A Fox in the Works
Chapter 1 - A Fox in the Works
Wake up.
Kakita Toshiki was on his feet before his eyes opened, leaving the quilted blanket draped over the figure in his bed. The cold told him the brazier had gone out in the night; the scent of cherry blossoms that his Lady was near.
Two steps to the right in the darkened room, then a step forward. His kimono and obi, exactly where she knew he would look for them. A tie for his hair; the azure and silver one, from the feel of the metal and inlay under his fingers. Salt and water for his hands and mouth.
Hurry.
He slipped open the shoji and left without looking back. Misao's futon and blankets in the hall were properly mussed; she always thought of the little details. As his lips formed a question, his Lady's voice in his ear again:
The Gates. You will miss him.
---
Toshiki used his diminutive size and speed to his advantage, slipping through hidden paths in the elaborate gardens in the heart of the Kakita Academy with ease. In passing he broke off two fading branches and a withering blossom with clever fingers, barely noticing the act as he suppressed his yawns.
The path took him to a small post set close to the gate. Visitors mistook it for a decoration and generations of Kakita had indeed decorated it well. Its real purpose was as an anchor for the long ropes which suspended lanterns or kites for events. Enterprising young men and women, however, had found another use entirely, one they imagined hidden from the generations who came before.
Up he went, agile as a monkey, and not a moment too soon. The Gates were always open but sometimes they opened wider than others. Now they were flung wide, as if to welcome Imperial guests. Which was the truth. The golden chrysanthemum of the Otomo, above the sigil of the Otomo Yuriko-hime. His wife. His world narrowed to that gold and green banner…
LOOK.
…and opened wide to a riot of colors and sounds; shapes and textures. The red of dawn's touch on the horizon. The slight thump of the horses hooves on the muddy road. A lark's muted colors so at odds with its glorious song, contracted with the green of the trees, the fox red of the samurais' hair, the hunter green of their kashimono…
His eyes focused again on what his Lady wanted him to see. Four samurai, with hair like a fox's coat wearing green. Kitsune bushi walking well behind the Princess and her guards, but here. Now. But she had not awoken him just for that. He drew in a breath and looked again, accepting the truth the world had to show him.
One's hair was darker, coarser than the others. His armor looked off; as if he didn't quite know how to put it on. His head snapped up to look at the little Crane on his carved perch then quickly turned away, not wanting to be seen to have seen.
"Asooo…the fox has come back to play?"
GRANDSON!
---
The four bushi entered the emissary's chamber. A small man with long white hair stood looking out through an open shoji into the gardens. He turned as they entered, an incandescent smile lighting his face. "Kenichi-san! Maito-san! Niobi-san! It is good to see you again." Guileless grey eyes regarded the fourth. "And you, honored guest?"
The fourth bushi felt his color rising. This was a mistake, she isn't even here. "Kitsune Renshin."
"You are as welcome as your brothers. I confess that I thought I knew all of the survivors of that dreadful day, but I am glad to see that I did not. May I see your papers?"
Kenichi stepped forward, only at the last going to one knee. When he did so the other two knelt as well. Renshin followed, too slow, but grey eyes gave no indication of having seen.
The gunso raised his outstretched hands over his head, holding out papers covered with kanji, wax seals, and ribbons. His hands trembled a bit as the papers were taken, examined, and returned.
"All is in order, Kenichi-san. Please, rise."
"Hai, Kakita-sama!" The three sprang to their feet; again Renshin guessed wrong and it took a moment longer to stand than it should.
"None of that. We were friends on the long march; we are friends now. Unless something has changed?" The Kakita's tone was mild and gently reproving. His scent was that of a calm man who had recently been with his woman.
"Iie, Toshiki-sama. But that was the march. This is the Kakita Academy itself." Kenichi lifted his head, his scent sharp with submission. "And you…"
"Yes, yes. So, have you been shown to your rooms yet?"
"Iie."
Toshiki clapped his hands. A young woman with long black hair tied back with a silver cord approached on light feet from down the hall. She paused, close enough that Renshin could smell Toshiki's scent on her. "Misao. Please guide our guests to their chambers and see to it they are refreshed. I would like to speak to them after dinner."
"Hai, Kakita-ue. Please, Kitsune-samas, come with me?"
The four followed, but Renshin paused so that Kenichi drew close. "What was that? I thought he was an artist in the Academy?"
Kenshin did not look at his companion as they fell into step. "Toshiki would never say it, but his family traces its line to the second daughter of Doji and Kakita. He is married to an Otomo. His twin guards Golden Petal Village, where Hantei shook the dew off his cloak and created the golden trees. By right of blood and marriage, he is likely the highest ranked person in this building unless the daimyo himself is present. But neither he nor his twin would assert such privilege."
Kaori was kuge? And highest kuge, at that? Renshin felt his heart fall. This form was a mistake such as will be told with laughter in the Forest for a hundred generations.
---
Yoriko carefully poured her husband tea, the bountiful "prepared by her own hand" meal spread between them. The cooks had, naturally, done their duty perfectly down to the little imperfections one would expect from a spouse. Husband and wife sat together in silence for a moment while she watched his fine hands caress his tea cup. Was that what they looked like when…
She shook herself. "So. Husband. All is well here in the Academy?"
Toshiki looked up from the tea. "Hai. The gardens grow ever more beautiful. The students grow less talented, or I am just a poor teacher of children."
She sipped from her cup. "And your post?"
"Your inquiry at the Court may yet bear fruit. Kakita-sama is unwilling to let me leave the Academy, saying that I am not yet ready. Ichiro-sama has expressed interest in our proposal to join our line with his."
"Hai."
Toshiki looked back down at his tea cup. "And your work? How fares the Ministry of Calligraphy and Seals? Have you gotten the ink stains out of the golden kimono I sent you?""
She felt her face hardening, saw the look of hurt in his eyes, quickly veiled. Oh Lady, why… Heard her own voice snap crisply, "Hai, husband. The robe you sent was repaired. I am honored to wear it every day."
…why is it this way between us?
She looked at his closing face, his hunched shoulders. She remembered laughing with him in the gardens of Otosan Uchi, attending performances, kissing in the rain as everyone ran indoors at a ruined Dragon fireworks show.
Standing, she shrugged out of her kimono, letting the silk fabric fall free. She reached for him, and he for her, and maybe it would be enough.
After, laying in her bed alone, she silently cried herself to sleep again.
----
Kaori's feet ached. Her back ached. She suspected that the foot of her back ached but she didn't really want to know. It was also raining, which made the beautifully sculpted road up to the Academy muddy. And horses had been past recently. A lot of them. Recently fed.
It was, in short, exactly the sort of moment that a young man would step into her field of vision from the side of the road. A tall, handsome young man with fox red hair and piercing green eyes. Handsome enough that she could feel herself straightening, smiling, even though he didn't say anything. He stood there, watching her watch him as she walked past. It would not have been courteous to turn and gawk at him after she walked by, so she hurried her steps towards the gates.
She could hear him laughing behind her. At her? She turned to see him sitting up, covered from head to toe in mud and other things. His fine hair was plastered to his head, his clothing soiled, and his face covered. Yet his laughter rang through the air like a bell. She felt her smile widen, tried to stop it, then felt her footing slip…
Mud. And horse. In her hair, her armor, her clothes. Everywhere. Followed by a sharp pain from her left ankle, quickly blooming into fire.
"Kakita-sama," said a man's voice. A tenor, probably. 'Please, let me help." She looked up at the smiling man, felt herself smiling as he drew her up, grabbing her as her left leg collapsed. "I have you." A warm arm slipped around her waist and he held her up, muck to her muck.
Oh Lady…why today of all days?
Together they hobbled up to the Academy and clean, hot water.
---
Miaso lit three sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji, founding kami of the Crane Clan and wife of Kakita, the mortal who won her hand from the Emperor and her heart on his own merits. She bowed low, pressing her face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
His Lady, he calls you, Lady Doji o'wise and fair. Please don't push him so hard. Please don't break him.
Lady, please, make the Princess see…
Tears stained the pillow as she pressed her face down harder, willing the Kami to hear her, and the sounds of the Princess voice singing out for the last three nights from her ears.
…let her see not just his fine face but the trembling in his hands after You have kept him up for six nights without stop. Let her see the pain he feels when his students cannot draw, and see the look in Toshi-kun's…
She rose up and slammed her head on the pillow. Never, not even in her own thoughts, could she dare that name. It hurt too much. She was who she was, a servant of the Hida brought from mud and fire to this perfect, beautiful place. This was her fairy tale come true.
..Toshiki-sama's eyes when it's too much and he can barely breathe. Please let her see him as I do. Please.
Misao looked into the jade statue's cold, hard, beautiful face.
Please?
Chapter 2: The Way of Things
Seven days after he arrived, Kitsune Renshin slipped out of the Academy's open gates in the dead of night. No fault to the guards; they were not trained to catch a fox who did not wish to be seen. He moved on light feet down to the edge of the forest. If a forest it could be called. Nothing wild lived within sight of the heart of Doji's dream; the trees themselves were just a part of the greater whole.
When he was safely beyond the guards sight he knelt in the soft loam. From a closed bag he drew a bowl of fragrant cooked rice, a brazier, oil, and fresh-made tofu. Lighting a small fire took only moments; frying the tofu took longer. The smell made his stomach growl but he set his own hunger aside.
Renshin poured the fried tofu and hot oil over the rice. Carefully he picked up the bowl and placed it in the shadows of an ancient tree, it's gnarled roots wrapping around what might once have been a fox's den. "I wish to speak to the Nine-tailed Elders."
Moments passed, stretching in silence. Then a hand reached from the shadows at the roots of the tree, the skin young but the nails thick and yellowed like an old man's. A body emerged, pulling itself effortlessly from the ground. The figure tucked greedily into the oiled rice and fried tofu, eating with his fingers.
The man (for a man's form it wore) set aside the bowl once he polished it clean with his long tongue. Nine white fox-tails spread out around him, along the ground, up over his shoulders, one standing proudly above his head like a plum. Despite the manner of his arrival, his blue and silver brocade robe showed no sign of dirt; nor did the shoulder-length fox-red hair which graced his brow.
Renshin bowed low. "Elder."
"Pup." The Elder answered.
"I beg a boon."
"Hai?"
"This form is not the right one. I thought Kaori was a humble samurai assigned to guard the Academy, her brother a disgraced painter. I was wrong. They are of the line of Doji, blood of the Kami. They are of the line of Kakita, bringer of life."
The Elder's sharp-toothed smile did nothing to mask the belly-deep laughter which nearly choked him as he said "Hai. This was known, had you asked."
Renshin ground his teeth behind his smile. "I need a new form".
The Elder plucked a white pearl shaped like a grain of rice from a pouch on his belt. He considered it for a moment. "No."
"Elder…"
The Elder's voice grew sharp. "You choose the rules of the game, the form, and the time. This was allowed as a favor given by the Lady herself. That you find your choices displeasing is not our concern."
"I…"
"Are you not fox enough for this task you chose?"
"No, Elder. I will succeed."
"Hai, you will. And we will watch with great amusement as you do."
---
Kaori considered the elaborately folded letter laying on her pillow. It had not been there when she got up. Which meant that, sometime between when she turned to wash with water and salt and turned back, someone had entered the room, deposited the object, and left.
For the third time this week.
Like the other two, this one was folded into a puzzle box. If she tried too hard to open it, it would tear and she'd lose the letter. If it was like the other two there might be something inside as well. She picked it up with the tips of her fingers.
Yes, a little weight pressed the bottom down. The first one contained three acorns made of copper, silver, and gold tied with a ribbon. The second, a piece of sea glass pierced in some unknown manner with a fine red silk thread. This one was a mystery to her.
