Chapter 4! Wheeee! Thank you, Erm, for the wonderful review! It made my day!!!!
Most of my childhood was spent in our manor on a small plot of land in Conté. We traveled often to Port Legann, where my father's Second Company was stationed in peace times. If not in Conté or Legann, then Corus, or even the Yamani Isles for a holiday. It was an enduring source of amusement for my parents that we actually spent more time in the Yamani Isles than we did in Corus with my father's family. Yamani was my milk-tongue, passed on to me by my father from his Yamani mother, Queen Shinkokami. I spoke the language of the isles for a good two years before I learned Common. My mother, a commoner with a better education than many nobles, spoke it fluently. It was like our own secret code; we could speak it in front of almost anyone with none the wiser to the meaning of what we said.
As a child I delighted in such a secret power, often using it to further my own means. I was never a spoiled brat, but I was far from perfect, and had my fair share of tantrums. At such times, I would refuse to speak or listen to anything but Yamani. My nursemaids, Tortallan born and raised, would plead and cajole, but to no effect, eventually tearing at their hair in frustration and calling for my father, the end that I desired. This method worked for many years, but I used it as sparingly as a young girl could manage, for even my gentle father had a limit to his patience. The year I turned seven, however, my Tortallan nursemaid, Agatha, left to start a family of her own, leaving my parents with a recommendation that they should search for a woman who spoke both Common and Yamani and would thus be better equipped to handle my rare but powerful tantrums.
Much to my dismay, my parents followed her advice, and wrote a letter to my father's cousin, the Yamani Emperor, asking for his assistance in finding a woman who fit their criteria. A commoner, preferably from the country. A delicate flower of the Yamani court would be ill-suited to life in our remote manse. Proficient in speaking and writing Common as well as Yamani characters, and well-versed in the arts of self-defense. I dare say there were not many who fit those requirements, especially in the Yamani Isles where women were rarely educated if they had the fortune to be born into the lower class. But the Emperor found one, and in far less time than we had anticipated.
Her name was Miwako, and she came with a shining recommendation from a lord on the southernmost isle of the country, Yonshuu. Five years past twenty, she was a short, sturdily built woman with beautiful brown eyes and a soft, kind voice. A scar marred the prettiness of her face, a long gash traveling from the corner of her lip, across the bridge of her nose and through the straight black line of her left eyebrow, ending just beyond her hairline. It curled the right corner of her lip eternally upwards in a humorless smirk. At times it was as if she was keeping a secret and it brought her great amusement.
When I grew old enough for darker thoughts and tales, she confided in me that the scar was not a memento of a pirate rid, the conclusion my young mind had drawn with its limited knowledge and romantic imagination. Pirate raids were all too common in the Yamani Isles, and Miwako had learned to fight them at a young age, but the blade that had marked her had been a mere farmer's scythe. Long, curving blades with short handles were used to cut handfuls of rice in one easy swing, a tool most common born Yamanis learned to use at a very young age. Miwako was no exception, spending much of her childhood out in her family's fields, stooped over and swinging her blade in a steady rhythm as the sun beat down on her back. One such day, when she was sixteen, her brother had been in the next row, swinging and hacking with a good deal of impatience. As she stood up straight to stretch and dip her cup into the water bucket, his swing had gone wide. Short as she was, Miwako's face had been right in the path of the swing. As her blood turned the rice field's water red and her screams brought her kin from nearby rows, Tatsuya, her brother, somehow managed to twist the story around so it became Miwako's fault. He claimed she had been standing too close, pestering him as women are known to do. Her family had believed him. With such a scar, no man in his right mind would look twice at her, much less marry her, or so they said.
For a Yamani girl of common blood, there were few options for her to choose from, so she left. Making her way to the coast with only a small bundle of her meager possessions, she went to Inabama Castle, the closest thing there was to a city on her small island. It was where the lord of the island lived with his family and servants, a port as well as a castle. Set on a hill with a sizable village laid out beneath it, Inabama Castle was the only real port on the island. From there, rice was shipped out and other goods shipped in. There, Miwako found peace in anonymity, finding work as a laundress for the castle's small militia. And that is how the Emperor found her, quiet and content, learning Common from the Castle scribe, survivor of countless pirate raids. A flawed woman with no name or family.
I wept as she told me her story, tears shining in her beautiful brown eyes. Her voice, always so musical and even, broke and wavered when she spoke of her family's abandonment. I wrapped my arms hard about her, trying to stem the flow of my tears. In all my years, and through all the great words I have heard, I have never forgotten the words she spoke to me that day.
"Do not cry for me, jochan, I do not regret the past." Jochan, a Yamani term of endearment. Precious one. "You are my family now. Even if we do not share a bond of blood, we share a bond of heart. That, my love, is ten fold stronger than anything blood can forge. That, I did not have with my family. But I have it with you."
I have held those words close to my heart through the trials and journeys of my life. I had few friends as a child, and the majority of them were adults in my father's employ. Out of all of them, I was closest to Miwako, who was the sister I never had. And I made a vow, with all the solemnity and self-righteousness of a ten-year-old girl, to never abandon her, come hell or high water. To this day, I have never broken that promise.