Glossary: Kengyu and Orihime: Classic Comix version, star-crossed lovers blah de blah de blah, Altair and Vega meeting across the Milky Way every year, referenced in various animes that I have seen, with my eyes. Google them, already. Sweet story. Enryaku-ji: the Buddhist monastery complex up on Mount Hiei, overlooking the city. Still stands today, still occupied by monks who have protected Kyoto from evil influences for centuries, except for those occasions when the monks took it into their heads to sack the city themselves - I guess defending against evil influences can get pretty nuanced. Woe unto thee O Jerusalem, you bastards, whack, whack. That kind of thing.
VIII. Up The Mountain
Shibumi Keitaro.
Acting Grand Panjandrum of the Saiji, the West Temple of Heian Kyo, just above the southern wall.
Warrior Monk.
Bad Ass.
He sat on his platform, balanced on his pole, legs crossed and arms folded. From his high perch, he stared the length of the rooftop to the east.
The southern wall and the southernmost portion of the City stretched before him in their glory. Above them, in the distance, the gently swelling hills south of Mount Hiei were beginning to glow.
Dawn.
He drew energy from the first sun of the day, as always. His power was birth and newness, revolution, the terror of the old-fashioned and the hidebound. He had been born to poke a stick into the Great Nest of Hornets, and laugh gently when they tried to sting him. His was the first power, the power of the beginning, of the laying of the foundations, of the first move, the first member to push aside the folds, ripe for conquest. The initiative was, in all things, his and his alone.
He quivered with joy atop his pole.
"Good morning, Shibumi-san."
He jumped.
He then sat, unmoving, staring at the beginnings of day-fire on the crinkly horizon. Drawing more energy.
"Shibumi-san?" An impatient tone. Familiar somehow.
When he felt able to pretend that he had not been startled -- he had not, it was only a twitch, he had slept oddly on his right shoulder -- he looked in the direction of the voice.
There wasn't enough light yet to make out details. The shape stood easily on the shingles about two arm's-lengths away down the roof. Tall, straight, unmoving.
"Who disturbs... my meditations?" Shibumi said with portentous calm.
"Ogasawara Sachiko. Dragon."
Shibumi's kundalini opened like an orchid at this.
"Aaaaah," he groaned, with joy. "My beloved. You have come to me at dawn... the perfect time. Our union will crack the very firmament, and our offspring will people the heavens. My wisdom will gather your fiery passions into... a scourge against the lawlessness of your order. You mean to yield to me at last, and hold within yourself... my superlative masculine energy."
There was a brief silence. The eyes of Shibumi's fated bride, just beginning to glitter in the faint light, were fixed on his, malignantly. "I have been meaning to speak to you about your manner, Shibumi-san. Unfortunately it will have to wait, for now. I have more urgent fish to disembowel, debone, pierce with a stick and char evenly over an open fire."
"Why have you come, woman, if not to... open your petals to me?" he said, chuckling.
"My imouto needs... a bath," Ogasawara-future-bride-chin said with labored patience. "I have come... to pay her temple fee."
--
I. Up the Mountain
Insanity is the last line of defense for the master bureaucrat... It's difficult to get a refund when the salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon. - Dave Sim, Cerebus the Aardvark
The sun was well up now, and shining full on the magnificent City of Tranquility and Peace.
Nanashi Yumi stood in the street outside the Mountain Lily Inn. Kogamon Avenue was never very busy, and even at this time of the morning there was only the occasional ox-cart. She looked up and down at the houses, mostly pretty modest affairs apart from Ii-dono's somewhat low-rent mansion down near the junction with Fourth Street. It contrasted oddly with the Burnt Grubbly Bits southwards: a ruined block of houses where not much good ever happened, she'd been told. She stood somewhat at an angle, what with the pack on her back -- she was used to walking, but not used to having possessions.
This section of street was ravaged with rain puddles from the storm last night and with strange marks, widely different from the usual footprints or wheel-ruts: deep disturbances in the earth, great strips of torn-out mud, and claw-marks looking as if they were made by a giant chicken. This part of Kogamon Avenue had been the arena of a great battle last night. And it had been something even more important, to Yumi. This was where she had learned that Sachiko-sama, her mistress, was willing to put herself to some trouble and risk in order to keep Yumi with her. More than that: that Sachiko-sama would fight for her. More even than that: they had both fought, for each other. Yumi had fought for her mistress, and better than she would have thought she could.
She was happy, but her happiness was tempered, in the morning light, by awareness of too many other recent developments -- in the inn behind her, yes, but there was something about the scene before her that was disquieting to her as well, and she was trying to work out what it could be. Somewhere, something was subtly wrong. And there was almost a sense that whatever it was was actively trying to hide from her…
Well, she had already found that she could look at nothing today, including herself, without seeing it in a new way. She was living a new life, and today she was even traveling in a new direction...
They had gotten to bed very early yesterday evening, she and Sachiko-sama, for they had both been exhausted after the fight with the demon, especially Yumi. This was just as well, as they had spent an odd, interrupted night anyway. Poor Yoshino-san had suffered some sort of attack. Rei-sama came into Sachiko-sama's room, beside herself. Yumi awakened immediately, and helped her shake Sachiko-sama awake. Yumi held Yoshino-san's hand, and assisted Sachiko-sama in odd ways -- "put your hand there" and "think this" or "feel that." Yumi did as she was told, assuming that Sachiko-sama would explain things when there was time.
Yumi was still half-asleep as all this was happening. She was worried about Yoshino-san, but was having trouble taking things in. She wanted to know what was wrong with her friend, but didn't want to interrupt. But she gathered from the things Sachiko-sama and Rei-sama and Yoshino-san were saying that this was a difficulty Yoshino-san had suffered with all her life, one that usually didn't bother her unless she over-indulged in strenuous activity, such as fighting demons. In those cases it could get bad and even endanger her life. However, Sachiko-sama -- or any skilled healer -- had ways of calming Yoshino's mad heart.
Eventually, when Yoshino-san was breathing better and her color had improved, they were able to go back to bed. But they were unsettled. Yumi's clothing and shoes were by the door of Sachiko-sama's chamber, the same items she had thrown aside in the Imperial Enclosure when she had run away. Yumi just stood there staring at them for what seemed like a long time, and it took Sachiko-sama a few moments to remember that she had given them to Satou-sama, and so Satou-sama must have left them there. Yumi couldn't stop thinking about this, for some reason. She had cast them aside, and here they were, neatly cared for.
They hadn't really been able to get back to sleep after that, but they had lain together on Sachiko-sama's pallet anyway. Eyes closed, resting. Eyes open, looking at Sachiko-sama, whose eyes were closed. Eyes closed, but knowing that Sachiko-sama's eyes were open, looking at her. Yumi kept opening her eyelids just a crack to see if Sachiko-sama was still looking at her, and one time she opened them just a hair too widely, and Sachiko-sama caught her. And they laughed.
In the end, Sachiko-sama decided that this was silly, and they weren't going to get any more sleep, and they might as well head downtown to the Saiji so they could have their bath. It would surely be open by the time they got there.
And it was. The bath didn't take as long as their first bath together two days earlier, but they lingered over it more. Sachiko-sama was in the most hideous temper after coming back from paying Yumi's temple fee -- she hadn't said anything, but just the look on her face had been enough to make Yumi quiet and meekly obedient. Once they got down to bathing, however, Sachiko-sama's face smoothed out. Yumi even heard her humming something as she scrubbed Yumi's back.
When she had rinsed Yumi's hair, she suddenly put her arms around Yumi and held her close, resting her head on Yumi's shoulder. Yumi felt very happy -- and very shy -- but she managed to say, "What's wrong, Mistress?"
"Nothing," came the reply, slowly. "Yesterday afternoon I was wondering if I would ever wash your hair again. That's all."
Yumi leaned back into Sachiko-sama, leaned her head against Sachiko-sama's head, and closed her eyes.
Soaking in the tub, they sat close together, Sachiko-sama with an arm around Yumi's shoulders. Yumi watched the steam rising off the water, her legs stretched out alongside Sachiko-sama's legs. They were her legs and feet -- cleaner than she was used to seeing them, but definitely hers. Yet somehow they looked different, next to Sachiko-sama's. The warmth and the steam and the nearness of Sachiko-sama all conspired to make Yumi a bit giddy. She wondered whose legs these were, if not her own. Then she wondered who she was.
Then Sachiko-sama spoke, and this fancy went the way of the steam -- rising away, yet hovering about their heads.
"A demon, Yumi."
Was that a statement or a question? It sounded like a statement, but it was a subject she felt fairly sure Sachiko-sama would have questions about. Then she thought it might be more in the nature of a command -- We will now discuss the demon. Perhaps. Perhaps it was all three.
"Yumi?"
I'm taking too long to think, Yumi realized. She still wasn't sure how to respond, so she tried simple confirmation. "It was, Mistress."
"Yes. It was."
More silence; more steam.
"I don't want to push you, Yumi. But this is a matter of some importance. I have questions. Fujiwara-dono and my fellow Dragons will also have questions... It was chasing you. It was really chasing me, or so it said, but it knew that chasing you was the best way of getting me. It knew us both, intimately as it seemed to me. How did it come by this knowledge?"
"I would give you answers if I had them, Mistress --" Yumi felt tears threatening.
She felt Sachiko-sama's arm squeeze her shoulders; she felt Sachiko-sama's cheek brush her forehead.
"You don't remember?"
"I remember some things, but I don't remember enough to understand... Mistress, I wish I could tell you what it was like, my life before I met you. I wandered from place to place. I begged for my food, and stole it when I had to. There were shadows everywhere. Demons in the shadows. There were dreams when I slept, and nightmares, and sometimes I'd remember things, horrible things, and I wasn't sure if they'd really happened, or I'd dreamt them. A nightmare demon could kill me as easily as a waking demon, it seemed; they were one and the same --" Yumi was crying now, and her breath was hitching. She was angry with herself. She needed to be stronger than this --
But then she was being cuddled, and her hair was being stroked, and soon she felt calmer. And stronger.
"When I met you, Mistress, it was the best dream I'd ever had. And I woke up in the morning, and the dream was still going on. So -- oh, I was so stupid."
"Yumi --“
"I thought I could escape from the demons, by being with you. But I was leading them to you --"
"Yumi, it’s all right."
There was a pause, in which Yumi searched for words to convey her shame and sorrow. But Sachiko-sama put a finger to her lips, and Yumi gave up the search.
"We have dealt with that," Sachiko-sama said. "I am satisfied that you concealed nothing from me. You only refrained from attempting explanations of things you did not yourself understand... and I know about the confusion between dream and waking; it is a country I walk in daily..."
Yumi believed Sachiko-sama. The sorceresses all seemed to have a little of that, especially Fujiwara-dono.
"Yumi, you told me that first night that you wanted to stay with me. You told me, last night, that you would not leave me. Is it still true? Do you still want to stay with me?"
"Yes. Yes, Mistress." More than anything. Please --
"Then stay." There was a smile in Sachiko-sama's voice. Yumi now looked her in the face. She wanted to see that smile. The attachment was there: in her eyes, and in her gentle touch on Yumi's shoulders; if Yumi cast her mind back, it was also in the way Sachiko-sama had held Yumi as they had drifted toward sleep last night, and in the way she had fought for Yumi like one possessed.
