Chapter 19 Kaneko
Kaneko
We’d only spent three days in the Imperial palace, and I still caught myself gaping like a river fish every time I rounded a corner to find a new, ever more wonderful painting or tapestry or carving.
Most were as old as the Empire itself, probably older.
A few, servants claimed, were gifts from the gods themselves.
I doubted those claims, though some of the craftsmanship certainly looked divine.
The corridors alone defied comprehension—some wide enough for five men to walk abreast. Every surface told a story.
The walls bore murals of the Empire’s founding, dragons coiled around the throne or flying high over battles.
Their golden scales were fashioned from actual gold leaf embedded in the paint.
When sunlight streamed through the latticed windows, those dragons appeared to breathe.
“Look at this one,” Yoshi whispered, stopping before a particularly elaborate panel depicting the first emperor receiving the dragon’s blessing.
His fingers hovered near the surface, not quite touching the paint, reverent despite his frustration.
“The detail in the scales . . . I could study this for hours and still find new things.”
“We’ve studied it for hours,” I reminded him gently. “Yesterday and the day before.”
His shoulders sagged. “Right.”
And yet, for all its beauty, the palace had transformed into something else these past days. War had descended upon paradise.
Generals marched through those magnificent halls like warlords, their armor clanking against the silence, their boots thundering across floors meant for silk slippers.
Twice that morning alone, Yoshi and I had thrown ourselves against a wall as formations of high-ranking Samurai charged past, their faces grim beneath their helmets, their hands never leaving their sword hilts despite racing through the heart of the Empire.
They moved like sharks through water—and everything else had to flow around them or be crushed.
“Did you see that one’s face?” Yoshi muttered once they’d passed. “He looked right through me, like I wasn’t even there.”
“We’re not warriors preparing for battle,” I said, though the dismissal had stung more than I cared to admit. “To them, we’re just obstacles to walk around.”
“We could be warriors preparing for battle if anyone would let us. You’re as skilled as half the soldiers in the army, and I . . . well . . . I have strength I can’t control, but it’s something.”
“You’re something, all right,” I teased.
The Garden of Eternal Autumn, where maple trees remained forever suspended between green and fire, now hosted strategy meetings.
Maps were spread across stone benches meant for moon-viewing.
The pavilion where Emperor Takashi had written poetry now sheltered arguments about supply lines and defensive positions.
Tiny silver bells that hung from purple-blue roof tiles still chimed in the breeze, but their music was drowned out by shouts and barks of orders.
Yoshi and I tried to sit in the garden, seeking some semblance of peace, but a minister shooed us away like stray dogs. “This is no place for children,” he snapped, not even asking our names before dismissing us.
Children.
Yoshi was the heir to Anzu Han, and I . . . well, I’d killed men.
But here, in this palace, we were nothing.
So we sat and watched the place evolve before our eyes.
Even the servants changed. They still moved like ghosts, but now many carried messages instead of tea, weapons instead of flowers.
The Hall of Ancestors, with its centuries of Imperial portraits, had become a thoroughfare for military advisors. Yoshi and I watched them stride past those ancient eyes without even glancing up, their own eyes fixed on scrolls.
“My grandfathers are in a hall like this,” Yoshi said quietly, standing before a portrait of an emperor from centuries past. “Watching everyone rush by without anyone really seeing them. I wonder if they feel forgotten, too.”
“We’ve only been here a few days, and I’m already starting to hate this place,” Yoshi whispered against my shoulder, his breath warm and frustrated. “My sister is out there somewhere—enslaved, maybe dead—and I’m sitting in a golden palace playing at being important. What good is any of this?”
The Windows of the Western Tower, where we’d taken to sitting in the afternoons, offered the clearest view of the contradiction.
Below, the capital spread like a painting—white walls, blue roofs, the peaceful maze of daily life—but now we could also see smoke from forge fires working through the night rising high and blocking out the stars.
We heard the endless lines of conscripts being herded to training grounds and supply wagons clogging every major street.
Paradise prepared for hell.
“Do you think it was like this when your father went to war?” I asked as Yoshi traced patterns in the dust on the windowsill.
