Yatagarasu Series
Volume 8:
The Raven's Reminiscence
Author: Abe Chisato
Part 2: That Night
After returning from Touke Territory to the capital, the preparations for Yukiya’s departure to the human world began in earnest. Chihaya came back from abroad, and the two of them studied human language and customs one-on-one.
“What do you plan to do about your name?” Chihaya asked.
Yukiya hadn’t thought about that at all.
In Yamauchi, a person used either their place of origin or their noble family’s name as a surname. In the human world, everyone had a surname, including the very poor. It was required for the bureaucratic apparatus of the human world.
“So I can’t go as Yukiya of Hokke, since that’s not a human surname. Hmmm… What did you do?”
“I called myself Yamanaka Chihaya.”
“You used your own name?”
“‘Chihaya’ is not an impossible name in the human world. It seems it’s more common for women, though.”
“I wonder if Yukiya works as-is.”
“I’ve seen similar names. Ask the Tengu to confirm.”
He had been tentatively planning to use Yamanaka Yukiya as his human world name, but shortly after that conversation, a notice arrived from the Ministry of Ceremonies. In anticipation of Yatagarasu going abroad in greater numbers in the future, it was recommended to use a name that indicated one’s origin in Yamauchi clearly.
“We have prepared surnames for each of the Four Families. We suggest Kitayama Yukiya for your association with the Hokke family.”
“Kitayama…”
“Is there a problem?” the official asked.
Yukiya shook his head. “No. That’s fine.” He wouldn’t have chosen to associate himself with the Hokke family, but it seemed that decision had been made for him. He had grown up as the second son of the governor of Taruhi Province in Hokke Territory. His immediate family was local nobility and nothing more. When he had been Nazukihiko’s personal attendant, he had pushed back against his Hokke origins, asking all and sundry why Yukiya of Taruhi wasn’t sufficient.
At some point, he’d stopped denying his ancestry. His mother was the daughter of the Lord of Hokke. He couldn’t remember when he’d first embraced that part of himself. Looking back now, he realized that it had been years since anyone in the Imperial Court had thought of him primarily as someone from Taruhi Village.
He laughed humorlessly and then excused himself.
Other arrangements for his absence were made. His role as military strategist for Yamauchi’s combined armies was transferred to a designated successor. The responsibility of leading the Yamauchishu who guarded the imperial family passed to Chihaya.
“You’ll be fine,” Chihaya said. He was not the kind of man who wasted words on reassurance. “If you run into trouble in daily life, the Tengu will help you out.”
Those were the last words of advice Chihaya ever gave him.
After every possible preparation had been made, the day of Yukiya’s departure arrived.
“I’ll be off, then,” Yukiya said to the Golden Raven in the Imperial Hall.
“Yes.” His expression was grave. “When you return, there is something I want to discuss with you.”
His formal tone made Yukiya frown. “If it’s an important matter, I’d rather hear it now.”
“No. We will speak after you have seen the human world. I want to know what you think of it, and I don’t want you to have any preconceptions.”
There was no arguing with that, so Yukiya didn’t bother trying. “Understood.”
“Your knowledge, when you come back, will be something rare.” The Golden Raven rose from his seat and clasped Yukiya’s shoulder briefly in farewell. “I’m counting on you.”
Akeru accompanied Yukiya from the Imperial Hall to the Gate of the Vermilion Bird.
“If you ruin your health, you won’t be able to do anything,” he said sternly. “So take care of yourself.”
Who are you, my dead mother? Yukiya thought but didn’t say. “I’m leaving everything here to you,” he said. Akeru would be managing the Golden Raven’s affairs while Yukiya was gone.
“I’ll handle it. Go, and don’t worry about anything here.”
Yukiya mounted his horse and headed for the Gate of the Vermilion Bird. The gate itself was large and painted red. Beyond it was a cave, and beyond that was a mechanized vehicle that carried cargo and (occasionally) people between worlds. It was a busy place, full of trade officials, merchants, and the sound of many crates being moved.
Today the flow of goods had been halted for the occasion of a Yatagarasu leaving Yamauchi. This was a rare event. Several officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were present.
Mixed in among the waiting officials was a Yamauchishu who wasn’t on duty today.
“I pray for the success of the strategist’s journey abroad,” Haruma said. He bowed to Yukiya with exaggerated politeness.
Haruma had been Yukiya’s assistant since his student days in the Keisōin. Even now, as a fully ranked Yamauchishu, he referred to himself in that way without embarrassment. In principle, there was no hierarchy among the Yamauchishu. In practice, old relationships persisted.
Yukiya hadn’t expected to see Haruma here. His old friend’s face was earnest and slightly solemn. His usual timidity was nowhere in evidence. He’d come here for his own reasons and wouldn’t bolt even if Yukiya commanded him to leave.
“You’re being considered for the next study abroad posting, aren’t you?” Yukiya asked.
“Perhaps. What will actually happen, I can’t say.” He shrugged. He was short and thin for a Yamauchishu. He’d never been an imposing physical specimen. His mind, though, was like a steel trap. He never forgot anything, and he rarely missed details.
“Depending on how things go, I’ll put in a recommendation for you,” Yukiya said.
“That is more than I deserve. Please take care of yourself, sir.”
Yukiya went toward the mechanized cart that would take him to the human world and hopped in. A Tengu was there awaiting him. The diminutive man wore a crow-shaped mask. He was one of the King of the Tengu’s servants. The King of the Tengu made all of the arrangements in the human world for a Yatagarasu to study abroad.
“My name is Kitayama Yukiya,” he said in the human world language that Chihaya had taught him. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“My, how polite,” the Tengu said in the language of the Yatagarasu. “It’s nice to meet you, too. In the human world, I go by Hara.”
“Mr. Hara? Or Lord Hara?”
“Mr. Hara is fine,” he said cheerfully. His hand rested on the side of the mechanized cart. There was a bench-like seat along one side; Yukiya sat.
Mr. Hara operated some kind of dial or lever. The cart lurched into motion with a rattling clatter. They traveled toward the cave at high speed. Wind roared past his ears. The cave’s darkness closed around them.
Chihaya had gone back and forth between Yamauchi and the human world many times. This was Yukiya’s first time leaving home.
