The Wings of Dreams

strength of will and the good fortune to cast a net and reel in total strangers, to reel in an entire kingdom—that’s what it takes to be in charge of the whole shebang.”
    “Well, keep such claptrap to yourselves, if you don’t mind. She’s got a big enough head already without anybody giving her any reasons to be an even bigger ass about it.”
    “Call her the provisional empress, then. She sure is what a real one would be like.”
    “Emperor or empress, nobody’s been chosen yet.” Gankyuu glanced down at his hand. He felt a numbing deep in the muscles. He’d forgotten to wash his hands after slicing apart the youma flesh earlier.
    Kinhaku smiled. “Well, it’s good either way, as long as we bring back our employers with arms and legs intact. Otherwise a fat fifty percent of our fee goes poof.”
    “If you die,” someone jested, “just leave half that fee to us and what comes with.”
    A bubble of laughter welled up.
    “Right back at you. To us, personally, it don’t much matter who the phoenix is. But when it comes to riding on the wings of the phoenix and the smooth sailing we’ve all been waiting for, it can’t help but matter.”
    Kinhaku glanced at the faces of the men around him. “To be sure, the girl’s not necessarily the one. Keep a close eye those going on the Shouzan. Don’t drop that phoenix. Loose the fledgling and the bill for all this good fortune will come due in a flash.”

Chapter 20
    [3-4]  D escending the slope, the crumbling trees and loose stones made each step a precarious one. Reaching the bottom, the firmly-rooted vegetation grew taller. The leaves were streaked with strange bands of purple, the boughs twisted into curious shapes. But the muck and leaf litter underfoot firmed up.
    The travelers breathed a collective sigh of relief.
    They emerged from the forest. Now a marsh confronted them. Trees thick with lumpy leaves and bushes sporting needle-like branches dotted the landscape. The path detoured around the marsh at first, but then turned toward the shore and sank beneath the murky water. It surfaced again on the banks of the opposite shore that now looked quite far away.
    Where the path submerged, at some point someone had laid down stepping stones, the centers hollowed out like a wagon furrow in a road. On the marshland beyond the opposite shore sat a small mountain of rocks and perhaps a pile of chopped-down trees, vestiges of abandoned efforts to complete the walkway.
    Instead of firewood, that day the goushi had gathered stones along the way. Now they threw them into the marsh. Most sank into the mud and out of sight. But one managed to poke a corner above the surface of the water.
    The intent, it seemed, was that if every person going on the Shouzan made a similar contribution, at some point a passable road would emerge.
    Shushou tossed in her collection of pebbles. Kinhaku bound the legs of his employer’s horse and those of his retinue with strips of cloth and secured them with thin leather straps. Shushou watched with mixed emotions, not sure whether or how much Kinhaku and Gankyuu deserved her loathing.
    Kinhaku was protecting his employer. But if rendering that protection required beckoning youma and accepting the casualties that followed, wasn’t that going too far? Based on the steps they were willing to take, the safety of anybody but their employers didn’t factor into the equation.
    And yet they’re guarding people who are going to Mt. Hou.
    If his employer knew what his goushi had done, he would surely be furious. Or maybe he’d shrug it off the way adults did, means justified by the ends.
    “This stinks,” Shushou said to herself. She really hated feeling this way. But the undeniable fact was she that she’d safely made it this far because of the goushi and koushu.
    She still hadn’t resolved this moral dilemma when Gankyuu called to her. They crossed the marsh a step ahead of the others and waited on the far shore for the rest to catch up.
    Kinhaku finished his preparations and stepped into the marsh. Catching up with him from behind, Shitsu Kiwa and his party mimicked Kinhaku’s movements. Kiwa’s followers descended into the marsh. Clambering to the first stepping stone, one raised a scream.
    Shushou glanced up at Gankyuu. “I don’t believe it. There are youma in the marsh?”
    There was a touch of the inquisitor in Shushou question. Gankyuu curtly responded, “No.”
    In fact, the bellowing man had scampered atop a tree