Glossary: "Yoshinosuke": Eriko is playing around; -suke is an ending more usually found on boys' names. "We have perhaps an hour..." : Two hours to us. The Heian day was divided into twelve hours, each one two of our hours long, each named after, naturally, an animal of the Chinese zodiac. The "hour of the Boar" is around 10:00pm. "Kannon-sama": Chinese Guanyin, the female bodhisattva of compassion; eleven-headed, thousand-handed, Kannon the Merciful. "Rei-pochi": Noriko is being fanciful. "Pochi" is a fairly common dog name in Japan, roughly equivalent to "Spot" or "Rover." (Though I don't know how often it's used as an honorific.) I gather dogs aren't kept as pets in Japan as often as over here, and I'm not sure about the history of the practice, but Sei Shonagon does tell a rather sad story about a pet dog, so we can be fairly sure the idea wouldn't have been completely strange to her contemporaries.
VI. The Compass Points
When Sei found Sachiko, she was kneeling on the ground near the southern wall of the enclosure and holding one of Yumi's shoes. There seemed to be an aura of winter around her; Sei almost felt the temperature drop as she came near.
"Sachiko..." Sei said. She steeled herself. She wondered if she was going to get the same treatment as Suguru. Sachiko was certainly in the right mood to dish it out. "This, well, this may not be as black as it appears..."
Sachiko looked up. Her face had that blank, expressionless calm which usually boded extremely ill for whomever she directed it at. And she directed it at Sei for a very long moment. Sei, who had stared down dragons (the sort with actual wings), nevertheless felt a tickle of nervousness.
"Spare me the hollow words of comfort," Sachiko said at last. "You lost track of her, Sei."
Sei looked off toward Mount Hiei in the northeast. "Yes. Shimako came up, and I was talking to her. I was going to introduce them. But when I looked for her, Yumi was gone. I looked away from her for a minute at most. I understand your being upset, but..." Sei didn't know just what to say. "Look --"
"Never mind about that right now."
"Pardon?"
"Recriminations are a waste of time. I might have the leisure later on --" a stabbing glance -- "but not now. Yumi's missing, and she has to be found."
Sei's mind cleared. Sachiko wasn't made to grant forgiveness easily, but then, Sei wasn't made to ask for it. As long as they both understood that -- "You're right, Sachiko, my old frozen hedgehog. Look, maybe she's just gone back to the Inn."
"Please do not call me an old frozen hedgehog. And why --" Sachiko held up the shoe, and a corner of pale green robe -- "would she leave these behind?"
"You have me there," Sei admitted. "My young frozen hedgehog."
Sachiko seemed oblivious to this last sally. Mystification increased in her brows. "She ran away. Why did she run away?"
"Maybe --"
"What did I do wrong?" This was spoken low, almost as if Sachiko were talking to herself.
Sei boggled. "Sachiko, I doubt like hell it was anything you did."
Sachiko looked up. "You're sure?"
Sachiko's blank calm was eroding. She was more vulnerable than Sei had ever seen her, and Sei felt a touch of pity. And fear. "Come on, my old buttered parsnip. Yumi's mad about you! We've all seen... The only reason I can think of that makes sense is, she must have thought it would be best for you if she left --"
"How could that be the best thing for me?" Sachiko rose suddenly. She seemed to be on the point of that terrible cold fury again.
"Well, when we find her, you can ask her that. Please don't lose your cool again, Sachiko --"
"I won't," she said curtly. "Fujiwara-dono was right. If I am to find her, help her, I have to keep my head. But the idea of her leaving being good for me is foolish -- I was balanced, Sei. It's as if an important piece was missing, and I didn't know until I found her -- and lost her --"
They turned at a noise, and there were a great many well-known faces approaching, from the garden. Youko. Rei and Yoshino, carefully not looking at one another. And Shimako, moving now to Sei's side. And there was Eriko, how nice, it had been months since Sei had seen her.
The Gang's all here!...
"We're looking for Yumi, Sachiko. No argument," Youko said.
"But we leave on the Questioning tomorrow morning --" Sachiko ran her eyes over them. "You all have so much to do --"
"You, Sachiko, should go back to the Inn and wait. You're still supposed to be guarding the egg."
Youko was looking at Sachiko in a calm, hard way. She's furious about what just happened, Sei realized. Everybody is mad at everybody else -- there's the devil to pay, and no pitch hot. Lady Mary, pity us.
After letting the Look sink in a bit, Youko turned to the others. "Let's divide the city into quarters. I'm northwest, Sei is northeast, Rei-chan is southwest, Eriko is southeast. Shimako-chan, you can assist Sei of course, and Yoshino-chan --"
"I'd like to come with you, Youko-sama."
Yoshino's voice, while perfectly audible, was still more subdued than anyone was used to hearing it.
Rei was not looking at anybody. She appeared to be glaring at a tree branch to her right.
Youko didn't let that silence go on any longer than she could help. "I have just chosen a new imouto, Yoshino-chan, and I think she'll want to assist me. But perhaps Eriko would --"
"You come along with me, Yoshinosuke," said Eriko. "We'll have some laughs, I bet."
Yoshino went to stand by Eriko.
"I'll trade with Rei, I think," Sei said. "I've a lead I'd like to try in the southwest."
"Of course; the southwest is really your city, isn't it, Sei?" Youko gave her a very dear smile. "Very well. Rei-chan?..."
"I'll take the northeast," Rei affirmed. "Noriko-chan can help me."
When this did not provoke a shriek of indignation from Yoshino, Sei was positive that something was desperately wrong, and resolved to get a hold of Rei and grill her at the earliest opportunity. Right now, Yumi took priority, however.
Sachiko, for her part, had folded and rolled Yumi's outer robes, and now put them through the toes of the sandals, and handed the little bundle to Sei. "I suspect you'll be the one to find her. Will you see that she puts these on? The day is turning chilly."
Sei accepted the items gingerly. She was still waiting for an explosion, from any of the possible local tinderboxes, and perhaps it was mischief that made her say, "You're taking this well, Sachiko," in an offhand manner.
"I'm not," Sachiko answered calmly. She turned to Youko, and her voice remained calm. "I'm furious at you. I think you've arranged things high-handedly. I think that as she's my imouto, it's my job to find her, not yours, Sei's, or anyone else's. I think that if I don't go looking, but send everyone else instead, that tells her I don't care about her enough to look myself. I think that the egg could be taken back and temporarily lodged in its usual prison at the Guild offices while I search for Yumi. I think a lot of other things, which I hold back from saying, because they might hurt people's feelings. But you and everyone else seem to think, as with one mind, that I should stay in my room with my nose to the wall while the grownups look for Yumi. So I succumb to majority opinion, re-swallow my spleen, escort the novices back to the guild dormitories -- which I feel sure you were about to ask me to do, with your usual tact and charm -- and then I'll go home, play with my dolls, and sulk. But you have not heard the last of this, Mizuno-sama."
Sachiko turned and walked back toward the Pine Grove. A sudden wind whipped up, causing the trees and bushes around her to express in involuntary dance the agitation she no doubt felt inside, and whipped the hems of her robes about her waist and legs. She continued to walk steadily, however, and would no doubt be a model of propriety in fulfilling her duties with the novices.
The others looked sympathetically at Youko, whose left eyebrow was twitching a bit. Even Yoshino and Rei seemed to have forgotten their own troubles for the moment.
"Do you still have all your fingers and toes?" Sei asked solicitously. "I can help you look --"
"Shut up, Sei. Come on, everyone. We have perhaps an hour before we start to lose the sun."
"I'll go after Sachiko," Rei said calmly. "I have to pick up Noriko-chan, anyway."
Yoshino moved quickly to Rei's side. "Rei-chan," she hissed, grabbing at Rei's arm, "why do you have to be so --"
And Rei shook her off. "I would rather you didn't hang on me," she said quietly, with no particular emphasis. She did not look at Yoshino. "I wish to be left alone."
And she went off after Sachiko, leaving Yoshino stunned and silent, and everyone else unable to look at her.
--
Youko caught up with Fujiwara-dono in the front room of the Jijuden, where she had accompanied the Emperor after the scene in the garden. The Emperor was now in retirement with Fujiwara no Yukinaga. "It's a bit upsetting for everyone, especially the boy -- an exile being caught in the Enclosure," Fujiwara-dono confided in her cheerfully. "Of course, it was known that he had gone missing from Kyushu, but it was assumed that he had been murdered by robbers, or eaten by beasts in the wilderness. He had no escort, you see."
"Will he be executed?"
"Probably. Yuki-chan has never liked him, and of course the wretch has no influence left apart from Prince Suguru, who has troubles of his own now. But I don't know... Toru-chan looks up to Prince Suguru. On the other hand, Yuki-chan has ruled Toru-chan since the boy was five... Well, I have my own work to be getting on with. But do keep me informed on the Yumi-kun matter. She seems a dear girl. Look for a few hours, and if you can't find her, I'll have a go."
