“When you grow up, you will become the wind.”
This was what his mother had always told him. When he reaches his coming of age at fifteen, he’ll leave for the outside world. Until then, study the matters of the world, he was told.
Become the wind, continue to drift so the lands of the west don’t stagnate.
It was a memory from the time Rikuson wasn’t called Rikuson.
The women protected the town, and the men ran in the grasslands. That was what he was taught. It was sad to have to leave home one day, but he thought it would be good to become the wind, become the ears, to help his mother and older sister.
Morning, he studied under a teacher. Noon, he explored the town. Night, he sought his mother and sister’s instruction.
The noon stroll was entertaining. Without wasting the pocket money he was given, can he buy something good? What can he use, that they will be satisfied with? This was, again, a part of his studies. Many of his male relatives became merchants. Rikuson will probably pick that route too.
Weighing the taste, cost, and amount, he brought the most suitable dried fruits and goat’s milk. After that, he headed for the shogi hall.
There was a noisy crowd of adults with free time. All sorts of information also go back and forth there. He could hear more at a tavern, but Rikuson still wasn’t allowed to be let in.
Among the binge drinking people of leisure, occasionally he would meet with a real deal.
“Oh, lad, you’re here?”
The elderly man sitting in front of a shogi board was the former secretary who was working at the government office. He was currently half-retired and collecting documents and making a new history compilation. He was the best shogi player in the western capital.
“Yeah.” Rikuson sat beside the elderly man and looked at the board. “Huh?”
He lost. How unusual. Rikuson looked at the elderly man’s opponent.
The opponent was growing stubble. His shabby clothes and hair were no different from being tied up or done up. The quality of his clothes wasn’t bad, but the condition was no good. He looked surprisingly young. With his feeble body, he didn’t look like a resident of the western capital.
“There’s some teeny pawn here.” The fox eyed man was wearing a monocle. Anything and everything about him was suspicious. And he even said pawn.
“Lad. Don’t be angry. Rakan-san is this sort of creature,” the elderly man said.
“He called me a pawn,” Rikuson said.
“A pawn, ain’t that alright? He said that everyone else is a go stone, you know.”
“A go stone.”
Did he make a mistake with pawn? Rikuson thought as he looked at the shogi board. His making little of everyone was testimony of his incredible skill in shogi. This was the first time he saw the elderly man lose.
Interest piqued, he also went to the hall tomorrow and the day after. The man called Rakan came every day–does he have a stable job? That very day, the elderly man wasn’t around.
“He’s back again, the Ih-child.”
The words that Rikuson wouldn’t hear if the elderly man was here, he heard when he was alone.
Ih-child, the children of the Ih clan. The clan that ruled over the western capital, had its good points and shortcomings.
The women became the leader. The men were chased out. The women don’t take husbands; the children don’t know their fathers.
The western capital originally had a lot of intensely patriarchal nomads visiting frequently. Rikuson understood what he had been called that too. The children who don’t know their fathers were also mocked as Ih-spawn.
Nonetheless, it was the Ih clan that prided in protecting the western lands for several centuries.
Since the elderly man wasn’t around, Rikuson sat beside Rakan. They had met several times before, but this man didn’t try to remember Rikuson. In fact, he didn’t try to remember anyone else’s face. He’d only sit before a shogi board, put down some coins, then play shogi, nothing else.
“Mister, can you not remember faces?” Rikuson asked.
“I don’t understand human faces,” Rakan replied.
“Don’t understand? Won’t you remember after seeing them many times?”
“I only see go stones and shogi pieces.”
Rikuson didn’t understand what he was talking about, but he didn’t think Rakan was lying. Surely, for Rakan, it was probably hard like telling apart the faces of livestock. There were also nomads who could remember all the faces of their goats. Rikuson didn’t understand that. Rakan might see human faces like goat faces.
“Then, what do you do when you really want to tell them apart?”
“….” Rakan pondered. He thought about Rikuson’s question as he played shogi unsparingly. His opponent admitted his loss with a pale face. “I remember the shape of their ears. I remember their height. I check the quality of their hair. I remember the smell of their sweat.”
“Isn’t it faster to remember faces?”
