The Twelve Kingdoms: A Thousand Leagues of Wind

cheerfully, "No, I'm sure you don't. Anyway you look at it, it's different here." He chuckled. "Children growing on trees, now that was a shock."
    Youko smiled thinly. The smile faded. "Not knowing all this stuff seems to irritate a lot of people."
    "You mean Keiki?"
    Youko glanced at him and shook her head. "The ministers and officials, too. Everybody seems taken aback by how totally clueless I am. And who can blame them?"
    Every time she said, I don't get it, Keiki and the ministers shook their heads and sighed.
    "It's because I'm a woman, that's why they're not happy with me." She'd heard the whispers plenty of times already. This is what you get with an empress.
    "Not quite," said Shouryuu.
    Youko looked at him. "No?"
    "When I came here, the most perplexing things to me were that woman could become ministers and the strange relationship between parents and children."
    "Meaning?"
    "In Yamato, women were at the center of the family. They never ventured into the outside world. But here, women will leave their children in the care of the father and go to work. Because the Late Empress Yo-ou expelled all the women from the kingdom, Kei doesn't have many female ministers, but in En they make up almost half of my staff. As you would expect, men predominate in the military. Even there, a good third of the soldiers are women."
    "Really . . . . "
    "If you think it over, there's nothing unusual about it. The kirin choose the kings, and as many of the kirin are female as male. Every generation, the scales may tip one way or the other, but in the long run it balances out to about fifty-fifty. The kings chosen are about half women and half men. Go through the historical records and do the calculations and you'll see that neither sex is favored in the long run."
    "No kidding," said Youko, her eyes growing wide.
    "There's nothing wrong with a king or kirin being a woman, and there's nothing wrong with a minister being a woman, either. Women here do not give birth, and raising children is not by default the woman's job. So the woman's place is not necessarily in the home. Simply because of raw physical strength, they are not as suited for the military, but where delicacy is called for, or a comprehension of the intricate workings of business, they are unsurpassed. As government administrators they can go far. Secretariats are often staffed by women."
    Youko laughed. "Of course."
    "That's why I don't think the ministers of Kei are giving you a cold shoulder because you're a woman. At the same time, however, being a women does have something to do with it, Kei having had such bad luck with empresses of late."
    She gave him a good long look.
    "These last three generations have seen a succession of incompetent monarchs who just happened all to be empresses. The last king Keiki chose was an empress and her reign was singularly short. And then he goes and chooses another empress. So the ministers must be thinking to themselves, What? Again? "
    "That's what it's about?"
    "That's what it really is about. The Royal Kyou of the northwest kingdom of Kyou has reigned for almost ninety years. And the empress who ruled before her did so for an extraordinarily long time. So if you were to spring a male king on the people of Kyou, they probably wouldn't be very happy about it. In the final analysis, that's what it amounts to. Don't worry about it."
    Youko sighed and then smiled. "Thanks for straightening me out."
    "No problem," Shouryuu replied with a grin. "If there's any way I can help out, let me know and I'll do what I can."
    Youko bowed to him. "I am truly grateful for all you've done."

Chapter 9
    A s she had promised, two weeks later Riyou, lord of Suibi Grotto, returned to her mountainous fiefdom.
    When she arrived at Mt. Ha, she drew alongside the soaring castle on Suibi Peak. In the world below, at the foot of Suibi Peak, she could see the hodgepodge of small blue roofs. If you took the tunnel from Suibi Grotto down through the heart of the peak, that is where you would emerge in the world below. The palisades enclosing the buildings stood in neat rows, along with more blue-tiled roofs standing before the gate. It was a shrine dedicated to the wizard who lived on Suibi Peak.
    Astride Setsuko's back, peering down at the tableau beneath her, a crooked smile came to Riyou's lips. All she was doing here was piling on the years, nothing more. And yet these people from the world below were grateful for her presence.
    Her worshipers no doubt