"I just... I beg your pardon," Youko said. "I shouldn't bother you with --"
"Mizuno-san." Fujiwara-dono spoke in a gentler tone now. She came forward and put a hand on Youko's shoulder. "You're worried about Ogasawara-kun. Of course you are."
"Not worried about her, so much as furious at her."
"Well, that too."
"Aren't you, Fujiwara-dono?" Youko looked hard at her teacher. "I mean to say... she went mad."
"I know."
"Miss Perfect Control lost control, completely." Youko fumed more, the more she thought about it.
"I saw."
"And it was mostly only friends of hers who saw it, but even so, I expect it will be all over the Guild -- all over the City -- in a matter of days. The Emperor saw it! My imouto -- in front of the Emperor --"
"There, there, my pet," Fujiwara-dono was patting Youko's cheek. "You're a bit upset; only natural."
"If this does get around --"
Fujiwara-dono cut in unexpectedly, in a completely different tone from what she'd been using. "It will enhance the Guild's rather fierce reputation with a fresh example, without adding to it in any significant way. Pray compose yourself, Mizuno-san. You know perfectly well that we are known for overkill and bloodlust. The reputation is not entirely deserved, but there have been a few who lived up to it, and some of our more admired members as well. Ogasawara-kun looks a right humanitarian next to some of them." This startled Youko, and she supposed it showed on her face, as Fujiwara-dono looked at her sadly, and sighed. "When a friend counselled mercy and forbearance, she listened. The more notorious angry sorceresses often haven't."
Youko felt some chagrin. Fujiwara-dono had tended to treat her more or less as an equal, ever since she had been accorded the dignity of a Winging Crane, and only occasionally slipped back into regarding her as a dunderheaded junior. "I'm sorry, Fujiwara-dono. I only --" She cut herself off. Best not to qualify the apology. "This unworthy one begs forgiveness."
"Granted. Mizuno-san, I understand your concern. But Ogasawara-kun's progress is of particular interest to me, as you know, and part of this teaching business is to make sure all parts and passions are in place. A sorceress who is an incomplete person may do incomplete work, or may do wickedness without meaning to, unpredictably. This is the first time I have ever seen Ogasawara-kun really passionate about anything, so much so that she lost her sangfroid, and it's something of a relief to me. No, no. I agree that such behavior cannot be countenanced. But, Mizuno-san... try an experiment."
"Fujiwara-dono, perhaps I should --"
"The search for Yumi-kun, of course. Humor me for a moment. Think back a few years, to when you first made Ogasawara-kun your soror mystica. A sheltered girl, from a good house. A defenseless girl, not quite grown. A difficult girl, sometimes not easy to like perhaps, but nevertheless a girl you came to cherish quite quickly. A girl who clung to your sleeve when she didn't understand what was happening. I haven't seen her do that in quite a while, but I remember her doing it more than once, and I remember wondering what combination of fear and devotion would allow a girl like that to show weakness in public. Oh, yes, she and I come from the same neighborhood, you know. And I remember how protective you were. An arm around her shoulder, whenever she seemed to need it. She always slept in your tent when a-journeying, in your bedroll, even --"
"Fujiwara-dono! Do you suggest that I might have ever done what she did, today? Just because I --" Youko stopped. Fujiwara-dono's words had brought back a time she remembered without remembering, it might be said; a time she could easily acknowledge had indeed passed in her life, though she didn't often recall it in detail. She remembered her feelings for her imouto, who had looked up to her so, and who had seemed unable to think of any better way of spending her time than to spend it with Youko. And she remembered her own fears, back then: Am I the right teacher for her? Will I be able to keep her on the straight path? Or am I wronging her by pretending, to both of us and to the world, that I am the mistress she needs? Youko's whole disposition, as well as her training, was never to show uncertainty, and to always see the best course, and see it clearly, and steer for it. Like any human person she was still subject to uncertainty however, and came closer to showing it over Sachiko than anything else... because at the time Sachiko had been more important than anything else... or almost anything else... but of all the important things, Sachiko was closest, and most vulnerable... I need to know I've done right by her; that, more than anything, is what upsets me about what happened today, the thought that it happened because I left something out of her training... I need to know she's going to be all right... I --
"Love her? Yes; you love her. And no, I'm not suggesting that you would ever do anything as nasty as what she did today; you've always had a bit too much self-control for that. You keep your head, Mizuno-san, even when all about you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you. You are known for it. But I strongly suspect that, if your difficult, headstrong, sometimes ill-natured little darling had ever been molested in any way, and you had happened to catch the molester --"
"I'm telling you I wouldn't, Fujiwara-dono!"
"No, no, you wouldn't. But, Mizuno-san, you would have had to stop yourself from doing it."
Youko said nothing. There was really nothing she could say.
"I sometimes think that we are very cruel, we of the Guild," Fujiwara-dono went on, stepping to a window. "We are a sort of socially-sanctioned anti-society bastion. We take girls from their families, and teach them skills subversive of reality, of the waking world itself... our work is necessary perhaps for the survival of the Empire, but it represents the triumph of dream over waking, shadow over substance: the reversal of their positions. People in general are therefore naturally suspicious of it, and wise men are always resentful of any power that is not theirs. The girls find themselves essentially disowned by their relatives -- oh, until they choose to leave the Guild, perform acts of cleansing, pilgrimages, marry, do as they're told, and so on. But while they're with us, none of their family or any of the people they grew up with want to have anything much to do with them. And in exchange for this sacrifice, we give the girls distant, unattainable mothers, like Suga-sama and myself. A bit like having a wolf or a bear, or sometimes a demon, for a mother. Is it not so?...
"Is it any wonder that sometimes a sorceress loses her temper?... No matter which way a woman goes, wife, nun, sorceress, it seems as if the price is too steep.
"We do give them sisterhood, however. We give them older sisters, and later younger sisters. And their lives in the Guild are defined through these relationships, to a startling extent... I talk to old girls sometimes, girls who left the Guild, usually around Dragon level, and are now mothers and grandmothers. Often girls who served in Koryo, or the Manchurian wars; very ably, some of them. Do they remember their great deeds, or the deeds of the great sorceresses they knew? Perhaps. But what they mostly talk about is their sisters. The older sisters who protected them, and the younger sisters they themselves protected. The girls they lived and served with. And they remember every trivial thing about them, as if it was yesterday." Fujiwara-dono shook her head. "Sad. All that knowledge of one another, and all that love in spite of the knowledge. Days and years of work and love intertwined. All meaningless now, except as beautiful memories, to comfort them when they're lonely, when their husbands or their children ignore them, when nobody understands them.
"You're all terribly important to each other. But I think... Mizuno-san... that Yumi-kun may be even more important to Ogasawara-kun than Ogasawara-kun was to you."
Youko said nothing.
"You know your own imouto best, so tell me if you really think I'm wrong. Yumi-kun had nothing, before Ogasawara-kun found her. And Yumi-kun is much more open with her feelings than Ogasawara-kun ever has been or will be. Yumi-kun adores her mistress and makes no secret of it. And Ogasawara-kun... has changed. Visibly. In less than two days. Extraordinary, is it not?"
"What does it all mean?" Youko was in a state of groping for words and ideas, as was often the case when Fujiwara-dono finally let on what she was thinking.
"I have no idea," Fujiwara-dono answered, without a trace of embarrassment. "There is a mystery here. It needs solving. Finding Yumi-kun may of itself necessitate a solution, or a partial one."
"I think that's what Sei has in mind," Youko mused. "Something she said when we parted, about retracing Yumi's steps --"
Fujiwara-dono smiled wolfishly. "She's nobody's fool, is Satou-san. I'm hoping she'll show some interest in attaining to the Guild leadership one day soon. Somehow I can't see her leaving to get married --"
"No," Youko said, with more abrupt firmness than was really necessary. She had a moment of confusion, made heavier by the weight of Fujiwara-dono's gentle, knowing smile pressing down on it, then added, "I'm not going anywhere either, Fujiwara-dono." Then a moment of greater confusion. Fujiwara-dono had always seemed to be grooming Youko for something, but had never said just what, and Youko hadn't been able to push herself to ask until this moment. "If it isn't the grossest impertinence to put my unworthy self forward..." She looked carefully at the floor, still feeling Fujiwara-dono's gentle, undemanding, ponderous gaze, light as wreaths of mountain cloud, heavy as the jungles of the south.
"Yes..." Fujiwara-dono said at last. "Yes. I did put your name forward as Grand Mugwump of the Dragons for a reason, of course. I'd have to be a fool, or Suga-san, not to see your many strengths. Your weaknesses you know about, and we have been working on them, you and I... Yes. With you and Satou-san primed to lead the Guild together, I could rest easy about the future. Just give me a little time..."
