Vocabulaire:
1. Assembly – A meeting of the Roman people called specifically for the purpose of debating or dealing with governmental or legislative matters. The three Roman assemblies varied in composition: the Centuriate, which organised the people into their economic classes; the Popular, which organised the people into their tribes; and the Plebeian, which did not allow the participation of patricians.
2. Castor's – Actually the Temple of Castor (thus: Castor's Temple). State houses included temples, which meant many temples were used as government offices, and often had paper-filled nooks and basements.
3. Contio (s. L.), contiones (pl. L.) – Preparatory meetings convoked for assemblies (see note above) to discuss any one of various comitial matters, including elections and the promulgation of laws.
4. Imago (s. L.) – A likeness made of wax and crafted as a mask, generally used for ceremonial purposes, e.g. ancestral parades during rites like funerals, where actors were hired to play the roles of the family's ancestors. They were passed down generations, so a person with illustrious ancestors could have quite a collection. A good imago reproduced a person's features with great faithfulness, from their wrinkles down to the shade and quality of their hair: even imperfections or scars were included. Imagines (plural) were thus exquisitely lifelike... and expensive. They were hidden away from dust and corruption in a special cupboard, taken out only for special occasions.
5. "It is because the barbarians have no Greek."– To be understood, the remark takes both a bit of recollection regarding past notes in the story and some familiarity with Greek texts on warfare. A fair number of Greeks who wrote treatises on warfare discussed the use of fire (especially for projectiles), going so far as to prescribe different recipes for creating incendiary mixtures. Recall then that the Mentulae are not users of Greek, which is why they are unlikely to be familiar with such Hellenic tomes. Recall too that at some point in this story, the statement "he has not a measure / an ounce of Greek" was used as a Himean (Latin) put-down for someone considered uneducated. Good Greek was expected of Roman nobles or Latin intelligentsia, and so it is too for the nobles of Hime.
When Natsuki derides the Mentulae as uneducated or unlettered by her line, she also pokes fun at her Himean allies. This is found in her ironic treatment of what she is practically calling 'the Mentulaean lack of education'. After all, the 'unlettered' Mentulae are determined unlettered in her statement only because they do not know Greek, having in place of that 'language of the lettered' another. What is this other? Himean, the language of Natsuki's allies—who are also the originators of Natsuki's put-down.
There lies the question: if a Himean (Person A) considers barbaric a Mentulaean (Person B) who has no Greek but has Himean (Person A's own language) instead, then what exactly makes a barbarian by Person A's definition? If we recall, too, that the word "barbarian" developed from the onomatopoeia supposed to represent the sound the Hellenes heard when listening to a foreign language, Natsuki's insinuation becomes more apt. She is actually jesting about what various people—especially the Himeans—consider 'unlettered', 'uneducated', or 'barbarian'. A pun with a bite.
6. Mea vita (L.) – Extremely affectionate endearment: "my life".
7. Peregrinum est, non legitur. (L.) – "It is foreign to me: I cannot understand it." Suou is referring not to the specific words, but to Natsuki's syntax effect and skip-style communication. She might as well be saying, Otomeium est, non legitur. "It is Otomeian to me: I cannot understand it."
8. Pila (pl.), pilum (s. L.) – The standard-issue Roman military spear
9. Publicani (L.) – Individuals/organisations hired by the Roman State apparatus (specifically, the Treasury) to farm taxes on its behalf. Tax farming activities were more elaborately discussed in an earlier chapter of the story—the 13th, to be precise—and can be found in the third part of that particular chapter, "parts" being delineated by the long horizontal bars denoting page breaks on this website.
10. Rostra (L.) – The name given by the Romans to the speaker's platform on one side of the Well of the Comitia. This is the place where tribunes of the plebs hold their assemblies.
11. Wakizashi (L.) – Traditional Japanese blade about the length of a forearm. Thus shorter than the katana, it was primarily used for defence, and generally held to be one of the best weapons for this purpose.
Inter Nos II: Inde ira et lacrimae
par ethnewinter
The Mentulae took a full day to array themselves before the Seventh's camp. About half of them had actually swept past the little fort upon arrival, which manoeuvre let the watching Himeans suppose their intent. The half that passed, actually a full army by itself, took with it nearly all the artillery the Mentulae were pulling, and was guessed to be destined for one of the two Himean city-provinces to the south. The Himeans did not know it at the time, but the army that went south was led by another prince of the Mentulaean empire, a half-brother of the captured Artaxi, whom Shizuru Fujino had defeated at Argentum.
The still-enormous force that remained to besiege the Seventh was in the care of a favoured baron of Obsidian's court. Baron Procaleps was actually meant to invest the city of Sosia, but the prince with whose army he had been marching had seen fit to give him other orders after running into this Himean outpost. The baron was told to destroy it first. A worthless deviation as far as the baron was concerned, since he would have preferred to ignore such a tiny force and simply drive for the original target. Nonetheless, trusting to the overwhelming number of his troops and the excellence of his own military mind, he settled down in front of the Himean camp and proceeded to siege it, expecting the matter to last for no more than a few days. One look at the odds would surely convince the defenders that the only thing to do was lie down and roll over.
The problem with this plan came when the doughty Himeans demonstrated they were not very good at lying down and rolling over. Part of the blame too fell on Mentulaean unfamiliarity with the Himean camp style, made clear with the first assault the invaders launched: having taken appropriate time to scratch their heads at the odd look of the enemy fort, the besiegers simply charged towards it and rolled up against its walls like waves on a rock-face. Many perished in the outlying ditches, but so numerous were the Mentulae that the waves kept on coming, a seething, screaming torrent of bodies trying to tear down or scramble up the walls. The effort was heroic; the gain, pitiful. None of the wall-climbers got very far.
The Himean camp was a good one and it bristled with fortifications. All legionaries were on the ramparts, shooting arrows and poking siege spears into enemy faces. The worst went to the Mentulae who actually got sufficient spears into the walls for their footholds, since these got close enough to the top to be subjected to the Otomeians' explosive daos. It was a terrible fight for both sides as one side refused to stop coming and the other refused to stop repelling. After only an hour of this engagement, the walls of the Himean camp were painted in red—and most of the paint was Mentulaean.
Even so, the Mentulae still had the better circumstances. They had the numbers to spend in extravagance while the Himeans were fewer and had to compensate by working double or even triple shifts. The Himeans were also cooped up in a fort, cut off from added resources until dark, when they might attempt to sneak out to forage or strip the field's dead of weapons and armour. An hour before noon during that furious first attack, the defenders began to run out of arrows and pila. By noon, their arms were seized by cramps. The defence on the walls looked as if it would flag.
And then one of the auxiliary heads, the Otomeian princess, started a trend: her servants suddenly produced sacks of manure they had collected from the stables and started pouring it onto the besiegers. As the besiegers were looking up, mouths agape from panting and yelling in the fight, many of them took the rain of excrement in the face. So shocked were they at this foul repellence that that section of the wall was cleared abruptly of enemies, with the defenders in a mirthful uproar. More sections of the wall took up the example.
That happened around the time the sun shone hot. Because the day itself had also begun warm, the shit-stink rapidly heightened, sinking the Mentulae into a crashing pessimism for what suddenly seemed a futile attack. While it may not have proven futile had they kept on, any such victory would still have proven Pyrrhic. The ratio of Mentulaean dead to Himean ones in that primary, three-hour assault was shameful: hundreds were lost to them while the defenders lost none. Sobered and itching for a wash, the Mentulae retreated to their camp and their commanders into their tents for discussion.
The next day, a more standard sortie was fought. Along with the assaults upon the walls, the Mentulaean commander ordered the engineers to assemble the siege weapons left to his army. The only difficulty with this was the ground, since it had softened enough in this area for the heavy engines to sink and rut. This made it extremely easy for the Seventh—actually half of the Seventh—to harass them, since the machines could not be moved very quickly out of battle. The Himeans' Otomeian cavalry, of which the Mentulae still had a pronounced fear, proved highly opportunistic in this respect, and several engines were lost in the following engagements. Nor did the Himean infantry seem to weaken whenever the cavalry ventured out for this purpose. They had a superior-if-alien organisation and an absolutely pig-headed view of surrender that the Mentulae found both astounding and worthy of exasperation.
Had this small camp been the Baron Procaleps's only objective in the invasion, he would have won, for he would then have been willing to commit more of his forces to the battles that developed. But his true objective was Sosia, waiting some distance away, more heavily fortified and expected to have more troops as its garrison. He might be following orders from a prince, but his primary orders carried greater weight in his head, voiced as they had been by the King. So, commit more of his troops than necessary he would not, risk more of them he refused to do... which was why the Himeans found themselves winning skirmishes they had expected to be one-sided, by virtue of the enemy's chief virtue not being used: the numbers.
Nineteen days into this fruitless and half-hearted investment, the Baron Procaleps packed up. Uttering a mighty oath to the gods, heaping imprecations on Himeans in general and one Mentulaean prince in particular, he uprooted the main force of his army and marched them off to Sosia. He left five thousand foot and all of his chariots to finish the siege, however, for he was not the sort of man who could truly stomach leaving a job undone. The forces he split off were put in the care of his son, also named Procaleps.
"Finish it quickly, but don't skimp on the result," he told the young man. "Kill every last one and burn that thing to the ground. Then come join me at Sosia."
