“The Poet.” She seemed to flutter. “He has been stripped of his rank.”
Hayo uttered, “So it is a coup.”
“It is one definition of peace, against another,” said Yoshiko. “The Keishi have no intention of sharing power.”
“The Keishi.Yourfamily,” Hayo said.
“Yes. So you must go. Please, these roads are no longer safe. Ashihara is abdicating. Seikiyo has granted the succession to my grandson.”
“A child,” Kai said.
The smile was cold as winter rain. “We’ve had child-emperors for decades. Much easier to control.”
“Goshira would never let him…”
“Goshira can’t hold things any longer.Ourdaughter wed the young emperor.Ourdaughter gave him an heir. He steps down: the rest is simple. Seikiyo is close to open war with the retired-emperor. Goshira has beenimprisoned. But rumors arrive. Another heir, they say, one from an opposing line: PrinceNioh’sson… The boy is Goshira’s grandchild, and Goshira will support his claim to the throne. It will not end well.”
Hayo scowled. “A trick.”
Yoshiko shook her head. “I told you, I have no wish for bloodshed. I only fear I’ve still not done enough.”
She left at sunset, open grief now on her face. Her handmaids and her guards were waiting at the foot of a carriage. “Believe me or don’t,” she said. “I can’t make your choice. But do not linger, Moonlit Kai. You’re not safe outside your family’s halls.”
With that, she made her way along the road, up to the palace, and the world that was changing underfoot. Kai watched until the sky dimmed, and the mountains grew dark, and for a moment it seemed they were in a hidden world.
“They’ll come for us,” Hayo said.
Kai turned to her. “I know.”
She left her aunt’s home the following day. Slipped past the gate and the guardhouse, and made it up the slopes of Mount Eizan to stay at one of the hot springs under an assumed name. She didn’t tell Hayo where she was going. She felt terrible about it – but she couldn’t put her family in any more danger.
If it’s me they want, they can find me back in Zusho, she’d told herself the night before, packing her few things. The capital had never wanted her. And it felt, somehow, strangely liberating to know she could be rid of it, herself.I tried, she thought, as she passed the market roads leading up the imperial mountain.I tried.
She knew her aunt and uncle would be worried, but the note she left by Hayo’s twin blades told them she would be all right.I’m going home, it said,where I won’t need swords anymore. She only hoped her disappearance wouldn’t draw attention to them even further. She hoped the Keishi matriarch had not been lying to them, that it had not been a trap.
As the morning sun shone brightly through the windows, she kneeled beside her small bundle and once again prepared to depart. It was quite a different feeling to be on the road on foot, alone, and knowing you were hunted; the last time she had come, she’d ridden in her stewardfather’s retinue, surrounded by Zusho retainers and shaded from the fat late-summer sun. Now it was winter, a year later, and she was alone.
She was tying the bundle when a small sound brought her attention to the sliding door.
The matron was outside, just visible through the thin paper, nodding in apology. “Ame’in. A message has arrived.”
Kai rose. “What message? Who is it?”
“They say, from your uncle. From the Poet.”
Tying her sash about her waist, Kai crossed the washroom, with its open balcony facing the springs on the side of the mountain behind her, a deck leading out and nothing but trees and forested mountainside beyond. A cold wind touched her back.
She hesitated.
There was a looming quiet on the other side of the paper-lined screen door. It sent a shiver down her spine, set her on edge. She kneeled, uncertainly, reaching for her small knife from where it lay among the folds of her belongings. For once, she wished she’d kept Hayo’s sword.
“Matron,” she called, tense. The matron’s voice wavered on the other side.
“Ame’in? Everything all right?”
“You have the message?”
She heard a shuffle.