Fujiwara-dono was gone. There was no real moment of departure, just a brief transitional moment when Youko was not sure what, if anything, was in the room with her. The old mage was unaccountable that way; she could usually be found in her office and audience chamber on the third story at the northern end of the Guild building, but apart from that one never knew when she was going to arrive or depart. Youko had found that simply accommodating Fujiwara-dono's ways had helped her get on in the Dragon Order more than any other single thing she'd done.
She walked out of the Jijuden, and strolled south to the steps of the Throne Hall, where her new soror mystica was waiting under the cherry tree. She was in fact kicking the trunk absently with the toe of one sandal, and not caring that she was getting cherry blossoms in her hair. My second soror mystica, and probably my last. Just as well. Thinking of anyone other than Sachiko as her imouto was going to be strange enough as it was. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Touko."
"You aren't going to call me Touko-san?" the girl said, looking up sulkily from the roots.
"I don't have any plans that way, no."
"But, Youko-sama!..."
"And you call me 'Mistress,' not 'Youko-sama.' All right?"
"Oh, very well. Mistress."
"If it seems arbitrary, that's because it is. It's just the way we go on, in the Guild... Fujiwara-dono has said her say, and we have to make up for lost time. Come along, by my side."
They walked south, through two gates, and out into the City again. Youko felt herself relax. Her family had been servants to various families of the Yokibito for several generations, and she always felt centuries of conditioning settle like heavy snowdrifts on her shoulders when she went into the Nine-Fold Enclosure. Freedom was outside the Enclosure. Real freedom is completely outside the city, she reflected, as she had done before, and felt a pleasant quiver of anticipation for the morning.
They turned west on Second Street. The houses to the south became less opulent and less attractive as they moved further west, and the influence of the City of the Right became stronger. Touko was quiet, pensive for most of the way.
Then, as they were turning south on Nishiomiya Avenue, headed in the general direction of the Guild offices, Touko spoke. "Fujiwara-dono examined this Yumi, didn't she? Searched her mind?"
"Why, yes, she did. How did you know about that?"
"Hikaru-san overheard Yoshino-san and the General talking about it."
"Interesting. Indiscreet, perhaps. Oh, not that it's a great secret. But why do you bring it up?"
"Fujiwara-dono could probably find her faster than anybody, couldn't she?"
"Yes. And if time or the gravest danger were a consideration, she would probably do it herself. She prefers to let us manage things ourselves as much as possible. She has to know that ours are capable hands to leave the Guild in. As it is, we go a-Questioning in the morning, and if we haven't found little Yumi by the hour of the Boar, I will have to confess my failure, and Fujiwara-dono will have to exert herself."
"You'll wake an old lady at that hour?"
Youko smiled. "Fujiwara-dono does not actually sleep -- or at least, I've never been able to catch her at it. And it's unwise to call her an old lady."
Touko frowned. "We've put a lot of distance between us now. Do you really think she can hear me all the way out here?"
"'Mistress.'"
"Mistress, sorry."
"Yes, I do. And there's no way of knowing when she'll turn up anyway."
Pause.
"She is an old lady."
"She is, or she might be. But she does not care to have any fresh-faced girl tell her of it." Especially not one like you, with an extra helping of sauce, and ridiculous curls in her hair.
Touko stared for a moment, and then smiled. "I'll keep that in mind, Mistress."
"You do that."
--
Eriko-sama and Yoshino were moving around the northern fringes of the Great Eastern Market, seeking the large pinkish-white mass of the cherry tree at its center. Eriko-sama was going to help Yoshino with the search spell. It was a bit more advanced magic than Yoshino was used to performing, but as Eriko-sama had not so much as seen Yumi yet, it had to be Yoshino who cast it. Or so Eriko-sama said. Yoshino, even as preoccupied as she was, suspected Eriko-sama of wanting to give her a difficult time, to teach her some sort of dreary lesson...
"What's the trouble with you and Rei, Yoshino?" Eriko-sama said abruptly, as they approached the tree.
"It's nothing," Yoshino said. Then wished she hadn't said anything, because "It's nothing," after the scene in the garden, sounded stupid.
"It's something. I've never seen you two so at odds before. You argue a lot but even then --"
"I would rather not discuss it, Eriko-sama --"
There was a gentle hand on the back of Yoshino's neck, and Eriko-sama was giving her a sweet, motherly look, under which even Yoshino quailed a bit. "Would you deny your grandsister, Yoshino? Rei is unhappy. She is still very precious to me, and always will be." Eriko-sama's grip on Yoshino's neck tightened ever so slightly. "If you have been trifling with her feelings, you little minx --"
"I tried to talk to her and she shoved me," Yoshino burst out. "She wouldn't even look at me. If I matter to her so little, then --"
"You know better, Yoshino. If there is one person in all the world who knows Hasekura Rei better than I, that one is you, who else? Level with me, you exasperating infant. You've been sniffing around boys again, haven't you?"
"I --"
"I really wish you'd make up your mind, you know. When I first noted your taste for masculine company, I was very happy for you -- 'A normal sister!' I thought. 'It's too bad for Rei, but Rei will have to grow up, I suppose. She'll get over it.' Except she can't get over it, because you keep going back to her. You keep bouncing back and forth: normal boy-hunger, and the floating world of girls together, and back again. You pull your cousin about so, twist her between two poles, I'm amazed she's still the same shape. I don't know why you don't just stab her in the heart and get it over with --"
"You --"
"Shshsh," Eriko-sama shshshed.
"It's not my fault," Yoshino said with furious hoarseness. "It's not. Why is she such a fool?"
"She's a fool, is she? A blithering, dunderheaded fool, moron, idiot of a Dragon-level sorceress. Hm. And that's why you chase after boys?"
Yoshino just glared, and growled a little. Eriko-sama was a hateful person. Funny she'd never realised it until now.
"You know perfectly well you chase after boys because you like them, not because Rei's a fool. Rei is no fool -- or rather, the one thing she's foolish about is you. She loves you to distraction. And she really imagines the two of you can make a life together. It'll never last, of course. Or it might last just long enough for you to both be senior sorceresses of unmarriageable age. But you don't love her, not really, and you won't be able to be happy with her, or make her happy in the end, and you might well destroy her with your hatred, with your jealousy for the life you might have had, the life you'll think she kept you from, when really it'll be you who kept her from a better life, purely and simply because you enjoy tormenting her, because deep down you hate her -- whoops!" Eriko-sama had to dodge, here, because Yoshinosuke had started swinging at her. Yoshinosuke had had about enough of this --
Then Yoshino was clutching her chest and gasping. There were sharp pains, and her chest was lurching and heaving, like her heart was trying to batter its way out --
Eriko-sama's arms were around her in an instant. Yoshino felt her chest calm down, the pain fade, a sun of warmth between them, and heard Eriko-sama singing in her ear:
Storms take the heavens
Unawares; the fire
takes
The highest treetops.
The earth devours Heaven's pain;
All the rivers swell
to flood.
The storm had passed. Yoshino felt able to stand, but still clutched at Eriko-sama, twisting her robes in angry fists. "I love Rei-chan -- I don't want to hurt her ever -- that was a cruel, wicked thing to say..."
"Yes, I know," Eriko-sama murmured in the same ear. "It would take a blind fool not to see how you love her. But Yoshino, you do hurt her with these little games of yours, and it would take a blind fool not to see that. Or a boy-crazy Yoshino, one of the two."
Yoshino had followed her own excitement, which she tended to do anyway. Usually Rei-chan encouraged that, and no one else cared. It seemed that this was a different matter, though: Rei-chan was angry, Yumi-san was missing, and everyone was worried. Her heart did whisper that she should have known quite well how Rei-chan would react. But she had thought she could have a little fun without Rei-chan finding out about it.
Oh, Rei-chan... oh, Yumi-san... "What should I do?"
"I don't know. But the two of you have to find a better arrangement than the current one. You are a sweet, pretty little girl with the soul of a sweaty, hairy warrior, and you have a great and terrible power over Rei-chan. You could destroy her, not because you're evil or you hate her, but through simple carelessness. You don't want that to happen, do you?"
"No. No, never. I'll talk to her, Eriko-sama. I will. If she'll let me."
"Just give her a little time to cool down. That's all she needs. She loves you too much to stay mad for long."
"...yes. Eriko-sama, we should be looking for Yumi-san."
"Right. You're recovered?"
"Feel fine. Nice trick. Wish I could do it for myself."
"By the time you reach that level, you shouldn't need to."
Yoshino hoped not. "But Eriko-sama, why did we come here?"
"We do it here," Eriko-sama answered, "or rather start it here, because the Eastern Market is the center of the southeast quarter, and this cherry tree is the center of the Market. We start at the center and work our way outwards. That is how these things are done. Now. Make the Eye, as I showed you."
