Chapter Nineteen Yora
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Yora
Yora paused briefly as he passed a statue of the god-who-guards-the-gates. Might be a storm, he thought. It was raining under the heavy sky, deep, roaring sheets of water mixed with smoke from the manor ahead. The wind was picking up.
“Hail, Kouzeon,” he whispered, lowering his head, as the rain and the misty mountainside shifted in a gust of wind. “Light of mundane voices.”
Deer Valley lay before him, a manor nestled in its hidden dale on the far side of the mountain. At its entrance, by the pond, great beams of oak stood beside a sliding door, on which a paper hung from a string. It was a poem, he saw. In the evening light, cicadas fall silent…
One of mine, he realized. A well-known link from his early days at court. Watching the moon above…
Below, someone had added, in a different hand:
Let the moon rise. Let the sun fall.
The sun meant the court. The Autumn Throne. Its chancellor.
Seikiyo.
“The Keishi have failed!” The Hara monk, a sour-mouthed ascetic named Shun’en of House Oba, slammed his fist onto the table.
“They have failed to enact their own laws, they have failed to uphold their promises to the landholders in the east, they have failed their subjects in the Kanden, and in every town and marketplace across the provinces! They have failed to manage the poor harvest in the corelands! And the triangle between Seizan, Omori, and Naruji? They barely have enough to feed their horses, let alone half the country! The fields are poor this year and signs say next year will be worse.”
The Hara clan, owners of Deer Valley, were regents of the court. But they were dissatisfied, angry at the rise of Keishi power, and now a branch had begun to split away.
“How much land do you have shares in, Shun’en?” Yora asked. “In those fields in Omori?”
“That is not the point!”
“The farmlands are doing all they can,” Yora said. “But the more we tax them, the worse it gets. We cannot sacrifice the Kanden plains for the sake of the Triangle. To abuse them will only increase the dissent that’s already there.”
“Lord Gisan will take care of that.”
“Tokuon? Why would he damage his lands for the sake of yours? If he bows down and turns on his own people, what respect will he have there?”
A Hara elder raised his hands. “That is not our debate. It’s not your nephew’s fault. Nor is it the bird-calling east. It is the Keishi. They have mismanaged for their profit and the corelands suffer. That is why we’re here. We’ve asked you here because something must be done.”
“You intend to stand against the capital.”
“We are the capital,” the Hara nobleman Ichiei Hoin said. Minister of the Left, friend of Goshira: Yora wasn’t surprised to see him here. Beside him sat his niece, Shigeo’s young wife, Nariko, Blue Lady of the Hara. So, she’s bound by her family, too, he thought. She met his eyes.
“Listen to me,” he said, “do not take part in a conspiracy against the throne.”
Slim-shouldered Moro laughed. “It’s not against the throne, it’s against Seikiyo! The Keishi grow fat and push the rest of us out.”
“We are fighting for our land,” Ichiei Hoin said, “and are prepared to take it if we must. He’s dismantling the entire order, taking everything for himself…”
“We can talk to them,” Yora said. “Seikiyo’s wife will listen…”
They didn’t believe it. Ascetic Shun’en said, “By taking the chancellorship, by marrying into the imperial line, he has merged kijin and Ten’in families… It’s an affront to everything we are.”
“You mean, everything you own?” Yora asked. He’d had enough. “I know you, monk – your temple has estates in Omori. What is this? You conspire with the retired-emperor? Get the Gensei to fight them for you? Is that what you want?”
The silence told him more than words. “I cannot join with this conspiracy.”
“You must!”
Moro held a paper out, a list of names in a ring. They wanted him to sign. He batted it away.
“I cannot.”
The room erupted in argument again. “Things are in motion,” Moro said. “They move faster than you know. Sign.”
Yora left them to their rage.
The little courtyard, at least, was quiet, and the air smelled clean and cool. A small moment of peace, if that. Ichiei Hoin stepped out behind him, clucking lightly with his tongue, and came to Yora as he untied his horse. “A word, poet.”
“I’ve already given you my answer,” Yora said.
“I have something to tell you.” The older man sniffed. His hair looked thin, his skin sallow, puffy. He seemed to have aged, over the course of the evening, as though he too felt some great danger coming over them all.
“Ame’in,” Yora said. “Let me pass.”
“Hold,” said Ichiei. Yora tried to pass again, and again Ichiei blocked him. “You are in trouble, poet.”
“Am I? You’re the one who brings a daughter of your house to see this. She’s married to a Keishi.” Ichiei huffed. He knew Yora meant his niece, Nariko, who loved Shigeo Keishi with the love of all the worlds. Who had borne his son.
“Whatever you think, I am your friend,” Ichiei said. “I’m telling you the truth. You’ve been tricked. Seikiyo? You protected him thirty years. But you must know the truth. I’ve had word. Goshira sends his people to Kitano.”
“For what purpose?
“To ascertain,” Ichiei Hoin said, “if Iyo’s supposed son is really a Kitanohara.”
Fear pricked the back of Yora’s neck. “Nonsense.”
“No. No. No. We know,” Ichiei whispered. Yora could smell the rice-wine on his breath, the sweat beading at his brow. “The Hoshiakari. We know he is Gensei, poet… We know what you did. The monk, Ryaku’in, he’s returned, and he returns with truth. He’ll tell everyone.”
“He won’t be believed.”
“Won’t he? Goshira has already taken steps.
He sent his agents to the east. You ask, what purpose?
