The samurai training outside the dōjō weren’t nearly as skilled as the Tairas had been. It was to be expected. They were inferior. Anyone was, compared to the clan that brought our empire to union in the first place. Looking at them was sickening.

  “You could at least try to keep it off your face,” Taira said, observing with his eyes more than I could.

  “Why should I?”

  “We need to learn from them.”

  “We’d be better off imitating your father.”

  “My father didn’t get around to showing us very much,” he said. “We’d be foolish to try his more advanced techniques from memory alone.”

  “Memory alone is how we’ve learned any technique.”

  “These are different,” he said, looking down from our vantage point as they moved to a thrust in their synchronization. “Simple and nothing special. They learn what everyone does. If you could read, you could learn it from scrolls.”

  “You can read it then.” I said.

  He sighed. “Me reading anything to you would be a problem.”

  “Everyone knows you can read.”

  “There’s a lot of things everyone knows, and they choose what to remember,” he said. “Besides, it would be good to get you used to sitting in your loathing.”

  “What good comes from that?” If I wasn’t supposed to strike these people, then why force me to be in the presence of things that angered me?

  “Plenty, Ryuunosuke,” he said. “You’re going to require a great deal of self-control if that strength of yours is ever going to do you any good.”

  “It keeps me alive.”

  “I wish you more from life than simply breathing,” he said.

  “That’s all there is to it.” I said.

  He shook his head. “We’re going to have to do something about your lack of education.”

  “This is plenty education.” I turned my eyes back to the samurai below.

  Education was of no use to a dead man, and any time I didn’t spend on strength, was time I’d be easily killed.

  “Ah, so this is where you’ve been hiding.” Self-control. Taira’s reminder was the only thing that kept me from rising to the provocation and hitting the Ho-ō eyed relative of mine.

  “Prince Touya,” Taira bowed in the corner of my eye.

  “Oh, stand before you provoke my brother to hit me again,” he said. It was too late to avoid provocation.

  “Can’t even say hello?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to provoke him,” Taira said.

  “I’m only being polite,” he said. “Shouldn’t I say hi when I stumble upon you?”

  “No.” I said.

  I could see Taira close his eyes, hear the breath he took in. He was not pleased with my answer.

  “My, my, I was hoping those engagement discussions of yours would at least make you better in the presence of ladies.”

  I turned around, noting the girl beside him. She looked and smelled the same as all the others in the palace. It was strange to see one outside of the palace. She wasn’t a sister of mine, of that much I was certain. She smelled of blood. Blood nothing similar to mine. She must have been a wife of some sort then.

  “Who is that?”

  “Who is this?” He repeated. “You were at her arrival. This is Sayuri.”

  “Why is she here?”

  “She’s my concubine,” he said. “It’s only natural she’s with me.”

  Concubine. Not a wife. That nuance, at least, I did understand. So she wasn’t important. There were no consequences for Taira to pester me about if she took offense to anything I did. I turned back to the samurai.

  “I guess Fujishima really hasn’t taught you anything.” He said. “He’s a good man, but there’s not much he can do with you, is there?”

  “Who are you talking about now?” I asked, his voice a hindrance to memorizing the motions before me.

  “Fujishima.”

  “Who?”

  He looked amused, but Taira’s look told me not to hit him. I already knew not to, since there was a girl so close to him.

  “The man heading your engagement discussions.”

  “What does he have to teach me?”

  “How to secure an engagement for yourself. How to be a husband. Things you are certainly unaware of.” He said. “Have you paid so little attention to your meetings?”

  “We’ve had no meetin–”

  “Ryuunosuke,” Taira cut me off. Whatever it was about the truth of the matter, he did not want me to say, but I already had.

  “You haven’t met with him?” He asked, covering his mouth with his hand. “My goodness, no wonder there’s been no rejection yet.”

  “HUH!?” I stood up.

  “Ryuunosuke.” Taira said again, taking my sleeve and pulling me away from the boy in front of me.

  “A word of advice brother,” he said, looking down on me with a look he was only afforded because Taira was here. “I wouldn’t blindly trust officials of any sort to do their job, especially if I were you. If you keep at this rate, she’ll get around to rejecting you before you’ve had your fun.”

  “Fun?” I repeated.

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  “Well you can’t mean to marry her.”

  “If I didn’t mean to marry her then I wouldn’t have talked to her.”

  He laughed. “Oh, you can’t be that naive.”

  “Who’s naive?!” I stepped closer and Taira pushed me back again.

  “If you’re not playing, I can assure you, she certainly is.”

  “Please, enough,” Taira said.

  “I’m only educating him,” he said, leaning in closer. Dangerously close. His eyes flicked to mine, hardly for a moment, but it was brazen. “He needs to learn how to play the game.”

  “I don’t play games.” I said.