Procaleps the Younger took up the task with the fervour of a son out to impress his father. Meeting the same resolute defence his sire had, he did not lose heart. He was convinced, besides, that the enemy was by now beginning to weaken and even run out of food. And in that last respect, he was correct. It was during his time besieging the Seventh that the Himeans experienced the first grave stirrings of hunger, from the lowest rankers to highest officers.
"We're working on less than half-rations, General," said one of the military tribunes to the Himean commander during a meeting. "The grain's almost out, and it's impossible to forage. They're tight! We can't venture far enough to actually stand a chance of finding anything, and we can't even send out messengers at night, since they're keeping close watch. They jump if they see so much as a prick dangling out."
"Let's hope it's with intent to just kill and not something worse, if they jump out for that," a senior centurion grinned wolfishly.
"We'll have to make do," said the general, his brown skin paler than usual. "And we'll keep trying, damn them!"
"Worse comes to worst, we could ask the auxiliary to surrender their spare horses for ration," suggested another tribune. "Those are big animals. Plenty of meat on them."
But the commander rejected the idea.
"They're the only cavalry we have to cover us," he said. "Let's keep them cavalry fighters as long as possible. If one loses a horse in battle, he'll just turn into another foot soldier."
"If only we could send someone!" another centurion cried. "Just one. But the cunni keep watch on us like vultures waiting for the kill. If this goes on, we'll lose by plain starvation."
"At least we have water," someone answered.
"For all we know, that could dry up any day too! It's getting warmer and warmer."
Takeda looked tiredly at the man for a few minutes, too anxious to even contest this bleak outlook. And he thought of what his legate had confessed to him when he began to voice concern: that she had actually sent letters already to Sosia and Argus, the latter being one requesting reinforcements. How embarrassed he had felt at that moment—and how impossible it had been to berate her!
"Like I said, we'll have to make do," he repeated, trying to sound more positive than he felt. "Reinforcements will come. Even if the people back in Argus and Sosia don't know we're in this situation, they know enough to have noticed something's off by now... and they did get a warning from Himemiya-san. They'll come. In the meantime, we hold these cunni at bay."
So the siege went on. At one point, the Mentulae grew more innovative, loading flaming brush onto their two remaining catapults and lobbing them over the fortified walls of the Seventh's camp. The idea came too late, however, for the weather itself helped foil the plan: sporadic showers fell to douse the flames and combined with the overall muggy damp to protect the wood. The creative stroke even made things worse for the besiegers later, for the Himeans soon answered with their own artillery twist. By order of their legate—who was thoroughly fed up with putting out flaming meteors—the defenders loaded a mixture of fat, kindling, and pitch into their own catapultae and aimed at the enemy's siege engines.
As the Mentulae were actually loading more flaming brush into their machines at the time, all the Himean missiles had to do was land close enough for the incendiary mixtures to break and spatter on the enemy catapults, which swiftly took flame. The Himeans waved a hearty goodbye to the nuisances as they burned, glad it had not occurred to their foes to use such substances for their own projectiles. Which relief provoked a puzzling remark from their Otomeian princess that no one could understand—save, it seemed, for their legate, who also needed time to think it over before she suddenly began snorting uncontrollably to herself. The remark that put her in that state was: "It is because the barbarians have no Greek."
The bigger worry for the Himeans was the change in seasons. While the light showers had helped with the problem of fire, they also augmented an increasing humidity paired with warming weather. Of themselves the Seventh did their utmost to keep their camp clean and free of dirt and faeces, but their enemies and neighbours outside the walls did not. This meant that the area surrounding them was ripening each day with potential nastiness. The Himeans would welcome any diseases that could afflict the Mentulaean camp, but not if the same ailments invaded their walls. Compounding their difficulties was that both camps also had a good number of pack-animals and horse, whose manure added to the general stink.
This was on the Himean legate's mind as she surveyed the grounds from the fort's highest tower, her face arctic despite the heat—which was still not comparable to the heat of the summers back home, she and her companions noted.
"Heavens, but their battlefield manners are obnoxious," she said, her eyes on the enemy tents. "You would think they'd know enough to keep an area free of excrement if they intended to stay in it for this long, but no. See, the bodies we killed just yesterday in their little sortie are still there! Where are their firebrands when they actually need them?"
"I think we burned them all out with their catapults, Suou-san."
"True, we might have," she grinned. "Poor Prometheus—men fail to use properly your gift stolen from the gods. All those poor corpses. Don't they look pitiful down there? Mentulaean those bodies might be, but I feel for them."
"Aren't a civilised lot, Legate," one of the centurions on the platform grunted. "They'll leave 'em there to melt, I think, and it will be us gets the worst of it. We've got to get out of here."
"So I think too," Suou agreed. "However, our commander is doubtful about forcing a full-on fight with them still—and I can't say I don't understand. Even I have to admit it will be a bit dodgy. Their infantry still looks to outnumber us two to one and, even more importantly, their horse three to one. Given that we'll be fighting on relatively flat ground, those are madmen's winning numbers at a wager, Takashi."
She paused to look into the horizon beyond the enemy's encampment, the dark parts of her eyes shrinking as she stared into the light sky. Her sharply contracted pupils gave her the look of someone blind.
"Part of me is screaming to take them on," she admitted. "But another part is asking if it's too great a risk. If only we'd whittled them down more, from the start! But whoever's leading them now is a little more cautious than the one before, so they're not losing as many as they were earlier. A better head for siegework, this one."
"We've good boys and girls, Suou-san," one of her companions ventured hopefully.
"Oh, the very best!" Suou exclaimed. "We wouldn't have held out so long here otherwise. But we have to remember that they're also tired boys and girls. About a quarter are afflicted with enteric fevers. Their bellies are half-empty and they've had to fend off the attacks of thousands of enemies harassing them through weeks now. Whereas the Mentulae out there are well-fed and well-rested. Added to which is that they have the capacity to cover their flanks in any deployment. They left all those damned chariots, after all."
"Damned now, yes."
She turned to the new voice and frowned.
"Oh no—you again, Natsuki?" she chided the Otomeian captain, who only gave a highly-injured sniff at the censure in her voice. Two of the girl's troopers followed her ascent onto the platform. Each one carried a stool, and they arranged their superior on them after mounting the tower, helping her sit on one and rest her bandaged leg on the other. They retired unobtrusively to a corner afterwards, and Suou eyed them with palpable disapproval.
"Natsuki, what are you doing here?" she demanded of the only dark-haired foreigner. "If I recall, you were told to stay in bed and let that heal. I'm now beginning to question whether I am correct in recalling that, because you seem not to share the memory—which discriminating case of amnesia has been going on for nearly three weeks now!"
The shell-pink lips plumped into a pout. Suou knew the girl hated this sort of lecture most, but went on anyhow.
"It's because you keep ignoring what we say that your leg refuses to heal properly," she said, crossing her arms loosely before her chest and arching a threatening brow. "Haven't you grown tired of having us douse it with alcohol, then, or are you developing some sort of deviant taste for that?"
Natsuki looked at her own leg.
"Better now," she volunteered.
"Not nearly!" Suou looked too at the limb, noting the yellowish stains that had seeped again through the linen. "Look at those. It's taking much longer than I'd like for it to dry up completely, and it's all because you keep breaking it open again yourself, what with all this walking about the camp. You're like a surveyor on a rabid hunt for a building infraction! What that thing needs is a good week of rest in bed and not outof it. You have to stay off your feet, the doctors said."
The girl arched a brow meaningfully, gesturing to the stool on which she sat.
"Very obedient of you now, yes," the Himean said with patent sarcasm. "You know what I mean, Natsuki. So please, for the final time—go back to your tent and stay there, for all our sakes!"
This time, the dark brow was arched at her.
"Not for all our sakes that I leave it?" she asked defiantly. "Not for all our sakes that I have left it, thus far?"
Suou took a deep breath, knowing the girl was referring to the times she had helped marshal the defenders whenever the Mentulae came close to scaling their walls. It was impossible to belittle her value at such times because she was instrumental to their ongoing successes. Natsuki's presence in battle always galvanised her men, and their energy often infected the Himeans. Many of the Himeans admired her as well, so the sight of the obviously ill, obviously injured girl ignoring her pains to fight with them roused them into ignoring their own weariness.
Suou knew too that even more important than Natsuki's effect on determination and morale was her leadership. Natsuki knew almost mystically where to send her men next, knew which spot would soon be in danger. It was the martial streak in the girl, of course: she had the natural ability to sense such perils before they materialised, and so had proven time and time again to be an invaluable asset to the defenders. Even so, it caused a great deal of worry for both her chaperone and physicians, who would cluck angrily after the engagements were over and lecture her all the way to bed until both her ears went scarlet.
"Granted," Suou replied heavily. "But it's high time you were permitted to be a little selfish, especially given everything you've done. This is for your sake now. Go on and rest."
Natsuki insisted: "Must talk to you now."
The Himean tilted her head. "If that was all, you could have just sent a messenger to get me instead, you know. All you would have had to do was wait."
"Too important," the other responded, before adding demurely: "I need to stay here a while, too."
"Why would you need to stay here?"
"Ah." An eager lift of the head. "We talk now?"
