by Fuyumi Ono
"It's okay. We won't stay in those kinds of inns. The kitsuryou's not around to fuss about the stables, so any old dive will suit us fine."
Until now, they had stayed at the best hotels, because it was necessary for the inn to have stables that could care for a suugu. Although she understood this, Shoukei frantically ran after Rakushun, who had already started for the gate.
"You can't be serious! Any old dive? You're kidding, right?"
Rakushun blinked. "About what?"
"What do you mean, about what?"
"What does it matter where you sleep? I'm not exactly thrilled at the prospect of sharing a room with you, though."
"Not even a canopy bed? Some dirty closet of a room?"
Rakushun paused at the gate and sighed. "You really did have a pampered upbringing. No worries. The beds may be hard, but not so narrow that you're going to fall out of bed. Or there will be a wooden floor. You should be able to get to sleep."
"I know that," Shoukei spat back. "That's why I can't stand it. I don't want to sleep in a place like that ever again."
The mere thought made her miserable, to be reminded of that mean and shabby life. Having stayed only in the finest hotels after fleeing Kyou, the thought was all the more unbearable.
Rakushun scratched at the fluffy fur beneath his ear. The main street of the small town was as quiet as the highway. "Well, yes, people usually sleep in beds. But there are people who sleep on the floor. There are people who sleep on the ground."
"That's hardly news to me."
"In your case, that's all it is. News."
Shoukei drew her eyebrows together. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"To you, it's simply something you know. Unfortunately, I suspect you have no idea what it is really like."
"Well, I wasn't kidding. I slept in a bed in a cold, drafty room, under a threadbare quilt. You may not realize it, but I hate even thinking about those times."
"Why?
Shoukei's eyes widened in amazement. "Why? Don't you know how miserable a life that was? Getting woken up at the crack of dawn, sent off to work before breakfast, coming home covered in mud and dung and straw. Never enough to eat. Going to bed exhausted, not being able to sleep because you're starving and cold. And even with no sleep, getting woken up the next morning and sent off to work all over again. Everybody making fun of you and talking down to you. I don't want to remember any of that life. You get it now?"
"Sorry, but not at all. Why so bad? Why deem it such a wretched existence? It is the life of all peasants. When you're poor, you go hungry. That shouldn't be news to you. But why can't you bear to be reminded of it? That's what I don't understand."
Rakushun stopped and glanced to his right. "How about there?"
It was a small inn that would hardly be high up on anybody's travel itinerary. Several tables were lined up on the dirt floor of the narrow, one-story storefront. Were it not for the sign advertising rooms, it would have struck her as nothing more than a shabby food stall.
"That? Places like that don't even have beds. In the first place, nobody dressed like me would ever stay at a place like that!"
"If that's the way you feel, then go buy something else to wear." Rakushun took a few coins from his pocket and pressed them into her hands. "That's where I'm staying. You can buy yourself some more appropriate dress or take the money and run. It's up to you."
"I--!"
Rakushun wagged his tail at the speechless Shoukei and walked over to the inn. Shoukei watched dumbfounded as he called out to the proprietor. With this amount of money, she could only afford the meanest quality of clothing, the kind of plain garb she'd worn at the orphanage, not to mention that it'd be secondhand at best. In this winter weather, there wasn't anything she really needed other than a coat or jacket. But she'd have to sell her silk outfits to buy those kinds of clothes. And that meant going back to the way she was before.
But, Shoukei thought, she had no money of her own. If Rakushun abandoned her here, she'd end up selling her clothes, anyway. And even then, it was hardly likely she'd have enough to take her all the way to En. Eating the cheapest food in the cheapest inns, could she even make it to the border?
Live with it, she told herself. But when she thought of returning to wretched life of a girl on the lam, she wanted to weep. Continuing on in this state, in the company of a hanjuu, and no suugu to boot, it was simply infuriating.