The human world’s air smelled strange. Yukiya scented iron on the wind. There was a stillness that he associated with tears in Yamauchi’s barrier magic. He thought about the tears in reality he’d seen with Nazukihiko before he became emperor—before Yukiya swore to serve him. He hadn’t thought about those experiences for many years. The ghost lights visible through tears in the barrier were lights from the human world. Yukiya had seen them many times without really understanding what they were. When he’d first seen them, he’d thought they were fallen stars, eerie and inexplicable.
At the time, Yukiya had believed that “true Golden Raven” was just a title. A useful fiction that allowed some men to take power and oppress others. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
The difference between a true Golden Raven and the emperor who reigned before him was as vast as the gap between the earth and the sky. True Golden Ravens had powers that they could use to preserve Yamauchi and keep it safe. The current emperor had the power to mend tears in Yamauchi’s barrier magic. He’d been born with that power. He had taken Yukiya to see the tears in the barrier so that Yukiya would understand the danger Yamauchi was in.
Yukiya remembered ghost lights glittering around him, beautiful and terrible, as he traveled to the human world. That experience and this one felt similar, but this time his lord wasn’t with him.
Emperor Nazukihiko remained in Yamauchi while Yukiya entered the human world.
***
He’d thought it would be unbearable to watch his homeland be swallowed by ghost lights, but Yukiya managed to enter the human world without incident. Yamauchi remained intact, as far as he could tell. After leaving the cave, Yukiya got off the mechanized cart and was taken to a house by a lake. Mr. Hara informed him that his feather robe would soon fade away, so he’d have to change into human clothing soon so that he wouldn’t attract attention.
Yukiya changed into soft, stretchy garments unlike anything he had worn before. After that, he was guided to the King of the Tengu in his study.
The study was full of things that Yukiya had never seen in Yamauchi. A device hung from the ceiling like a windmill tilted on its side; it spun on its own, nearly soundless. Along one wall, vividly colored fish swam in a glass tank, the water lit from within.
“Hey, you made it.”
The King of the Tengu was a man of middling height wearing silver-rimmed spectacles perched on the edge of his nose. His hair was light-colored and peppered with gray. He had freckles across his cheeks and smile lines etched around his mouth.
“I am Junten, the King of the Tengu. In the human world, I go by Tanimura Masaru.”
Junten was the thread that connected the human world and Yamauchi. He had been that thread since Yamauchi’s founding. He likely understood Yamauchi from the outside better than anyone except the Golden Raven himself.
Yukiya offered the same polite greeting he had given Mr. Hara. Junten received it with visible satisfaction.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Junten said. He gestured toward a long bench with leather upholstery. “Please sit down. Before you settle in, we should talk.”
Yukiya sat. The seat of the bench compressed under him in a way he found slightly alarming.
Junten produced cold tea from somewhere and set it in front of him.
Yukiya took a sip. The flavor was nothing like Yamauchi’s tea, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was clear and clean and sharp; just one sip made him feel more alert.
“It’s herbal tea. Do you like it?” Junten settled himself on a similar seat across the table. “At my age, you have to be careful about caffeine.” He stated this with great authority despite the fact that he appeared to be about the same age as Yukiya, if not younger.
“Now, then.” He set down his cup. “Chihaya has already covered this, I’m sure, but I want to confirm once more what you are here to do.”
“I am here to search for ways to continue Yamauchi’s existence in the human world,” Yukiya said. “Perhaps there is some way to prevent Yamauchi itself from collapsing, which would be ideal. But we must also think about how to preserve our people when the collapse comes, whether that means supporting a collapsed Yamauchi from outside or moving people back and forth between worlds. Since we don’t know what form the collapse will take, we must prepare for the worst-case scenario.”
“I agree for the most part,” Junten said, nodding. “Yamauchi has been brought to the brink of ruin by the scheming of the Kuisaru, but I believe that there is still hope to save it.”
Yukiya sat up straighter in his seat.
Junten adjusted his glasses. “If things were proceeding exactly as the Kuisaru intended, Yamauchi would have been destroyed long ago—the moment the old mountain god was brought down. Yamauchi was no longer needed for the new mountain god, but it didn’t just disappear like it should have.” His voice was low and quiet, like he was speaking about a dead friend. “To the great surprise of the Kuisaru, the new mountain god inherited enough of the old god’s nature that Yamauchi still exists. For that, we owe thanks to Princess Tamayori.” He smiled a little. “When the shrine maiden who served the old mountain god sided with the new one, his nature became aligned with that of the former mountain god. Yamauchi found its footing again. I believe that when the current mountain god dies, we can still carry out the rebirth ritual as we have until now, and Yamauchi will continue to exist.”
Junten looked Yukiya in the eye.
Yukiya had heard the broad strokes of all this from Chihaya before. Nothing Junten had said so far surprised him.
“But that is a problem in and of itself, isn’t it?” Yukiya asked. “We cannot call the status quo stable, or even desirable.”
“Yes,” Junten said. “The mountain god and Princess Tamayori have no interest in the Yatagarasu. Or in the Tengu, for that matter. Yamauchi still exists, so they are still alive, but they have not contacted us or you. Any contact from our side is met with silence.” He spread his hands. “I don’t know what they’re thinking. The fact that they have cut off contact to this extent suggests that even if we perform the ritual, they may have no intention of leaving the divine realm. But we can’t give up without even trying.” He paused. “The mountain god and Princess Tamayori have human emotions, which makes them unpredictable. Perhaps they can be convinced to participate in a ritual to assist Yamauchi, and perhaps not. I believe that we must attempt the ritual regardless. It’s our best chance to save Yamauchi.”
But who would perform the ritual? The village around Mt. Ara was deserted now. There was no one left who knew how to perform it.
“I’ve bought the land around Mt. Ara,” Junten said. “Everything I could, anyhow. I am also looking for additional properties nearby, but I’ve met with some setbacks.” He shrugged with theatrical despair.
“Have you purchased Mt. Ara itself?” Yukiya asked. He knew about the concept of land ownership in the human world. If he were Junten, he would have purchased Mt. Ara first.
Junten looked down at the table. He hadn’t wanted Yukiya to ask that question.
“No. The current owner is a human who refuses to sell.”
Yukiya stared at him. “A human? Who?”
