When she was young,
Sparrow
was a very happy child.
Father was a trade merchant who married later in life. It was said that upon seeing beautiful Mother, he fell in love at first sight—foolish for a man his age.
A slender, tall figure, ivory skin, flowing curves—she was a beauty. Anyone would have been captivated, not just Father.
Mother was a foreigner, clumsy with words but a hard worker. She often helped Father with his business. Sparrow loved going to the church with the two of them holding hands. On rest days, the three of them would pray together, eat out, and head home.
It seemed Father met Mother, a foreigner, by pure chance. From the neighboring
Saou
—Mother had been aboard a ship from that country. A storm caused a shipwreck, and Mother was rescued by Father's trading vessel. At first they couldn't communicate and struggled, but Father was skilled in the Saou language, so he looked after Mother in various ways.
Father immediately tried to send Mother back to Saou, but it didn't work out. The wrecked ship had carried Mother's husband and child aboard, and they had both perished. Mother had no family in Saou and nowhere to return to.
Father was a merchant, but a genuinely kind man. His business ran on goodwill and personal connections—there was no way he could abandon a woman left all alone in the world. What's more, Father, who had remained single past forty, was foolish enough to catch feelings, of all things.
"I'd been planning to adopt a relative's child eventually, you know."
The following year, Sparrow was born. Although she was a girl, Father—who had never expected to have children—was overjoyed, and for ten days after Sparrow's birth, he kept handing out sweets to everyone who passed by the shop.
It was Mother who named her Sparrow. A name for a tiny little bird—how cute, Father said. Sparrow didn't resemble her slender, beautiful mother at all, but looked very much like her stocky father. Not particularly large eyes, a small button-like nose, and not much height to speak of. But she had dimples and rosy cheeks. Father showed off Sparrow to every last relative.
Sparrow's looks couldn't be called pretty, but she wasn't slow. She was walking before her first birthday, and by the time she turned two, she was chattering away. By the time she was three, Father watched her with a grin, wondering how much further she'd grow.
Sparrow was not slow.
She remembered that Mother had disappeared before she turned three, and she remembered how Mother had been before disappearing.
One day, Mother was suddenly gone. Father was thrown into a panic. The employees were shocked, bewildered, and a great commotion erupted over what on earth had happened.
He drew countless sketches of her face and searched, day after day.
Had she been caught up in some kind of incident? Father searched for Mother, but strange details gradually began to surface.
Information from Father's business dealings seemed to be leaking. There was no hard proof, but peculiar patterns showed up in the imports and exports from other countries.
Father built his work on personal trust, but that alone didn't sustain a business. Sparrow's quick mind—she inherited that from Father.
Father never dismissed even the slightest sense of unease. He reviewed the flow of the ledgers for the years since Mother had arrived.
And a certain country came into the picture.
Ri
, a country neighboring Saa. It had no diplomatic relations with Saa, but lay to the east, across the border.
Mother had claimed to be from Saa, yet her appearance more closely resembled that of the Ri people.
"I swear, I swear I'll find her for you, dear."
Father said this to Suzume while handing her a holy text, telling her to study. With nothing else to do, Suzume had a servant read the text aloud to her.
"Mother must have had her reasons. It must have been something she couldn't help."
When Father said this so gently, Suzume thought for the first time that he was a fool.
Years later, Father said he might have found Mother. Apparently, someone claimed to have seen a person in Ri who looked just like the portrait.
Father was overjoyed and boarded a ship bound for Ri.
At that moment, Suzume regretted not reaching out. She wished she had simply accepted that Mother was dead. If only the two of them, Father and daughter, had gone on living together in peace.
But that dream was not to be.
Father never returned.
What becomes of a child who loses both parents? Had Suzume been a little older, things might have been different. But for a daughter not yet ten, there was nothing she could do.
Within a month, Father's assets were seized and gone. The only things that remained in Suzume's hands were a few gold coins left behind by the servants who still felt some gratitude toward Father.
Had Father been in his right mind, he would have chosen a proper guardian for Suzume. Mother was beautiful — just how mad had she driven Father?
"If anything happens, go to the church."
Suzume clutched the gold coins tight and made her way to the church.
The clergyman was relatively decent. Pitying Suzume, he tried to place her in a poorhouse. But Suzume knew that wouldn't work. The few remaining gold coins would be taken as soon as they were found.
Suzume had already made up her mind.
At the church, there was a teacher who wanted to spread the faith eastward. She had heard he would be departing soon.
"Please take me with you."
Suzume said this before the stern-looking teacher.
"Children cannot come."
The teacher was a man of about forty. He had once served as a bodyguard for the head priest of a great church, and he was built solid. A man traveling to a foreign land full of heathens had to be able to handle himself.
Suzume was a child. She had no power whatsoever. She had only one thing.
"God, Are You Watching Us?"
Suzume knew the contents of the scriptures that had been read aloud to her over and over. She had been read to so many times. She could recite every single word and character aloud without a single mistake.
