by Fuyumi Ono
Meaning that, amazingly enough, Chodai had spoken with the goushi of his own volition.
“The goushi went out of their way to inform us. That means something really dangerous must lie ahead. I am not so reckless as to want to see for myself. I wasn’t ever interested in seeking out alternate routes simply in order to defy the goushi.”
“But—”
“I detoured around the marsh because I knew there was something in it worth avoiding. The goushi obviously knew about it and took measures not available to us. If the goushi would go to such lengths, we reasoned that it shouldn’t be crossed at all. Don’t you think?”
“That does make sense.”
“We looked for a way around, again, not because we wished to defy the goushi. So if the goushi say the way ahead is impassable, we’ll listen to what they have to say. Seeing as they’re going to the trouble of carving out a new route, we might as well follow them.”
“I see.”
“Though Kiwa and his group seemed to have pushed the trees aside and proceeded along the road.”
Shushou started, her eyes wide. “Shitsu-san did what? Really?”
“You okay with this?” Rikou asked Gankyuu.
Gankyuu rose to his feet to run after Shushou then stopped in his tracks, searching out the place he’d last seen her with his eyes only.
“Let her do what she wants. She paid me up front anyway.” But there was little sense of triumph in his words.
“Huh.”
“For the life of me, I can’t understand how that girl thinks.”
“Really?” said Rikou.
Gankyuu glanced back at him. “So you say. Aren’t you the one who came all this way in order to escort that handful of trouble to her destination?”
“That I did.”
“In which case, you go,” Gankyuu said, and sat down on the spot.
Rikou grinned. “Don’t be mean. Putting distance between yourself and a koushu in the Yellow Sea is dangerous to your health.”
“Maybe.”
An unfathomable smile rose to Rikou’s face. “Even I hold my own life dear. It’s not something, alas, I wish to cast aside on behalf of somebody else.”
“Then why did you come all the way to the Yellow Sea?”
“I believed my presence might prove necessary. Though I suspect it no longer is.”
Gankyuu cocked his head to the side. “I don’t get that at all.”
“Chasing after Shushou would be easy enough. But without you there, it’d be an empty gesture.”
Gankyuu raised his head. Meaning what? the expression on his face said.
“Shushou probably ended up with Chodai or Kiwa. She’s not so foolish to believe she could navigate the Yellow Sea by herself. I don’t think she will reach Mt. Hou without a koushu by her side.”
“I see,” said Gankyuu, his mouth twisting into a frown. “There’s no need to guard Shushou if she’s not going to become empress.”
“If Shushou doesn’t become empress, I’ve got no reason to be here.”
When Shushou told Rikou she was going to Mt. Hou, the feeling she was destined to become empress took root inside him. He hadn’t ended up in that town with any thought of meeting her or anybody like her. For whatever reason, that was where he’d decided to stop for the night. For whatever reason, he’d circled around the town to check out the cemetery. And then for whatever reason, he’d left Seisai alone for a few minutes.
Gankyuu said, as if privy to these thoughts, “I think, in general, that’s what one person chancing across another is all about.”
“Though I don’t think it was so important who Shushou met. Had it been somebody other than me, that connection would have become equally important.”
“I suppose there must be others around as whimsical as you.”
“But if you weren’t there, Gankyuu, it’s hard to imagine how things would have turned out.” Gankyuu stared back at him. Rikou smiled. “You’re a koushu, quite out of my class. I expect you’re going to have a hard time grasping where guys like me are coming from too.”
Gankyuu chuckled. “Huh. You really think so?”
Rikou smiled again. “That is the response of a person refusing the possibility of comprehension. Sans explanations, there’s no way to say whether you understand or not.”
“You’re saying I’m narrow-minded.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Koushu empathize with the feelings of other koushu. That’s no less true for everybody else. As a general rule, if it didn’t happen to you, you’re not going to get it. At the same time, though, there are also those words that reject comprehension while casting aspersions on those who don’t understand.”
Gankyuu sank into silence.
“Shushou wants to understand you.”
“I don’t think she ever will.”
“And you couldn’t be bothered to offer an explanation?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Or perhaps you didn’t want her to get you from the start. Or feared her not getting you even after the explanation.”
Gankyuu sighed. “That’s not it.”
“Hmm?”
“What I don’t get is all these people who think a king is important to a kingdom and want one so bad they’re willing to go on the Shouzan.”
Rikou nodded and said with a wry smile. “That could indeed stand in the way of a mutual understanding.”
Gankyuu had no more to add. Rikou kept any further thoughts to himself. No fires burned in the scattered campsites. The people scattered here and there wrapped the dark and quiet around them like a heavy quilt and stayed up through the night.
At the break of dawn, after the skies had brightened sufficiently, the koushu came to their feet and made ready to travel. Sullenly and silently, Gankyuu did the same, strapping the packs to the back of his haku. That was when Kinhaku approached him.
“Gankyuu—”
Gankyuu looked up to see Chodai at Kinhaku’s shoulder.
“Shushou—”
“The little brat’s not here. She dismissed me, don’t you know.”
“I know,” Chodai interrupted. “She left with Kiwa.”