"My god, it's as though you haven't been listening at all," Suou said, opening her eyes wide. Her surprised irises looked like pieces of the sky, bright and feathered with little bits of white. "Just to teach you a lesson, then: No. I will not indulge you any longer, Natsuki—at least, not until you understand that my indulgence of you shall stop when it's your health involved. Get your men to take you back to your tent. That's all. Be off!"
She turned away and muttered the rest to the waiting centurions, who had been trying very hard not to laugh at the exchange.
"You'd think such a smart girl would understand how dangerous it is to risk a wound in this weather," she grumbled to them, aware Natsuki could still hear her. "That mess outside isn't conducive to good health either."
"I come about that," Natsuki's low voice suddenly spoke at her back. "I want to talk about that."
"I'm not going to turn around, so go away."
"Like this is fine too."
Suou's eyes met those of Takashi, who grinned his big yellow teeth her way.
"I think you better listen to her, Legate," he volunteered to the rueful-looking patrician.
"Yes, I think I better," she agreed, whirling to face the foreigner once more. The bony, severely beautiful face smiled in triumph at her surrender.
Now I understand what you meant, Shizuru-san, Suou thought to herself, now only a little surprised that even her estimation of the Otomeian's obduracy had been wrong. She remembered thinking once that anyone who was not Natsuki's lover could easily see that the princess would be stubborn, but she still turned out to be wrong in thinking they could guess the extent of that stubbornness. Heavens, but the girl could be like a brick wall! Suou had not expected her to be this wilful, and even now the concentrated exposure to her that their situation afforded was revealing further depths of wilfulness in the Otomeian, ones that exasperated Suou to no end.
At least half of the exasperation was for herself too. Irked as she might be by Natsuki's obstinacy, Suou had to admit she was also amused by it: sometimes titillated, even. She did not know if it was simply because of the Otomeian's childlike manner, or delicate looks, or something else... but there was a quality to Natsuki's insubordination that had you tickled even when her teeth would surprise you with a nip, or smiling even as she broke leash and rammed you like an unruly kid goat. Suou found, to her chagrin, that she was not proof to the charm of unruly kid goats—even if she did want to lock this particular specimen in a pen on occasion. Oh, princesses! Bleating, butting bundles of stubborn!
"I'm still of half a mind to order the men to cart you back to your tent," Suou threatened, flicking a glance to the troopers in the corner and wondering if they would actually obey such an order. She had long-since learned that the regard Natsuki's men gave her was fanatical. In which respect she was very like her absent lover.
Suou leaned close to the girl.
"Were you by any chance half as disobedient when it was Shizuru with you?" she asked.
"Half," was the wicked reply.
Suou's lips twitched.
"Which was still worse than your average army mule, I'm sure," she quipped, throwing back her shoulders and stretching her aching back. "I have a proposition. If you really want me to listen, you have to listen to me first. Mutual exchange, you might say. Otherwise, it's off you go."
The Otomeian cocked her head to indicate her attention.
"Promise me you shall spend the rest of the week off your feet," Suou bargained, fully aware that this might be the most she could get out of the girl. "Absolutely no walking. Ask some of your men or servants to carry you—or ask mine, even. I'll have mine put together a litter. And you have to listen to the doctors from now on."
She paused and heaved a deep sigh at Natsuki's face.
"I'm not trying to be dictatorial, really," she told the young woman, bending closer and speaking very softly because this was for Natsuki's ears alone. "It's for your health, Natsuki, as well as my well-being. There's at least one person who would skin me alive if something bad happens to you again."
Natsuki seemed to sigh, though no breath actually escaped.
"Shizuru-san would be very displeased with me already with just the leg," Suou continued. "What more if she knew about all this?"
The pensive look vanished: Natsuki scoffed.
"Why be angry with you?" she rebutted. "Illogical. Shizuru is logical."
"Generally, yes. When it comes to you, no," Suou retorted. "She tends to become very illogical when it's you involved."
To her surprise, the girl's face fell—but not in annoyance.
"No, not like that," Suou whispered urgently, putting a hand on the Otomeian's shoulder. "Do not take it like that, Natsuki: I didn't mean that as an accusation or anything of the kind. I just wanted to point out that I take my promise to look over you as seriously as she took it from me, and both of us were deadly serious in that conversation. Apologies if it came out badly."
The Otomeian responded by shaking her head and assuming an aloof look, one that seemed calculated to cover up the fact that she had just now looked miserable.
"The promise," the girl said. "All right."
"You agree?"
"Yes." And then a hasty addendum: "Unless it is an emergency, yes?"
Suou nodded slowly. "Of course, but only a true emergency. Not merely something like a burning need to stretch your legs or anything of the kind."
Ever the stickler, the girl enquired what Suou's parameters for identifying 'true emergencies' were.
"Let's just say that if another arrow is about to stick you, you have every right to get to your feet," the Himean answered with narrowed eyes.
Natsuki said she would abide by the pledge.
"Good! Break that and I swear I shall lash you to your bed and sit on you afterwards," Suou said in good humour, putting both hands on her hips as she regarded the young woman. "Why are you here then? What is it you wanted?"
Quite unexpectedly, the other lifted one hand and pointed over the railing. She was pointing towards the Mentulaean camp, her finger aimed towards the cluster of chariots currently unmanned.
"I want them," she said.
"Them—er, the bladed chariots?"
"Mm. I want them."
Suou tried to work it out by herself first, then finally gave up and quizzed the girl.
"You want to force battle, I know," Natsuki explained. "If so, no more need to wait. Not anymore."
"Why not?" A thoughtful frown. "Were you waiting too?"
Natsuki nodded excitedly. "Now it ends. The terra is perfect. We can leave this camp as soon as they are caught. The chariots are no worry... just the infantry. Maybe those are no worry too."
"Go on and tell me why," Suou urged, still with a frown.
"Suou," the Otomeian very nearly whined, enthusiasm suddenly dissipating. "You said it before... when we made this camp. You really forget, maybe?"
Suou hung her head and smiled at the young woman.
"I think I do," she sighed. "Besides which, Natsuki, I fear you're not being terribly clear. Might I ask you to either switch languages, please, or simply tell me in more detail what makes you so excited to attack them now? As it is, I am left with sentences that I can tell are related, yet whose links I cannot seem to find. Peregrinum est, non legitur."
Natsuki audibly sighed. It had a surprising depth of expression that said to Suou that she was being very slow and the only reason she was not being scolded for it was because the Otomeian was being very patient today. Which nice bit of irony made Suou's eyes dance wildly as she listened to the very patient girl.
"You see," Natsuki said in Greek, making another point of lenience by acquiescing to both of the legate's requests. "The chariots are the most important concern for you, no? Not actually the infantry."
"Yes, that is true," Suou said in the same language, playing along with a glint in her eye. "You understand me so well! I seem to be as a clearly written book to you, or a precisely articulated passage."
"It is so in this case," the girl nodded sagely, either ignoring or simply missing Suou's joke. "But you worry for nothing. The chariots are not a concern any longer. A new factor subtracts them from the equation."
"Oh god, you sound like an Attic version of my sister."
Natsuki's brow creased. "Hrr?"
"Go on, please, and do not mind me. Why are they out of the equation?"
"The Mentulaean chariots are large, heavy," Natsuki said, excited as she came to her point. "Good in their lands, maybe, but not here. Before, they could work, because there was no hindrance. But now a hindrance arrives. They have not used the chariots in the last two engagements, so they may not have noticed—as you have not noticed—but, this close to the river, the soil changes swiftly. The feel of it, or the... I cannot recall the word... the quality... I was waiting for it. You observe later," she said, suddenly releasing a very soft, very pleased giggle that only Suou heard. "The chariots' wheels will sink and get stuck. A fine trap, this soil."
Her auditor was frozen, stunned by the good sense of this advice. In her mind, Suou was actually jumping up and down. Of course! The chariots were indeed likely to get stuck in mud like this, which fetched spatters all over the legionaries whenever they walked. Why had she not thought of it? Oh, but she was a Himean through and through: unused to thinking of the mechanics of chariots, which she had only ever encountered in these lands, and as units of the enemy. She had only thought of them swirling around their camp those first days into the siege, had not thought of the steadily worsening impediment to the conveyances in the very ground they walked. Ah, but to think now of how to use that in a battle...
She stayed still and quiet for so long that Natsuki took it upon herself to speak again, keen to regain the Himean's attention.
"I think if they are pressed enough they will try to use them," she told the fair-haired woman, looking as though she would give her a tug if she failed to surface from her daze. "And when they fail... I think there will be panic enough for a rout. But they must be pressed enough, Suou. You understand?"
Suou snapped out of her stupor and gave the girl a smile.
"Don't worry, we can press them enough to bleed oil," she said, now sharing Natsuki's enthusiasm. "I know just how to do it! Now all I have to do is convince Takeda-kun that this is the perfect time."
She paused to look affectionately into green eyes, then bent again to speak in a whisper.
"You really are a pearl beyond price, Natsuki. I'd kiss you for this if I could, but..."
The younger woman smirked at her shrug.
"Shizuru would be angry?" Natsuki suggested.
"Ready to murder me," Suou enlarged. "And with good reason. Pearls beyond price should always be jealously guarded, especially when their worth proves to be beyond the ornamental—high as they already rank there."
The Otomeian blushed and ducked. As for Suou, she straightened and turned to the centurions, who had fallen into their own dialogue ever since the conversation had switched to Greek. Most Himeans had a basic working knowledge of the language of the Hellenes, yes, but very rarely understood the elite Attic argot, especially when it was rapped out at the pace at which Natsuki and Suou had been speaking.
