The Wings of Dreams

not going to Mt. Hou. I am entering the Yellow Sea in order to hunt youjuu that can be trained as kijuu. Do you know what people call men like us?”
    “Well—ah—”
    “ Corpse hunters. Even when old hands band together, they are less likely to capture a youjuu than they are to return from the Yellow Sea bearing the dead bodies of their companions on their backs. That’s the kind of business this is.”
    The year before last during the fall equinox, Gankyuu lost his kijuu and hunting companions in the Yellow Sea. A youma devoured the six kijuu hitched to an outcropping of rock, along with his two partners nearby. Eight in total. If the beast hadn’t already gorged itself, Gankyuu would have been the next item on the menu.
    He stayed in the Yellow Sea until the winter solstice, managing to catch the haku to use as a kijuu. Training the beast kept Gankyuu busy enough that he hadn’t made it back to Ken the year before.
    “As a result, my supplies have hit rock bottom. On the way to Ken this year, I didn’t stay at a single inn or sail on a single ship. No sooner had I finished training the haku but I rode him three days and two nights straight here, practically falling asleep in the saddle. I’m just as tired as you and probably more broke. Fact is, the keeper’s a old family friend, so I’m counting on him to spot me the balance.”
    “Ah,” the girl muttered, momentarily lost in her thoughts.
    Gankyuu gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. “That’s the kind of place the Yellow Sea is. Now be a good girl and go back to your family. Your lodgings tonight—”
    He didn’t finish the rest of the sentence. The girl whipped off her dirty padded kimono, removed the fur coat beneath it and turned it inside out. Seeing the silver coins sewn in a crisscross fashion into the lining, Gankyuu nearly fell over in surprise. A single silver coin was worth five ryou, what the typical petty bureaucrat made in a month. And there was more than one silver coin.
    She thrust the coat into Gankyuu arms. “Thirteen silver coins comes to sixty-five ryou. Take me to Mt. Hou.”
    The flabbergasted Gankyuu stared down at her.
    “Consider it your retainer. However, you’ll be expected to cover any expenses along the way.” The girl smiled sweetly. “My name is Shushou. First item on the agenda: as your employer, I shall be taking the bed tonight. You can sleep on the floor. Do you have a problem with that?”

Part One
Chapter 1
    [1-1]  T he winds came on like the eternal nothingness of the pitch-black Sea of Emptiness itself.
    Starting in the fall, the slow, cool, atmospheric currents began to stagnate, collecting into a mass of frigid air over the Northern Kyokai. The waters shed their warmth. The temperate zones thinned and contracted. Eventually the ocean took on a uniform chill.
    Carried to the surface by the sluggish currents and touched by the winter frost, the dark water froze in patches, mottling the dark ocean with specks of white.
    The air froze as well into an icy wind that poured out of the north, bobbing the ice floes, raising whitecaps on the surface, and finally surging to a gale-force wind that even turned back the tides as it bore down on the land.
    This was the joufuu.
    The joufuu roared out of the Kyokai from the northeast and whipped across the coasts. Reaching the northeast quarters of the Kingdom of Ryuu, it battered the mountains, released great quantities of snow, froze Ryuu to its very bones, and rushed on.
    Leaving the last of its precipitation in the border mountain ranges, the now dry air flooded across the northern frontiers into the Kingdom of Kyou.
    In Renshou, the capital of Kyou, the literally skyscraping heights of Ryou’un Mountain stood like great sailing masts. The cluster of overlapping peaks drew an arc around the city far below, as if embracing it within a bundle of calligraphy brushes. The peaks converged into a smaller number of summits that broke through the Sea of Clouds, forming an atoll of small islands at the top of the world.
    The dry winter wind whistled among the peaks and hummed across the ridges, soaking like rain into the cracks and fissures, raising a constant, humming chorus. The winters in Renshou were accompanied by what sounded very much like the distant call of the ocean.
    Where the sunlight slanted into the streets, the constantly blowing wind and the gusts tumbling down the bare face of the mountains whipped up little whirlwinds, one of which tossed the