“I only learned this recently,” Junten said defensively. “The land rights to Mt. Ara are complicated. I looked into purchasing them right after the new mountain god took over, but there were legal difficulties. I assumed that everyone would have the same problem acquiring the mountain, but I was wrong. The current owner is a human who tried to develop Mt. Ara in the past, but he gave up on that. I approached him, thinking he’d surely be willing to sell land that he’s not doing anything with. But he hasn’t agreed to sell yet. At least we know he won’t sell it easily.”
Yukiya did not think this was good news. It wasn’t safe for a human, any human, to own Mt. Ara. If the owner decided to develop the mountain again by building new roads and buildings, the secret of Yamauchi’s existence might be discovered. A chill went up Yukiya’s spine.
He could not leave things entirely to the Tengu. He had to become capable of managing matters like these himself.
“Leave the Mt. Ara negotiations to me,” Junten said. “I will acquire Mt. Ara; don’t worry.” He smiled with great satisfaction. “Someday, you’ll buy it from me. The price will be completely reasonable, I assure you. Mt. Ara is small for a mountain.”
Junten’s expression became grave. “Rebuilding Sannai Village and relearning the lost ritual are greater difficulties, I’m afraid. We need human residents in the village. I want you to think about how to make that happen. I will be considering strategies to achieve that goal as well.”
“Understood.”
“Next, we must obtain more human currency. Villages don’t maintain themselves, and we’ll need funds if we ever have to resettle Yamauchi’s people in the human world. The Tengu will support these efforts as much as possible, with one caveat: our own people must not suffer or be found out. We will involve ourselves in secret, or not at all.”
The Tengu wished for Sannai Village to be rebuilt because the village’s presence benefited Tengu trade operations. Another man might have considered the Tengu attitude toward the village cold-hearted. Yukiya thought it was smart, and he was glad that Junten was being so open about his motives. It was easier to deal with people who laid all their cards on the table.
“While you’re here, consider ways of growing Sannai Village and earning human currency. When the Golden Raven was here, he tried various approaches that weren’t terribly effective.” He looked at Yukiya as if he were measuring his capabilities with his eyes. “And one more thing: you’re not allowed to steal Tengu money. We’ll cooperate with the Yatagarasu as best we can, but we will not risk causing harm to ourselves or our operations. If I catch you stealing from us, you will be punished.”
Yukiya nodded. “That’s perfectly reasonable.”
Chihaya had laid out the broad strokes of studying abroad in the human world to him before. Any Yatagarasu sponsored by Junten would work for the Tengu for a wage paid in human currency. The Tengu were aware of these arrangements. Yukiya and Junten weren’t discussing them directly because now was the time to negotiate, not to rehash information already known to both of them.
“Do not infringe on Tengu interests, and assist us someday when we need it,” Junten said. “If you can promise that, we will offer you our full cooperation.”
The Tengu were skilled at making deals because they only ever made deals that benefited them. They were fair-weather friends. During the great war against the Kuisaru, they had offered no assistance aside from increased trade. If the Yatagarasu ever became a liability, the Tengu would deny all association between them.
“I promise,” Yukiya said. He could hardly answer otherwise.
“Then this negotiation is concluded.” Junten stood and held out his hand.
Yukiya looked at it.
“A handshake,” Junten explained. “You’ll need to become a diplomat and a capable merchant in the human world. A handshake is proof that there is no hostility between parties and that a friendly agreement has been reached.”
Yukiya stood and took the offered hand.
“Good.” Junten released his hand and signaled to Mr. Hara, who had been waiting nearby. Hara produced a gray sheet of paper covered in fine writing, spread it on the floor, placed a chair on top of it, and then gestured for Yukiya to sit.
After Yukiya sat in the chair, Mr. Hara took out a pair of scissors with silver blades from his pocket. He applied the scissors to Yukiya’s hair without ceremony or hesitation.
Yukiya’s long brown hair reached the center of his back. Mr. Hara was cutting it all away. Each snip near Yukiya’s ear made him want to flinch. Few people cut their hair in Yamauchi. A noble cutting their hair short indicated monastic commitment, and even then, priests and priestesses grew their hair to shoulder length.
Mr. Hara worked with efficiency and practiced care. He checked his work several times and finally nodded.
Yukiya stood up, looking down at his shorn hair on the ground with a complicated expression on his face. He was shown a mirror. He looked miserable. His hair was as short as a newborn infant’s.
How irritating, he thought. He frowned at his reflection.
“It suits you,” Junten said, grinning. “Welcome to the human world, Kitayama Yukiya. While you’re here, I’m your boss.”
When they went outside, a four-wheeled vehicle was waiting for them. It was made of gleaming, shiny metal and built low to the ground. This was an automobile. Yukiya had heard descriptions of them before.
The inside of the car smelled of metal and made him feel slightly ill. He got in, his face composed.
Mr. Hara got in the driver’s seat and turned the car on. As they drove, Yukiya looked back at Mt. Ara through the rear window.
Compared to the mountain that housed Yamauchi’s Imperial Court, it was absurdly small—not much more than a hill, really. A person could climb it in an afternoon easily.
Contained within that hill was Yamauchi. Everyone he’d ever known was there. He had to find a way to protect it without relying on the Tengu.
The scenery from the car window was very strange. They drove by mountains and hills at first, but as they progressed, the number of cars multiplied and buildings lined both sides of the widening road. The houses were unlike anything in Yamauchi. Some were vaguely familiar in shape, but others were made of stacked red stones, or carved from single massive slabs, or painted in colors he had never seen used on any building before.
“This is still the countryside,” Junten remarked. “We’re not in the city yet.”
“What is that?” Yukiya asked, pointing to a building. “And that over there?”
Junten answered his questions without complaint. “From here, we’ll take the expressway toward Tokyo. The city is… different. You’ll be surprised.”
Yukiya knew the name Tokyo. It was supposed to be the center of the human world, their equivalent of the Imperial Court.
“What is an expressway?”
“As you can see, cars travel quite fast here. One wrong move and there could be a serious accident, so there are speed limits. The limits differ depending on the road.”
“But I’ve heard the human world has flying carriages. Why not use those?”
“You mean airplanes? They exist, but operating them is complicated. Training pilots—the people who operate the airplane, the equivalent of charioteers—costs money, and flying an airplane costs money, too.” Junten looked amused. “Yatagarasu have wings. Humans don’t. Assume that your relationship to air travel here is limited.”
