“If you never listen to me, how will you ever expect to display the refinement and knowledge they will want of you when you return to court?”
“If I go to the capital, they’ll kill me,” Sen said. “What’s the point?”
“Exile may not be for ever,” Yozora said. “When you marry, you will move into your wife’s home. You may be required to present yourself to the court once that occurs. What will people say if you appear with no knowledge of the Souchou classics? The great kingdoms of the continent had wisdom a thousand years before our emperors were ever born, when the gods and monsters fought over our lands. They were the rulers of the human world once.”
“Then why don’t they believe in our gods and the spirits of the world?”
“Different languages use different words,” Yozora said. “To call something another name is not to change its sense. Hm? It is what lies underneath the words that counts. Tens of thousands of years ago, they say, the seas were calm, and beautiful. Humankind lived across countless countries and continents, vast amounts of land that are no more. But the seas have risen. The old lands have been eaten by the sea. Our islands are sacred. The gods dipped a heavenly spear into the raging storm, and the drops of seawater that fell when they removed it became our islands… Our mountain, the barrier mountain, was one of those first lands. Or so my family has always said. In the West, they think it different. But after all of it, a thousand generations of life and death led to the creation of your clan from the imperial line. You are its heir, Hoshiakari, as is your sister. You must live up to it.”
“This isn’t my land,” Sen said.
“Nihira will inherit his mother’s lands equally with Hakaru, but you must form a house of your own. Your own manor to manage in the name of the capital.”
“Yes, master. I know. You’ve said.”
“You are of a great warrior house,” Yozora told him, not unkindly. “The time may come when they call you to serve. Now: what are the tasks of kijin-tai?”
“Kijin are the highest embodiment of what it means to be a warrior,” Sen said by rote. “They walk the line of life and death; and become like gods themselves. Ghosts of gods of the dead. The task of the warrior is to serve, to reflect on righteousness within themselves; to find a lord and serve in a trustworthy manner, with respect, and with the compassion of Kouzeon, the sound of justice.”
“That is what they say.”
“That is what they say,” Sen agreed.
“You must be mindful of your position in this world,” Yozora croaked. “Not many are so privileged. So yes, duty is our way. Service is our way. We do this to protect the fabric of the realm. The great monk of land-and-sea once said, ‘The low classes, farmers, artisans, and the like, their lives are simple. They have not wealth nor power, and their labor does not offer time for them to follow and fulfill the Way.’ Hm? A warrior must put aside all other things and pursue the Way over everything. We must protect and punish the common classes as is needed, as the way of heavenly morality on earth decrees. We serve the Ten’in emperors. The nobility have hundreds of manors throughout these lands; it is up to us, as warriors, to look after them.”
“They hire warriors to do their dirty work for them,” Sen replied. “It’s always been the same.”
“And why does this happen? What do you think?”
“Nobility and the court don’t want to leave their palaces,” Sen said. “They don’t like going to the countryside, they use warriors to manage them instead.”
Yozora dipped. “So you know what happened. Our forefathers gained power because they were brought into the empire’s service and assimilated. And so, were ‘barbarians’ no more. Hm? In short, even the war of succession between Goshira and his brother Sutoh was a war between the new system of outsiders becoming the warrior power, and the old system of imperial rule. Goshira supported the new warriors because it suited him. And he won.”
Dusk. Steaming rice, half polished. Wine in the warmer. Sen’s mind wandered pleasantly, the early evening swooped down around them, and his stewardmother, Lady Iyo Ogami’in, sat resting by the fire.
“Son,” Iyo said. “Are you sure it was her?”
Sen straightened.Son. Iyo Ogami’in always called him that, though they were not related, not by blood. The bond that his uncle Yora and his father had once forged with the eastern clan beyond-the-mountains held strong, and bound him to her, under her protection, for all these many secret years. Officially he was Iyo’s ward, the son of a sister who had died. Officially, he was of the Kitanohara line. Iyo was sixty, graceful lines at the corners of her eyes, hair slowly turning gray, and a fiendish kind of wisdom lingered in her smile.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think so.” In the days and weeks since the incident with the western monks, Sen had become convinced that somehow, that no’in woman who had the same jade bead as he did – a Gensei bead – was connected to his family and the events of their deaths. He felt a flicker of memory whenever he thought about it, and at length he had gone to his stewardmother and begged her until she revealed the truth – that he had been found with a no’in girl on the night that his mother died. That they had been found together, hiding, as the town of Azemichi burned around them. And that Yora, the great poet and general of the Gensei clan, had saved them both, taken the both of them here.
“They say this is a time of changes,” Nihira said, reclining at his place by the hearth. He was eating with his brother Hakaru. “People in the fieldtowns. They claim to have seen the inexplicable, supernatural thingsthroughout the woods… strange sounds and tricks of the light… They say, ‘Something is coming.’”
“I want to talk to her again,” Sen said. “Maybe she knows something, about…”
“Is she to be your bride? Would be fitting.” Hakaru laughed. “‘The out-cast will meet.’”
“She’s not an outcast, she’s no’in,” Sen said.
Hakaru shrugged. “That’s what no’in are.”
Sen found himself looking at his hands. “Still. I was wondering.”
“What does your tutor say?”
“Yozora just wants me to read old books from the continent. Who cares about Yozora. When I steal off to read the more interesting ones, he gives chase with his limping leg, shouting at me, ‘Akuma Dai-oh was never such an evil one! The Serpent have your tongue!’”
“He is protective of you,” Iyo said. “He served your family, once.”
