Chapter Twenty-Six Yaeko #2
“Invited me. Din’t they?” Tano’s voice was thick and dark as smoke. “A meeting, at Deer Valley. They wanted me to become a captain, lord, of their new guard. An anti-Keishi guard…”
He bowed again: “I bring you news of treason, lord. And I submit to you, I did, I attended their ill meet, but I knew nothing they would ask until I got there. I was told, lord, that I could count on your protection. Was I misled?”
Seikiyo observed the compact man with the lisp of the central provinces, who opened his palms before them now, revealing fingers you couldn’t break if you hit them with a mallet.
He’s a killer, Yaeko thought. Put a knife in his hands, he’ll come back with someone’s heart, dripping and still warm.
“I promise, I hold no intention, helping them,” Tano said.
“Tell me this.” Seikiyo’s cold gray eyes bored directly into Tano’s own. “You’ve turned on the house that clothed and fed you these last years. You bring us their secrets. Why? Who’s to say that these are not more lies?”
“I never lie,” said Tano.
“And yet you betray.”
“Betrayal?” Tano scoffed. “I am kijin, lord, as you are.”
“To be kijin means to feel shame,” Shosei interrupted. “You admit you freely turn against your lord. What stops you turning against us?”
“To be kijin means we choose who we serve,” Tano said. “I’ve given my piece.” He bowed once more, and left: “Do what you will.” They brought him to the lesser halls, to wait, under guard.
Seikiyo had few words. “Can we trust him?”
“Can’t trust any of them,” Shosei mused. “Sanka-Gensei. You hear the way he talked? They’re nobodies. The wild blood never left them. They paint their faces. They’re basically Iteki.”
“Good for them,” Yaeko said. “This one seems unpainted.”
He glared at her.
“Come,” she said, “who wouldn’t be fed up with the court? Those outside a system can see how it works – better, even, than those who are inside it.”
Seikiyo made to speak, studying the flames of his lamps as they flickered and waved. “Deer Valley. I’d hoped it wasn’t true.”
Seichi had come forward. “Father…”
But Seikiyo raised a hand. “Yaeko, escort Shosei to the emperor’s hall. Ashihara is to sign a decree, to invade Deer Valley, arrest these conspirators. Moro may be captured, or killed. It makes no difference.”
“Father,” Shigeo urged. A pale fear had come into his features, and Yaeko remembered that he had a Hara wife. “We can still find a way to peace—”
“Peace is what has broken,” Seichi barked. “Peace. You’re turning into the Poet now, brother. You spend too much time with him.”
“Peace, father, please,” Shigeo said. “These names… Hara, Moro, they’re the highest nobles in the court.”
“And they turn against us,” Seikiyo said. “The Hara clanline is fractured – the regents won’t hold sway. We confiscate their properties. All who took part in this… Deer Valley conspiracy. Bring Moro here. Arrest the others. You have your orders.”
“Listen to me!” Shigeo cried. “Moro has the ear of Goshira. Let me talk to him, and—”
“Talk?” Seikiyo stood. “Talk to him? This is – all of it – from the scheming of Goshira. And you want to talk?” His face grew cold.
“Fine. You’re close to the retired-emperor, Shigeo.
You were his attendant; you act as a mediator between us.
So: mediate now. Make the old man come to his senses. Otherwise, we’re done.”
“Away, you snail,” Seichi mumbled, playing with the knife again. Shigeo slapped his younger brother across the face.
Outside, the light had turned. The gate had emptied. Beyond, the city stretched below, alive, inviting. Within the walls it felt a prison. The cherry tree had lost its leaves.
By evening, Tano Kitsue had been released. The orders had been sent. Yaeko found Shigeo writing at his desk, and hesitated, waiting for the young man to dry his ink.
Finally, he sighed. “You know what my cousin used to say? Preaching like the enlightened on a public square: ‘It never matters what they think of you,’ he said. ‘You have to know what they’re afraid of.’ That’s what this is. What all this really is.”
“You think Goshira is behind this?”
“The windswept emperor?” Shigeo blew out his cheeks. “This is what he does.”
He peered across the narrow, winding streets and houses of the outer palace, houses made by ancient families, rich, privileged, untouched by war. A swathe of buildings cut across wide avenues with a view of the hills.
“All this burned down, once,” he said. “This place, this wood. Fires always come again.” His large black eyes met hers. “This means the end of the cloistered government. Goshira… My father will wreck him. It’s what he was waiting for.”
They walked below the walls, the trickling stream, the fishpond, trees that would give oranges and mulberries in the new year. The young lord’s voice caught in his throat.
“He asks too much of me, Yaeko. But what should I do? I cannot stand against my father. But I cannot stand against the retired-emperor. If I try to be faithful to Goshira, I cannot be a good son. If I try to be a good son, I cannot be faithful to Goshira.”
“I have no answers.” She reached for him. “I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes, I wish I was still at the Hermitage. Things were better there.”
“Things were simpler,” she said. “And we were very young.”
He took her by the shoulder, as though drawing strength. “Sometimes I think only the unlucky are born to live in these palaces… Oh, it’s a road that doesn’t end. It turns you into one of them… turns and turns… until, one day, suddenly you believe the stories. You believe the myths are true.”
He moved, as if to ask her something, a wordless plea she couldn’t understand. “Shigeo,” she began, but the pageboy appeared, interrupting them.
“They want you in the council, ame’in.”
Yaeko growled, “I’ll be there in a moment.” But Shigeo just looked away.
“Go,” he said. “Go. I’ll find my own way home.”