“I don’t understand faces. I know they have eyes, a nose and a mouth. But they scramble up when I put them together, so I can only see go stones. If it’s the size of their nostrils and the length of their lashes, then I’ll know.”
It seems he remembered specific features, not the entire thing. It was terribly tiring so aside from extremely important people, he wouldn’t do it.
“Is mister from the capital?”
“Yeah. I’ll go back someday. I have to,” Rakan said while beating his next opponent.
His mother told him to become the wind and drift, but would she approve of him drifting all the way to the capital?
“When you become important in the capital, will you give me a job?” Rikuson asked.
“Hmm, I can if you promote from a pawn.”
“Okay.”
His sister also told him that it was good to make any connections. Whether he became a merchant or whatever, it was better to know all sorts of people.
When he returned home, it was dinner time. Everyone in the clan came to eat dinner together. It was all women around him. The clan normally gave birth to a lot of daughters and one person left on a journey last year, so Rikuson was the only boy here. The children here aside from Rikuson were three girls who were born a year apart from each other. They were Rikuson’s cousins, and they looked really alike as if they have the same father. His older sister had already passed her coming of age, so she was among the adults.
As Rikuson looked after his cousins’ meals, he listened in on their conversation. About food supply, about imported goods, about exported goods.
His mother was the leader of the clan. The one currently managing the Ih clan was his mother’s younger sister–Rikuson’s aunt. His aunt couldn’t have daughters. His elder sister, regarded as the next leader based on her age and resourcefulness at this rate, proactively joined in the conversation.
Through trade with foreign countries, they were apparently in a very hectic period now. As they had been in the red for consecutive years, the capital had made complaints. Rii exported a large amount of high quality paper, but the quality has worsened in recent years. It was troubling since paper was their principal commodity as it was convenient to carry due to its lightness.
Moreover, a minor locust plague had also broken out. Since their population has grown in number, their increasing the amount of farmland has become in vain. The capital only looked at the numbers, and denied support since the crop yield was the same. With the growth of the population, their food supply won’t be enough soon.
“Let’s bring out the black stone,” his aunt said.
His mother, his mother’s older sister, his older sister and his older cousins could only nod.
Rikuson, not knowing what the black stone was, carried bread to his three-year-old cousin’s mouth.
At night, his older sister and mother taught him the history of Isei Province. During the founding of Rii, the queen mother’s trusted retainers became the leaders of the three provinces.
The Ih clan who governed the west was apparently under a lot of hardship. The land was particularly strong with the patriarchal mindset. They made little of how the founder of the clan was a woman and deceived her many times over. To obtain a name, there were people who had whispered sweet words to her, and people who had tried to wrestle away her power.
Thus, so the family won’t be taken over, they created a matrilineal system. They didn’t take husbands. The scions were all women.
A special duty was formed for the men.
One of them, was becoming the wind.
The wind, otherwise known as the ears.
They traverse the entire Isei Province to gather information. As merchants, as nomads. Those who became nomads were later called the Wind-reader tribe. They handled birds and controlled the insects.
However, there was a miscalculation.
The Wind-reader tribe perished fifty years ago.
One of the several Wind-reader tribes lost regular contact with the Ih clan. They had split from the Ih clan years, decades, centuries ago. There were no more people who swore eternal loyalty to the clan head of the past. Before anyone knew, people who got in touch with foreign countries appeared.
Then an incident happened. The Wind-reader tribe they lost contact with was completely destroyed by a different tribe. Some people, judging that the technique of using birds was due to bloodline, kidnapped the women to take the power as their own. Then, to monopolise it, they killed the rest and turned the survivors into the slaves.
The Ih clan couldn’t forgive the Wind-reader tribe that had been negligent in communication. The remaining Wind-reader tribe was broken up and those with the capability were made to live in town. Occasionally, it seems those who use their skills for the wrong purpose were disposed of secretly.
If the Wind-reader tribe still existed, Rikuson had another path. The path of traversing the grasslands as a member of the Wind-reader tribe.
His mother and sister had told him. They didn’t teach him how to handle birds, but how to manage the insects. They also taught him the system of the farming villages that remain in various locations.
So that, if a locust plague does break out, the men of the Ih clan that are scattered all over can act more efficiently than any other people.
