Chapter Twenty Sen
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sen
“The great houses are angling for attack,” Tokuon said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
It was morning. Kitano castle glimmered in cold sun, the swallows called, and the breakfast trays had just been pulled away.
Lord Tokuon, encamped, told of a gathering army comprised of bannermen from Amayari, and Tokeishi-Zusho soldiers who declared they would be loyal to the clan-heir, Kai.
In the capital, the regent house, the Hara, were posturing against the Keishi for control of what was once their place, amassing followers in the central valleys while the Keishi owned the west and the islands of the Wings.
In the provinces, the Gensei had begun to gather under Tokuon’s flags.
And now, he said, House Zusho had begun to pull away from their obeisance to court. They were a sub-branch of the Keishi, but with the rise of discontent across the valleys and the plains, many among the central houses had changed sides, and turned against the man they called the usurper, Seikiyo.
Yora and Kai Gekko’in, stuck in the capital, were as yet unaware their eastern lands had risen on the march.
So Tokuon had said.
The low tables were full: on one side, Iyo, her husband Azamaro, and her sons Nihira and Hakaru. Sen sat with Jobo below them. Rui had not been allowed inside, and was forced to wait beyond the gates. Because of her class. Because of her crime.
“It’s a brand,” she’d said, without surprise. “A mark that never goes away.”
Now Sen sat beside his stewardmother.
Now discussions had begun.
“They’ve come to conquer us!” Hakaru shouted, glaring. “No good will come with sheltering these people.”
Nihira remained cautious. “Would you rather shelter the Autumn Throne? That’s the alternative. The empire won’t sit idly and let you mock them, and if you think—”
“Enough,” said Iyo. “They are our guests.”
“We’ve seen what these ‘guests’ will do,” Hakaru spat. “What did they do to our forebears? They’ll do the same. They’ll do it to all of us. That’s what waits. A rusty sword.”
Iyo remained silent; Nihira bit his lip. Finally, Azamaro spoke. He stood, with his full beard and solid shoulders, said, “Lord Tokuon. What news from the west?”
Tokuon, clad in the colors of the Gensei clan, had a high, noble face and sharp eyes, dark as ravens.
He spoke little, and gave the impression of a man carved of stone.
When they met on the road, Sen noticed the flags held by his standard-bearers did not have the flower motif of their larger kin-group, but rather, a three-tiered mountain in a circle, the symbol of his lands.
He sat, his hawk’s face angled downward, flanked on all sides by a dozen warriors whose names Sen was supposed to know.
To the right sat Tokuon’s wife, Ohori Tsuruhime, smooth and calculating, renowned as the best warrior in the Kanden; her brother, broad-shouldered Nitta-no-Kanesuke Daijin, called the Shiden, who laughed at everything but had no humor in his voice.
To the left, their bodyguard, Masakari Saito, a warrior-monk the size of a bear and just as strong; and finally, Sen’s older cousins, Tsuna and Myorin, daughters of his uncle Yora, who was with Sen’s sister in the capital.
“Our uncle Yora is caught in the claws of the imperial court,” Tokuon was saying. “His back is to the wall, and instead of a sword in his hand they make him use a brush. He needs our help.”
But Tokuon was not the only foreign lord to have arrived in Kitano.
A week before, an envoy had come, calling for loyalty to the Autumn Throne and the Keishi clan, whom Iyo nominally supported by nature of their treaty.
The chancellor, Seikiyo, demanded Iyo pledge her troops to the capital’s defense.
Iyo had refused them. She had no plans to become embroiled in the infighting of the western clans. “My place is here,” she’d said, “and my loyalty has never been questioned. But we will not be drawn into your wars. We have our own laws, and we owe you no debt of service.”
“And what does Yora say?” Jobo asked them now. “You have seen him, in the capital?”
Tokuon scowled. “The capital. It’s overrun, with filthy rabble from all over, shouting, cursing in dialects you can’t understand.” He rose. “Lady Ogami’in, let us continue this in private. I would appreciate your words as well, crow monk.”
His eyes passed over Sen’s again, and after a moment, Jobo inclined his head. Sen’s stewardmother stood; they were dismissed.
“I wonder what they’re talking about,” Sen muttered, leaning against a pillar with his brothers. They had come to watch his cousin and his stewardmother walk the outer deck that ringed the house.
