The Wings of Dreams

students who’ve died and all their relations, it’s getting to be a pretty run-of-the-mill kind of thing.”
    “Don’t talk like that, Shushou.”
    “It’s the truth!” She shrugged. “But hardly all that surprising. The headmaster’s house didn’t have bars on the windows.”
    Shushou looked across the courtyard. All the windows and doors facing the courtyard were protected by beautifully designed iron latticework. Additional layers of coat of fresh plaster were added to the walls on a daily basis. The doors were reinforced with iron rivets. Watchmen stood guard day and night.
    “The father of a boy from a nearby town died. His father traveled a long distance taking orders and delivering barrels. At sundown he hadn’t returned. The concerned neighbors went looking for him, only to discover that the people wintering over in a hamlet three miles away were all dead. They found his head there.”
    “Shushou—”
    “But what can you do? The boy didn’t have any bodyguards at his house. In the fall, locusts destroyed the whole crop. If his father didn’t deliver the barrels, they would starve. Payment for an order was found in his mouth. When the youma attacked, he probably worried about dropping it while running away.”
    Joshou patted his daughter’s back in a consoling manner. As if escaping that reassuring touch, Shushou set off to the main wing of the house. “I am fine. I’ve gotten used to it, don’t you know. People dying isn’t so frightening anymore. Grandmama died when I was young. It seems foolish to be afraid of anything after that.”
    “Shushou, enough.”
    Joshou ran after her and hugged his arms around her shoulders. He all but carried her into the parlor and set her down in a chair. “These are hard times.”
    “That’s what everybody says.”
    “I understand the pain you must see in the people and the world around you. But you mustn’t allow thoughts of resignation to take hold of your mind.”
    “I am hardly resigning myself.”
    “Shushou—”
    Shushou looked up at her father. “Aren’t you going on the Shouzan?”
    Joshou’s eyes opened a bit wider. “The Shouzan?”
    “These are hard times because an emperor does not sit upon the throne. If you became the emperor, that would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?”
    Stroking his daughter’s hair, Joshou shook his head and said with a sad smile, “Blessed though I may be, Shushou, I am nothing but an ordinary merchant.”

Chapter 3
    [1-3]  K eika called from the living room. “Miss, supper is served.”
    Shushou put down her writing brush. She glanced over the sheets of seemingly random scribbling, gathered them up, and stuffed them into the bookcase. She was cleaning the ink stone when the door opened and Keika stuck her head into the room.
    “Miss, is it true the headmaster was killed?”
    “Um, yes.”
    “And yet you continue to study! School has been suspended, has it not?”
    “True.”
    Keika was a live-in maid, a year older than Shushou. She was one of a class of servants that weren’t paid a salary, but were reared as members of the family. In exchange for a minimal guarantee of room and board, they were granted a minimal but real standing. This wasn’t to say that none of the servants in Shushou’s house were paid a wage, but the gap in social status was considerable.
    Keika was the child of such a live-in maid. Installed in the Sou estate by her parents, she’d been working there as a maidservant since she was little. Despite her status, having been raised together from a young age made her presence a relaxed and familiar one, and being so close in age to Shushou, all the more so.
    “Such turns of events are becoming commonplace to an unsettling degree. But we cannot allow ourselves to mope.”
    “I’m not moping about anything.”
    “That may be so, but you said you wished to take your dinner in your room.”
    “I don’t particularly want to look at my father’s face right now.”
    “Ah,” Keika said with a dubious expression. She hauled Shushou to her feet and marched her into the living room. The evening meal was already set out on the dining table.
    “Your father has been delighted with your progress. And to think he once mightily objected to your going onto the prefectural academy.”
    Shushou sat down and surveyed the table settings. “That he did.”
    “Does it really matter all that much? You can study here at home, can’t you? Your father can always hire a