Suzu quickly got a blanket and tucked it around his shoulders.
6-4
Shoukei was assigned to the Shousha, the superintendent in charge of the palace buildings in the Ministry of Heaven. To be precise, she was made a servant to his underlings.
Her day began before daybreak. She was awakened before she could see the first rays of dawn and started earning her daily keep by dusting all the furniture. She polished the windows, swept, mopped and polished the floors. Before the empress and ministers awoke, everything had to be washed and dried.
The gardens were groomed while the empress and ministers were in their meetings. Weeds were pulled, the cobblestones swept and scrubbed. By the time the high officials finished with their duties and returned to their ministries, everything had to be wiped down again. And then you had to rush back to the place they just left and straight it up. At the end of the day, you washed all the cleaning rags and went to bed right after dinner.
If she were mopping the floor or washing the cobblestones and the empress or a minister happened to pass by, she had to prostrate herself right there in the place she was cleaning. She stooped over or kowtowed until the person in question had gone by. Otherwise, she had to walk around with a big pile of rags in a hamper on her back. If anybody complained about a spot of dirt anywhere, she had to fly over, bow with her face to the floor, and wipe away the stain.
Her quarters were in a dorm in a corner of the Imperial Palace. She was given clothes to wear and was never hungry. Winters in Kyou were slightly more temperate than winters in Hou, and the world above the Sea of Clouds even more so compared to the world below. But life here was a lot worse than it was when she was living in that poor little village in Hou.
The other servants took pride in working at the palace, but pride was the farthest things from Shoukei's mind. Until three years ago, she had been the one walking on the polished floors, the one being kowtowed to. It was her own personal hell to have to scrape the floor with her forehead in a palace like it.
On top of that, the Royal Kyou Shushou assiduously avoided her. Since that first day, she had not spoken to her once. At best, as Shoukei crawled along the floor, she might spy a glimpse of the brilliant silk train of her dress, a whiff of fragrant perfume, the clear, lucid chiming of her swaying obidama as she sailed past her.
Once it had all been within her grasp.
"What's this?"
Shoukei put down the cloth she was using to dust the furniture and picked up the ornamental hairpin in the shape of a flower. It was made from a kind of limpid ruby mined in the Kingdom of Tai. It was in the shape of a peony, carved from a single crystal of the transparent, scarlet gemstone, a gorgeous, blossoming flower, layered with petals so thin you imagined them bending at the touch of a fingertip.
"I used to have dozens. The ministers fell over each other presenting them to me."
She was in a room inside the imperial repository. The jewelry was neatly lined up on a shelf, wrapped in clothes.
So what's with all these things? Probably got stored here and long forgotten. Stored away, belonging to no one, put away for safekeeping, waiting to be disposed of by the next king or to decorate the hair of the queen or princess. And so the gifts just piled up in the repository.
Or the empress.
Shoukei was seized with the urge to dash the hairpin on the floor.
The Royal Kyou. Or the Royal Kei.
Right now, these were the kinds of accolades and glory raining down on them. And this was the cruel lot that she, the mere daughter of a king, had been left to.
"Sooner or later, everything comes to an end."
Every king, too, comes to an end. A day when the corpses roll on the floor.
She tried calming herself with these words but would not be pacified. Her life would end before that day came for the Royal Kyou and Royal Kei.
"You done in there?"
The sudden voice made Shoukei's heard skip a beat. The old woman who oversaw the Shousha's servants had caught sight of her.
"Um… yes, I am."
"Well, then, get onto your next job. If you don't hurry up and get it done, you won't be in time for dinner."
"I'm sorry," Shoukei apologized, rewrapping the hairpin.
The old woman laughed. "Allowing young women in here is always a mistake. I understand how you feel, but don't go around touching the fine merchandise. There'd be hell to pay if any of it got broke."
"Yes," she said, placing it back on the shelf.
"They all think, what would this look like in my hair? Oh, I'd be so beautiful. I did the same thing when I was your age."
Shoukei glanced back at the wrinkled old woman. The woman smiled. "It's always a disappointment. It don't look right on girls like us, just looks sad and funny, like decorating a scarecrow with flowers."
Shoukei picked up the cleaning cloth and clenched it tightly.
"We've got the arms and legs of people who work for a living. Strong physiques and even dispositions. Got no rank or fine jewelry to wear, but you don't need those to have pride in a sound body and mind. Don't need to care about doodads like that."
But I'm different. The words stuck in her throat. She painfully swallowed the retort.
With no idea what Shoukei was thinking, the lady laughed. "Only makes it worse, you still being young and all. And kinda cute as well. But you got to treasure what's been given you. You don't want to go lusting after baubles and ignoring your hard-won talents. Well, when you're done here, go to the room in the back."
Her head bowed, Shoukei hurried out of the room and went to a room deeper in the building. She closed the door and took several deep breaths.
The jewel of Youshun Palace. Skin like pearl, dark blue hair like the sky before daybreak. Eyes the color of amethyst. Waves of praise and adoration falling on her as ceaselessly as the waves breaking upon the shore. She'd lost all of it, and for no reason of her own.
"I used to have tons of these," she said to herself, approaching the shelf.
It was the room where the ceremonial fineries were kept, used to dress up the empress, queen or princess for religious festivals. Robes entwined with the feathers of a phoenix, strings of black pearls like so many poppy seeds woven into a fretwork, a diadem displaying a phoenix perched on the branch of a Chinese parasol tree.
The jewels could be plucked by the handful from the gemstone fountains in the Kingdom of Tai. She knew for a fact that of most value were the pearls, harvested in the southern waters of the Red Sea.
All gone. All those beautiful things that had once been hers, locked away in the imperial repository in Hou, waiting for the next king to be crowned.
"But they were all mine."
They had been made for her, tailored to her specifications, presented to her by her retainers. Why must they pass right under her nose to the next empress? Shoukei found herself possessed of the conviction that she must be the next empress of Hou.
I am the Empress. Just like that girl the same age as me. The Royal Kei.
That girl got lucky and robbed her of everything that had once been rightfully her own. Here she was, crawling and groveling, being worked to death, growing old and decrepit without a speck of joy or happiness, while she was adorning herself with all these treasures.
Unforgivable.
The Royal Kei had taken everything Shoukei had lost. A girl who had been a big fat nothing until the kirin chose her, and then she went and grabbed everything Shoukei had lost. A peon like her didn't deserve a thing.
Right now she'd be in the imperial palace in Kei, living it up on cloud nine. Like Shoukei, she'd never dream that one day she'd lose it all. She'd be too busy dressing herself up in all her countless gowns and adorning herself with ruby hairpins.