The city was full of the sounds and smells of autumn market. The last of the crops were brought to market, what wasn't sold to the royal storehouses bought by merchants and to smaller extent to private individuals. Pigs and cows were herded to market for slaughtering and salting for the winter months. Fur traders from the mountains of the east and some even from the distant north brought their wares. Wine sellers from the west displayed their finest summer vintages. All in all autumn market was a festival. Everyone went to the market.
Yoko had an array of ribbons she had purchased from a silk weaver, a new winter cloak lined with ermine on the inside, and a jug of very fine Therusian wine under her arm for her yearly visit to the Grave. She walked along cheerfully, her hair in a braid down her back, in the tunic and leggings that were much more practical in the cooling weather than the festive skirts and flimsy blouses that the other young women wore to the market festival. She stood out anyway. A young woman bursting with health and vitality and a careless beauty that drew the male eye effortlessly. Men followed her passage with their gazes, turned to watch her walk by, sometimes getting slapped for it by the ladies they happened to be with. Yoko grinned happily and strolled on, content with the world. It was not until she passed the booth of a rug salesman that she happened to find herself mingling with the gray robed forms of priests, who were gathered in turn around the Prophet and of all people her own father, the Great Priest of Meta-Rikan, although he seemed to be taking a second seat nowadays to Angelo, touring the market.
Angelo saw her first, before she could slip away unnoticed. She had over the last year since the coronation scene between him and Kall-Su, tended to avoid the Prophet when she could. It did not deter him at all from seeking her out upon occasion.
"Yoko. Has the market been good to you today?"
Given no choice, she stood before her father and the Prophet, her arms full of purchases. "It has."
"What have you there, Therusian wine? You've not taken to the sin of partaking of spirits, have you?" It was said with a tone of humor, but there was censure under it. Before Gara's observations, she had never noticed how Angelo used words so much to his advantage before.
"No." She murmured.
"My daughter takes it in tribute each year to the grave of Dark Schneider." Geo Note explained, as though he feared Angelo think her a drunkard.
"Ah, is it that time again?"
She did not answer. She wanted away from the cloying presence of so many of Angelo's followers. His captain of the Basilica Guard, Sinakha, stood beyond the Prophet's shoulders, staring at her with his strange eyes. She shuffled her feet and said.
"There's one more think I need to purchase. I should hurry before they sell out."
"By all means, hurry then." Angelo gave her leave. Her father frowned at her from under his graying mustache, as though he thought her manners deplorable. She lowered her eyes and slipped though the priests, finding escape.
When she was gone, the Prophet shook his head sadly at Geo Note, who had become a regular attendee at his sermons, who urged his own parishioners to listen to the words of the Prophet.
"I fear the girl spends too much time honoring that dark spawn of hell. The rumors fly that she sits at his grave like she might at a worship."
"She had a -- strange relationship with him." Geo Note said. "She does not take her honoring of him past this one day a year. I would put a stop to it otherwise."
"There is only so much the hand of a father can do to curb the willfulness of a young woman grown. She needs the guidance of a husband to set her on the path of righteousness. Why have you never betrothed her, my friend?"
"I have tried." Geo Note sighed, the tortured sigh of a neglected father. "She will have nothing of it. She is a strong girl. Her time in the Samurai Resistance during the wars gave her a will of her own."
"A girl like that needs a strong man." Angelo observed. "It is unseemly that she should run wild so."
"Perhaps."
The Prophet, having spoken his piece on the matter of Yoko's marital status turned his attention to other things. A carpet for his study in the temple.
Afternoon brought rain to skies that had been clear. A cold front accompanied the storm, the frigid fingers of its breezes creeping in through cracks in windows and under doors. It was a sign of a cold winter to come. Yoko looked out the window of her room into an evening gone dark and unpleasant and wished she had gone to the Grave earlier. She was in for a soaking now and a cold one at that. Fortuitous that she had bought a new, well oiled winter cloak. She pulled a heavy woolen tunic over her head and donned her work boots, lacing them tightly to keep out the water, gathered her bottle of wine and her bouquet of autumn flowers and ventured into the rainy dusk. There were covered walkways circling the cathedral courtyard, leading from the dormitories to the cathedral to the outbuildings that served it and finally to the east wing of the palace. Well bundled people kept strictly to these thin havens from the rain.
She passed a group of women, coming from the cathedral. Fine ladies by their expensive cloaks, by the polished state of their hair and faces. Yoko hardly paused to look at them, so used to ignoring and being ignored by the glamorous birds of paradise that peopled the king's court. There were so many more lovely young ladies now that there was an unmarried king sitting the throne than there had been.
"Yoko?"
She started at her name, turning to look into the painted midst of silk and fur. Princess Sheela or Queen Sheela if one granted her the title of her husband's throne, was bundled in the center of the ladies in waiting. Her face was half hidden by the edge of her hood, her soft, black bangs, framing eyes equally dark. Tentatively she smiled at Yoko. Yoko blinked at her, surprised to see her out on such a miserable afternoon. Surprised she wasn't attending a royal dinner with her husband or some equally prestigious function. She had only returned to the city a week ago, to honor the death of her father. She would stay perhaps for another month to visit with her friends and family before returning to her husband's kingdom of Judas. Yoko hadn't spoken to her since her arrival.