"I will fight for you, if I must," Sachiko-sama said, as if she'd heard Yumi's thoughts. "Will you fight for me at need, as you did last night?"
"Yes!"
"Then there's no more to say about that. The rest, we can work on."
More silence. Warmth and closeness. The steam made everything indistinct except Sachiko-sama.
"We must be careful of one another."
"Mistress?"
"You must be careful of me, Yumi. Leaving the way you did -- it hurt me."
Yumi couldn't say anything.
"But I must likewise be careful of you. I have to make sure I don't give you reason to want to leave."
"I didn't want to leave."
Sachiko-sama looked at her then.
"Mistress," Yumi added belatedly.
Sachiko-sama shook her head with a faint smile, and waited.
"I left because I realized I was a danger to you. You were right about that... I should have talked to you before I left.
The look continued.
"But Mistress, if I'd talked to you, I wouldn't have been able to leave."
"It's sweet of you to say so." Sachiko-sama squeezed Yumi gently again, and Yumi rested her head on Sachiko-sama's shoulder.
"You are important to me, Yumi. I'm only just realizing... am I important to you?"
"Yes, Mistress." A simple yes was a pathetically lame answer, next to Yumi's true feelings, but Yumi lacked the eloquence to convey anything more.
"We must talk to one another. About important things -- and there are a great many important things to talk about, it seems. But we must also talk about silly, unimportant things. We must know one another, Yumi. We will be spending quite a lot of time together, and we must know one another as well as is possible."
Yumi felt a familiar sadness at these words. "There isn't very much to know about me, Mistress."
Sachiko-sama gave her an enigmatic look, at this. "I suspect you're wrong about that..."
Back at the Mountain Lily Inn, Yumi had excused herself from her mistress, who was taking a last-minute look around the room to see if there was anything else that absolutely had to come with them. Yumi had gone out into the common room, and turned to her right.
The situation was tense in the room Yoshino-san and Rei-sama shared; when Yumi peered around the door-frame, Rei-sama was trying to finish packing for the journey, Yoshino-san kept interrupting her, and a girl Yumi didn't know kept looking from one to the other in a lost way. "So I'll stay," Yoshino-san shrilled, "I'll stay in this hole and chew twigs until you come back. But if I have to stay, why can't you stay too?"
"You know," Rei-sama said with great weariness. "Fujiwara-dono -- my duty as a swordhand -- I'm a Dragon, Yoshino, don't you understand? This is for the Order --" Rei-sama was trying to tie a number of small packs together in one big pack and talk to Yoshino-san at the same time. She wasn't doing either very well.
Yumi came all the way into the room and knelt at Yoshino-san's side.
She wondered if she should have come in. She wondered if she should leave right now. She would have, if not for the fact that she had to leave soon and she wouldn't see Yoshino-san again for weeks. Yoshino-san seemed to be caught between two fires now. She couldn't ignore Yumi, especially since they hadn't been able to really talk since Yumi's safe return. And the driving force of her passions required her to continue to hound her beloved Rei-sama. But Yoshino-san changed the direction of her thoughts, for Yumi's sake. Yumi watched her do it, and felt ashamed.
"Good morning, Yumi-san."
"Good morning, Yoshino-san. I am sorry to disturb you..."
Rei-sama, at least, did not seem to resent the interruption; she immediately took it as an opportunity to finish consolidating her baggage.
"I hope you enjoy the Questioning, Yumi-san. I really wish I was going with you. Be careful, though. It can be -- well, you know it can be dangerous out there."
"Yes. I wish you were coming too, Yoshino-san. I wondered..."
"Yes?"
"Well... last night, you... you helped fight the demon, for my sake. And now you're ill. I just wanted to make sure..."
"Oh. Yumi-san, you're worried that this is your fault?"
Yumi just nodded.
Yoshino-san took Yumi's hand. "Don't think that. It will require the deepest magic to heal me. I'm just about old enough now for it to be done -- it would certainly have killed me just one year ago. Even with me grown enough -- and even for Fujiwara-dono -- it will be difficult and draining work. So it was thought best to leave it till after the Questioning. I was going to have to stay behind anyway."
As soon as this was out of her mouth, Yoshino-san seemed terribly annoyed again, and she was looking resolutely at her feet.
"Charming," Rei-sama said. Her things were assembled at last and slung over one shoulder.
Yoshino-san said nothing.
"To hear you so easily confess to Yumi-chan what I've been trying to get you to accept for weeks now, I mean," Rei-sama went on. "So I haven't been bashing my head against a granite cliff-face for nothing. Very heartening." Rei-sama's head was high, but her mouth was grim. There were tears in her eyes as she looked at Yoshino-san.
"I don't want you to leave me," Yoshino-san said. She sounded like she had just managed to stop herself screaming it. Had she not been clutching Yumi's hand so desperately, Yumi would have attempted a polite withdrawal.
Rei-sama flung her bags back to the floor. They bounced but stayed tied. She was shaking with passion, but her voice was still controlled, if a little louder than normal, "I don't want to leave you either! I am doing so at Fujiwara-dono's order and there is nothing else on earth that could make me do it!"
There was silence, then, one of those silences that seems to go on forever. Rei-sama and Yoshino-san were both crying, and so was the girl whose name Yumi didn't know --
"Is something the matter, Yumi?"
"No, Mistress. I'm all right!" Yumi said, turning. There was her Mistress coming out the entrance of the Mountain Lily Inn, resplendent in the white robe and hakama with the red sash which were the official uniform of the Dragon Order -- insofar as the Dragon Order bothered with an official uniform, that was; the departure on Questioning was an important occasion.
"Sorry to disappear like that; I had to talk to Miyo-san about something. Oh, dear. This is a bit of a mess, isn’t it?” Sachiko-sama surveyed the scene of last night’s battle with a half-smile that belied her words. “Oh!" she added, looking at the particular area where they were standing. "Isn't this the exact spot we were in last night? When I found the thread?"
"I think so, Mistress." It was. Yumi looked at the ground too. She still remembered how she'd felt in that moment, seeing the thread dissolve in Sachiko-sama's hands. How had Sachiko-sama found it... should she ask?
"I still don't know how I found it," Sachiko-sama said, making Yumi jump a little. "I was looking for it, but without really knowing what I was looking for. It seemed to fall into my hands, almost..." There seemed to be a question in Sachiko-sama's eyes, as she looked at Yumi. But the moment passed quite quickly -- “Oh, we'd better be going. There are one or two people I'm hoping to talk to before we start. Come along, then." Sachiko-sama half-turned, offering Yumi one arm. Yumi ran to her side, accepting the offer quickly.
Then Yumi gasped, and stopped.
For a moment, Sachiko-sama was attempting to drag a suddenly motionless imouto. Then she stopped, and looked at Yumi questioningly. Yumi’s attention had been riveted by -- and now, after a moment of stillness, she was walking toward -- the empty house on the other side of the street, and toward the slightly bent wooden pillar Sachiko-sama had bounced off of the previous evening when the Demon had thrown her. Close up, Yumi was looking up slightly at the thing that had caught her attention.
Sachiko-sama, right behind her, said, “What is it, Yumi? What is the matter?”
Yumi pointed.
There was a hole in the pillar, about two handspans above eye-level. A bit of cracked, yellowed enamel poked out of it.
Sachiko-sama stared at it for a moment, evidently not sure what it was, and yet also thinking she ought to know, and not sure why Yumi was so startled by it -- and then memory did its trick. "The Demon's tooth," she said.
"From when you slapped it, Mistress," Yumi said.
"I think you’re right..." Sachiko-sama stared at it a bit more. "Well. Thank goodness it didn't hit anybody. Odd that it hit this particular pillar, though..."
Yumi reached for the tooth.
Sachiko-sama caught her hand gently. "Yumi!"
"We can't just leave it here, Mistress." Yumi felt this very strongly.
Sachiko-sama looked at her speculatively. "You're probably right... Here. Put your hand on my arm here, near my wrist."
Yumi obeyed.
"Now... the feeling you had last night. What was in your heart and mind when you were summoning the water-creature to help me? Can you recapture that feeling?"
"Yes, Mistress," Yumi answered, looking into Sachiko-sama's eyes.
"Then do so."
Yumi did. You must not damage my beautiful priceless Mistress, you horrible old SLUG…
There was warmth. Sachiko-sama moved her hand to the tooth, Yumi's hand on her arm following after. Yumi couldn't even see clearly whether Sachiko-sama's hand touched the tooth. But the tooth shifted in its hole, like a bit of ice melting over a grate as warm water ran over it; then it crumbled, into chunks, then pebbles, tumbling, then sifting down in fine grains, then a smear of yellowy dust on the wood beneath the hole. And then even the stain was gone.
Yumi fancied she'd heard a very faint distant scream, but the wind sometimes made odd sounds, blowing through the timbers of ruined buildings in the City of the Right...
"All right?" Sachiko-sama said. "You look a little pale." She clasped Yumi's helping hand.
"I'm well, Mistress," Yumi said. "I just hope it really is dead."
Sachiko-sama put a hand to Yumi's cheek. Yumi felt her face get a little hot, but kept looking Sachiko-sama in the eye.
"You fought so bravely for me last night," Sachiko-sama said. "My warrior..."
Yumi was still uncertain about most things, but the hand on her face and the mind and heart that moved it were her certainty. Her mind was a jumbled basket now of knick-knacks, odds and ends, and she put things together haphazardly for the moment. She put Sachiko-sama's gentle determination as they had spoken in the bath together with her clothes sitting by their door in the morning, with all of them at Yoshino-san's bedside, with the question of who she was when she wandered alone, and who she was when her legs nestled next to Sachiko-sama's in the bath, and could both Yumis really be the same person? The one was frantic, looking to and fro like a doomed bird, reaching behind the next mountain for safety, and the next, and the next, with shadows always at her heels; the other was warm, safe, at peace, and able to track down a demon’s tooth for her mistress. She could reconcile the two, with Sachiko-sama to help her -- if not her, then who? It was only that in this gentle quiet, with this protecting arm around her, that she had the leisure, the time to think, and there was suddenly too much to think about and not enough hard matter to bring the thinking to any conclusion --
"The rest, we can work on."
Well. She would gladly take Sachiko-sama at her word.
--
Third Street, just west of the junction with Nishiomiya Avenue, was filled with girls and young women. They were in that excited, excitable, slightly ill-tempered condition you find in large groups of people who are about to set out on an expedition of any kind. At the same time it had the air of a garden party, where people stood chatting in twos and threes - or fours and sixes, since famulae and sorores were often attending upon their mistresses.
A variety of moods was represented. Some found the Questioning interesting but a bit of a horror, as it involved leaving Heian Kyo -- deliberately turning one's back on the world's center for the decidedly déclassé thrill of sleeping under trees, on mountains, or in the Old Night, communing with crickets and monsters. So while there was overexcitement in all conversations, in some it had a sort of hysterical edge, as of extreme reluctance. In others, it was strong anticipation, an eagerness for the open road. The Mountain Lily contingent set the tone here, as in so many things -- even the juniors, as they took their cues from their mistresses.
