"When you grow up, you'll become the wind."
Those were the words his mother had always drummed into him. At fifteen, he would undergo the coming-of-age ceremony and step out into the wider world. Until then, he was told to study the ways of the world.
Become the wind, and keep flowing so the air of the western land never stagnates.
Rikuson.
These were memories from before Rikuson bore that name.
Women guard the city; men run across the grasslands. That was what he had been taught. Leaving home someday would be lonely, but if he could become the wind, become a pair of ears, and help his mother and elder sister, then he thought that would be enough.
In the mornings he learned from a tutor, in the afternoons he strolled through the city, and at night he received instruction from his mother and elder sister.
The afternoon strolls were interesting. The challenge was to buy good goods without wasting a single coin of his allowance. What to spend it on to feel satisfied—that, too, was part of his education. Most of the men in the extended family became merchants. Rikuson would probably choose the same path.
Comparing taste, price, and quantity, he would buy the most reasonably priced dried fruits and goat's milk. Then he would head to the shogi parlor.
There were idle adults chattering away. All sorts of information circulated there. He would hear even more stories at the tavern, but Rikuson was still too young to be let inside.
Among all the drunken idlers, one occasionally encountered the genuine article.
"Hey, kid, you came?"
The old man sitting before the shogi board was
a public office
clerk—or rather, a former scribe. Now half-retired, he was apparently collecting documents to
compile
a new history book. He was the strongest shogi player in the Western Capital.
"Yeah."
Rikuson sat beside the old man and looked at the board.
"Huh?"
He was losing. That was unusual—Rikuson looked at the old man's opponent.
The man had an unkempt beard. His clothes were rumpled, and his hair was less tied back than bunched up. The fabric quality wasn't bad, but the overall condition was poor. He looked surprisingly young. His scrawny frame didn't look like someone from the Western Capital.
"Some little infantry guy showed up."
The fox-eyed man wore a monocle. Everything about him looked shady. And what's more, he'd gone and called Rikuson an infantryman.
"Don't get angry, kid.
Rakan
is just that kind of person."
"Infantryman..."
"Infantryman, what's wrong with that? Everyone around here was called go stones, you know."
"Go stones?"
Wondering whether there was really any difference from being called an infantryman, I studied the shogi board. Sure enough, for someone who looked down on everyone around him, his shogi skills were devastatingly strong. It was the first time I'd seen the old man lose.
Curious, I came back to the dojo the next day and the day after that. The man called Rakan seemed to have no regular job, since he was there every day. The old man wasn't around that day.
"That dog-child's here again, huh."
Words I wouldn't have heard if the old man were there now reached my ears since I was alone.
Dog-child — a term for the children of the Dog Clan. They were the clan that ruled Seito, but they had their pros and cons.
A woman served as the head, and any males born were driven out. That woman had no husband, and no one knew who had fathered the children.
Seito had always been a place where nomadic people — with their strong patriarchal values — came and went freely. Rikuson knew there were things said about them. Children whose fathers were unknown were sometimes sneeringly called "welps of the Dog's belly" and worse.
Still, there was a pride the Dog Clan held: that they had guarded the western lands for hundreds of years.
With the old man absent, I reluctantly sat down next to Rakan. We'd crossed paths several times, but this man made no effort to remember Rikuson. In fact, he made no effort to remember anyone at all. He simply sat in front of his shogi board, and when someone placed money down, he played a game. That was all there was to it.
"Hey mister, don't you remember faces?"
"People's faces? I can't tell 'em apart."
"You can't? If you see someone enough times, you'd remember, right?"
"All I see are go stones or shogi pieces."
I didn't fully understand what he meant, but Rikuson didn't feel like Rakan was lying. For Rakan, it must have been as hard as distinguishing the faces of livestock. Some nomadic people could remember every single sheep's face. Rikuson couldn't fathom it. Perhaps to Rakan, human faces all looked the same as sheep's faces.
"Then what do you do when you really need to tell someone apart?"
"..."
Rakan was thinking. He mulled over Rikuson's question while playing shogi without a shred of mercy. His opponent's face went pale as he conceded defeat.
"I remember the shape of their ears. I memorize their height. I check the quality of their hair. I take note of how badly they smell."
"Wouldn't it be faster to just remember their face?"