"..."
"Please take me with you."
If you have no value to offer, no one will spare you a glance.
To her father, Suzume was his daughter — and that gave her value.
To the servants, Suzume was the merchant's daughter — and that gave her value.
So Suzume demonstrated a different sort of value: she could be a useful pawn for the priest's missionary work. Above all, Suzume was her mother's daughter. She had features from the East.
After that, the priest grumbled for a while but ultimately gave in, and Suzume was glad of it. Perhaps he already knew that she had nowhere left to go.
"Even if you die, I won't be held responsible."
"I understand."
Suzume set off eastward with the priest. However, since they were conducting missionary work along the way, their pace was slow. It took a full year to cross Saō and reach Ri. But traveling through Ri proved incredibly difficult.
Along the way, the priest gave her scriptures written in various languages.
"Listen up. Language. Learn the languages. Don't get a single word wrong. Your life could depend on it."
The priest was gruff but looked after her well. Still, he was on edge because they had been chased down several times by people who opposed the church's teachings. There were times they were locked up and subjected to treatment bordering on torture.
"Heathens. I will never forgive you until you convert."
That was the priest's catchphrase.
It was a mystery what chain of events had brought them to Ri, a land full of heathens, but it didn't matter to Suzume.
Even within the church's traveling party, a child servant was not treated all that well. The party itself didn't have much in the way of funds, so there was no helping it. At times like those, she remembered what she was. Not the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Just a wretched little servant girl.
So she used her wits to get food. Sometimes, when she met a kindly-looking woman in town, she would cry at her side and occasionally receive a handout. There were children who would share their snacks if she made them laugh like a clown. On the rare occasions that a celebration offered a proper feast, she would eat as much as she could store away, stuffing herself with food she normally never got.
By chance, when she ended up traveling with a troupe of wandering performers, she learned magic tricks. If she practiced openly, she would get beaten up, so she climbed a tree and watched from hiding. When she performed those tricks for rich people, they started tossing her small coins.
The priest scolded her when he found out, but since he felt some guilt about not feeding her properly, the sweets and coins she earned were never taken away.
Suzume
is
a sparrow.
She changed her name. The teacher's lesson was that pretending to be a person of Li would increase one's chances of survival.
"I heard you're heading to the Western Capital."
"Yes."
The teacher and his group would apparently be staying in a town within Li where one of the larger churches had been built. They intended to use it as a base to spread their teachings.
"Shall we head that far?"
"I'll be fine."
Suzume was already twelve years old. In Li, she was approaching the age when girls were considered marriageable. Most people would think it dangerous. But Suzume had cut her hair short, almost shaved. Her small eyes and flattened nose were far from beautiful. She tagged along as a servant girl with a merchant caravan heading to the Western Capital.
By the time she reached the Western Capital, the new year had passed and she was thirteen. She walked around carrying a portrait of her mother that was already quite worn and tattered.
Suzume seemed to have a knack for being a clown. During the day, she performed tricks with comical movements to earn a few coins, and at night she slept in the waterways to escape the cold. After living like that for a while, she heard a rumor that someone resembling her mother's portrait could be found somewhere.
"I'm pretty sure I saw her at the biggest mansion. Well, it was just the once, though."
Believing those words, Suzume headed for the mansion.
The largest mansion in the Western Capital. There was no way someone as filthy as Suzume could get in. So she waited in front of the mansion for someone to come out.
"Brother, please wait!"
A voice was heard.
A sturdy young man emerged from the gate. Though called a man, he was probably only about fifteen years old. But he wore much nicer clothes than Suzume. His sharp brows would likely attract young women.
Next came a girl. The voice just now must have been hers. She was of marriageable age, with sharp eyes but a beautiful face. The lavish fabric was probably silk, the kind her father had handled when he was still in the business. It had been years since she'd touched any.
"Come on! Hurry up! Brother is going to escort you, you know. Be grateful! Ugh, if it weren't for Grandfather's request, he absolutely wouldn't do it."
Another girl followed behind the strong-willed one. This girl had beautiful red hair and jade-green eyes. Unlike the previous one, her gaze was gentle. She seemed not much different in age from Suzume, yet how could they be so different?
"
Gin
, watch your mouth."
A voice was heard.
A voice she hadn't heard in years.
"
Ha
"...you will be raised to the rear court. You should think about your position."
There she stood—a tall, slender woman with ivory skin and flowing curves.
The girl called Gin scowled. But Suzume couldn't care less about that. All she could wonder was why this beautiful woman, someone who was supposed to have been with her all along, was standing right there.
"Understood, Mother."
Gin said.
Mother. Suzume chewed on the word. The Li language—she had spent years painstakingly mastering it. It definitely meant "mother," but she couldn't understand why this girl was using it.
She had heard the story that her father's wife had had a husband and children before meeting him. But hadn't she said they died in a shipwreck?
"Motheeer!"
