Read Prince of Outcasts Online
Authors: S. M. Stirling
And more important for her purposes and the Empire's, there were troops, too, the growing muster of the High Kingdom gathered over distances she found almost inconceivable, in a range utterly alien to the small, tightly organized and quite uniform population of her own country. Armored knights and men-at-arms, light cavalry in mail shirts with bow and saber, field catapults rumbling by on their way to a camp outside the little city, kilted archers in green brigandines, once the serried swaying points of a pike-phalanx marching by beneath the banner of a golden honeybee on black and singing in a deep male chorus:
“Awake, ye Saints of God, awake!
Tho' Zion's foes have counseled deep,
Although they bind with fetters strong,
The God of Jacob does not sleep;
His vengeance will not slumber long!”
Then a company of Boiseans behind a wreathed standard topped by an upraised golden hand, with hobnail boots slamming down on the pavement in earthquake unison to the rattle of a kettle-drum and brassy scream of a trumpet and a harsh cry of:
“Make way, make way!”
from their officer with the transverse red crest on his helm and vine-root swagger stick in his hand.
“We have accomplished much, Majesty,” Egawa said. “We have set all this in motion, and turned it to our purposes.”
The commander was an inch or so less than her own five foot six in the local systemâmedium height for a man in Nihon, short hereâbut broad-built and squat, in plain dark black-and-gray
hakama
and kimono and five-kamon
haori
jacket, fan and the two swords through his sash. He had grown a little gaunt since he had lost his left hand on the beach at Topanga; Montival had fine doctors, as good as any in Nihon, but that was a grave injury and more so for a man in middle age.
Yet despite the fresh lines in his square, rather brutal face and the extra gray in his hair where the topknot stood up above the shaved strip, there was less hidden tension in the set of his stance. He still looked ready to draw and strike instantly, but less as if he wished something would give him the opportunity.
Every now and then his eye would stray to the sword tucked through the moderate-width modern-style sash she wore around her own kimono. Yellow gleams seemed to move in the black depths of what was no longer a simple sheath of lacquer and wood. Just as the blade beneath was no longer simply steel, not even simply a marvel of seven laminations from the hand of the ancient master-smith Masamune.
He looked aside, cleared his throat, and made a slight show of
glancing over the railing of the verandah at the samurai who stood motionless as statues at the street gate, water beading on the lacquered lames of their armor and the plates of their broad-tailed helmets, the dim light glittering on the long heads of their tall
su yari
spears. Two flags flew there; one the
TennÅ
's personal banner, red with the sixteen-petal stylized chrysanthemum
mon
of her House in gold, the other the Hinomaru, the red sun-disk on a white ground. More guardsmen stood beneath the balcony, almost invisible against the dark red brick with its coat of ivy, save for the wet gleam on the blades of their
naginatas
.
“Yes,” Reiko answered. “It is for that that my father sacrificed himself. So that the generations of our people might live. For that, and this.”
Her hand rested on the hilt of the transformed sword for a moment before she went on; they both inclined their heads.
“That we of the Dynasty may have the power to guard them through all time to come. There is much yet to be done, but we have made a good beginning . . . to be sure, with the help of our enemies! They will long regret killing the Montivallan High King when they slew our
Saisei TennÅ
.”
“Hopefully they will
not
regret it so very long,
Heika
,” her officer said with grim humor, and she nodded acknowledgment before she said:
“Come, let us examine the circumstances.”
The sliding doors behind them were of glass and metal, salvage of the ancient world rather than modern paper and lath, but the principle was the same. Egawa worked them, then preceded her and bowed her into the room. She stepped out of her zÅri sandals and across the mats to a low table that held several maps and stacked reports, along with ink-blocks and brushes and a lever-worked mechanical calculator.
The Montivallan ship that had borne her Grand Steward to the homeland had returned recently with a suitable retinue for herâthe bare bones of one, at least. As she and Egawa sank back on their knees and heels on the mats in
seiza
and set their katanas by their right sides the inner door slid open and lady-in-waiting Egawa Chiyo appearedâa stern-faced woman of about thirty, the guard-commander's sister and named for the poet. She directed two maids, young cousins of hers in
their early teens, and also related to Reiko as grandchildren of her grandfather's sisters; personal service to the Empress was a post of much honor, eagerly sought among women of high birth. Chiyo wore a rather plain iro-tomesode, and the youngsters the more colorful
furisode
suitable for young maidens.
All three had
wakizashi
shortswords thrust through their modest-width modern
obi
, steel
tessen
folding fans tucked away inconspicuously,
tantÅ
-daggers, and lead weights sewn into the bottom hems of their long hanging sleeves, which could be grasped and instantly swung as deadly flails. Their brothers and uncles and male cousins served in the Guard, but like them the attendants were expected to instantly throw themselves between she whom they served and any danger, if necessary with bare hands or the long pointed pins that secured their piled hair.
The pleasantly spare room was large and comfortable, softly lit by biogas lamp fixtures overhead. It had bookshelves, map-stands, a few flowers, armor-stand and racks for
naginatas
near the inner door, and an alcove where she had hung a scroll she had made herself; she had always found calligraphy an aid to a tranquil mind. The other side bore a
kamidana
where she could make offerings, at the proper above-eye-level height with a circular mirror in front of a stylized miniature shrine and the other necessary objects. The mirror was customary . . . but for one of her birth, it had a special significance.
Reiko sighed inwardly as the maids laid a
kakeban
serving table by each of them, very much like a lacquered tray with four legs and stretchers. She knew all the women who served at Court by name and had grown up among them, and she felt the gentle, invisible, unspoken and irresistible pressure of their presence and their gaze shoving her back into her own appointed role as firmly as they performed theirs.
