The Wings of Dreams

accomplish anything. Economizing would only leave more money in my father’s pockets, not make the poor any richer or less hungry.”
    Shushou took a long breath. “No doubt about it, I’ve had an easy life. When it came to food and clothing, no expense was spared. I lived in a large and luxurious house, the windows barred to ensure maximum safety. Bodyguards everywhere. But outside the walls, people were dying every day. However pitiable, it wasn’t my place to say so. I had only one thing left to say at times like that—”
    She paused and held up a finger.
    “Why didn’t you at least hire a bodyguard?” Accompanied by suppressed smiles, the answers were voiced from next to the haku and aside the fire.
    Shushou looked back at them and sighed. “I did think of becoming a government official. In that small way, I could work on behalf of the people, maybe begin to assuage those vague feelings of guilt. But the headmaster was killed by a youma and the academy closed. I was awfully naive. Studying hard and joining the civil service in order to improve the government only made sense if somebody in charge was running things in the first place.”
    Gankyuu said, “So that’s why you decided you’d become empress.”
    Shushou shook her head. “No. But I wanted somebody to. There’s no way a twelve-year-old could. I’m the first one who’d laugh at the idea. When the right person with all the right qualifications becomes emperor, the youma will go away. The famines will abate. That’s why I was always asking people why they weren’t going on the Shouzan. But I got no takers, except to be told that children are such simpleminded creatures.”
    She cocked her head to the side. “I figure if you’ve got the time to sit around complaining about how hard life is and envying the lives of others, then you might has well gather up your fellow whiners and go on the Shouzan. Otherwise it was so much spitting in the wind. Though when I thought about, the same applied to me too.”
    The expression on Gankyuu’s face was one of sincere regard.
    “I was angry that nobody was trying to become emperor. At the same time, I told myself there was no way I could and so there was no reason for me to go to Mt. Hou. I was pretty much putting myself in the same box as them. My actions had to speak as louder than my words. I would go to the Yellow Sea. When I returned I could tell everybody to put up or shut up with a clear conscience. Resent me or envy me, but I’d give back as much as I was given. And once I did, there was no need to make myself become some stuffy government official. I could do as I pleased.”
    “As you pleased?” came the soft voice next to the fire.
    “I always wanted to be a kijuu stable master.” Shushou smiled. “I like kijuu. Nothing wrong with being a shushi either. And don’t tell me I can’t understand what it means to be a koushu. I’ve had enough of that. I’ll become a shushi, leave Kyou, spend all the time I want with kijuu. And if I happen to cross paths with an old friend and get an earful about how terrible things are in Kyou with an empty throne, I can tell them to shut up about it until they’ve gone on the Shouzan.”
    Now from beside the fire came the sound of smothered laughter.
    “I really couldn’t tell you myself that life is better with an emperor. That’s what the adults all say, but there hasn’t been an emperor since I was born.”
    “You don’t say.”
    “There hasn’t been an emperor all that time. Yet my father went to work every day. I went to school. The government went about its business. And businesses went about theirs. Everybody got by the best they could. So I have to believe that even without an emperor, people will keep on getting by the best they can.”
    She tilted her head the other way, as if posing the question to herself. The fire itself seemed to gently question that conclusion.
    “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
    “Are things really that much worse off without a ruler?”
    “The problem isn’t so much that they’re worse, it’s that they keep getting worse and never improving.”
    “That is a troubling thought,” Shushou said, folding her arms. “Leaving Kyou and taking off on my own is one thing. But it’d be hard living with myself knowing that life back in Kyou was going from bad to worse.”
    Gankyuu settled against the haku and watched Shushou making plans and debating those plans with herself. With the pain mostly quenched by the