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Yoko is fairly certain that empresses should not have vacations. Especially new empresses still not entirely certain in their interactions with their own officials, and empresses whose countries are far from prosperous, too.
However, her time in the Twelve Kingdoms has taught her that there certainly is a right and proper way to do things, but her chance in guessing what this way might actually be is, at best, fifty-fifty.
Also, Shoryu says emperors who do not take vacations from time to time start going mad very quickly. And he should know.
Yoko is sitting at a table so lovely that a couple of years ago she wouldn't have dared to touch it. She is having tea with an emperor, she thinks suddenly, and since she's just been comparing her current life with what was two years ago, that makes her smile. Not that she hasn't had lots of tea with this particular emperor. Not that she isn't an empress herself.
Tea and sweets and all the necessities appear on the side tables as if by invisible hands, and Yoko almost sighs remembering all the small faults of the housekeeping back in the Gyoten palace. Bad housekeeping is the surest sign of disorder in the family, her mother used to say. It's all right, Yoko reminds herself. It's all right and we'll change anything that is not right yet.
"More tea?" Shoryu asks quite formally, but his eyes are laughing; she likes that. She thinks maybe she will learn to be like that, some day.
They are talking about kirin.
"I just keep feeling confused", Yoko says. "He looks like a human, but he isn't, and I always forget this when I deal with him every day. " She pauses for another sip of tea and looks at the ocean outside. "And this thing with not getting older only makes it more confusing".
"Well", Shoryu answers reasonably, "Keiki's not much older than you, is he? This, at least, is nothing to worry about."
"Yes, but…" Yoko fiddles with her cup, just a little; the cup is lovely but, she thinks, a bit too over-the-top for Shoryu. Maybe emperors do not get to choose their own teaware. Or maybe she does not know Shoryu as well as she thinks. After all, she seems not to know Keiki even for dealing with him every day.
Shoryu looks serious, even though they aren't actually talking about matters of state. Or maybe kirin always are a matter of state in some way.
"You shouldn't let the rest worry you either", he says. "There are things that you need to remember about kirin, like their being merciful and their inability to stand the smell of blood, but you probably don't forget this anyway, do you?" He goes on without waiting for her answer, and she thinks, yes, oh yes, there are things about rulership here that I remember too well, and these things about kirin are tied in with the ways I learned about rulership. I've already learned the basics, she realizes suddenly, and she is glad, but also surprised that Shoryu already knew that about her, before she did.
But Shoryu is talking, and she is being impolite to her host, with her thoughts wandering all over. And also he knows more about kirin than she does, and she needs to hear this.
"… And Enki never wanted to choose an emperor and he still is not quite certain that I won't lead En to destruction", Shoryu is saying, "though I think I've mostly earned his trust by now. Can you imagine Keiki feeling like this?"
She pauses and tries to do just that. For some reason the Keiki she is attempting to imagine has his hair wrapped in a bandanna and she wonders whether she can persuade the real Keiki to try it out. Just once. For a minute. So that she'd be able to see how it looks.
Ah well, probably not.
"No," she says to Shoryu, "not really. But I thought that was because Enki's a taika."
Shoryu smiles. "You and I, we are both taika, so, of course, we are exactly alike."
She tries not to snort; it would really be too unsuitable to snort while drinking tea, empress or not.
"Perhaps," Shoryu says, "you are listening to your advisors too much. Being a taika is just a fact of your history, though of course to those who were born here it seems to be the main and huge difference between you and them. Or between Keiki and Enki, if we get back to the point. But everyone has something in their life that makes them differ from others. Have you thought about the facts of Keiki's history, what is different about him?"
Yoko pauses, because too many things come to her at once. "The previous empress!" she says, and then adds, "Shitsudou!"
Shoryu nods and looks at her expectantly, and she thinks he seems a bit sad. Or perhaps it is her who feels sad remembering this about Keiki. "Kirin do not usually survive shitsudou, do they?" she asks.
"Not in my memory," Shoryu says, "Though I am no historian, and perhaps someone in some kingdom had passed through exactly the same thing. But it seems that the previous empress of Kei used the only chance for Keiki to survive this."
She remembers the reflection of a woman's face, bloated from tears. She had to be young, that empress, probably older than her but still young, but she looked old — and sick. She thinks about Keiki being ill, about the strangeness of having this visible talisman of the kingdom's wellbeing, who is also a being.
"I feared I would be foolish like her," she says slowly. "I still think I am like her in some ways; I wouldn't want ever to harm Keiki, for one. But I can't believe I'd go mad like her. Though maybe I will, I don't know. Do you think this power, this responsibility, makes emperors go mad sometimes?" she asks, looking straight into Shoryu's eyes.
"I've wondered about that myself," he answers calmly. "But me, I haven't gone mad yet. That's the only answer I have."
They fall silent. The teapot is almost empty. Yoko looks inside her cup, staring at the swirling tea leaves, and thinks about the madness creeping suddenly, and about the changes that let her sit here and talk of power with a man who was born five hundred years before her. And about Keiki, having to deal with her after he had watched his previous chosen empress go mad.
Maybe, she thinks, she will change more, to survive and to watch over Kei together with Keiki. For centuries, maybe — though this is something she won't try to imagine. Not just yet.
"I think we are done with tea, aren't we?" she says.
* * * * *
"… has he changed at all?" Keiki asks, down there in the city, and then he corrects himself: "Is he changing?"
He is not looking at Enki at all. He is watching the splendid view of Kankyuu opening before him and thinking about mistakes and hopes. And Enki is sitting on the parapet.
"Him? Changing?" Enki snorts, jumping down. "Come on, he'll never change. He keeps being such an idiot at times, no matter how I try…"
He falls silent, and Keiki does not need to look back to know that Enki is now standing next to him, also watching the city.
"I don't know," Enki goes on, his voice softer now. "I really don't know. I truly thought he'd ruin everything, but, well… maybe he will, someday, but… he got wiser. Hasn't changed, not really, but got wiser." Enki grinned. "Just don't tell him I said that! No, really, if he hadn't got any wiser at all in five hundred years, it would've been just…"
Keiki shrugs. The emperor should always be wise — but he hadn't known En-ou five hundred years ago, and it wasn't him who had chosen En-ou.
Joukaku was the one he had chosen. Joukaku — and Yoko.
"You know," Enki says suddenly, "it's really impossible not to change at all. Even for immortals. It's just that we are changing more slowly."
"Yes," Keiki answers thoughtfully, finally turning to look at Enki, "you are right."
Yoko, he thinks, is changing every day.