"I can't tell faces apart. I know they have eyes, noses, and mouths. But when I try to put it all together, it gets tangled and they all look like Go stones. I can tell the size of nostrils and the length of eyelashes, though."
Instead of remembering the whole, he apparently memorizes individual features one by one. It sounded exhausting, so he seemed to avoid doing it for anyone other than particularly important people.
"Is your uncle from the Central Court?"
"Yeah. I'll be heading back before long. I have to go back."
Rakan said this while crushing his next opponent in a game.
His mother had told him to become the wind and flow freely, but would she be all right with him flowing all the way to the Central Court?
"If you make it big in the Central Court, will you give me a job?"
"Hmm—if you work your way up from infantry, sure."
"Got it."
Anything,
connections—
his older sister had told him those were worth building, too. Whether he became a merchant or whatever, it was better to get to know all sorts of people.
When he returned home, it was time for supper. The whole clan ate together. The people around him were all women. Their bloodline naturally produced many daughters, and since one had passed away the year before, Rikuson was the only male. Besides Rikuson, there were three daughters born a year apart. They were his cousins, and since they shared the same father, their faces looked very alike. His older sister had already passed the age of coming of age, so she was considered an adult now.
Rikuson helped his cousins with their meals while listening to the conversation. They talked about food supplies, the import of foreign goods, and exports from Rei.
His mother was the central figure of the clan. The one currently leading the Inu clan was his mother's younger sister—Rikuson's aunt. The aunt had no daughters. It was already becoming clear that, given age and aptitude, his older sister would be the next clan head, so she was actively joining the conversation.
Trade with foreign nations was apparently in a very difficult period. Deficits had continued for years, and the Central Court was sending complaints. Rei had been exporting large quantities of high-quality paper, but the quality had been declining in recent years. This was a serious problem because paper was their primary export—lightweight and convenient to transport.
On top of that, a minor locust infestation had also occurred. Expanding farmland to match the growing population had backfired. The Central Court, looking only at the numbers, had cut off support since the harvest yield hadn't changed. More people simply meant not enough food.
"Let's go ahead and mine the black stone."
The aunt said.
His mother, his mother's older sister, his older sister, and his older cousins could only nod in agreement.
Rikuson had no idea what the black stone was. He was simply
carrying bread
to the mouth of his youngest cousin, who was turning three.
At night, his older sister and mother taught him the history of the Inu Western Province. When Rei was founded, three of the Queen Mother's most trusted confidants became the heads of three provinces.
The Inu clan, which governed the west, had apparently struggled terribly at first. The land had particularly strong patriarchal traditions. The clan's founding matriarch was mocked for being a woman and was nearly deceived on multiple occasions—some whispered sweet words to win her name, while others tried to seize it by force.
So they created a matrilineal family system to prevent their households from being taken over. They took no husbands. All heirs were women.
Men developed a special role of their own.
One such role was becoming a Wind.
A Wind — or as some called it, an Ear.
They roamed across every corner of the Inu Western Province, gathering information. As merchants, as nomads. Those who took up the nomadic life would later come to be known as the Wind Reader clan. They commanded birds and controlled insects.
However, there had been miscalculations.
The Wind Reader clan was destroyed fifty years ago.
One of several Wind Reader clans had cut off regular contact with the Inu clan. Years, decades, even centuries passed in separation from the Inu clan. No one would forever remain loyal to a long-dead patriarch. Eventually, people emerged who began making contact with foreign nations.
And then, disaster struck. The Wind Reader clan that had severed contact was, tragically, annihilated by a completely different tribe. Someone who determined that the ability to command birds was inherited through bloodlines abducted women to claim the power for themselves. To keep it exclusively, they killed the others and enslaved the survivors.
The Inu clan could not forgive the Wind Reader clan for their negligence. The remaining Wind Reader clans were disbanded, and those with abilities were settled in cities. At times, those who abused their powers were quietly disposed of.
If the Wind Reader clan had survived, the Land Descendants would have gained one more path — the path of racing across the grasslands as a member of the Wind Reader clan.
His mother and sister told him this. He had not been taught how to handle birds, but he had been shown how to control insects. The agricultural village systems that remained in various regions were also explained to him.
So that when a locust plague struck, the men of the Inu clan scattered across the land would be able to act faster than anyone—.