Starlit Reflections: Dark Quarter

Fushigi Yuugi is copyright Watase Yuu, Flower Comics, Studio Perriot, Pioneer Entertainment, Viz Communications and other interested parties. The characters and situation are used without permission for personal entertainment only, and no copyright infringements are intended. No profit is being made from this fic; if there was, Tasuki and Tamahome would lighten me of it, as soon as they could.

Chapter Six: Toward Destiny - Iname

 Iname was often given to quiet contemplation, and was the only one of us to make a hobby of stargazing.  One night, as we lay beside the road, he pointed out the stars of our seishuku.  I was more interested in the way our constellations lay side by side than any abstract beauty they presented.

 Iname laughed as I told him that, but sobered quickly.  He remained silent a long time, lying on his back, staring at the sky.  Jealous of his attention, I demanded to know what he found so fascinating about the sky.

 "They go on forever, Uruki," he replied.  "The stones are eternal, but they are below our feet.  The stars beckon us up to join them, now and for always."

 "Will you go?" I demanded petulantly.

 He glanced over at me and chuckled.  "I will always reach up to them," he assured me, "but my feet will always remain safely here."

 A week after we had met Hikitsu and Tomite, I was regretting my impulsive tongue.

 "Now that we are together," I had said brightly, "there's only two to go!  I wonder what Iname and Urumiya are like?"

 After seven days of riding from dawn to dusk and long, hard riding lessons - Tomite was a patient teacher, but he was also an implacable one - I was not a happy person.

 We had ridden halfway up the country and three-quarters of the way across.  I had met garrulous shopkeepers, closemouthed herdsmen, foreign traders, and delinquent youths.

 Namame had taken great delight in recounting how, after Takiko had come running into the main tent and blurted out my situation, the men of the tribe had come charging out to my rescue just a little too late and had to settle for soundly thrashing the three youths instead.  He also said that they would suffer consequences, beyond the night.  I didn't want to think about that.  Intellectually, I knew that the tribes of the central plains practiced slavery, but the idea that someone would be enslaved because of me was uncomfortable.  The ringleader had been the chieftain's son, but a younger son, not the youngest nor the eldest, which was an uncomfortable place to be.

 I still couldn't really accept that, as a Genbu shichiseishi, in the eyes of many of Hokkan's people I was far more important than the Great Khan.  I was too used to being Mei Ling, the more-or-less ignored not-quite-princess.

 The mountains were no longer misty blue clouds on the horizon - now we could see Genbu's hands as they cupped the plain of His people.  The thick rocky fingers of mountains thrust up against the sky, almost a line across the western border.  The only real break in the Western mountains was the Pass of Tolan, named for the city built in and across it.  Or perhaps the city was named for the pass.  It didn't really matter.

 The city of Tolan is the largest city in Hokkan.  It is the capital of our country, and the residence of the Great Khan.

 It was the place I could no longer call home.

 Hatsui had been acting oddly ever since Tomite and Hikitsu had joined us.  He shared a tent with them, but he didn't seem to be resentful of them.  I must admit that I didn't try to understand his feelings - I sensed that if I did, it would bring me nothing but pain.  So, in my childish selfishness, I deliberately did not think about them.

 Perhaps this was wise of me, though.  As long as Hatsui could look at me and know that I did not know, he was not rejected.  However, considering all that next happened... perhaps he would have been better to declare himself.  Perhaps I should have looked deeper and given him an answer before the question was asked.

 It would have hurt, but the pain was inevitable, and perhaps it might have been lessened a little.

 Perhaps.

 I imagine that it was at approximately this time that the Emperor of Koutou finally responded to the news that had swept all around Hokkan.  Certainly I can think of no reason why the Koutou soldiers should have delayed their progress, and the location of the High Temple of Genbu, in the centre of Tolan, was no secret.

 So it is likely that it was around this time that the army of Koutou sent out its assassination squads, with orders to find and kill the Genbu Shichiseishi, by whatever means necessary.

 We were going back to Tolan.

 The city was and yet was not my childhood home.  I had spent my childhood sequestered in the Women's Quarter of the Palace of the Great Khan; in truth, I was as innocent of Tolan's streets as any child of the steppe tribes.  Yet it was the place I was born.

