pair of armed samurai. My chief adviser and closest friend was a beautiful young woman with the intelligence of a sage and the wit of a monkey god. She looked like she could be my sister, and sometimes she acted like it, though I remembered when she had been a dirty-faced child running around the palace gardens. She didn’t really advise me on much, but Akari had informants everywhere and knew everything that went on inside the walls of the palace; I relied on her to tell me the things I needed to know.
“Yumeko-sama,” Akari said with a reverent bow and a less reverent smile that only I could see. My chief adviser was the epitome of charm and grace in public, which was also the only time she called me Yumeko-sama. “The sun is beginning to set. Everyone is waiting for the Moon Clan daimyo to send the first lantern down the river.”
I nodded and raised the lantern before me. “I’m ready. Let us go. But first...” I gave her a shrewd look. “Were you able to obtain what I asked for?”
She gave a despairing sigh and held up a stick with three brightly colored rice dumpling balls shoved halfway down the length, a popular festival snack. I grinned and plucked it from her fingers, as the guards pretended not to notice. “When you’re finished, Yumeko-sama,” Akari said, putting emphasis on the “sama,” as if to remind me that daimyo of great clans should not indulge in common festival sweets—at least, not in public... “Kage Haruko is in the main hall, and wishes to speak to you before the sending of the lanterns.”
“Oh?” I bit off one of the rice balls and motioned us down the hall with the rest of the stick. “Her health has been poorly lately, or so she said in the missive apologizing that she couldn’t be here tonight. I wonder why she changed her mind?”
“I’m sure you can ask her.”
We walked in silence through the palace until we came to the main hall, which was emptier than normal. Most everyone was either at the festival or on the banks of the numerous moats running through the city, paper lanterns in hand.
But a group of people waited for me as I stepped into the chamber, men and women in the distinctive black and purple of the Shadow Clan. The woman in the center, surrounded by nobles and samurai, was a distinguished older woman whose hair was threaded with silver, but who was still quite beautiful despite her years. She sat cross-legged on a cushion, her back straight and her eyes closed, but they opened as I stopped in front of her, and she looked me over with a sharp black gaze.
“Haruko-sama.” I nodded respectfully, and she returned it. “I will admit to being surprised to see you here. Your note said you were not well enough to travel.”
“I’m not.” The Kage daimyo held up a hand, and immediately the young samurai standing beside her offered his arm to help her to her feet. “I’m here,” the daimyo went on through gritted teeth as she stood, “because my thrice cursed grandson would not stop pestering me to make the journey, and since we came all this way, I thought I would pay my respects.” She gave me a tight smile. “You haven’t changed since I saw you...thirty years ago? Before the war with the Hino that took my son.” She shook her head, as if dissolving those memories. “My apologies, I am being a rude old lady. I don’t believe you have met my grandson?” She motioned to the man beside her, who gave me a solemn bow. “This is Kage Kousuke.”
“It is an honor to meet you, my lady,” Kousuke recited.
“I would introduce you to my other grandson, the baka that convinced me to make this ridiculous journey, but he has apparently decided that greeting the Moon Clan daimyo in her own palace is not important and disappeared as soon as we reached the docks.” Kage Haruko made a hopeless gesture with both hands. “That boy. If he wasn’t such a skilled warrior, I would have sent him off to live with monks long ago. Maybe they could make sense of his dreams.”
I pricked my ears, about to ask