A polite scratching at her shoji broke Kaori's focus. "Enter," she called, still looking at the folded box. She heard Misao moving into the room, setting things aright as she approached and began to work on the samurai-ko's hair. The servant had slept outside Toshiki's door for six days before relocating to Kaori's six days ago.
"Very good. Do you know where my brother is?"
"Hai, Kakita-sama. He stayed up last night painting."
Of course Misao knew where he was. And probably what inks the baka was out of, and when he last drank tea.
The maidservant stepped back as Kaori rose, a tiny tinkling coming from near samurai-ko's ear almost startling her. "The acorns are bells?"
Misao's voice held repressed laughter. "Hai, Kakita-ue."
Kaori made her way to her way to her brother's study with a dancer's grace, occasionally shaking her head a little to hear the acorn's chime.
---
She's coming.
Toshiki raised his head from the doodle in front of him. It looked like it would probably be a lark, like the one he saw when Renshin arrived. Or maybe a fish. It was hard to tell at this stage.
A moment later, his beautiful twin stormed through the open shoji. Not that she would ever think of herself in any of those ways. She was to her eyes plain, though men stared at her openly when they thought she could not see. She walked with purpose, never with a cloud of anger and determination rising around her like thunder over the mountains.
Her grey eyes swept the disordered room, the origami flowers opening and closing in the half-light, the paintings and partial paintings scattered about like leaves in a storm. She barely glanced at the huge, rough kanji "Jade" hanging on the wall - she knew what it was for and why he kept it, even here in the heart of Doji's Dream. In her hands was another letter folded into an intricate puzzle box.
She could not ask, so he took it from her, turning the box over in his hands. Whoever folded these needed to study a bit more; the folds were intricate but like the first two simple to undo once the central line came free. Just a bit of gentle teasing and the third proved as simple as the first, opening into a beautifully written letter. Within it, an origami gardenia with a flush of life on it, not unlike one he had folded last night.
Toshiki looked over at the vase where he had set the flower aside in the early morning hours. It was no longer there.
Clever fox, he thought, that should get her attention.
The letter read:
The sunlight filters
Slants through the forest branches
Come and run with me
Kaori eagerly picked up the flower. "This is one of yours?"
"Hai, from last night," he answered.
"Did you give it to the writer?" Her tone was mild but the anger underlying it was not.
"Iie. I did no such thing. I made it to ease my fingers and put it there." He pointed to the now empty vase.
"You know the Masters do not think…"
"And they do not know. Officially. Unofficially I am who I am, and if they object to the old arts they may take it up with the Lady."
He handed her the letter. "Go. See the letter writer tonight. He clearly wants to speak to you, and his message is clear enough. If he can get into the Academy, steal a flower from my study while I am in it without being seen, then he would have already caused mischief if that was his aim."
She withdrew, the acorns in her hair chiming as she went. I know, sister. You are not allowed to be happy. But you want to be.
With a shaking hand he picked up his brush to start again. Maybe this time the Lady would think he got it right.
---
Yoriko watched from Toshiki's room as Kaori slipped into the garden. The young woman walked with light feet but eyes accustomed to watching the comings and goings in the Court of the Emperor were not fooled by foliage and shadows.
A rendezvous, Kaori-chan? Good for you.
She looked around the empty chamber. A tastefully done scroll in formal style, ink and a bit of color carelessly creating a perfect autumn landscape hanging on one wall. Kimono carefully folded and stowed in a honeycomb shelf, cherry wood stained dark red. A table, a futon, an ikebana replaced every day with something from the garden outside.
All of it perfect. None of it real.
Your heart isn't here, is it Toshi-kun? Is it anywhere someone can touch?
The wife picked up the blanket off his futon. She pressed it to her nose, inhaling the scent of him, the feel of the cloth a poor substitute for the warmth of his smile.
Enough of this, I'm being silly.
The princess turned back to the table and went to work on her letters. Her left hand drifted to rest just below her navel when not busy with papers, pots, and ink. Many matters demanded her attention and she did not have time to let silly things get in the way.
---
Kaori slipped without a lantern into the gardens she grew up in, walking well-worn paths that outsiders would never find. This was her place, her home, and she was not going to let some outsider just wander around in it. Sneaking into her room to leave presents was one thing. Stealing from her brother's was something else entirely.
Even if she did it herself sometimes. The look on his face when he couldn't find the right brush was worth it.
Standing by a lantern post, not anywhere near as concealed as he thought, was Renshin. Kaori studied him in the half-light; the angles of his face, the bushy business of his hair, the emerald green of his eyes glowing back at her from the darkness…
Blushing a little, she came closer. "Good evening, Renshin-san. I got your note. Notes."
Green eyes stared into grey and she felt herself flush. "Would you like to walk in the gardens?"
He pressed a finger to his lips, turned, and ran towards the wall. He raced up it like a squirrel, finding fingerholds it had taken her years to master as a child. She saw a flash of white teeth from the top as he went over.
Alright then.
A ribbon from her waist bound back her sleeves, and a quick hitch tucked the long kimono under her obi. Her run took her most of the way up the wall before her weight tried to drag her back down; a quick in-draw of breath into her hara and an explosion of strength down her legs solved that problem. By the time she got to the top of the wall Renshin was already half-way to the forest, running as fast as his legs could carry him.
She dropped down and raced after him. Grasses grown long in the summer heat whipped at her legs, leaving marks which would be hard to hide tomorrow.
Renshin had stopped just inside the woods, next to a lit brazier. He handed her a bowl of oiled rice and fresh, fried tofu with a smile. Silently they ate together, under the trees, away from the masters and the guards and her duties. For however long the bowl lasted, she could just be a woman on a little adventure with a man. A man who, from the looks he kept sending her way, was more than just a little interested in her.
Too soon the rice and tofu ran out, leaving just emptiness within the bowl and a slowly gathering chill in the air. She looked at the Kitsune, put her finger to her lips, and shook her head. He closed his bright green eyes, letting his hair hide his face from her gaze. With nothing to say, Kaori untucked her kimono, unwrapped the ribbon tying her sleeves, and walked back to the Academy alone.
---
Miaso lit two sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji. She bowed low, pressing her face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
His Lady, he calls you, Lady Doji o'wise and fair. Please don't push him so hard. Please don't break him.
Lady, please, make the Princess see…
Misao heard the rustle of silk and felt the warmth of a body setting next to her. "Make the Princess see what, servant of my brother's children?"
The young woman kept her forehead pressed against the pillow. "Make her see that she loves him, and he her," her voice came out in a whisper.
"And what of Kaori? Have you no care for the twin?", the Lady's voice was as hard as Misao had dreaded, cold and beautiful like the statue given life.
"She deserves to be happy, Lady."
"Hai. Toshi-kun has a soft heart. He plays the game, but in trying to keep all of you safe, he has frozen the world. This will not end well."
Miaso felt her tears falling but kept her sobs inside.
"What would you dare, servant of my brother's children? What would you give to see him happy again? "
Misao drew in her breath, hands held to shield her belly below her navel. "Everything."
"Good. Here is what you must do."
Seven days after he arrived, Kitsune Renshin slipped out of the Academy's open gates in the dead of night. No fault to the guards; they were not trained to catch a fox who did not wish to be seen. He moved on light feet down to the edge of the forest. If a forest it could be called. Nothing wild lived within sight of the heart of Doji's dream; the trees themselves were just a part of the greater whole.
When he was safely beyond the guards sight he knelt in the soft loam. From a closed bag he drew a bowl of fragrant cooked rice, a brazier, oil, and fresh-made tofu. Lighting a small fire took only moments; frying the tofu took longer. The smell made his stomach growl but he set his own hunger aside.
Renshin poured the fried tofu and hot oil over the rice. Carefully he picked up the bowl and placed it in the shadows of an ancient tree, it's gnarled roots wrapping around what might once have been a fox's den. "I wish to speak to the Nine-tailed Elders."
Moments passed, stretching in silence. Then a hand reached from the shadows at the roots of the tree, the skin young but the nails thick and yellowed like an old man's. A body emerged, pulling itself effortlessly from the ground. The figure tucked greedily into the oiled rice and fried tofu, eating with his fingers.
The man (for a man's form it wore) set aside the bowl once he polished it clean with his long tongue. Nine white fox-tails spread out around him, along the ground, up over his shoulders, one standing proudly above his head like a plum. Despite the manner of his arrival, his blue and silver brocade robe showed no sign of dirt; nor did the shoulder-length fox-red hair which graced his brow.
Renshin bowed low. "Elder."
"Pup." The Elder answered.
"I beg a boon."
"Hai?"
"This form is not the right one. I thought Kaori was a humble samurai assigned to guard the Academy, her brother a disgraced painter. I was wrong. They are of the line of Doji, blood of the Kami. They are of the line of Kakita, bringer of life."
The Elder's sharp-toothed smile did nothing to mask the belly-deep laughter which nearly choked him as he said "Hai. This was known, had you asked."
Renshin ground his teeth behind his smile. "I need a new form".
The Elder plucked a white pearl shaped like a grain of rice from a pouch on his belt. He considered it for a moment. "No."
"Elder…"
The Elder's voice grew sharp. "You choose the rules of the game, the form, and the time. This was allowed as a favor given by the Lady herself. That you find your choices displeasing is not our concern."
"I…"
"Are you not fox enough for this task you chose?"
"No, Elder. I will succeed."
"Hai, you will. And we will watch with great amusement as you do."
---
Kaori considered the elaborately folded letter laying on her pillow. It had not been there when she got up. Which meant that, sometime between when she turned to wash with water and salt and turned back, someone had entered the room, deposited the object, and left.
For the third time this week.
Like the other two, this one was folded into a puzzle box. If she tried too hard to open it, it would tear and she'd lose the letter. If it was like the other two there might be something inside as well. She picked it up with the tips of her fingers.
Yes, a little weight pressed the bottom down. The first one contained three acorns made of copper, silver, and gold tied with a ribbon. The second, a piece of sea glass pierced in some unknown manner with a fine red silk thread. This one was a mystery to her.
A polite scratching at her shoji broke Kaori's focus. "Enter," she called, still looking at the folded box. She heard Misao moving into the room, setting things aright as she approached and began to work on the samurai-ko's hair. The servant had slept outside Toshiki's door for six days before relocating to Kaori's six days ago.
"Very good. Do you know where my brother is?"
"Hai, Kakita-sama. He stayed up last night painting."
Of course Misao knew where he was. And probably what inks the baka was out of, and when he last drank tea.
The maidservant stepped back as Kaori rose, a tiny tinkling coming from near samurai-ko's ear almost startling her. "The acorns are bells?"
Misao's voice held repressed laughter. "Hai, Kakita-ue."
Kaori made her way to her way to her brother's study with a dancer's grace, occasionally shaking her head a little to hear the acorn's chime.
---
She's coming.
Toshiki raised his head from the doodle in front of him. It looked like it would probably be a lark, like the one he saw when Renshin arrived. Or maybe a fish. It was hard to tell at this stage.
A moment later, his beautiful twin stormed through the open shoji. Not that she would ever think of herself in any of those ways. She was to her eyes plain, though men stared at her openly when they thought she could not see. She walked with purpose, never with a cloud of anger and determination rising around her like thunder over the mountains.
Her grey eyes swept the disordered room, the origami flowers opening and closing in the half-light, the paintings and partial paintings scattered about like leaves in a storm. She barely glanced at the huge, rough kanji "Jade" hanging on the wall - she knew what it was for and why he kept it, even here in the heart of Doji's Dream. In her hands was another letter folded into an intricate puzzle box.
She could not ask, so he took it from her, turning the box over in his hands. Whoever folded these needed to study a bit more; the folds were intricate but like the first two simple to undo once the central line came free. Just a bit of gentle teasing and the third proved as simple as the first, opening into a beautifully written letter. Within it, an origami gardenia with a flush of life on it, not unlike one he had folded last night.
Toshiki looked over at the vase where he had set the flower aside in the early morning hours. It was no longer there.