“So the large cargo vehicles we passed earlier handle human world logistics?”
“That depends on the distance, and the vehicle. Humans use airplanes, ships, railways, cars, and motorcycles, among other options. This world is more complex than you’re thinking. Many different people with their own cultures and languages have divided the land between them. Travel distances here are incomparable to distances within Yamauchi.”
Yukiya knew this wasn’t meant as a slight, but he felt like a frog at the bottom of a well all the same. His first glimpse of Tokyo confirmed Junten’s statements: the human world was vast and complex. He would not—could not—learn all about it in an afternoon.
Tall buildings filled the plain like a second mountain range. They were not mountains, but they were as tall as the grandest temples Yukiya had ever seen, all made of glass and stone. He tried to count them, but there were thousands. The roads below them were immaculate, and there were crowds of people on the road, in the cars, everywhere. He tried to estimate the population of the immediate area and arrived at figures that made him dizzy. There might be more people in his line of sight right now than there were in the whole of Hokke Territory.
The King of the Tengu’s Tokyo home was a unit on the highest floor of what Junten called an apartment building. They left the car in a parking area below the building, stepped into a device that carried them upward, and arrived at the top of the building.
Junten unlocked a door with a key, and lights flashed on automatically, like magic. The walls and floor were covered in pale stone patterned with a faint ink wash. A large painting hung on one wall depicting something that Yukiya could not immediately identify. All of the furnishings were black. Along one wall, a glass tank like the one at the lakeside lodge held fish that swam languidly through lit water.
Junten operated some kind of switch or lever. A cloth panel along one wall folded itself upward with a flat mechanical sound. What it revealed was not a wall but an expanse of glass.
They had arrived after dark. Below the window were ghost lights, the fallen-star scattering illumination of a human city at night. Yukiya was seeing ghost lights in the human world this time, and not from within of Yamauchi. There were no shreds of barrier magic between him and the eerie light.
Yukiya wasn’t easily dazzled by beauty or spectacle, but Tokyo at night was an obviously beautiful thing. He could also tell that this was a very expensive place to live, even without knowledge of what apartments in Tokyo cost.
The building was tall enough to be a mountain in itself. Each floor and each room had an individual owner, all of them living their lives with barely any connection to one another.
“Doesn’t that make you uneasy? Not knowing who’s next door?” Yukiya asked.
“It’s convenient,” Junten said. “Nobody looks at you twice.” He grinned. He had several other properties, and there were specific reasons he had chosen this one to bring Yukiya to first. “You’ll stay here until you’re used to the human world. Take the room Chihaya was using and unpack. Once you leave this building, you must not say a single word in the language of the Yatagarasu. Until you can manage on your own, Mr. Hara will look after you. After you’ve found your footing, I’ll introduce you to human work contacts and to others who live among humans as we do.”
With that, Junten collapsed onto a black leather sofa in the center of the room with the satisfaction of a man who had been productive and now intended to enjoy idleness. “I’m starved. Let’s eat.”
“You weren’t even driving,” Mr. Hara said, distinctly unimpressed.
“We’re getting delivery!” Junten announced. “Pizza! I want pizza.”
The first food Yukiya ate in the human world was a Margherita pizza, generously covered in sweet tomato sauce and melted cheese. He thought that the human world’s food was distinctly flavorful, but he didn’t know if he enjoyed it or not.
***
From the next morning onward, Yukiya did housework while learning about the human world under Mr. Hara’s instruction.
During the day, while Junten went out in work clothes, Mr. Hara taught Yukiya many things. How water came out of a tap with a single touch. What lights that used neither fire nor magic actually were. The concept of a country. The political system by which many humans participated in their own governance. The existence of foreign countries that existed beyond this country’s borders and a vast expanse of water called an ocean.
When they went out shopping, Mr. Hara and Yukiya bought ingredients for dinner at a supermarket, moving through the aisles among ordinary humans. At a drugstore, Mr. Hara bought bleach for cleaning the toilet, which was a task Yukiya had not previously considered in detail. When something caught his interest, he pointed at it and asked for an explanation. When a shop clerk asked him, “Are you from overseas?” Yukiya smiled and answered, “I’m a foreign exchange student.”
The human world was not as outrageous or uncomfortable as Yukiya had feared at first, but the buildings were still overwhelming sometimes. All the houses were built out of different materials. Vehicles didn’t all look the same. Clothing was as varied as the people on the street. The rhythm of everyday life and the comforting routine he fell into became familiar enough over time for Yukiya to ignore much of his homesickness.
Humans and Yatagarasu were more similar than he’d expected. Until now, the only human Yukiya had seen up close was a frightened girl, glimpsed from the wrong side of a crisis. Watching humans live their ordinary lives, he realized that he had been carrying an unnecessary prejudice against humans. He’d been acting as if they were hostile, alien creatures, but they were neither.
The days of cooking, doing laundry, and cleaning while Mr. Hara taught him things were somewhat difficult. They were also deliberate and purposeful. Housework had seemed like a waste of time on his first day, but Mr. Hara and Junten insisted that these tasks were part of the normal human experience. When Yukiya learned that Junten had put the Golden Raven through the same thing when he was still a boy studying abroad, a number of things about his lord’s domestic habits suddenly made a good deal more sense to him.
The television was not sorcery but a mechanism of science. Humans had no magic, only science and technology. Yukiya learned that electrical appliances broke down when brought into Yamauchi. The rules that governed the human world and the rules that governed Yamauchi were entirely different.
The more he learned, the more there was to learn. The human world was so vast that it might as well be limitless. The power of science was immense, but it was not easily quantifiable; new scientific discoveries were being made every single day. The destructive capacity of weapons that science had produced sent a chill through him.
Barriers like the ones that existed in Yamauchi did not exist in the human world. There was nothing protecting this world from itself.
Mr. Hara told him that a Tengu had once brought a gun into Yamauchi. It had rusted and rotted away on contact with Yamauchi’s air. Knives made of stainless steel and carbon steel had gone as soft as wet rice crackers in moments.
Science and technology were the magic of the human world. Yamauchi’s magic was inherited from the mountain god’s power and will.
