The Wings of Dreams

again. I couldn’t carry the body out, Your Honor, and had to leave her there. Hard to made any of those legal options stick in that case.”
    Shushou snorted through her nose. “That is not likely to happen either.”
    “Why not?”
    “If I die, then nobody will become Empress. It is unlikely the Gods would let such an injustice pass without a righteous response.”
    Gankyuu’s shoulders sagged again. “Look—”
    Shushou smiled and held Gankyuu’s hand. “When my moukyoku was stolen, I was afraid I wouldn’t make it in time for the Spring Equinox. But we’ve arrived right on time. Heaven must be smiling down upon us.”
    “Sure seems that way.”
    “When I become Empress, I am not going to do bad things. You are a lucky man.”
    Gankyuu took a deep breath and let it out. Where the hell does such confidence spring from? “Mt. Hou is a long way away.”
    “No problem. I knew we’d have a kijuu.”
    But yours got stolen, Gankyuu was about to say. Shushou glanced at his haku and said, “I heard you say you’d left a kijuu in the stables. That’s why I hired you.”
    Shrewd was right. Even at her age, she was far too scheming to be called precocious. There was no denying the look of resignation in his shoulders as he slumped a bit in his stride. “I’m impressed.”
    Shushou patted him on the back. “Compared to me, there’s nothing for you to get discouraged about. Anyway, back home, I’m known as the brightest kid in the neighborhood too.”
    Gankyuu didn’t have it in him say yay or nay. His shoulders only slumped further.

Chapter 10
    [2-2]  G ankyuu silently walked on. Shushou had to run a little to keep up. Unlike Gankyuu, her footsteps were light. The road before dawn was cold and covered with frost. A child’s stride made the distance all the longer. Even worse, she’d covered the three-day journey from the port city at a half-run, and a single night’s rest had done little to alleviate the fatigue.
    But Shushou barely noticed it at all.
    She’d really worried about getting to the gate before the Spring Equinox. But not only had she arrived the night before, she’d secured herself a guide to boot.
    Shushou knew there were professional guides who escorted people on the Shouzan, quite necessary when venturing into the Yellow Sea. Alas, despite arriving in time, the theft of Hakuto hadn’t left her with enough time to hire a proper guardian. That she’d had the good luck of finding a guide experienced in the Yellow Sea led her to believe that no matter what happened next, she would figure something out.
    Right now, curiosity overwhelmed any feelings of anxiety. Following the barrier wall, Gankyuu strode south. Though the boulevards weren’t as big as those in Renshou, the presence of lane partitions was unusual. The intersections of the main roads in Renshou had nothing of the sort, only street-wide square plazas.
    In this city, the intersections were dominated by structures as wide as the roads. Some were made out of stone and secured on all sides by iron doors. The barrier walls and ramparts jutted out here and there. The stores and shops lining the streets were equipped with gates and sturdy doors.
    Carried by the human tide to the southeast, Shushou surveyed her surroundings with intrigued eyes. Eventually they arrived at a single gate.
    “To imagine there’d be a gate in a place like this,” Shushou said, raising her voice.
    The loop road that circumnavigated the city inside the barrier walls emptied into the large plaza before the gate. Streams of people spilled into the plaza and collected there as if in a sluice pond. Before them, the watchtowers bracketing the huge gate soared into the sky.
    Shushou glanced up at Gankyuu. “This is the southeast?”
    Gankyuu let out a long breath. “That’s right.”
    He tilted his head back to take in the five story pagodas. County seats and castle towns were usually surrounded by twelve gates at the twelve cardinal directions. The city of Ken did not have a Dragon Gate or a Serpent Gate. Instead, as if the southeast corner had been cleanly lopped off, a separate, larger gate, opening toward the mountains, had been placed there.
    “The Earth Gate.”
    The looming mountains seemed to press down against the gate. Beyond the layered ranges, the faint peaks were finely etched against the pre-dawn sky. A great black wall blocked the way. The summits reached out to the left and right like the sharp teeth of a lumberjack’s saw, melting