Clever fox, he thought, that should get her attention.
The letter read:
The sunlight filters
Slants through the forest branches
Come and run with me
Kaori eagerly picked up the flower. "This is one of yours?"
"Hai, from last night," he answered.
"Did you give it to the writer?" Her tone was mild but the anger underlying it was not.
"Iie. I did no such thing. I made it to ease my fingers and put it there." He pointed to the now empty vase.
"You know the Masters do not think…"
"And they do not know. Officially. Unofficially I am who I am, and if they object to the old arts they may take it up with the Lady."
He handed her the letter. "Go. See the letter writer tonight. He clearly wants to speak to you, and his message is clear enough. If he can get into the Academy, steal a flower from my study while I am in it without being seen, then he would have already caused mischief if that was his aim."
She withdrew, the acorns in her hair chiming as she went. I know, sister. You are not allowed to be happy. But you want to be.
With a shaking hand he picked up his brush to start again. Maybe this time the Lady would think he got it right.
---
Yoriko watched from Toshiki's room as Kaori slipped into the garden. The young woman walked with light feet but eyes accustomed to watching the comings and goings in the Court of the Emperor were not fooled by foliage and shadows.
A rendezvous, Kaori-chan? Good for you.
She looked around the empty chamber. A tastefully done scroll in formal style, ink and a bit of color carelessly creating a perfect autumn landscape hanging on one wall. Kimono carefully folded and stowed in a honeycomb shelf, cherry wood stained dark red. A table, a futon, an ikebana replaced every day with something from the garden outside.
All of it perfect. None of it real.
Your heart isn't here, is it Toshi-kun? Is it anywhere someone can touch?
The wife picked up the blanket off his futon. She pressed it to her nose, inhaling the scent of him, the feel of the cloth a poor substitute for the warmth of his smile.
Enough of this, I'm being silly.
The princess turned back to the table and went to work on her letters. Her left hand drifted to rest just below her navel when not busy with papers, pots, and ink. Many matters demanded her attention and she did not have time to let silly things get in the way.
---
Kaori slipped without a lantern into the gardens she grew up in, walking well-worn paths that outsiders would never find. This was her place, her home, and she was not going to let some outsider just wander around in it. Sneaking into her room to leave presents was one thing. Stealing from her brother's was something else entirely.
Even if she did it herself sometimes. The look on his face when he couldn't find the right brush was worth it.
Standing by a lantern post, not anywhere near as concealed as he thought, was Renshin. Kaori studied him in the half-light; the angles of his face, the bushy business of his hair, the emerald green of his eyes glowing back at her from the darkness…
Blushing a little, she came closer. "Good evening, Renshin-san. I got your note. Notes."
Green eyes stared into grey and she felt herself flush. "Would you like to walk in the gardens?"
He pressed a finger to his lips, turned, and ran towards the wall. He raced up it like a squirrel, finding fingerholds it had taken her years to master as a child. She saw a flash of white teeth from the top as he went over.
Alright then.
A ribbon from her waist bound back her sleeves, and a quick hitch tucked the long kimono under her obi. Her run took her most of the way up the wall before her weight tried to drag her back down; a quick in-draw of breath into her hara and an explosion of strength down her legs solved that problem. By the time she got to the top of the wall Renshin was already half-way to the forest, running as fast as his legs could carry him.
She dropped down and raced after him. Grasses grown long in the summer heat whipped at her legs, leaving marks which would be hard to hide tomorrow.
Renshin had stopped just inside the woods, next to a lit brazier. He handed her a bowl of oiled rice and fresh, fried tofu with a smile. Silently they ate together, under the trees, away from the masters and the guards and her duties. For however long the bowl lasted, she could just be a woman on a little adventure with a man. A man who, from the looks he kept sending her way, was more than just a little interested in her.
Too soon the rice and tofu ran out, leaving just emptiness within the bowl and a slowly gathering chill in the air. She looked at the Kitsune, put her finger to her lips, and shook her head. He closed his bright green eyes, letting his hair hide his face from her gaze. With nothing to say, Kaori untucked her kimono, unwrapped the ribbon tying her sleeves, and walked back to the Academy alone.
---
Miaso lit two sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji. She bowed low, pressing her face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
His Lady, he calls you, Lady Doji o'wise and fair. Please don't push him so hard. Please don't break him.
Lady, please, make the Princess see…
Misao heard the rustle of silk and felt the warmth of a body setting next to her. "Make the Princess see what, servant of my brother's children?"
The young woman kept her forehead pressed against the pillow. "Make her see that she loves him, and he her," her voice came out in a whisper.
"And what of Kaori? Have you no care for the twin?", the Lady's voice was as hard as Misao had dreaded, cold and beautiful like the statue given life.
"She deserves to be happy, Lady."
"Hai. Toshi-kun has a soft heart. He plays the game, but in trying to keep all of you safe, he has frozen the world. This will not end well."
Miaso felt her tears falling but kept her sobs inside.
"What would you dare, servant of my brother's children? What would you give to see him happy again? "
Misao drew in her breath, hands held to shield her belly below her navel. "Everything."
"Good. Here is what you must do."
Chapter 3: A Maiden's Hand
Kaori was not angry.
Clearly, she was not angry. The half-dozen cutting poles laying around the edge of the garden, slices into neat sixths by her blade, were far too perfectly cut for her to be angry. Maybe that was the problem; she should cut them into eights instead.
She assessed the final pole, its thick woven padding covering a strong bamboo rod. Her focus shifted as images, scents, warmth from the last month intruded on her thoughts. Letters delivered in the middle of the night, when she was sleeping. Walks in the garden in the heat of the day. A poetry contest, even though he was so bad at it, in which he dedicated every halting haiku to her.
Kaori clenched her teeth. To keep herself from biting her tongue when she struck, not from anger or frustration or the unfairness of a world in which she could fall in love with an adventurous, thoughtful, sweet, honorable, handsome man and not be allowed to be with him because
HE WAS NOT KUGE!
The cutting pole fell into seven pieces.
Now, she was angry.
---
Misao washed Kaori's back, taking care not to rub too hard on the scars her mistress earned during the days when the five companions (in truth four companions and their servant, not that she minded) travelled together through the Empire and beyond. She gently lifted Kaori's long hair, rubbing soap, then oil into it to keep it strong.
"Misao?"
"Hai, Kakita-ue?"
"Misao, we are in a bath. You are washing my hair. You can call me Kaori, here if nowhere else."
"Hai, Kaori?"
"Is it hopeless?", the swordmaster's voice was wistful. "I knew it would be hard when I took Toshiki's place. I've never regretted it - the training would have killed him. But." She hunched forward, drawing around her pain. "Is this going to be all that I am allowed to be?"
Misao poured hot water on her mistress' back, then worked the oil into a lather and rubbed her shoulders. "Iie, Kaori. You know I like to read histories?"
"Hai. I remember Toshiki teaching you to read."
"I was reading the tale of Doji and Kakita last night. The author mentioned," and Misao prayed that Kaori did not ask to see the text, for she would have to explain how she knew of the hidden laws of the Kakita, "that the family of Doji was, in some ways, still bound by the Hantei's words."
Misao's mistress still under her kneading hands. "What do you mean?" Kaori's voice came out as a high, thin whisper.
"That a man might ask for the hand of a Crane maiden and, if he can present unique and true answers to the three riddles, he can win it."
Misao felt her mistress crumple around herself, pulling her knees to her chest, her soft sobs muffled by her hands.
Oh Ka-chan, I will make this right.
---
Finding Renshin was not difficult.
The Kitsune thought of himself as clever. He thought he was good at hiding. He may well have been both. But Misao knew where to look for him. She served the same truth, in the same way, plotting out the courses Toshiki and Kaori would take during the day, looking for the unobtrusive corners where one might hide just within sight in case one was needed. Love was the great truth neither of them could deny.
He stood at the corner of the garden, close enough to hear Kaori at her practice but far enough away that unless she looked she would not see him. He crouched on his knees, right hand down, left hand up and tucked close to his heart. With his red hair and red juban, he looked almost like a fox lying in wait for a mouse.
Some noise she hadn't meant to make must have startled him, for Renshin's head whipped around in her direction. His green eyes reflected the light for a moment, making them seem like mirrors in the sun. But that was just a trick of the light, as he shook himself and rose.
"Misao, ne?" Renshin said as he stood and walked towards her. "You are Toshiki's servant."
"It is my honor to serve both of Kakita-ue, hai."
"Do you have a message for me?"
"Hai. Do you love her?"
Renshin's head rocked back as if slapped. The look he turned on her would have frozen another servant in her steps. She gazed back at him mildly, waiting for his rage to pass.
It took the samurai a few moments to regain his composure.
"You have no right to ask that."
She locked eyes with him, her brown against his vivid green. "I am the only one who can."
Whatever he saw in her was more than he could bear. He looked down at his hands. "Hai."
"Then you must go to the Masters. Tell them you wish to invoke the Trial of Kakita. They will resist, but you have the right to ask as samurai, as bushi."
Renshin looked down at his feet. "What is this Trial?"
"In the early days of the Empire, when Hantei told Kakita he could marry Doji, Doji did not find her brother's words pleasing. So she placed three riddles on the man her brother chose for her: to bring the dead back to life; to tell the Court the length of the world and how long it would take to walk it; and to find a thing of perfect beauty."
The Kakitas' servant continued, her voice low and measured. "These three questions became the Trials of Kakita. It is an ancient rite, and one the Masters may not deny. As a bushi of a family allied with the Crane, you have standing invoke it. "
Renshin nodded, a sudden decision made. "It shall be so." With a leap he was past Misao and running.
Misao turned to watch him go. Standing at the entrance to the practice grounds was Kaori, her face flushed red, hands trembling, eyes filled with tears. The maiden stared at her servant then whirled and ran away.
Oh Lady, please!
---
Wisdom is knowing when not to bend.
Hai? His Lady did not often bother him with simple truths. His sister, on the other hand, was very fond of reminding him that, as her idiot brother, he often forgot the things others considered important. Things like sleeping, or eating, or remembering to visit his wife.
Asooo…
Kaori strode into his study, her perfectly maintained armor and the sacred blade she won on the day of the Topaz Championship at her hip proclaiming some kind of intent. He took a moment to study her, noting the formal hair-ties of blue and white silk, the carefully applied make-up which made her eyes seem wider and larger than they were, and the fine silk of her under-robes.
He stood up, all not quite five feet of him, his stained kimono and loose hair contracting poorly with her perfection. He bowed a little to her, then jumped back as she fell to one knee before him. She bowed her head and pressed the knuckles of her left hand to the ground, the right resting on her heart. The motion caused the acorn bells in her hair to chime.
"Toshiki, brother, I beg you not to allow this thing."
He reached out to her, to draw his sister to her feet, but stopped his hands before they left his sides.
"Hai?"
Kaori's voice was firm. "I know Renshin came to you. I know what he said. You cannot allow this."
"I do not have the authority to…"
She cut him off, "YOU DO. You know you do. You are the last of the line. You are my BROTHER."
"Wisdom is knowing when not to bend," he said, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. "Why not, sister?
She continued to look to the ground. "You know that Kakita Ichiro-san has asked for my hand. We need this alliance. Yoriko-hime needs this alliance. You need this alliance if you are ever to leave this gilded cage."
Toshiki nodded, watching the future play out in his mind. His sister, a high lady as she deserved to be, forever to put aside the sword. His wife strengthened in the Courts, with access to the influence and power of the Doji. Freedom for himself, to travel again, to see the world beyond the Academy and its confines.
He looked down at the shining figure of duty and honor before him. My sister, crying every night of her life, abused and alone, her art denied so that I can be free.
"I will make my will known to the Masters and then to Renshin."
