Chapter Twenty-Seven Yora #2
Seichi laughed, a loud, boastful laugh, the kind that hid fragility behind it. Then a second time, more quietly, almost to himself. He mounted, wheeled about. “We leave!”
This will be used against Kai, Yora thought, and against me.
“What does it mean?” Yaeko asked. “Kai wasn’t part of this, was she?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He shook his head. “It’s what they needed.”
Shigeo met him at the palace, red-eyed. “My father has announced the succession. Ashihara is stepping down. His son will accede to the Autumn Throne. It’s happening. Father’s furious. Demands you come before the council.”
Yora hurried in.
“You must speak to him,” Shigeo said. “He has vowed to crush the rest of the conspirators.”
“What ‘rest’? He’s killed them all already.”
Shigeo paled. “Not all of them.”
They turned the corner to find one last surprise. Tano Kitsue, whom Yora saw at Deer Valley, sat waiting by the doors. For a moment, he was stopped in his tracks.
“You must blame me, lord,” said Tano, when he saw them and realized what he’d done.
Yora soured. “You’ll be rewarded,” he said, voice tighter than he’d thought. “You’ll be made well from this: what can I blame but human nature?”
With that, he entered the room.
The chancellor had always been a quiet man, but now the silence that lay in his chambers wilted into something else; the silence of an illness, a lack of air. “When did they approach you?”
He knows, Yora thought. What could he say?
“I refused them.”
“And you didn’t report it?” Seikiyo stood, waiting. His hands had bound themselves into fists.
“I was trying to make peace,” Yora said, carefully.
The chancellor grimaced, as if to say: what other excuse will you come up with? “If you will not fight for me,” he asked, “what are you still doing here?”
“Lord, you asked me to find the source of these conspiracies against you. Killing will only make it worse. More enemies. Let us find another way.”
Seikiyo declined. “That’s enough.”
“Chancellor,” Yora began, but Seikiyo cut him off.
“We were friends once. We shared everything. What happened?”
“I wish I knew.” Yora didn’t bother to hide the hurt – or the regret – from his voice. Not anymore. “I know what Seichi said…”
“I am shattered by this apparent betrayal of loyalties.” Seikiyo approached. “You ordered your men to stand by while the conspiracy was put down… Why? Because they were your seedlings? Your soldiers? Were they working on your orders?”
“I would never do that.” Yora found himself retreating. “I would never undermine the throne.”
“You have already undermined it!”
Yora remained silent.
“The court, lord, always bickers. They tip back and forth,” Seikiyo said. “I thought I had you to help me.”
“I advise caution…” Yora offered.
“You always do.”
“… caution not to set dry wood alight. This was the work of individuals. Criminals, yes, but individual men and women. The entire Hara clanline is not to blame.”
“Any more than yours was?”
“Three hundred years ago, the great families were all the same,” he said. “We can be unified again.”
“Can we?” Seikiyo waved off suddenly. “I saw an awful sight this morning, poet… A crow, with a sparrow in its mouth, dead. I thought, what sign is this… What ill omen…”
“You cannot do this,” Yora said. “You cannot force the succession…”
“What law says that I cannot?”
“Think of how it looks, think of how it seems—”
“It seems the young emperor has taken the cloister. As has been the tradition of his family for generations. And put his firstborn son on the throne under a regent. As has always been done.”
“People will think you’re using this to take control.”
“Will they? Or will you?” He didn’t wait for Yora’s answer: “Why not, Yora? Why shouldn’t I? I held the fortress. I kept the realm together when your brother tried to take it all.”
“And now you try to,” Yora said.
“I never sought that. Never.” Seikiyo turned, shaking his head. He seemed to have lost his focus. The candle to his right lay unlit; he held it in a trembling hand.
“Do you see them?” Seikiyo asked. “Ghosts? When you close your eyes and lie back, they come… They come and take your rest. And the past opens before you, not the world.”
“They told me you were having problems.”
Seikiyo stared. “Who told you.”
“It’s not hard to see you’re struggling.”
Seikiyo moved away. “It’s nothing… No more than any of us.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” That word: like an accusation. Yes.
“What haunts you, lord?”
Seikiyo gave a bitter smile. “Only the dead. They’re never gone… They come back. They come back and come back. Dead enemies… dead friends…” A look to Yora: “Dead children.”
Yora felt a familiar tightening in his chest. “I would help you,” he said. “If only…”
“‘If only.’”
“Lord. Do not do this. The security you’re looking for, it’s not this way.”
“And I suppose you’re the one to tell me where it is. I could have used your help, but now I find, everything was lies…”
“I have tried to help—”
Seikiyo wasn’t angry now. “It’s too late, Yora. It’s done. The boy will accede. His father Ashihara will retire. Deer Valley will be burned. We’ll put Goshira under house arrest.”
“What will that accomplish?”
“He’s been meddling with everything – you see his creeping fingers in every one of these events. It must be done.”
“He’s the emperor’s father. Grandfather to the crown prince.”
“As am I,” Seikiyo said.
“The boy is an infant…”
“There have been child-emperors before. Our history is known for it. There is always another power behind the throne, surely you know that.”
Yora had no words.
“All right.” Seikiyo gestured vaguely. “All right.” He went to his seat, retreating into formality. “You are no longer a member of this council, Yora. You may go.”
The brothers Shosei and Seichi had returned.
Both wore armor in the traditional colors of their family, bright gold and turquoise, and behind them stood gaunt Nagai Sanetomo, head of Shosei’s bodyguard, an old warrior with fine white hair, deep lines under his eyes, and thin lips.
He’d been a retainer of Tokuon’s father, Yora knew, and once cared for the boy after his father’s death in the war of succession.
We are much alike, Yora considered, yet he loves me not. He remembers we were on opposite sides in the war. And now… now we’re on opposite sides once again.
“Poet.” Seikiyo was quiet as they led him out. “You’re lucky I’m letting you live. Remember that.”
Yora nodded once, and took his leave. Behind him, Seikiyo had moved to the great window, with a view of the mountains to the west, and as he looked back to his old friend one last time, Yora saw Seikiyo gazing out to where the sun was setting on the slopes of Mount Eizan and the western hills, and to the palace gate, where the shadows of night had come.
“I’ve resigned,” Shigeo told him later, ash-faced and angry, in the garden. “From the palace guards. Moro… he’s admitted everything. Probably writing a confession now, filing his paper. My father ordered his jaw split. Broken. I don’t know. He’s to be beheaded at Phoenix Crossing at sundown.”
“And Deer Valley is to be burned.”
Shigeo said, “People are furious. They see this – I passed the marketplace, they’re making effigies of my father, trampling through the mud.
There are groups. Citizens’ leagues, making a thousand prayer-wheels to throw into the sea.
And the court? If anything, this sends them to Goshira.
It sends them to Prince Nioh. They want the mirror prince, they say.
His wife was one we took. They gasp at this, the violence.
They decry us. They say, ‘This is a civilized society.’ They say, ‘Executions were outlawed for two hundred years, until the demon-emperor…’ and my father shrugs and says, ‘Now we bring them back.’ It’s unfathomable. ”
Yora watched the young man, the lord who was Seikiyo’s heir. He shook his head, straining; he couldn’t keep still. Eventually his hand found a single chrysanthemum that had bent over the path, and he smashed it away.
“Ame’in.” Yora waited for the younger man to pause. “How are you doing?”
But Shigeo wheeled off. The death of his wife, Nariko, had devastated him.
Yora knew this. He’d never known the woman well, never had a chance to, before he saw her with an arrow in her back.
But now, coughing, eyes red-rimmed, and pale, he could see Shigeo hadn’t shaved or slept.
He’s floundering. His father has gone too far.
“I’m leaving, Yora.” Shigeo’s words came faintly, thin of breath. “I… can’t stay in this anymore. They want to reject my resignation, but I won’t let them. Father’s furious.”
“What of your son?”
A silence. “We got him out.”
Shigeo shook, patting tears from his eyes. “He’s sick, you know. Father. That’s what this is… It’s not just the nightmares. He knows: a – cancer, I think. He’s trying to do as much as he can before it gets too bad… I just can’t be part of it anymore.”
“What will you do?”
This sadness, this little laugh. “I don’t know. Become a monk. Try to save our souls. I’m to tell you, my brother Shosei will be in charge. You’ll be permitted to remain as a retainer. My other brother, Seichi, will give your commands.”
“The arrow.”
The memory of the young boy’s singing seemed to fill Yora’s ears.
Yora heard it as he rode to watch the mansion in Deer Valley fall, heard it as Seichi went in with his torch. As he turned, drunk with victory, reeking of smoke. As he shouted, “The fire!”
Seichi threw another torch into the blaze, and rode back to the road. “The firebrand!” Shosei shouted, for his brother. The Keishi homeguard cheered. “The firebrand! Seichi the firebrand! The flaming arrow!”
Yora sat on his horse, and watched, and did nothing.
Maybe we truly have entered the Age of Plagues.
Watching the horses and riders, watching the boy who was once his student cry victory as the icons burned.
The rising of their voices and the deep sound of flames covered everything.
His horse pulled at him, uneasy with the fumes and smoke.
He watched it all with tears in his eyes.
The pond at the inner court lay still, glass-like, even as the walls collapsed, even as Deer Valley hall began to burn. He could see an image of it on the water. Reflections, raining up at him, reflections of the embers raining down. They look like flowers, he thought. Burning flowers.
I have done all I could. And now there are a hundred people dead. The temples burn. Seikiyo controls the courts. Night has fallen. He has stripped me of my titles, and the fires rage beyond the royal steps.
Everything I have tried has failed, he thought.
All that’s left is the truth.