"Kintarou, you were down last," she said to the men, who stopped their talk. "Where was the commander?"
"Checking the supply and rations, Suou-san."
"Let's go see him—you too, Takashi. I'd like both of you to hear it." She smiled and puffed at a stray lock of hair. "Besides, he's not been very comfortable with the two of us being alone ever since we got stuck here. Afraid I'll say 'I told you so'."
They laughed heartily with her, joking all the way down from the tower. They liked their legate very much, and so their interactions were warm. Throughout the march and the time penned up in this camp, Suou had been steadily working and fighting with them, always in good humour, always ready to give a kind word to anyone needing one. As she proved so very capable, and seemed always to understand their concerns so very well, the Seventh was very quickly charmed: nearly every member of that tiny army had grown to esteem their legate even more than their current commander. Just as Suou had planned.
This was a contingency scheme she had formulated from the start, in case their general should suddenly decide on a tactical error without room for her to manoeuvre—something even worse than this ill-fated march to Argentum, for instance, or something that would without a doubt see all of them dead. If it came to that, Suou decided, she would have to instigate a mutiny and take over, and having the support of the rankers and officers would make such a coup so much easier.
The idea was a worst-case resort, though. Not even Suou, results-oriented woman that she was, truly liked the notion. Mutiny in the army was ever the Great Unpardonable, its authors easily condemned to death by convention and law. Her principle in this matter was to always exhaust the full vocabulary of persuasion first... and only after proving the man deaf and herself mute, only then would she even remember there was such a word as rebellion.
She did not need to remember the existence of the word on this occasion, as it turned out. Takeda heard her willingly this time, and quickly adopted her suggestions. Once everything had been agreed upon, the soldiers were duly informed of the plan and given the standard pep talk—in which respect Suou actually thought the commander acquitted himself well, based on the reaction of the soldiers. The Otomeian princess disagreed with this, however, and said that the legionaries' eager responses to Takeda's speech were due more to the general exasperation with their circumstances and a desire to have an end of the matter. Smiling at the fairly reasonable assessment, Suou whispered to the girl nonetheless to be kinder. Comparing all commanders to her charismatic lover, she told her, was just a little unfair.
They set the attack for twilight, just before dawn of the next day. The infantry massed in a line and simply marched up—although they took care to do it quietly—and fell on their surprised foes, who barely received warning from the guards before they were deprived of them by Himean swords. The Mentulaean officers were quick, however, and they rallied their still-groggy men to defence. The first few lines put together fell quickly under the relentless Himean assault, but eventually torches were lit and spines were stiffened: some of the Mentulae finally began to wake and present to the attackers a decent fight.
The conflict seemed to hold for a time in the front lines, with neither army gaining ground nor moving backward. But then something seemed to break on the Mentulaean side, which was still half-gripped by panic and the rude remnants of sleep. The Himeans, on the other hand, were fully awake and fighting as though it would be their only chance to live—which it was. The attackers suddenly swelled, seemed to push even further. When his infantry threatened to cave in, Procaleps the Younger, commander of the Mentulaean force, did the most logical thing to save it.
His actions were exactly as the Himeans wanted them.
He gave the order for the charioteers to mobilise, sending his now-awake teams to the parked conveyances. Up the drivers and archers clambered onto the vehicles and on the vehicles rolled through the mud... before abruptly getting stuck in the sludge. Natsuki's prediction came true and her plan was carried to fruition: hundreds of her jubilant troopers rode their powerful horses through the thick slush and cut down the mired chariots, many of which were abandoned by panicking drivers. Nor were the Himeans left behind in their part of the battle: once the Mentulaean foot recovered its bearings and tried to go into the standard line, the Himeans went into their own formation and continued their press.
By this time, the first glow of light was beginning to spread on the sky. The timing could not have been better, for it was just about time for the other part of the Himean offensive to strike. Suou had hidden the artillery behind and beside the left of the infantry line, which was farthest from the cavalry charge. As soon as the Mentulae saw that weakness and tried to outflank the Himean foot on that side, the artillery shocked them with a rain of missiles. The result: the Mentulae on that side fled and piled up to the Himean right. Which left them pooling neatly between the Himean line and the Otomeians. These were still cutting down the remaining charioteers on the Himean right. As more of the Mentulae from these abandoned chariots ran to the safety of their infantry comrades, both Himean and Otomeian charges followed them inwards without breaking line. The Mentulae walked themselves straight into a pincer.
The battle was relatively short, lasting for perhaps little more than an hour. So vigorously had the Seventh fought against its besiegers that nary a Mentulaean might have been left on the field had it not been for the general's orders to spare anyone from high command, in order to extract information . Save for that handful kept alive, every other Mentulaean was put to the sword. The Seventh and its allies had been cooped up in that camp for over twenty days by then, living on scrap rations and bone-tired from the vigilance of the besieged. They were not in a merciful frame of mind.
Suou shook hands afterwards with her commander, who announced he would be awarding her decorations as soon as he was able. This triumphant reconciliation was interrupted when one of the tribunes ran to them, calling out that the Mentulaean camp was stuffed with food and supplies. The Seventh could have a decent meal tonight!
"Isn't it wonderful, Suou-kun?" he gasped, having been worrying about feeding the men ever since the siege began; he had actually reduced his own rations to far less than half, trying to spare what he could for the men. "Oh, this is a good day! And I'm glad you were here with me, since I'd not have thought of using the artillery to cover the left flank. That was brilliant!"
She shook her head and answered, gently, "Thank you, but I'm afraid it wasn't my idea. I remembered reading it in Harada-san's accounts of her campaign before this one, where Shizuru-san did it first—although she hid her artillery under cover of a fog, not the darkness."
So lifted was his mood by the combined victory and relief that this did not have the power to depress him. He nodded thoughtfully.
"Still, it's a good idea," he confirmed.
It was on the tip of Suou's tongue to say it was because Shizuru was a good general, but she stopped herself in time.
"I'll handle the cleanup, Takeda-kun," she told him. "You go see to the food before the men run through it like goats let loose in a garden. I've one to look after already and it's more than enough!"
"What do you mean?" Takeda asked in confusion, removing his helmet to swipe his sweaty brow. "You have a goat?"
But she merely laughed and slapped him on the back of his cuirass, told him again to go on. A look at their camp stopped her laughter once he left, for she was just about able to make out a dark head of hair peeking down at her from one of the guard-towers, all its accompanying heads a uniform blonde. She shook her head.
"You were right, Shizuru-san: she really is a brat," she muttered under her breath. "I told her to stay off her feet, didn't I?"
As events developed in the North, so did they in Hime. At the same time the Seventh was besieged, Shizuru and her allies went into the next stage of their plan, which was to call successive contiones for the Plebeian Assembly. This was intended to keep the plebeian people adamantly on their side by keeping public interest stoked and furiously blazing for them. Very easily handled, because they had one of the greatest—and to the Traditionalists, worst—tribunes of the plebs in history on their side, in the person of Urumi Himemiya-Kanzaki.
She had by now become legendary in her doings on the rostra, which meant she drew crowds consistently whenever she began to declaim. Indeed, even some senators or knights known to have more conservative sympathies attended her contiones not for the sake of argument, but rather to watch her antics. Easy to hate the scoundrel, these almost-fence-sitters said, but hard not to love her rostra manner. And those who hated the scoundrel most would bite their teeth and gnash, not least because they understood exactly what the almost-fence-sitters meant: Himemiya-Kanzaki really did have the most watchable rostra manner of all those they had seen in their generation.
What they had yet to understand, though, was the purpose for which the woman employed her talents. It was actually part of Shizuru's plan to have Urumi draw all the attention with her contiones, because it meant that their foes would concentrate their ire upon the latter. In vain. While Urumi's role in the scheme was certainly important, the true attack was not to come from her venue but from another, which Shizuru and Chikane—working with typical subtlety and atypically severe stealth—were preparing at that very moment. So Urumi's splashing in the Comitia waters were actually performed only to throw diverting splatters in Traditionalist faces, conveniently permitting her allies to focus on other aspects.
For a while all seemed to go as they expected. A slight snag nearly happened midway through July when Chikane got wind of a suit being prepared against her best friend, courtesy of several publicani who had the contracts for collecting taxes in Sosia. As her informants put it, these tax farmers were fuming over Shizuru's reorganisation of taxes and loan collections when she had passed by that province and cowed the governor into taking orders from her. They had only now decided to sue her belatedly for arrogating herself such power over Sosia's fiscal matters.
Chikane agreed wholeheartedly with her friend's rearrangements—one look at the reports and exorbitant interest rates being enforced in Sosia had her scowling. Yet she had to admit nonetheless that the restive publicani would have the upper hand in court, because they had the contracts with the State and had no legal barriers to their usury. Worried, she went to see her friend straightaway.
Her friend received her with nary a twitch of concern, however, and answered that she already knew about the complaint. Furthermore, it turned out that Chikane was just a day late with the data: Shizuru had already dealt with the publicani.
"My informants must be tardy indeed," Hime's senior consul sighed then, lowering herself onto her friend's couch. "What did you tell them? This was yesterday, Shizuru?"
"Yes," Shizuru replied, while mixing some light wine and spring water for her visitor. "I invited them to a nice little dinner as soon as I caught the whispers, naturally."
