing. Neither his family nor his station nor his king could provide anything to satiate the emptiness eating away at his insides. He wanted only the name of the boy that his father had failed and his mother had left unmourned. But the boy would never have a name, nor anyone to call him by it.

And so for the sins of his mother and father, Ki Kura the Second denounced his family, his title, his home. He left behind the gilded halls, and the silver trays of meat and fruit, and he left behind the name he was given. He donned a cloak and a pair of boots and he put a stale half of bread in a bag, and he cast off the fear and gave himself a new name. One that belonged to him, and not his father.

Nakisu Tae the Only, which meant, in the old tongue, dead boy.