---
Yoriko slowly rubbed oil into Toshiki's hair, hot water working to loosen the knots in her back and hips as she labored on his neck. She could feel him trembling under her fingers but there was nothing to be said. He knew who he was. She knew who she was. The barrier between them was more than just water and skin.
She rose from the bath and pulled a robe of soft, raw silk around her. Her husband rose as well, coming to stand beside her. In the steam she found towels and began to dry him off. Scars from battles he never mentioned, stains from ink and paint, a tortoise-shell tattoo across his back - his skin was a map of the a world she would never truly know.
He stood as she hung his formal kimono around him. A soft white yakuta of the finest silk. A second kimono of stiffer blue silk, painted by Toshiki's own hands with an elaborate design of blossoms and cranes. The final outer robe of white and blue, painted just last night.
Yoriko paused, holding the kimono before her to see it better in the light. A painting of Kakita handing Doji a mirror covered the entire silk canvas. He had executed it in the style that got him banished from Court, realism so painful to see that it tore at the heart. She tilted it, and the scene changed slightly; now she was looking at Renshin rather than Kakita, at Kaori rather than Doji.
"Daring, husband." She hung the outer kimono around his shoulders then started work on the ties. He would never get them in the right place to not ruin the effect if left to his own devices.
"Necessary, wife." His words were as clipped as her own but the tone held underlying warmth. "They must know I am not asking."
"Hai." She finished the ties and selected an obi. "You should take your fan."
"As you say." He looked at her. She tried to smile back at him through her wife's mask but all that came out was a little brightening of her eyes. There's the man I met in the garden's that first night, fresh from facing the Hells with nothing but a paint brush and laughing. I've missed you, Toshi-kun.
The Crane Lord turned from his wife and went to remind Masters of the Academy of their place.
---
Renshin paced.
The garden was large for its kind, but he was kitsune, born in the Forest and made from its soil. The walls wore on his spirit. The carefully tended paths which delighted Kaori locked him in place. How could anything here be said to be free, to be alive, wrapped in so much tradition and imagery?
He heard the tread of soft feet on the, smelled the mix of ink and paint and paper that masked Toshiki's own scent drifting down the trail. He looked up to see not the painter but kuge, a Lord of the Crane Clan and child of the gods who came to Earth to save it, in his full splendor. The kitsune fell to one knee. From the recesses of Renshin's heart came dark doubt. This was a mistake such as will be laughed at through the ages. He could have come to this place as a noble lord, as a suitable suitor…
"Renshin-san. Good. I have news for you." Even the painter's voice had changed. Usually light, now it carried subtly and tones that made the fox's ears want to flatten if they still could.
"I have spoken to the Masters. They have agreed that you may answer Kakita's riddles. If you succeed in their eyes, you will be wed to Kakita Kaori. If you fail, you are banished from the lands of the Crane. The Masters will send word to our allies that you have dared beyond your station and exhausted our generosity. There may be a place in this world where you can rest your head but not within the Emerald Empire." Toshiki's voice rattled the fox's bones.
"Be aware as well that, if you fail, kitsune, Kaori will never wed another. This is the price she pays for your audacity."
His voice changed, becoming less of a thing of legend and more that of an angry brother. "I know what you are, Renshin. Do not think retreating to your Forest will save you. I have studied in the High House of Light, walked in the Shadow Lands seeking truths, tore the Sultan from his blooded throne in the Burning Sands, fought beside the Jade Champion when she cast down traitors who stole the power of the Heavens and the Hells for their own. If you fail, I will have your pelt for a trophy and your Elders will thank me for staying my hand."
"You have three days. Now take yourself out of my sight."
Not a mistake to be laughed at; a tale told to young pups to remind them that touching the sun can burn your bones.
---
Yoriko lit three sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji. She bowed low, pressing her face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
His Lady, he calls you, 0'Doji-kami. Please don't push him so hard. Please don't break him.
Lady, please, make the others see…
She pressed her hands together on her belly below her navel.
…Please make Toshi-kun see that soon we will be three.
Chapter 4: Three Little Riddles
On the morning of the first day, Renshin set off into the nearby forest. Not his Forest, not this little bit of tamed wood, but close enough for him to think. He settled into a sun-dappled nook and drifted into deep thought.
Bring the dead back to life.
Measure the length of the world and how long it would take to walk it.
To find a thing of perfect beauty.
Sometime later a bluebird landed on his forehead. After a little while it left and the samurai was none the wiser.
---
On the morning of the second day, Renshin set off into the nearby forest. He walked at a normal pace until he left the gate guards sight. Then he reached inside himself and raced forward, leaping from shadow to shadow, from tree to tree with a speed uncanny to behold. He ran until his legs ached and his breath came in ragged gasps. He ran until his feet cried for mercy and his arms shook.
Once far enough away, he threw back his head and let out a yip like an injured dog. Chest heaving, legs on fire, he sat in a sun-dappled nook and drifted towards deeper waters, but his thoughts leapt like tadpoles in the shallows.
Bring the dead back to life.
Measure the length of the world and how long it would take to walk it.
To find a thing of perfect beauty.
Even exhausted, Renshin could feel his muscles twisting and struggling. He tried to catch some of the thoughts as they past.
A flower? What kind? No, flowers don't last…maybe the world is as long as a string? Is a seed dead? Has someone tried that answer already? No, seeds are alive not stones…what about stones? The kami are real, but are they alive? Should I talk to the Elders and get a pinwheel seed to lead me to Meido? Maybe a peach? A peach would taste good right now….
---
On the morning of the third day, Renshin pondered finding a gate to Jigoku and throwing himself into it. It would probably be faster than whatever the "painter" had in mind. He raced through the forest wearing nothing but a fundoshi, foxes ranging beside him for a while then falling away.
Bring the dead back to life.
Measure the length of the world and how long it would take to walk it.
To find a thing of perfect beauty.
Three little questions. Three traditional answers. None of them would help him now.
So he ran.
---
On the morning of the fourth day, a serious-faced Misao opened the shoji to Renshin's room to find the bushi struggling with his thick red hair. He had managed to get it tangled up into something that might, just might, be considered a top-knot by generous eyes.
"Kitsune-sama?" she said from the opening, kneeling but not bowing to him. He was samurai, yes, but she served the Kakita.
He looked at her, his hands tangled in his hair, eyes opened wide. "I don't know the answers."
"Here," she said, rising from the mats, "Let me help you."
---
A little later on the morning of the fourth day, Kakita Kaori sat on a little stool wearing her finest kimonos, freshly painted by her brother last night. She was sure his work, all in silver paint made through a technique he would not share with the Masters, would bring tears to the eyes of anyone with an ounce of spirit in them. That why she did not look at them when Misao dressed her. She had to be hard. Had to be cold, like the sea glass drop resting against her heart.
Seeing Renshin walk in, his thick hair woven into a braid, his hunter green juban and black hakama actually pressed and neat, she felt a moment of hope. It died when she caught the old, hard faces of the Masters gathered around. Handsome he may be but it would take more than just cleverness to resolve this challenge.
Her brother sat, resplendent in his robes, his face a mask to outsiders. Not his twin, though - she saw the tightening in his eyes, then the faraway look he got when he heard his Lady's voice.
Renshin bowed low to the Masters and waited for their command.
The Mistress of the Theater, a woman seventy seven summers into this life, stood from her stool. "Let all know that Kitsune Renshin, daring greatly, has requested the right to compete for Kakita Kaori's hand. Kakita Kaori, last daughter of the line of the First Kenshinzen, Kenshinzen of this Academy, Protector of Golden Petal Village, Granddaughter of Kakita and Lady Doji will submit to the results of this indignity." She was old but her voice carried power gained from a thousand performances, many before the Emperor himself.
"You have been given three questions, Kitsune-san.
The First: Bring the dead back to life.
The Second: Measure the length of the world and how long it would take to walk it.
The Third: To find a thing of perfect beauty.
How do you answer?"
Renshin's voice carried laughter in it as he answered, "I am ready, Kakita-sama. However, may I ask a question first?"
The Mistress conferred with the other Masters. "Hai."
"Do I have to answer the questions in the order given?" Renshin pitched his voice so that it resounded throughout the chamber.
The Masters conferred again, whispering behind fans. "Iie, you may address them in any order you wish," the Mistress eventually answered.
"Very well." Renshin straightened and looked her directly in the eyes. His green eyes seemed bright and merry, though his face struggled towards seriousness. "If Kakita Kaori-sama can assist me, I can answer the riddles to your satisfaction."
"Please, stand here," he said, pointing to the center of the room. Kaori considered, then rose, taking short steps to stand where directed.
"I will answer in this order. The world…" He stood in front of Kaori, then held out a hand so that less than a finger width separated the two of them. He walked around her, so that when he finished he stood in facing her again. "My world takes four steps to walk around, and less than a breath, though it will take a lifetime to encompass it all."
She felt her breath catch in her throat.
"A thing of perfect beauty…" He stepped in then, so close their noses touched. She felt his arms go around her, felt the warmth and strength of him as he pressed his lips to hers…
…what was he doing, OH BANZI…
Seizing the moment with the skill of an iaido master, of a samurai-ko enjoined by Bushido to live life to the fullest, Kaori kissed Renshin with strength and passion. When he tried to draw away, she held him close with arms strengthened from twenty years following the way of the sword. If this was to be her last moment with him, it would be worth it.
Sometime later, she let him pull away. They were both gasping for air.
"Love is the only perfect beauty", he managed after a few breaths. Renshin tried to step back but she would not let go. "For the first," he said as Kaori snuck a look under his arm at the Mistress, who was fanning her blushing face. "I think I've proved my point."
---
Toshiki walked out of the room where the Master's conferred. Kaori sat on the opposite side of the room from Renshin, her kimono in proper array again. Both looked at their hands.
"The Masters have decided."
Neither of the two looked up.
"You are to be wed at summer's end. Arrangements will be made."
---
Miaso lit two sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji. She bowed low, pressing her face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
His Lady, he calls you, Lady Doji o'wise and fair. Please don't push him so hard. Please don't break him.
Lady, please…
Misao heard the rustle of silk and felt the warmth of a body setting next to her. "What is it child?"
She tried to press her face into the pillows, but felt a soft, warm hand cup her forehead. It lifted her up, pushing not with strength, but exerting authority that could not be denied.
The Lady stat next to the servant, her simple blue kimono and long black hair surrounded by a nimbus of jade light. She was as beautiful as the statue but neither cold nor hard, flesh not stone. She looked at Misao and smiled like a mother seeing her daughter for the first time.
"Well?"
"Lady, please, tell Toshi-kun to let me go. Let me return to my family. I will…" her hands went to the slight swell of her belly, still hidden under her robes. "I will say nothing."
"Iie."
"Lady…"
"Toshi-kun plays the game to keep all of you safe. I play the game to create an Empire from the hearts of men."
The Lady touched Misao's cheek. "And women. And children."
Chapter 5 - What Dreams Are These?
Yoriko carefully placed the last of her kimono in the gilded box.
"Husband, I have one last favor to ask of you."
"Hai?" Toshiki looked up from the table. She could just barely see the outlines of a new sketch, probably the recent wedding, on the paper before him.
"Now that the wedding is done, Misao will come with me to Court. It is time she learned to be a lady's maid."
The painter's face did not flinch but she could see the panic in his eyes. He drew in a breath to say something.
The princess knelt before her husband and pressed a finger to his lips. "Hush, Toshi-kun. She will be back in the spring as wet nurse to our sons."
He tilted his head to one side.
"You are fortunate the Kakita are known for siring twins."
---
Toshiki lit seven sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji in a group of five and an a group of two. After some thought, he placed another stick with the two, bringing the total to eight. He bowed low, pressing his face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
O'Lady Doji, wise and fair, please keep them safe…
Iie. Make the world where they will grow and love. That is my gift to you, grandson of my husband's line.
And so he did.
Chapter 1 - A Fox in the Works
Wake up.