“War. War and chaos.” He turned to find the short, sharp-eyed woman, Ohori, striding easily through the evening. She was followed by the bear-like guard, Masakari Saito, who lingered in the shadows a dozen steps behind.
“Sen, this is the Crane Princess, Lady Ohori,” Nihira began. “Lord Tokuon is her husband…”
“He knows who I am.” Ohori came close. She had a tense, unnerving presence, and before he knew it, Sen had bowed, and stepped away. “I have wanted to meet you for a very long time, Hoshiakari. This is a momentous occasion.”
Sen paused at this, unsure. Ohori moved with the stern demeanor of one long-accustomed to the field, but spoke with a gentle voice. He found he was intimidated, hesitant to speak.
“We’re raising the Gensei allies,” she said. “Has he told you? That’s why we’re here.”
“He said he wants to bring me home.”
“He doesn’t lie. These warriors will take back your lands, and they will fight for you, though many believe the leadership should fall to Gisan, not you.”
“My house was their liege.”
“But you’re not from the Kanden,” Ohori said.
“They are loyal people there, and fierce. They don’t trust strangers.
You’re heir to one of the four great lines, but they don’t know you.
You should know your history. You should know who you may face across the field.
And these men and women are your allies, they will not simply offer you their service just because their fathers and their mothers served your own. ”
“What of you,” he asked, “Oshigen-no-Ohori? Do they serve you?”
“The Oshi-Gensei, my family, we’re from Kiseda manor in the upper Kanden. Yes, they know me. It’s our destination.”
“What will they want from me?” Sen asked.
Ohori laughed. “That’s the question, isn’t it. They expect to be rewarded, Hoshiakari. That means you have to have things to give them. That means you have to win.”
Sen looked to Lord Tokuon again, on the veranda where he walked with Iyo. He couldn’t hear their words. Tokuon, however, felt his gaze, turned to catch Sen’s eye with the same sharp look he’d had before; hard as stone, unreadable.
Sen’s other cousins, sisters Tsuna and Myorin, were practicing their bow-work on the grass.
Myorin had an ease to her that suggested great experience.
Long hair tied back, black and lustrous, she moved as someone at home anywhere in the world.
Her older sister, Tsuna, had a stark, rigid look, with her hair shorn short with a razor.
“Let us greet your cousins,” Ohori said, “Myorin and Tsuna… Tsuna, you know, takes her name from the founder of our clan. Tsuna Shoko’in. You should meet them.”
She eyed him. Sensing his hesitation. “You do know the history of our clan?”
“I… could learn more,” he said. “Only the common stories.”
“We’ll have to change that.” She gave a grin. Despite her stern demeanor, he felt Ohori wanted to help him. Something in her seemed to say, Don’t worry. It said, Welcome, Sen.
It said, You belong with us.
When Sen had grown accustomed to his teacher’s unexpected ways, the stench of blood smelled different to him.
He had hunted; all the great houses of the east knew how to hunt.
But killing a defenseless animal for slaughter, eyes wide, rank with fear, was something else.
He’d never get used to it. Jobo would go into the ge’in town at the edge of the city, bring the old prayers of his order with him, and offer up the dead.
He emerged as always, wiping the blood from his hands.
“My fate is not in question,” he would say, afterwards. “There is a path, and along that path we may grow; I ask nothing of enlightenment. I know what I have done.”
Sen never asked him. He wanted to know; Jobo’s old days, his unspoken past, somewhere in the capital, when he had a different name – a noble’s name, he’d hinted. “I met the demon-emperor,” he’d told Sen once. “I met his daughter. I saw what happened when the River Palace burned.”
Sen saw this past in him now, like a storm of the heart, as he stood scowling as Tokuon’s retainers took up their posts at the edge of the yard. The great meadow on the northern hills lay covered with horses, carts, and sweating men grown damp in chill air among the dragonflies.
If Sen could never manage to pull the knife across his victim’s throat, he at least understood, now, what Jobo tried to teach him. There was no truth but what was left: the corpse, the bright red on the gutters, and the knife in your hands.
“Mercenary killers,” said Jobo now, still scowling as he looked over the highland. Gisan banners, tents of dirty gray; a blight, he’d said, upon Kitano gate.
“They’re my father’s bannermen,” said Sen.
Jobo looked at him, blankly. “So?” And walked off.