Yukiya understood that being in the human world was inherently a vulnerable position. There was no mountain god to defend him or the other Yatagarasu here. He thought about what it meant to live in a world that a god defended and sustained… and what it would be like to lose that protection.
***
After being taken to various places and managing well enough at simple day-to-day tasks, Junten took Yukiya to a clothing store in Ginza and had a suit made for him by a tailor.
“Listen, Mr. Kitayama. Remember this. In the places I’m going to take you from now on, there are a lot of people who will try to assess your worth by the suit and watch you’re wearing. Don’t misunderstand me: you won’t simply be wearing expensive clothes. You need to wear things that suit you and carry yourself with confidence. People speak differently to people they respect. If you want others to respect you, you’ll need to look like them and speak like them so that they’ll assume you share their values. That’s what these clothes are for: making a good impression so that others will agree to go into business with you.”
Junten took Yukiya to a party after his first tailored suit was delivered. The room was full of people who would have been nobles in Yamauchi. The cheerful, easy greetings they exchanged with one another were not entirely unlike the surface behavior of the Four Families. Yukiya saw through their facades easily. He didn’t meet a single honest or trustworthy person at that party.
In the taxi on the way back, Yukiya considered the idea that earning foreign currency would require regular dealings with people like the ones he’d just met. A headache settled in behind his eyes and stayed there.
He was assigned miscellaneous errands for Junten’s work in addition to the housework, and he managed everything without difficulty. Junten’s primary trading partner, whoever that was, had not been introduced to him yet.
The human world included nonhumans besides the Tengu. He had not yet met any of them, but from scattered pieces of what the Tengu said and did not say, he could tell they were extremely cautious. Nonhumans needed to protect themselves. The human world had no easy category for what they were. Yukiya understood that kind of caution, being a nonhuman himself.
Any Yatagarasu who settled in the human world would be a permanent outsider. They would have to conceal their true nature. The humans respected money and class, which couldn’t be guaranteed for Yatagarasu settlers. Junten’s help was real, but who knew how long the alliance between the Yatagarasu and the Tengu would hold? While the Tengu were on his side, Yukiya had to learn as much as possible.
He understood viscerally why Chihaya kept insisting that more Yatagarasu needed to be sent abroad.
***
Yukiya was completely exhausted. Junten had started using him as a secretary in business meetings a few months ago. He had sticky notes plastered all over the notebook in his briefcase. It was late at night; Yukiya had worked all day and gone to another horrid party with Junten that night. He stepped into the apartment gratefully; he could barely keep his eyes open.
The room he had taken over from Chihaya was smaller than Junten’s, but it was more than sufficient for Yukiya’s needs. A desk lined with dictionaries covered in many sticky notes rested along one wall. The bed was placed opposite the desk, near a window. The walk-in closet contained uniforms: shirts and suits in the same colors. He had only one set of casual clothes that he’d bought at a department store.
Ever since he had started assisting Junten in his work, he had been given money as a wage. He’d barely spent any of it.
Junten often expressed distaste at seeing Yukiya’s spartan, sparsely furnished room and possessions. “This looks like the room of a corporate wage slave who works for a black company. Nazukihiko and Chihaya bought things for themselves, you know. You’re allowed to do that.”
Yukiya shook his head. He was in the human world now, but he’d return to Yamauchi soon enough. He didn’t feel the need to buy or keep souvenirs from the human world, and he saw no point in improving his temporary living conditions. He was learning a lot about the human world, which was good: he was fulfilling his mission. He wouldn’t be stuck here forever. He wanted to go home.
Worn out to the point he could barely see, Yukiya flung himself onto his bed fully clothed. The bedclothes were clean and smelled like fabric softener. It had been almost exactly a year since his arrival in the human world. He’d submitted regular reports in writing, but soon he’d be summoned back to Yamauchi to report in person to the Golden Raven.
Before he fell asleep, Yukiya remembered that the Golden Raven had wanted to discuss something important with him before he left. What was it? He’d forgotten.
***
The phone rang.
Yukiya opened his eyes and frowned at the brightness all around him. He’d left his desk light on and it was shining in his face.
His cell phone was on the bed next to him, ringing loudly in the stillness of the night.
I must have fallen asleep, Yukiya thought blearily. He picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Yukiya frowned. “Huh?”
The digital clock by the bedside showed that it was well past midnight. This couldn’t possibly be a work-related call. Suspicious, Yukiya pressed the phone to his ear and listened carefully.
***
On a dark night, pale hydrangeas bloomed round and full.
A man standing among the flowers looked Yukiya’s way. The hydrangea petals dripped water like weeping moons.
“Why?” the man asked softly.
***
“Sumi.”
Hamayū was sitting next to her daughter when she heard her husband call her by her childhood name. She looked around. There was no sign of the Golden Raven anywhere.
“Did you just hear His Imperial Majesty’s voice?” she asked.
Kikuno blinked. Beside her, Shion and Akane were eating their evening meal.
“No, I didn’t hear anything,” Kikuno said. There had been no notice of a visit, either. “Perhaps you misheard something? It is raining.”
“No…” Hamayū knew his voice. She wouldn’t mistake it for anything else. She left her seat, trance-like, guided by a dark foreboding she couldn’t explain. She stepped outside onto the wet veranda.
Rain fell softly around her. The evening air was crisp and cold. The sun had set, but a little light lingered in the sky. Beneath rain clouds moving in slow, uneasy coils, the mountain sloped serenely to its peak, the Imperial Court locked inside it.
Hamayū gazed into a gray sky deepening toward black, and then she saw it: a giant shadow.
A Yatagarasu flying through the rain.
They were three times the size of an ordinary horse, easily. Nothing that size was a horse. Around them, smaller shadows—Yamauchishu on horseback—crowded close, clinging to the figure.
Wings spread, the huge Yatagarasu had an overwhelming presence.
They were flying straight toward her.
There was only one person in all of Yamauchi who had a raven form that large.
“Nazukihiko…” Hamayū stepped down from the veranda to the muddy ground, still barefoot.
This was wrong: terribly wrong. Nazukihiko almost never took raven form. She could count on one hand the number of times he’d transformed since their marriage almost ten years ago. He hadn’t transformed even once since he’d become emperor. Why now?