A level glance from Chikane. "Naturally."
"It was then that I told them I would beat them to a lawsuit if they pursued the matter any further."
"How could they have succumbed to such an argument? They would have had the Treasury on their side, you know."
"Perhaps so, but the law actually is on mine... or, at least, it is if you go far back enough." Shizuru handed Chikane a drink, which the older woman took with a murmur of gratitude. "There is an ancient statute going back to the time of our last king that actually forbids extortionate rates of interest. You know our old laws hold, so long as they are not amended or repealed by the new ones—and no one truly wishes to repeal or amend ancient laws, given the attitude towards antiquity and tradition amongst our people. Oh, I almost wish they had not broken! Imagine the look on the Traditionalists' faces at court when they would realise they would have to support my side, much though they would love to see me prosecuted: it would have been impossible for them to go against a law actually belonging to tradition, after all."
"I do admire your capacity for levity even when discussing such a possibility."
A faint smirk. "What makes you think I am not serious?"
"Oh, Shizuru." Chikane sipped at her wine and looked thoughtful. "About that statute, however: where did you find it?"
"In Sagara-san's last book—was it last year or the year before that?—discussing her findings on ancient law drawn from that tattered old compendium she discovered in a dusty corner of Castor's. I shall lend you my copy later, if you wish it."
"Thank you. I wish I had known to buy one myself. I did not even know of it, that book of hers."
"You were occupied by other things then, I believe," Shizuru said. "And besides, most tomes discussing ancient law are not given much attention. There are few enthusiasts in that area, are there not? So it transpires that you may not have heard of the book coming out because few do talk about it."
She walked from her desk to sit on the couch next to Chikane.
"Returning to the publicani of Sosia, however, I confess I also threatened to attach to them the odium of Suda Yuuji-han."
"The disgraced Sosia governor, yes," the blue-eyed woman smiled. "Whose disgrace, incidentally, was partly of your orchestration."
"But entirely of his origination," Shizuru answered. "Well, he went into voluntary exile before the court could condemn him for his doings in Sosia. He managed to make off with a good part of his fortune. Still, his name stinks to the high heavens in Hime at the moment; it shall be a long time before he can even come near Fuuka again."
"Which is why the Sosia publicani quailed at your threat to connect them to him, I assume?"
Shizuru winked at her.
"Fear not, Chikane, for the problem no longer exists," the younger woman said. "They have decided to abandon all thoughts of serving me such a suit. Besides, they were also afraid of falling entirely out of the running for any concessions I might be in a position to grant in the future, should I actually go ahead with my rumoured annexation of the Mentulaean Empire. Bad business to antagonise a possible governor-conqueror, and all publicani are good businessmen at heart."
The other woman said nothing for a few seconds, content to nod and sip her wine. After a while, she turned to look at Shizuru.
"You always walk such a fine line," she sighed to the younger woman.
A particularly unrepentant smile came to Shizuru's lips.
"I am sorry for making you worry," she said without a hint of apology.
"Not at all," Chikane retorted. "It makes my life a little more interesting."
Shizuru chuckled. "As the audience feels about those performers who walk a thin beam over a bed of nails, no doubt, with a gasp for every wobble and wiggle."
Chikane smiled.
"Ah, my interest in you goes beyond such shallow suspense," she told the younger woman. "I do hope you are not about to belittle my emotional investment come your troubles: I invest a great deal of emotion in you, you know."
"To be sure," the other said, tongue-in-cheek. "Humour is still a form of investment."
After that problem was resolved, everything seemed to go well. Urumi continued to make trouble in the Forum as Chikane and Shizuru's manipulations below the surface progressed, and soon Chikane found herself considering a suggestion to Shizuru that their true attack should begin. For that purpose did she ready herself at home one day, with the intent of paying her friend a visit in the latter's villa just outside of Hime.
"Has someone gone to fetch the gig?" she asked her steward, while tucking her wakizashi into her belt. She was a cautious woman as well as a conscientious wife, and she knew that her spouse felt better knowing she always carried some article of weaponry. "I must leave presently."
"It is being readied now, Domina," the man answered. "I am sorry for the delay."
Chikane smiled her wonderful smile at him. "Not at all. It gives me time to see my wife first, at any rate, for she did say she wished to prepare something for me to bring."
"I believe the other domina is in the private kitchen," he advised. "I shall hold the gig here until you return, Domina. Would you also prefer to know when it arrives?"
"No, thank you. I shall merely return when I am ready."
"As you wish, Domina."
Off Chikane sauntered, passing through her enormous atrium and deeper into her mansion. She was searching for a specific room, the one her steward had mentioned, and her long-legged stride carried her swiftly to it. As her steward said, her wife was still there.
"Here you are," she said to announce herself, moved as always by the sight of her spouse actually using the private kitchen added to their manor. Looking far more like an unusual sitting room than a kitchen, this abnormal architectural addition was for Himeko's use alone. How her enemies had once tried to make capital out of it when they found out! Chikane Himemiya's wife made use of a kitchen, Chikane Himemiya's wife pottered about pots and pans as any common slave! And so on, and so forth... until they found out that Chikane Himemiya also pottered about in the same marble-countered, mosaic and gilt-decorated room—all added details that rather robbed the fact of any ignominy. It became just another of those ancient patrician quirks instead, even if everyone knew only Chikane should rightly be absolved of shame by that reasoning. Even so, the capital had already been stolen.
Chikane pulled out a seat at a table.
"That smells lovely," she commented, watching the other woman work. Himeko was transfering some steaming biscuits to a cloth-lined hamper. She would sprinkle some poppy-seeds atop a batch before depositing it in the basket, working swiftly but with enough care so as not to crush those biscuits at the bottom. Once they were all in, she took the tray and brushed off the poppy-seeds left there onto the topmost biscuits. Nothing unaccounted for, nothing wasted. Maximum economy in application.
Chikane marvelled again at how efficient a housewife was her spouse—though not in any acceptable mode of her class, of course. Himeko knew many things Chikane did not, such as how to bake bread and cook complicated stews out of meagre ingredients; how to tend to a plot of rich soil and sprout wonders that could be eaten or used to brighten up a room; how to banish all manner of pests from the dark, damp corners of a house. These were things that a poor daughter of a poor house had to learn, and they were not things supposed to fascinate Chikane in any way. Yet it fascinated Chikane how appealingly earthy she continued to find them.
Although one must admit that may also be because it is Himeko who does them, specifically, she conceded to herself, ever the woman conscious of qualifiers. And one must admit too that Himeko does not look actually look 'earthy', for all her knowledge suited to the role; for Chikane Himemiya's wife looked as impeccably patrician as her birth was unspeakable. As fair and purple-eyed as the products of the Armitage, she was even more nobly-cast of face—which meant Chikane could indulge in a private laugh whenever they ran into some poor-skinned, uninspiring-looking member of a Famous Family. Put one such noble next to Himeko and let a random bystander guess which one was the aristocrat. Oh, such fun!
"For Shizuru again?" she asked.
"Yes," her wife said. "I thought I'd make her some more. She likes these so much."
"Should I be envious?"
The other woman stopped what she was doing and looked at her with a laugh.
"I know the two of you eat them together, Chikane-chan," she teased.
It was Chikane's turn to laugh.
"I never deprive her of more than one, just so you know," she defended. "At any rate, this seems to be the fifth batch you've made her in just a little over two weeks. I am certain she is more than pleased to receive them, Love, but it appears to me as though you are a little more eager than usual to give her such tokens."
The other woman had gone to wash her hands in a bronze water-basin, and wiped them clean before returning. She had been married to Chikane for long enough to see the statement Chikane had just tendered not in a jealous light, but in the shade actually intended.
"I know, Chikane-chan," she said, coming over to the table as well. Her wife rose to fetch another chair and helped her into it first before sitting again. "I'm just worried, I guess."
Chikane tilted her dark head. "About Shizuru?"
"Yes."
"Understandable, these days. But may I hear from you why?"
A nervous shuffle of the feet first, before Himeko could reply.
"Well, she doesn't look herself. Or not so much, I think," the blonde said cautiously. "She's getting so thin too, and she looks so tired, and—I don't mean she looks bad, of course, only tired. She's still beautiful."
The raven-haired woman suppressed a laugh at the sudden disclaimer.
"Shizuru shall never be anything but beautiful," she agreed. "But I understand."
"Also, Chikane-chan, Shizuru doesn't usually seem so..."
She trailed off and would have left it there had Chikane not prodded.
"Seem so?"
"I don't know," Himeko admitted. "How to say it, I mean. I keep remembering things."
"Things."
"Ye-es. Like—oh, like the last time I went to visit her with Urumi! Did Urumi-chan tell you what we talked about?"
"Yes, although I daresay you shall have to tell me specifically what you mean, Dear."
The fair woman shifted uncomfortably, hunching to settle both elbows on the table and brace herself on them. Chikane smiled at the pose, finding it so devoid of affect. Her Himeko was so very natural.
"We were talking about what was happening," Himeko was telling her. "And how people kept opposing her and saying such things about her and then—and then she said it again." She paused, anxiety suddenly settling over her bright face like an ill-suited pall. "That she would, you know, 'destroy them if necessary'."
Chikane said nothing.
