The Hara nobleman’s words echoed in his ears as he mounted his horse: “We are protecting the capital. We are doing what must be done.”
“And what is that,” Yora asked.
“Standing up against a warlord,” Ichiei Hoin said. “Just like your family had tried to do. We are standing up for what isright.”
Right?Yora thought.Right?My brother knew that what he did was right. And look what happened. He destroyed our clanline because of it. He got his head cut off. His righteousness didn’t save him. You really think your righteousness will save you?
“The great poet, Yora Shijin!” the ascetic Shun’en called when he left. “Look at him! He does nothing!”
Yora spurred his horse. It was almost sunrise – he had to get home, for the chancellor expected him in the morning. His sense of duty told him to report what he had heard, but his heart said something else – and that was the most troubling thing of all.
When he reached the lane, a stocky young warrior, Tano Kitsue of the Sanka-Gensei house, called out, and Yora met him in the shadows of the eaves. His scowl told Yora all he needed to know.
“The Kyohara cannot be put in charge of this,” Tano whispered. “These old men, they’d move against Seikiyo at the height of his powers, without an army to back them up. They think their rank will be enough? They’ll die, all of them.”
Yora said that he agreed, but had not been able to convince the older Hara patriarch who organized the group.
“Where were you when your brother stood up against injustice?” the Hara monk, Moro, had shouted when he left. “When the bounds of reason were torn apart, and a dictator pulled the puppet-strings to take control? When Asa’in was killed for it! When your family was destroyed for it!”
“I did what I needed to do,” he’d said, “to protect what we still had.” He went to Nariko, wife of his friend Shigeo: “Get your son to safety.”
Now, riding back to his residence in the dead of night, the voice rang in his mind and would not go away. It stabbed at him, furrowing deeper and deeper in his heart and repeating like an echo, an endless voice that whispered,Where were you, Yora?
Where were you?
He thought back to that blustery black afternoon when he returned to the city, after his census of the estates. He’d gone straight to the palace, to his lord, Seikiyo, reports in hand, folded under a crimson pouch of silk; he returned to the palace before he saw his own home. “Where is Kaji Getoh?” he’d asked. The servant’s reply: his retainer was guarding the east watch. So instead of meeting with his household guard, he sat heavily in the anteroom, feeling his fatigue.
I’m where I’ve always had to be, he thought to himself now, riding in the darkness.
But still he remembered how the weight had fallen on him. He remembered the sickness in his master’s eyes.
We are young no more.
In the days of young Emperor Kin’ei, whose death led to the dispute between his brothers Goshira and Sutoh, a storm lingered over the royal city for many days. Thick, black clouds like smoke, thunder, lightning. People said it was a curse from the gods; the court and their diviners had proclaimed there was a monster in those clouds, and so Yora had been sent.
He killed the devil nightbird, calling its eeriehyo, hyocry in the middle of that storm. Like a mountain thrush it appeared, quickly, in the smoke, darting here and there and framed by lightning. He drew an arrow to his bow. But the nightbird, Yora knew, was servant of the great god of the barrier, Hososhi; what would killing it bring?
Silence. That was what the aristocrats had said.Our diviners have shown: we must kill this beast. You, kijin, who serve the court; you will be the one to do it.
So he did.
Yora killed it with his ancient bow on that black-smoke night, watching with sharp eyes as the specter fell from the sky and landed in the river, where it was carried away.Hososhi forgive me, he had said; when he returned to the palace he was greeted as a hero.For what?he’d said.For going out in a dark night lashed with rain? For following orders? For killing a bird?
No, they told him: for killing enemies of the court.
It was symbolic. It was a statement of their rule. That’s all it ever was. Kijin would never be aristocrats, the nobles made sure no one could forget.You are those who serve, they said.You are those who use violence where others may not; how could you ever become one of us?
Instead, they called him lord protector. Instead, they gave him rank. Instead, he met Emperor Kin’ei, and was gifted the great swordNagareboshi – while his friend the lord Seikiyo wrangled chains around them all without their ken.They say we’ll never be like them, he thought now, riding home at last,but when their own war-guards control an army, and surround them with its force, what else is there to do?
Morning came, and with it, the yearly hunt led by Seikiyo and his clan. Yora had spoken to Prince Nioh during the last one, learned the first hints of this undoing; now, the prince was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the imperial entourage came through. A drum sounded. The young emperor, Ashihara, had arrived to watch while kijin called to one another and dashed into the woods. Seikiyo gazed at him across the distance of the soft, grass-pillow field, and offered him a nod. Ashihara, emperor, son-in-law, nineteen years old, gave the slightest bow, then waited in the shade of parasols. Seikiyo brought Yora to his side.
“They told me you were not at the mountain yesterday,” he said, as they made their way along the colored trees. “Dealing with the monks.”
“No, lord, I was in the estates. I didn’t hear until I returned.”
“Those hillocks?” Seikiyo raised his eyes. “What for?”
“One of the regent sons invited me to see his orchards. The oranges.”