“Nazukihiko! Nazukihiko!” Hamayū was running before she realized it, sprinting through the herb garden past startled guards and maids. She vaulted the hedge without slowing and came down on the other side, trampling flowers and shrubs, running toward the shadow in the sky with her face turned up to the rain.
He would have fallen out of the sky without support. The way he was flying wasn’t right. He didn’t appear injured, but he couldn’t fly in a straight line without aid.
“Nazukihiko!” Hamayū screamed at the sky.
He fell. It wasn’t a glide or a controlled landing. Hamayū threw herself forward to catch him, to break his fall so that he wouldn’t be hurt. She went down with him, both of them rolling in the mud together.
He was brutally heavy. His glossy feathers covered her face. Hamayū got her hands under him and pushed his face up from where it had plunged into muddy water and held him still. People who had come running after her shouted words she couldn’t hear.
Hamayū wiped the mud from Nazukihiko’s beak. The smell of blood was thick in the air; her hands shook. Everything shook. She would not have been surprised to learn that there was an earthquake, but there was not. Her own personal world was shaking, tilted on its head.
She turned and screamed at whoever was nearest, “Get a doctor! Now! Hurry!”
Responding to her voice, the feathers brushing her arms shifted and stood on end.
Hamayū looked up sharply. Nazukihiko was trying to transform, making a sound like scales being torn forcibly from a living thing. Feathers that had covered his face drew back into the skin. Some peeled away and fell. His white face was laid bare to Hamayū’s inspection.
He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes weren’t focused on anything. He was not trying to focus them.
“Nazukihiko. Do you understand me? It’s me. It’s Sumi.”
His left wing began to take human form, and then the transformation stopped.
Only his face, his neck, and his right arm were human. His left arm and lower body remained covered in black feathers, his lower body still enormous and wrong. He had talons where feet should be. He looked as if a raven and a man had been cut apart and spliced back together.
Nazukihiko was shaking like she was, breathing painfully as life left his limbs.
Hamayū understood everything.
He was barely alive. He had come here to fulfill his promise to her—the promise that she should be the one with him at the end. He had flown all the way here, dying, for the sake of that old promise.
“Thank you,” she said softly. It felt inadequate, but she didn’t know what else to say. She sounded strangely calm to herself.
Nazukihiko let out a shuddering breath—his last breath. Hamayū watched closely as his bristling feathers lay quietly down.
In the ninth year of his reign on the third day of the month of cool sunsets, Nazukihiko, the true Golden Raven, perished in Empress Hamayū’s arms.
***
Natsuka received the news in his private residence adjacent to Clear Mirror Temple. He had finished his duties for the day, changed into comfortable clothes, and was just sitting down to eat dinner with his attendants.
A shadow covered the last of the fading sunlight as a Yatagarasu in raven form dove into the garden with enough force to scatter gravel. Rokon had his greatsword in hand before anyone else reacted, but then he stopped dead, one eyebrow raised.
Red cord wrapped around the sword hanging from the intruder’s waist. The horse he rode also carried a red-corded sword.
“Those are Yamauchishu,” Rokon said.
The temple guards were on the move, startled. They didn’t attack, but they approached with exaggerated caution. That was not protocol for Yamauchishu or temple guards. Everyone was briefly on the back foot until Rokon put himself between the guards and the Yamauchishu.
“State your business,” Rokon said.
The Yamauchishu in human form opened his mouth, then looked past Rokon’s considerable bulk and noticed Natsuka.
“Prince Natsuka! Please come to Shion Temple at once.”
“Has something happened to Princess Shion?” Natsuka asked, alarmed. He rose from his cushion.
“His Imperial Majesty is at Shion Temple.”
“What?”
Before he could ask why, the Yamauchishu added, “He has been injured.”
Natsuka’s heart skipped a beat. “How bad is it?”
“You should come quickly, Prince Natsuka.”
The Yamauchishu’s haste told him how serious the situation was. A Yamauchishu who neglected to report the extent of an injury could face consequences further up the chain of command. Ignoring protocol like this meant that Yamauchi was in a state of emergency.
Natsuka had no time to change. An attendant thrust something appropriate at him; he put it on over his priest’s robes and went outside. It was raining, and the sky was dark.
He didn’t care about getting wet. He mounted the horse that was brought out for him and rode hard for Shion Temple.
The rain lashed angrily at Natsuka and the horse. Natsuka could barely see to steer. He followed the Yamauchishu before him, his face streaked with rain. They landed on Shion Temple’s grounds scant minutes later.
It was deathly quiet. Yamauchishu carried lanterns that burned sugar crystals and led the way forward. A dark, huge shape lay sprawled in the temple’s medicinal herb garden. The plants were all crushed by the passing of many feet. Months of work had been ruined in the past hour.
Natsuka had never seen a Yatagarasu so large before. The thought arrived seconds ahead of understanding what he was looking at.
The blood drained from his face, and then he ran.
As he drew closer, the lantern light illuminated a human face and arm. Most of the body was in raven shape, but not all of it. Hamayū knelt in mud at Nazukihiko’s side, her head bowed and her arms around him. She didn’t look up when Natsuka approached. A maid stood nearby with shaking hands, holding a kimono stretched out wide on both sides to shield Empress Hamayū from the rain.
The maid looked hopefully at Natsuka. Her cheeks were wet, but he couldn’t tell if she was crying. The rain was getting worse.
A physician from Shion Temple stood rigid beside Hamayū and the maid, his hands stained with blood. He wasn’t moving. Nazukihiko was beyond medical aid. The physician’s eyes were wide open, fixed on the corpse before him.
Hamayū was as still as a statue. All her attention was on Nazukihiko. Her expression was cold and empty in the white lantern light.
Natsuka forced himself to look at his brother, his white face peaceful in death. There was almost no blood that he could see, but Nazukihiko’s gums were bleeding slightly. His eyes were still open and perfectly clear, but he wasn’t looking at anything.
His little brother, the true Golden Raven, Nazukihiko… was dead.
“Is it… is it really His Imperial Majesty?” Natsuka asked, stunned.
No one answered him. The rain said nothing. The herb garden said nothing.
Natsuka didn’t believe what he was seeing. This had to be a nightmare, right? Only nightmares were as illogical as this. He’d abdicated in his brother’s favor and had spent his life protecting him, and yet his brother was here before him, dead in the herb garden.