But most sentiments were more in agreement with Oe Hikaru, who was chairing a stand-up symposium on the subject of how tiresome all this was, really. She and her circle were at the centre of this, girls who were likelier to have adorned the simple Guild robes with a dash of pattern, with a scarf or a light undercloak or a sash of some sort -- and likelier to have their hair unbound and long, court-style. These were girls who had fled to the Guild from some undesirable circumstance, rather than coming to the Guild because it was what they really wanted, and if any of them were still wearing Guild robes a year hence it would be a miracle, or the result of a profound personal revolution.
And with some, it was more vague, and you couldn't really tell whether they fell to one side of the line or the other. Three of them in particular: three novices, fresh-caught famulae Rats, their robes white, their hair new-styled, and their arms linked, were almost bouncing off the walls of the surrounding buildings singing, screaming, sneaking up on their brand-new mistresses, and being scolded for noise. Rebuked, they slunk up the street a ways toward the Guild Offices, comforting one another, and then squealed anew when they were accosted by Satou Sei, in a disreputable old foreign-looking grey cloak and high leather boots, putting her arms around them, shouting "Climb on into my pack, my lovelies, and travel with me! Let me keep you warm!" They fled her, giggling, to the Guild entrance where they bought food from Tomiko the Crab, a former sorceress now in her fifties, who ran a food stall just to the right of the door. She was a retired housewife whose husband was dead and children grown, and her manner of dress was something between that of a sorceress's split-hakama style and that of an untidy field laborer. She sold hot food: barbecued eel, octopus, quail with mushrooms, grilled vegetables, and steamed Chinese dumplings, but she also urged on them packs of her special trail-rations: twice cooked food, sweet crackers, and dried fish spiced to various tastes.
"The regular dried fish the Guild gives you, that'll keep you going, but you'll be precious bored with it after a few weeks! Take it from me, girls, I know."
Some distance above the Crab's food cart and the Guild entrance, in her office on the third floor, Fujiwara Akiko was saying, "It was falling down anyway, Suga-san."
"Fujiwara-dono, it's the Rasho Mon. Yes, it was falling down, but now it's fallen for good, and there are too many witnesses as to why. The City is a-buzz with it this morning: a demon was among us last night."
Akiko sat on a mat, facing her verandah. She was putting together a last-minute bag of tricks. She had what her superiors -- back when she'd had superiors -- had always regarded as a childish attachment to street-witch trickery involving herbs and roots and interestingly-shaped stones. She had always insisted that it was a simple hobby, and one that did not detract from her more important studies. She had known better than to claim that such things aided her studies, but she felt that in some ways they had. She smiled happily at her newest acquisition: the crystal that Tsujimoto fellow had used on poor Yumi-kun yesterday. She had gone back to the garden later and hunted around among the pebbles and stones until she'd found it. A genuine crystal used by a genuine street witch. It still had some virtue in it, and, most interestingly, it was capable of being re-infused, with new energy!...
Suga-san stood behind her and to her left. Akiko didn't have to see her lieutenant to know what the expression on her face was. Suga-san was greatly annoyed. Suga-san was generally annoyed about something or other. Heigh-ho.
"A great many people are simply terrified," Suga-san went on, "and are debating moving, except that of course this is where Civilization is kept, so they are unlikely to do so. Lord Minamoto Taro is simply furious -- his home on Red Bird Avenue has been rendered unfit for humans to live in! He claims the demon threw lightning at it, and then shat on it --"
"The demon didn't throw the lightning," Akiko said patiently. She had decided at last on the best array of items to accompany her on her travels, and was now putting them in a little leathern bag which had some most curious properties of its own, including an utter immunity to damp, and besides that -- oh, she would never breathe a word of besides that to another living soul. "The lightning was natural. I saw it from the air. The demon was responsible for the house being shat on, only it wasn't excrement, just mud and water -- oh, and probably some ox shit and some horse shit; you know what our streets are. But it was not a willful defecation on the part of the demon. Minamoto-san must not give way to paranoia. The demon hit a big puddle, that's all. And Minamoto-san ought to be thankful for the mud; it put the fire out. The rain might have done the trick, or it might not --"
"You think Minamoto-dono should thank the demon?"
"I really must ask, Suga-san, not to be importuned on the subject of what Minamoto-san should do. I have some ideas, that way, but they are not for public consumption. The arrogant little fart. You have offered to pay for repairs, have you not?"
"Not repairs. Rebuilding."
"Rebuilding, then."
"It'll be awfully expensive. I don't know if the Guild accounts can cover it." Suga-san had gone all prim, as she usually did when the subject of money came up. Mouth in a tight line, hands clasped before her.
"Tell him to rebuild, and when he finds out the total cost, to bill us. If he needs starter funds, accommodate him. I'll supplement the Guild accounts from my own private funds, if necessary. Placate him. I would do it myself, but I'm due to appear in the street below in a few minutes, say 'Follow, you insolent pampered young cretins,' and lead our girls away into the terrible wilds. It's a quaint custom we have in the Guild; you may remember it."
"A few, Fujiwara-dono, are doing more than cowering fearfully," Suga-san said aggressively. "A few have some idea of the protections you put on the City. And they wonder how a demon managed to get in, in spite of --"
"Didn't you tell them?"
Suga-san's mouth closed in a thin line.
"You can tell them if you want to, Suga-san. I never said you couldn't."
"There would be panic!"
"And we could have it over, and move on to something else... My protections won't keep out the strongest demons, but I did dreadful things to a few of them and they stay away anyway -- or if they do come in, they walk on plovers' eggs the whole time they're here. I have no problem with that being public knowledge, Suga-san." Akiko glared out through the open shutter at the bright blue sky, irritably pensive. "The thing that does embarrass me is that I haven't yet figured out a way of fireproofing wood. Not a cost-effective way, anyhow. One lit taper can be more dangerous to this city than all the demons ever spawned...." She shook her head. "Anyway, the demon was killed. By one of my students!" Akiko allowed herself a moment to gloat. She was prodigiously proud of Ogasawara-kun. "By Heaven, I knew the girl had it in her. She had help, but even so --"
"Nevertheless," Suga-san interrupted in a cold voice, "your reputation is somewhat blown upon, Fujiwara-dono. Whether they are right to blow upon it is not the issue. They have. What would you?"
Akiko stood carefully, turned and gave Suga-san as neutral a look as she could manage. She would have put up with this schoolmistressing from no lesser person, and there were days when she might have found it almost unbearable even from Suga-san. But a good fight always set her up splendidly, and last night had been restorative in other ways as well.
Envy ate at Suga-san. Envy was not the mainspring of her, the winding-key of her very being, but it was behind much that she did. Akiko had always ranked higher than she, both in the Guild and in Society -- such quarters of Society as would have any dealings with sorceresses, that was. To envy her this was extremely silly of Suga-san. The fact was that Akiko was simply older than she -- at least twice her age, and Suga-san would never see fifty again -- and Akiko had been a great-aunt and childhood fixture to the last six or seven emperors in succession, an even more potent fact. If that ranking, that supreme respect, were only due to Fujiwara-dono's age and to her having been born in the high snows of the social mountain, whereas Suga-san had been obliged to struggle up from the foothills, then it might not be as powerfully purplish-green a case of envy as it was...
...but even that envy wasn't as strong as Suga-san's unspoken yet unmistakable vexation over the fact that she had not been notified of the demon's presence last night. Akiko and her Mountain Lily girls had dealt with it among themselves, and Suga-san had not received so much as a memorandum.
That was my mistake. Nevertheless, I haven't time for this now.
"As for my reputation, Suga-san," she said, a whole flock of familiar thoughts having flown in formation through her mind, gone hard about, and out the back of her head again, "as for my reputation, it has got where it is, over time, without my giving it any particular thought. And I see no reason to change a winning system. I bid you good morning. We should be back by the beginning of the fifth month, as usual."
--
In the street below, Yumi was saying to Sachiko, "I was wondering, Mistress -- you seemed awfully angry earlier..."
"Angry, Yumi?" Sachiko was a bit distracted. She hadn't seen hide nor hair of Sei-san this morning, and had been hoping for a word with her before they started -- Sei-san had agreed to help her with magical protections for her charge, the egg, while they were on the road, and so she had been scanning the crowd, so far without luck.
"When you came back from paying my fee. Your eyes were terrible and you didn't speak for a while." Yumi looked down. "You don't have to tell me if you'd rather not, Mistress."
Sachiko looked at Yumi, and sighed. Dealing with that self-delighted ass Shibumi had put her in a foul mood -- it was not so much that he didn't understand the word "no" as that he didn't seem to hear it at all. One day he was going to push her too far, and... and... she didn't know what she was going to do, but it would be as awful a thing as she could think of on the spur of the moment, when it came. "I'm sorry, Yumi," she said. "The man I talked to about the fee is rather a fool, and he made me angry, that's all. I'm sorry if I worried you."
"It's all right, Mistress." Yumi was looking at her again with those lovely deep eyes of hers. "I was only wondering if there was anything I could do."
Sachiko smiled. Just a polite request, probably, but why does it make me so happy? She held herself back from touching Yumi's face again. It had been a pleasure, earlier, to see how Yumi's cheeks flushed at the touch. But she needed to be businesslike, here. "We do need to talk, Yumi."
"Yes, Mistress?"
"As I warned you earlier, there will be questions today. About your past."
Yumi looked down.
"I'm sorry, Yumi," Sachiko said, gently. "I know that you are uneasy on this subject."
"I don't have a past," Yumi said. A low, quiet, unaffected voice of pure misery. "I'm nobody, I'm nothing..."
Sachiko felt a stab of anger. "That's nonsense. You are Yumi. You are my imouto. You are precious to me. And you must have come from somewhere, even if you --" She broke off. There was too much emotion crowding into her voice. Her hands were on Yumi's shoulders. She allowed herself only a gentle squeeze of reassurance as she removed them. "Fujiwara-dono will insist on knowing everything you know, and everything you can remember."
"Is this... another test, Mistress?"
Something had happened to Yumi. She was looking Sachiko in the eye now, and her jaw was set.
Sachiko smiled. "It might help you to think of it that way. But... not as a test I'm setting for you. The world is setting it for you, and I am at your side in this. I will help you in anything I can... against demons, and against the past. Remember this."
"Yes, Mistress," Yumi said.
They just stood there, looking at each other. Sachiko had started by looking at Yumi's face for signs of how she was feeling, and had been sidetracked by the gentle absorption of Yumi's eyes in hers, and was now thinking only of how adorable this face was, and how she would like to touch it, and hold Yumi again, as she had in the bath that morning --
-- and then Satou Sei-san landed on Yumi's back.
"Glaaah!" Yumi commented.
"Give you good day then, Yumi Fleet-foot! What a pleasure to land on you, in such fine weather!"
"Aaaiigh! Satou-sama --"
"Satou-san."
"You are needed for a conference, my heart," Satou-san whispered loudly into a flustered Yumi's ear. "A very important conference, in the councils of the wise... Oh, good morning, Sachiko my old frog. You can come too, I suppose --"
"Satou-samaaaa!"
"Satou-san."
"-- though I don't know how much your actual contribution will be required, but we couldn't very well ask your imouto and not ask you, could we? --"
"Satou-san!"
