“Ah.” He resumed his ponderous pace. “You know I don’t trust them anymore. The Hara. Not these days.”
“They’re well aware,” Yora began.
“Well, they must be.” Seikiyo plucked an unripe fruit: persimmon. “Anything worthwhile?”
“No.” Yora smoothed his robe. “No, nothing useful.”
He made his way back to the gates, through a sandy path and past some stablehands and horses. From the edges of the lawn, young Ashihara watched it all, as though he wished that he could change into a statue behind his silken screens. He held a thin, soft hand to his mouth, and squinted, taking in the sight. He would watch the hunt from here; no eyes could see him through the screens, for an emperor must be constantly a presence, and yet, apart. Yora bowed to him; the air stung.He must feel cold, in winter, among so many of Seikiyo’s men.
The young emperor seemed to see him through the silk. Already he must know his power had been ended; whatever his father the retired-emperor controlled was slipping away, and he was now a puppet. Meanwhile, the court turned on itself, like beasts.
Eventually Ashihara moved his presence away from the killing, and back along the little path that would return him to his city. There, hands crossed calmly over silken cream and pale-green robes: his wife, LadyHagane, Seikiyo’s daughter, the mother of the heir. She nodded to him, gestured to show the way.
Yora stood quietly, gazing at the field, the edge of trees, the practice area and the arrows breaking through the line of targets made of straw. A group of hunters had returned, passing the rise of the hillside at the northwest wood. He watched the bows, the swords, the men coming in with an animal strung up. When Ashihara glanced at them – his chancellor’s men, who leaped through wood and brush and tracked the sacred blood of deer – Yora wondered what he saw.
Death, it was said, was unholy in the eyes of the enlightened. To kill was to be unclean, and courtiers would never so besmirch their souls. They had outlawed executions for two hundred years in their search for purity. They would not kill.But now, where are we?A court, surrounded by killers. Hunters. Men who knew the scent of blood.
He watched the young emperor depart, head bowed against the chill, the splintered shards of light. Wind fell in. Autumn settled. Ashihara seemed resigned. He seemed to understand his fate more than Yora knew. Above them, the hawks began to scream. The emperor was a symbol for good in the world, they seemed to say. But the cutthroats had to run it.
CHAPTERTWENTY
Sen
“The great houses are angling for attack,” Tokuon said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
It was morning. Kitano castle glimmered in cold sun, the swallows called, and the breakfast trays had just been pulled away. Lord Tokuon, encamped, told of a gathering army comprised of bannermen from Amayari, and Tokeishi-Zusho soldiers who declared they would be loyal to the clan-heir, Kai. In the capital, the regent house, the Hara, were posturing against the Keishi for control of what was once their place, amassing followers in the central valleys while the Keishi owned the west and the islands of the Wings. In the provinces, the Gensei had begun to gather under Tokuon’s flags.
And now, he said, House Zusho had begun to pull away from their obeisance to court. They were a sub-branch of the Keishi, but with the rise of discontent across the valleys and the plains, many among the central houses had changed sides, and turned against the man they called the usurper, Seikiyo.
Yora and Kai Gekko’in, stuck in the capital, were as yet unaware their eastern lands had risen on the march.
So Tokuon had said.
The low tables were full: on one side, Iyo, her husband Azamaro, and her sons Nihira and Hakaru. Sen sat with Jobo below them. Rui had not been allowed inside, and was forced to wait beyond the gates. Because of her class. Because of her crime.
“It’s a brand,” she’d said, without surprise. “A mark that never goes away.”
Now Sen sat beside his stewardmother.
Now discussions had begun.
“They’ve come to conquer us!” Hakaru shouted, glaring. “No good will come with sheltering these people.”
Nihira remained cautious. “Would you rather shelter the Autumn Throne? That’s the alternative. The empire won’t sit idly and let you mock them, and if you think—”
“Enough,” said Iyo. “They are our guests.”
“We’ve seen what these ‘guests’ will do,” Hakaru spat. “What did they do to our forebears? They’ll do the same. They’ll do it to all of us. That’s what waits. A rusty sword.”
Iyo remained silent; Nihira bit his lip. Finally, Azamaro spoke. He stood, with his full beard and solid shoulders, said, “Lord Tokuon. What news from the west?”
Tokuon, clad in the colors of the Gensei clan, had a high, noble face and sharp eyes, dark as ravens. He spoke little, and gave the impression of a man carved of stone. When they met on the road, Sen noticed the flags held by his standard-bearers did not have the flower motif of their larger kin-group, but rather, a three-tiered mountain in a circle, the symbol of his lands.
He sat, his hawk’s face angled downward, flanked on all sides by a dozen warriors whose names Sen was supposed to know. To the right sat Tokuon’s wife, Ohori Tsuruhime, smooth and calculating, renowned as the best warrior in the Kanden; her brother, broad-shouldered Nitta-no-Kanesuke Daijin, called the Shiden, who laughed at everything but had no humor in his voice. To the left, their bodyguard, Masakari Saito, a warrior-monk the size of a bear and just as strong; and finally, Sen’s older cousins, Tsuna and Myorin, daughters of his uncle Yora, who was with Sen’s sister in the capital.
“Our uncle Yora is caught in the claws of the imperial court,” Tokuon was saying. “His back is to the wall, and instead of a sword in his hand they make him use a brush. He needs our help.”
But Tokuon was not the only foreign lord to have arrived in Kitano. A week before, an envoy had come, calling for loyalty to the Autumn Throne and the Keishi clan, whom Iyo nominally supported by nature of their treaty. The chancellor, Seikiyo, demanded Iyo pledge her troops to the capital’s defense.
