The Twelve Kingdoms: A Thousand Leagues of Wind

crammed with huts and sheds barely big enough to lie down in. The overflowing tide of people, their faces glum and ragged, flowed right up to the gates. The refugees had built themselves a village on the vacant land. But it looked like one strong gust of wind would sweep it all away.
    When she stepped inside the city itself, its decrepit condition became even more apparent. She had to wonder how many laborers had been pressed into hard service building these pointless, meandering walls. Some were so squat and narrow that they appeared to have been dumped there as refuse. And the others were amazingly high and thick.
    The streets zigzagged through the chaotic city, ending in blind alleys. Shoukei had never seen such a confusing place. Buildings built without any rhyme or reason. Horse carts haphazardly blocking the flow of traffic. Milling crowds of refugees only throwing everything into complete chaos.
    "What is with this city?" Shouko said under her breath.
    She noticed people casting apprehensive glances in one particular direction. A number of them passed by her with tight faces, heading down a road that apparently ran to the city center. One man walked forward with a hard expression on his face. Another man turned back against the flow of people, looking fearfully over his shoulder as he headed in the opposite direction at a brisk clip.
    What is going on? she asked herself.
    Shoukei headed in the same direction, craning her neck to see. She turned a corner. The people moving in that direction had unexpectedly multiplied. Before long, the surging tide of humanity made retreat impossible.
    "You'd better stop."
    The sudden sound of someone's voice calling out to her made Shoukei turn back, even as the human wave bore her along. From within the throngs, an old man turned to her and held up his hand.
    "You'd better not go. You're gonna see something you don't want to."
    "What?" she wanted to ask, searching her surroundings, but the river of people bore her along with them. Before she knew it, she had come to the main boulevard of the city.
    It was the center of the city. More than a boulevard, it approximated a town square. The streets abruptly opened up into a plaza surrounded by crumbling walls. Soldiers were posted around its circumference. In the center were a number of people tied together.
    The thing she didn't want to see.
    The people paraded to the center of the plaza were secured with ropes around their waists. Eyeing the brawny men securing the rope, Shoukei could tell that something was about to happen. The thick wooden posts arranged on the ground only reaffirmed this conviction.
    A crucifixion. Those people were going to be nailed to those stakes. There are places other than Hou where this punishment is exacted?
    Rakushun had told her that there was no kingdom without a death penalty. But decapitation was the usual method. A particularly severe sentence might entail planting the severed head on a pike. More cruel methods of execution were no longer carried out anywhere else, or so the very knowledgeable hanjuu had told her.
    "You don't want to see this."
    Somebody pulled on her coat. When she turned around, it was a small, middle-aged man with a tired look on his face. "This isn't the place for a girl like you. You should leave."
    "Why are they doing this?"
    The man shook his head. "The worse thing you can do in Wa Province is fail to pay your taxes, or run away from a labor gang. It was one or the other for most of them there."
    "But . . . crucifixion . . . . "
    "I know, it's news to most travelers. Nobody wants to spread bad news, that's why. So they leave Wa Province hearing no evil, seeing no evil. Come here and it's another story."
    "But this--"
    Shoukei's voice was drowned out by a scream, intermingled with the sound of a stone mallet striking a nail. Without thinking, she turned and saw the writhing form of a man, one hand pinned to a wooden post.
    "Stop . . . . "
    Again, the heavy sound. Shoukei reflexively recoiled and shut her eyes. It used to happen all the time in Hou. None other than her own father had mercilessly sent so many people to the gallows.
    In an instant, the memory and fear of almost being drawn and quartered shot through her thoughts. The vengeful voices and vitriolic cries of the townspeople as they dragged her into the square in front of the Rishi. The bitterness in Gobo's face as she raised the cane to flog her.
    Another scream. Moans arose from the crowds surrounding the