Satou-san's face became odiously solicitous. "Something amiss, sweet Sachiko? You're looking a bit irked."
"Will you please get off of Yumi?"
"Oh!" Sei-san flashed her wicked teeth. "Well, if you insist. Remarkable noises she makes, though; I was rather enjoying it." She moved back and shifted a bit, but one arm stayed around Yumi's shoulders "Look, this isn't till later, when we're on the road. The three of us, plus Youko, with Fujiwara-dono presiding."
"You haven't got off her yet." Sachiko had folded her arms, and was glaring at Sei-san.
"Fussy, fussy!" The imp lifted the arm off of Yumi, and held her hands up. "What, are you a girl in your father's garden, and no other may touch your doll?” (Sachiko felt a spurt of real anger at this, but controlled it.) “Oh, what a show this Questioning'll be. Any gate, Fujiwara-dono will help you remember, Yumi, but she wants you to be thinking about it, and going back in your mind as far as you can."
"Is she going to force me to remember?" Yumi seemed nervous.
"Oh no," Sachiko said. "You don't force people to remember things, or think of things. That'll break the lock on the mind and the mind as well, or it'll twist the lock and make it impossible to open. You don't force remembrance, you more sort of encourage it. You --" Sachiko broke off. Satou-san and Yumi were both staring at her, Yumi intent and worshipful, Satou-san with raised eyebrows. Satou-san had lowered her arm gently back onto Yumi's shoulder at some point, Sachiko noticed, and ground her teeth a bit.
"That's pretty advanced magic, Sachiko," Satou-san said. "I haven't even started learning it yet. I don't think Youko has either..."
"Fujiwara-dono was explaining it to me the other day," Sachiko said, still staring at Satou-san's arm. "I doubt I could do it, from her explanation. Anyway, Satou-san, consider the message delivered. When are we to join you?"
"After lunch. When we resume the march, you'll come to us."
"Very well, Satou-san." The arm. Sachiko kept her eyes on it until Satou-san removed it at last, with another grin.
--
Noriko approached Rei-sama with some trepidation. The most warlike of the Dragons appeared to be in a most warlike mood this morning. Usually, it was Rei-sama who approached her, and she worried about seeming over-familiar -- though after yesterday, it seemed to her -- but she didn't want to take advantage --
Anyway.
She held her back straight, and her head high, and walked up to her. "Good morning, Rei-sama."
Rei-sama's face eased at the sight of her. "Good morning, Noriko-chan. Thanks again for your help yesterday. I was such a mess, and I'm sorry for all the trouble you had with me."
"Oh, don't worry about it, Rei-sama... Anyway... I was wondering if -- well, what we talked about some days past --"
"Your being my acting soror mystica, for the duration of the Questioning? Yes, Noriko, would you? I managed to get Yoshino to stay behind..." Noriko had known Rei-sama was going to try this, but hadn't really expected her to succeed. Her astonishment must have shown in her face, for Rei-sama immediately followed up with, "Well, truth to tell, she had a bit of an attack last night. Too much excitement." Rei-sama, it suddenly occurred to Noriko, seemed thoroughly miserable. She hadn't noticed it before because of the ramrod posture and the game face, but her eyes were a bit wet and she kept rubbing the back of her head. "I managed to get Sachiko awake; a bit of a heavy sleeper, Sachiko... I'm not much use as a healer myself, I'm afraid. Anyway, Sachiko got Yoshino's body to behave a bit, got her so she could rest comfortably, but told her in no uncertain terms that she was to stay behind as I'd said -- "I can't answer for your condition if you subject yourself to stress again so soon" -- you know how Sachiko can Tell You Something, when she wants to. So. There we are."
Noriko wondered. She wouldn't have thought that even Sachiko-sama could tame that blade, though if anybody could... "Is that why you were looking so, well, grim, when I came up to you?"
"Yes. On the nail, Noriko. Difficult conversations with Yoshino. A series of them..." Rei-sama a bit wild-eyed, here. Looking at things that weren't there. "So. You don't have a mistress yet."
Noriko shook her head.
"That's such a mystery, Noriko. You're adorable. If I didn't already have Yoshino, I'd be grabbing for you."
Noriko blushed. "You shouldn't say things like that, Rei-sama." She peered around them.
"You're not embarrassed, Noriko?" Rei-sama seemed disbelieving.
"No. Terrified. If it gets back to Yoshino-san that you said that, we're both for the chop."
"Oh, nonsense. But isn't there anybody you'd like for a mistress?"
"Yes. But it's impossible. Never mind, Rei-sama. You'd think I was a fool."
"I'll bet I wouldn't. Fool is the last word to come to mind, when I think on you. But you keep your own counsel, Noriko." Rei-sama smiled, bravely, but wearily. Noriko wanted to comfort her, but she couldn't help but notice that their sisters, in the separate conversations happening all around them, nevertheless kept shifting their eyes to her and Rei-sama. Very noticing eyes.
One pair of eyes, approaching rapidly, belonged to Eriko the Black, who put a hand on Rei-sama's shoulder. "Good morning, Rei."
Rei-sama turned, and now there were tears in her eyes. "Mistress --"
Eriko-sama embraced her former soror gently. "I'm sorry Yoshino has to stay behind. The two of you haven't half talked things out, have you?"
"No, we haven't. The timing of all this is very poor... And I don't understand why Fujiwara-dono thought that Mayuko-san would be a good one to leave with Yoshino. The girl is a milksop. Yoshino will be chewing on her bone-marrow by suppertime --"
"Rei, Rei, Rei," Eriko-sama tisked. "Do you remember all the times you thought Fujiwara-dono had to be wrong, and she turned out to be exactly right?"
Rei-sama sighed. "You're right. Ah, well. I've no choice but to trust her anyway."
Noriko wasn't sure whether she should stay or go. But she felt sure that Eriko the Black would dismiss her at any moment anyway, and she felt it would be more dignified to take her leave first. "Well, Rei-sama --"
"Who is this adorable creature?" Eriko-sama said with a sudden smile right into Noriko's eyes. Noriko's knees wobbled a little.
"This is Nijo Noriko, Eriko-sama," Rei said. "Noriko accompanied me on the search for Yumi-chan yesterday --"
"Oh, yes, you were with us at the crunch, too, weren't you?" Eriko-sama said delightedly. "I'm sorry I didn't recognize you, Noriko-chan."
"Oh, I was all over mud... it was dark," Noriko said happily, a bit dazed by the glory that was Eriko-sama. A very pleasant person --
"Noriko really helped me yesterday, Eriko-sama," Rei-sama went on. "I was in a sad state, and she kept me moving. She's agreed to be my soror mystica pro tempore."
"How adorably delightful of her!"
"Come to think of it -- you have to have a soror to come on the Questioning too, don't you, Eriko-sama?" Rei-sama added.
"Oh, that's all right. I found one before breakfast."
Noriko boggled. "Really?"
"Fast work, Eriko-sama," Rei-sama said, smiling.
"Rikki?" Eriko-sama said, to thin air, as far as Noriko could tell.
But I know that name...
And its owner, a thin, somewhat unkempt girl, in tatty robes and with an unruly short haircut, stepped out from behind Eriko-sama. She wasn't looking at anyone or anything.
"Oh, good morning, Rikki-chan," Rei-sama said, in tones of mild surprise.
"You are acquainted?" Eriko-sama said to Rei-sama, in similar tones.
"The Guild is a small world, Eriko-sama. Rikki-chan is one of several girls I'm training as a swordhand."
"Really!" Eriko-sama addressed her taciturn new acquisition. "And do you have talent, Rikki?"
Rikki-san mumbled something, in a gruff voice, and turned away toward the wall of the Guild Offices.
This was shockingly rude behavior, and Noriko would have been shocked if she hadn't seen it several times before. Rikki-san was just like that. She was a peasant, but that alone was not explanation enough; Noriko knew some very good-natured and polite peasant-sorceresses. Rikki-san wasn't ill-natured -- people usually assumed that, but Noriko knew better. Rikki-san just didn't function well in social groupings of more than two people, and she didn't care for being put on the spot. This had held her back. She had been in the Guild longer than Yoshino-san, who had made Ox-level not long ago, but was still Rat-level herself. She'd had a mistress for a time, but that relationship had ended in shameful circumstances -- apparently; none of the parties concerned would discuss the subject, so everyone else was left to wonder about the details -- and the older girl had since left the Guild to get married.
Rikki-san had stayed, seemingly without hope, but with no inclination to move on. She was a bit mysterious; people tended to shun her, and some of the sillier ones whispered that she was unlucky. Whenever a new Dragon was looking for a soror or even a famula, Rikki-san never seemed to be even a possibility in anyone's mind... until now. And now, Noriko had a feeling that Rikki-san's wandering, ill-tended career had come to a sudden end, and she was about to be horribly murdered by Eriko the Black --
But Eriko-sama just smiled and touched Rikki-san's hair briefly. "That's all right, Rikki," she said softly. "In your own time."
Rikki-san didn't move, or look at Eriko-sama. But Noriko could see a bit of her cheek, and it was pink -- oh, she had to pretend she'd never seen that.
Eriko-sama turned back to Rei-sama. "I have to discuss something with Youko. Let's talk later, Rei. We haven't really had time to catch up."
Rei-sama nodded. "I'm sorry, Eriko-sama, if things didn't work out... for you, I mean... but, well, I'm very happy you've come back to the Guild. We've all missed you. I've missed you especially."
"Thank you, Rei..." Eriko smiled happily, and kissed Rei's cheek. "And it was nice meeting you, Noriko-chan. You and I will talk too, I'm sure." So saying, she turned and walked away.
Rikki-san went docilely at her side.
"There were several girls in need of a mistress, this morning," Noriko said musingly. "And a few of them are cute. How in the world did Eriko-sama settle on that one? I'm glad she did -- happy for Rikki-san! But I don't understand it."
Rei-sama, still smiling at Eriko-sama's retreating back, said, "That's her way. She's fond of painting flowers, you know. She'd have a bowl of flowers all of one kind in front of her, and you'd look at her painting of it, and it'd be perfect except she's painted one out-of-place flower, among the others -- an unusual kind she'd seen somewhere -- or a sprig of weeds -- or once it was a black flower with a broken stem, dripping blood on the table. She was in a bad mood that day. She's attracted to unusual things, people, creatures. I was about the most unusual creature in the Guild, the year I arrived -- I was already taller than most of the Dragons, including Eriko-sama -- and I thought I'd never find a mistress. I thought that for about a quarter of an hour, and then there was Eriko-sama, staring me in the face... I'm glad she's taken Rikki-chan into her garden. Rikki-chan badly needs cultivation."
Noriko looked at her temporary mistress with a wild surmise. "Rei-sama... you knew Eriko-sama was going to choose Rikki-san. Didn't you?"
Rei-sama smiled at her. "Can't get anything past you, Noriko! I was pretty sure. I might have tried steering her toward Rikki-chan, if I was in doubt, but Eriko-sama's not one for being guided; she's more the guiding kind. Shall we --" She broke off. She had looked back to where Eriko-sama had gone, and was now staring.
There was a curious confrontation taking place. A tall man, good-looking if a bit dishevelled and stubbly, was facing off with Eriko the Black, up the street. They were just looking at each other. He was standing there, in the street, surrounded by sorceresses. Noriko couldn't put her finger on just what was strange about this...