"She says it so often now, Chikane-chan," Himeko continued, finally giving vent to her concerns. "That she'll destroy them. Maybe I'm just being thin-skinned, and I hope maybe I am—but I don't know. Something... ohh."
She sighed out the breath, looking frustrated with herself for being unable to communicate the precise notion in her head. She sent a pleading look her wife's way, but continued right after it.
"It's just the way she says it," she said. "And the way she looks when she says it. Oh, she doesn't look angry, really, or even mad, but there's something about it that just worries me!"
A hum rose from Chikane's throat as she nodded slowly to soothe her restless wife.
"Can you not clarify further, Darling?" she asked the other woman. "I have heard her say that as well, and as you say, she does not really look as furious as many others would—at least, excepting that time she said it in Senate, in the meeting at the Ogasawara's basilica. There was something truly worth some worry."
She grinned then, displaying her lovely even teeth in a smile that was just as lovely and even; one of the more objective reasons her wife loved to use her so often as a model lay there, for Chikane's smiles were almost always perfectly symmetrical. There is a face, had said one of the most popular sculptors of the city, who was also giving private lessons to Himeko for the art: There is a face devoted entirely to the divine proportion!
"She gave me quite a start that day," said the lips devoted to the divine proportion.
"I didn't see it," Himeko reminded her, giggling. "I wish I had seen that, though."
"Put another of those busts of me in our bedroom and perhaps you shall," Chikane replied, knowing what her wife meant.
A playful look. "You said you thought I was getting better."
"Which is exactly why I was so surprised when I saw it."
"Not because it was in the bedroom?"
"That too is a consideration. How am I to make love to my wife without feeling mocked by a haughty effigy of me looking down its nose as though it beheld some gory spectator sport? It takes self-ridicule to a new extreme."
She stopped then, having remembered something she had wanted to ask upon seeing the first trial busts of herself.
"Incidentally, Darling, they all look like that. I had the same impression from the paintings, but it was faint there whereas here it stands out. To be sure, they are all very exquisite of execution. And yet, I do have a personal qualm. Why is it that I seem so haughty in all the likenesses?"
Her wife had been giggling all this time and finally gave up at the last remark, bursting into heartfelt laughter. She got up from her seat and gave Chikane a kiss on the mouth, the gesture brief because she was still laughing.
"Oh, Chikane-chan," she cried when able. "Only you could ask that!"
Chikane only touched her lips in confusion. Not being addicted to peering at her reflection in a mirror, she could not fully appreciate what her wife meant by that, especially since her true personality was so contrary to the coolness of her looks.
"I suppose that means I shall have to figure it out for myself," she murmured, making a note to peek in the cupboard containing her imago later. She looked again at her wife. "But we stray from the point, Dear. What was it about her speech on destruction that worried you so? Can you truly not explain further?"
The blonde in front of her sobered and thought for a while. Then, she finally produced what she thought was the best answer of which she could think.
"Her eyes," she said positively. "Her eyes don't look as calm as the rest of her face, Chikane-chan."
Chikane's own eyes regarded her wife with astonishment.
"It's when I see them that I think—well, I think she means all her threats. Or, no—it's when I see them that I start thinking her threats sound like promises."
The other woman tilted her head silently. How curious, she thought, that even her wife who knew hardly anything of politics should understand this foreboding: for Chikane understood very well what her wife was trying to say but could not articulate properly. So even Himeko had noticed! But perhaps that was not entirely unreasonable. Chikane's wife was an artist, after all, and had that intuitive and feeling perception most artists did, which sensed things without necessarily understanding the logic behind them. How swiftly they accepted these intuitions amazed Chikane, since she herself was a person who required reasoning behind everything she would deign to accept.
Her wife was smiling.
"And I'm not doing a very good job of explaining, am I?" she asked Chikane shyly. "I sound so silly. Eyes!"
Chikane returned the smile.
"No, I understand," she said. "Astonishing, however. I have known Shizuru nearly all our lives, which is why I am perhaps one of those few who may actually claim to understand her enough to see through the mask. Yet you, who have known her for only a fraction of that acquaintance, seem to perceive her quite clearly as well."
Himeko looked worried again. "Oh, Chikane-chan! Do you mean I'm right?"
Chikane crossed her legs under the table, but not before using one to nudge her wife's.
"'Yes' in part, and 'perhaps' to others," she sighed. "We shall see. You are good friends with her now, and I see your concern for her may well watch mine. It may be time I told you of something concerning Shizuru, Love, especially as I have longed to speak to someone of it of late. Who better than you? I have some time to spare before leaving, so I shall speak to you of it now. I never told you why she is the way she is, you see."
The other woman asked what she meant.
"Passionate without seeming it. I mean how she is actually a very passionate woman and yet manages to seem perfectly calm most of the time... or even unmoved by things that would move others to emotion. Apathetic would be another way to put it, but given her way with words and affability, it is hard to use that term. Let us say, rather, that she does not show so many emotions before others."
She added swiftly, however: "Most of the time, I stress. That incident at the Ogasawara basilica was a departure from usual—although perfectly justified."
Himeko voiced agreement softly.
"But you see what I mean."
"Oh yes, Chikane-chan. I used to think she was even more so... than you are, sometimes."
The blue-eyes twinkled. Before Chikane could say anything, however, a flash of something crossed her wife's visage. She taxed Himeko with it.
"What is it?" she asked. "You seemed troubled by some thought just now."
The other woman was reluctant.
"I was just thinking," she answered. "If Shizuru weren't so nice, she would be scary.
Chikane smiled grimly. "I think, in fact, that her being 'so nice' makes her scarier. In any case, I was going to tell you the reason—or rather, one of the reasons for her being like that."
Himeko told her to continue.
"It begins from the logical point," the patrician commenced. "You know who her parents were, by reputation?"
"Oh, yes."
"Although I would not think you had ever met them, of course."
Her wife giggled. "I should be so lucky, Chikane-chan."
"Indeed?" Chikane smiled. "I knew them. Our parents were good friends, particularly our mothers. So we knew each other almost from birth, you might say—or her birth, at any rate, since she is younger."
"That long?" A pause after she received affirmation. "So that's how you know Shi-chan?"
"Yes. From long past."
Having the artistic sensitivity, Himeko asked the correct question: "What were her parents like, Chikane-chan?"
The raven hair was pushed back as Chikane brushed away some of the locks over her brow.
"I think I need not tell you they were very impressive people, dear," she said. "Both epitomes of what true patricians should be. Everyone agreed on this, of course."
Her wife hummed.
"I liked them," said Chikane. "They were easy to like too, but then I suppose it came more easily to me as I neither felt threatened nor intimidated by who or what they were. A distinct advantage, I daresay, that many other people did not have when dealing with them—hence the wariness many others felt when they were present. Something like what happens to Shizuru now—or me, too, I submit. A sort of insecurity before our presence that sets others on edge."
"I know how that is."
She reached to hold her wife's hand, smiling.
"I hope that does not apply to me in your case," she joked, stroking the thin, work-roughened fingers with her longer ones.
Himeko smiled. "Not now."
"I am glad. But to Shizuru?"
Her wife hesitated.
"Sometimes," the blonde eventually answered, cheeks going a healthy shade of pink. "She's just so... you know. Oh, I don't mean she puts me off, Chikane-chan!"
She waved her hands, growing more flustered by the second.
"I like her awfully," she declared. "And I love her too, because she's one of the first friends I ever had among the people you know. You know I don't dislike her at all."
Chikane encouraged her to go on.
"I don't know how to explain it," Himeko sighed in frustration. "Maybe it's just like you said. Shi-chan's nice but intimidating."
"Intimidating, and yet you call her chan."
"Oh!" Himeko said, apprehensive. "Is that wrong?"
"No, she likes it," Chikane said, amused that her wife had reacted so earnestly to a joke. "She said so herself."
But the other woman was obviously bothered, and persisted on the thought: "Are you sure? I don't want to—"
"Himeko," said the patrician in the firmest voice she could summon in speaking to her wife. "Do not worry about it. Please do not stop addressing her that way, or you may even give her cause to be saddened. Trust me on this, and forgive me if that jest fell flat: it was merely a jest, with nothing more to it."
Her wife gave in, nodding with only the slightest hesitation.
"All right," she eventually said. "If you say so, Chikane-chan."
"I do say so, because she did say so, My Dear."
"Mm..." the sandy-haired woman nodded. "Oh. What do her parents have to do with why Shizuru-chan is the way she is?"
"Ah, that," said Chikane. "You see, they were very hard on her."
"How?"
"It is difficult to say. Let us simply say that they were very strict and expected nothing but the best from Shizuru," was the reply. "Not that she ever failed to deliver, of course, given who or what Shizuru is. But when I say they were hard, I mean they were constantly, perpetually so, for as long as I knew them. They were hard on Shizuru, you see, in the sense that she was never allowed to make, hmm, such tiny mistakes as other parents would allow of their children. I do not mean they restricted her freedoms. Rather, I mean that certain things, things most would permit a child to do, were not permitted in her case."
Chikane stopped, frowned thoughtfully.
"I think," she added. "I think I do not remember a time when they allowed her to—if I may revert to the vernacular—slack off."
The other woman looked sad.
"Poor Shizuru," she eventually whispered. "They were cruel people, then."
But Chikane differed: "No. No, they were not."
Himeko stared at her questioningly.
