Chapter Eight Yora
CHAPTER EIGHT
Yora
He watched the hunters from a distance. There was a shout, a triumph in the trees.
Someone must have felled a deer. The Keishi clansmen were calling to one another, ready to take the hunt into the woods.
Hawks circled in the sky. What do they see, he wondered, those sharp-eyed hunters in the blue?
Do they see us as of a kind? Or merely another target?
No, he told himself. They are indifferent.
The summer had been humid, marred by storms from the south, and even now the air hung heavy, pressing like a damp embrace. He longed for the winds to come and the air to find its chill; when the leaves fell and the world showed its colors again, as it changed into the season of long nights.
The horses whinnied. On the shooting fields, his lord’s cousins were trying their hand at targets made of straw.
They wore hunting clothes with round collars, angled caps, flowing sleeves that could be gathered at the ends.
A party had gone off into the woods, and even now the men below him were lowering their bows.
Seichi, Seikiyo’s youngest son, had scored some point.
He saw his former student, Yaeko of House Eiga, there among them.
At last he felt a breeze, the ending of the summer storms. Clouds had gathered on the mountain.
“You won’t try your hand?”
The mirror prince, Nioh Shinno, half-brother to Emperor Ashihara, came behind him wearing jeweled clothes.
He inclined his head: arrows were being removed from the straw-and-paper targets.
“My lord Shijin,” he said, voice soft in the vastness of the field, “if the stories are true, you’d best the lot of them. ”
The mirror prince was a slim man, not yet thirty. Dressed in robes with waterlilies over green and red brocade, circles under his eyes and a constant smile he wore like a mask. He held a long, thin box in his hands.
“Lord Prince,” Yora said. “How’s your brother?”
The prince turned back, annoyed. “Half-brother. He’s too busy being half a god. No one sees him.”
“His people see him.”
A smile. “And thus: I am no one.”
“What are you doing here, lord?”
Nioh shrugged. “Yora the Poet. Named for some lines you wrote, what, thirty years ago? Ever the ear of our lord chancellor and the darling of the court. ‘Listen to him,’ they tell me… But am I meant to report my whereabouts to you, now?”
“I meant, not many nobles come to see a hunt.”
“No,” Nioh said. “They wouldn’t. Too… uncivilized. Although one wonders at the evils that they do, with their money and their words.”
Another arrow whistled. Far-off hunters gave a shout. Yora gazed to the group of workmen who’d come to watch, from the edges of the wood, though in truth you couldn’t see anything from here, unless the hunters decided to swing back and make target practice of the trees.
“Deer are sacred with some temples,” Nioh continued, with a noble’s didactic air.
“Some would say this is close to blasphemy.” He indicated vaguely.
“A common saying in the capital: ‘The farther from Saikyo you get, the worse you will become.’ Distance brings out that which is primitive, in all of us. So terrible, inhuman. Only now, kijin hold the chancellor’s seat.
Our halls are swarmed with fighting men. Not the learned ones.”
“The learned ones have better things to do,” Yora suggested, “than wander aimlessly through halls.”
“Yes, they study. And you warriors. You hunt. Though I would prefer to have you here… Seems much wiser than to have our loyal men scattered in the wild. Or who would protect us?”
Even the Ten’in are human, Yora thought. And humans desire power. “They fear us.”
“Perhaps. But what a contradiction you are, Yora. The Poet. A fighting man, and a learned one.” Nioh shrugged, nonchalant.
“You do know that we – we of certain nobility – we speak for you. Things are not as worried as you might expect. My respect for your line goes deep. After all, you are the descendants of great heroes. Who was it, Raiko, in the old mirror-books, who slew the demon Hiradoji? Monster-in-human-skin. Rampaging around the capital, killing, drinking blood. Then, a band of heroes, led by your ancestor, assaulted Hiradoji’s palace, used some trick to sneak him into getting drunk, chopped off his head.
Yet, even after it was removed from his body, Hiradoji shouted curses and bit them if they came close. ”
He gave a halting smile. “Now it seems the myth is true. Yes? No matter how you cut the head, the monster will remain to bite you. Or don’t you agree?”
“I’m a man of neither world,” Yora said. “‘Walking the bridge’, my father used to say. You remarked about the hunt. Well. Seikiyo and his sons are out here, now, with their bows and arrows, seeking deer to offer to the god of war.”
“Yes.”
“I must tell you, lord, I am hunting, too.”