Eriko-sama was looking back at him calmly. And Rikki-san was looking back and forth between the two of them, obviously mystified.
Noriko and Rei-sama, without prior consultation, started to sidle closer to them. Nonchalantly. Rei-sama will grab him, Noriko thought, and I'll start kicking his ankles.
"I miss you," the man was saying, when they came in earshot.
"I imagine I'll miss you too, eventually," Eriko-sama replied. "It will take more than a few days."
"Ah." The man looked down. "I see."
Eriko-sama put her hands on her hips and stamped one foot, her eyes flashing, and the sorceresses nearest to her moved off, with almost unseemly haste. One Dragon actually took her soror in her arms and carried her bodily away, onee-samaaaaa -- "What would you, Yamanobe-san? Married life was difficult for you, and intolerable for me --"
"I thought you wanted to get married -- more than anything!" Yamanobe-san was looking at Eriko-sama again. His eyes hinted at a confused stew of emotions that made Noriko ache a bit to look at.
"I thought so too," Eriko-sama said calmly. "I really did. Well, well. It appears I was wrong about that. Who would have thought it? Would you like an apology? Well, then. I am sorry, Yamanobe-san."
He looked at her. He nodded once. Then he looked some more, then nodded twice. Then he said, "You're right, Eriko-san. You're probably right. I'm sorry to have troubled you. If you -- but, perhaps not. Never mind it." He seemed as thoroughly miserable as Rei-sama had a few minutes ago. He turned, and started to walk slowly away.
There were a lot of gasps and titters from the sorceresses all staring at him, and at Eriko-sama, and they were talking to each other excitedly behind their hands. "...spineless..." Noriko could have sworn she'd heard that word. Yes, everyone seemed to think he was a coward, and weak, because he wasn't even trying to force Eriko-sama to come home with him -- not that he would have had much luck at that.
Noriko wasn't so sure. It had just dawned on her what was odd about the tableau: she'd never seen it before. Lone men did not approach large gatherings of sorceresses. They just didn't. Until now. He had come among them, and he didn't seem afraid of Eriko-sama at all, or of anyone else. Nor did he seem belligerent -- just hurt and confused.
Perhaps Eriko-sama was thinking that also. She said, "Yamanobe-san?"
He stopped, and turned slowly. "Yes, Eriko-san."
"I don't want to live with you," she said, deliberately, "but I don't want to marry anyone else either."
He stared. "You don't?"
"No. You're free to marry someone else, of course... I could hardly blame you..."
"I don't have any intentions that way, Eriko-san. Not now."
They gazed upon one another for a bit.
Then Yamanobe-san said, "Shall we meet once a year? As Kengyu and Orihime do?"
There were a lot of gasps, and moans, and shrill sighs, as well as tittering, and outright coarse laughter from someone Noriko couldn't see. But Eriko-sama and Yamanobe-san had eyes for no one else.
"It might be more than once a year," Eriko-sama allowed, smiling.
Yamanobe-san stared at her a moment longer, then smiled. A completely genuine smile. Relieved, Noriko thought. "All right! All right... I'll look forward to your visits, then. Have a good Questioning, Eriko-san."
Eriko-sama bowed slightly. "Why thank you, Yamanobe-san."
He bowed back, somewhat more deeply, turned, and continued the way he'd been going. With something more of liveliness this time.
The excited chatter increased as he got further away. Noriko let out a long breath she'd been holding in. "That is no ordinary man," she said, wonderingly. "To agree to a bargain like that!"
"That's Eriko-sama," Rei-sama said proudly. "She finds unusual people. Even if she has to go hunting for them."
--
When Fujiwara Akiko-dono emerged from the Guild Offices and crossed up the short distance to Third Street, she found all of the Dragon Order and their sorores and famulae, waiting for her. Which is to say, most of the Guild.
They were all looking at her.
She had stood in this place many times before. She had been leading Questionings for nearly one hundred years now. Lately she had been aware that this time was going to be different, given Amaterako-sama's prediction with regard to the egg -- but now she thought there might be something more. The sight of everyone waiting for her affected her more strongly than it had done in... well, the years blurred, along with the faces. Some of these faces looked so like faces she had known, twenty years, fifty years ago, and longer. She had had friends, once. There had been a sort of Mountain Lily Gang in her youth, a close-woven sisterhood. All gone now. Akiko the only survivor. But when she looked at these faces, she could almost fool herself into believing that those days weren't so far off, that they'd never really ended, that today was yesterday if you could just see it from the right angle...
So, for a moment, she allowed herself to just stand there and look at them all, and wallow in nostalgia and affection... wallow a bit. Can't wallow too long. Wallowing makes you an easy target...
Remembering with pleasure and affection the irritating and frustrating Guild elders of her own day, she raised her voice to address her cubs: "The journey of a thousand miles does not begin with a single step," she told them. "It began a thousand years before."
There were open mouths, frowns, and lips moving, repeating the words, trying to parse them.
"Come, come!" She clapped her hands. "That road won't walk itself." She turned and started east.
She heard many pairs of feet behind her, printing dusty footprints in the air, following.
--
She smiled. She knew how it was behind her without looking: this was a moment for famulae and sorores to walk close to their mistresses. Many of them had never left Heian Kyo until now, and they couldn't really imagine what the world might look like outside the walls. Some had been on pilgrimages here and there, but never more than a day or two days' journey out. A carriage-ride up Mt. Hiei to Enryaku-ji, or something of the kind. This journey would be crossing Hiei-sama, and moving on into the wilderness in the northeast. This was scary for most of them. Funny thing, though -- or not so funny -- most of the elder sisters were in much the same case. They had been on Questionings before, but only as sorores, or famulae. There were in fact only three exceptions to this: Torii Eriko-san, Mizuno Youko-san, and Satou Sei-san. Three seasoned Dragons, no more. And with all Akiko had heard about the chaos at Prince Suguru's pavilion yesterday, it was clear that the Guild was in very great danger.
So this Questioning was very important.
--
"I feel FINE," Yoshino said loudly.
Mayuko-san began to tear up. Again. "Please, Yoshino-san, don't shout at me so. I'm only trying to --"
"To MOTHER me and PAMPER me and BABY me and CODDLE me and make me VOMIT. It's bad enough I have to stay here on my own. Will you at least let me feed myself?" She snatched the bowl of lees away from her nursie. "And this is all right in the morning, but if you don't give me something more substantial this afternoon, I'm throwing it at you."
She ate, grumpily. So. Rei-chan was tramping off into the wilds, with that blasted Noriko-san at her side. Wonderful. Bloody wonderful. Nothing she could do about it... I could do something dreadful to Noriko-san when they come back. Involving spikes. Yes, spikes. She chewed moodily, her teeth clicking against each other, because you can't really chew lees.
She noticed that Mayuko-san was sitting a little way away, looking at the floor. Her plain, round face was turned away from Yoshino, but visible at an angle, and hopelessly sad. A tear rolled down one cheek.
Yoshino felt awful.
None of this was Mayuko-san's fault. It was not only pointless to take it out on her, it was cruel.
Am I cruel? she wondered. Or might she be the sort of girl one naturally takes things out on?
If she is, does that give you the right to take things out on her? she seemed to hear Rei-chan ask, in her driest tones.
"I'm sorry, Mayuko-san," she said softly.
Mayuko-san looked around. She was still morose, but seemed surprised as well. "Oh... you don't have to apologize, Yoshino-san. It's nothing... anyway... um, would you like me to just..."
"I would like you to come back and sit with me," Yoshino said.
Mayuko-san was quite astonished now. "R-really?"
"Yes. We're going to be spending a lot of time together, so we should try to get along."
"I thought you were mad at me..." Mayuko looked down.
Was there ever a girl more feeble and wet?
"I'm mad at Rei-chan, and at my body, mostly," Yoshino answered. "None of it is your fault, though. And it can't be any fun for you either, getting stuck behind here, looking after an invalid. All your friends get to go on the Questioning too, same as mine." Yoshino hmphed. "We're discards, Mayuko-san."
There was a silence. Mayuko-san stood and padded over; her feet in their thick socks were broad like her face and her hips. She sat near Yoshino. She still wasn't looking directly at her.
"I don't have any friends, really," she said at length.
Oh, no. Yoshino sighed. Then she seemed to hear Rei-chan enjoining her to behave again. And then she cursed Rei-chan, wishing upon her sore feet, and perhaps the occasional corn. If Rei-chan were here, she would tell me to behave, and I wouldn't have to do it myself. "But I always see you with that Hikaru girl," she said, deciding it was more sensible to talk to people who were actually in the room with her. "I thought you were friends."
"Not really," Mayuko-san said. "She just lets me tag along." Another tear rolled. Then Mayuko-san wiped her eyes with a sleeve, shaking her head a little. "I'm sorry, Yoshino-san. I'll try to be better company."
"Don't worry," Yoshino said. Almost against her will, she was concerned about this Mayuko-san. "You've been nice to me, and I've been rather horrible to you. I'll try to be better company too. But if you want to tell me about things... I always thought you were a member of Hikaru-sama's group. Today is the first time I've seen you away from Hikaru-sama, certainly."
Mayuko-san smiled sadly. "I'm not a member, really. I'm not much use at anything. Except healing."
"You're a Dragon-level sorceress, aren't you?"
"Oh, barely. I can turn one key, earth. That's one reason, you see, it was decided I'd stay behind with you. I'm a good healer --" there was a little dash of pride, there, the first sign of spine Yoshino had seen -- "but not the best. That's Sachiko-sama. So I'm someone who can look after you without depriving the expedition of a useful sorceress." She smiled the soft smile again. "Sachiko-sama is a glorious person. You're lucky to live here with her."
"She can be pretty difficult, actually," Yoshino said.
"Oh." Mayuko-san looked a little disappointed.
Now, now. "She is a fine person underneath it all. Look, who was your mistress?"
Now Mayuko-san looked thoroughly downcast. "I didn't have one."
"You what?"
"That's the other reason I was to stay with you. I've never had a mistress, I've never been on a Questioning. I would be useless anyway."
Yoshino tried not to stare. She had heard tell here and there that there was now and then a freak of nature such as this. The meeting of mistress and soror, however, was the soror's responsibility too, perhaps almost as much as the mistress's. It sounded as if Mayuko-san hadn't made much of an effort, if any. "Did you never want one?"
"Of course I did. Of course. I guess... everyone just thinks I'm a bore. And I'm not pretty or talented, so... So. But... well..."
She was looking away again, embarrassed.
"But what?"
"You'll laugh at me."
"No I won't." Yoshino said patiently. "I don't have a sense of humor. Was there never anyone you wanted for a mistress?"
"Yes..."
"Who?"
"Hikaru-sama..."
Yoshino frowned. "She's your own age, isn't she?"
"She's a few months older," Mayuko-san owned. "But we entered the Guild on the same day."
"So she couldn't very well be your mistress."
"She will always be my mistress," Mayuko-san said softly.
Oh dear. Hopelessly in love. Emphasis on the "hopeless." Poor Mayuko-san. "Does she know how you feel about her?"
