“My cousins.” She swallowed. “Right in front of me.”
“Gods . . .”
“My family gave their lives in resis tance against the Kazumitsu Shōgunate.” A black light burned in her eyes, her skin deathly pale. “So, yes, I would give my body. My final drop of blood. The last breath in my lungs to see this country freed.”
“What about Aisha?” Yukiko tilted her head, eyes a fraction narrower.
“What about her?”
“What does she have to gain from any of this? Why does she care? It can’t just be because of Kaori’s face.”
“You dishonor her, Yukiko-chan.” There was steel in Michi’s voice. “She is stronger than you or I could ever dream.”
“Is she? If Yoritomo dies, she inherits the throne, right?”
“You do not know what you are talking about.”
“Then teach me. What is she risking, exactly?”
A long moment of silence passed, each of them staring at the other’s reflection. The only sound was the creak of the ceiling fans, the distant murmur of the city beyond high, glass-topped walls. Yukiko was beginning to think she’d pushed Michi too far when, at last, the girl began to speak.
“Think on this.” Michi began to arrange Yukiko’s hair again, her hands a touch less gentle than before. “Your mother. My uncle. The Shōgun and the Guild have bled us. Our resolve is built on scar tissue. It is easy to rail against injustice when the authorities have given you a reason to hate them. What have they given Aisha?”
Yukiko shrugged, said nothing.
“Everything she could ever ask for,” Michi continued. “Anything she could dream. If she wished, she could live her entire life inside these walls, never touched by the growing rot beyond. She chose to open her eyes. She chose to refuse all of this, to risk everything they have given her, everything she could ever be. The Dynasty, the Guild, they’ve never taken anything from her. And still she wants to tear them down. Why?”
“I don’t know why.”
Yukiko stared long and hard at the girl’s reflection, as if seeing her for the first time. She realized that the Michi she knew was simply a costume, a role adopted for the sake of ruthless expediency. She began to feel distinctly out of her depth, sinking to the eyes in black, cloudy water, reaching out instinctively for Buruu’s warmth in the distance. She began to understand the scale of it all, the machine she was pitting herself against, the fact that she really knew nothing about the allies she had thrown in with.
Buruu. Her father. Her own life.
A lot to risk in the hands of strangers.
Michi watched her carefully, speaking as if reading her thoughts.
“I asked Aisha the same thing once. Why she risked all, and where she found the will to do it. She said that from the outside it seems an enormous thing, for anyone unscarred to choose to resist. To look around at the smiling faces of their peers, and step willingly outside the warmth of that contented little circle. She said that every part of her being rebelled against the notion at first. Because there is something in us that loves the momentum of the mob, Yukiko-chan. The comfort of swimming in the current with our fellows. Something in all of us wants to belong.”
She was staring at Yukiko’s reflection, but her eyes seemed focused at some distant point inside the glass.
“Yet as sunset approaches, all anyone needs do is look ahead and see where this current will lead us. To realize that if we do not stop and swim against the stream, eventually we will find the precipice over which it flows. We all of us know it. As surely as we know the sound of our own voices. We see it when we look in the mirror. We hear it when we wake in the long, still hours of the night. A voice that tells us something is deeply, horribly wrong with this world that we have made.” Michi’s voice became a whisper. “Aisha said it became a simple thing after that. As simple as speaking. As mustering the will to say one tiny little word.”
“What word?” Yukiko whispered too, without quite knowing why.
Michi breathed, a syllable as tiny and fragile as glass.
“No.”
“Training is going well, I hear,” Aisha said, sipping her tea. The sun had slipped below the horizon, bringing a cool dusk. The whispering sea breeze was a mixed blessing; banishing the scorching heat, but blowing in the suffocating stink of Kigen Bay. The summer’s worst was over, and autumn would soon be approaching on dry, yellow feet. Yukiko wondered if she would be back in the Iishi by then, to watch the trees shed their green dresses. She hadn’t seen the shades of the world turn to rust since she was a little girl.
“Hai, Lady,” Yukiko replied. She was kneeling on a flat silk cushion before the low, polished table. Three of Aisha’s maidens were playing music again, deft, pale fingers flitting across taut strings, loud enough that curious ears passing by the rice-paper doors would only hear the haunting melody of the shamisen.