“My family has led to nothing but pain. Look at you. Look at who you are. Old, dying of corruption of your heart. They said your lungs ail you; they don’t. It’s your heart. It’s eating you away. Your brothers died when they tried to kill our lord and my father was executed when he thought he could surrender.”
“Howdareyou,” her mother said. “How dare you speak to me like that… I gave birth to you. I raised you. Andthisis how you repay—”
“You didn’t raise me,” Yaeko shouted. “You abandoned me. I was raised by House Keishi and that is where I’ll stay.”
At the end, when her coughing had subsided, her mother spoke so quietly that Yaeko almost couldn’t hear. “You’re no daughter of mine.” Fury spasmed on her face, but buried beneath it, in the glinting of her eyes, was pain.
And fear.
Because she knows I’m right, Yaeko told herself.Because she has wasted her life living a fantasy of revenge. She has withered away.
It’s my life now.
I will never become like you.
Yaeko rose, and, as her mother coughed and spat blood onto a handkerchief, she turned away. She left her mother to meet her fate. Left her to die in the stuffy, airless room with the windows boarded up, to remain with nothing but the truths of what she’d done, with a scowl on her face and the sliding door slammed shut.
I will never become like you, Yae told herself again.Never.I can see clearly now. I am the eyes and ears of the Keishi, I am like the stone lion-dogs. I see everything and I say nothing… And I will always protect those who have truly protected me.
Now she gripped her reins beside Shigeo Keishi and his guard as they crossed the Gate of the World. Mount Eizan towered above them, its view obscured by smoke. They were halfway up when Seichi, the youngestKeishi brother, arrived. His helm was marked by an arrowhead, each lamellar plate woven with shades of Keishi turquoise and gold. At thirty, he was larger, and rougher, than his brothers. He was cursing already.
“Brother,” Shigeo called. “What’s going on?”
“The monks,” Seichi rasped, proud eyes glaring. He had a scar, she saw, above his brow. “I fuckingknewthis would happen… The pagoda’s gonna burn.”
He pointed with thick hands toward the gate. Smoke was billowing freely over the five-storied wooden tower at the heart of the temple. “They say this is the Age of Plagues,” Yae muttered, “yet they dothisto their own temples?”
A crowd had gathered before the gate, two distinct groups of monks crashing together like a pair of waves in a channel. She saw three river monks, men in long, dark robes with round bamboo hats over their heads, and went to them as Shigeo tried to get the others to calm.
“You! What is this?” The fire roared; the scuffle swept through the crowd.
“We are mere dedicants,” said the first monk. He was fifty or sixty, a kind face squinting with laugh-lines around his eyes. His head had not been shaved of late, and remained covered with gray-streaked stubble. “Visiting from the Temples of the River.”
The second monk stood taller, round of face and belly; his ruddy cheeks made him seem even younger than he was. “My name is Joji, ame’in. The teacher Moro asked us to help mediate, but it seems the time has passed…”
He gestured, somewhat helplessly, at the shouting monks in the street behind them. A few had begun to advance, throwing punches, wrestling each other to the ground while their brothers tried to pull them back, their headscarves fluttering in the wind.
“The monks of the Mountain and the Gate are raising arms against each other again,” said the first dedicant, who introduced himself as Gochi-no-Tai.
“They conflict over interpretation of the sutras?”
Round-faced Joji laughed. “Nothing like that. This is politics!”
“This?” Yaeko glanced about, incredulous. “This is violence.”
“All politics is violence, ame’in,” Gochi said. “Everyone knows.”
“What happened?”
The third dedicant, smaller and thinner than the others, with a handsome face and a fresh, blue-shaven head, stepped forward. He indicated a large, squat man with a once-broken nose, shouting among the throng.
“Ryaku’in. The banished monk. He’s returned as leader of the Mountain. Now he is challenged by a rival, Moro, over the future of their temple… and Goshira’s patronage…”
“We hear rumors, ame’in.” Gochi came close. “Storms in the north, tidal waves at the coast; demons in white walking the land. Now, this exiled monk Ryaku’in, he returns with troubled words. He says the second Gensei child is alive.”
“What Gensei child?”
“Lady Kai has come to the capital,” the thin monk said. “But now Ryaku’in returns, he claims she has a brother. I am Aiichi, ame’in. I brought the news. Moro offended Ryaku’in at their last retreat, demanded that the Mountain join the Gate, in resisting Keishi rule in support of the retired-emperor.”