Kakita Toshiki was on his feet before his eyes opened, leaving the quilted blanket draped over the figure in his bed. The cold told him the brazier had gone out in the night; the scent of cherry blossoms that his Lady was near.
Two steps to the right in the darkened room, then a step forward. His kimono and obi, exactly where she knew he would look for them. A tie for his hair; the azure and silver one, from the feel of the metal and inlay under his fingers. Salt and water for his hands and mouth.
Hurry.
He slipped open the shoji and left without looking back. Misao's futon and blankets in the hall were properly mussed; she always thought of the little details. As his lips formed a question, his Lady's voice in his ear again:
The Gates. You will miss him.
---
Toshiki used his diminutive size and speed to his advantage, slipping through hidden paths in the elaborate gardens in the heart of the Kakita Academy with ease. In passing he broke off two fading branches and a withering blossom with clever fingers, barely noticing the act as he suppressed his yawns.
The path took him to a small post set close to the gate. Visitors mistook it for a decoration and generations of Kakita had indeed decorated it well. Its real purpose was as an anchor for the long ropes which suspended lanterns or kites for events. Enterprising young men and women, however, had found another use entirely, one they imagined hidden from the generations who came before.
Up he went, agile as a monkey, and not a moment too soon. The Gates were always open but sometimes they opened wider than others. Now they were flung wide, as if to welcome Imperial guests. Which was the truth. The golden chrysanthemum of the Otomo, above the sigil of the Otomo Yuriko-hime. His wife. His world narrowed to that gold and green banner…
LOOK.
…and opened wide to a riot of colors and sounds; shapes and textures. The red of dawn's touch on the horizon. The slight thump of the horses hooves on the muddy road. A lark's muted colors so at odds with its glorious song, contracted with the green of the trees, the fox red of the samurais' hair, the hunter green of their kashimono…
His eyes focused again on what his Lady wanted him to see. Four samurai, with hair like a fox's coat wearing green. Kitsune bushi walking well behind the Princess and her guards, but here. Now. But she had not awoken him just for that. He drew in a breath and looked again, accepting the truth the world had to show him.
One's hair was darker, coarser than the others. His armor looked off; as if he didn't quite know how to put it on. His head snapped up to look at the little Crane on his carved perch then quickly turned away, not wanting to be seen to have seen.
"Asooo…the fox has come back to play?"
GRANDSON!
---
The four bushi entered the emissary's chamber. A small man with long white hair stood looking out through an open shoji into the gardens. He turned as they entered, an incandescent smile lighting his face. "Kenichi-san! Maito-san! Niobi-san! It is good to see you again." Guileless grey eyes regarded the fourth. "And you, honored guest?"
The fourth bushi felt his color rising. This was a mistake, she isn't even here. "Kitsune Renshin."
"You are as welcome as your brothers. I confess that I thought I knew all of the survivors of that dreadful day, but I am glad to see that I did not. May I see your papers?"
Kenichi stepped forward, only at the last going to one knee. When he did so the other two knelt as well. Renshin followed, too slow, but grey eyes gave no indication of having seen.
The gunso raised his outstretched hands over his head, holding out papers covered with kanji, wax seals, and ribbons. His hands trembled a bit as the papers were taken, examined, and returned.
"All is in order, Kenichi-san. Please, rise."
"Hai, Kakita-sama!" The three sprang to their feet; again Renshin guessed wrong and it took a moment longer to stand than it should.
"None of that. We were friends on the long march; we are friends now. Unless something has changed?" The Kakita's tone was mild and gently reproving. His scent was that of a calm man who had recently been with his woman.
"Iie, Toshiki-sama. But that was the march. This is the Kakita Academy itself." Kenichi lifted his head, his scent sharp with submission. "And you…"
"Yes, yes. So, have you been shown to your rooms yet?"
"Iie."
Toshiki clapped his hands. A young woman with long black hair tied back with a silver cord approached on light feet from down the hall. She paused, close enough that Renshin could smell Toshiki's scent on her. "Misao. Please guide our guests to their chambers and see to it they are refreshed. I would like to speak to them after dinner."
"Hai, Kakita-ue. Please, Kitsune-samas, come with me?"
The four followed, but Renshin paused so that Kenichi drew close. "What was that? I thought he was an artist in the Academy?"
Kenshin did not look at his companion as they fell into step. "Toshiki would never say it, but his family traces its line to the second daughter of Doji and Kakita. He is married to an Otomo. His twin guards Golden Petal Village, where Hantei shook the dew off his cloak and created the golden trees. By right of blood and marriage, he is likely the highest ranked person in this building unless the daimyo himself is present. But neither he nor his twin would assert such privilege."
Kaori was kuge? And highest kuge, at that? Renshin felt his heart fall. This form was a mistake such as will be told with laughter in the Forest for a hundred generations.
---
Yoriko carefully poured her husband tea, the bountiful "prepared by her own hand" meal spread between them. The cooks had, naturally, done their duty perfectly down to the little imperfections one would expect from a spouse. Husband and wife sat together in silence for a moment while she watched his fine hands caress his tea cup. Was that what they looked like when…
She shook herself. "So. Husband. All is well here in the Academy?"
Toshiki looked up from the tea. "Hai. The gardens grow ever more beautiful. The students grow less talented, or I am just a poor teacher of children."
She sipped from her cup. "And your post?"
"Your inquiry at the Court may yet bear fruit. Kakita-sama is unwilling to let me leave the Academy, saying that I am not yet ready. Ichiro-sama has expressed interest in our proposal to join our line with his."
"Hai."
Toshiki looked back down at his tea cup. "And your work? How fares the Ministry of Calligraphy and Seals? Have you gotten the ink stains out of the golden kimono I sent you?""
She felt her face hardening, saw the look of hurt in his eyes, quickly veiled. Oh Lady, why… Heard her own voice snap crisply, "Hai, husband. The robe you sent was repaired. I am honored to wear it every day."
…why is it this way between us?
She looked at his closing face, his hunched shoulders. She remembered laughing with him in the gardens of Otosan Uchi, attending performances, kissing in the rain as everyone ran indoors at a ruined Dragon fireworks show.
Standing, she shrugged out of her kimono, letting the silk fabric fall free. She reached for him, and he for her, and maybe it would be enough.
After, laying in her bed alone, she silently cried herself to sleep again.
----
Kaori's feet ached. Her back ached. She suspected that the foot of her back ached but she didn't really want to know. It was also raining, which made the beautifully sculpted road up to the Academy muddy. And horses had been past recently. A lot of them. Recently fed.
It was, in short, exactly the sort of moment that a young man would step into her field of vision from the side of the road. A tall, handsome young man with fox red hair and piercing green eyes. Handsome enough that she could feel herself straightening, smiling, even though he didn't say anything. He stood there, watching her watch him as she walked past. It would not have been courteous to turn and gawk at him after she walked by, so she hurried her steps towards the gates.
She could hear him laughing behind her. At her? She turned to see him sitting up, covered from head to toe in mud and other things. His fine hair was plastered to his head, his clothing soiled, and his face covered. Yet his laughter rang through the air like a bell. She felt her smile widen, tried to stop it, then felt her footing slip…
Mud. And horse. In her hair, her armor, her clothes. Everywhere. Followed by a sharp pain from her left ankle, quickly blooming into fire.
"Kakita-sama," said a man's voice. A tenor, probably. 'Please, let me help." She looked up at the smiling man, felt herself smiling as he drew her up, grabbing her as her left leg collapsed. "I have you." A warm arm slipped around her waist and he held her up, muck to her muck.
Oh Lady…why today of all days?
Together they hobbled up to the Academy and clean, hot water.
---
Miaso lit three sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji, founding kami of the Crane Clan and wife of Kakita, the mortal who won her hand from the Emperor and her heart on his own merits. She bowed low, pressing her face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
His Lady, he calls you, Lady Doji o'wise and fair. Please don't push him so hard. Please don't break him.
Lady, please, make the Princess see…
Tears stained the pillow as she pressed her face down harder, willing the Kami to hear her, and the sounds of the Princess voice singing out for the last three nights from her ears.
…let her see not just his fine face but the trembling in his hands after You have kept him up for six nights without stop. Let her see the pain he feels when his students cannot draw, and see the look in Toshi-kun's…
She rose up and slammed her head on the pillow. Never, not even in her own thoughts, could she dare that name. It hurt too much. She was who she was, a servant of the Hida brought from mud and fire to this perfect, beautiful place. This was her fairy tale come true.
..Toshiki-sama's eyes when it's too much and he can barely breathe. Please let her see him as I do. Please.
Misao looked into the jade statue's cold, hard, beautiful face.
Please?
Chapter 2: The Way of Things
Seven days after he arrived, Kitsune Renshin slipped out of the Academy's open gates in the dead of night. No fault to the guards; they were not trained to catch a fox who did not wish to be seen. He moved on light feet down to the edge of the forest. If a forest it could be called. Nothing wild lived within sight of the heart of Doji's dream; the trees themselves were just a part of the greater whole.
When he was safely beyond the guards sight he knelt in the soft loam. From a closed bag he drew a bowl of fragrant cooked rice, a brazier, oil, and fresh-made tofu. Lighting a small fire took only moments; frying the tofu took longer. The smell made his stomach growl but he set his own hunger aside.
Renshin poured the fried tofu and hot oil over the rice. Carefully he picked up the bowl and placed it in the shadows of an ancient tree, it's gnarled roots wrapping around what might once have been a fox's den. "I wish to speak to the Nine-tailed Elders."
Moments passed, stretching in silence. Then a hand reached from the shadows at the roots of the tree, the skin young but the nails thick and yellowed like an old man's. A body emerged, pulling itself effortlessly from the ground. The figure tucked greedily into the oiled rice and fried tofu, eating with his fingers.
The man (for a man's form it wore) set aside the bowl once he polished it clean with his long tongue. Nine white fox-tails spread out around him, along the ground, up over his shoulders, one standing proudly above his head like a plum. Despite the manner of his arrival, his blue and silver brocade robe showed no sign of dirt; nor did the shoulder-length fox-red hair which graced his brow.
Renshin bowed low. "Elder."
"Pup." The Elder answered.
"I beg a boon."
"Hai?"
"This form is not the right one. I thought Kaori was a humble samurai assigned to guard the Academy, her brother a disgraced painter. I was wrong. They are of the line of Doji, blood of the Kami. They are of the line of Kakita, bringer of life."
The Elder's sharp-toothed smile did nothing to mask the belly-deep laughter which nearly choked him as he said "Hai. This was known, had you asked."
Renshin ground his teeth behind his smile. "I need a new form".
The Elder plucked a white pearl shaped like a grain of rice from a pouch on his belt. He considered it for a moment. "No."
"Elder…"
The Elder's voice grew sharp. "You choose the rules of the game, the form, and the time. This was allowed as a favor given by the Lady herself. That you find your choices displeasing is not our concern."
"I…"
"Are you not fox enough for this task you chose?"
"No, Elder. I will succeed."
"Hai, you will. And we will watch with great amusement as you do."
---
Kaori considered the elaborately folded letter laying on her pillow. It had not been there when she got up. Which meant that, sometime between when she turned to wash with water and salt and turned back, someone had entered the room, deposited the object, and left.
For the third time this week.
Like the other two, this one was folded into a puzzle box. If she tried too hard to open it, it would tear and she'd lose the letter. If it was like the other two there might be something inside as well. She picked it up with the tips of her fingers.
Yes, a little weight pressed the bottom down. The first one contained three acorns made of copper, silver, and gold tied with a ribbon. The second, a piece of sea glass pierced in some unknown manner with a fine red silk thread. This one was a mystery to her.
A polite scratching at her shoji broke Kaori's focus. "Enter," she called, still looking at the folded box. She heard Misao moving into the room, setting things aright as she approached and began to work on the samurai-ko's hair. The servant had slept outside Toshiki's door for six days before relocating to Kaori's six days ago.