Yoshino scrunched up her face and concentrated -- spongy, slimy -- difficult -- until her whole head was one gigantic eye. "Done."
"Hood! Hood!"
"Ooops --" Yoshino threw the hood of her cloak over her head, or rather over her giant eyeball on the slender stalk of her neck.
"Better. The eye must be lidded, to focus on great distances -- and to keep from frightening passers-by out of their wits, of course. They might go right into hysterics. A giant eyeball with two cute little braids hanging down on either side of it! How macabre! Are you ready?"
"Don't make fun of my braids, Eriko-sama. Not when you've suddenly taken it into your head to dress like death on pilgrimage... Say, this isn't easy to keep up..."
"That is why I am here," Eriko-sama chuckled, taking Yoshino's upper arm.
Yoshino felt strength filling her. The feeling, so familiar because Rei-chan did it for her all the time and yet unfamiliar because it was Eriko-sama doing it for her now -- a different touch, a different presence within her -- made her feel like crying -- an urge she suppressed immediately. If she were to weep in her current state, her clothing would be soaked in salt water in short order. She'd seen it happen -- embarrassing --
She clutched at the hem of her hood, adjusting it in the air over her enormous pupil. The sun dimmed; the marketeers and shoppers and booths and blankets were under shadow, then there were sharp little lights everywhere decorating the shadowy people without destroying the shadow. Focus... right across the Market, to its northern edge. Focus on that building -- through the building. Room upon room, like a strange box puzzle, and little passageways, and little people moving in them, in all directions, toward one another, away from one another, in a kind of dance.
"Ooooo," Yoshino said happily.
Eriko-sama poked Yoshino in the side with one finger. "Don't become too entranced," she cautioned. "Try to focus on the particular person we're looking for."
"I would, like that, if she was anywhere in sight," Yoshino said irritably.
"She isn't? Then we change our site!" Eriko-sama grabbed Yoshino from behind, under her arms, and lifted her. Eriko-sama's cloak spread out, and resembled black leather wings. In a moment they were airborne, and well above the heads of the crowd, though still low enough to cause them some consternation. A low-flying bird of indeterminate species with a nine-foot wingspread and a giant eyeball on the top of its head, which eschews the more standard bird-sounds such as "caw! and "yark!" in favor of "Yoicks! Hark for'ard! Tally-ho!" and "Once around the Market, Eriko-sama, then north on Red Bird Avenue, and a hard right at Fifth Street! Full speed ahead and damn the pedestrians!" can have that effect on people.
--
Toshi the Rat leapt almost a whole foot when the hand landed on his right shoulder.
He didn't like being sneaked up on -- as which of us does? But as he was usually the one who did the sneaking, he was even more put out than most of us would be.
Especially as it occurred to him -- even before he'd turned around -- that the number of people who were actually capable of sneaking up on him was remarkably small and, given the general trend of recent events, there was really only one person it could be.
"There is a strange woman with no manners behind me," he said, to no one in particular, and turned around.
And there was that grin.
"Knew I could count on you, Tosh," said Satou Sei-san.
"And I can always count on you, for sure," Toshi said sourly. "What do you want?"
"The accomplices. Need to know where they're holed up."
"I can lead you to them," Toshi suggested. "It isn't far. Do you suppose you could avoid the sneaky-sneaky-aren't-I-clever in future?"
"'Fraid not, Tosh," Sei said gently, as they started out from the Western Market, going south along one of the disreputable and incomplete alleyways between Sai and Nishiomiya Avenues. "The main reasons being: I am sneaky, and I am clever. What's bred in the bone will not out of the flesh. Could you give up being a thief, ever?"
"Yes, yes, Toshi understands, even dim Toshi understands that much. But I nearly tried to stab you, and that probably would have been the end of Toshi --"
"Toshiiii! We've meant so much to each other --"
"Leave off! That's my pouch --"
"Just checking, seeing if there are any billets doux in here. If you've been unfaithful to me, lovebuns, I'll rip your nuts off. Ah! What have we here?"
Toshi finally succeeded in breaking her hold on his neck, skipped away, and crouched there in the alleyway, knife at the ready.
"Very nice linen, hmmm? Oh, with some lovely stitching too -- the characters 'Tsuji' and 'Fu.' I don't think I need to ask what that stands for. Isn't that nice? The man you were tailing gave you a present --"
Toshi whimpered.
"-- or, no, people don't ordinarily give you presents. Could you have picked his pocket? Or, possibly --"
She was upon him then, like a hawk stooping. She had him by the front of his shirt and was lifting him up, and up, and up, until his head struck the cornice of the house they'd been skulking by, with a dolorous clonk, followed by blurred vision. Toshi was trying to shout, but in his ears it sounded like squeaking. He seemed to hear the mad cries of ravens drawing near.
And this vicious foreign woman, her black cloak flapping about her like a raven's wings, her hands at his collar and her toothy smile burning itself into his eyes, trumpeted in his face, "Ah, now, could you have been fraternizing with the enemy, ducky? Fabulous! I wonder how your liver will taste?!"
Toshi squealed and beat at her hands, without apparent effect.
"Oh, do you want me to let you go? It's a bit of a drop, me dear old corn-fed piglet. Not fatal, necessarily, but you're courting at least a broken leg... That's better. Toshi, my lumpkin, I'm doing all the talking here. Considering that your chance of continuing your existence in the human form depends on your appeasing me, pleasing me with that crooked tongue of yours -- hah! -- well, don't you think you ought to be a bit more talkative?"
And so Toshi talked, in a rather high-pitched voice.
By the time he had finished, Sei had relented a little, and brought him back to street level, where he sat on a box, and though still trembling, he was talking in a more accustomed register.
"I see," Sei said, when he had done. "The usual sort of thing. Of course, this Shinji would want to avenge his aniki. Only natural." She smiled, and hummed to herself, her fingers working. She seemed to be intertwining bits of straw she'd taken out of her pocket, a bit of impromptu weaving -- it was the first time he'd seen her do anything remotely feminine, and that startled him, a little. She went on: "Though I do wonder... Didn't you tell me Shinji and his aniki had an entirely healthy terror of sorceresses?"
"Yes," Toshi said, "but I guess he's angry enough and in enough pain and fear that he's willing to take a risk. What's happened to his aniki is making him a little crazy. He wants to have your guts, your friends' guts, and even the guts of this Tsuji Fu, although --"
"And so you were going to lead me there and help him ambush me?"
"That's what I agreed with Shinji." An agreement he'd made somewhat against his will, but...
"That's what you agreed, eh? Was your hand even then going to be a stranger to your promise?"
"I know you," he said. "I know that even with me coming at you from behind by surprise, the two of us wouldn't be able to take you. It would be suicide. So I was going to skip out at the crucial moment --"
"Leaving Shinji to his fate?" Sei sighed. "You don't disappoint, Toshi old son. For sheer cold-blooded expediency, you are unparalleled."
"I am unworthy of your praise, strange foreign woman with scary teeth when she's mad. So, shall we?..."
"I think not." Sei seemed to have finished her odd little impromptu weaving job, and now she looked up from it at Toshi, unsmiling. The absence of a smile on that face, if anything, chilled him more than the smile had before, when she'd been about to drop him from a great height. He had always called her mad, a crazy foreigner, but for the first time now it occurred to him that she might really be mad, some way. He wondered how many of her friends saw this face she was showing him now, even while he began to wonder again whether he was going to survive this meeting. "You will take me to Shinji and Ichiki's dwelling place," she went on. "You will point it out to me from as far away as possible. I will pay you off. And then you will take a powder. I won't be requiring your services again today, or indeed ever."
"What?"
"Please lead the way, Toshi."
"But..." Toshi was at a loss. This madwoman had inconvenienced him more than once, he had often regarded her as a pestilence in his life, but the thought of never seeing her again was not a happy one, he didn't know why. "You don't believe me, that I wasn't going to help him?"
Sei sighed, and looked away, back toward the Market. There was a difference of opinion between a fish vendor and a customer which was on the verge of coming to blows; the thief and the sorceress were near enough to hear the music, but not the lyrics, of the dispute. The foreign woman watched them without avidity. She still wasn't smiling, but her face wasn't quite as dreadful. "Oh, I believe you, right enough. It certainly sounds like you. I may be as powerful as you say, Toshi, but I am also vulnerable. I have built my armor well, but even the best armor will have a chink in it somewhere big enough for a rat to pinch through't."
She looked back at Toshi, and he almost flinched back from this look; it was a frozen look and seemed to come from a very long way away. "It is simple folly to travel with such a creature in your pocket," she said softly. "And I promised myself long ago I wouldn't die stupid.
"Daylight's a-wasting, Tosh. Lead on."
Toshi rose, not looking at her, and led on.