Another voice joined in.
It was a child. Smaller than Suzume. About eight years old.
"Take me with you too!"
"No. You're staying here to study with me. We'll go shopping another time, alright?"
"Aww!"
The child clung to the mother's legs.
Suzume couldn't comprehend what she was witnessing. The only reality thrust upon her was that every child around her mother was far more beautiful than she was.
Suzume's head was shaved clean with a razor, and her clothes were the same old rags she'd been wearing for years. Too poor to stay at an inn, unable to bat for days on end—nothing but a filthy, grimy wretch.
Without thinking, she poked her face out from behind the wall she'd been hiding behind. One step, then another, drawing closer to her mother.
"There's something dirty over there."
The girl called Gin spoke. Her eyes were clearly those of someone looking at filth—not merely worthless, but something whose very existence should not be permitted. Suzume was reminded of her father's gaze when he'd had her appraise junk.
"Gin, don't mind that."
The man said. "Don't mind that"—Suzume couldn't tell what meaning lay hidden in those words.
But Suzume looked at the beautiful woman.
The beautiful woman, just like Gin, cast a brief glance at Suzume, and without so much as a reaction, turned and led the children back into the estate.
Suzume didn't know what to do.
But she had followed her mother's back all this way. She believed that if her mother saw her, she would surely notice something.
But she hadn't even noticed.
What had all those years of chasing after her mother been for?
Had Suzume wanted a tearful reunion between parent and child? No, that wasn't it.
She wanted to know what value she had held in her mother's eyes. That was what she needed to understand.
That night, Suzume slipped into the estate.
She had to find out. She had to know what she had meant to her mother.
Years of being hounded by heretics had, if nothing else, made sneaking into the estate a simple matter. Moving from shadow to shadow, she searched for whichever room her mother might be in.
"You reek of rat, it's unbearable."
Someone spoke from directly behind her.
She spun around in a panic, but before she could even turn, she was pinned down from all sides.
"Homeless brat, are you a thief? I'll chop your fingers off."
The one holding her down was a man. Around thirty, maybe — she couldn't see his face with herself pressed to the ground.
"I'm not a thief."
Suzume chose her words as carefully and politely as she could. It was something her teacher had drilled into her. But it had the opposite effect.
"You're a foreigner, aren't you? Your accent is unusual."
Suzume's face was ground hard into the dirt.
"You're young, but what country are you from? Sahō? No, further west than that? What are you after?"
The man dragged her to a spot out of anyone's line of sight.
"I — I came to see my mother."
Suzume managed the words in halting fragments.
"Your mother? A gutter rat in rags like you has a parent working in this estate?"
A mocking laugh. No matter how much she was insulted, Suzume didn't care. She simply pulled the crumpled portrait from inside her clothes and held it out.
"...What is this?"
The man's voice changed. Confusion had crept into it.
The grip holding Suzume loosened.
"Are you that person's child?"
She didn't know who "that person" was. All Suzume could do was seize the opening created by the man's confusion. Escaping, however, was another matter. As for how to exploit the gap—
"Thirteen years ago, my mother was caught in a disaster and rescued by my father. I was born at that time."
"A daughter, huh. Ha ha, right, right. I suppose she did exist."
The man laughed.
"That woman's daughter—the one she discarded as unnecessary."
The word "unnecessary" rang through Suzume's skull.
"Unnecessary?"
"Yes. Unnecessary. You're a child with no use for returning to this estate. Years of hiding abroad in foreign lands—your only value was serving as proof of identity."
The past tense. So Suzume was no longer needed.
"I can't very well bring you back. For the role to be fulfilled, you're inevitably a redundant existence."
"A redundant existence."
The words struck Suzume's head like a hammer blow.
She had known. She had known the moment her mother left her and her father behind.
"What happened to your father? If he was a prosperous merchant, he must have remarried, no?"
If only he had been that kind of father. Her father had been kind, gentle, and foolish.
"When he heard my mother was in Li, he set out on a journey and died. The family collapsed. Nothing was left for me, so I came here chasing after my mother."
"You traveled carrying only that portrait?"
"Yes."
"Hmm."
The man appeared to be thinking. He studied Suzume the way one appraises goods.
Suzume understood. Right here, right now, her worth was being decided. If she had nothing to offer, she would most likely be disposed of as something unnecessary.
"I can speak my native tongue, as well as Liyan and Sā'ou. I also understand several other languages."
She recalled the texts her teacher had given her and recited foreign languages fluently.
"I can do arithmetic too. I once endured a week of hunger on nothing but water. I'm resistant to pain, and I'm handy with my fingers."
Suzume performed tricks she'd seen and imitated.
She'd do whatever it took. To survive, to find her worth.
"...What a fool. But you seem to have far more talent for it, don't you?"
The man muttered under his breath.
"Alright. Show me your abilities for a while. If you prove your worth..."
The man grinned.
"I'll make you my successor."
To Suzume, the man became her master.