She swallowed her pride and went looking for a used apparel shop. She picked out a change of clothes. When the pedestrian outfit was ready to her satisfaction, only her shoes were out of character. She'd sold off everything down to there. The only thing she hadn't purchased was peasant-grade footwear. So now her shoes didn't match. At any rate, the only thing left to do was go behind the screen in the shop and change.
Pulling on the starchy garments, she wanted to cry. Right now in Kei, a girl is draped in a luxurious silk kimono of the most amazing quality, wearing a brocaded, embroidered fur coat heavy with pearls.
Biting her lip, she returned to the inn. It was mortifying enough to have to tell the proprietor that she was with the hanjuu, and just as miserable being shown down the moldy old hallway.
"Here," he said, abruptly.
When she opened the door, there was the hanjuu, sitting nonchalantly on the floor in front of a brazier. He looked at Shoukei and scratched his ear. "I don't understand girls. What's so embarrassing about going into a rundown inn wearing silk clothes?"
"You're the one who gave me the money and told me to."
"Yeah, but I didn't think you'd actually change into them. Well, that's what you should wear from now on. That's about the class of travel we'll be engaged in."
"It stinks." Shoukei sullenly sat down on the floor.
Rakushun gazed at the brazier. "No matter how many times you say it, it doesn't change the fact that that's how most people get by. How inconvenient bringing up a princess must be."
"Inconvenient?"
"Inconvenient to treat the ordinary as extraordinary. As surely as you get used to luxurious attire, you start to think that that kind of clothing, as you put it, stinks. So you want to wear silk. You're not the only one who thinks that way. Every girl wants to wear beautiful silk clothes and live a dressed-up life. Perhaps it's in their nature. Who wouldn't want to live the life of a queen or empress or princess?"
"Well, unfortunately, not everybody is a princess."
"No, indeed. But you are."
"I'm… " not the princess royal, Shoukei started to say, but Rakushun wagged his tail. "You are the princess royal. That fact notwithstanding, I'm not saying this with any ulterior motive in mind. The people of Hou sure didn't like you, though."
"Why… ?"
"I've met my fair share of refugees from Hou. They all hated the late king. Not a one of them had a good word for you, either. You are a very unpopular person."
"It wasn't my fault!" Shoukei shouted. She couldn't for the life of her understand what everybody had against her.
"It is your fault. Because you were the princess royal."
"Because of my father."
"Your father became king. So you became princess royal. That, indeed, was not your fault. But when a man becomes king, the mantle of responsibility falls upon his shoulders, and upon the shoulders of the princess as well, like it or not."
Shoukei gaped at the rounded back of the rat.
"There are two kingdoms with a princess or prince, Ryuu and Sou. The empress of Sai had a son, but he died before her coronation. The prince of Ryuu is a minister of state, working on behalf of the kingdom. The prince and princess of Sou also assist the king. The princess is the director of the national health service. Before, the sick were treated at homes, and the doctor visited them there. Nowadays, they are admitted to a hospital where doctors can care for them. That system was initiated by the princess royal of Sou. So, tell me, Shoukei, what did you do?"
"What?" Caught off guard by the question, Shoukei just stared at him.
<
br /> "There once was a princess who remonstrated with her faltering king and was killed for it. And the word is that after the king of Kou died, the princess of Kou and her brother joined the work brigades along with everybody else. The kingdom collapsed, and they could do nothing to stop it. So they took responsibility. They volunteered. Until the next king is chosen, they'll work to save their ravaged country. So, what did you do?"
"But… my father never asked me to do anything."
"You're missing the premise of the question. That is something you should have addressed."
'But… . "
"You knew nothing? Nothing of what the princesses in other kingdoms were doing?"
"I didn't know!"
"Then you should have informed yourself. I know Hou better than does Shoukei, Princess Royal of Hou. Don't you find that more embarrassing than your tattered wardrobe?"
"But… " she started to say, and swallowed the rest. She didn't know what to say next.
