Chapter Twenty-Six Yaeko
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Yaeko
Early winter
When she returned to Saikyo after her study at the Hermitage, Yaeko found her mother’s old house forgotten.
It had been gifted to some noble of the fourth rank, an accountant, junior master of the books.
One day soon after, she found herself standing before it as if seeing a ghost. She would have to make her own house, her own name, it seemed to say.
A sound caused her to turn, and she stiffened when she saw her teacher, Yora, and her great benefactor, Seikiyo, on the busy street – the only warriors, it was said, they would ever let into the council.
The two great men, born of war and now presiding over a decade of peace, had seemed so bright, so weighty, as they watched her and offered her a position in Akiyo’s mountain-wolves.
Fighting a lump in her throat, she accepted.
She was a soldier of the Keishi, she told them; she would do her job.
She would move up. She would leave this all behind.
That morning, she’d been startled by the appearance of her teachers. This morning, she was startled by a hurried pageboy at her door. “Orders! From the palace!” the poor boy gasped. “It’s the monks, they’re at the gates. Trying to stop a messenger from getting through. You’re needed at once.”
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Tano Kitsue, of the Sanka-Gensei. An officer of the north gate. Ran through morning traffic shouting: ‘News! Urgent news for Lord Keishi! Let me in!’ The monks will try to take his head off.”
Now, following the breathless page, she found herself looking at the house again, perched and in decline, on the ninth street from the palace. It would soon be rebuilt and given to some other noble lord. Good, she thought. Leave the past. Eat it; let it feed you. Burn off what remains.
I have a job to do.
She hurried to the gate.
On First Avenue, people passed without seeming to notice. It was a busy day, but the weather had dropped. Clouds above whispered rain, gray skies dulled the colors of the street.
She remembered the cold, blustery day on the island of Sentaiji, when her mother took her from the Keishi school at the Hermitage, took her to the strange island nuns.
She was a child then; she did what her mother said.
I will redeem the great shame of our family, they made her vow.
I will do what I have to do to end this reign and the corruption of the capital.
I will stop the Keishi oppression once and for all.
Well, mother, father; ghosts: can you see me now? I grew up.
I owe you nothing.
Soon she heard the sounds of a commotion outside the north gate.
A crowd had gathered. The guards had barred the doors in the face of a swarm of red-cloaked monks who were trying to get in, and in the midst of them stood a short, stocky warrior from the provinces, clamoring for entry.
“Homage to the all-encompassing!” the monks shouted.
“O-Muryou, one-of-wrath, eyes-of-heaven-and-earth – destroy the barriers to enlightenment!”
She found Shigeo gathering a bundle of papers at the gate. “Ryaku’in,” he said, seeing her. “He’s back. With his monks of the mountain…”
She cursed. “What is it now?”
“They demand the death of Moro, who offended them. Their rival. Ryaku’in’s a wanderer. My father had him exiled, and yet he’s back… claims we’re entering the Latter Age of the Law.”
“Monks fighting over laws is nothing new.”
“More like fighting over land. The temples have their own armies now; they know we can’t touch them.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
He shook his head. “They claim the retired-emperor places too much confidence in his advisor, Moro of the Gate. ‘Remove him,’ they say. ‘Remove Moro, and the Mountain will support Keishi authority in the capital.’ Now Ryaku’in has, apparently, returned. Says he carries secrets.”
Beyond the gate, square-built Ryaku’in stood no taller than her, but made up for it with his girth. A thick, bold face, a nose broken long ago, robes of black and gold.
“The signs are clear,” he announced, his voice grating over the stones.
“Our divinations have shown! We are entering the third age, the Age of Plagues. The retired-emperor Goshira is the root of all corruption! He ruined his brother, the true emperor, Sutoh, whom they call a demon! The gall! They cursed him with death from the mountains of Takano!”
Behind him, the monks of the Mountain looked set to fight. Carrying their sacred relics and portable shrines, chanting, shouting warnings at the guards. An army of beige, hempen brown, black, maroon, and gold.
They go too far, she thought. The great temples had begun sending armed bands into the capital any time they wanted something to be changed. Not even Seikiyo could control them.
Ryaku’in waved to the crowd, spittle flying. “The defilements are everywhere! If you look in four directions, you will see the signs of evil!”
“We will not let traitors into the palace grounds, monk,” she shouted.
“I am no betrayer,” Ryaku’in said. “I speak only truth.”
