“Ryaku’in refused,” Joji added. He seemed to find everything amusing. “He denies it, but many say he’s a great friend of the lord Keishi. He is angry that the former-emperor put such faith in Moro… he feels slighted. And he brings word of this new Gensei heir… There was a summit; arguments ensued; Moro splashed his face with water. Ryaku’in burned down Moro’s temple in retaliation, and here we are… Moro says these banished monks of Ryaku’in are here to take the retired-emperor’s head, traitors to the realm.”
Traitors, Yaeko thought.Everywhere I go.
“Can you do nothing?” she asked.
“We are but three travelers,” their leader, Gochi-no-Tai, said. “We were sent to try to prevent the fighting. We arrived too late…” He opened his hands. “Last year, he was their ally, but because of this offense it seems Ryaku’in is now determined to put down the retired-emperor’s court. He brings word of this new heir, this brother, who is an enemy…”
Yaeko brought her horse around. “Enough of this,” she shouted. “Form them up!” To the river monks, with their heads low and eyes hidden by their bamboo hats: “You might want to find somewhere safer.”
“We are on earth,” Gochi said. “Is that not safe enough?”
By now, Shigeo had returned, pale and coughing. Smoke was everywhere; the rioters had spilled beyond the gate. Seichi hollered for his bannermen, shouting, “Hold them back!” His voice hung thick with rage. But there were too many, and the soldiers of the royal city did not want to strike at holy men.
“Stop them!” Yaeko cried, but the guards had wavered. Proud Seichi turned about, wiping soot from his eyes.
“It’s no use. They won’t risk a blow to the reliquaries. I say, fine. Letthem solve their own problems.” He cantered back, with one last, disdainful look to the fire. “Make sure it doesn’t spread into the city.”
Coward, Yaeko thought. “This is madness.Where is Yora?”
“Supposed to be here,” Seichi called. He waved away a flurry of heat-blasted smoke, as the shouts of the clashing monks came to a pitch. He shouted, “Solve this!” then thundered off, leaving Yaeko and Shigeo to command the imperial guard, alone.
“Madness,” she muttered.
But Seichi was right: With a handful of mounted troops, she had no hope of containing the violence of two hundred monks in a brawl at the base of their own temple.
“Pull back!” she called, cursing. “This is madness. Pull back!”
She took one last glance at the monks, who were yelling at each other, making feints and shoving back and forth with violence. Their shouts echoed angrily into the coming night; their spears and longblades glinted in the deep, red-bodied sky. Behind them, the temple on the slopes of Mount Eizan continued to burn.
CHAPTERNINETEEN
Yora
Yora paused briefly as he passed a statue of the god-who-guards-the-gates.Might be a storm, he thought. It was raining under the heavy sky, deep, roaring sheets of water mixed with smoke from the manor ahead. The wind was picking up.
“Hail, Kouzeon,” he whispered, lowering his head, as the rain and the misty mountainside shifted in a gust of wind. “Light of mundane voices.”
Deer Valley lay before him, a manor nestled in its hidden dale on the far side of the mountain. At its entrance, by the pond, great beams of oak stood beside a sliding door, on which a paper hung from a string. It was a poem, he saw.In the evening light, cicadas fall silent…
One of mine, he realized. A well-known link from his early days at court.Watching the moon above…
Below, someone had added, in a different hand:
Let the moon rise. Let the sun fall.
The sun meant the court. The Autumn Throne. Its chancellor.
Seikiyo.
“The Keishi have failed!” The Hara monk, a sour-mouthed ascetic named Shun’en of House Oba, slammed his fist onto the table. “They have failed to enact their own laws, they have failed to uphold their promises to the landholders in the east, they have failed their subjects in the Kanden, andin every town and marketplace across the provinces! They have failed to manage the poor harvest in the corelands! And the triangle between Seizan, Omori, and Naruji? They barely have enough to feed their horses, let alone half the country! The fields are poor this year and signs say next year will be worse.”
The Hara clan, owners of Deer Valley, were regents of the court. But they were dissatisfied, angry at the rise of Keishi power, and now a branch had begun to split away.
“How much land do you have shares in, Shun’en?” Yora asked. “In those fields in Omori?”
“That is not the point!”
“The farmlands are doing all they can,” Yora said. “But the more we tax them, the worse it gets. We cannot sacrifice the Kanden plains for the sake of the Triangle. To abuse them will only increase the dissent that’s already there.”