"Does wearing wool embarrass you? Most people in the world wear wool. No one should be embarrassed to wear the best that their hard work could afford them. Then there are those who do no work and wear silk. Nobody much cares for them. Nobody likes a freeloader who, without raising a finger, gets something they could never afford with a lifetime of labor. That should be obvious. If you know someone who got all that you had lost without an ounce of effort, you'd resent her, wouldn't you?"
Shoukei shut her mouth to keep from saying anything. In fact, there was a certain empress whom she deeply resented.
"Something you've been given through no effort of your own demands nothing of you in turn. You never understood that. Hence, your resentment."
Shoukei struck the floor with her fist. "So you're saying that everything is my fault? Everything happened because I was bad!" She couldn't admit that. Neither did she want to. "My father never asked me to do a thing! My mother said the same thing! What was I supposed to do? They didn't let me go to university. I didn't have the chance to learn anything. And that's all my fault? There are lots of people like that, lots of people who live rich and comfortable lives. Why does it all have to come down on me?"
"We rightfully reap what we rightfully sow. To profit otherwise is a mistake. And hiding behind misbegotten gains fools no one."
"But!"
"You had mountains of silk dresses, didn't you? You could be said to be an expert on silk dresses, couldn't you? But do you have any idea how all that finery came to be? Did you ever stop to think how much labor it took or why it was given to you in the first place? Why the servants wore hand-spun garments and you wore silk? Until you understand that, you won't understand anything, this is what I'm saying."
"I don't what to hear it!" Shoukei threw herself on the floor and covered her ears. "Just shut up already!"
9-2
"Well, let's go."
At Rakushun's urging, Shoukei picked up her things. The night before, he had left her to cry herself to sleep. He woke her up that morning. In the tavern, she warmed her chilled body with a bowl of gruel, and they left. He said nothing, and she kept her thoughts to herself.
They left the city on foot, and pressed on toward the east. The snow was not as heavy in Ryuu as Hou. But a sharp, cold wind blew instead. It was the coldest time of the year. If you didn't have a thick wool muffler wrapped halfway up your face, small icicles would start forming at the end of your nose. And if you didn't keep your hair covered, it would turn to a sheet of ice.
Many people traveled by horse cart. The bed of the wagon would be packed with straw and rags and covered with a thick tarp. Along with the heat from a brazier, you shared the warmth along with your fellow travelers. Farmers from the neighboring communities hired out their wagons while their fields lay fallow. Hou had a similar system, but in her home country they didn't use wagons, but horse-drawn sledges.
"So where do you hail from?"
The travelers they rode with were often girls and old women. Healthy men walked alongside on the highway. The girl sitting next Shoukei asked the question.
Shoukei hugged the onjaku to her chest. "Hou," she said. The onjaku was a round metal container filled with hot coals. The surface was etched with a lattice of small slits and ridges and the interior was packed with steel wool. This kind of simple onjaku was hung around the neck and kept you warm when you go out in the winter.
"Hou isn't doing well. The king was overthrown."
"Ah… yeah."
Wrapped in the heavy canvas, the interior of the wagon was dark, lit by a single lamp.
"How about you, child?" she said to Rakushun. Beneath the heavy muffler, Shoukei laughed to herself.
"I was born in Kou."
"Oh, didn't the king of Kou die last year? Three years ago it was Hou and a year ago the empress of Kei died. Tai is in that condition now. These are unsettled times."
"Ryuu is doing well. The king is very long-lived."
"Yes," the girl laughed. "But not as long-lived as the king of En. But longer than Kou or Hou, so we count ourselves blessed."
Shoukei instead thought of what she'd seen along the way. She'd assumed that it was a wealthy kingdom, but landscape was more desolate than she had expected. There were hardly any tall buildings. The cities spread out over the land as if clinging to the earth.
When she interrupted to ask about this, the girl and the other travelers laughed. "The houses of Ryuu are in the earth. The winters are long and the summers cool, so we burrow into the ground. Rich or poor, all houses are big."
