The Twelve Kingdoms: A Thousand Leagues of Wind

have her passport with the endorsement of the Royal Sai.
    After five days in the city, she gave up on that, too. What she'd learned of Shoukou's brazen behavior was even worse. The city spilled over with privately resentful voices, but such was the fierceness of Shoukou's grip that none dare voice these feelings aloud.
    "Seventy percent or a life," was the expression she heard.
    The tax was seventy percent of the harvest. If this payment was short in the slightest, you paid with a life. Turn yourself in to be killed, or present the head of one of your family.
    Shoukou went hunting in the hamlets, they said. When he was in one of his moods, he'd go to a farming village in the outlying districts and kidnap girls. A few days later he'd toss them out like a bundle of old rags.
    At times, merchants came from the borders of Kou and ships arrived from Tai carrying human cargo. He deceived itinerants and refugees from the faltering kingdoms into coming to Shisui to replace those that had died beneath his lash. Wagons and ships traveled to the kingdoms bearing food and provisions and distributed it to families who had lost their homes and land. Those receiving the goods believed that the governor dispatching the wagons and ships to be a compassionate man. In the place of the provisions, people were carried on the return trip. Travelers who came, lured by the promise of land and citizenship, would curse their terrible folly only afterwards.
    Why, Suzu asked herself with almost unbridled fury. Why would the Royal Kei keep such a beast as a public servant?
    Rumors abounded on the streets. The reason Shoukou could persecute the people so, the reason he was never called to account, was because he had somebody covering for him. Probably somebody in Gyouten. Somebody in Kinpa Palace. Somebody at the top.
    The late empress Yo-o had been in on it, so the rumors went.
    The late empress had no interest in governing the kingdom, that was why. The ministers and government officials did whatever they wanted and nobody gave a damn. Kiss a little ass, throw a little jewelry and silk around, and they'd look the other way.
    Because she was a woman, the people of Takuhou said. Kei had bad luck with empresses. They never governed in peace.
    Suzu laughed to herself. An empress from Yamato, the one person in the world who would understand her. A monarch filled with gentleness and compassion.
    What a joke.
    The Royal Kei had been her best and last hope, the one thing that kept her going. I want to meet her, Suzu had told herself over and over again. What an idiot she'd been.
    "I won't forgive them. Shoukou or the Royal Kei."

    Suzu left Takuhou and headed for Gyouten. As expected, it took her five days. Using her bank book, she withdrew the balance of the funds. It'd raise eyebrows when the Royal Sai found out, but at this point Suzu didn't care.
    The first thing she went looking for was a licensed arms merchant.
    You couldn't defeat a youma with an ordinary sword. You'd end up breaking the sword and not hurting the youma. For youma hunting, you had to have weapons upon which a special spell had been cast. Because they were only made by the Minister of Winter, they were called touki, or winter weapons. On the door to the shop was the official seal authorizing them to make armaments.
    Licensed arms merchants were also the only dealers in the chains and ropes used to capture and train youma and other you-beasts. Suzu recalled traveling often to an arms merchant at the base of Mt. Ha in the southwest kingdom of Sai to buy military-grade tack for the groom who took care of Riyou's flying tiger, Setsuko.
    And quite different from an ordinary dealer, these arms merchants carried a class of weapons not widely known to the public--weapons that could kill a wizard. A governor was a class of baron, and thus a full-fledged wizard. You had to have a particular kind of sword to wound him.
    Suzu browsed around the shop and selected a dagger. She didn't know how to use one, but she knew she'd need it. Arms merchants actually rarely sold "winter weapons" to customers. This was one time when the endorsement of the Royal Sai on her passport came in handy.
    She next went to an establishment that specialized in pegasi and flying beasts. She didn't need a horse or ox. What she needed was a mount much faster than a horse, a pegasus that could leap over any fence or barrier.
    Flying youma were captured by wild game hunters in the Yellow Sea, where youma abounded in great