Chapter Thirty-Two Kai
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Kai
“Tell me, lady, why should I be meeting with my enemy?”
Kai asked the question formally, and with respect where no respect was due. She’d not been pleased to find Yoshiko Keishi at the entrance gate, not pleased to answer when they told her of a message that had come.
Not just a message. The chancellor’s wife herself.
A patch of red spearflowers rustled in the frosty breeze.
She eyed them, thinking, worrying, felt a prick of fear.
She’d stayed as quiet as she could. Like a recluse, for weeks.
Her status in the capital was nothing now, disintegrated, after her audience with the chancellor; no one would let her close.
Not in the palace, not anywhere. Finally, she’d abandoned the court in frustration, staying with aunt Hayo at her home.
Hayo had been uncertain and uncharacteristically on edge; Kai had once or twice even seen her polishing her own swords, just as sharp as her uncle Yora’s, though shorter and somehow hungrier because of it.
Two slim blades like slivered moons in the night, and aunt Hayo had seen her watching, nodded slowly, and slid the blades silently into their sheaths.
There was a soft click as the swords drove home, and Hayo had left one of them at the foot of Kai’s bed, with a whisper: “Just in case.”
Now it seemed that news had gotten out. Now, the Keishi wanted to meet her in plain sight, with a message that said, We wish you no harm.
But they did, Kai thought. They did.
She felt Hayo’s blade at her side, and watched as the Keishi matriarch came in.
“Lady Keishi,” Kai said again. “Please. Why are you here?”
“I’m not a warrior.” Yoshiko, Lady of Six Waves, eyed Kai across the hearth.
She seemed older than Kai remembered, dressed in the austere robes of one in mourning.
She’s not trying to impress me anymore, Kai thought.
Beside them, Hayo sat with her hands folded in her lap, but her silence was louder than words.
“Unlike my husband and the other members of the clan,” Yoshiko said, “I strive only for peace.”
“I wish I believed you.”
“You’re alive because of me, Gekko’in. You know that day. When the Musha’in brought you before us, crying, ready to tear out our hearts… I asked them to spare you. Even then, I wanted no further bloodshed. I’m glad my voice was heard.”
She raised a hand. “Our relationship is strained. Me. And my husband. Our daughter, Hagane… It has been too much.” Hagane, who’d been used for political purposes, as a tool to insert the Keishi into the royal line.
Yoshiko made no pretense of her thoughts.
“I haven’t been in the same quarters as my husband for a year.
We disagreed about the marriage. I no longer let him stay with my house. ”
“You still haven’t told us why,” Hayo said, beside her.
“You’ve no love for me. I know. But I want to help you.”
“Help?” Hayo scoffed. “What help?”
“The kind that might just save your life.”
Smiling a thin smile, Yoshiko eyed the wisps of steam, held the kettle in her hand, watching it pour, rising and lowering with deftness, into the cups.
“I had a dream last night. A terrible dream… I saw a carriage aflame, out of control. None could stop it. It was guarded by the gods of hell, demons with the heads of horses and oxen; they carried before them a tablet marked ‘Emptiness’. ‘We come from Aku Dai-oh,’ they said. ‘We come for your family. You are fated to die. You are fated to the hells of nothingness.’”
She lowered the kettle, placed her hand on its side, feeling the black of the iron, burning hot, and pulled her fingers away. “You will be arrested.”
“If you’ve betrayed our trust,” Hayo began, but Yoshiko cut her off.
“You must take Kai from the home-provinces now, with speed. There is nothing to guarantee her safety anymore. They will do anything to connect her to the plot.”
“Of which she is innocent.”
“They found her mark. A poem, in Deer Valley, where the conspirators met. Light under the moon.”
Kai burst: “I gave that poem to Goshira.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’ll use it. Whereas I… would truly like you on our side.”
“What side is that?”
“The side of peace. Please, for your own sake. You must leave the capital immediately. For your safety.”
“What do you care of our safety?” Hayo said.
“My son is dead. Killed in his own garden.”
“We had nothing to do with that,” said Hayo.
“No.” Yoshiko’s eyes glinted now, little diamond tears. “No, I know. But the fact remains. My son has been killed. Seikiyo… has lost himself. His retainers come up from the Green Mountains in the west. They bring the Keishi army with them.”