  “Everyone plays games,” he said. “People are toys.”

  “I’m no one’s toy.”

  “Oh you’re a toy Ryuunosuke,” I said. “Taria’s just the only one who’s figured out how to play you.”

  He caught my fist before it connected with the boy before me’s face.

  “Let me go Taira.”

  “Self control Ryuunosuke.” He ignored the order.

  “See? Plays you like a koto.” He said. “And that little foreigner is going to play you the same if you don’t play her better.”

  “Not everyone treats people like toys,” Taira said, pulling me further away from him.

  “Everyone toys with everyone,” he shrugged. “This girl toys with me the same as I do with her. You use Ryuunosuke to be here, and he uses you to keep him out of trouble. It’s no different from what I do.”

  “I can assure you, it’s very different.”

  He gave a short bow before pulling me back toward the palace.

  “LET GO OF ME!” I pulled free, baring my teeth.

  “You were going to hit him. Again.”

  “HE PROVOKED ME!”

  “It’s only words.” He said. “They mean nothing.”

  “I don’t use you for anything,” I said.

  “Even if you did, I’m hardly in a position to mind.” That wasn’t a good answer. “Let’s go and meet with Fujishima.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  He sighed. “The man heading your engagement.”

  “WHY!?”

  “To make sure he’s doing his job.”

  “It’s his job. He has to do it.”

  “Even you can see that people’s jobs mean very little when in regards to you,” he said. I couldn’t argue.

  “Fine.”

  Taira was finding more and more excuses to “clean me up.” He was set on impressing this old fool. An old fool unsuited to anything but writing letters regarding a decision that had already been made. Formalities.

  Scrubbing my skin and putting items in my hair that lacked any practicality is what he filled his time with. A waste.

  It was two hours after him claiming we needed to have this meeting that we ended up there, standing in the front of the old man’s desk, in a room full of too many useless things for his work to be taken seriously. Only a woman had an excuse to fill their space with so many things.

  “What brings you here Prince Ryuunosuke?” The bald man asked.

  “Checking on the engagement.” I said.

  “What in particular?” He asked.

  How was I supposed to know the details of his job?

  “The correspondence,” Taira whispered.

  “The corr-uh-spond-ance.” I repeated the long word. I didn’t know what it meant.

  “There’s yet to be any,” he said.

  “What?” He asked, under his breath, but the bald man turned to him.

  “Did you say something, boy?”

  He shook his head.

  I eyed him. “What’s correspondence?”

  “Letters,” he explained. “He hasn’t sent them any yet.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You’d have to ask him that.”

  “Why haven’t you sent any corr-uh-spond… letters?”

  “It’s simply tactical,” he said. “I can assure you, it’s a part of every engagement process.”

  “And what advantage just such a tactic give?” I asked.

  “Advantage?” He repeated. “It displays a lack of desperation. You don’t need the engagement that badly. They need to work for your interest.”

  “She has my interest.” I said.

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “But–”

  “There is no but.” I said. “I don’t play games. Send her a letter.”

  “I… sending one first is…”

  “I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK IT IS!” I said. “DO YOUR JOB AND GET MY INTEREST ACROSS.”

  “I… very well then, young prince.”

  “You may want to check the contents of that letter.” Taira whispered.

  “That slave of yours ought to watch his tongue if he wants to keep it.” The man said.

  Taira silenced.

  I glared at him. “I want to see that letter when you’ve finished it.”

  “Are you certain you wish to–”

  “No more of these games Fushi–”

  “Fujishima,” Taira said.

  “Whatever,” I scoffed. “I don’t want delays like this again, or I’ll find someone else to take of these things.”

  What was this idiot doing for five months?

  “Yes, Prince.” He bowed, but it meant little in terms of respect.

  I left, not bothering to return it.

  The walk back was silent. Taira remained beside me at the door of The Kōkyū but did not go inside. His lack of presence meant I would have to undo all the “cleaning-up” he’d done. I pulled out the sticks and other useless things he’d put into my hair, saying words he would scold me for as they caught themselves in my hair. I pulled them out regardless, losing hair that no one but him would notice.

  The distraction led me to walk into a person.

  I looked up, finding a man. Not a son of the Emperor, a man. Not a doctor. He didn’t seem to be of any profession.

  His eyes averted mine as soon as they saw him. Ho-ō eyes. He was too old to be of the Emperor. His brother. My uncle.

  “Damn brats,” he muttered, pushing me out of his way.

  I turned my eyes to the place he was coming from. It was larger and flashier than the other spaces. The middle. The center. Important. Which woman lived there, I could not say. Someone important enough to be able to summon a man. Someone important enough for even the Emperor’s brother to acknowledge.

  I turned my attention back to the sticks in my hair, pulling them out, and returning to bed.