"Very good. Do you know where my brother is?"
"Hai, Kakita-sama. He stayed up last night painting."
Of course Misao knew where he was. And probably what inks the baka was out of, and when he last drank tea.
The maidservant stepped back as Kaori rose, a tiny tinkling coming from near samurai-ko's ear almost startling her. "The acorns are bells?"
Misao's voice held repressed laughter. "Hai, Kakita-ue."
Kaori made her way to her way to her brother's study with a dancer's grace, occasionally shaking her head a little to hear the acorn's chime.
---
She's coming.
Toshiki raised his head from the doodle in front of him. It looked like it would probably be a lark, like the one he saw when Renshin arrived. Or maybe a fish. It was hard to tell at this stage.
A moment later, his beautiful twin stormed through the open shoji. Not that she would ever think of herself in any of those ways. She was to her eyes plain, though men stared at her openly when they thought she could not see. She walked with purpose, never with a cloud of anger and determination rising around her like thunder over the mountains.
Her grey eyes swept the disordered room, the origami flowers opening and closing in the half-light, the paintings and partial paintings scattered about like leaves in a storm. She barely glanced at the huge, rough kanji "Jade" hanging on the wall - she knew what it was for and why he kept it, even here in the heart of Doji's Dream. In her hands was another letter folded into an intricate puzzle box.
She could not ask, so he took it from her, turning the box over in his hands. Whoever folded these needed to study a bit more; the folds were intricate but like the first two simple to undo once the central line came free. Just a bit of gentle teasing and the third proved as simple as the first, opening into a beautifully written letter. Within it, an origami gardenia with a flush of life on it, not unlike one he had folded last night.
Toshiki looked over at the vase where he had set the flower aside in the early morning hours. It was no longer there.
Clever fox, he thought, that should get her attention.
The letter read:
The sunlight filters
Slants through the forest branches
Come and run with me
Kaori eagerly picked up the flower. "This is one of yours?"
"Hai, from last night," he answered.
"Did you give it to the writer?" Her tone was mild but the anger underlying it was not.
"Iie. I did no such thing. I made it to ease my fingers and put it there." He pointed to the now empty vase.
"You know the Masters do not think…"
"And they do not know. Officially. Unofficially I am who I am, and if they object to the old arts they may take it up with the Lady."
He handed her the letter. "Go. See the letter writer tonight. He clearly wants to speak to you, and his message is clear enough. If he can get into the Academy, steal a flower from my study while I am in it without being seen, then he would have already caused mischief if that was his aim."
She withdrew, the acorns in her hair chiming as she went. I know, sister. You are not allowed to be happy. But you want to be.
With a shaking hand he picked up his brush to start again. Maybe this time the Lady would think he got it right.
---
Yoriko watched from Toshiki's room as Kaori slipped into the garden. The young woman walked with light feet but eyes accustomed to watching the comings and goings in the Court of the Emperor were not fooled by foliage and shadows.
A rendezvous, Kaori-chan? Good for you.
She looked around the empty chamber. A tastefully done scroll in formal style, ink and a bit of color carelessly creating a perfect autumn landscape hanging on one wall. Kimono carefully folded and stowed in a honeycomb shelf, cherry wood stained dark red. A table, a futon, an ikebana replaced every day with something from the garden outside.
All of it perfect. None of it real.
Your heart isn't here, is it Toshi-kun? Is it anywhere someone can touch?
The wife picked up the blanket off his futon. She pressed it to her nose, inhaling the scent of him, the feel of the cloth a poor substitute for the warmth of his smile.
Enough of this, I'm being silly.
The princess turned back to the table and went to work on her letters. Her left hand drifted to rest just below her navel when not busy with papers, pots, and ink. Many matters demanded her attention and she did not have time to let silly things get in the way.
---
Kaori slipped without a lantern into the gardens she grew up in, walking well-worn paths that outsiders would never find. This was her place, her home, and she was not going to let some outsider just wander around in it. Sneaking into her room to leave presents was one thing. Stealing from her brother's was something else entirely.
Even if she did it herself sometimes. The look on his face when he couldn't find the right brush was worth it.
Standing by a lantern post, not anywhere near as concealed as he thought, was Renshin. Kaori studied him in the half-light; the angles of his face, the bushy business of his hair, the emerald green of his eyes glowing back at her from the darkness…
Blushing a little, she came closer. "Good evening, Renshin-san. I got your note. Notes."
Green eyes stared into grey and she felt herself flush. "Would you like to walk in the gardens?"
He pressed a finger to his lips, turned, and ran towards the wall. He raced up it like a squirrel, finding fingerholds it had taken her years to master as a child. She saw a flash of white teeth from the top as he went over.
Alright then.
A ribbon from her waist bound back her sleeves, and a quick hitch tucked the long kimono under her obi. Her run took her most of the way up the wall before her weight tried to drag her back down; a quick in-draw of breath into her hara and an explosion of strength down her legs solved that problem. By the time she got to the top of the wall Renshin was already half-way to the forest, running as fast as his legs could carry him.
She dropped down and raced after him. Grasses grown long in the summer heat whipped at her legs, leaving marks which would be hard to hide tomorrow.
Renshin had stopped just inside the woods, next to a lit brazier. He handed her a bowl of oiled rice and fresh, fried tofu with a smile. Silently they ate together, under the trees, away from the masters and the guards and her duties. For however long the bowl lasted, she could just be a woman on a little adventure with a man. A man who, from the looks he kept sending her way, was more than just a little interested in her.
Too soon the rice and tofu ran out, leaving just emptiness within the bowl and a slowly gathering chill in the air. She looked at the Kitsune, put her finger to her lips, and shook her head. He closed his bright green eyes, letting his hair hide his face from her gaze. With nothing to say, Kaori untucked her kimono, unwrapped the ribbon tying her sleeves, and walked back to the Academy alone.
---
Miaso lit two sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji. She bowed low, pressing her face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
His Lady, he calls you, Lady Doji o'wise and fair. Please don't push him so hard. Please don't break him.
Lady, please, make the Princess see…
Misao heard the rustle of silk and felt the warmth of a body setting next to her. "Make the Princess see what, servant of my brother's children?"
The young woman kept her forehead pressed against the pillow. "Make her see that she loves him, and he her," her voice came out in a whisper.
"And what of Kaori? Have you no care for the twin?", the Lady's voice was as hard as Misao had dreaded, cold and beautiful like the statue given life.
"She deserves to be happy, Lady."
"Hai. Toshi-kun has a soft heart. He plays the game, but in trying to keep all of you safe, he has frozen the world. This will not end well."
Miaso felt her tears falling but kept her sobs inside.
"What would you dare, servant of my brother's children? What would you give to see him happy again? "
Misao drew in her breath, hands held to shield her belly below her navel. "Everything."
"Good. Here is what you must do."
Seven days after he arrived, Kitsune Renshin slipped out of the Academy's open gates in the dead of night. No fault to the guards; they were not trained to catch a fox who did not wish to be seen. He moved on light feet down to the edge of the forest. If a forest it could be called. Nothing wild lived within sight of the heart of Doji's dream; the trees themselves were just a part of the greater whole.
When he was safely beyond the guards sight he knelt in the soft loam. From a closed bag he drew a bowl of fragrant cooked rice, a brazier, oil, and fresh-made tofu. Lighting a small fire took only moments; frying the tofu took longer. The smell made his stomach growl but he set his own hunger aside.
Renshin poured the fried tofu and hot oil over the rice. Carefully he picked up the bowl and placed it in the shadows of an ancient tree, it's gnarled roots wrapping around what might once have been a fox's den. "I wish to speak to the Nine-tailed Elders."
Moments passed, stretching in silence. Then a hand reached from the shadows at the roots of the tree, the skin young but the nails thick and yellowed like an old man's. A body emerged, pulling itself effortlessly from the ground. The figure tucked greedily into the oiled rice and fried tofu, eating with his fingers.
The man (for a man's form it wore) set aside the bowl once he polished it clean with his long tongue. Nine white fox-tails spread out around him, along the ground, up over his shoulders, one standing proudly above his head like a plum. Despite the manner of his arrival, his blue and silver brocade robe showed no sign of dirt; nor did the shoulder-length fox-red hair which graced his brow.
Renshin bowed low. "Elder."
"Pup." The Elder answered.
"I beg a boon."
"Hai?"
"This form is not the right one. I thought Kaori was a humble samurai assigned to guard the Academy, her brother a disgraced painter. I was wrong. They are of the line of Doji, blood of the Kami. They are of the line of Kakita, bringer of life."
The Elder's sharp-toothed smile did nothing to mask the belly-deep laughter which nearly choked him as he said "Hai. This was known, had you asked."
Renshin ground his teeth behind his smile. "I need a new form".
The Elder plucked a white pearl shaped like a grain of rice from a pouch on his belt. He considered it for a moment. "No."
"Elder…"
The Elder's voice grew sharp. "You choose the rules of the game, the form, and the time. This was allowed as a favor given by the Lady herself. That you find your choices displeasing is not our concern."
"I…"
"Are you not fox enough for this task you chose?"
"No, Elder. I will succeed."
"Hai, you will. And we will watch with great amusement as you do."
---
Kaori considered the elaborately folded letter laying on her pillow. It had not been there when she got up. Which meant that, sometime between when she turned to wash with water and salt and turned back, someone had entered the room, deposited the object, and left.
For the third time this week.
Like the other two, this one was folded into a puzzle box. If she tried too hard to open it, it would tear and she'd lose the letter. If it was like the other two there might be something inside as well. She picked it up with the tips of her fingers.
Yes, a little weight pressed the bottom down. The first one contained three acorns made of copper, silver, and gold tied with a ribbon. The second, a piece of sea glass pierced in some unknown manner with a fine red silk thread. This one was a mystery to her.
A polite scratching at her shoji broke Kaori's focus. "Enter," she called, still looking at the folded box. She heard Misao moving into the room, setting things aright as she approached and began to work on the samurai-ko's hair. The servant had slept outside Toshiki's door for six days before relocating to Kaori's six days ago.
"Very good. Do you know where my brother is?"
"Hai, Kakita-sama. He stayed up last night painting."
Of course Misao knew where he was. And probably what inks the baka was out of, and when he last drank tea.
The maidservant stepped back as Kaori rose, a tiny tinkling coming from near samurai-ko's ear almost startling her. "The acorns are bells?"
Misao's voice held repressed laughter. "Hai, Kakita-ue."
Kaori made her way to her way to her brother's study with a dancer's grace, occasionally shaking her head a little to hear the acorn's chime.
---
She's coming.
Toshiki raised his head from the doodle in front of him. It looked like it would probably be a lark, like the one he saw when Renshin arrived. Or maybe a fish. It was hard to tell at this stage.
A moment later, his beautiful twin stormed through the open shoji. Not that she would ever think of herself in any of those ways. She was to her eyes plain, though men stared at her openly when they thought she could not see. She walked with purpose, never with a cloud of anger and determination rising around her like thunder over the mountains.
Her grey eyes swept the disordered room, the origami flowers opening and closing in the half-light, the paintings and partial paintings scattered about like leaves in a storm. She barely glanced at the huge, rough kanji "Jade" hanging on the wall - she knew what it was for and why he kept it, even here in the heart of Doji's Dream. In her hands was another letter folded into an intricate puzzle box.
She could not ask, so he took it from her, turning the box over in his hands. Whoever folded these needed to study a bit more; the folds were intricate but like the first two simple to undo once the central line came free. Just a bit of gentle teasing and the third proved as simple as the first, opening into a beautifully written letter. Within it, an origami gardenia with a flush of life on it, not unlike one he had folded last night.
Toshiki looked over at the vase where he had set the flower aside in the early morning hours. It was no longer there.