I say: to instigate a war. Anything that destabilizes peace will only be more leverage for him to use against Seikiyo.
He plans to instigate this… If you cannot help us, Yora, I respect that decision, but you must know, it is coming.
The retired-emperor and the chancellor? They are two bulls.
They will come head-to-head – whether we like it or not. It’s coming, Yora, it is coming.”
The Hara nobleman’s words echoed in his ears as he mounted his horse: “We are protecting the capital. We are doing what must be done.”
“And what is that,” Yora asked.
“Standing up against a warlord,” Ichiei Hoin said. “Just like your family had tried to do. We are standing up for what is right.”
Right? Yora thought. Right? My brother knew that what he did was right. And look what happened. He destroyed our clanline because of it. He got his head cut off. His righteousness didn’t save him. You really think your righteousness will save you?
“The great poet, Yora Shijin!” the ascetic Shun’en called when he left. “Look at him! He does nothing!”
Yora spurred his horse. It was almost sunrise – he had to get home, for the chancellor expected him in the morning. His sense of duty told him to report what he had heard, but his heart said something else – and that was the most troubling thing of all.
When he reached the lane, a stocky young warrior, Tano Kitsue of the Sanka-Gensei house, called out, and Yora met him in the shadows of the eaves. His scowl told Yora all he needed to know.
“The Kyohara cannot be put in charge of this,” Tano whispered. “These old men, they’d move against Seikiyo at the height of his powers, without an army to back them up. They think their rank will be enough? They’ll die, all of them.”
Yora said that he agreed, but had not been able to convince the older Hara patriarch who organized the group.
“Where were you when your brother stood up against injustice?” the Hara monk, Moro, had shouted when he left. “When the bounds of reason were torn apart, and a dictator pulled the puppet-strings to take control? When Asa’in was killed for it! When your family was destroyed for it!”
“I did what I needed to do,” he’d said, “to protect what we still had.” He went to Nariko, wife of his friend Shigeo: “Get your son to safety.”
Now, riding back to his residence in the dead of night, the voice rang in his mind and would not go away. It stabbed at him, furrowing deeper and deeper in his heart and repeating like an echo, an endless voice that whispered, Where were you, Yora?
Where were you?
He thought back to that blustery black afternoon when he returned to the city, after his census of the estates.
He’d gone straight to the palace, to his lord, Seikiyo, reports in hand, folded under a crimson pouch of silk; he returned to the palace before he saw his own home.
“Where is Kaji Getoh?” he’d asked. The servant’s reply: his retainer was guarding the east watch.
So instead of meeting with his household guard, he sat heavily in the anteroom, feeling his fatigue.
I’m where I’ve always had to be, he thought to himself now, riding in the darkness.
But still he remembered how the weight had fallen on him. He remembered the sickness in his master’s eyes.
We are young no more.
In the days of young Emperor Kin’ei, whose death led to the dispute between his brothers Goshira and Sutoh, a storm lingered over the royal city for many days.
Thick, black clouds like smoke, thunder, lightning.
People said it was a curse from the gods; the court and their diviners had proclaimed there was a monster in those clouds, and so Yora had been sent.
He killed the devil nightbird, calling its eerie hyo, hyo cry in the middle of that storm.
Like a mountain thrush it appeared, quickly, in the smoke, darting here and there and framed by lightning.
He drew an arrow to his bow. But the nightbird, Yora knew, was servant of the great god of the barrier, Hososhi; what would killing it bring?
Silence. That was what the aristocrats had said. Our diviners have shown: we must kill this beast. You, kijin, who serve the court; you will be the one to do it.
So he did.
Yora killed it with his ancient bow on that black-smoke night, watching with sharp eyes as the specter fell from the sky and landed in the river, where it was carried away.
Hososhi forgive me, he had said; when he returned to the palace he was greeted as a hero.
For what? he’d said. For going out in a dark night lashed with rain?
For following orders? For killing a bird?
No, they told him: for killing enemies of the court.
It was symbolic. It was a statement of their rule. That’s all it ever was. Kijin would never be aristocrats, the nobles made sure no one could forget. You are those who serve, they said. You are those who use violence where others may not; how could you ever become one of us?
Instead, they called him lord protector.
Instead, they gave him rank. Instead, he met Emperor Kin’ei, and was gifted the great sword Nagareboshi – while his friend the lord Seikiyo wrangled chains around them all without their ken.
They say we’ll never be like them, he thought now, riding home at last, but when their own war-guards control an army, and surround them with its force, what else is there to do?
Morning came, and with it, the yearly hunt led by Seikiyo and his clan.
Yora had spoken to Prince Nioh during the last one, learned the first hints of this undoing; now, the prince was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, the imperial entourage came through.
A drum sounded. The young emperor, Ashihara, had arrived to watch while kijin called to one another and dashed into the woods.
Seikiyo gazed at him across the distance of the soft, grass-pillow field, and offered him a nod.
Ashihara, emperor, son-in-law, nineteen years old, gave the slightest bow, then waited in the shade of parasols. Seikiyo brought Yora to his side.
“They told me you were not at the mountain yesterday,” he said, as they made their way along the colored trees. “Dealing with the monks.”
“No, lord, I was in the estates. I didn’t hear until I returned.”
“Those hillocks?” Seikiyo raised his eyes. “What for?”
“One of the regent sons invited me to see his orchards. The oranges.”
“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, Lady Hagane, 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.