Nioh nodded slightly, as though in confirmation. “For my brother, yes. So, here we come to the bridge. Tell me, do we cross, or are you standing in my way?”
A shout went up; someone else had scored. Ge’in pageboys dashed onto the grass, plucking arrows. “I suppose that would depend,” Yora said, “on the direction you wish to travel.”
The prince considered him. “Indeed. They say you’re looking for something in the east. They say you’re interfering with my father the retired-emperor’s affairs.”
“I’m here on Seikiyo’s orders, lord. I will not lie.”
“Seikiyo Jokai,” Nioh muttered. “The monk-warrior. Why, I wonder, did he take the tonsure, only to insult the temples of Mount Eizan? He has rejected the Boar’s petition again.”
“The Boar?”
“Ryaku’in. He’s fighting to come back.”
“The monks are always fighting,” Yora said. “I cannot speak to their motives.”
“I can,” said Nioh. “So: you’re hunting. As is your like. What matter to me? I have no role in politics. I’m not in line for the throne. I would much rather live in my manor and have peace.”
“You’ve been speaking with the retired-emperor,” Yora said.
“He’s my father.” Nioh laughed. “Am I under investigation, poet? Should I call you the Watchman now, instead?”
“‘The lotus leaves, unstained and glimmering with dew –’” Yora quoted.
“‘Yet floating, they hide the silt below.’ Forgive me, but they call your father the windswept emperor for a reason. He has his hands in the game at all times. So if you are meeting with him, that means you’re either a player now, or you are a piece. ”
“I’m a scholar.”
“You have a claim to the succession if your brother dies. I must have an answer.”
But it is dangerous to accost the sons of kings. Nioh remained unmoved. “To discuss poetry. And I have no claim; you made sure of that. My mother wasn’t high-ranking enough. Ashihara was always the heir.”
“I’m trying to protect you,” Yora said.
Nioh looked to the trees, where a hawk circled a far point in the sky.
“Something has died,” he said. “Forget about the east. It doesn’t matter.
Ryaku’in is what my father cares about, he’s coming back.
You know, you spoke, I remember. In the courts, what was it, two years ago?
Against me, in the line of succession, on account of my mother. And you come to me now.”
“Your brother the emperor was about to be married.”
“Half-brother.”
“Yes.”
“He was seventeen.”
“And adding your name to the succession would have done more harm than good,” Yora said. “We needed a union in the families…”
The prince cut him off. “The Keishi family. You’re ever their pet.”
“Regardless. The moment has passed. Stability is stability for all.”
“Ah. ‘If you seek shelter, always find a bigger tree’,” the prince clucked his tongue. “‘To hide beneath.’”
There was no point in trying to evade. “A war within the family almost tore this empire apart, a generation ago. Do you not remember?”
The mirror prince had slowed, his veneer slipping away. Now, he gave Yora a thin look, as if searching for motive.
“I was a child then. In more ways than one. You’d prefer I stayed quiet, in my mansion and my far estates.
Farming oats. Idling away. What of my life, lord poet?
What of a future? A road goes nowhere without its destination: you would have me waste my days in leisure.
You’d have me speak nothing to the court about the succession again. ”
“From the wider point of view, Prince, for the court, it would be…”
“What?”
“Preferable. Especially now.”
The prince gave another sigh. “Suppose you told me why?”
“The emperor is to have a son. The diviners have seen it.”
“And so: succession. You do not wish to stir the pot. You do not want a challenge to the throne.”
“Peace has always been my goal.”
“The Keishi,” Nioh allowed, “tied themselves to my family the moment Seikiyo married his daughter to my brother. Have you no thoughts on that?”
Yora held his tongue.
“So: we are at an impasse. Perhaps the bridge has broken under us. If that is indeed the case, then, Yora Shijin, one cannot blame you for being the man they told to stand upon it – and one cannot blame me for wishing to cross. We’re both victims, you and I.
Do you truly have no wish to see your family restored? Your lands, your titles.”
“I wish for peace.”
“At the cost of all else, peace.” The prince turned, hands clasped behind him, looking Yora directly in the eyes.
“You well meet your reputation, poet. I suppose it’s no surprise. Loyalty: such a hard thing to hold onto, in these times. Like water. Perhaps that is what has passed beneath us… sweeping our bridge away.”
With this, the prince’s cloaked guards swept in, and he was guided off. Yora called: “They know you’re hiding something.”