“Hell take your truth. Go back!”
“Listen, Yaeko Eiga,” called the monk. “And you, son of Keishi. The enlightened see you.”
“I’ve nothing to hide,” Shigeo said. “Make way!”
“Lord! Lord!” The young warrior, Tano Kitsue, pushed his way through the throng. Monks bellowed, barring his path.
“Bring him in!” Yaeko had to shout to be heard over the crowd. The guards rushed in, shoving monks away right and left, but it was like trying to push through waves. They were everywhere. “Back! Back!”
The monks tried to stop Kitsue from entering, and the young guard called out in terror. Shigeo drew his sword. “You intrude upon imperial grounds, monk! Step forward and there will be blood!”
“There is blood already,” Ryaku’in cried. “Tell your father what I want. Tell him to come back to the table. No more need be spilled.”
“Be gone,” Shigeo ordered.
“Tell him,” Ryaku’in repeated. “Tell him: we have a deal.” And with a hiccuping laugh, the square-built monk stepped sideways, and finally, the others let Kitsue through.
“What does he want?” muttered Shosei, the round-faced middle Keishi son. He looked younger than his thirty-three years. “This little man. Kitsue? Tell us, and get him out of our sight.” His younger brother Seichi sat idly by the dais, watching, with a dagger in his hands.
“Our lord poet has been searching for conspiracies,” Yaeko said. “It appears he found one.”
The Sanka-Gensei were even more removed from the capital than the rest of the Gensei clan, Yaeko knew.
People like Shosei called them barbarians still, for rumor had it they were related to the old Iteki who assimilated, whose roots went deep in the woodlands of the north and east. A few hundred years before, the Gensei – ancestors of the current lineage – had been tasked with subduing so-called barbarian clans, and brought treaties of peace to the Iteki, joining them into their service as hunters and trappers, and hired swords who were not afraid to get their hands dirty in the provinces.
Over time, those assimilated houses became truly part of the kijin-tai, and the clanlines all had ancient links with the warriors of the past. Some said the wild blood had never left them.
“They mark their skin with ink,” her tutors at the Hermitage had told her.
“And paint themselves in a cruel mockery of court customs.”
Well, Yaeko thought now. I am kijin too. I am a warrior. To them, to those nobles, I will always be just another barbarian, manners be damned.
That is what Seikiyo has worked so hard to change.
“Speak,” Shosei called, all at once. His topknot had started to come loose, she noticed, and his voice rose slightly, as it always did, as though tinged with panic.
“Lord,” Tano Kitsue bowed, rambling, “I bring news… from the regent’s house, lord… Where’s your father?”
“Tell us what it is, man,” Seichi grumbled. “Before our father comes.”
Tano rose: “I speak only to him.”
“You will speak to us.”
Tano laughed. “And who are you? The Keishi brothers? The last dogs of old Isawa? Tell me, amé, where’s the noble son? Where’s Shigeo? Why should I speak with you, who never lived within the capital before?”
“We are your betters, Tano of the Gensei line.”
“But I am not. They are my parent house—”
“The Shark?” Seichi scoffed. “That is what they call you, no? ‘Tano, Shark of Sanka-Gensei…’”
“I care not. I was sent to serve the Hara—”
Seichi gave a snort. “As if that’s better.”
“Fine. Do what you will,” Tano said. “But your father, he’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
They sat for half an hour, each side glaring in the stalemate, with the Sanka-Gensei scowling at them with his arms crossed about his chest, Shosei fidgeting his soft fingers, and Seichi, bored, simply sharpening his knife with his feet propped up.
At last, the big doors opened and Seikiyo entered with Shigeo at his side.
“Speak,” he said brusquely. “Tell your story.”
“Lord,” Tano said, still glaring at the brothers. “I come with a confession, lord, and a promise. It was me, brought in for my service to the regent house. The Kyohara clan. They aren’t happy. They wish to see their powers of regency restored.”
“They are regents still.”
“Yet the chancellorship lies with you, lord.” Kitsue bowed low, but now, Yaeko saw, a deep and hungry glint had marred his eye.
“I wanted you to know that it was me who came to help you. You have surpassed them, lord, marrying into the Ten’in.
They know, lord: their time is up – but they, oh, those men are proud. Won’t let it go.”
There was a silence. For a moment, Seikiyo stood gazing at the young man from the northern gate, who had come declaring he had vital news fit only for the chancellor’s own ears. “What did they want of you?” he asked.