"Probably," Mayuko-san said. "She seems to know everything else about me. She knows when I'm hiding something. Sometimes she seems to know what I'm thinking before I really know." Mayuko-san was waxing rhapsodic. More vivacity here than Yoshino had seen yet. The girl had a case, all right.
"But she doesn't return your feelings?"
"No... why should she?"
"Oh, don't be so abject, Mayuko-san..."
"Well, why? She's the talented daughter of Lord Oe. My mother was in service to Yamamoto of the Heike -- a warrior family. Sort of noble, certainly compared to me and my mother, but the house of Oe would laugh themselves sick at the thought of it."
"What about your father?"
"I don't have one."
"Everyone has a father!"
"I never knew mine. And mother died when I was little. She never told me about him... or not that I remember. I grew up serving the Yamamotos. And keeping still."
"You know that what family you came from doesn't matter, in the Guild?" Yoshino offered it half as question and half admonishment. "Most of us have been disowned by our families anyway. I'll bet your Hikaru-sama isn't on speaking terms with her father these days."
"No, she's not. She's never talked about him much."
"But the point is, family background doesn't matter. Not here. Look at Sachiko-sama. She's the bluest of the bluebloods. Her family were on marriage terms with emperors when Oe-dono's were still rusticating in Kyushu. And Sachiko-sama has chosen for her soror a beggar-girl off the streets. And Yumi-san was a very good choice, too, if last night is anything to go by..."
"Oh, Yoshino-san... is it true that Sachiko-sama fought and killed a demon last night?" Mayuko-san seemed a bit breathless. She really does admire Sachiko-sama a lot.
"True. I watched her do it. Actually, she had help from Yumi-san. Yumi-san is brave, and she has powerful magic, it suddenly turns out - and she and Sachiko-sama have already formed a deep attachment. And just two days ago, Yumi-san was all miserable and putting herself down, and thinking she wasn't worthy of Sachiko-sama, and I was telling her what I'm telling you now: it really doesn't matter." Yoshino sighed, and looked at Mayuko-san, whose eyes were wet.
"Oh, Yoshino-san... that's so..." Mayuko-san's voice had gone all wobbly.
Yoshino resisted the urge to fall back on her pallet and make retching noises. "I suppose, if you like that kind of thing... Sachiko-sama and Yumi-san are good people, but they both seem to need a lot of looking after. I'm hoping they'll look after each other better from now on..."
Yoshino trailed off. There was a noise on the verandah. Boards creaking, and then a series of agile little thumps.
She looked at Mayuko-san.
Mayuko-san looked at her. Mayuko-san had both hands over her mouth and was trembling. No help there, then.
Yoshino looked at her own right hand, and spoke to it, carefully, one word. It began to glow red. She raised it from the padded robe.
The verandah door slid open, hitting its jamb with a smack, and a small person with flailing arms came tumbling into the room.
"Don't move!" Yoshino snapped.
The red light was more impressive if it suddenly pierced a comforting darkness, but even in daylight, it cast an eerie glow over the room; there seemed to be red ghosts in the very floorboards, straining to get out.
Yoshino wasn't actually sure how long she could or should keep this up. She felt fine, damn it, but Sachiko-sama's orders, and Fujiwara-dono's, had been strict: "No needless exertion; no over-excitement. Stay away from confrontations. Behave yourself." But, for Heaven's sake, if confrontations insist on coming to me... Mayuko-san was clinging to her shoulder. Terror, no doubt. Yoshino felt annoyance at this --
-- until she recognized the feeling she'd had yesterday with Eriko-sama, and countless times with Rei-chan, a feeling like a hot spring was bubbling up inside her. Mayuko-san was lending her strength. There was a warm, steady pulse of energy, as different from Eriko-sama's as Eriko-sama's was from Rei-chan's, but with a familiar feeling to it: the feeling of being loved.
Tears welled up in Yoshino's eyes, and she shook her head, a short vehement shake, to clear it. No time for that...
...why has this girl never been accepted as a soror mystica?
The small person on the floor was staring at the red pulsing floorboards and trembling badly. "Make them stop. Please, my lady --"
"What do you want here?" Yoshino asked calmly. She could be calm. She could be in a confrontation like this, with an intruder, and still be calm. It was amazing how calm she felt. "Why have you come?"
"I came to see Lady Sachiko," the small person piped up -- a girl, as Yoshino saw now, of no more than eight or nine. She wore rags, worn almost through in spots, but kept carefully clean and mended. Her face was sharp, her eyes darting, like a bird in a trap.
"What did you want with her?"
"She's l-looking for a girl named Yumi-san, described her for me, I did some asking around, found a few girls who might be this Yumi-san, thought I'd ask Lady Sachiko --"
"Lady Sachiko is gone, sorry," Yoshino interrupted. All was becoming clear now. "Yumi-san was found yesterday evening. They've both left town with the other sorceresses, on an expedition."
The girl's face fell, even as her taut, wiry frame relaxed. She bit her lower lip.
Yoshino relaxed too; the light changed from red to white, and then disappeared. The room was ordinary again. She put her ordinary hand on Mayuko-san's hand, which still rested on her shoulder.
Mayuko-san jumped. "Sorry," she whispered, and started to remove her hand -- but found that Yoshino was holding onto it.
"Thank you," Yoshino said, firmly, and with a very firm look at her new friend.
Mayuko-san stuttered, "I d-didn't mean, well --" She blushed, and looked away.
The girl intruder stood up, dusting herself off. "Well," she said. "I guess I'm pretty stupid." She sounded very disappointed with herself, and the world generally.
"I don't think you're stupid," Yoshino said. "You're Kikuko-chan, aren't you?"
The girl stopped dusting and stared at Yoshino.
"Forgive my intrusion," said a disembodied voice, mournfully, and the girl -- Kikuko-chan, Yoshino was sure -- jumped and gave a startled "hah?"
"Good morning, Goben-san," Yoshino said. "How may I help you?"
The door to the upstairs passageway, behind Kikuko-chan and to her left, opened gently, no more than three handspans, to reveal a greying head, forehead on the floor in the hall, shaved crown pointing into the room. Kikuko-chan drew back from it, but then held still, as if she was afraid a sudden move might get her in trouble again.
"I deeply regret the necessity of interfering in your private affairs, Mistress Yoshino-sama," said the disembodied voice, evidently emanating from this greying head, which lifted itself briefly and then smacked its forehead on the floor.
"Was that a little too much noise, Goben-san?" Yoshino said. "Sorry. Something unexpected happened. I will do all in my power to foresee the unexpected, in future."
"I -- Iiiiiii, ahn --" He seemed reluctant to let the matter go there, yet unable to articulate his reluctance.
The door opened somewhat further and Goben-san's daughter, Miyo-san, appeared in the hall above her father's prostrate form.
"Good morning, Yoshino-san," she said. "Sorry to be a nuisance. Your downstairs neighbor complained of a noise."
"Good morning, Miyo-san!" Yoshino said cheerfully. "It was only our visitor, here. She took a bit of a fall, but she's all right now."
"Oh!" Miyo-san said happily, with a friendly look at the girl. "Are you Kikuko-chan?"
Kikuko-chan looked around wildly.
"How does everyone know my name?" she demanded of Yoshino, whirling back to face her.
"You told it to Sachiko-sama, and she told it to me," Yoshino said simply. "She said if you turned up, you were a friend of hers, and we were to offer you food and shelter."
"She said the same thing to me!" Miyo-san said. She knelt next to her father, but did not prostrate herself; she merely reached a hand out to Kikuko-chan, smiling. "She added that you would certainly refuse the offer, but that was only your strange idea of good manners, and that we were to keep offering until you gave up."
Kikuko-chan glowered at the hand, and then looked at the floor. "Sachiko-sama," she said, almost growling. "And what if I don't want people doing things for me? What if I didn't ask for your charity?"
"Charity?" Yoshino echoed innocently. "It sounds as if you've been putting some energy into the search for Yumi-san. In the event, we found her ourselves, but I'm sure Sachiko-sama would want you to be compensated for your time and trouble."
Kikuko-chan's shoulders slumped.
Miyo-san dashed forward, put an arm around Kikuko-chan's shoulders, and began to lead her away downstairs. "We have some bass, fresh-caught in the river this morning," she was saying sweetly, "And rice-cakes, and miso soup -- oh, and some lovely oranges! Would you like oranges?" Kikuko-chan only mumbled in response, as they started down the ladder. Goben-san was still in his favorite position, saying "Aa -- aa -- aaaaah --"
Yoshino giggled. Then stopped. Then started again without meaning to. She decided to let it ride. It was the first laugh she’d had all day.
"I thought you didn't have a sense of humor, Yoshino-san," Mayuko said shyly.
"Oh, sometimes -- by mistake --" Yoshino said lamely, and giggled again.
--
As the straggling, uneven column of sorceresses had moved north up Nishiomiya Avenue, then turned east at Second Street, it had abandoned any pretense of order and gone back to the conversing-in-twos-and-threes state it had been in before Fujiwara-dono had appeared. The only difference was that they were all walking now, and in the same direction. Good order was not as vital as it would become later, and everybody was very nervous, of course. So the leadership allowed some little chaos for the time being, as everyone walked along beside the Second Street canal, its waters decorated with cherry blossom petals that kept falling, falling, falling from the trees lining the canal. This was the last sweet sight of the City that had given most of them birth, and Fujiwara-dono would not interfere with their enjoyment and occasionally noisy admiration of the blossoming trees.
However, Mizuno Youko breathed a deep, heartfelt sigh of relief as they passed through the Nijo Gate. The dusty road stretched ahead, broken some distance off by the wooden Nijo Bridge over the waters of the Kamo river. Past the river, the road went on, obscured now and then by houses and trees, but always reappearing eventually, up the mountain, in white and grey fragmented strips showing between the sheltering trees around the shoulder of the mountain. To the gorge, to adventure, to the endless warring harmony of earth and heaven, the many kingdoms of sea and sky. The road went on forever.
"Your favorite time of year, I know," said a well-known voice beside her...
Satou Sei was happiest on the road, too. Not that Heian Kyo didn't have its charms. She had adopted the City as her new hometown, whether the City liked it or not, and she knew that it would always be so. If she couldn't come back to the City, she would be forever lost. But if she couldn't leave the City sometimes, she would be forever imprisoned... she sidled closer to Youko. They might not have many opportunities to talk, in days to come, with Youko at the vanguard and Sei watching the rear. Youko was wearing the standard white robe and hakama with red sash. No insignia of her office; she didn’t bother with that kind of thing. People knew she was in charge, and if they didn’t they soon found out. Sei approved of that. "Your favorite time of year, I know," she said softly.
Her friend turned her head to look at her, and gave her a small smile. "You were in my mind again."
"I'm insidious, I am."
"Among other adjectives.... will you be falling from a great height onto any more demons in the foreseeable future?"
"I can't promise anything. Demons are the very devil to work with, and anyway I get bored doing the same thing over and over."
Youko sighed. "All right. You won't be serious."
"You expected me to?" Sei raised her eyebrows.
"I try not to expect anything of you because I know you don't like it. I only hoped..."
Sei looked at her old friend seriously. Youko didn't seem upset, or really sad. Wistful, if anything.
"You ought not to think so much," Sei told her. "You'll make a ruin of your complexion."
