Chapter Eighteen Yaeko #2
Then her mother gave her a dagger that belonged to her father. Yaeko had the blade even now, on a small stand by her bedside. She looked at it now and then, polished the blade to remember where she’d come from.
“What will you become?” her mother asked, that day, when they burned the pact and swallowed ash-in-water before the gods. “My wild rose, what will you become?”
“Worthy of our family,” she’d said. “I’ll do my duty.”
But that meant nothing now. She’d been a child, coerced by the very people who were supposed to keep her safe.
Instead, they sent her into the heart of their enemies and expected her to finish what they started.
That was before Seikiyo showed her what a loving parent really was; his enemies called him a tyrant, but in truth, everything he did, he did for his family, to keep them safe.
The last time Yaeko had seen her mother, the dying woman begged her to remember the promise, begged her to remember what she’d said, the young child who had drunk the seal of ash and been sworn to her family’s vendetta to the grave. Who said, I’ll do my duty.
“Do it now,” her mother gasped.
Yaeko recoiled. “Never.”
“You must.”
Yaeko tore away. You want to know the truth?
she wanted to scream into her mother’s face.
I keep that knife, the one you gave me all those years ago, I keep it not to remember what you wanted me to do, but to remember who you were.
What all of you were. Who would use a fourteen-year-old as a weapon for your lost cause.
Who would have me end my life – for you – rather than begin one of my own.
I keep it to remember what you were, and what I will never be.
“I won’t become like you,” she said, bitter with rage.
“I am your mother! This is your family!”
“My family has led to nothing but pain. Look at you. Look at who you are. Old, dying of corruption of your heart. They said your lungs ail you; they don’t.
It’s your heart. It’s eating you away. Your brothers died when they tried to kill our lord and my father was executed when he thought he could surrender. ”
“How dare you,” her mother said. “How dare you speak to me like that… I gave birth to you. I raised you. And this is how you repay—”
“You didn’t raise me,” Yaeko shouted. “You abandoned me. I was raised by House Keishi and that is where I’ll stay.”
At the end, when her coughing had subsided, her mother spoke so quietly that Yaeko almost couldn’t hear. “You’re no daughter of mine.” Fury spasmed on her face, but buried beneath it, in the glinting of her eyes, was pain.
And fear.
Because she knows I’m right, Yaeko told herself. Because she has wasted her life living a fantasy of revenge. She has withered away.
It’s my life now.
I will never become like you.
Yaeko rose, and, as her mother coughed and spat blood onto a handkerchief, she turned away.
She left her mother to meet her fate. Left her to die in the stuffy, airless room with the windows boarded up, to remain with nothing but the truths of what she’d done, with a scowl on her face and the sliding door slammed shut.
I will never become like you, Yae told herself again. Never. I can see clearly now. I am the eyes and ears of the Keishi, I am like the stone lion-dogs. I see everything and I say nothing… And I will always protect those who have truly protected me.
Now she gripped her reins beside Shigeo Keishi and his guard as they crossed the Gate of the World.
Mount Eizan towered above them, its view obscured by smoke.
They were halfway up when Seichi, the youngest Keishi brother, arrived.
His helm was marked by an arrowhead, each lamellar plate woven with shades of Keishi turquoise and gold.
At thirty, he was larger, and rougher, than his brothers. He was cursing already.
“Brother,” Shigeo called. “What’s going on?”
“The monks,” Seichi rasped, proud eyes glaring. He had a scar, she saw, above his brow. “I fucking knew this would happen… The pagoda’s gonna burn.”
He pointed with thick hands toward the gate. Smoke was billowing freely over the five-storied wooden tower at the heart of the temple. “They say this is the Age of Plagues,” Yae muttered, “yet they do this to their own temples?”
A crowd had gathered before the gate, two distinct groups of monks crashing together like a pair of waves in a channel. She saw three river monks, men in long, dark robes with round bamboo hats over their heads, and went to them as Shigeo tried to get the others to calm.
“You! What is this?” The fire roared; the scuffle swept through the crowd.
“We are mere dedicants,” said the first monk. He was fifty or sixty, a kind face squinting with laugh-lines around his eyes. His head had not been shaved of late, and remained covered with gray-streaked stubble. “Visiting from the Temples of the River.”
