“To any extent, it seems the monks are searching for something,” Seikiyo continued. “They were seen fighting, in a no’in town. With one of the Ogami’in’s sons. And it makes me wonder…”
Yora waited.
“Goshira sends his servants to the east,” Seikiyo said. “He seeks to use his influence as retired-emperor to get those monks to do his bidding. Why?”
He put a hand on Yora’s shoulder, and the two old warriors returned to the grand hall, side by side. “You are my strong hand,” he said, “the only loyal member of the Gensei family. I want you, Yora, to find the truth of this. Why have there been whispers in the east? Is Former-Emperor Goshira using some sorcery against us? Is he stirring up the monks? Is it something else? I need to know. You will find the truth of these rumors. And when you find them, root them out. We need this taken care of, quietly. I don’t want to burden the emperor-who-reigns.”
“As you wish,” Yora said.
“Good.” Seikiyo offered him a hand. “I don’t need to say, but I’ve allowed your family’s daughter to live in peace these last eighteen years. Kai Gekko’in survives but with our grace. That was my gift to you, Yora,for your loyalty. Understand that. She didn’t need to suffer her father’s fate.” He gave Yora a pointed look. “So make sure that she does not.”
“I understand,” said Yora.
“I’m trusting you, poet,” Seikiyo said, before Yora bowed low, and left his friend in the great council hall. Seikiyo called out when he was at the door. “Find them, Yora,” he said. “Find out what these monks are doing in the east. Find out what they want there. Find out what they know.”
CHAPTERFOUR
Rui
The wheelbarrow slid down into the muck with a sickening lurch and Rui was thrown sideways, hitting her head upon the stone. “Fuck!”
It spilled over the road, and soon the wet gravel and dirt were both covered in manure. She shouted wearily, struggling to push it out. “Come on, you stupid thing!”
Rui Misosazai was nineteen years old, and she was fighting with a wheelbarrow full of shit. Above her, the high-built road stretched off toward the slope of Kitano to the east, dotted with little houses and thatched roofs.
“Want some help?”
Old man Goro sat perched on the side of his hill, watching her. His tattooed arms were crossed against his chest. They were old marks, she knew, Iteki marks, of birds and beasts and sea; of the people who’d lived in these lands for thousands of years, since before there was an empire. She shoved herself against the cart again. “No.”
It didn’t move. In fact, it slid down, even deeper. She slipped, banged her shin against the side. “Damn it!”
“Come,” the old man said, working his way to the road. “I may be old, but I know how to right a cart.”
Goro’s hut lay at the far end of the village, upon a barren hill with maple trees overlooking the shallow-paddied husk of earth he called his “field”. Above them, Mount Kanzan stood like a god over the junction ofthe two rivers, the Kitano and Oshuno, which carved their lines north, eventually forming the boundary between Lady Iyo’s lands and the towns of the mountains. Like most peasants in early summer, he was preparing to plant the next year’s rice in wet plots of clay and mud, and all across the outvillage, no’in were collecting manure with which to fertilize it.
“Tell ’em thank you for me,” he said, when they were done, wiping sweat from his brow. “For sending you. Maybe I’m blessed with luck for once in my life. Aha!”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Rui said.
He laughed. “Well, the Wild Rui Misosazai’s come to help me, eh? It’s a miracle. I already got good luck!”
She couldn’t help but smile. The old townsman settled down onto the fence and brought out a bamboo flask. “So. First you bring me firewood, then you offer to help me manure the field. What gives?”
She couldn’t avoid it any longer. She stood before him, opening her hands. “Elder, I need your help.”
In the days and weeks after her encounter with the monks, nothing felt the same. Western penitents, and priests of the mountain temples near the capital, had come, they said, to celebrate the wedding of Lady Iyo of Kitanohara to the lord of Kurogane in the north.
But they were everywhere now.
She saw them in the little square by the watchtower, clapping wooden blocks together to attract attention. “A savage from the mountain towns, a barbarian, a hairy shrimp-eater! A no’in has offended us!”
“We have taken it up with the lord,” they cried. “Be advised! Understand what the consequence will be, if it is determined you have hidden such a one!”
Rui had slipped back into the shadows of the miller’s hut, worried that at any moment, the head monk, the big man with square shoulders and a broken scowl on his face, would see her. Who knew what would happen then.
The lady of Kitanohara, people were whispering, was angry because they had killed a serow in her borders. But the monks?
The monks raised their icon of the goddess Kouzeon, shouting, calling Rui a blasphemer.