--
Nijo Noriko, walking at the side of Hasekura Rei-sama, was both pleased and displeased with where she was. Pleased because the Mountain Lily Gang of Six was a notorious group and this was her first time working with them -- she hoped to make it the "Gang of Seven," if that wasn't presumptuous of her -- and displeased because Hasekura Rei-sama, whom she admired highly, seemed to be in a terrible mood, and Noriko was having to step very lightly around her. This was not at all the case, ordinarily. Ordinarily, the difficulty was to keep out of Hasekura-sama's lap. Hasekura-sama had a weakness for cute things. Noriko had always been cute, or she supposed she must have been, as people had been pinching her cheek and stroking her hair uninvited for as long as she could remember.
She had certainly never objected to being in Hasekura-sama's lap -- quite the reverse -- except that Shimazu Yoshino-san would split apart at the merest sight of it and assume her true form of nine flaming, shrieking harpies. How one little girl could contain nine harpies was a bit of a mystery to Nijo Noriko. Shimazu Yoshino-san was shockingly jealous over her tall, magnificent cousin. Noriko understood readily enough why Yoshino-san valued Hasekura-sama so highly, but didn't think that she -- Noriko! -- was really a threat to the Great Romance even from the proximity of Hasekura-sama's lap.
But something else was a threat to it, apparently. Noriko had not been privy to recent events, but understood that there had been some trouble and a bit of a scene in the palace gardens, and it seemed clear that Yoshino-san had broken faith with Hasekura-sama somehow. And here was the result: Hasekura-sama silent, thin-lipped, and occasionally having to be reminded of little things like where they were and what they were doing. Not that she was utterly useless, she just seemed to lose focus occasionally.
Noriko had briefly met this Yumi-san earlier in the afternoon, and she had seemed a likeable person, but Noriko hadn't spent enough time with her to be much help in tracing her, which meant that the success of their mission depended entirely upon Hasekura-sama, who would be searching these well-kept streets in the wealthiest quarter of Heian Kyo like a hawk a-hunting one moment, and pacing in one spot the next, absently biting a knuckle.
At last, Noriko decided that was about the limit. She stood in front of the distracted Dragon, hands on hips, glaring up at her, and waiting for her to notice.
Which she did, surprisingly fast. There were actual tears starting in Hasekura-sama's eyes as she said, "You... you remind me of Yoshino when you do that --"
"Enough, Hasekura-sama!" Noriko snapped.
"Enough what?..."
"Aren't you ashamed of all this dithering? This is a friend of yours we're looking for, isn't it? Aren't you concerned for her?"
"Of course I am," Hasekura-sama said tiredly. "Yumi-chan's a sweetheart. It's just that..."
"What happened with you and Yoshino-san?"
"Noriko-chan, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but...well, I'd rather not discuss that with you..."
"Really? Oh, goody. Well, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I don't want to discuss it at all, with anybody. Your problems with Yoshino-san are none of my business. But it seems you need to talk about it with someone, and I'm the only one here. Of course, you could just get yourself under control and apply yourself to the task at hand. I much prefer that option."
Hasekura-sama turned away, looking resolutely at the ground. "You can be such a pest, Noriko-chan, honestly..."
"Or, alternately, I could nip over to the northwest quarter and tell Mizuno-sama that you're having some unmanageable personal problems, and she can send someone over you would trust to help you with them."
That proud head turned slowly and Hasekura-sama was giving off an expressionless yet deadly glare which would have daunted a lesser Noriko. "Nijo-san, what are you trying to do, here?"
"Only get your mind onto something other than your cousin," Noriko answered cheerfully. "Is it working yet?"
Hasekura-sama managed to keep up the scary stare a few moments longer. Then she strolled over to a nearby bench, and sat on it. "No," she said. "But thank you for trying. Maybe you should go get Youko-sama after all --"
And Hasekura Rei-sama, better known as the General for her shining conduct at the Battle of Five Hills... began to cry.
Noriko stood glaring at her for a moment. Then she sighed, and went and sat beside her, and put an arm around her shoulders. Hasekura-sama collapsed the rest of the way. She buried her face in Noriko's shoulder, and soaked through four robes surprisingly quickly. She made very little noise about it. Noriko heard her sob once.
So, Noriko had to comfort her and build her back up. In fact, that made it quite easy, or at least known territory. Noriko was the sort of girl who could cope, and she had much experience performing this office, for many girls. She'd just never expected to have to perform it for the excellent Dragon sorceress and noted swordhand Hasekura Rei-sama. Well, you learned something new every day. "Don't cry, don't cry, Rei-sama. It's nothing that can't be fixed, is it?... Here, blow your nose. Are you ready to talk about it?..."
"Nothing to talk about," gasped Rei-sama. "She hates me and she's leaving me or I'll have to leave her so she can be happy and that's the end of it..."
"She doesn't hate you, and she's not leaving you, and I'd advise you not to break with her. That'll just make a bad situation worse." She knows all this deep down, Noriko thought. She just needs to get the grief and pain out of her, and then she can be reasonable about it. I hope... Noriko sent a fervent prayer to Kannon-sama.
"Really? You don't think she hates me?" Rei-sama asked, in a fragile way.
"Of course not, don't be silly --"
Rei-sama's face twisted in anger. "Well, what the HELL do you know?" And like that she was on her feet again, striding up and down before the bench.
"Rei-sama...please..."
"One night -- one blessed, blessed spring night -- we're together, clothed only in our room. We're sharing everything. Everything, do you understand? Our bodies and our souls. She's all the way in, in the center of me, where no one else has ever come. I no longer know where my body ends and hers begins, and it no longer matters. We are one. Do you hear? One body, and one spirit."
"If you say so." Noriko was tough, but she almost flinched back from Rei-sama's angry, wet, pale face and burning eyes.
"And it's happening the same for her, I'm all the way in the center of her, I know I am. Or I thought I knew... And then, the next day, in front of everybody, she runs off with a brace of bloody boys, and does goodness only knows what with them where no one can see, a dark place, furtive, groping --"
"Should they have done that in front of everybody too?"
Rei-sama stopped her pacing and stared at Noriko. "What!"
"Should they have run off when there was no one to see, and done their groping in front of everybody?"
There was a pregnant pause.
Then Rei-sama said, "You're actually a pretty cold person, aren't you, Noriko-chan?"
"You should make up your mind which you want, is all I'm saying. Next you'll be demonically furious because they touched each other halfheartedly in front of two or three people."
"I'm not in a humor for these winsome jests just now. Do you have anything helpful to say?"'
"Rei-sama, you are a romantic, and Yoshino-san is not."
"Wh-what?" Rei-sama seemed all off-balance once more.
"Not particularly helpful, but the best I can do right now."
Rei-sama sat back on the bench, very carefully. She was not looking at Noriko, for the moment. "Are you saying... she doesn't love me?"
Noriko rolled her eyes. "A true romantic, to the end. If someone doesn't love the way you love, then it isn't really love they're feeling. Rei-sama, for all your sternness in battle, and your practicality in Guild matters, you're a dreamer at heart, aren't you?... and Yoshino-san is not. You've read too many romances, and believed them, is what it amounts to. You believe that two people can dream the same dream. And they can, but because they're two different people, they're not going to dream it in the same way. Yoshino-san loves you. A person need only speak your name in her presence to know that. When you spend time with other girls, she becomes furious. When she spends time with other girls, or especially with boys, you sulk, and mope, and consume. Oh, you probably think of it as sorrowful ardor, suffering in decorous silence, or some such --"
"Yes!" Rei-sama said, surprised.
"But it's moping," Noriko finished firmly, with a hard look at Rei-sama. "Hard to say which is worse. When you mope, it's bad for you. When she's furious, it's bad for everybody else. You love each other, in different ways. So it's wrong of you to expect her to share your romanticism, just as it's wrong of her to expect you to share her all-embracing practicality. She understands your kind of love, but because she's never experienced it herself, she's impatient with it at times, thinks you're being over-dramatic, wasting her time with nonsense. But from that to saying she doesn't love you is as much to say -- oh -- for example, that because ocean-water isn't sweet like water from the Kamo, it isn't really water. It has to be water your way, or not at all. Do you see?"
Rei-sama was looking at Noriko with her mouth slightly open. "Noriko-chan... how do you know all this?"
"I don't. I'm just guessing."
"Noriko-chan!"
"No, I really am just guessing. It's an informed guess, from knowing the two of you, watching you. When two people love and argue with one another so publicly, it's hard not to come to some conclusion about them. But you can't ever really know what happens inside another person -- not without using magic, and that's cheating, isn't it?... You can make a pretty good guess based on her outrageous behavior, and that's about it."
Rei-sama continued to look at Noriko, almost in admiration. Then she said, "Why have I never asked you about this before, Noriko-chan?"
"Because I'm younger than you, and too cute to be really bright."
