I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

Hanzo absorbed that without immediate response. She was clearly aware that he had not offered her the explanation she was actually looking for, and equally clearly aware that pressing directly was not the way to get it.

Nathan considered her for a moment, then decided there was little harm in giving her something.

”This isn’t my real appearance,” he said.

Her head turned toward him. The surprise on her face was genuine and unguarded, which was unusual for her, and it lasted only a second before she smoothed it back into her usual composure and looked ahead again.

”I see,” she said simply.

She did not ask anything further. That was the shinobi in her, knowing when to let a silence do the work that questions couldn’t. But Nathan could see the shape of her thoughts moving behind her eyes anyway. Someone foreign, not from Kastoria and not from anywhere nearby. Someone that Kaguya had trusted deeply enough to hand Ayame’s safety to without hesitation. Someone who had walked through Yorimasa and Morosuke as though they were inconveniences rather than threats, who carried power that didn’t fit neatly into any category she had a name for.

Whoever Ryo actually was, Hanzo was becoming increasingly certain he was not ordinary. Not by a considerable distance. She even started doubting he could be someone famous now that she learnt he was wearing a disguise.

The hours passed slowly and without incident, swallowed up by the steady rhythm of hooves on packed earth and the gradual changing of the light as the sun climbed and then began its long descent. The road north was long and largely quiet, the kind of quiet that comes from a land that has learned to be careful about the noise it makes. Rolling stretches of countryside gave way to dense treelines and then opened again into broader plains, and through all of it the territory felt watched even when nothing was visibly watching.

Norihiro’s domain sat further north and angled east, past Minato and beyond several stretches of road that Nathan had not traveled before. He had a reasonable sense of where he was going, more than Hanzo likely assumed. Sakura had described the route to him during their time together on the road, walking him through landmarks and distances with the easy familiarity of someone who had made the journey many times. She had invited him too, openly and without any apparent awareness of the irony that now surrounded that invitation. He had not taken it seriously at the time. Seeing her again had not factored into any plan he was building. And yet here he was, riding north toward her father’s city with blood already decided at the end of the road.

He kept that thought at the back of his mind and left it there.

When evening began settling over the land, painting the sky in layers of amber and fading gold, Hanzo pulled her horse to a slower pace and started scanning the treeline on either side of the road with a methodical eye.

”We stop here for the night,” she said.

Nathan glanced at the sky. There was still some light left. ”We could push further.”

”We could,” Hanzo agreed, ”but we won’t. Traveling after dark on roads this heavily watched invites problems. If something happens at night it happens loud, and loud is exactly what we cannot afford right now.”

Nathan considered arguing the point and decided against it. He suspected the practical calculation about avoiding incidents was genuine, but he also suspected that Hanzo simply recognized when rest was the right answer and had no particular shame about choosing it. The horses had been working since morning. They needed water and stillness and time off the road, and pretending otherwise to save a few hours of travel wasn’t worth it.

They dismounted mid-road and walked the horses forward with the reins in hand, both of them scanning the edges of the path for a spot that offered enough natural cover to make a camp without advertising their presence to anyone passing by.

”Something I had in mind to ask,” Hanzo said as they walked, her voice unhurried. ”Where is your companion? The other woman.”

”She will join us later,” Nathan said.

Hanzo nodded once and didn’t push it. Nathan had already sent word ahead to Yukihime before leaving, mapping out the direction and the general destination. She would find them when she found them. He trusted that completely.