Sowing Ghosts 1.1

CHAPTER ONE

SMOKE

The eighth year of the Daiei era, fourth day of the second month
(February 23, 1528)

Is the capital really this badly unsettled, Hiroki asked himself as he walked, or is it me? The little he’d seen of Kyoto thus far seemed uncomfortably like the countryside: both seemed broken, and with nobody interested in making the effort needed to fix them. The one big difference between capital and countryside was the smell of wood-smoke here, heavy and sour in the cold, damp of late afternoon. The smell meant there had been fighting recently. It was a smell he had grown up with, but it still bothered him.

As did his inability to understand why he had been sent here.

On the surface, he was the leader of the small escort of an embassy sent by his liege, Lord Tanuma of Kozuke province, to the shōgun in the capital. But his skills were not those of a typical warrior; he was never going to be renowned for his abilities with lance or sword. What he was good at—and training his two subordinates to be better at—was learning things. Seeing his way through mazes and confusions, and so easing his lord’s way. Guarding diplomats seemed to be a waste of his talents.


At the end of the block Hiroki paused and looked back. Nobody was following him. Satisfied that he had  slipped away while the other members of the embassy were still settling into their new quarters in the temple, Shōkokuji, he turned south on Muromachi Avenue, in the direction of the East Market. For any other member of the embassy to go off alone would have been a serious error, but Hiroki knew Kyoto — though he hoped to be able to keep the others from learning too much about this for at least a while longer. At the market he might be able to immerse himself fully enough into the life of the city that he would gain understanding of what was newly wrong.

The clouds had finally broken up, and the westering sun shone brightly. A brisk north wind had accompanied — or caused — the change in the weather, and the muddy streets had mostly frozen to the point where he didn’t have to worry about ruining his clothes. He did have to keep his hands inside his sleeves, but this was a small price to pay for a few hours of freedom from his superiors.

It has to be something newly wrong that bothers me. After all, war was all he’d ever known; he had grown up surrounded by the burnt wreckage of aristocratic mansions, and his only knowledge of the capital and country at peace had come in stories from his grandfather — and many of those stories had come to Grandfather as legends, of a shining Ashikaga shōgun and a golden pavilion and a flowering of art nearly a hundred years gone now.

This unease Hiroki felt was about more than warlords and a divided shogunate. There was something —

“Have you accepted your inner Buddha Nature?”

Hiroki stumbled, stopping just in time to avoid bumping into the man who stood in his path, arms outstretched and palms facing upward to heaven. “Do you chant the Lotus Sutra? The end is coming for us all, friend, and the world will end in fire. You must chant the Lotus Sutra with me.”

The man was not a monk, or at least not dressed in a monk’s saffron robe. He was likely, Hiroki thought, drunk. Whether or not he was, he was being extremely rude. Hiroki glared at the man but kept silent. The man glared back, his antagonism threatening violence—until his bleary gaze took in the long-sword whose scabbard hung from Hiroki’s sash. After a moment the man flushed, bowed jerkily and stepped aside. Hiroki resisted the urge to flee, and forced himself to walk slowly past the man, who began muttering some sort of chant in the bastardized Sanskrit the Buddhists used.

“Those people are so annoying!” It was a young woman speaking to him this time. Looking at her, Hiroki decided this interruption was more acceptable.  She was of medium height, her face a bit more heart-shaped than the soft roundness that was fashionable. She was slender—quite possibly because she was poor, which would also account for the shape of her face. Though her kimono was of lavender silk and bore embroidered flowers in bright yellow and orange, it was old, worn, and almost certainly had been bought second- or even third-hand.

“I am afraid I am not very conversant with the latest developments in Buddhism,” he lied. The woman raised her carefully trimmed eyebrows — he guessed she was either a maid or a prostitute, because she had only her own, natural eyebrows and not the extra set higher-class women liked to paint on their foreheads. “What did he mean by ’inner Buddha nature’?”

“He's one of the Lotus sect,” the woman said. “The Hokkeshū. Hokkeshū are strong supporters of the common people” — she bowed, with just the right touch of impertinence to suggest irony — “and samurai of the lower ranks. They believe that all people are equally capable of attaining enlightenment in this life.”

“I don't pretend to know much about Buddhism,” Hiroki said—a half-lie, this time—“but that sounds a remarkable claim.” Nobody who had lived in the capital could fail to know about the Hokkeshū, but it served his purposes to be ignorant here.

“It does not meet with favour in the older temples,” the young woman said in a toneless voice. Then she smiled, and Hiroki felt the cares of the world lift a little from him. “But you will not be surprised to learn that many in the capital love this philosophy. A lot of temples in this city are ruined, but the Hokkeshū is growing faster than anyone can count, and its temples are springing up all over the city. Especially in the west.”

The western part of the capital had never found much favour with either the aristocracy or the shogunate. Hiroki was unable to remember ever having visited it. “Should I be worried?” he asked her. He smiled as he did so.

“They think they can make a peaceful, just and prosperous society,” the young woman said. “But they are also amazingly effective at looking out for one another—and intolerant of others. Their temple militias are  getting stronger. They have even, by themselves, beaten back raids on the city.”

“Raids by warrior bands?”

“No, by farmers who don't want to pay taxes or their debts. Since we don't really have a government to protect us now, it's maybe just as well the Lotus people will fight for the city.”

“You seem to know a fair amount about what goes on here,” Hiroki told her.

She moved to stand beside him. “I find it good for my business to be able to talk about things that interest my clients,” she said, smiling.