Astorm had wreaked havoc on the capital.
The sun refused to rise for days, the porters said; and afterward, everything was left in sickly twilight. They claimed it was the judgment of the gods, of spirits come to curse them for their ways. They said there hadn’t been such a darkness since the time the shaman-emperor slew the eight-headed serpent and redeemed humanity in the eyes of the heavens. But crops were failing. People were growing scared. Religious sects were fighting amongst themselves, and in the midst of this, on the tenth day of the fifth month, the Poet, Yora Shijin, returned.
He’d been on the road since dawn, half a province away and for three weeks in the home-countries before that, traveling, maintaining the personal touch on his master the chancellor’s relationships. He had turned back to the western capital in stages, stopping to give visit to the vast estates, but theirs was a mountain country, and in those provinces, it took a full week longer than expected.
Now rumors had come – rebellion was stirring in the east – and so Yora, as captain of the imperial guard, and the only loyal Gensei, had been summoned home. A shard of sunlight threatened its way across the gatehouse. He knew the guards, young men he’d tutored at the Hermitage in Yamano; they’d come of age and joined the ranks of his sovereign’s retainers, held positions in the great Hara and Keishi clans. Was that a source of pride? He wondered. Still, he was tired; half a hundred yearswere gaining on him. The Hall of Heaven, the Hall of the Morning, and the Twelve Council Halls loomed before him like sentinels, but at least the sun had come. After three days of storms, summer had fallen upon them bright and hot, with a warm breeze from the west and a brilliant sky tufted with cloud.
He watched the drifting white as he walked, counting the two hundred sixteen buildings of the imperial compound – no more and no less, in accordance with auspicious numbers of the Middle Path. They lay flat and low, preferring long halls with many rooms instead of multiple floors. A few nobles, he saw, had already started changing the arrangement of their gardens, their artificial lakes and streams, for the changing of the season.A world in miniature, they called it.For the Ten’in bring all within; and within, lies the world.
Already the sun was growing hot. Already the shouts of the merchants and fishmongers rose, trilling, into the air. A wooden clapper called midmorning. Fishermen on the coast had been out in the black predawn, toiling their lines, pulling their catch – it was a three-hour boat ride to Awa Bay, and already the travelers had packed wagons tight with ice from the Islands of the Wings. Around him the capital lay resplendent under hills, modeled on the ancient kingdoms of the continent across the sea where the Souchou now held sway, and like Souchou, the city lay in a grid, with long, wide roads running parallel to each other where ten horses could trot abreast. Hills west of the palace, the mountain to the north, the river to the east, low plains and the highway running south, and the temples on the mountainside: the capital was the largest city in the empire, and the most refined.
“Poet,” the guardsman called. Onoe Rokuro was one of Akiyo Musha’in’s men, of House Hara, a scarecrow with ropey arms whom he’d tutored in his days at the Hermitage. “Welcome back.”
“It’s been no time at all,” Yora joked. “Palace burn while I was off?”
Rokuro smiled. “Your weapon, ame’in.” All must leave weapons at the door when entering the palace. Yora unknotted his sword, long and beautiful with its blue and black motifs, its lacquered fittings along the sheath, augmented by fine indigo thread of the Gensei clan, representing sky and stars and moon.
“Nagareboshi,” Rokuro whispered reverently, “the Falling Star.”
“Keep it safe for me, will you? The former-emperor gave it to me.”
He adjusted his robe, pale green marked with ferns and the five-petaled flowers of his family, and crossed the threshold to find another former student, Tokeishi-no-Eiga Yaeko Oki, on the other side. The flyingbutterfly of the Keishi clan adorned her sleeves, its wings outstretched. “Shijin,” she greeted him. “The chancellor awaits.”
A possessed and earnest woman, Yaeko was less than thirty but had already made a mark among the ranks. She’d been his daughter Tsuna’s bedpartner once, a born warrior and of strong moral fiber, but she suffered under the burden of duty too: Yaeko was but a child when the rebellion occurred, and she had seen her family destroyed. Of all her house, only some unknown, distant cousins remained loyal to the Keishi and the throne, while the rest of her clan had tied themselves to the Gensei Katsusada Asa’in’s rebel forces – including her father, who was executed when the fighting was done. The loyal relatives themselves were killed by Gensei troops before Asa’in fled.
My own brother, he thought.
Yaeko, he knew, had a strong desire to bring her family back to the power and prestige they used to have, and felt the need to prove herself to their Keishi lords because she was the only one of her family left. “We were great,” she’d told him once. “We were senior guards of the old Keishi… until my father chose to face them on the field.”
I can’t let that happen again, she’d told him.I can’t end up like they did.
“I owe you my service, you know,” she said now, leading him through the halls. “I wouldn’t be here, if it weren’t thanks to you.”
How was he to answer? “We do what we can,” he said. He was brother of Katsusada, after all; brother of the man who’d ruined her family… and her teacher, at the same time.Yes, he thought,she will be tested yet.
Seems we’re all trying to make up for the past.
“How is Lady Kai?” she asked.
“Well,” he answered. “She’ll arrive this afternoon, you can ask her yourself.”
Ahead of them, two ge’in servants were busy hanging a great picture-scroll outside the chambers. Yaeko nodded. “It’s you, lord. Look. Seikiyo commissioned it. ‘Legendary Yora Shijin, the poet who slew the devil nightbird…’”
“Ah,” Yora sighed, scratching his head. “I wish they wouldn’t, it’s embarrassing.”
“Your deeds are famous.”
“It’s a young man fighting in that picture. I see no young man now. He’s much better-looking than me!”
“Give yourself some credit, ame’in. You saved the emperor more than once.”
“I’ve tried to do what I could.” He sighed. “‘When you must seek shelter, look for a big tree.’ I was lucky. That’s all it was.”
“I thought you always say we have to make our own luck,” she teased, as they neared the door.
“Did I?”
He grinned. She followed him into the palace of the sky-seen nation, and its chancellor, who was waiting within.