Clever fox, he thought, that should get her attention.
The letter read:
The sunlight filters
Slants through the forest branches
Come and run with me
Kaori eagerly picked up the flower. "This is one of yours?"
"Hai, from last night," he answered.
"Did you give it to the writer?" Her tone was mild but the anger underlying it was not.
"Iie. I did no such thing. I made it to ease my fingers and put it there." He pointed to the now empty vase.
"You know the Masters do not think…"
"And they do not know. Officially. Unofficially I am who I am, and if they object to the old arts they may take it up with the Lady."
He handed her the letter. "Go. See the letter writer tonight. He clearly wants to speak to you, and his message is clear enough. If he can get into the Academy, steal a flower from my study while I am in it without being seen, then he would have already caused mischief if that was his aim."
She withdrew, the acorns in her hair chiming as she went. I know, sister. You are not allowed to be happy. But you want to be.
With a shaking hand he picked up his brush to start again. Maybe this time the Lady would think he got it right.
---
Yoriko watched from Toshiki's room as Kaori slipped into the garden. The young woman walked with light feet but eyes accustomed to watching the comings and goings in the Court of the Emperor were not fooled by foliage and shadows.
A rendezvous, Kaori-chan? Good for you.
She looked around the empty chamber. A tastefully done scroll in formal style, ink and a bit of color carelessly creating a perfect autumn landscape hanging on one wall. Kimono carefully folded and stowed in a honeycomb shelf, cherry wood stained dark red. A table, a futon, an ikebana replaced every day with something from the garden outside.
All of it perfect. None of it real.
Your heart isn't here, is it Toshi-kun? Is it anywhere someone can touch?
The wife picked up the blanket off his futon. She pressed it to her nose, inhaling the scent of him, the feel of the cloth a poor substitute for the warmth of his smile.
Enough of this, I'm being silly.
The princess turned back to the table and went to work on her letters. Her left hand drifted to rest just below her navel when not busy with papers, pots, and ink. Many matters demanded her attention and she did not have time to let silly things get in the way.
---
Kaori slipped without a lantern into the gardens she grew up in, walking well-worn paths that outsiders would never find. This was her place, her home, and she was not going to let some outsider just wander around in it. Sneaking into her room to leave presents was one thing. Stealing from her brother's was something else entirely.
Even if she did it herself sometimes. The look on his face when he couldn't find the right brush was worth it.
Standing by a lantern post, not anywhere near as concealed as he thought, was Renshin. Kaori studied him in the half-light; the angles of his face, the bushy business of his hair, the emerald green of his eyes glowing back at her from the darkness…
Blushing a little, she came closer. "Good evening, Renshin-san. I got your note. Notes."
Green eyes stared into grey and she felt herself flush. "Would you like to walk in the gardens?"
He pressed a finger to his lips, turned, and ran towards the wall. He raced up it like a squirrel, finding fingerholds it had taken her years to master as a child. She saw a flash of white teeth from the top as he went over.
Alright then.
A ribbon from her waist bound back her sleeves, and a quick hitch tucked the long kimono under her obi. Her run took her most of the way up the wall before her weight tried to drag her back down; a quick in-draw of breath into her hara and an explosion of strength down her legs solved that problem. By the time she got to the top of the wall Renshin was already half-way to the forest, running as fast as his legs could carry him.
She dropped down and raced after him. Grasses grown long in the summer heat whipped at her legs, leaving marks which would be hard to hide tomorrow.
Renshin had stopped just inside the woods, next to a lit brazier. He handed her a bowl of oiled rice and fresh, fried tofu with a smile. Silently they ate together, under the trees, away from the masters and the guards and her duties. For however long the bowl lasted, she could just be a woman on a little adventure with a man. A man who, from the looks he kept sending her way, was more than just a little interested in her.
Too soon the rice and tofu ran out, leaving just emptiness within the bowl and a slowly gathering chill in the air. She looked at the Kitsune, put her finger to her lips, and shook her head. He closed his bright green eyes, letting his hair hide his face from her gaze. With nothing to say, Kaori untucked her kimono, unwrapped the ribbon tying her sleeves, and walked back to the Academy alone.
---
Miaso lit two sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji. She bowed low, pressing her face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
His Lady, he calls you, Lady Doji o'wise and fair. Please don't push him so hard. Please don't break him.
Lady, please, make the Princess see…
Misao heard the rustle of silk and felt the warmth of a body setting next to her. "Make the Princess see what, servant of my brother's children?"
The young woman kept her forehead pressed against the pillow. "Make her see that she loves him, and he her," her voice came out in a whisper.
"And what of Kaori? Have you no care for the twin?", the Lady's voice was as hard as Misao had dreaded, cold and beautiful like the statue given life.
"She deserves to be happy, Lady."
"Hai. Toshi-kun has a soft heart. He plays the game, but in trying to keep all of you safe, he has frozen the world. This will not end well."
Miaso felt her tears falling but kept her sobs inside.
"What would you dare, servant of my brother's children? What would you give to see him happy again? "
Misao drew in her breath, hands held to shield her belly below her navel. "Everything."
"Good. Here is what you must do."
Chapter 3: A Maiden's Hand
Kaori was not angry.
Clearly, she was not angry. The half-dozen cutting poles laying around the edge of the garden, slices into neat sixths by her blade, were far too perfectly cut for her to be angry. Maybe that was the problem; she should cut them into eights instead.
She assessed the final pole, its thick woven padding covering a strong bamboo rod. Her focus shifted as images, scents, warmth from the last month intruded on her thoughts. Letters delivered in the middle of the night, when she was sleeping. Walks in the garden in the heat of the day. A poetry contest, even though he was so bad at it, in which he dedicated every halting haiku to her.
Kaori clenched her teeth. To keep herself from biting her tongue when she struck, not from anger or frustration or the unfairness of a world in which she could fall in love with an adventurous, thoughtful, sweet, honorable, handsome man and not be allowed to be with him because
HE WAS NOT KUGE!
The cutting pole fell into seven pieces.
Now, she was angry.
---
Misao washed Kaori's back, taking care not to rub too hard on the scars her mistress earned during the days when the five companions (in truth four companions and their servant, not that she minded) travelled together through the Empire and beyond. She gently lifted Kaori's long hair, rubbing soap, then oil into it to keep it strong.
"Misao?"
"Hai, Kakita-ue?"
"Misao, we are in a bath. You are washing my hair. You can call me Kaori, here if nowhere else."
"Hai, Kaori?"
"Is it hopeless?", the swordmaster's voice was wistful. "I knew it would be hard when I took Toshiki's place. I've never regretted it - the training would have killed him. But." She hunched forward, drawing around her pain. "Is this going to be all that I am allowed to be?"
Misao poured hot water on her mistress' back, then worked the oil into a lather and rubbed her shoulders. "Iie, Kaori. You know I like to read histories?"
"Hai. I remember Toshiki teaching you to read."
"I was reading the tale of Doji and Kakita last night. The author mentioned," and Misao prayed that Kaori did not ask to see the text, for she would have to explain how she knew of the hidden laws of the Kakita, "that the family of Doji was, in some ways, still bound by the Hantei's words."
Misao's mistress still under her kneading hands. "What do you mean?" Kaori's voice came out as a high, thin whisper.
"That a man might ask for the hand of a Crane maiden and, if he can present unique and true answers to the three riddles, he can win it."
Misao felt her mistress crumple around herself, pulling her knees to her chest, her soft sobs muffled by her hands.
Oh Ka-chan, I will make this right.
---
Finding Renshin was not difficult.
The Kitsune thought of himself as clever. He thought he was good at hiding. He may well have been both. But Misao knew where to look for him. She served the same truth, in the same way, plotting out the courses Toshiki and Kaori would take during the day, looking for the unobtrusive corners where one might hide just within sight in case one was needed. Love was the great truth neither of them could deny.
He stood at the corner of the garden, close enough to hear Kaori at her practice but far enough away that unless she looked she would not see him. He crouched on his knees, right hand down, left hand up and tucked close to his heart. With his red hair and red juban, he looked almost like a fox lying in wait for a mouse.
Some noise she hadn't meant to make must have startled him, for Renshin's head whipped around in her direction. His green eyes reflected the light for a moment, making them seem like mirrors in the sun. But that was just a trick of the light, as he shook himself and rose.
"Misao, ne?" Renshin said as he stood and walked towards her. "You are Toshiki's servant."
"It is my honor to serve both of Kakita-ue, hai."
"Do you have a message for me?"
"Hai. Do you love her?"
Renshin's head rocked back as if slapped. The look he turned on her would have frozen another servant in her steps. She gazed back at him mildly, waiting for his rage to pass.
It took the samurai a few moments to regain his composure.
"You have no right to ask that."
She locked eyes with him, her brown against his vivid green. "I am the only one who can."
Whatever he saw in her was more than he could bear. He looked down at his hands. "Hai."
"Then you must go to the Masters. Tell them you wish to invoke the Trial of Kakita. They will resist, but you have the right to ask as samurai, as bushi."
Renshin looked down at his feet. "What is this Trial?"
"In the early days of the Empire, when Hantei told Kakita he could marry Doji, Doji did not find her brother's words pleasing. So she placed three riddles on the man her brother chose for her: to bring the dead back to life; to tell the Court the length of the world and how long it would take to walk it; and to find a thing of perfect beauty."
The Kakitas' servant continued, her voice low and measured. "These three questions became the Trials of Kakita. It is an ancient rite, and one the Masters may not deny. As a bushi of a family allied with the Crane, you have standing invoke it. "
Renshin nodded, a sudden decision made. "It shall be so." With a leap he was past Misao and running.
Misao turned to watch him go. Standing at the entrance to the practice grounds was Kaori, her face flushed red, hands trembling, eyes filled with tears. The maiden stared at her servant then whirled and ran away.
Oh Lady, please!
---
Wisdom is knowing when not to bend.
Hai? His Lady did not often bother him with simple truths. His sister, on the other hand, was very fond of reminding him that, as her idiot brother, he often forgot the things others considered important. Things like sleeping, or eating, or remembering to visit his wife.
Asooo…
Kaori strode into his study, her perfectly maintained armor and the sacred blade she won on the day of the Topaz Championship at her hip proclaiming some kind of intent. He took a moment to study her, noting the formal hair-ties of blue and white silk, the carefully applied make-up which made her eyes seem wider and larger than they were, and the fine silk of her under-robes.
He stood up, all not quite five feet of him, his stained kimono and loose hair contracting poorly with her perfection. He bowed a little to her, then jumped back as she fell to one knee before him. She bowed her head and pressed the knuckles of her left hand to the ground, the right resting on her heart. The motion caused the acorn bells in her hair to chime.
"Toshiki, brother, I beg you not to allow this thing."
He reached out to her, to draw his sister to her feet, but stopped his hands before they left his sides.
"Hai?"
Kaori's voice was firm. "I know Renshin came to you. I know what he said. You cannot allow this."
"I do not have the authority to…"
She cut him off, "YOU DO. You know you do. You are the last of the line. You are my BROTHER."
"Wisdom is knowing when not to bend," he said, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. "Why not, sister?
She continued to look to the ground. "You know that Kakita Ichiro-san has asked for my hand. We need this alliance. Yoriko-hime needs this alliance. You need this alliance if you are ever to leave this gilded cage."
Toshiki nodded, watching the future play out in his mind. His sister, a high lady as she deserved to be, forever to put aside the sword. His wife strengthened in the Courts, with access to the influence and power of the Doji. Freedom for himself, to travel again, to see the world beyond the Academy and its confines.
He looked down at the shining figure of duty and honor before him. My sister, crying every night of her life, abused and alone, her art denied so that I can be free.
"I will make my will known to the Masters and then to Renshin."
---
Yoriko slowly rubbed oil into Toshiki's hair, hot water working to loosen the knots in her back and hips as she labored on his neck. She could feel him trembling under her fingers but there was nothing to be said. He knew who he was. She knew who she was. The barrier between them was more than just water and skin.