"They were actually very kind," Chikane explained. "I liked them very much, as I said, and in great part because of their kindness. Especially her mother."
A pause before going on.
"And she was the hardest when it came to Shizuru, I believe."
Her wife shook her head, completely perplexed now. "But why, Chikane-chan? I'm afraid I don't understand, I'm sorry—"
"No, it may be that this is my fault: I am the one who falls short in explaining now," Chikane sighed, interrupting the apology. "Permit me to attempt again. Try to understand first, however, that Shizuru is of a great patrician family. This must be appreciated fully for the explanation to proceed."
The other woman nodded attentively. "You mean a patrician like you."
"Yes, Dear." She raised one hand, unfurling it elegantly in the air as she continued to speak. "You understand some of this already, but I ask that you suffer me to say more on it for the purposes of this conversation. It is a complex matter, best expressed only after the best possible understanding of its origins has been achieved."
"Yes, I'll listen."
"Thank you. Then I begin with this, which you comprehend to some part already: we patricians bear a great burden. The greater the nobility or fame of one's family, the greater the burdens become. The case for patricians as opposed to our plebeian peers is worse, because we have the simultaneous disadvantage and advantage of having blue blood in our veins. There is expectation there, as well as wariness. To carry these twin loads without being crushed is difficult and requires a specific personality... or perhaps a specific person."
"Patrician blood is too old, Himeko," she sighed, reaching for her wife's fingertips. "It is too thin and grows thinner by the ages. Those families among us that still insist on breeding exclusively with other patricians—my family and Shizuru's class here, you note—find themselves producing fewer and fewer people with the characteristic strength distinguishing those clans that lorded over Hime for centuries. For every Shizuru Fujino thrown up by us, there are several hundred nonentities, with no credit to them save their aristocratic name."
"They threw up a Chikane Himemiya," her loyal wife added, provoking a grin.
"As it is, at least our blood is yet to be exhausted," Chikane replied. "But now you see the curse in the blessing, and the ceaseless struggle for patricians in a world where plebeians are growing more and more powerful. And why should they not? This is no longer a world of kings and queens, and not even we patricians want a world of kings and queens. Yet the fact remains that we are descended from those kings and queens, and all know it."
"All means both others and us. Understand, it is not enough that others know it, because the knowledge of others only grants the licence you see being given us each day, by people who brand us eccentric or weird or full of nonsensical vagary—all because they know we are patrician, and we are permitted to be full of nonsensical vagary. This is a shallow acknowledgment, especially if it is not paired with the true acknowledgment of the self, the patrician self in all its majesty. This shallow acknowledgment leads only to the formation of patricians you often see today, those of my peers who abuse the cachet granted them indiscriminately, and who thus fail to experience the true hardship required to forge themselves into any kind of steel. Overindulged, bored, and pampered specimens who can never be great because they have never experienced the resistance necessary for it."
She met her wife's eyes and saw the question swimming in the purple.
"The closest possible example with which you are familiar is Shizuma," she said.
Himeko looked uneasy. "But she's so..."
"Yes, I know, and when I said 'closest possible', I meant to hint I do not count her one anymore," Chikane confessed. "Still, there can be no question she has been pampered much of her life, not meeting the resistance of which I speak. But not any longer, Himeko... not after that. I am sorry for the pain she endures even now, but I pray it may serve only to her enhancement, for I have long lamented the waste of such a talent as is held by that friend of ours. If it turns out as I hope, then my point is justified: you cannot make a good sword without hammering it."
There was an interval of silence between them as Himeko thought about it, her wife's thumb chafing the knuckles of her right hand. The sound of some slaves laughing floated in from the window, and Chikane smiled. How good it is, she thought, to have a house where even the servants are happy.
"I think I understand what I mean by being pampered, Chikane-chan," she heard her wife say. "So Shizuru-chan's parents were thinking of that too, which is why they were hard on her?"
"Yes," Chikane replied. "The Fujino line is one of those that have very nearly gone extinct, Himeko. Shizuru is the only Fujino of her generation; her parents knew she might well be the last, especially as she made it clear early on that she was attracted only to women. She was made to know how special she was from the day she could talk. Shizuru has always been conscious that she is very nearly the endpoint of an august lineage."
She smiled and looked immensely proud, which she was.
"Patricians do not die out with a small gasp, and the Fujino are true patricians. Shizuru was—or rather, is—their final shout, to speak. It is probable, My Love, that we have been blessed enough and cursed enough to see the last true Fujino live. Is that not fascinating?"
Himeko pulled her arms closer to her body. Chikane did not take her to task for the shrinking reaction, having seen the tiny gold hairs rise on the fair woman's skin—as indeed the thought she had just expressed deserved. But suddenly, another thought rose to the fore: was not Shizuru's girl from the North also the last of an ancient dynasty?
Oh! she said to herself, stunned as she paused to consider it. Her next blink came a touch faster as she shook her head privately at an idea. Coincidence! It had to be mere coincidence. Even so, she had to allow such a coincidence was surely the height of chance. To think of those two young women, the last of two mythical dynasties, suddenly meeting and quite possibly coming together in the end... Why, she thought, it was almost a pity they could not actually make a child, between themselves. Or should it be a mercy, rather? Well, she had to meet Shizuru's girl first before she could tell.
"Shizuru had to become an Atlas," she told her wife, who was yet shivering; little did the woman know Chikane had come close to the same. "And when her parents died, more than an Atlas. Her parents were well-pleased with her, I should think, and yet saw something else too that begged pause from that appreciation."
Himeko leaned forward eagerly, still hugging herself.
"What do you mean?"
"This is the part that is complicated," Chikane began, only to be interrupted by her grinning wife.
"You mean that was the easy part?" Himeko asked, nose wrinkling.
They laughed.
"Unfortunately, yes," the raven-haired woman answered. "I shall attempt to explain very clearly; please tell me if there is aught that confuses. Returning to what I was saying, Shizuru was everything any patrician family could hope for in a scion and more, in the sense that she was born being better than nearly everyone else at nearly everything—or everything that matters, anyway. There are various kinds of genius, Himeko, but the truest is the versatile kind. And Shizuru has it."
"So do you."
This time, only Chikane laughed.
"Well, let us set me aside for now, though I thank you for that," she told her spouse. "In Shizuru's case, however, there is something else that even I find... hmm, remarkable. No doubt it is the reason her parents were so hard on her, because they were so afraid for her due to it. I do not think they could have done otherwise, mind you."
She squinted, then continued.
"Shizuru lacks something I have, Himeko. Or, conversely, she has something I do not, by virtue of lacking what I have."
"You know I'm not good at word riddles, Chikane," said her amused wife.
Chikane bowed her head slightly. "Forgive me, my dear. You know I am accustomed to speaking this way."
"I know. I don't really mind, so long as you explain them to me."
"Let us put it simply, then. Shizuru, from the day she was born, had no sense of the outrageous."
All that gained, as she had expected, was a befuddled expression. Chikane nodded in reassurance, then looked her wife in the eye.
"This is the confusing part, isn't it?" the blonde asked softly.
Chikane answered positively.
"Then I'll do my best to follow," Himeko sighed.
"And I shall do my best to lead," answered the patrician with a smile. "Permit me to begin with the query: you think Shizuru and I are somewhat similar, do you not?"
A nod.
"And yet you cannot refute that we are very much different from each other too, not only in appearance. This goes beyond personality, even. We are different on the most basic, most essential level of character found in an individual."
To her astonishment, that gained a positive nod.
"I always felt that," said her wife. "Although I can't really tell how, Chikane-chan."
"It is all right," Chikane answered. "I shall tell you. The essential difference is that, whereas we both function on an advanced level of ability compared to others, I have the ability to restrict mine if need be—"
She broke off, shook her head.
"No, that is not exactly right. Hmm, let me put it another way. As you see, even I find this a precarious thing to articulate. Let us say an indication would be our modes of thought. Both of us are very rational people, as I am sure you have noticed."
"Yes."
Chikane stifled a grin at the feeling in the response and proceeded: "We are the same in that sense. We obey rules of reason, acknowledge the logical precepts. However, the difference exists even there, because Shizuru's reason has the potential to become almost irrational by its extremity."
Apparently, even Himeko was aware of the contradiction immediately: "Irrational... reason?"
"Yes," Chikane answered. "You see, reason is premised on several basic assumptions, Himeko. Such as, say, the idea that one added to one always makes up two. While both Shizuru and I recognize that fact, the difference is that I stop at recognizing it and proceed to reason or work out a mathematical formula from it. I accept the fact as a fact because it has always been recognized as true, and because I need an origin to continue reasoning, as Aristotle would put it. I can add one and one, get two as an answer, then move on to the next step. You follow, My Dear?"
Himeko nodded.
"Very well," Chikane said. "Shizuru, on the other hand, would go further than I in both directions of the equation. And perhaps that is where the difference truly lies. We return to the example of one being added to one. At first, Shizuru would proceed to reason from the assumption that one and one make two, as I had. Nonetheless, if she ever reached any point in her later reasoning—and you must remember that Shizuru has faultless reasoning—if ever she came to a point where she felt that some sum in the equation was unsatisfactory to her purposes, she would not accept it as a... say, inescapable figure of fate that the formula cannot help but produce. Shizuru would actually go back to the very beginning and question the categorical rule of the equation itself."
Her eyes narrowed faintly as she came to her conclusion.