Both tables came from Japan originally, but had been in a museum here before their allies supplied them, and she felt slightly guilty as the heated sake flasks were placed on them and poured with due ceremony into shallow
sakazuki
cups.
They are so very old, and so very beautiful.
Abstractly she knew that she was much less enmeshed in ceremony and ritual than most of her ancestors. It had been two thousand years, perhaps three, since so few people dwelt in the Land of the Gods. The modern court reflected that, that and the ceaseless pressure of the
jinnikukaburi
raiders and their sorcerer lords. The very knowledge of some of the more arcane rites had been lost, because only Reiko's grandmother and her nurse and one or two others had survived from the Imperial household; others were well-recorded in writing but impossible because their sites were haunted ruins that would not be reclaimed for generations at best.
But even so, in many ways my time here was like . . . what is the ancient word . . .
a vacation,
despite hardship and peril. Odd to be alone among strangers, even when some became friends. Yet, also so oddly liberating for a time.
“
Kanpai
, Majesty!” Egawa said, lifting the cup formally, then pausing for an instant as if he'd been caught in some solecism he couldn't name or define.
Poor Egawa,
she thought, as she shook back her sleeve and drank delicately, one hand cupped around the other.
I am his superior officer, but also his
TennÅ
, and I am a woman, yet also a student of the arts of war who he knew and trained as a child. And he has seen me be the vessel of my Ancestress, a living God for a moment. He is a most intelligent man, but he is not particularly subtle or at ease with contradictions, with ambiguities. Like a cat, he prefers things to be . . . tidy.
She sighed again; she missed her cat, but it would have been cruel to have subjected Aiko to the sea voyage that had brought the reinforcements. Cats loved people, but they loved their homes as much. And to be sure, now there was Kiwakoâmore rewarding than any pet, a whole personality blossoming like a flower. It was well to have something in your life besides the grim necessities of power.
The papers on the table occupied them for some time; occasionally she reached out and adjusted one of the supplemental stands nearby, each holding an alcohol pressure-lamp before a movable curved mirror. Ruling, even ruling less than four hundred thousand people, involved a great deal of dealing with numbers and reports and maps. She had been raised
to that even before her brother was lost and she received a prince's education as heir to the throne; women of the upper classes did much of the routine administration at home these days to spare men for battle, and they set policy more often than the men liked to acknowledge.
When war was involved, it generated still more paper. At least these reports indicated fewer raids than usual back home since she and her father left on their mission. Perhaps the enemy was occupied elsewhere, since Japan was far from their only foe. Or drawing back their strength to strike later, or for once preoccupied with defense rather than attack.
Or a dozen other explanations. Do not speculate beyond the evidence. Good advice . . . but it is like saying that you should not scratch a mosquito bite. True, yet so much easier to give than take! But already some of our people live who would have died or worse if we had not made this voyage.
When you put war and ruling together, there was no end to the administrative trivia, and it was a constant struggle to remember that each figure in the columns represented a person, a bundle of loves and hates and longings connected to so many others.
At times you must disregard that, for the greater good; that is
giri
. But
ninjo
, feelings and compassion . . . that must have its place too, or you become an empty suit of armor that walks and kills, and then a blight upon the world.
“At least now we are no longer perpetually trying to make one tatami cover a whole tsubo by shifting it around very quickly,” she observed.
“Hai, Heika!”
Egawa said cheerfully. “Don't the
gaijin
have a saying about robbing one to pay another. . . .”
“Robbing
Peter
to pay
Paul
,”
she supplied, dropping the English names into the Nihongo smoothly.
“Yes, exactly. We have been robbing IchirÅ to pay JirÅ all our lives.”
“And JirÅ to pay IchirÅ,” she said.
“Now, we may bestow gifts lavishly on both sons!”
She made a single swift nod and indicated the papers: “This all seems quite satisfactory. Not perfect, given the transportation difficulties and how long it takes to build a ship, but satisfactory. Especially if we can hire vessels from Hawaii, and that looks to be possible even if their king
KalÄkaua does not enter the warâand eventually, it seems likely he will. From the reports he is an intelligent, farsighted man, and many of his people are partly of our blood. They are Hawaiian now, but they remember.”
He made an affirmative sound and bowed again in acknowledgment.
“General Egawa,” she said, as she put her cup down after a sip.
Hot sake was comforting on a cold day, as much for reasons of the spirit as the body. There was a reason they called winter the Black Months in this part of Montival; it was as far north as northern Hokkaido, though not as bitterly cold. Short days and little light went with the wet chill.
“There is something that I wish you to most particularly remember and bear in mind.”
“
Hai
, Majesty?”
“We have been through a very great deal together. Battle and worse. You have seen me . . . wield great power.”
“
Hai
, Majesty!”
This time his tone was fervent rather than merely politely deferential. What had happened on the beach at Topanga was like nothing since the time of legends, as the Divine Wind struck down the enemies of the Empire. And she had killed one of the
kangshinmu
adepts who had tormented them as much or more than the soldiers of their foes. For much of her people's history the
TennÅ Heika
had been less a worldly ruler or commander than an intermediary between the living and the world of the Kami and the ancestors, serving the whole people thus as the head of a household did an individual family. In that moment she had been both, and that was her destiny now.
There were three of the Sacred Treasures. The Jewel we retained; the Mirror is still lost; the Sword I have reclaimed. That was no accident. The Mirror confers the wisdom to use power rightly, but first we must
have
power to survive at all.
“You have seen me be the vessel of the Immortal One Shining in Heaven, for that moment.”
She stopped for an instant to emphasize what came next; and closed her own eyes. Memory burned with a fire that sustained, the memory of being suffused by that glory, touching something vast beyond human
conception. And that greatness speaking, Her voice warm with pride and love: