by Jeff Minerd
“That is acceptable to me,” Tak said.
Jon whistled with surprise. The audacity of the moment loosened his tongue. “Wow,” he said. “I thought your dad was mad before.”
ELEVEN
The Kinzou reached the mountains of the Eastern Kingdoms just as the first real snow of winter fell. Fat, wet flakes whirled thickly in the sky. They clung to every rope and line of the ship, outlining them in white. To Brieze, it looked very pretty.
The Kinzou flew northeast, keeping the mountains close on their starboard side, making for the city of Kyo at the heart of the Eastern Kingdoms. The crew was in high spirits. Men sang and whistled as they hauled on ropes or scrubbed decks, their breath coming out in cheery puffs. Captain Hiroshi grinned broadly, his thumbs hooked into his belt, and he breathed deeply, savoring the air. Snowflakes decorated his beard. All the tension had gone out of him. He no longer shouted his orders but gave them in a soft voice, as if they were afterthoughts.
Brieze leaned on a rail near the bow, wrapped in a warm cloak, and studied the mountains as they passed.
She’d never seen mountains like these. She had studied maps and pictures, but drawings were nothing like the real thing in front of you. Instead of stretching out in a long, zig-zagging chain like the Highspire Mountains, the eastern mountains were grouped tightly together. To Brieze, they looked like herds of mountains, as if they had all decided to huddle together. It was stunning to see so much solidness all in one place. It was as if the mountains had banded together to challenge the dominance of the sky and vastness of the sea of clouds surrounding them.
The kingdom’s four main mountain masses stretched out before her—Ushu on her right, Koku to the northeast, Onshu beyond that, and Kaido off in the northerly distance, nearly lost in the haze. They had once been separate kingdoms, which is why they were still called the Eastern Kingdoms even though they’d been united under one Emperor more than a century ago. The Kinzou was making for Onshu, home to the capitol city of Kyo.
The eastern mountains were different in another way. The Highspire Mountains were covered with pines, and from a distance they appeared pleasantly green. The eastern mountains were bare. Their predominant colors were the brown and gray of naked earth and stone. Through her spyglass, Brieze saw the mountains were not completely treeless. She spotted small pines here and there. And there were large, orderly orchards terraced into the mountainsides with rows of apple, cherry, and plum trees. But the branches of these orchard trees were bare and dusted with snow.
Houses clustered into villages on the mountainsides and grew into cities crowning many of the peaks. The roofs of the houses were covered with clay shingles and painted in bright colors, mostly vivid green and blue and yellow. The roofs all curved upward at the corners, so unlike the flat roofs of the west. This strange little architectural quirk made Brieze feel how far she was from home. It reminded her that she was in a strange, unfamiliar land with strange, unfamiliar rules and ways of doing things.
On the third day after they entered the Eastern Kingdoms, they reached the capitol city of Kyo.
Brieze had never imagined a city larger than Selestria, which took up the entire top third of Selemont, Spire’s tallest mountain. But the city of Kyo entirely covered not just one but three mountains. These three mountains were nestled close together, so close that a system of gravity-defying arched stone bridges connected their lower flanks, making the mountains seem to be reaching out and grabbing each other with long, spindly limbs. As the Kinzou edged closer to the city, Brieze could see nothing of the original surface of any of the three mountains. They had been completely transformed—carved and crafted into stone walls and towers, pillared houses and paved streets. Even the city’s parks and green spaces looked man made. All the roofs were brightly painted and curved upward at the corners. They glittered in the noon sun. Triangular flags and pennants flew from the rooftops, flapping in the crisp, clear winter air.
The port of Kyo was as large as the city of Selestria. It took up the top third of one of Kyo’s mountains. A series of stone quays ringed the mountaintop, the smallest ring near the peak, the largest about a half-mile below. It looked as if a stack of circular stone shelves had been built into the mountain, each one completely encircling it. They were supported from below by clever stone buttresses. Rectangular, airship-sized berths had been cut into them, with mooring posts that looked like stone pillars with gigantic iron chains.