Rei-sama seemed taken aback. "Oh. Um. Right." She looked around them, taking a real interest in their surroundings for what seemed like the first time that afternoon. This is promising, Noriko thought. "I want to talk to you more later, Noriko-chan. I think you're smarter than I am about things like this, and you might be able to help me. But we're wasting time at the moment... How did we get onto East Konoe Street?"
"I'm not sure of that myself, Rei-sama."
"When last seen, Yumi-chan was heading south from a point south and west of where we are now. This neighborhood isn't my best guess for her to flee to..." Rei-sama stood.
"How are we going to look for her?"
"I was hoping to avoid this..." Rei-sama sighed, and took a square of linen out of the pouch at her side. "Yumi-chan didn't own this long enough for it to be the most helpful object imaginable, but one makes do." She handed it to Noriko.
"But what are you going to --" Noriko gasped and turned away.
Rei-sama was undressing!...
Noriko stood there, staring firmly away, eastward down the street, her left hand over her mouth, her right hand clutching the linen to her breast, which was pounding. She felt herself going pink at the thought of Rei-sama gradually becoming naked behind her. Oh, she hoped this didn't get around. If Yoshino-san hears about it, I might not live to see the Sun Gorge. "Rei-sama, what are you doing --"
"Sorry to be so abrupt." Rei-sama's voice was firm, if a bit strained with the chore of undressing. "But I've wasted too much precious time as it is. Thank you for bringing me to my senses, Noriko-chan. Now, we must cast aside these trammels of civilization -- these damned useless, pretty bits of nothing we use to conceal our true selves --"
Noriko squeaked.
"-- and come face to face with our animal nature. We are animals, you know, Noriko-chan. Can you doubt it?"
"Rei-sama, please!" Noriko wailed. She was more frightened than she'd ever been in her life. She was beginning to cry.
"Time to shed, like a locust husk, this nothing woman, this Hasekura who is so easily wounded, so easily cast down, and EMBRACE THE BEAST!"
Noriko screamed and whirled, fists raised, ready to use the most terrible defensive spells she knew, no longer caring what she might see --
She saw a large golden dog, and a small pile of neatly folded clothing.
"What?" said the dog.
Noriko stared at it. "Rei-sama?" she said warily.
"Of course. Who else?"
"But you -- I thought you were going to --"
"Going to what?" Rei-sama's, or the dog's, ears were perked, and she, it, was giving Noriko an annoyed, impatient look. With a dog's face. Somehow.
Noriko decided that it would be a bad idea to embark on the subject of what she had thought Rei-sama was going to do. So all was -- reasonably -- well, after all. Just as well, because now she thought about it, the most terrible defensive spells she knew weren't actually that terrible. "Um, never mind. I think I just got hysterical for a moment. Probably the heat."
"What heat? It's early spring."
"I --"
"Noriko-chan, do we really have more time to waste like this? Hold the linen out."
"What?" Noriko was having difficulty with all this, still. She was talking to a dog. The dog was Rei-sama. The dog was like a bristling, golden, grinning robe Rei-sama was wearing -- or had she truly become the dog? --
"The linen I gave you. So I can smell it. Unless you want to do the tracing." Over-elaborate patience. From a dog... A beautiful, adorable golden dog...
Noriko held out the linen, and Rei-pochi sniffed it a moment. "There, there. Sorry if I was short with you, young 'un. Mmm, better than I thought." Rei-pochi wagged her tail. "Come on, then. Second Street. All along the southern edge of the Enclosure. We're bound to pick up her scent somewhere there! Keep the linen handy in case I need it again!"
"Yes, Rei-pochi," Noriko agreed dreamily.
"Didn't quite catch that," Rei-pochi said distractedly, trotting away.
"Yes, Rei-sama," Noriko corrected herself. She collected Rei-sama's clothing, which Rei-pochi seemed to have forgotten about, and ran to catch up. Don't leave me behind, beautiful Rei-pochi!
"Fine, fine. Ruf. An excellent day for hunting. Ah, I'll break that damned rabbit's neck when I catch her!..."
"We're not after a rabbit, Rei-sama. We're after Yumi-san."
"Of course we are, of course we are. Didn't I say? Don't distract me, baby darling." Rei-sama nuzzled Noriko's hand briefly and kept on trotting.
"I'll... try not to, Rei-sama. Rei-sama, are you still upset about Yoshino-san?"
The dog looked perplexed. "What's a 'Yoshino-san'? Is it good eating?"
"Well, it's someone you love very much."
"Like a puppy?"
"A little... more like a... mate?"
"Oh, mates? That's all human nonsense. Find 'em and forget 'em, that's my motto."
"Yes... yes, I see," Noriko said, running faster to match the new pace Rei-sama was setting. Perhaps dogs had it simpler, after all. Beautiful, beautiful golden dogs; short golden hair everywhere except where it grew long over her paws; wonderfully alert, expressive ears; a friendly, engaging dog grin... baby darling... In a way, it was a pity she would have to change back later...
--
Shinji had been busy. Perhaps Toshi was more trustworthy than he looked, but in the end, Shinji had decided not to count on the little rat. He'd done a setup that didn't exclude a third party, but wasn't dependent on one either. It seemed the best way. It had been a lot of work, tearing away the planks of the porch and removing the support struts in key places, and making the arrangement just under it, an arrangement reminiscent of his poaching days, before Aniki had taken him on... no, mustn't cry now...
Anyway. Beneath the porch, the Mouth waited.
And Shinji waited, in the dark front room of their dwelling. He was sure it would be today. He gripped his weapon, but had the sense to wipe it occasionally, so that his own sweat wouldn't make him lose his grip. He was in a strange place, a come-to-a-point, squeezed-up-tight place. Chances were excellent he'd be dead within five minutes after the sorceress turned up. (Unless the sorceress is in a mood to draw things out, he thought, and then tried to sponge the thought away, as the phrase "draw things out" gave rise to unfortunate mental images. Shinji was cursed with a rather visual imagination.) There were a great many things about life he was no longer thinking about, or looking at, because they had ceased to be important. All that was left was revenge for his aniki, his dying aniki. Ichiki-sama had sunk very low today, and Shinji was quite sure he wouldn't last until midnight.
He had warned all their neighbors away. The intelligence that a sorceress was coming to see him had been very effective in emptying out the neighborhood, though it had been difficult to have all those final conversations with those he'd counted friends as well as neighbors, his and Ichiki-sama's fellows: thieves, grifters, unsuccessful publicans, rejects. "Are you mad, Shinji?" "If a sorceress is really coming, then why are you staying?" "Flee with us, while there's time!" He'd thanked them all for their concern, but had told them, "My course is set, and I can see the end of my path. I owe it to my aniki to face his killer." Old Keiko the Witch had called him "a blithering young idiot." Well, perhaps he was, but he was a blithering young idiot with a mission. He owed it to his poor dying aniki to stick it to his killer just as hard as he could, before she impaled him with a tongue of flame and burst him so that his guts spilled out. She would probably eat his guts as well, or at least pickle them for later use in her wicked craft. The defilement of it was past bearing, but Shinji would just have to bear it somehow. He wiped a tear away irritably. He would be dead, after all. Perhaps he would be unaware of --
"Shinji? Oi! Fair Shinji? Step forth, my lovely. The sun is setting, and the evening star sings in the glorious deep blue."
She was here! She was talkative. Shinji would give her some talking. Oh indeed he would. She was just a few feet from where he crouched in shadow just inside the door, by the sound, still in the dust of the street. He just needed her to --
"-- step forward."
-- a little. Just step forward a little --
"-- onto the porch."
-- just step forward a little onto the porch, that's all you need to... do...
"Shinji, my devious young architect, I've no wish to be rude at all, but your porch is rigged, and I ain't stepping on it."
"You read my mind!" It just burst out of him. He couldn't help it. "It isn't fair!"
"Shinji. I can see there's something wrong with the porch. She lists to starboard, and the planks in front of the door have clearly been ripped up and hastily reinstalled in the very recent past. I didn't read your mind, I just used my own. What did you put under it, Shinji? Spikes? Or possibly it's something that's supposed to grab my legs so I can't dodge when you hit me with whatever it is you're holding, a simple slip-knot arrangement perhaps, pulled tight by my weight --"
"You're reading my mind again!" Shinji howled. He clutched his hair with his free hand.
"Now, if I were reading your mind, like it was a bloody scroll, don't you think I'd be able to see what was in your hand?"
Shinji squinched his eyes tight shut at that. This was like being hit over and over. And he didn't want to pull his hair any more; his scalp hurt. "Then how did you know I had something in my hand?!"
"Well, the odds of your attacking me barehanded aren't good. You'd have something, even if it was just a stick. I bet you've got something better, though, resourceful young limb of Satan that you are. What has he got, Shimako?"
