The Twelve Kingdoms: A Thousand Leagues of Wind

Shoukei. "The Red Banner people are gone by now."
    Shoukei didn't answer, silently cutting the straw into the feed.
    "A good thing it snowed," a boy said earnestly.
    Even with a horse-drawn sleigh, the snowy roads were almost impassable. When it snowed, the Red Banner troubadours had to camp out in a town until it stopped. Truth be told, Shoukei had been wishing for snow as well. But the snow was also the reason she hadn't gotten home until late.
    The Red Banner troubadours were masters of travel, but even winter could best them at times. They usually traveled the circuit of cities and towns from spring until fall and then wintered over in a big city, where they would rent a small dwelling and settle down for the rest of the season. The reason they would take such risks during the winter was because King Chuutatsu, Shoukei's father, had forbid entertainers to work except when the fields lay fallow.
    Since his death, many Red Banner troubadours now chose to pack it in during the winter, but there were still those who continued to tour. During the winter, there was nothing to do in the towns and villages. So when a Red Banner troupe showed up, they would be welcomed with open arms. That was enough to motivate not a few of them to brave the elements and keep on trudging from town to town.
    "It was a really great show."
    "I liked the acrobats the best."
    Her head bowed, Shoukei listened to the accounts of their delightful day. She was dying to say how she used to see similar performances all the time at the palace.
    "Oh, yes," said a girl, "and the story they told about the empress of the Kingdom of Kei. She's only sixteen or seventeen!"
    "What?" Shoukei raised her head.
    "Isn't that something? A king is the same as a god, right? I wonder what it would be like to become one of the twelve ruling the whole earth, the elite of the elite."
    The other girls nodded. "Yeah."
    "I would definitely wear silk, with the embroidered plumage of a bird. And gold and silver and pearls."
    "And there was this pretend king who started doing whatever she felt like and the new empress clobbered her. That must have been something to see."
    "Because the Royal En came to help her with reinforcements."
    "Wow, to think she even knows the Royal En!"
    "You know, they must know each other real well if he'd come to her rescue like that."
    "Don't you wonder what the coronation ceremony was like? I bet she was all gorgeous and everything."
    Shoukei stared down at her feet. The boisterous voices faded away. A sixteen or seventeen year old girl. Who had become empress.
    Shoukei knew what living in a palace was like. It was totally different from this remote corner of the world.
    It's not fair, she said to herself. She was stuck in this miserable life while a girl her same age was enjoying everything that had been taken from her. Shoukei had no way of returning to the palace. Her wonderful parents had been killed and she had been exiled to the hinterlands where she would spend the rest of her life.
    She looked at the shovel in her hands. Hands tanned like leather from toiling under a blazing sun, hands whose protruding joints had grown accustomed to carrying heavy loads, hands that bent like claws, with no one to manicure and care for them. She would grow old like this. As if adapting themselves to living in this hick town, her mind and body were going to seed as well. In time, she'd turn into a boorish old hag like Gobo.
    And all the while, the empress of Kei would reside at the palace, eternally as beautiful as she was at sixteen.
    "It's not fair."
    Deep within her heart, another voice chimed in.
    It's unforgivable.

Part III
    he month drew to a close. In Gyouten, the capital city of Kei, the giddy atmosphere finally dissipated. A sense of calm returned to the handling of visitors and the reaction to the coronation in general. The topsy-turvy of the palace settled down. Nevertheless, with the midwinter Koushi ceremony approaching, there was still that sense of being kept constantly on one's toes.
    Youko looked out the window and sighed softly. Through the windowpanes she could see the wintry gardens and fields.
    Mornings she spent at the Gaiden. Afternoons she returned to the Naiden. These two buildings constituted the core of the palace, where the empress did the bulk of her work. In basic terms, the Privy Council met in the Gaiden and the Naiden was where she performed her official duties as empress.
    The Naiden essentially began where the outer