“Figures.”
“Last night, Kiwa cleared the trees out of the way and continued along the road.”
Gankyuu shot Chodai a startled look. Chodai nodded. Kinhaku frowned.
“It seems that old rich man couldn’t bear to part with his wagon. He set out at daybreak. He can go wherever he feels like, except the girl went with him. You okay with that?
“She could say she was throwing her life away and I’d tell her to get on with it. I’m no longer in her employ. She’s got nothing to do with me.”
Part Four
Chapter 24
[4-1] Shushou grumbled aloud, “To start with, he kept insisting that I just wouldn’t understand. I can’t stand being treated like a little idiot.”
Kiwa responded with an exaggerated nod. “That certainly is an unbecoming attitude. You are anything but an ordinary child, Shushou. Ordinary children certainly do not go on the Shouzan.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, that’s corpse hunters for you. In a word, cynics. They claim to be koushu as their birthright but some of them were born in Kyou. You never hear about them going on the Shouzan. For that matter, I’ve never heard of a koushu becoming emperor, either.”
“Koushu are raised in the Yellow Sea since they’re children, so they’re not going to understand how the outside world works. And I’m not a koushu. It goes both ways, though. A koushu won’t understand what it means to grow up as a merchant’s daughter either. And yet they go on like they know everything. They’re all Miss this and Miss that. Not like they mean it. I can hear the scorn in their voices. But if they’re going to insist that only koushu can understand koushu, then I will insist that they can’t understand me unless they were born into the household of a wealthy merchant.”
“You’re exactly right. It’s a small man who cannot
grasp the needs of others.” Kiwa looked around. “How in the world could people on foot transport all of this? Don’t you think so, Shushou?”
Shushou agreed and similarly examined her immediate environment. The wagon was piled high with luggage. Kiwa sat solidly on a thick mat slung between the boxes. Because of the poor state of the road, the ride was anything but comfortable.
“It would be quite impossible for your people to carry all of this.” All of this came to a horse-drawn wagon and three handcarts.
Shushou nodded, but felt an uneasy qualm in her heart. She said, glancing at Kiwa, “You are carrying a lot of supplies. Why do you need so much?”
Kiwa smiled. “I am a man who prefers to travel with a generous entourage. Simply feeding them takes an equally generous amount of food. I ask you, how could we otherwise carry the necessary water and food to cover an unknown distance taking several days?”
Food for forty-plus people would indeed add up. But Shushou cocked her head to the side and asked, “Couldn’t the members of your retinue each carry their own provisions?”
Kiwa waved his hand as if the subject was hardly worth discussing. “Perhaps if we knew how long it was going to take. To start with, we’re hauling our water in barrels, not the kind of thing a man could easily bear on his own. Even divvied up, there’d be no way to carry individual portions.”
“Yeah,” Shushou mumbled. She looked over her shoulder. The curtains of the covered wagon were drawn back. She could see his men behind the wagon earnestly pushing and pulling the handcarts, packs strapped to their backs.
“What’s the matter, Shushou? You seem unsettled. Are you afraid?”
“Well, I don’t feel that way,” Shushou prevaricated. “It’s hard to say sometimes, you know?”
There were youma around and they were headed straight toward a nest of them. She had good cause to feel uneasy. If that was fear then she was afraid. But having chosen this course over the disagreeableness of putting up with Gankyuu, she wasn’t eager to voice such complaints.
What weighed more on her mind at the moment was traveling in a wagon. She’d been on foot since entering the Yellow Sea, gathering up firewood along the way and filling her canteen from springs. Traveling seated didn’t sit well with her.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Shushou. Those trees indicating the presence of youma were cut down at the beginning of last winter, weren’t they? Youma have to eat. With the road blocked, nobody would be passing their way. They’d surely go elsewhere for food.”
“Well, yes, that’s probably the case.”
“Of course it is,” Kiwa proudly declared with a smile. “After spending this much time in the Yellow Sea, even amateurs can learn a thing or two. I’m not one to look down my nose at the accomplishments of others. That’s where Chodai and I differ. I’ve been watching what the goushi do, you see. But I couldn’t possible discard my wagon. It contains too many things a man like me can’t go without.”
Like your luggage, Shushou thought, while nodding in wan agreement. “But doesn’t the problem come down to taking a full ration of water with you? What if, for the time being, you carried what you could and did you best to make it last?”
“Not knowing whether there will be potable water waiting for us ahead?”
“That’s true, except that Gankyuu and the koushu each carry a single canteen. If the koushu can make it work, surely you and your men could get by each carrying his own rations?”
Kiwa waved his hand. “I’m afraid there’s where you can’t lump me in with the koushu. The koushu have those stones that purify undrinkable water.”
“Ah, yes. Now that you mention it.”
“I had no idea such things existed. So, of course, we have none of our own. That’s why we have to carry so much more water than the koushu.” As if those same koushu were still around, Kiwa lowered his voice to a whisper. “You hear about what happened back there?”
“Back there?”
“At the lake where you couldn’t drink the water.”