She said that aside from the rain-drenched northeast and the Kyokai shoreline, houses in Ryuu had large rooms underground. Because of the cold climes, the kingdom did not have large-scale industry, but was rich in stone. They quarried stone, built their houses underground, connected the sub-basements together, and even tunneled out small underground roads.
"Wow." Shoukei didn't know anything about the other kingdoms. She had never left Hou before. She hadn't associated with the citizens of other kingdoms. She had spent her life confined to the imperial palace. And with no interest in what was going on in the world around her, the whole idea of underground roads fascinated her.
"What if the air goes bad? Doesn't it get stuffy in there?"
"Oh, the ventilation takes care of it."
"But there's no sunlight down there. Isn't it awful dark?"
"There are skylights. In Ryuu, the courtyards of houses extend down into the ground. The light radiates out from there. It's not dark and gloomy at all. The rooms clustered around the courtyard are very comfortable."
"And the tunnels?"
"The tunnels are built on the same principle. Haven't you seen them? For the larger tunnels, the long, narrow skylights run down the center of the main thoroughfare."
Now that she thought about it, Shoukei recalled seeing the long, narrow shed-like structures running down the middle of the road. Yet they didn't have roofs. She'd wondered what they were.
"Those are the skylights? What about rain? Doesn't water collect in there?"
The girl smiled. "It doesn't rain much there."
Shoukei nodded. She looked at Rakushun. "That inn didn't have underground rooms, did it? But if we looked, we should be able to find one."
"The underground rooms aren't for the lodgers, but for the innkeeper and his family. That's because Ryuu levies a tax based on how large the underground part of the building is. Add a business surcharge on top of that and it can get quite costly."
"Hey, kid, you know a lot."
Rakushun awkwardly scratched at his ear. The girl paid no attention to his reaction and smiled at him. "Ryuu is a good place. We don't grow a lot of wheat, but we have a lot of mines and quarries and gemstone fountains. And lumber. We really have been blessed."
"There are mines in Hou, too. What about raising livestock?"
"We do. But there's not good grazing. Don't you have good horses in Hou?"
"And cattle and sheep. Lots of those."
"We raise them in Ryu
u, too, but not that many. We can't grow enough forage in the summer. Still, we do pretty well for ourselves. Our king's a good person, too. The winters are real bad, though."
"It really is cold. I didn't expect it."
"People say it's better than Tai. They say that if you go outside at night, your nose will freeze half off. Even during the day, if you don't cover your face, your nose will get frostbit."
"Huh," Shoukei exclaimed. "There are so many different kingdoms. I wasn't aware."
She had thought they were all like Hou, closed in during the winter by the snows that melted in the summer, watering the green seas of grass.
The girl looked at Rakushun. "Is it true that in the south you can even sleep outside during the winter? That you can harvest wheat twice a year?"
Rakushun waved his hand. "Yes, you can harvest crops twice in a year. But that doesn't mean you can sleep outside in the winter. Though in Sou, the southernmost of the kingdoms, that might be possible."
Shoukei blurted out, "The winters in Kei are probably warm."
"I wonder," the girl sighed. "Kei just crowned a new empress. The kingdom seems to be settling down pretty well."
Shoukei had nothing to say in response.
"It must be really tough when a kingdom starts to falter. The refugees from Tai are in a bad way. If your house gets burned down there, you'll surely freeze to death."
"Yeah."
"Tai is totally in chaos. Recently, youma have even shown up near Ryuu. I've never seen one, but that's what people say."
Unconsciously, Shoukei found herself looking at Rakushun.
"To make matters worse, the weather of late has been getting worse. The north has seen record amounts of snow. Smaller towns are completely cut off and there's great concern that famine will set in there. We've got a good king, so nobody knows why."
The wagon creaked. The sound struck Shoukei as the creaking of the kingdom itself. The kingdom was rusting from above. If a county court could be corrupted, then everything above must be already rotten to the core. The kingdom was headed on a downward path.
