Everyone was polite enough to not enquire where Takuya had disappeared to and settled in for the night in their comfortable room. They were woken, however by cries of alarm from outside.
Snatching up wakizashi and sliding open the doors to the room and the balconies, they heard someone beating feet across the tiled roof and continuing shouts from below.
Two of the Crane ashigaru who had been posted outside were holding their lanterns high and gesticulating with their yaris as a dark, slightly ragged figure ran along the roof, hopped onto a lower roof and changed direction to run back along the way he had come.
Sugi and Koji (in a feat of nimbleness unsurpassed perhaps in his lifetime to date) hopped over the railing of their balcony and down onto the roof to cut the figure off (figuratively). I really wish Matt’s roll for this largely inconsequential balcony drop had been for something more suited to the result: sliding across the polished hood of a blaze orange sports car on one-tightly denim-ed ass cheek in order to catch a perp.
Sugi bellowed at the figure to stop his running or be cut off (literally) and the fellow slid to a halt. they hauled him over the railing and into their room for some answers. Yoshihiro meanwhile was down providing answers to the alerted guards – it was all a test, they passed, well done, keep it up. As he passed back upstairs he met Eiji and assured him all had been handled. Eiji, likely delighted at being able to go back to sleeping off the sake headache, grumbled his way back to his room.
The chap they’d captured was called Moko and he was a forager and trapper employed by the Ryokan’s cook. He was armed with only a small knife and had a satchel with a dead quail in it, so his story seemed to check out. They summoned tea and sake as well as Yori and his wife Sayuri to verify Moko’s identity, which they did. Turns out that Moko and Sayuri have a thing going and his rooftop excursion was just because he was visiting her clandestinely, but had reckoned without the on-edge Crane guards. It was all very tawdry, grubby peasant nonsense.
I realise only now that when I was writing Moko I was half thinking about Spiller from Arriety. A more ruggedly handsome, 3-d version of Spiller, I suppose.
Yori and Sayuri were excused (Yori still in the dark) and the quail was taken away for preparation, but they kept Moko. He swore to stay with them and they graciously allowed him to sleep on the balcony.
The next morning, they had breakfast and then had a meeting with Hiramori Sachuko. As they were getting ready Koji was approached by a servant whom he could not see, she asked if he had any laundry that needed to be washed and he passed off his dirty clothes to her. She almost fell over with the weight of the not-particularly-heavy-travelwear and then withdrew.
The meeting with Sachuko held few surprises: she applied a bit pf pressure for them to find in favour of the Crane and quickly. A few good reads of her intentions revealed that she is mostly worried about somehow losing the vast amount of koku she is to transfer over to the Otter.
Her assessors are poring over the Ryokan’s books and questioning the reedman and farrier to properly assess the value of the village. But her initial impression is that this shrine village is a real money spinner for the Otter.
Their next stop was the shrine. They met some merchants leaving as they were going in and they were grumbling a bit. They didn’t seem to be fans of the new statue arrangement and had previously enjoyed the meditation garden as a place of quietude after the bustle of the road.
They examined the misplaced statue and talked to Tame who is really, really, just too old for this shit. He’s a little more que sera, sera than even a detached monk should be. He admitted that the shrine has undergone some changes since he, uh, introduced the impressionable young shrine keeper, Umezawa Iwa to the sutras of the Perfect Land Sect.
They went to question her and while she was initially unresponsive, she responded when Sugi hauled her up. Not violently, as violence in a shrine is unthinkable, but right up to the margin.
The girl – and she is probably 17 or 18, about the same age as Sugi – had been awake for a long time reciting the mantra. Her bloodshot eyes and dark rings around them told of a feverish degree of devotion. But she broke her recitation to propound on the Age of Failing Virtue and the corruption of her own social strata, the Samurai classes that was destroying Rokugan. She was dedicated to the Perfect Land Sect and had pushed aside the Fortunist worship of Koshin, which was part of the doomed Imperial system.
She cares not a jot for her own life, content to die for her beliefs, and similarly does not care for the claims of the Otter or the Crane. The shrine, she believes, should be dedicated to the many spirits that make this area their home and maintained by the Umezawa. When pressed, she admitted that she had removed the first three scrolls from their container in the honden and given their safekeeping to the spirits of the marshes. She would give them no assistance in getting those scrolls back. However, she was convinced (impressively so) that if the yoriki could win them back then the judgment of heaven would be self-evident and the fate of the shrine placed in human hands. Their hands, preferably.
It was a pretty busy morning, all things considered. Now they’ve got to go find some spirits.
Not that kind.
Okay, not ONLY that kind.