Taking in the size and splendor of Kyo, Brieze felt a strange feeling she couldn’t quite identify. It was a little like jealousy, and a little like fear. But not really like either of them. She realized the feeling was humility. She was feeling humble. “Interesting,” she said to herself. “I haven’t felt that in a while.”
Captain Hiroshi took the wheel of the Kinzou himself and steered it toward one of the rectangular berths. Every man took a position at one rope or line or another. The steering and the sails had to be handled just right. If the ship came in too fast, it would crash into its berth, causing damage. If it came in too slow, it would sink too fast and miss the berth entirely, hitting the mountainside below.
Brieze held her breath during the maneuver, and she didn’t let it out until the bow gently kissed the stone quay and the ship came to rest snugly in its berth. The Devious, still tied to the bowsprit above the bow, didn’t suffer a scratch. The Kinzou’s mooring chains were hooked on. The crew furled the sails, and the ship went still. Brieze felt the stillness of the deck in the soles of her shoes.
They were home.
The crew cheered loudly, and she cheered with them.
But it wasn’t time to celebrate yet. There was still much to do. As eager as they were to return to their homes and families, not a man on the Kinzou would rest until their cargo of timber had been unloaded, sold, and turned into hard cash jingling in their purses.
“All right men, you know what to do!” Hiroshi shouted. “I want our cargo unloaded and secured by nightfall!”
The crew got to work.
A squad of uniformed men stood dockside, closely watching the activity aboard the Kinzou.
“Who are they?” Brieze asked.
Hiroshi sighed. “That’s our navy being on high alert I’m sure,” he said. “Come on. I expect they’ll want to have a word with you. They’ll be questioning all foreigners entering the country now.”
Hiroshi led Brieze down a gangplank to the dock. To her surprise, she couldn’t walk straight. She staggered and struggled to find her balance. After so much time living on a constantly rocking airship, walking on solid, unmoving ground felt strange. Her body kept wanting to sway back and forth.
Hiroshi laughed and took her arm. “Easy does it, my little Nagmor-slayer. You’ll get your land legs back soon.”
He greeted the leader of the navy squad good-naturedly and was greeted cordially in return. The squad was dressed much like airmen of the West, with tight-fitting uniforms, high polished boots, and close-cropped hair. But their uniforms were gray, not blue, and the black scabbards of the swords at their sides were inlaid with characters of Eastern writing.
Hiroshi and the squad leader talked too quickly for Brieze to pick out more than a few words. Then the leader asked her a rapid question, and she was surprised to find she didn’t understand at all.
“He wants to know who you are, what your business is here, and how long you’ll be staying,” Hiroshi said in the Western tongue.
She responded to the leader in the Eastern tongue, but his brow furrowed and he looked questioningly at Hiroshi.
“He is having difficulty with your accent,” Hiroshi said. “I’ll translate.”
Brieze was taken aback. None of the crew aboard the Kinzou had any trouble with her “accent.” But she supposed in a city as large as Kyo there must be many different accents and even dialects.
“Tell him I’m here to visit and learn about Eastern culture. I’ll be staying through the spring,” she said.
Captain Hiroshi related that
to the leader—and much more. From the words she could pick out and his gestures, Brieze understood he was telling the story about their encounter with the Nagmor. The leader’s eyes widened with surprise, and the men murmured among themselves. They looked at her with new interest and respect. The leader asked Hiroshi several questions, then explained something in an apologetic tone.
“He needs to know where you’ll be lodging,” Hiroshi said. “I told him I’ll secure a room for you at Mama Kasshoku’s boarding house on Little Kyomont—it’s a very safe and respectable place, by the way—and that I’ll personally escort you there.”
This was all coming at Brieze fast. She hadn’t really thought about where she’d stay in Kyo. If she had wanted, she could have had her father obtain a letter from the King that would have allowed her to stay at Spire’s embassy in Kyo. But she had wanted to enter the city on the down-low, and keep her business to herself.
It didn’t seem like that was going to happen.