Shushou felt a chill down her spine. “Um, well—”
“The water in the stream flowing from there to the marsh is undrinkable too.”
“Stands to reason. It flows down from the lake.”
“And that’s why it you can’t drink it. But not everybody travels with a full supply of water like me.”
“True.”
“The goushi put the rocks into that water and make it potable. The kind of thing anybody here would want, don’t you think?”
“I would think so.”
“I heard that those short on water went asking for some and got turned down point-blank. What could they do? Once they ran out of water they could drink, they’d have no choice but to drink the water they couldn’t.”
“And did they?”
“No, no.” Kiwa shook his head. “They went back to the goushi and begged for some stones. The goushi wouldn’t budge an inch. So they found themselves at the end of their rope.”
“Are you telling me they tried to steal them?”
“Well, tried. Rather pathetically. Personally, I wouldn’t have had it in me to take them to task. Without anything to drink, they were going to die of thirst. At any rate, I heard there was hell to pay when they were found out.”
“It turned into a brawl. That was after leaving the marsh, wasn’t it?” She was pretty sure she’d caught sight of the scene.
“That it was. The goushi ganged up for a few rounds of punching and kicking, but let them off with the warning that under any other circumstances, they would have tossed them into a youma nest. Seeing as they were right back where they started, I shared some of my supplies.”
“Oh.”
“A sad tale, don’t you think? When you come across people in dire circumstances, it’s only natural to lend a hand, isn’t it? Doing nothing when people are at their wit’s end and settling the matter with violence? I felt it was about time I parted way with the goushi. This was a opportunity worth taking advantage of.”
“I suppose so.”
Kiwa was certainly correct. If the koushu weren’t thirsty, it didn’t matter to them how much anybody might want a drink. That’s what it came down to.
But she also knew about the “jug stones” Kiwa had mentioned. Gankyuu kept a number of them in a small satchel. The stones, however, did not last forever. A stone could be used only one time. They started out white, then turned a pale black or green color.
“Those goushi, they’re hard nuts to crack.”
Shushou said, “The goushi don’t have an unlimited numbers of those stones, you know.” When Kiwa bridled she quickly added, “It’s not like I’m covering for them or anything. But they probably only carry enough stones for themselves. They have to calculate how long it will take to get to Mt. Hou, the distances involved, and prepare the number of stones they’ll need along the way. Handing them out would put them in a fix. Because of the stones, they don’t bring extra water with them.”
“And when a thirsting man appears in front of you?”
“I’m not denying it, but the goushi don’t have enough to share with everybody. Gankyuu is ever mindful of the rainfall, so I have to believe he’s cutting it fine. It’s easy being charitable with the people right in front of you, except won’t everybody start asking for a handout then? There’s no way everybody can have one. In the first place, they only work once. What happens when people come back for more? In which case, there’d soon be no stones left for anyone.”
“In other words, anticipating your own need for water in the future, you should cast aside those in dire need now?”
“Yes, it could turn out that way. But however terrible it may be turning away those in need, would it really be any different knowing they’d be coming back to you in the future in the same straits? Goushi are responsible for more than their own lives. They are entrusted with those of their employer. Making a show of such sympathies now when it will condemn their employer to a gruesome death later wo
uld be turning their priorities upside down.”
“Ah. So as long as their employer stays safe and they collect the balance of their fees, they shouldn’t worry their little heads about what it took to get them.”
“I didn’t mean that. Oh, I don’t know. I can’t explain what I mean.” Shushou sighed and looked away.
Kiwa smiled. “I understand that you feel a sense of obligation to the goushi, and hence your impulse to rationalize their behavior.”
“Not my intent.”
Shushou really wasn’t trying to cover for them. The goushi and koushu didn’t want or need anybody making excuses for them. Though it’d be hard to read what she was saying as anything but exactly that.
White sunlight bathed the road ahead. The wagon continued on in a faint cloud of dust. Sweat glistened on the foreheads of the men hauling the handcarts. They were piled with a lot of supplies.
It was three months until the Summer Solstice, the next opportunity to leave the Yellow Sea. If they didn’t want to starve to death in the meantime, they’d need all that food. Thinking about it that way, somebody like Gankyuu must be out of his mind making the round trip on a single kijuu while carrying only what he could.
“But he’s not,” Shushou mumbled to herself.
Gankyuu hadn’t brought along any rice. Shushou would have expected him to pack rice and barley. He hadn’t at all. Only a sack of what looked like flour. It made up the bulk of every main meal. Boiling water added to a half-filled bowl would expand enough to top off three full bowls. The gruel was flavored with locally-found herbs, or shavings from beef jerky, dried shrimp or seaweed or tea.
The equivalent amount of rice, wheat or barley couldn’t be crammed into a space so small. Gankyuu only packed provisions that’d allow them to leave at a moment’s notice. Come to think of it, Rikou carried much the same. How did he know it’d be so necessary?
At any rate, because they traveled so light, they could leave almost at once when youma attacks came.
Kiwa was hauling along an extremely generous amount of supplies. He was a man of considerable weight. Literally. But was that the wisest strategy? Especially with youma ready to pounce on them at any moment.