"I cannot call it madness, nor stupidity," she told her wife. "Stupidity would be to disdain the categorical rule—the fact, I mean. Madness would be to warp it. Shizuru does neither. I feel, rather, that she questions factness, with the intent of remodelling or rewriting the fact to her purpose. And the frightening thing, Himeko, is that her rewrites work! They crumble existing structures, they destroy the way things have always been figured out—and yet they work, they are logical!"
Her black brows slanted, a disturbed look coming to her eyes.
"This is what concerned her parents so deeply, I believe, for her sake," she said. "As indeed it concerns me now, for the same reason. If we return to the example earlier, I am saying that Shizuru would dare to take apart the very premise that everyone would simply accept as true. She would ask whether one and one would really, truly, always be two."
Himeko regarded her wife with genuine unease, her mind still wrestling with the words and their complexity, yet her heart already understanding what was being said. She had understood it from the moment she saw that glimmer of fear in Chikane's blue gaze, a gaze that was only ever cool and composed, kind and fearless. Yet that had been fear, which Himeko knew when she saw it.
"I think... I see a little, Chikane-chan," she said truthfully. "A little, at least."
Chikane nodded, her immense calm settling over her once again. It was too much a part of herself to ever truly vanish, after all.
"You see what I mean by saying she has no sense of the outrageous," she said. "Or had none, as her parents worked hard to try and put some into her, particularly by being so hard, as we said."
"Was she different before?" Himeko asked. "Was there ever a time they didn't do that—or hadn't noticed, um, that she had no sense of the outrageous?"
Chikane's brows slanted again as she gave it some thought.
"Of that I cannot be certain," she eventually said. "I can say, however, that Shizuru was a little more free of expression with others than she is now, when she was much younger, although I do not deny she was still given to being generally in control of herself. I suspect it is as much a product of the breeding as it is her actual character." Her face loosened suddenly, and she surprised her wife by chuckling: "I remember one time she fell into the ditch being dug by some workers for the garden pool."
She winked at Himeko, who gave a little gasp.
"Our garden pool?" the woman asked. "In this house, Chikane-chan?"
"Yes. My father was the one who had it built."
"Oh! And poor Shi-chan fell into the pool? When?"
"She fell into the ditch," Chikane clarified mildly. "That would become the pool. It was during a rather late get-together for us youngsters, all the adults discussing politics in the grand study. I was one of the eldest, which meant I was occupied by several little monsters running around the atrium and into the rooms. None of us even noticed Shizuru slink away. She has an uncanny knack for slipping about unperceived she wishes, as you know."
Chikane twisted her lips ruefully and went on: "She apparently made her way to the garden and, there being no lights in that area just yet, walked a touch too close to the edge of the large ditch. Some ground collapsed and she fell." Her wife squeaked, and she knew Himeko was imagining it happening. "Shizuru was about seven then and she was all elbows and legs, you might say, because she was always tall for her age. Thus the poor girl was bruised so badly it was a miracle no bones were broken. And she received quite a nasty gash on her head, too."
Her wife burst out: "Poor Shi-chan! What happened? How did you get her out?"
Chikane lifted an eyebrow.
"We did not," she said. "She got herself out. No one saw her fall, you see, and we did not even know she had wandered off to that area of the house. The situation in the atrium was rather too, ah, complicated to permit even that point any notice so quickly."
"She didn't call for help?"
This time, the question earned her an incredulous look.
"Shizuru, shriek for someone to pull her up from a ditch?" Chikane said. "Surely you know her better than that, Himeko! The rest of us were in the other atrium wondering where she had gone when, all of a sudden, someone did shriek and pointed to one of the archways."
"And?"
"And there she was, her clothing torn and really quite frightful, her face positively awash with blood. But, whereas everyone was rushing towards her in a panic, she simply busied herself with arranging her mussed clothes as well as she could. Oh, she was wincing, yes—but very faintly. So there we were, making an absolute fuss and screaming for the doctor. And do you know what she did?
Himeko asked what it was.
"She just lifted her chin like so—you know the way she does it—and then made a wonderfully elegant bow, as if to apologize for causing so much commotion. And then she said: 'Your new pool shall be deep. What manner of leviathan do you intend to put in it, Chikane?'" Chikane sighed reminiscently. "She was wonderful."
Himeko laughed. "So that's why she always jokes about finding a sea-monster in our pool!"
"Mm." A sudden smile. "Which reminds me of some news that may come as an interesting aside, mea vita: Shizuma told me that Shizuru has been making arrangements for builders to enlarge and deepen her house's pool, as part of a remodelling of her courtyard garden. Mayhap she intends to tease me after all these years by actually getting a leviathan before I can? It would be so very like her."
Her wife giggled.
"But she's not going to be there to oversee it, is she?" she asked Chikane. "I mean—if you're talking about the garden pool in her manor inside the city. She can't cross the city boundary yet."
"She is apparently leaving most of the actual design to the architect," was the answer. "I doubt her faith shall prove misplaced, since I know the man and he happens to be a genius of good taste. I collect she shall merely specify what things she considers necessary, such as that whim to add apples," she said, with a faint smile for her friend's vagaries. "She is original, is she not? Ordinary apple trees in a garden already adorned with the rarest plants from other lands?"
"The apple trees look pretty when they blossom and the fruits come."
Chikane conceded that. "At any rate, we have spent quite enough time on this aside, have we not? I was telling you of Shizuru when she was young."
"And I was laughing at it," Himeko smiled. "Yes, Chikane-chan. So that was how Shi-chan was."
The other woman hummed, then went back to the first topic as though there had never been a divagation.
"That was how she was. All the same, she also turned into who she is due to her parents' handling. She was instructed to never show more than the very minimum of emotion necessitated by propriety, to be as reserved in her opinions as possible, and so on. They held her in an iron grip, so to speak, without crushing her. To that degree, we can say her parents did very well with their responsibilities."
"But an iron grip is still a cold one, Chikane-chan."
A chuckle, followed by a kiss.
"That was a very good play on words you just made, my dear," Chikane praised her spouse.
The other woman laughed. "Thank you."
"And, yes, an insightful one. It could be considered cold, considering how they began treating her that way almost as soon as she could speak. They were brilliant people too, after all, and they could sense it – I mean what their daughter was. I do not blame them, nor do I think they ever had anything but her interests at heart. They were frightened for her."
Her wife echoed the word.
"They had good reason to be frightened, I think," Chikane expounded. "Every now and then she shows what she is, Himeko, which is—for lack of a better term—a perfect radical. Not in the negative sense! I mean, rather, that she would take apart everything that seems to be... unsatisfactory to her reasoning. I know her well enough to know that she is only biding her time until she gets to the consulship before she really begins to draw blood from the conservatives' flesh. She would attempt to change Hime drastically, given a chance."
"You make it sound scary."
"It is, in a way. Although I am fairly certain that she would probably be right in the sense of bettering things, whatever she does, I cannot help but be a little worried about it, all the same."
Her wife enquired why.
"Ah, well," she sighed, with a tiny smile. "It is simply that I am still more a product of our class than she is, so I still have a modicum—small, but still there—of reluctance for destroying certain traditions. That is what it is, I suppose."
The other woman grinned impishly.
"I know someone who destroyed an important social tradition," she quipped.
Chikane burst into laughter.
"Oh, a touch!" she cried, holding a hand to her chest. "Very well. As it is, I am a radical too."
"Chikane-chan."
"It is true," Hime's senior consul allowed. "But with the caveat that I am little less radical than Shizuru is, or so I would maintain. I did manage to stay under the Traditionalists' radar for a good while, you know. Whereas they sniffed out Shizuru almost from the beginning. Such an exquisite sense of smell Armitage-san and the others have, when it comes to that! They marked her from the outset."
Himeko got to her feet and went to fetch a jug of water.
"So I was the stink that let them smell you?" she asked teasingly, handing her wife a cup.
"I would prefer to say you were the fragrance, my dear, that led them to me," Chikane answered. "Nothing so tickles their noses as a lovely perfume they would like to have themselves."
The other woman shook her golden head, blushing in spite of herself as she filled up Chikane's cup.
"Furthermore, you were an exception," the other continued, suddenly growing solemn. "Before I met you, I must confess that I never thought I would fall in love with someone beyond the upper stratum of Hime's social sphere. All the same, it matters nothing to me, since I had always thought of the social prescriptions for relationships as rather preposterous. I am speaking, rather, of other traditions."
Himeko poured some water for herself, then went to put away the jug.
"So while I still have that little adherence to some of the rules of our class, of our tradition, Shizuru does not. Never mind that she seems to, now. I have always felt that the relative forbearance she has shown thus far is merely an act, a sop to the factions she needs to pass through before she attains her ambitions. And she will attain them, make no mistake of that."
She met her wife's eyes as the other woman sat again.
"Sometimes," she said in a lower voice to answer the question in Himeko's countenance. "Sometimes I get the feeling that there is something lying dormant in that friend of mine—something almost terrible. What would be the fallout, I wonder, if that were ever unleashed?"
Himeko frowned in thought.
"You mean..." she started. "If the—the sense of the outrageous that her parents put in her just let go?"
Chikane responded to that with a strange smile, her head tilting to one side as she looked out of the window and to the sky.
"The truth of it is that I think that she still has no sense of the outrageous, Himeko," she admitted. "In fact, I do not know if she ever shall."