Shinji was upside down suddenly, and his head smacked against the floor. He screamed, and lost his grip on the weapon. Then he felt as if he was a kite being flown in a typhoon. Then he was in a tumbled heap in a corner.
A new voice, another woman, in the room with him, said, "He has a sword, Sei. It's a bit rusty, and the balance isn't good. It has a large, obviously fake ruby set in its pommel."
And now, the bitch queen murderess's voice, also in the room all of a sudden. "You disappoint me, Shinji. An ordinary sword?"
Shinji struggled out of the tangle of his own limbs -- up to a standing position -- if he had to die, he was going to die on his feet -- "How did you get in here without stepping on the boards? You cheated!"
He had half expected monsters, inhuman creatures with six breasts each and leading vengeful ghosts on leashes. Instead there were two women, one in a rather plain white robe and hakama, and the other, taller one in some outlandish skin-tight gear, black legs and padded golden breast, with a sort of black half-cloak, and a mop of yellow hair, obviously a foreigner, but not supernatural. They were both looking at him in wonder.
Shinji ran at the taller one. He knew this was the end, and he probably wouldn't make it across half the distance between them, but this was how he would die, he would die fighting, he owed it to --
The typhoon effect was repeated.
But he ended up face down on the floor with a hand on his back between his shoulderblades, and a bumped nose, instead of on a spike with his own wet guts landing on his face, as he had expected.
"Shinji," said the voice of the taller sorceress, "you are relentlessly hostile. Perhaps I have earned it, but I'd like to talk to you calmly and quietly, as one professional to another. Will you stand up in a peaceable fashion, instead of flying at me like a deranged grasshopper, and can we try to have some kind of adult relationship?"
...Shinji had no idea what was going on. His hopes for this encounter were all destroyed, but so were his fears.
On an experimental basis, he said, "All right."
The hand was removed from his back, and he was being helped up.
He stood there, rubbing his nose and the back of his head, and looking at his guests. The taller one still had that smile, which he was beginning to think might be friendly rather than sardonic. The smaller one merely had a sweet, relaxed expression. She had a calming effect on him; he suddenly felt certain that nothing too terrible could happen to him with this one around; she had a face that wouldn't allow anyone to be unjustly murdered and boiled, with his own innards, in a bag. "I, er, apologize for my violent behavior, which surprisingly turns out to be unwarranted," he said, bowing.
"Don't worry about it, Shinji," said the taller one. "You're upset, naturally. Your aniki is wounded. Is he dying? Toshi seemed to think so."
"I don't think he'll make it through the night," Shinji said. And then he did begin to cry. He couldn't stop himself. All the desperate stratagems of planning and revenge he had put between himself and the death were gone now --
He turned away from the women and sat on the floor. This was shameful. He couldn't speak; he couldn't trust his voice.
He heard the inner door slide a little.
"This is him in here? On the pallet, sleeping?" the taller voice asked him.
He turned his head just enough so they could see him nod. He wanted to apologise and he couldn't even do that right now.
"Hmmm. Not my forte, really," the taller voice said, somewhat muted. "Shimako, I believe you're pretty skilled?"
"Reasonably, for ox-level," the smaller voice answered. "My Mistress is a close friend of the best healer in the Guild, after all. I think I could comprehend such a wound -- such a degeneration in the tissues, such a depletion of the humours -- but I don't know if I have the power to reverse it all."
"Then we will collaborate. Abide a little, Shinji."
What was this?
Shinji stood. He turned and went to the inner door.
The two women were kneeling on the floor, to either side of Ichiki-sama. Their hands rested gently on his belly, his chest, his forehead. The younger one's eyes were closed. Shinji couldn't see the older one's face, her back was to him.
Shinji waited in the doorway. There was a lump in his throat. He was telling himself firmly, over and over, not to hope.
The younger woman spoke:
The hollow tree holds
A letter
from a loved one.
Moonlit paper glows.
Warm sad thoughts. When the hole is
Closed,
leave the letter inside.
Ichiki-sama's hand twitched.
Shinji found that he had bitten his knuckles hard enough to make them bleed. Stifling a curse, he rushed back into the front room to dress it.
When he came back in, Ichiki-sama's eyes were open. He was talking to the sorceresses with some hoarseness, but intelligibly. "That was my death blow. I was sure of it."
"I was the one who dealt it to you," the older sorceress answered, "so it was only right I help with the healing."
"Am I healed?"
"You should rest for a few days," the younger sorceress said very seriously. "It was a near thing. Healing is best applied to a wound as soon as possible after the wound happens. It was late for you, almost too late. You should be all right, though, as long as you don't go right back into your routine."
"Right now, I feel about strong enough to eat some rice lees and fall asleep..." Ichiki-sama looked up at Shinji, who was standing over them now, holding a bowl of rice lees and a dipper of water. "Just the thing," Ichiki-sama went on. "This foolish and incompetent young man is my student. He has not much in the way of charm, grace, or talent, but he is devoted enough, and understands his duty. I hope he has not disgraced himself in any way?"
"Not at all," the older sorceress answered him. "We had a misunderstanding at first, but cleared it up quickly enough. He is very devoted, and I think he's more talented than you give him credit for."
"He had better be," Ichiki-sama growled. "Are you going to feed me that lees, boy, or watch it dry?"
The older sorceress rose, and Shinji knelt in her place. The younger sorceress raised Ichiki-sama's head in her lap. Shinji fed and watered his aniki. There were tears in Shinji's eyes, but he was barely aware of them. Inside he felt quite calm, and content. The world was the right shape again.
After Ichiki-sama fell asleep, Shinji served the sorceresses the last of his sake in the front room. They honored him with their names, and he told them a little of his history, and Ichiki-sama's.
"I am only a simple thief," he said. "But you have laid a great obligation upon me, and if there is any service I might do you, you need only name it."
"I wounded Ichiki-san in the first place," Satou-san said. "Only right I should help heal him. But there is a favor you can do me, Shinji-san."
"Anything --"
"Tsujimoto no Fujito."
Shinji looked down. "Perhaps I was over-hasty... Toshi-san said you were looking for that one. I think Ichiki-sama wouldn't like me to. Mind, if it were only me, I'd tell you anything you wanted to know. I have no use for the high-and-mighty bastard. But..."
"You and Ichiki-san were in some sort of partnership with him? That much seems obvious, from the way we met you fellows."
"Yes. Still are in a partnership..."
"Not unless you mean to join him in exile," Sei said. "Tsujimoto no Fujito is done, like dinner. He was captured in the Imperial Enclosure a little while ago."
"What! Really?"
"Truly. Actually, I don't know what they mean to do with him. I think the punishment for breaking banishment is death --" Satou-san looked at Todo-san, who inclined her head once -- "but I don't know what sort of favors the pipsqueak can call in. He has at least one friend that I know of, who has the ear of the Emperor. But at the very least, I'd guess he's going back into exile."
Shinji was most pleased by this intelligence. He hoped that Tsuji-chan was in serious trouble.
"But he's not so much the one I'm interested in," Satou-san went on. "It's the girl, the beggar-girl. The one he sent up into our rooms in the Mountain Lily Inn."
The girl? How was she of any importance?... "Yes?..."
"How did he happen to find her?"
--
The young sorceresses had been in chaos, when Sachiko had found them in the Banqueting Pine Grove. Shrieking, excitement. A few were still in tears, though not many. There were some loud ones saying Satou-san ought to be disciplined, and some quieter ones looking miserable and tugging at the sleeves of the loud ones. No one could talk for long without being interrupted, but the main subject of discourse seemed to be what punishment would be appropriate for such an outrage. Oe Hikaru-san was saying that banishment to the frozen north was the only way to go.
Sachiko had held up her hands and spoken to them for a few moments, telling them it was time to return to the dormitories. She had touched briefly on the need for the Guild to maintain proper decorum in public places, but did not stress the point.
The girls and young women trooped quietly after her in the streets.
A few citizens bowed as they passed, but the custom was falling into disuse. "A sign of the coming collapse, when old ways are so flouted," Suga-sama would cry. "Even if you could force people to reverence you," Fujiwara-dono would answer, "would it be a kind of reverence worth having?"
Sachiko didn't know which of them was right. She suspected both of them were.
After she'd turned the junior sorceresses over to the Matron of the Day, her progress back to the Mountain Lily Inn was slow. She kept looking into every corner, every shadow, for anything Yumi-shaped, however small. She was examining beggars and street people much more closely than was her wont.
Where are you, Yumi?
Come home. Please come home --
She was looking off into an alleyway, and she almost bumped into the flower girl.
"Flowers, your ladyship, only a few --"
Sachiko looked, and saw the face of the flower girl she'd met the day before yesterday, and given the rough side of her tongue, almost in this exact spot.
The flower-girl's eyes widened as she recognised the scary lady from the day before yesterday. She froze in terror.