Youko hmphed. "Excellent advice. If you can reduce the number of things there are to think about, I will gladly comply with it."
Sei thought about this.
Youko was not just the person Sei would have chosen for a friend, if she'd had the choice. (She'd never chosen a friend in her life, it seemed to her; they just happened to her, like the weather.) But somehow, Youko had become the person she was closest to in the whole world. She even remembered a time when she would have destroyed herself, if not for Youko. But even close friends as they were, Youko was a mystery to Sei, in a lot of ways. But whose fault was that? In her own distinct manner, she was as self-sufficient as Sei was herself. Sei knew that Youko, like herself, was a career sorceress, and the Guild would always be her home. But they had different approaches to the same position -- or predicament, depending.
"I was being silly," Sei allowed at last, "and I suppose you were too. I can't reduce their number. But maybe I can help you think about them?"
Youko's head snapped around, and she stared at Sei. "That almost sounded serious."
"Why shouldn't it be?"
"Thinking isn't fun," Youko said. "You don't like to do things that aren't fun."
Sei just endured that. It seemed the best way.
Youko looked away again. "I'm sorry, Sei. I'm not being fair to you."
"No, you're right," Sei said, without shame. "I don't like to do things that aren't fun. Watching you think, on your own, bearing responsibilities alone, isolated from the rest of us, is especially not-fun for me."
Youko turned her head back to look at Sei again. A slow, almost shy look.
"You always have something to do," Sei added. "You keep yourself so busy, I sometimes think you're afraid that, if you stopped working, we would decide we didn't need you."
Youko sighed. "Someone has to do these things. They're real tasks. I don't invent them."
"I think you're right. But I think I'm right too."
"Do you think I should stop working, and wait for people to notice?"
"Maybe some time off from work, every so often, wouldn't kill you... do you know, I have never seen you in our rooms at the Mountain Lily Inn?"
Youko was taken aback. "Well... why should I..."
"We're your friends," Sei said. "You've had a standing invitation for literally years, but you're always busy with something."
"Sei -- look, the last thing I wanted was to hurt your feelings, but --"
"You haven't."
Youko went rigid at this, and glared at Sei. "What are you doing?"
"What's important here is not my feelings," Sei said, laughing. "I'm not sure I have any. What's important here is you, never taking time off to just sit with friends, relax, have a drop of wine maybe, and chat about matters that aren't life or death or in need of being resolved with firmness and administrative virtuosity by the beginning of the next quarter at the latest."
"I don't have anything on my mind like that at the moment," Sei said defensively, "But there are certainly things that need thinking about --"
"Good. So let me help you."
"What will you want in return?" Youko said quickly.
"I'll want you to help me have fun," Sei shot right back.
There was a momentary lull in the hostilities, if "hostilities" was the right word. Neither of them had raised her voice, and someone watching them at a distance, as several people were, would never have suspected they were having an argument.
"You need help to have fun?" Youko said at last with raised eyebrows.
"Sometimes I forget the motions," Sei said lightly, "And need a gentle touch, or a smack, to remind me. Or sometimes, however you try, you can't have fun alone. So you hunt around for someone to have fun with. You end up with some pretty random people that way -- though the process can be enjoyable in itself --"
Youko looked at the sky. "You certainly seem to enjoy the process," she said airily. "No one reports on you, exactly, and I don't exactly ask, but from the sound of things you seldom sleep alone."
"True," Sei said sadly. "That's not all my own will, look you. Sometimes, you just have a duty to people, not to let them sleep alone. It can be cursed hard on a girl."
"Don't," Youko said, almost absently.
There was a little more silence.
"You were the first person I met, when I arrived in this country... remember?" Sei said.
"Yes." Youko's voice was quiet.
"The first person to start teaching me the ways, and the language, of my adopted land, was you. At first I went from liking you to being annoyed by you; it was as if I suddenly had a sister I hadn't asked for, one who kept following me around and visiting gratuitous advice upon me. And I didn't understand why you were so persistent, because I wasn't at all sure you liked me. You seemed so annoyed by me."
Youko was looking at the road now. "I was annoyed by you. You were annoying. You still are."
Sei grinned at this.
In a defiant, almost hostile tone, Youko added, "You were also noble, fearless, brilliant, and even terrifying when you were in the right mood."
"Well said!" Sei did love a well-turned phrase.
"And you still are all those things," Youko went on, as if Sei hadn't spoken. "I couldn't leave you alone because I'd never known anyone like you. Does that make you happy?" She wouldn't look at Sei.
"No," Sei said. She glared at her friend's profile. She wished she could look understanding into her, for even as noble and fearless and brilliant as she was, some things hurt too much to explain. "I spent those days chasing a will-o-the-wisp, which turned out to be real enough to draw blood."
Youko gasped. As well she might. Sei didn't usually bring this subject up. But at least Youko was looking at her now.
"After it was over, I did wonder what it was all for. But I know better now. It brought me to this country, to our at-times-highly-amusing city. To this Guild, an organization which lets me get away with being only as organized as I care to be. It brought me to a great teacher, Fujiwara-dono. To people, friends, I value." She tried the most ingratiating smile she knew. "You most of all, Youko."
Youko looked away again. "Even annoying as I am?"
My exasperating friend. "Annoying isn't all you are. You are also fearless, noble, brilliant, and -- quite often -- terrifying. In your own way, which is different from mine, but still perfectly valid..."
Youko was completely off-balance, now. So many things screamed to be said that she couldn't decide on one. She gestured with her hands, trying to compose her thoughts, but even to her, it looked a bit like flailing. Then Sei took one of her hands, very gently, and everything inside Youko went very still.
"You and Fujiwara-dono have dropped a lot of hints, lately," Sei said. "I'm not deaf, or blind. Just slow to make up my mind, betimes..."
Youko brushed a thumb across the back of Sei's hand as she searched for her next words. "We know that you want your freedom."
"I hew nearer the bone, the freer I may be," Sei agreed. "But freedom, silly to say, has its limitations. On the back of a dragon, I was free. There was nothing to tie me to the world below except a fragile link with a girl I'd never met, and even that could have gone the way of mist. I was on fire for the sky. I could have become a true dragon, living only for the winds. That's freedom. I might easily have seized upon it, and we would never have known each other..."
There was dragonfire in Sei's eyes.
Youko's legs were walking by themselves. She had no idea where she was putting her feet. She had eyes only for Sei. And she'd put her other hand into play, so that she was clasping Sei's in both.
If Sei noticed, she paid it no mind.
"But," Sei went on, "I didn't seize it. I came back to earth, to walk among humans again. What does that tell us?"
"It would be sad, never to have known you," Youko said.
A typical mocking Sei grin. "You would never have known the difference! Never mind. I feel the same. That's the trouble with freedom. You need something to be free of, and then, of course, you're bound to it, and your freedom is as free as the present moment, which is always falling into the prison of the past... I'm right up against it here, Youko. I need more time, but maybe not that much more. I do know that a life without the Guild -- and without my annoying friend -- would be an empty life, unless I could find something else to fill it the same way. And what are the chances of that?"
"Finding someone like me?" Youko smiled. "Impossible."
"I agree. So. Tell me what's on your mind?"
Youko hesitated, but only for a moment. There was one problem Fujiwara-dono had dropped in her lap this morning that might especially benefit from Sei’s touch. So she told Sei what was on her mind.
--
Not long before they came to the Nijo Bridge, Sachiko-sama and Yumi were approached by a beautiful girl, a beauty on the order of Sachiko-sama herself. A polite "good morning" was exchanged between Sachiko-sama and this girl. Sachiko-sama then said, "Yumi, this is Todo Shimako. She is Satou-san's soror mystica, so you're apt to be seeing a lot of one another. Why don't you two get acquainted? I should discuss something with Youko-sama." And Sachiko-sama, with a smile and a squeeze to Yumi's shoulder, speeded up her pace, making for the head of the informal column, leaving Yumi a bit crestfallen.
"I hope I don't impose," Shimako-san said to her.
"Oh, no!" Yumi said. "It was so sudden, that's all. How do you do, Shimako-san?"
"Very well, thank you. And you?"
"It's a beautiful day," Yumi said, "and I'm walking the roads again, but this time with over a hundred other people..." She trailed off. This was obviously a well-bred girl. What would she think of Yumi the mendicant? --
"I gathered you have led a wandering life," Shimako-san assured her. "We have only just met, but I did spend much of yesterday searching for you. My mistress has told me a great deal about you. She is interested in you, and she likes you very much."
"Satou-sama is a bit mad, isn't she?" Yumi said this without really thinking; the angry, Tsujimoto-thrashing Satou-sama of yesterday afternoon was in her mind's eye, and it was only when the words were out of her mouth already that it occurred to her that Shimako-san might find them offensive.
"She's not like other people, certainly. That looks like madness, sometimes... My mistress is concerned about you, Yumi-san." Shimako-san seemed mildly reproachful.
"I didn't mean to insult her," Yumi hastened to say. "She helped me so much, yesterday. She got that man Tsujimoto away from me. And she was there, with the others, when the demon nearly got me. I still don't know how they found me. Did they just keep a lookout on the Suzaku Oji, or --"
"No, Yumi-san. My mistress found you."
"Wh-what?"
"She was looking for you all afternoon. We all were, of course, except for Sachiko-sama. In the end, thanks to one piece of information my mistress found, she was able to locate you, on Ninth Street. And she knew there was a demon after you, though I'm not sure how. She consulted with a cat, and I couldn't hear their conversation... She got me to pass the information to the others, and went after you first herself."
Yumi gazed at Shimako's friendly smile, and looked away. "I see," she said. "Everyone was searching. Except Sachiko-sama. Was she busy with something?"
"She couldn't. Oh, no. Mizuno-sama had forbidden her. Mizuno-sama ordered her to stay at the Inn and guard the... egg, she said." Shimako-san looked sweetly mystified. "I'm not sure just what that was, but I suspect it's something to do with the big to-do about this Questioning, which everyone isn't talking about. And Sachiko-sama was terribly, terribly angry with Mizuno-sama for curbing her. She wanted to search for you herself. I've never seen the two of them so at odds. Oh, well. It's over anyway, Yumi-san. You're back with us, the demon is dead, and our departure wasn't even delayed. I just wish Yoshino-san was coming with us.”
“So do I,” Yumi said sadly.
"I know how my mistress seems, Yumi-san, and I can understand if she makes you uneasy. She comes by her strangeness honestly; she comes from another land, another world, across the Great Eastern Ocean."
"I thought there was nothing across the Great Eastern Ocean."
"So did I, until Mistress came from there."
"I see." Yumi did not see.
Shimako-san was silent for a moment. She seemed to be groping. "She told me that everything about everything seems to take you by surprise. She felt close to you, because she was like that when she first arrived here… your mistress and mine often work together on things, and so we are likely to be thrown much together. I only..."
Did Shimako-san want to be friends?
Sachiko-sama had moved to take Yumi's hand. Yoshino-san had instantly offered her own. Shimako-san, however...
She's like me.
And there it was. In spite of her superior breeding, Shimako-san lacked Sachiko-sama's confidence, and felt unable to recommend herself. She seemed to feel instinctively, as Yumi did, that no one would want to be her friend, and so she cut the feet out from under her own offer of friendship even as she made it.