No. No, it can’t end this way. It can’t. Why is he dead?
Natsuka’s thoughts churned sluggishly forward. If this was a dream, he would wake from it. And if it wasn’t, there were things he had to do. Things that could not wait for grief.
“Who was in command?” Natsuka asked. “Where were the Yamauchishu?”
Splashing footsteps, and then a Yamauchishu came running out from the temple buildings. It was Chihaya, one of the Imperial Guards that his brother had trusted most.
“Prince Natsuka.” Chihaya bowed.
“What happened?”
“We don’t know.” Chihaya never wasted words. “After His Imperial Majesty dismissed everyone in the palace for the night, he disappeared. For reasons we do not yet understand, he appeared here. By that point he was already wounded. At present we do not know where Lord Akeru and one other Yamauchishu, who should have been at his side, have gone.”
“What caused his death?”
“This.” The physician came forward, trembling in a way that had nothing to do with the chilly air, and held out a short dagger.
A murder weapon.
“How are the Yamauchishu currently deployed?” Natsuka asked.
“To protect Princess Shion and Her Majesty the Empress, we have mobilized every available guard and secured this area. We have fully mobilized those who were on watch in the Imperial Palace, and they are gathering information. We have no reports from them yet. His Imperial Majesty appeared in raven form here without warning, and shortly after, he died.”
Natsuka clicked his tongue in irritation and pushed wet hair away from his face. Keep it together. Reproaching Chihaya would change nothing. The Yamauchishu had lost the Golden Raven. Yamauchi’s chain of command was in disarray.
“Rokon.”
Natsuka’s bodyguard stepped forward immediately. “At your command, Prince Natsuka.”
“Have the temple guards stand watch over Shion Temple. The Yamauchishu guarding this area should be redirected to the investigation.”
He raised his voice to the Yamauchishu who had gathered around him. They were waiting for orders.
“I am taking command of the Yamauchishu immediately. All of you, hold your positions and await further orders. As head priest of Clear Mirror Temple, I will make an urgent request to General Genya and the Aerial Army of Heaven. The Aerial Army of Heaven must seal this place off within the hour. No one approaches or leaves without my express permission.”
“Yes, Prince Natsuka,” Rokon said.
“If you have need of further orders, send to Clear Mirror Temple. I must strip my father of his right to command during this emergency before he causes more trouble.”
Yamauchishu briskly carried out commands, enlivened by purpose. Natsuka paid no attention to them. He took in the position of his brother’s body and wondered where he’d flown in from. Where had he been stabbed, and who had attacked him? He had to find witnesses who’d seen him flying.
What was happening at the Imperial Palace now?
Natsuka couldn’t leave Nazukihiko in the rain like this, but his size would make him difficult to move. The body wouldn’t fit on a stretcher.
In the mournful chaos, Natsuka turned to Chihaya, who had not moved from his side.
“Why did the Yamauchishu leave His Imperial Majesty alone?”
Chihaya didn’t waste his breath on apologies. “I don’t know. I believed he was in the Night Palace. I received a report that he was no longer there, and by the time I got here…” He paused. “I am not with him at every moment. The Yamauchishu who were assigned to His Imperial Majesty at the time of this incident were from the younger generation—those who entered after the Keisōin’s curriculum changed. They graduated during his reign.”
“Did His Imperial Majesty dismiss them himself?”
“Yes. And it appears he called for me specifically.”
“He called for you?”
“He summoned me to the Night Palace.” Chihaya’s face crumpled. “When I got there, he was gone. I was trying to figure out where he had disappeared to when an urgent message arrived from Shion Temple.” He ducked his head. “I don’t understand what happened. Not where he was stabbed, or why, or who did it.”
Natsuka exhaled slowly and then said, “I know who did this.” The mastermind behind this attack was obvious.
“I’m going to the Palace Above the Clouds immediately. I have to strip my father of command before he does something stupid.”
He didn’t wait for Chihaya’s response. He mounted his horse and rode off.
***
At that hour, Shiun no In’s maid was painting her toenails with clear polish.
The incense burning in the corner was her favorite. The tea she sipped tasted of flowers. Another maid fanned her face with practiced, unhurried strokes.
There was a commotion outside.
“Prince Natsuka, this is an outrage! Even if you are the head priest of Clear Mirror Temple, you can’t just barge in here at any hour of the day or night!” one of Shiun no In’s ladies-in-waiting scolded sharply. She shrieked in dismay.
Footsteps, heavy and rough, echoed in the hallway outside Shiun no In’s private rooms. Her son appeared in the doorway, his hair wild and standing on end, his shoulders soaked, his robe wet through, his face twisted by deep, fundamental rage.
Shiun no In looked at his face and understood that the Golden Raven was finally dead. Dead at last.
She didn’t let her satisfaction show. “What a commotion. Has something happened?”
Natsuka looked through the bamboo screen in front of her. His expression was eloquent even without words. “His Imperial Majesty has passed away,” he said through gritted teeth.
“What?!” She covered her mouth with her sleeve.
Internally, she was smiling. So it is done, she thought, consciously concealing her glee. “How dreadful. Did you come to bring this news to your mother in person?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” He laughed with open contempt. “My father’s residence is next door. You were on the way.”
The retired emperor did, indeed, live in the temple a few hundred yards away.
“I see. And what did His Imperial Majesty the retired emperor say?”
“What he always says. He spoke through an attendant and told me, ‘Handle it as you see fit.’” Natsuka sighed wearily. “To think: these are the parents the mountain god saw fit to give me.”
“You haven’t come to see me in such a long time, and this is how you greet your mother?”
His gaze was sharp enough to cut. He didn’t need to command silence for her to close her mouth.
“You did this to Nazukihiko,” Natsuka said. “Why? How could you do such a thing?”
“I have no idea what you’re referring to.”
“You’re going to play innocent?”
“You are completely mistaken.” Shiun no In gathered her dignity about her like a shield. “I had no part in any of this, I assure you.” She was still trying to repress a smile. She wasn’t sure that she was succeeding.
“His Imperial Majesty bent the Imperial Court too far to suit himself. This is the result. Proposing a female Golden Raven—how foolish! It is one thing to be a doting father; it is quite another to be a capable ruler. Is it so surprising that many would come to hate him for his blind stupidity and pride?” Her tone was scornful and pitying in equal measure. “Was this not the retribution that was always coming?”