"Your majesty." Yoko bowed her head respectfully, eyes straying to Sheela's hidden figure, wondering if the rumors of the princess's pregnancy were true.
"It has been a long time. How do you fair?"
"Oh, I'm well. How do you find Judas, Princess?"
"Ah, a fine city. Not quite as seasonable as Meta-Rikan -- but it is home now."
"Its not seasonable tonight." Yoko smiled. "What a miserable time for you to be talking a walk. Were you at worship?"
Sheela nodded her head. Her ladies looked bored.
"I'm surprised you didn't go to the temple of the Prophet. Every else does nowadays. Even your brother has made it his official place of worship."
"I know. I just wished for something more comfortable. There is too much change in my life nowadays -- I yearn for old, familiar things."
Yoko could sympathize. Very much so. There were times when all the new practices and byways of the engorged Meta-Rikan made her want to close herself in her rooms and hide. She to missed the old days before all the upset and destruction that had changed her world. She missed growing up with Rushie, before he had ever been discovered to be the vessel of Dark Schneider. She missed just being Yoko, the unremarkable daughter of the high priest. But wishes never came true. That was a hard, cold fact that had been drilled into her over the years.
"Well," Yoko said, impatient to be about her business. "Its too cold and wet an evening for me to keep you standing here ---"
"Are you going to his grave?" It was blunt and Sheela stared at her with expectant, sad eyes.
"I -- yes."
The princess nodded once, pulled her cloak tighter about her throat. "Say a prayer for me." She murmured and hurried past, her women trailing behind her, some casting doubtful stares back at Yoko.
She was left standing there with the wind tearing at her cloak, tearing at the petals of the flowers in her hand, with nothing to do but recall just how many women Rushie -- Schneider -- had been adored by.
She slipped past the gate guard, who waved her on from their shelter of the small gate house and she braved the slick cobblestones of the town below. Even with her hood up her hair was soaked and cold water dribbled down the inside of her tunic. Lightning flared at the edge of town, followed almost immediately by the boom of thunder. She shuddered, ears echoing the clap. She doubted her own reason to braving this storm merely to pour wine into already soaked earth and leave flowers that would be destroyed by morning. Her sojourn could just as well be accomplished tomorrow if the weather permitted. She was cold and shivering and soaked to the bone. The lights of a nearby tavern beckoned. Warmth and song and mulled cider were powerful sirens.
She plunged past, half way there and determined to reach her goal,
wet or not. Again lightning struck
Monuments to the dead loomed in the darkness ahead of her. Light blinded her and the earth shook. She cried out, deafened, body tingling with the nearness of the strike. The wine jug hit the earth and landed with a sloshy thud. She stood, grasping the flowers in nerveless hands.
The exterior of the Temple had been completed, with much skilled labor from artisans and stone masons. A great statue of one of the holy messengers of god perched just outside the great glass windows of the Prophet's study. He sat with his back to the outside world, his hands paused in their movements, quill frozen above a sheet of fine parchment, ink wet on its tip. Behind him the flash of lightning illuminated the face of the angle. The roar of thunder rattled the window panes. The Prophet stared blindly into the fire across the room, his eyes wide, his mouth pressed tight as if in concentration or communication with some higher deity than mortal man might usually hold converse with. He was the Prophet, after all.
After a moment, he sat the quill down, careful to wipe the excess ink from its tip. He walked to the door of his study and quietly asked the young priest on duty in his outer office to summon Captain Sinakha. Then, he went to the windows and stared out into the storm. On his mouth lingered a slight smile.
Yoko stumbled in the mud and went down on one knee. Mud slid down her boot tops. So much for dry feet. She might as well take off her cloak and revel in the rain for all the good it had done keeping her dry. She sludged up the hill, past the mausoleum of some wealthy family and towards the obelisk that marked Rushies grave.
And found it wasn't there. Not in one whole piece at least. The ground was rent as though some great hammer from heaven had struck it. The jagged, lower half of the monument lay tilted at an odd angle, the upper half in a hundred pieces on the ground around it. The air smelled of ozone and smoke. She stood in shock, staring, knees loosing all strength, buckling. She slid to the mud, feeling shards of stone under her palms. Of all places, lightning had struck here. Obliterating his monument.
She started crying, tears mixing with cold rain. Recklessly she crawled over the chunks of stone, over mounds of disrupted earth, clawing uselessly at grass and dirt. There was a great hollow where the strike had centered, where earth had been blasted away from. Splintered pieces of wood jabbed skyward. The remains of a funeral box. She wanted to back away, not to see if anything else remained, horrified to see -- and she could not. She peered into the darkness and found only wood and the hollow bottom portion, mud filling it rapidly, of the coffin. If a body had ever been there, none was now.