The terror would probably have broken in another moment, and been followed by a mad dash for safety. But the scary lady got down on her haunches and said, in a non-scary way, "Let me see your flowers."
Timidly, the flower girl extended one bunch. They weren't very good flowers, as she would have admitted if pressed. This early in the spring, the pickings weren't good, and these were wilting after a day of being held and shown and all. Nobody had bought anything, and she had begun to think of eating the flowers.
The scary lady said, "Oh, these are nice. How much?"
The flower girl thought she might get hit at any moment. The flowers clearly weren't nice. It would take a fool to think they were, and the scary lady did not smell like any kind of a fool. "J-just one copper, my lady --" The lady would surely think even one copper was overcharging for a few wilting wildflowers --
"I have no coin on me," the lady said. "But what do you think of these?"
The lady was holding out two rice-cakes. They were wrapped in leaves, which the lady had pulled back a bit. The cakes smelled of honey and sesame. The girl's mouth watered, and she gulped. She couldn't remember ever being offered that much food at once. "My lady?..."
"I had meant these for my dinner," the lady said, "but I can get something else at my inn. Go on and take them."
The girl had frozen in disbelief this time. Now there was a screaming in her head, take them, fool!, and she took them. Grabbed them, in fact, snatched them out of the lady's hands. The lady looked startled.
"S-sorry," the girl said. "I'm sorry, ladyship. Here's your flowers." She thrust the flowers out. It was only later that she thought about how rude she had been, to this kind, if mad, lady, and cringed.
The lady took the flowers very gently. "Thank you," she said. She even smelled them, and smiled. It was a very small, not very convincing smile. But it was a smile.
The girl was torn. She wanted to just stand there looking at this lady, and she wanted to run away. She thought maybe she ought to stay until she was dismissed, and that decided her.
"You yelled at me, the other day," she said, more or less at random, and then wondered if she should have mentioned it.
The lady looked at her, a calm, unreadable look. "I know. I'm sorry about that. I was angry at something someone had just told me. I shouldn't have taken it out on you. What's your name?"
"Kikuko," the girl said. She'd given her real name without thinking about it. Usually she told anyone who asked that she was Endo the Mad, the Emperor Godaigo, something ridiculous. But it seemed dangerous to speak an untruth to this lady.
"Kikuko-chan, I am Sachiko. A pleasure."
Kikuko bowed.
"Do you eat to your fill every day, Kikuko-chan?"
"Y -- no," Kikuko said uncomfortably.
"There isn't a family that could take you on, as a servant, a helper?..."
Kikuko pressed her lips together. She could take care of herself. She didn't need anybody. She was tough. Anyway, there was nobody to trust.
"How old are you, Kikuko-chan?"
"I could be eight... or nine..." Kikuko felt embarrassed. She didn't actually know. Neither of her parents was around to be asked.
The lady moved away from the subject. "I suppose that's old enough. Still, it is good to have people around you. I mean, if you get sick --"
"Don't need anybody!" Kikuko said too loudly. Then she ducked her head, abashed. She wasn't used to people taking an interest.
"I see," she heard the lady say. She sounded sad. "I see." She was quiet for a moment. Then, "Kikuko-chan, I have a friend who lives in the streets as you do. Her name is Yumi. She's older than you, but not quite as old as I; she is just reaching womanhood. She has brown hair. She's slender. Big brown eyes... almost as big as yours. When last seen, she was wearing a simple white tunic. She blushes easily, and if she's startled she makes strange sounds of distress like a baby dragon caught in a trap. She is..."
Kikuko, wondering what the sudden silence was about, looked up and saw, to her surprise, that there were tears in Lady Sachiko's eyes. "Your ladyship..."
Her ladyship looked away and looked back, and the tears were gone. Kikuko wondered if she'd imagined them. "I love her very much," her ladyship went on. Her voice was a little unsteady. "She was only with me for about a day, but... she is my joy. I suppose a mistress shouldn't love her famula, as Fujiwara-dono suggests, it's bad form, but I do love her and I want her to come home. I don't want to be a bore, but..."
Kikuko didn't know what to say.
"I don't suppose you've seen her anywhere, Kikuko-chan? Or a girl who could be her?" The forlorn hopefulness in those blue eyes...
"No, your ladyship," Kikuko said. Oh how she wished she could say yes. "I would tell you right away, if I did," she added impulsively.
"Thank you, Kikuko-chan." Lady Sachiko smiled again, and this time it was much more convincing. "If you do see her, could you bring word to me? I'm at the Mountain Lily Inn. Do you know where that is?"
"Between Ii-dono's palace, and the burnt grubbly bits over yonder," said Kikuko. "Past the wobbly thing. Yes, ladyship, I know it."
Lady Sachiko hesitated, still smiling, and then said, in a more businesslike tone, "Even if you don't see her -- stop by sometimes anyway. I'm on the second floor, southwest corner, if you just want to climb up."
"I don't --" Kikuko growled and looked away.
"You'd rather take care of yourself. I understand that. Look, think of me as a fallback. If your usual ways of getting food aren't working, then stop by. I should be able to find you something... No?... Well, the offer stays open."
Kikuko felt a gentle touch on her shoulder. The lady Sachiko was standing. "I have to go now, Kikuko-chan," she said. "Thank you for talking to me."
Kikuko remembered her obligation -- the smell of it was filling her whole head and making her a bit dizzy. "Thank you for the rice cakes, your ladyship. I hope you find your friend, your ladyship." Thank you for talking to me, your ladyship. Thank you for...
"I hope so too, Kikuko. I wish you good luck for the rest of your day."
Kikuko watched her ladyship go. Down the street. She thought it was just her ladyship's dignity that made her go so slow -- her ladyship was a young woman after all -- but then she noticed that her ladyship was constantly glancing away, in this direction or that. At the mouth of Hell's Ditch, she stopped and looked away west along that stretch of sheds, shacks, skins stretched over sticks, her eyes sad and searching.
No one has ever looked for me that way, and no one ever will, Kikuko thought. The thought made her feel wild and happy, and then it made her feel like crying.
Making sure her bundle of leaves, and their precious contents, were securely tied under her arm, she trotted down to the place where Lady Sachiko had stood, went into Hell's Ditch, and began to make for her secret fort. She chose an unconcerned, half-walking, half-skipping gait, in case she was spotted by anyone she knew. She was taking the rest of the day off. These rice-cakes, one meal to her ladyship, were four meals to Kikuko. Though probably one of the cakes would end up being money instead of food. There was something she wanted to try...
Sachiko arrived at the Inn. She went to the kitchen, calmly. She calmly requested a simple meal from the innkeeper's daughter, Miyo. Miyo-san seemed to sense that something was wrong; her eyes kept searching Sachiko's face. Sachiko ignored this as politely as possible. She appreciated Miyo-san's concern, but she didn't want to talk just now.
She climbed the ladder to the suite.
There was no one there.
She stood looking at the empty room for a moment. She hadn't expected, but she had hoped...
She got on with the rest of her day:
She found a nice vase to put the wilting, scrawny wildflowers in. These aren't worth half of one of those rice cakes, and you are a fool, she seemed to hear her mother's voice saying. Well, perhaps. Perhaps. Her high-born parents seemed to want nothing from her but her obedience. If she wanted to ignore them as much as possible, and hold an uneducated beggar, two serving-girls, and a grinning unreliable hedge-wizard to her heart all the rest of her days, who knew what anything was worth? Not Sachiko. She had learned more in the last few years of her life than in all the years that had come before them, and she was now, at last, prepared to admit that she knew next to nothing after all. She put her head down on the kotatsu. Her hands clasped at the vase.
She wept.
People of her class generally approved of weeping; it was how you demonstrated that you were capable of fine and poetic feeling. To Sachiko, it had always seemed like one more contrivance, as well as a waste of energy -- energy that might more sensibly be used to alleviate the very cause of the tears, to your own benefit, and perhaps the benefit of others. But she had not known she was going to weep before she started, it was like a storm that had taken her unawares, and it was the first time she had done anything spontaneously, so far as she remembered, since childhood, and so she decided to let it run its course. Through her misery, she laughed a little weak laughter at her careful self-analysis 'mid such a spontaneous act, but the misery quickly took over again.
In time, her sobs were tearing at her, robbing her of breath, and then, with no volition of which she was aware, she screamed:
"YUMI!..."
After that, the sobs faded, the tears slowed.
She looked up at the vase she still was clutching and saw, to her mild surprise, that the flowers were standing straight, seemed bigger than before, and were blooming furiously, almost viciously.
Hm. I didn't tell them to do that.
Oh, well. There would be some nice flowers to welcome Yumi and the others home, when they came.
And Yumi would come home.
Outside, it began to rain.
Back to The Sorceress's Heart Index - Back to Maria-sama ga Miteru Shoujo-Ai Fanfiction