“That’s fine I guess,” she huffed.
The squad leader bowed to her and said the Eastern word for “Welcome,” enunciating slowly and clearly as if speaking to a child. “Yo-koso.”
Brieze scowled, then caught herself and faked a smile. She bowed and said “Thank you” slowly and clearly back, “Ari-gatou.”
When the men had gone off, she said, “Did you have to tell him about the Nagmor? I don’t feel the need to be a celebrity in this city. I don’t want everyone knowing my business.”
“You want to meet with the Fujiwaras, right?”
“Well, yes.”
“Trust me, this is the best way. Now, let’s get your stuff and get you to Mama Kasshoku’s. They’ll be checking later to make sure you’re staying there.”
Brieze grabbed some things from the Devious and stuffed them into her backpack. Some clothes, including her last set of clean clothes, her combs and pins, a bar of soap, her journals and stationary, ink and quill. She checked her purse. She had a fair number of coins, but she had no idea how long her money would last in Kyo. She hoped Mama Kasshoku’s wasn’t an expensive place.
She felt sad at leaving the Kinzou. It had been her home for more than a month. She would miss it, and its crew. She wanted to say goodbye to them. But the men were all so busy. Already, they were hauling the first of the large pine trunks out of the cargo hold and carrying it across the deck. No one seemed to notice that she was leaving. She sighed, shouldered her backpack, and walked down the gangplank to where Hiroshi waited.
“So where is this Mama Kasshoku’s?” she asked, more sulkily than she intended. No one cared she was leaving.
“There,” Hiroshi said. He pointed out across the quay at the smallest of Kyo’s three mountains, called Little Kyomont. It looked to be several miles away. Still, in the crisp, clear winter air, Brieze could make out some of the larger buildings and wider streets. She squinted as if she might be able to pick out Mama Kasshoku’s from where they stood.
“Well,” she said, “where’s our ship? Or do you want to go in the Devious?”
Hiroshi laughed. “We can’t fly there, my dear.”
“Can’t fly? Why not?” The airspace around Kyo was thick and swarming with airships. Small ships swooped over their heads as they spoke. It made no sense that they couldn’t fly.
“You have much to learn about the city of Kyo,” he said. “There are many, many people here. If they let everybody fly, the sky would be so crowded the ships would do nothing but crash into each other.”
Brieze gestured at the sky. “Well, all those people are flying.”
“To fly in the city of Kyo, you need a permit, which is expensive and takes time.”
“Well how in the heavens are we supposed to get there then?”
Hiroshi grinned. “We walk.”
Brieze stared at him as if he’d suggested they hop all the way to Mama Kasshoku’s on one foot. “Seriously,” she said. “How are we getting there?”
“It’s only three miles. A good hour’s walk at the most. And it will be a great way for you to see the city and meet some of its people.”
Brieze swallowed. Hiroshi was serious. Her heart sank even lower. In the Kingdom of Spire, and especially in the capital city of Selemont, walking was considered an unsophisticated and generally socially unacceptable way of getting around. It was fine for short trips—across the street say, or down to the end of the block. But any more significant excursion required an airship.
Brieze was more of a walker than most Westerners. She’d walked a lot growing up on Footmont, a mountain whose impoverished residents had no choice but to use their feet to travel. On the farm where she grew up, the rickety old airship her grandfather owned was used only infrequently, to transport crops or animals to the market in the big town at Mountainhead. When she became the wizard’s apprentice and moved to his island, she took walks there to explore the place. This was considered odd by some. But then, everyone on the wizard’s island was odd in some way.
But still—to walk three miles? For an hour? That was hard for Brieze to wrap her head around. She lifted one of her feet and inspected the thin sole of her shoe. It was not a shoe made for walking. None of her shoes were. Her shoulders slumped. Already, the pack on her back felt heavy.
“I’m going to need a better pair of shoes,” she sighed.