If anything, she found Shimako-san more intimidating than Yoshino-san. Shimako-san was a lady, like Sachiko-sama. But Yoshino was only intimidating at first glance -- and Yumi wished more strongly than ever that Yoshino-san was here. She would never allow us to be so clumsy with each other.
Yumi said, "Will you be my friend, Shimako-san? I don't know very much about friendship, and so I might do it wrong. Please be patient with me!"
Shimako-san smiled shyly. "I should be asking you... Pray forgive my clumsiness, Yumi-san."
"If one of us stumbles," Yumi said, "the other will offer an arm."
"And if we stumble at the same time?"
"Then we will try to break one another's fall?" Yumi said uncertainly.
After a moment, Shimako-san laughed. And then, they were both laughing carefully together. They found later that they'd had the same mental image at the same time, of the two of them about to fall, and saying to one another, after you. No, after you...
--
Sachiko fell into step beside Youko-sama at last; her former mistress had been conversing with Sei-san for several minutes, and Sachiko hadn’t liked to interrupt. Anyway, she wanted to talk to Youko-sama alone.
Sachiko's rage of yesterday had subsided, of course, and now it only remained for her to be ashamed of the things she'd said. Youko-sama's manipulativeness and high-handedness were irksome at times, and her decisions could seem arbitrary. But she was, after all, Grand Mugwump of the Dragon Order. Sachiko had occasionally been placed in a position of leadership herself. She had been forced to wonder if it was possible for anyone to conduct herself in such a post so well as to escape any hint of censure. Even Fujiwara-dono, as capable a leader as Sachiko had ever seen, was often thought insane, or at least wrongheaded, and occasionally it was even whispered by this or that person that she might be... incompetent. Only no one quite had the nerve to tell her so to her face. Perhaps that was the secret of being a good leader: to be so formidable that no one had the courage, or the presence of mind, to accuse you of wrong action even when there might be grounds for it -- but how could that level of formidableness, that Fujiwara-dono style of implacability, unreadableness, and unpredictability possibly be expected of Youko-sama who was, after all, only a little older than Sachiko herself? Surely Fujiwara-dono hadn't always been as she was now. It must have taken her years to acquire this strange, incalculable poise, this seeming madness with a steely sanity beneath it... Sachiko wished she could take back what she'd said, could have controlled herself better --
"Do you still think my decisions were high-handed, arrogant, and unjust?" Youko-sama said. She was looking straight ahead, down the road.
"Yes," Sachiko said truthfully.
"I see." Youko-sama's voice remained level.
"But I also think... on reflection... that your decisions were the only possible ones. And I've been wishing I could unsay the things I said."
Youko-sama did glance at her then. She seemed almost startled. Then she looked ahead again. "I see... Well, I still think it was a disgusting, uncivilized show you put on with Tsujimoto-san yesterday. And I'd appreciate it if, should you find it necessary to make such a display again, you could endeavor not to do so in front of the Emperor. But... well, your actions were, after all... understandable."
Sachiko stared a bit. She couldn't recall Youko-sama ever making such a concession before.
"Still wrongheaded, mind you," Youko-sama added with a flash of sternness. "And quite senseless. None of that helped you get Yumi back, did it?"
Sachiko didn't say anything. It grieved her to admit the justice of that, but what else could she do?
"But Fujiwara-dono made me think about what I might have done in your shoes... anyway... can we forgive and forget, Sachiko?"
Youko-sama's tone was very gentle now.
This is as close as either of us will get to pleading, Sachiko thought. She bowed her head. "Most of the fault was mine, Youko-sama. I was going to go on to interrogate him about Yumi, but..."
"Still pointless."
Sachiko ground her teeth a bit, but she wanted peace, and she had to let it pass. "Yes. I don't think he knows very much about Yumi. He obviously held her in contempt; regarded her as nothing more than a tool. And he certainly wouldn't have had any useful ideas about how I could go about finding her."
"Not like the demon."
"Yes..." Sachiko turned to look Youko-sama in the eye. She felt troubled. Youko-sama had echoed her private thoughts quite accurately. "The demon would have known."
"They both, well, procured Yumi for their own purposes," Youko-sama mused. "And they both thought they had power over her, that they could compel her to do their bidding. They were both wrong. But the demon was closer to right."
"The demon very nearly was right," Sachiko said quietly.
Youko-sama just looked at her. Waiting.
"I still don't know how I found that thread... I, well, I loved Yumi. I just closed my eyes and loved her with everything I had, consigning to darkness everything that wasn't her, or me, or our love -- I felt, I felt her loving me back." That moment was still with her. It had been joy, unexpected, impossible, and she hadn't consciously believed in it until Yumi had fallen asleep in her arms a little later. "I actually felt that, like the warmth of a fire or a hot bath. I held us apart, and reached into that darkness, and the thread was there in my hand, and I knew it for what it was. It was almost as if Yumi had handed it to me -- though I don't think she did -- though I can't be sure, of anything --"
"Except her love."
"…Except that. It seemed to hum, that thread, as if alive. I was angry. I looked all my anger at that thread. And then, it had gone all brittle and flaky in my hands..."
Youko-sama nodded.
"I don't know how I found it, and I certainly don't know how I destroyed it."
"Perhaps Yumi destroyed it? She clearly has more talent than meets the eye."
"I don't -- believe so."
"But you don't know?"
Sachiko was being stern with herself, making sure she kept what she wanted to be true well separate from what she thought could be true. As Youko had taught her... "Maybe we did it together?"
"Without Yumi being aware of her own contribution? Possible. Yumi's awareness needs kicking up."
"You always used to say that about me."
Youko-sama gave her a quick smile. "I still do, sometimes... Yes, I think that may be nearer the mark. We witnessed a collaboration between the two of you, last night. Fujiwara-dono was first to point it out."
"But it doesn't answer the question. I don't think you could destroy a thing like that unless you knew how it was made in the first place."
"Perhaps Yumi provided that knowledge."
Sachiko glared at her former mistress -- face it, she's always going to be your mistress -- "Do you still think she's deceiving me?"
Youko-sama sighed. "I was never married to that idea in the first place, Sachiko; not really." She paused. "A person can know things without knowing she knows them, you know. Fujiwara-dono believes there's a lot more in Yumi's world than anyone knows about, especially Yumi. We're not trying to persecute her, but only to help her, and protect her and ourselves from potentially explosive knowledge."
Sachiko's anger had subsided. "You're right. I think Fujiwara-dono might be right too. I'm sorry, Youko-sama."
"Love can make a person unreasonable," Youko-sama said gently. She touched Sachiko's hand briefly. "I know this from experience."
--
The Eternal City of Peace and Tranquility had long before overflowed its eastern wall, as if the well-kept, stylish City of the Left were in a panicked, headlong flight from the raised arms and bared teeth of the City of the Right. This far north it had overflowed not just the walls but the banks of the Kamo River itself, so that even after the Dragon Order and their sorores had crossed the Nijo Bridge, there were still stately homes, and not-so-stately homes, and government granaries, and little temples, and even a drilling-ground or two, as well as small marketplaces and food vendors here or there. The marketplaces were not very busy at this time of day, but such merchants as there were grew quiet and watchful as the long train of sorceresses passed along the Nijo Road toward Mount Hiei. Some made a poor show of activity, pretending they didn't care about it, but most stared outright, often with their mouths hanging open.
"Ordinarily they'd be crying their wares to us, wouldn't they, Mistress?" Yumi said. The silence was making her uneasy.
"Perhaps we qualify as a religious procession," Sachiko-sama said with brisk cheerfulness.
"Still, it is strange, Mistress..."
Sachiko-sama looked at Yumi and sighed. "It's true that we sorceresses are not held in the highest regard. They need us, and they fear us, and they don't trust us. We do serve the public weal, but in order to do so, to the best of our ability, we must not be bound to the public weal, beholden to it. We must be free. A sorceress chained to the organs of state would be little more than a clown, or at best a marketplace soothsayer or cunning-woman. In order to do our best work, we must be.... unpredictable. Here we are, women who move in courtly circles, walking along the road in broad daylight, not hidden in dark carriages with only our sleeves showing..."
Sachiko looked at Yumi then, and must have seen how confused she was. She squeezed Yumi's hand. "There's something indecent about us," she said. "There always has been. We protect the City and the Empire from our human enemies, and from darker forces, but to do so, we must do many things that are regarded as unclean." She sighed. "And I must say that men do seem to be suspicious and mistrustful by nature, of women who seem not to need them in any way. We tramp off into the wilds like this, year after year, with no male escort to fight for us or find us food, and we tend to come back more or less unharmed, or at least uncomplaining."
"Everyone thinks we're unnatural?"
"Exactly." Sachiko-sama said. "I suppose you didn't know much about sorceresses until a few days ago, Yumi. Do you feel that I... well..."
"Mistress?"
"Do you feel I should have told you about the burdens we bear before -"
They became aware of a disturbance up ahead. Everyone was shifting to the northern edge of the road to make way for a splendid carriage, decorated with knotted silk strings and gold and pearl inlay. One long, rich sleeve hung down from the window, poking out from under the gauze curtains. The design of the sleeve was intimately familiar to Yumi, but she had to stare at it for a few moments before she really knew what she was seeing. Purple with acacia flower pattern –
She looked at her mistress. Sachiko-sama, so warm and gentle only a moment ago, had gone stony and silent. She stared away up the road toward the mountain. Many of the nearby sorceresses were looking around uneasily, looking at the carriage, looking at Sachiko-sama. The carriage's attendants, in blue tunics, red sashes, and tall black caps, seemed to emulate Sachiko-sama: they stared straight ahead of them, toward the Kamo River and the Nijo Gate away to the west.
This encounter seemed to last a long time. One could swear the sunlight was at a different angle when the carriage had passed. But it did pass, finally, and everybody except Yumi was looking anywhere other than at Sachiko-sama.
"Mistress?" Yumi ventured.
"Yumi?" was the distant reply.
"Who was that, Mistress?"
Sachiko-sama gently disengaged herself from her famula. "I would just as soon not discuss it, Yumi."
Yumi stood where she'd been left, still reaching with one hand, but not touching Sachiko-sama. "Yes, Mistress."
Yumi was trying to think of what else to say, but Sachiko-sama had left her. She was drifting back toward the edge of the road, inspecting the bushes and flowers and flowering trees, the great cherries which blessed their way with petals.
What did I say?
Yumi, dejected, walked on alone. She kept stopping and starting and stopping again, because it felt unnatural and, well, dangerous, to move too far without Sachiko-sama. But Sachiko-sama doesn't want me near her... but where else can I...
Then she jumped at a hand on her shoulder, and looked up to find Satou-sama, with an unwontedly serious expression on her scarred face. The scar startled Yumi. Somehow it was more noticeable when Satou-sama wasn't smiling; one forgot about it the rest of the time.
"Don't take that to heart, Yumi. Just give Sachiko a few minutes. I think she was taken much by surprise."
"By what?" Yumi asked plaintively. "Satou-sama, who was that in the carriage?" But Yumi suddenly knew the answer to this question, even before Satou-sama confirmed it:
"Her mother."
Back to The Sorceress's Heart Index - Back to Maria-sama ga Miteru Shoujo-Ai Fanfiction