 I couldn't go back.  I had journeyed, chaperoned only by Takiko, in the company of several young men.  Never mind that two were far more interested in each other than any girl, one was madly in love with my companion and the fourth treated me like a rather annoying younger sister.  Rumour was not aware of any of that.

 So I was no longer marriageable, which is about the only value any princess has, which meant that the Great Khan would not welcome me back.  The only person who would, would be my old nurse, Chui Yuen, who I missed terribly.

 That was the only good thing about it; I would see her again.  If, that is, I could get past the gate.

 I felt myself grinning.  That last, at least, was definitely not a problem.

 Hatsui was not pleased with my plan.

 "Are you insane?" he demanded harshly, after I outlined my plan over the breakfast fire.

 "No," I replied archly.  "You of all people should know I can be inconspicuous if I want to be.  I want to see Chiu Yuen.  I'm going to see her."

 "You've heard all the rumours!  You'll be mobbed!"

 "The descriptions aren't even accurate.  Nobody's going to recognise me."

 "Give up, Hatsui," Hikitsu advised.  "When she gets that look in her eyes, all we can do is get out of the way."

 I glared at him.  What look?

 Hikitsu clutched dramatically at his chest and toppled over backwards.  "Dear, oh dear," Tomite murmured.  "Hikitsu, are you still alive?"

 "Barely," my fellow shichiseishi replied cheerfully, still lying in the grass at his lover's feet.  "Perhaps you should check?"

 Tomite glanced around the circle, his eyes flicking over Takiko and Namame's blushing faces.  "I will, later," he promised, in a tone as bland as if he were discussing the weather.

 I gave up to the giggles.

 Nobody wanted to go with me.  Hikitsu and Tomite were not comfortable in large crowds, and Takiko wished to rest.  Namame would not leave her behind, and Hatsui, possibly in retaliation for my refusal to take his advice and remain, declared mulishly that he was not going into the main city either.  He was perfectly content, he stated, to remain in the common room of the trader's inn on the outskirts of the cattle yards outside Tolan.  I could go see my nurse if I wanted to, but he wasn't going.

 So I cloaked myself in shadows once again and set out alone, in an action I now recognise as the height of foolishness.  But at the time I could not imagine many of the dangers that might befall me.

 And so, if a watcher had been paying attention, he would have been able to see a moving patch of shadow that afternoon, darting along the city streets, slipping between passersby and traffic, moving towards the Palace.  I was wise enough with the ways of traffic by now to move with rather than against the flow.

 There were a lot of people on the street.  I wondered why until a loud voice ahead of me yelled "Make way!  Make way for the Great Khan!"

 I fled for the wall, but I was too late.  I did make it to the side of a buttress that jutted out onto the street, where a patch of shadow as big as a girl would not be remarkable.  I was still far too close to the street, and the royal procession, for my liking.

 First the eunuch, announcing the procession, walked past, followed by a group of boys, dressed in royal yellow, scattering sweet yellow roses over the street to perfume the air and hide the foul scent of the road from royal nostrils.  Then, mounted on an expensive, over-pampered horse, rode the Great Khan.

 I couldn't help it.  I had to look up at the man who had sired me.

 The Great Khan, I concluded rather clinically, was a handsome man.  His black hair was streaked with silver, not an unusual thing in a man aged over fifty.  His body was still well-muscled and he had not let those muscles go to fat as so many large, well-muscled men tend to do when they enter middle age.  His jaw was squared and jutted out as if he was setting it against some distasteful yet necessary task, and his brown eyes scanned the horizon, taking great care to never actually touch upon the street around him.

 Following his horse came the four carriages that carried his First Wife, his current favourite, his lesser wives, and his more-favoured concubines.  The Great Khan's First Wife was a woman of around his age, and handsome, with strong bones in her face and long, raven's-wing-black hair.  His favourite, however, was a girl no older than I was, from the south.  Her hair was long, the colour of fire, and her bright eyes were pale, almost colourless.  Her mouth was set in a petulant pout, that men doubtless found adorable.