Hiroshi took the backpack from her and slung it over his shoulder. “I will carry this for you. But before we go, there is one thing…”
The tone of his voice made Brieze look up from the contemplation of her shoe. Hiroshi was grinning, and his eyes were shining. Suddenly, Riku was kneeling in front of her, holding out what appeared to be a heavy drawstring purse.
“What is this?” she asked. The activity aboard the Kinzou had stopped. All the men were gathered on the main deck. They all faced her.
“For the saving of our lives and our cargo, my men decided that you be made an honorary member of the crew,” Hiroshi said. “Each has given one piece of silver from his anticipated profits. That’s eighty-one pieces of silver, about the standard crewman’s share of what we expect to make. We’ll adjust it as necessary should profits prove higher.”
Brieze’s mouth opened and closed. “I can’t take it. It’s too much.”
“Take it!” Hiroshi hissed under his breath. “Otherwise you dishonor them.”
Brieze took the purse. It felt as heavy as it looked. She looked up at the crew, grinning at her. Not knowing what else to do, she bowed deeply to them.
As one man, they bowed back.
Someone began to sing. Another man joined him, and then another. Soon they were all singing. Singing loudly in their deep, throaty voices. People walking along the quay stopped and listened. It was her favorite song. The one about returning home to the land of apple and cherry blossoms.
There my heart lies, there my breath sighs
Currents be kind, and weather be fine
And bring me back to my one true home
Brieze blinked rapidly. Her throat tightened.
“Oh crap,” she muttered to herself. “I’m going to cry.”
She partly fought it, and partly just let it happen. She blinked and let the tears roll down her cheeks. She was grinning and mortified at the same time. Hiroshi discreetly handed her a handkerchief. She dabbed at her cheeks. Her face was flushed and hot.
The song ended. The crew burst into cheers and waves and shouted well-wishes. Brieze waved and shouted back.
“Now we go,” Hiroshi said. “Ready?”
She grinned up at him. “Right now, I think I could walk back to the Kingdom of Spire if I had to.”
TWELVE
Brieze walked with Captain Hiroshi along the quay, passing warehouses and shipping company offices. Throngs of dockworkers called to each other or sang as they loaded or unloaded cargo. There was a lot of noise. Brieze and the captain descended a wide stone stairway cut into the mountainside and came to the entrance of one of those impossible bridges she had seen from the air.
It rose high like an arch, dwindling to a thin ribbon in the distance as it ascended to its peak and then descended toward Little Kyomont.
The bridge was crowded. They joined a line of people going to Little Kyomont on the right hand side. They passed a steady stream of people on the left heading to the port. The wind was stiff—and cold! Brieze huddled behind the protection of Hiroshi’s broad back as they walked. Her feet were already starting to ache. Even though her braid was weighed down with a polished stone tied to the end, it whipped about in the heavy wind and nearly smacked a passerby in the face. Brieze grabbed it, pulled it over her shoulder, and held onto it. The view of the city from the bridge’s peak was breathtaking, but when she slowed her pace to admire it, someone behind her stepped on her heels and muttered something unfriendly. She picked up her pace.
They stepped off the bridge into the throng of people crowding the streets of Little Kyomont. There were so many bodies that Brieze felt the warmth of them as the churning crowd closed in around her. The voices were like the roar of a waterfall in her ears. She heard shouting and laughter, and the plucky twang of some stringed instrument. She smelled grilling meat and baking bread. Exotic spices. Merchants hawked their wares. Everyone was dressed in bright colors, padded coats of scarlet and emerald and sky-blue embroidered with silver and gold.
Brieze made Hiroshi stop for a moment while she sat on a curb and took off a shoe to remove a pebble that had found its way under her heel. Her foot was clad in a grimy sock she’d been wearing for weeks. There hadn’t been many opportunities to change or bathe on the Kinzou. She tried to massage the ache out of her foot. “Is this a festival?” she asked Hiroshi, to stall for time. She had to shout to be heard above the crowd.
“No,” he said, “Just an ordinary day.” He offered her his arm to help her up.
She put the shoe back on. She took his arm reluctantly and groaned as he hauled her to her feet.