The Absolute Imperative
23 September 2005
by Loren Dean

Shosuro Ridachi walked along with his companions, silent, his head bowed. Everyone was quieter today. The encounter with the mosquito-oni and the revelation of the Innkeeper's heinous crime had made for a sober day's travel. A part of Ridachi knew that he looked as introspective as the rest, and that part was glad for the mask that perception would provide.

Indeed, behind his mask, a silk scarf he had tied about his face, he was seething. He had violated what his master had called the Absolute Imperative.

He could hear in his mind his Master's stick whipping through the air. The old sage had never touched Ridachi with it, but the sharp whisper of its flight was punishment enough. That had been a very basic lesson: imagining pain was worse than pain itself. The Master used the sound of the stick's flight to signal his displeasure with an answer.

"You violated the Absolute Imperative," his imagined Master was saying in his head. "And what is that?"

"Never reveal that you know more than you should," Ridachi replied, the conversation entirely in his mind.

"You speak the words, yet you do not heed them," the Master said crisply. "And this is the path of capture and death. There can be no failure, Ridachi-san. To fail is to bring elimination."

And he had failed. It had turned to his advantage, but he had failed. It lay in the coins.

The Innkeeper had laid the coins on the table, bright and shiny, cheerful in the lamplight in spite of the threatening clouds above. But the coins had sparked interest in Ridachi, minted as they were in Shinjo lands, the little stamped mons on the coins signaling to the observant that they were far from home – much further from home than they should have been. Ridachi had suspected fraud in the form of counterfeiting, but the truth had been much worse. A late night investigation had turned up a bloodied kimono in a storeroom, and that had led to questionings and a horrible confession from the Innkeeper. A dead merchant. A body hidden beneath the floor. A restless soul bent on revenge. The night could have gone wrong in a thousand different ways. Fortunately, the pathetic Innkeeper had acted alone. With no support, the half-dozen samurai in his house easily wrung the truth from him, and saw to it that the body was dealt with properly, as well as the Innkeeper. The whimpering man's homely wife was even now on her way to the Daimyo with a letter from Nikana-san explaining the situation.

But coming out of the storeroom, Ridachi had allowed himself an indulgence, placing the coins the Innkeeper had given him on the shrine in the hall. At the time, it had seemed an effectively threatening signal to the Innkeeper that his secret was known. And in that, the Absolute Imperative had been broken.

"What would have happened if the Innkeeper had more sense?" the Master was speaking. His words were softer now, but the effort of listening for them made them sound more important. "He could have removed the coins, hidden them or destroyed them, claimed complete ignorance, and said that the Kimono came from some waylaid traveler. There was a ronin in the Inn that night. The Innkeeper could have blamed the whole thing on the wave-man, and said he had been coerced into a coverup. Without the coins to illustrate duplicity, he could have told any story he wanted."

This was all true, and it was only the Innkeeper's utterly stupid lie about pimping his wife that led to the wresting of the final truth from the man. And relying on other's stupidity, Ridachi well knew, was folly. He would have to rid himself of indulgence, and be more cautious in the future. There could be no failure.