She paused. “We were defeated because we weren’t bloodthirsty enough, Sen. Because the imperials were willing to do anything – anything – to take what they wanted. Even if it meant unspeakable horror. Even if it meant upsetting the gods. They used their dark magic and corrupted themselves, they turned themselves into those who killed for power, rather than those who had power, through stopping killing. The Iteki weren’t willing to do that. They cared too much.”
“About what?”
“About the earth. About their souls… We’re still paying that debt. All of us. The very houses you want to know now are the ones who beheaded my great-grandfather with a blunted sword.”
“I know,” Sen said, quietly. “But your grandfather made peace.”
Iyo looked away. “Better to assimilate than stand out.”
She released a little feather off the balcony, watching as it whirled and spun away in the mountain air. “I know very well what I’ve benefited from, and what I’ve paid, to get to where I am. But I’d be lying if I said I did not hate what I’m now the representative of. They call this the country of gold for a reason, Hoshiakari… But the thing that is eating at my heart is that I know the things my people had been fighting for have all been given to me on the back of compromise and submission. I’m only where I am, it has only been made possible, because I’m standing in the pool of complicity and on the shoulders of those who came before me… who fought for what we now have, and who died for it… And I’ve done nothing but benefit from that choice. It would make the spirits of those who came before me shrink away in shame, and I will do it anyway, because I know the fires that the only alternative will bring.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Sen said. “It doesn’t have to be the only way.”
“I wish you were right.” Her hands brushed the fine grain of the wood-rail, and she breathed deeply, as if in one breath she could hold the entire world inside herself, and let it free. “Maybe one day, you’ll prove that you are. Come. Let’s get home. The weather has turned again.”
Sen looked up and saw a flat, slate-colored sky. “It’s been like this all the time, these days.”
“Yes,” Iyo said, eyes passing through the clouds. “Yes, it has.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
Rui
They’re taking over everything, Rui thought.
All around her the Gensei camp grew outward like an occupying force. The outvillage road lay burdened with the weight of their carts, their heavy-footed men. Some called to her as she passed, hooting, whistling. She ignored them. She hadn’t been able to talk to Sen since they’d arrived; it was like she’d been erased, discarded, now that the kijin came. Now that Sen had his family again.
“Who cares, anyway,” she muttered. They wouldn’t let her in the castle, so she decided to watch what these soldiers were up to on the field. Soon they shouted at her: go away.
They don’t know me, she thought.They don’t know my heart.She could shoe a horse. Build fires. Thatch a roof so it never leaked in the rain. She could heal broken bones after a fall. Sing to horses so they were not afraid.I can do all of this and more and nobody cares. I could walk like a boy through this city, I was a crow monk and no one wanted to come near. I could go as I pleased.
Except there. Except the fortress. Except their house.
The house of the family who brewed rice-wine near the gate.
The family of the boy, Idachi.
I could pass for a ghost here, she thought.I’m living, but what life do I have? I wait for peace, and always the wind blows it away. I find myself staring at them, now and again, and never have the courage to speak.
She was about to leave for the mountain when she saw them. The boy’s parents had come out, as many of the merchants and the traders had, to watch these newcomers set their camp. As she passed her eyes over the crowd, she saw the Honnen couple staring back, staring at her.
I should go to them, she thought.I should say something.
She couldn’t bear it. Instead, she turned away.
Hurried back up the mountain trail in shame.
She wandered to the little shrine, sat trying to repair a damaged bind of reeds. There Sen found her. Rui didn’t know what to say – everything had become so complicated, now that the clan had arrived, now that the Gensei said,Come home.
He stepped into the hollow, a small, round place just beside the shrine where the trail split off and a shallow fold of earth dipped down. A quiet place, here in the leaves, where the forest and its sights and sounds seemed gentle; the broken turf, the fallen tree, still blanketed with fronds and the fuzz of moss and insects. A place of emerald green now turning to the flame of autumn, where the air grew chill, even in the sun, where you might glimpse a harvest moon through branches; and where shadows danced upon the forest floor with the quickness and sure motions of a child, singing.Those are the gods, Granny Chie told her once, when she was young. The older woman brought her out to collect fresh mountain herbs, bundled them together with her loop of string. In autumn, when the days turned sharp and the dew-chill layered on the grass, the shadows grew all around them, quick, fleeting. The writing of the gods, old Chie said. They tell us things.
Now Sen sat beside her; now the shadows danced. He grasped one hand about the other, fingers looped around a wrist.
“I can’t stand the castle,” Rui said, looking off.
The afternoon sky grew larger, vast and endless, marked with tattered cloud. Her anger was disintegrating. Sen seemed unsure what to say. “I can’t imagine what it’s like.”
Rui shook her head. “Guess not.” She stopped, overwhelmed by a simple hopelessness. “You people think you have to save everyone and you don’t even see what you’re doing. Maybe you don’t care.”