She rose from the bath and pulled a robe of soft, raw silk around her. Her husband rose as well, coming to stand beside her. In the steam she found towels and began to dry him off. Scars from battles he never mentioned, stains from ink and paint, a tortoise-shell tattoo across his back - his skin was a map of the a world she would never truly know.
He stood as she hung his formal kimono around him. A soft white yakuta of the finest silk. A second kimono of stiffer blue silk, painted by Toshiki's own hands with an elaborate design of blossoms and cranes. The final outer robe of white and blue, painted just last night.
Yoriko paused, holding the kimono before her to see it better in the light. A painting of Kakita handing Doji a mirror covered the entire silk canvas. He had executed it in the style that got him banished from Court, realism so painful to see that it tore at the heart. She tilted it, and the scene changed slightly; now she was looking at Renshin rather than Kakita, at Kaori rather than Doji.
"Daring, husband." She hung the outer kimono around his shoulders then started work on the ties. He would never get them in the right place to not ruin the effect if left to his own devices.
"Necessary, wife." His words were as clipped as her own but the tone held underlying warmth. "They must know I am not asking."
"Hai." She finished the ties and selected an obi. "You should take your fan."
"As you say." He looked at her. She tried to smile back at him through her wife's mask but all that came out was a little brightening of her eyes. There's the man I met in the garden's that first night, fresh from facing the Hells with nothing but a paint brush and laughing. I've missed you, Toshi-kun.
The Crane Lord turned from his wife and went to remind Masters of the Academy of their place.
---
Renshin paced.
The garden was large for its kind, but he was kitsune, born in the Forest and made from its soil. The walls wore on his spirit. The carefully tended paths which delighted Kaori locked him in place. How could anything here be said to be free, to be alive, wrapped in so much tradition and imagery?
He heard the tread of soft feet on the, smelled the mix of ink and paint and paper that masked Toshiki's own scent drifting down the trail. He looked up to see not the painter but kuge, a Lord of the Crane Clan and child of the gods who came to Earth to save it, in his full splendor. The kitsune fell to one knee. From the recesses of Renshin's heart came dark doubt. This was a mistake such as will be laughed at through the ages. He could have come to this place as a noble lord, as a suitable suitor…
"Renshin-san. Good. I have news for you." Even the painter's voice had changed. Usually light, now it carried subtly and tones that made the fox's ears want to flatten if they still could.
"I have spoken to the Masters. They have agreed that you may answer Kakita's riddles. If you succeed in their eyes, you will be wed to Kakita Kaori. If you fail, you are banished from the lands of the Crane. The Masters will send word to our allies that you have dared beyond your station and exhausted our generosity. There may be a place in this world where you can rest your head but not within the Emerald Empire." Toshiki's voice rattled the fox's bones.
"Be aware as well that, if you fail, kitsune, Kaori will never wed another. This is the price she pays for your audacity."
His voice changed, becoming less of a thing of legend and more that of an angry brother. "I know what you are, Renshin. Do not think retreating to your Forest will save you. I have studied in the High House of Light, walked in the Shadow Lands seeking truths, tore the Sultan from his blooded throne in the Burning Sands, fought beside the Jade Champion when she cast down traitors who stole the power of the Heavens and the Hells for their own. If you fail, I will have your pelt for a trophy and your Elders will thank me for staying my hand."
"You have three days. Now take yourself out of my sight."
Not a mistake to be laughed at; a tale told to young pups to remind them that touching the sun can burn your bones.
---
Yoriko lit three sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji. She bowed low, pressing her face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
His Lady, he calls you, 0'Doji-kami. Please don't push him so hard. Please don't break him.
Lady, please, make the others see…
She pressed her hands together on her belly below her navel.
…Please make Toshi-kun see that soon we will be three.
Chapter 4: Three Little Riddles
On the morning of the first day, Renshin set off into the nearby forest. Not his Forest, not this little bit of tamed wood, but close enough for him to think. He settled into a sun-dappled nook and drifted into deep thought.
Bring the dead back to life.
Measure the length of the world and how long it would take to walk it.
To find a thing of perfect beauty.
Sometime later a bluebird landed on his forehead. After a little while it left and the samurai was none the wiser.
---
On the morning of the second day, Renshin set off into the nearby forest. He walked at a normal pace until he left the gate guards sight. Then he reached inside himself and raced forward, leaping from shadow to shadow, from tree to tree with a speed uncanny to behold. He ran until his legs ached and his breath came in ragged gasps. He ran until his feet cried for mercy and his arms shook.
Once far enough away, he threw back his head and let out a yip like an injured dog. Chest heaving, legs on fire, he sat in a sun-dappled nook and drifted towards deeper waters, but his thoughts leapt like tadpoles in the shallows.
Bring the dead back to life.
Measure the length of the world and how long it would take to walk it.
To find a thing of perfect beauty.
Even exhausted, Renshin could feel his muscles twisting and struggling. He tried to catch some of the thoughts as they past.
A flower? What kind? No, flowers don't last…maybe the world is as long as a string? Is a seed dead? Has someone tried that answer already? No, seeds are alive not stones…what about stones? The kami are real, but are they alive? Should I talk to the Elders and get a pinwheel seed to lead me to Meido? Maybe a peach? A peach would taste good right now….
---
On the morning of the third day, Renshin pondered finding a gate to Jigoku and throwing himself into it. It would probably be faster than whatever the "painter" had in mind. He raced through the forest wearing nothing but a fundoshi, foxes ranging beside him for a while then falling away.
Bring the dead back to life.
Measure the length of the world and how long it would take to walk it.
To find a thing of perfect beauty.
Three little questions. Three traditional answers. None of them would help him now.
So he ran.
---
On the morning of the fourth day, a serious-faced Misao opened the shoji to Renshin's room to find the bushi struggling with his thick red hair. He had managed to get it tangled up into something that might, just might, be considered a top-knot by generous eyes.
"Kitsune-sama?" she said from the opening, kneeling but not bowing to him. He was samurai, yes, but she served the Kakita.
He looked at her, his hands tangled in his hair, eyes opened wide. "I don't know the answers."
"Here," she said, rising from the mats, "Let me help you."
---
A little later on the morning of the fourth day, Kakita Kaori sat on a little stool wearing her finest kimonos, freshly painted by her brother last night. She was sure his work, all in silver paint made through a technique he would not share with the Masters, would bring tears to the eyes of anyone with an ounce of spirit in them. That why she did not look at them when Misao dressed her. She had to be hard. Had to be cold, like the sea glass drop resting against her heart.
Seeing Renshin walk in, his thick hair woven into a braid, his hunter green juban and black hakama actually pressed and neat, she felt a moment of hope. It died when she caught the old, hard faces of the Masters gathered around. Handsome he may be but it would take more than just cleverness to resolve this challenge.
Her brother sat, resplendent in his robes, his face a mask to outsiders. Not his twin, though - she saw the tightening in his eyes, then the faraway look he got when he heard his Lady's voice.
Renshin bowed low to the Masters and waited for their command.
The Mistress of the Theater, a woman seventy seven summers into this life, stood from her stool. "Let all know that Kitsune Renshin, daring greatly, has requested the right to compete for Kakita Kaori's hand. Kakita Kaori, last daughter of the line of the First Kenshinzen, Kenshinzen of this Academy, Protector of Golden Petal Village, Granddaughter of Kakita and Lady Doji will submit to the results of this indignity." She was old but her voice carried power gained from a thousand performances, many before the Emperor himself.
"You have been given three questions, Kitsune-san.
The First: Bring the dead back to life.
The Second: Measure the length of the world and how long it would take to walk it.
The Third: To find a thing of perfect beauty.
How do you answer?"
Renshin's voice carried laughter in it as he answered, "I am ready, Kakita-sama. However, may I ask a question first?"
The Mistress conferred with the other Masters. "Hai."
"Do I have to answer the questions in the order given?" Renshin pitched his voice so that it resounded throughout the chamber.
The Masters conferred again, whispering behind fans. "Iie, you may address them in any order you wish," the Mistress eventually answered.
"Very well." Renshin straightened and looked her directly in the eyes. His green eyes seemed bright and merry, though his face struggled towards seriousness. "If Kakita Kaori-sama can assist me, I can answer the riddles to your satisfaction."
"Please, stand here," he said, pointing to the center of the room. Kaori considered, then rose, taking short steps to stand where directed.
"I will answer in this order. The world…" He stood in front of Kaori, then held out a hand so that less than a finger width separated the two of them. He walked around her, so that when he finished he stood in facing her again. "My world takes four steps to walk around, and less than a breath, though it will take a lifetime to encompass it all."
She felt her breath catch in her throat.
"A thing of perfect beauty…" He stepped in then, so close their noses touched. She felt his arms go around her, felt the warmth and strength of him as he pressed his lips to hers…
…what was he doing, OH BANZI…
Seizing the moment with the skill of an iaido master, of a samurai-ko enjoined by Bushido to live life to the fullest, Kaori kissed Renshin with strength and passion. When he tried to draw away, she held him close with arms strengthened from twenty years following the way of the sword. If this was to be her last moment with him, it would be worth it.
Sometime later, she let him pull away. They were both gasping for air.
"Love is the only perfect beauty", he managed after a few breaths. Renshin tried to step back but she would not let go. "For the first," he said as Kaori snuck a look under his arm at the Mistress, who was fanning her blushing face. "I think I've proved my point."
---
Toshiki walked out of the room where the Master's conferred. Kaori sat on the opposite side of the room from Renshin, her kimono in proper array again. Both looked at their hands.
"The Masters have decided."
Neither of the two looked up.
"You are to be wed at summer's end. Arrangements will be made."
---
Miaso lit two sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji. She bowed low, pressing her face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
His Lady, he calls you, Lady Doji o'wise and fair. Please don't push him so hard. Please don't break him.
Lady, please…
Misao heard the rustle of silk and felt the warmth of a body setting next to her. "What is it child?"
She tried to press her face into the pillows, but felt a soft, warm hand cup her forehead. It lifted her up, pushing not with strength, but exerting authority that could not be denied.
The Lady stat next to the servant, her simple blue kimono and long black hair surrounded by a nimbus of jade light. She was as beautiful as the statue but neither cold nor hard, flesh not stone. She looked at Misao and smiled like a mother seeing her daughter for the first time.
"Well?"
"Lady, please, tell Toshi-kun to let me go. Let me return to my family. I will…" her hands went to the slight swell of her belly, still hidden under her robes. "I will say nothing."
"Iie."
"Lady…"
"Toshi-kun plays the game to keep all of you safe. I play the game to create an Empire from the hearts of men."
The Lady touched Misao's cheek. "And women. And children."
Chapter 5 - What Dreams Are These?
Yoriko carefully placed the last of her kimono in the gilded box.
"Husband, I have one last favor to ask of you."
"Hai?" Toshiki looked up from the table. She could just barely see the outlines of a new sketch, probably the recent wedding, on the paper before him.
"Now that the wedding is done, Misao will come with me to Court. It is time she learned to be a lady's maid."
The painter's face did not flinch but she could see the panic in his eyes. He drew in a breath to say something.
The princess knelt before her husband and pressed a finger to his lips. "Hush, Toshi-kun. She will be back in the spring as wet nurse to our sons."
He tilted his head to one side.
"You are fortunate the Kakita are known for siring twins."
---
Toshiki lit seven sticks of incense and placed them in the bowl before the statue of Lady Doji in a group of five and an a group of two. After some thought, he placed another stick with the two, bringing the total to eight. He bowed low, pressing his face to the silk pillows in front of the shrine.
O'Lady Doji, wise and fair, please keep them safe…
Iie. Make the world where they will grow and love. That is my gift to you, grandson of my husband's line.
And so he did.