“Impossible.” Kai stirred. “They wouldn’t let him bring a military force into the palace…”
“Who would stop him? You? Your uncle? My son is dead. And your cousin has been building his forces in the east. Our scouts have seen it. There are those who say the Gisan lord has lost his mind, strung up heads along the mountains as a warning. Don’t you understand?
My son is dead. And now everything happens at once.
You will be killed, Moonlit Kai. I saved your life once, years ago. I’m trying to do the same for you now.”
Be wary, Kai thought. “My uncle is doing what he can.”
“The Poet.” She seemed to flutter. “He has been stripped of his rank.”
Hayo uttered, “So it is a coup.”
“It is one definition of peace, against another,” said Yoshiko. “The Keishi have no intention of sharing power.”
“The Keishi. Your family,” Hayo said.
“Yes. So you must go. Please, these roads are no longer safe. Ashihara is abdicating. Seikiyo has granted the succession to my grandson.”
“A child,” Kai said.
The smile was cold as winter rain. “We’ve had child-emperors for decades. Much easier to control.”
“Goshira would never let him…”
“Goshira can’t hold things any longer. Our daughter wed the young emperor.
Our daughter gave him an heir. He steps down: the rest is simple.
Seikiyo is close to open war with the retired-emperor.
Goshira has been imprisoned. But rumors arrive.
Another heir, they say, one from an opposing line: Prince Nioh’s son…
The boy is Goshira’s grandchild, and Goshira will support his claim to the throne. It will not end well.”
Hayo scowled. “A trick.”
Yoshiko shook her head. “I told you, I have no wish for bloodshed. I only fear I’ve still not done enough.”
She left at sunset, open grief now on her face. Her handmaids and her guards were waiting at the foot of a carriage. “Believe me or don’t,” she said. “I can’t make your choice. But do not linger, Moonlit Kai. You’re not safe outside your family’s halls.”
With that, she made her way along the road, up to the palace, and the world that was changing underfoot. Kai watched until the sky dimmed, and the mountains grew dark, and for a moment it seemed they were in a hidden world.
“They’ll come for us,” Hayo said.
Kai turned to her. “I know.”
She left her aunt’s home the following day.
Slipped past the gate and the guardhouse, and made it up the slopes of Mount Eizan to stay at one of the hot springs under an assumed name.
She didn’t tell Hayo where she was going.
She felt terrible about it – but she couldn’t put her family in any more danger.
If it’s me they want, they can find me back in Zusho, she’d told herself the night before, packing her few things.
The capital had never wanted her. And it felt, somehow, strangely liberating to know she could be rid of it, herself.
I tried, she thought, as she passed the market roads leading up the imperial mountain. I tried.
She knew her aunt and uncle would be worried, but the note she left by Hayo’s twin blades told them she would be all right.
I’m going home, it said, where I won’t need swords anymore.
She only hoped her disappearance wouldn’t draw attention to them even further.
She hoped the Keishi matriarch had not been lying to them, that it had not been a trap.
As the morning sun shone brightly through the windows, she kneeled beside her small bundle and once again prepared to depart.
It was quite a different feeling to be on the road on foot, alone, and knowing you were hunted; the last time she had come, she’d ridden in her stewardfather’s retinue, surrounded by Zusho retainers and shaded from the fat late-summer sun.
Now it was winter, a year later, and she was alone.
She was tying the bundle when a small sound brought her attention to the sliding door.
The matron was outside, just visible through the thin paper, nodding in apology. “Ame’in. A message has arrived.”
Kai rose. “What message? Who is it?”
“They say, from your uncle. From the Poet.”
Tying her sash about her waist, Kai crossed the washroom, with its open balcony facing the springs on the side of the mountain behind her, a deck leading out and nothing but trees and forested mountainside beyond. A cold wind touched her back.
She hesitated.
There was a looming quiet on the other side of the paper-lined screen door. It sent a shiver down her spine, set her on edge. She kneeled, uncertainly, reaching for her small knife from where it lay among the folds of her belongings. For once, she wished she’d kept Hayo’s sword.
“Matron,” she called, tense. The matron’s voice wavered on the other side.
“Ame’in? Everything all right?”
“You have the message?”
She heard a shuffle.
“Matron,” she called again.
The door exploded in her face.