Natsuka slashed through the bamboo screen in a single strike, sword in hand. He approached Shiun no In until he was close enough to touch her.
Shiun no In hadn’t seen Natsuka’s face so clearly in years. He didn’t resemble his father in the slightest, but he didn’t look much like her, either. He had grown into his own man, and she’d never really been able to call him hers. He had always opposed her.
Her ladies-in-waiting screamed in terror.
The tip of Natsuka’s sword rested in the hollow of Shiun no In’s throat.
Shiun no In laughed, unable to conceal her happiness any longer. “Let your anger take you, if that will satisfy you. Cut me down.” She looked up at him without fear, the blade steady at her throat. “There will be no female Golden Raven,” she said in a tone of finality. “There is only one path open to you now: to become the new Golden Raven. Hate me as much as you like. Kill me if you wish. I don’t mind.”
This was her victory, and she was going to enjoy it to the fullest. She had maneuvered Natsuka into this position. He had no choice but to do as she wanted. He would marry Nadeshiko, the beloved daughter of her younger brother. It would have been a bit better for Nadeshiko to marry earlier, of course, but she couldn’t turn back time, alas. Nadeshiko was young enough to bear children; that should suffice.
And when Nadeshiko bore a male heir, Nanke’s usurpation of imperial power would be complete. Her younger brother Tōru would seize more power as the emperor’s father-in-law. He would be appointed the Yellow Raven and become the power behind the throne. This was Shiun no In’s long-cherished desire. It didn’t matter if she died here; she had already won.
No one else would understand aside from Tōru. Tōru had always understood her devotion.
“I offer my congratulations to His Imperial Majesty the new Golden Raven.” She rose cautiously from her seat. Natsuka didn’t stab her as she prostrated herself on the floor.
She was painfully aware of Natsuka staring down at her.
He raised his sword slowly and then drove it deep into the wooden floor beside her head.
“Whore,” he spat.
Natsuka left the blade where it was, turned his back on her, and walked away.
She watched him go, laughing hysterically. Once she started laughing, she couldn’t make herself stop.
***
His mother’s high-pitched laughter followed Natsuka out of the room. The image of her kneeling before him, emaciated and humbled with a sword at her throat, would not leave his mind. She was insane. She still believed that Natsuka would marry Nadeshiko and become the next emperor.
That was never going to happen.
Natsuka wanted to claw his intestines out with his own hands. That was his mother. She had produced him somehow. He felt no connection to her whatsoever. When he was young, he’d tried to understand her motives and goals. He didn’t recognize her now. She’d given up on all her personal ambitions to give him a future he’d never wanted.
At least he understood what his mother was trying to do. The Yellow Raven was the highest-ranked official in all of Yamauchi. They had power over the Four Families and were equal in rank to the emperor. Shiun no In had always wanted to make her younger brother the Yellow Raven. She’d doted on him for her entire life. She’d always wanted his daughter to wed Natsuka, regardless of Natsuka’s own wishes.
Nazukihiko had turned out to be a true Golden Raven, and all of her calculations and plans had gone awry. She hated Nazukihiko for existing. She didn’t care what would happen to her son or her husband; all she’d ever wanted was for Nazukihiko to die. She didn’t even care about the fate of Yamauchi. It could collapse in on itself and be destroyed for all she cared, as long as her brother became the Yellow Raven first. Natsuka had always been simply a means to an end for her.
Natsuka remembered Nazukihiko’s frequent poisonings during childhood. Everyone knew who was responsible for those attacks, but no one could ever prove it. She’d finally killed him, and she’d undoubtedly covered her tracks.
We all knew this could happen, and it still happened, Natsuka thought. He covered his face with both hands. His mother had been insane for a long time. Decades, at least. But her madness had not muddled her faculties. Even now, in her hysteria, she was capable of long-term planning and patience.
She had never possessed empathy or understanding for others. It never entered her mind to wonder what other people might want or need. She’d lived this long without realizing that Natsuka had never wanted to be emperor or marry Nadeshiko. Not for a single moment.
Natsuka wondered if her brother wanted to be the Yellow Raven. He doubted she’d ever asked him.
What he felt toward the former empress was stronger than anger, but the emotion expressed itself as a sensation of emptiness, like he’d been hollowed out on the inside with a knife.
Nazukihiko.
The reality of his brother’s death hadn’t fully sunk in yet. He’d spent years of effort and countless resources keeping his brother safe, and he had failed.
Why now?
“Prince Natsuka.” A temple attendant approached him with a horse at his side. His lip trembled and he hunched in on himself, afraid.
“I should have killed her a long time ago,” Natsuka said bitterly.
The attendant’s face went through several emotions in quick succession. “That… it wouldn’t be…”
“I know. It probably wouldn’t have changed anything in the end.” Natsuka sighed. “I know.”
All roads led to this ending. He might have delayed the inevitable, but he could not have stopped it. Killing his mother now would not restore his brother to life.
“I will investigate,” Natsuka said. “I will discover everything she has done to the smallest detail. I will make sure the historians record her as a criminal and a traitor. I will not let her win.”
He glanced back at the door that led to his mother’s residence, then faced the attendant.
“My brother was stabbed,” he said. “That means someone murdered him. We need to find out who did it, whatever it takes. And summon the King of the Tengu. We must inform him of what’s happened.”
Natsuka would find out how his brother had died. He would link Shiun no In to his brother’s murderer publicly so that her crimes could never be buried or denied.
Translator's Notes
Yamanaka means “in the mountains,” which is very similar in meaning to Yamauchi. Chihaya is not creative here.
Kitayama means “north mountain.” Hokke means “north house” or “north family.”
A “black company” in Japan is a notoriously exploitative workplace that disregards labor laws, often requiring unpaid, excessive overtime, verbal harassment, and high-pressure, unsustainable, or dangerous working conditions. These companies often target young or foreign workers, trapping them in high-turnover, low-pay, and mentally exhausting roles.
Like other emperors, Nazukihiko gets an era or regnal name: annei, meaning “everlasting peace.” The month of cool sunsets is rendered literally (suzukurezuki means “cool sunset month”).
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