 The three lesser wives sat in their carriage, as calm and composed as if they were still in their quarters at the Palace, obviously taking their behaviour from the First Wife.

 In marked contrast was the behaviour of the favoured concubines in the fourth and final carriage.  Singing and playing with toys, they amused themselves as they were carried to wherever the Great Khan was going.  The truly amazing thing, though, was that, in the centre of the favoured concubines, in the place reserved for the Emperor's secondary favourite - she who, while not quite as important as his most favoured concubine, is preferred to all his other concubines - was my mother!

 I stared in shock as I watched Li Jiang smile and chirp at a woman who she had spoken of with hate only a month before, and then turn to bestow a comment on another she had envied desperately.  She was clearly loving this new - and, I could see from the clenched teeth and stiff demeanour of those around her, quite genuine - status.

 The carriage moved down the street, and I watched it go, followed by a virtual army of serving maids and eunuchs.  Some part of me could not believe my eyes.  What had happened, to so lift my mother's status?

 I had to get to the Palace, and talk with Chui Yuen.

 The gate guards, predictably enough, did not notice a small shadow floating gently through their midst, and so I found myself within the Palace of the Great Khan once more.

 I did not linger over my old haunts, for I had no idea how long the Great Khan, his coterie of concubines and his army of servants would be gone.  I definitely didn't want to be there when they returned.

 Looking for her first in her little cubby in the servant's quarters, I tried my old rooms next, and there I found her - in her little chair drawn up to the window, busy sewing something.  I shut the door behind me, uncloaked myself and sighed with relief.

 She heard me, and looked up.  The sewing was flung to one side as she sprang up, as sprightly as if she were my age instead of twice it.  "Little Miss!"

 The next few minutes were lost in a frenzy of hugging.  I had missed Chiu Yuen, but I had not realized how much.  The past two weeks had been an eternity.

 Admidst tears and laughter, I told her of what they had been like; of my brothers, the land, and riding lessons.  I shared with her the amazement I'd felt at the market and my terror on that wild ride on the steppe.  Finally, I broached the subject that had been pulling at me hardest.

 "What has happened here, Chiu Yuen?  What happened to change my mother so?"

 Chiu Yuen sighed.  "You did, Little Miss."

 I felt my eyes widen.  "I did?"

 "I told you, didn't I, how long I had known of your destiny, my Little Miss?  It turned out that I was not the only one with their eyes upon you.  It appears that half the eunuchs used to watch for you, and most of the maids."

 I swallowed as I remembered childish pranks, such as snowballs lobbed from within the shadows.  "They - they did?"

 "Yes, Little Miss.  So when you did not reappear for dinner, the day you left, I was asked about it."  Chiu Yuen rubbed her wrist, and I felt a sudden chill.  My eyes narrowed as I saw the bruise.

 "Don't look like that, Little Miss!  This bruise was just an accident, from when I was made to sit down.  Long stopped them before they could do anything more to me."

 "Long?" Now that was a surprise to me.  Long was one of the most senior eunuchs in the Palace.  He was also about the only senior eunuch who ever behaved as if he noticed me, and had always treated me with respect.  Still, there is a great difference between a daughter of the Great Khan and her nursemaid; that he would protect a woman of Chui Yuen's status was a highly unusual act for an eunuch of his rank.

 For some reason, a brush of colour suddenly swept along Chiu Yuen's cheekbones.  "Long and I have been... friends for several years," she replied diffidently, "and he has always been very... kind to me."

 Two weeks before, I would not have heard those pauses.  Now, I could only wonder at what I wasn't hearing.  "I'm glad to hear that," I replied lightly, so as not to let her know what I'd heard.

 "So they sat me down and asked me where you were, and did not let me leave the servant's dining room until I had told them all about Lady Takiko and how you and she had left.  Among them was Zhong, who is -"

 "The Great Khan's confidant," I whispered.

 "Yes, Little Miss.  So he undoubtedly carried the story straight to the Great Khan."

 "I still don't see why that would affect Li Jiang's rank," I said quietly.

 "With the whole Palace abuzz with the fact that the First Shichiseishi had been a daughter of the Great Khan, he could not ignore your disappearance, Little Miss.  You were not here to heap honours upon, so he had to give recognition to your mother, for bearing you."