“You’ve no standing over my father’s guards,” Nioh reminded him. “They told you I’m hiding something. What of it? They say, ‘Another word from him and heads will roll.’ They say, ‘The landless prince, he must be angry.’ They say, ‘Something must be up.’”
“I’m trying to help.”
“You believe that, but perhaps you should consider what the implications of your ‘help’ really are. I like you, poet. On another day, we could have crossed the bridge together.”
With a sparrow’s nod, Nioh gathered his box with slim fingers and withdrew a flute in a silken bag.
“But I forget myself. Please, take this as a token of my respect. One of my great treasures, small as it is. It was given to my grandfather by the great Souchou Dynasty to the west; richest country in the world. They offered this to mark completion of a treaty. You could say, this is why we have a sea-line with the kingdoms of the continent. Apparently, there were two dragonflies sculpted out of wood at the mouthpiece, representing peace, and union, on both sides of the sea, but during transport, someone dropped it, and they broke off. Now there are none. Poetic, I think, for our times. Isn’t it? ”
“My niece Kai Gekko’in plays the flute, a little,” Yora said, “though I’m sure not so beautifully as you.”
“The smallest hawk still has a voice,” the prince said. “We would be glad to give it to her.”
Nioh inclined his head; the guards fell about him, close as shadow.
“One day, you will start to see. Perhaps you already have. But it will grow in you, it will be cancer. Then things will change. Then maybe one day you will be able to talk about it as you are, and not bright Seikiyo’s thug on a string. ”
“We don’t have to be enemies,” Yora said.
“I agree,” said Nioh, and made his leave.
Yora returned to the path to find his bodyguard, a rangy wolf of a man named Kaji Getoh, near the trees. “That was a pretty bit of business,” Kaji grumbled. “What now?”
Yora eyed the gate, where spectators had gathered, moving like little birds. The retired-emperor, Goshira, had exited the palace.
Kaji Getoh rasped, “What’s he doing here?”
“Same as any of them,” Yora said. “Watching, for his sport.”
Goshira stood in his munificence at the far side of the field.
Beside him his religious aide, the monk Moro, towered tall and cavernous, hollow in the chest and with the stoop of those of certain height, soft, and lilting.
The silent Tessoku, the Shrouded Guard, floated behind them, so named for the veils they wore over their faces, marked with the letter reading “Emptiness.” They slid from the path like wraiths, trailing Goshira to the shade of the willows, their intentions obscured by the hoods they wore at every hour of the day.
They passed, but Yora found the eyes of the retired-emperor locked upon his own, and he bowed, lightly, in respect.
I know, Goshira seemed to say, over the distance. I know of your investigations.
I know what Seikiyo has ordered you to find.
Then he turned, and the gaze was broken, and the air seemed to alter once again.
Sunlight dappled the grass. Yora walked on, for he’d seen the chancellor’s oldest son, Shigeo, in the shade: a young man of the second rank, Shigeo was dressed in clothes of green brocade marked with flowers and the Keishi butterfly on the sleeve.
He stood with his wife, Nariko of the Hara clan, and their infant son, Sukehira.
Everyone is here, Yora thought. What had he said when Getoh asked? Yes. Watching.
“So you saw that,” Yora observed.
Shigeo removed his gloves. “My father, as lord chancellor… he and our retired-emperor are ever at each other’s throats. Sometimes I think my friendship to Goshira is the only thing stopping them from all-out war.”
“What does Seikiyo say to that?”
“What do fathers always say? ‘Be happy, serve your house, marry, make a lot of children.’ He knows he has to keep the peace. At least, until the new-emperor accedes.”
“Your sister. She’s well?”
“Complains she is a whale, but the time is close. Actually, she wants a word with you, if you can spare it. Until her child is born, Goshira holds everything. Power over his son the emperor. Over the court. Father asked me, knowing my friendship, to be a liaison of sorts.”
“Good thing you’re loyal,” Yora offered. “You’re close to him. The retired-emperor.”
“As much as anyone can be.”
“Then he may share with you. Might tell you what he’s up to…”
Shigeo stopped. “I am to be a spy?”
“Consider it a favor.”
Shigeo nodded, bade him farewell. Yora found himself alone, but for the breeze and the grass and the shifting thoughts of what they’d said. And what they hadn’t said; what that look, what Goshira’s colder gaze, had conveyed across the field. The retired-emperor, as always, was testing him.
But for what, he didn’t know.