The second monk stood taller, round of face and belly; his ruddy cheeks made him seem even younger than he was. “My name is Joji, ame’in. The teacher Moro asked us to help mediate, but it seems the time has passed…”
He gestured, somewhat helplessly, at the shouting monks in the street behind them. A few had begun to advance, throwing punches, wrestling each other to the ground while their brothers tried to pull them back, their headscarves fluttering in the wind.
“The monks of the Mountain and the Gate are raising arms against each other again,” said the first dedicant, who introduced himself as Gochi-no-Tai.
“They conflict over interpretation of the sutras?”
Round-faced Joji laughed. “Nothing like that. This is politics!”
“This?” Yaeko glanced about, incredulous. “This is violence.”
“All politics is violence, ame’in,” Gochi said. “Everyone knows.”
“What happened?”
The third dedicant, smaller and thinner than the others, with a handsome face and a fresh, blue-shaven head, stepped forward. He indicated a large, squat man with a once-broken nose, shouting among the throng.
“Ryaku’in. The banished monk. He’s returned as leader of the Mountain. Now he is challenged by a rival, Moro, over the future of their temple… and Goshira’s patronage…”
“We hear rumors, ame’in.” Gochi came close. “Storms in the north, tidal waves at the coast; demons in white walking the land. Now, this exiled monk Ryaku’in, he returns with troubled words. He says the second Gensei child is alive.”
“What Gensei child?”
“Lady Kai has come to the capital,” the thin monk said.
“But now Ryaku’in returns, he claims she has a brother.
I am Aiichi, ame’in. I brought the news.
Moro offended Ryaku’in at their last retreat, demanded that the Mountain join the Gate, in resisting Keishi rule in support of the retired-emperor. ”
“Ryaku’in refused,” Joji added. He seemed to find everything amusing.
“He denies it, but many say he’s a great friend of the lord Keishi.
He is angry that the former-emperor put such faith in Moro…
he feels slighted. And he brings word of this new Gensei heir…
There was a summit; arguments ensued; Moro splashed his face with water.
Ryaku’in burned down Moro’s temple in retaliation, and here we are…
Moro says these banished monks of Ryaku’in are here to take the retired-emperor’s head, traitors to the realm. ”
Traitors, Yaeko thought. Everywhere I go.
“Can you do nothing?” she asked.
“We are but three travelers,” their leader, Gochi-no-Tai, said.
“We were sent to try to prevent the fighting. We arrived too late…” He opened his hands.
“Last year, he was their ally, but because of this offense it seems Ryaku’in is now determined to put down the retired-emperor’s court.
He brings word of this new heir, this brother, who is an enemy… ”
Yaeko brought her horse around. “Enough of this,” she shouted. “Form them up!” To the river monks, with their heads low and eyes hidden by their bamboo hats: “You might want to find somewhere safer.”
“We are on earth,” Gochi said. “Is that not safe enough?”
By now, Shigeo had returned, pale and coughing.
Smoke was everywhere; the rioters had spilled beyond the gate.
Seichi hollered for his bannermen, shouting, “Hold them back!” His voice hung thick with rage.
But there were too many, and the soldiers of the royal city did not want to strike at holy men.
“Stop them!” Yaeko cried, but the guards had wavered. Proud Seichi turned about, wiping soot from his eyes.
“It’s no use. They won’t risk a blow to the reliquaries. I say, fine. Let them solve their own problems.” He cantered back, with one last, disdainful look to the fire. “Make sure it doesn’t spread into the city.”
Coward, Yaeko thought. “This is madness. Where is Yora?”
“Supposed to be here,” Seichi called. He waved away a flurry of heat-blasted smoke, as the shouts of the clashing monks came to a pitch. He shouted, “Solve this!” then thundered off, leaving Yaeko and Shigeo to command the imperial guard, alone.
“Madness,” she muttered.
But Seichi was right: With a handful of mounted troops, she had no hope of containing the violence of two hundred monks in a brawl at the base of their own temple.
“Pull back!” she called, cursing. “This is madness. Pull back!”
She took one last glance at the monks, who were yelling at each other, making feints and shoving back and forth with violence.
Their shouts echoed angrily into the coming night; their spears and longblades glinted in the deep, red-bodied sky.
Behind them, the temple on the slopes of Mount Eizan continued to burn.