 "I heard a lot of rumours in the marketplaces," I said thoughtfully.  "They all said I was a great beauty and the treasured daughter of the Great Khan.  I almost died laughing."

 "That isn't such a joke anymore, Little Miss," Chiu Yuen replied slowly.  "The Great Khan has named you a High Princess, and in the last proclamation to the people, you were spoken of as 'the fair flower of Hokkan'."

 I blinked.  Then, I said slowly, "Why?"

 Chiu Yuen shrugged.  "Things are looking bad, Little Miss.  We have a threatened war on our border, and traders don't come when there's war.  We've all been praying for the Priestess of Genbu, and when she appears, the first person to follow her is the Great Khan's own daughter.  If he makes it look like you left with his blessings, then it looks like he's backing her.  And if it doesn't work, he can say he sacrificed his beloved daughter to the good of the country."

 I felt my lips twist.  "That sounds like him."

 "Don't make that face, Little Miss! Your face might freeze that way!"

 That restored my good humour.  "Why, Chiu Yuen," I teased, "I thought you knew that only happens when the wind blows south-south-west!"

 And that, in turn, restored hers.  "Mayhap so, and mayhap no, and mayhap we will never know," she replied cheerfully, one of her favourite sayings.  "But tell me more of your star-brothers - you say you have found four of the six?"

 I stayed for an hour, but after that time, I dared not remain.

 Chiu Yuen agreed with me.  "The Great Khan has only gone to the High Temple to burn incense for the Priestess of Genbu's success," she told me.  "We can expect him back within an hour.  And I do not think you wish to be found here, do you, Little Miss?"

 So I bade her a second farewell, cloaked myself in shadows once more, and ghosted out of the gate.

 I was almost too late.  No sooner was I outside the gate than the scent of roses assaulted my nose and I heard the cry, "Make way!  Make way!"

 So I did.  I fled down the nearest alley and ran until I was out of breath.  And thoroughly, completely lost.

  I really had to start thinking before I acted, I decided, as I found myself wandering the streets of Tolan.  The afternoon sunlight washed the street and there were no patches of shadow, so I had to reluctantly release my shadow and venture out, clad only in my clothing.  Which was perfectly respectable, but still, no protection from eyes.

 "Hey, pretty lady...."

 Or street boys who were bored.  I ignored them.

 "We're talkin' to ya, girl!"  My shoulder was roughly grasped and I was spun around.  I didn't hesitate, but simply continued the spin, letting the momentum wrench me out of the boy's hand and away from him.  I took the opportunity and ducked away from the group, running into an alley....

 .... Which turned out to be a dead end.

 I spun on my heel, turning to face the three (Do these sort of boys always gang up in threes? I thought wildly) who were blocking off the end of the alley.

 Drawing in a deep breath, I was trying desperately to think of a way out of this one when the sound of hoofbeats came thudding down the street outside.  I expected them to go past, but instead the rider came galloping into the alley.  One of the street toughs got kicked as he tried to dive out of the way.  The young man on the back of the horse wheeled his mount around, holding his hand out to me.  I didn't reject this gift of luck and flung myself up onto the horse.  Then we were thundering down the street.

 The rider definitely had a destination in mind, and I wasn't sure it was a place I wanted to be.  "Where are we going?" I asked, over the hoofbeats.

 The young man tilted his head down to look at me, and I immediately lost all my thoughts.  Some strands of his long black hair had come undone from the tie at the nape of his neck, falling across his face and his strong, hawklike features.  His eyes were dark, dark green, richest beryl, darkest jade.  I could have stared at him forever.

 "My house,"  he replied.

 His house?  That was more sobering than a pail of cold water.  I stiffened in his arms.

 "My family will be delighted to meet you, Uruki," he added.

 Family?  And....

 "How do you know who I am?" I demanded suspiciously.

 He smiled, a heartbreaker's smile, and transferred the reins to his right hand.  Then he used the left to roll up his right sleeve, displaying the symbol 'Niu' on his right bicep.  "The stones told me," he said simply.

 "You're Iname?" I asked disbelievingly.

 "So I am.  It must be your lucky day!"

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