“I don’t know. I was too young to remember. Or maybe they shielded me from it.” He looked at his finger, now gray with dust. “No one’s shielding us now.”
“No one sees us long enough to shield us from anything.”
By the third day, despite all the palace’s marvels, we both felt utterly aimless.
We were less useful than the decorative vases displayed on pedestals.
At least they had a purpose, adding beauty and tranquility to their surroundings.
At least people looked at them before rushing past to plan battles.
“We should ask to see Haru,” Yoshi said that afternoon, not for the first time. “Just . . . demand an audience or something. We came all this way with him. He can’t just abandon us.”
“He didn’t abandon us. He’s the Emperor—”
“He’s not the Emperor. His brother is still alive.” Yoshi’s voice held an edge I rarely heard. “And even if he becomes Emperor, he’s still Haru. He promised to help me control this . . . this thing inside me. I haven’t seen him since we entered the city. Not once.”
And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it?
We’d left Suwa Temple because Haru needed people he trusted, because Yoshi needed help with his power, and because I’d been ordered by shadows I didn’t understand; and yet, since arriving in Bara, we’d seen Haru exactly once—a glimpse of golden robes disappearing around a corner, surrounded by advisors, too far away to even call out to.
“Maybe we could train,” I suggested, though we’d already trained for three hours that morning. “The eastern grounds—”
“I’m sick of training!” Yoshi’s frustration finally boiled over.
“I’m tired of running through the same forms, doing the same exercises, feeling this power surge and having to suppress it because if I let it loose, I might hurt someone important and cause an incident. Do you know what happened yesterday?”
I shook my head.
“I was going through the kata and a master’s reed came down on my shoulder—you know how they do.
I felt the power start to rise, like anger bubbling beneath my skin.
I felt myself beginning to move faster, and I had to stop—but I couldn’t stop.
I threw one punch, one open palm to the master’s chest, and sent him flying across the yard like I’d just tossed a child’s toy.
The poor man had to be hauled away to the healers by a pair of his brothers who’d been watching the whole thing.
You know what I saw in their eyes as they carried him away?
Fear. Kaneko, they were afraid. Of me.” He pressed his palms against his eyes.
“I need Haru’s help. He knows what this is like.
He can show me how to control it, how to live with it.
Hells, I can help with the war or whatever, but he’s too busy being a prince to remember he promised—”
“He didn’t promise,” I said quietly. “He helped when he could, but things have changed.”
“Everything’s changed—and nothing has.” Yoshi dropped his hands, and I noticed dark bags forming beneath his eyes for the first time.
“By all reports, my father is preparing for war, the Emperor is dead, Haru might be Emperor, and here we are, counting the hours until something interesting happens or someone remembers we exist.”
One might think a few days living in a palace without a single duty or purpose would be welcome, would give us time alone to rediscover ourselves, the “us” we’d lost for over a year.
And yet, every night, I felt him twitch in his sleep, his body jerking with unconscious bursts of speed.
He’d wake gasping, disoriented, tangled in sheets that had twisted around him from movements too fast to control even in dreams. His frustration was building like water behind a dam, and I didn’t know how to help him.
At least at Suwa the monks had tried to help. Then Haru had shown him the way and made him feel capable instead of cursed. But here, without guidance, Yoshi was drowning, and I was begging to worry that he might be strong enough to pull us all down with him if no one stepped in to offer a hand.
“Maybe we should just leave,” Yoshi said one evening, staring out at the city. “We could go back to Suwa. At least there we had purpose.”
“I don’t think the temple will take you back until you’ve mastered your gift. You certainly couldn’t train with the other students now.”
“Then we go somewhere else. Anywhere else. One of the shrines might be able to help. The Shinto mahou—”
“Is all about healing and trees and beasts,” I countered. “They know less about fighting than the whores in the red district.”
The moment the words left my mouth, I winced.
I knew, better than anyone, that those men and women had teeth.
When they looked past their captivity, they were as fierce as any Samurai.
Hana might not have worn armor or wielded a blade, but the fire that burned within her was white-hot.
I doubted she was one of Sakurai’s shadows, but she would serve the Empire, she would resist invaders, in any way within her power.