Shirakawa Ren was the youngest daughter of the lord of Shirakawa Domain on the Tokaido. From childhood she had ridden horses and drawn bows, and her temper was fiercer than any of her brothers'. In the spring of her seventeenth year, all Kyoto was talking about her marriage. People said the little princess of the Shirakawa house was to wed Konoe Gen, the new master of the shogunate. On the night her wedding robes were delivered to the domain residence, she sat in the corridor watching the lights in the garden and suddenly remembered the first time she had ever seen him, when she had still been a girl who dared to say anything and demand anything she pleased.
In those days the old regime had not yet fully fallen and the great domains had not yet chosen their sides. Konoe Gen was only a young military man lodging with the Shirakawa family. He wore a purple haori, and his face was as cold as frost on the back of a blade. Ren had secretly mounted the savage horse one of her brothers had brought back from the northern frontier, and when it nearly threw her down the slope, Konoe Gen rode after her and plucked her bodily from the saddle with one hand. She was so startled she could not speak for several moments, aware only of the faint scent of pine on his sleeve. By the time she had regained herself, he had already set her down and gone off with her father to speak of military matters without even a single word of comfort.
Shirakawa Ren was not the sort to take that quietly, and she was even less the sort to give up. At the end of the corridor, however, the person she blocked was not Konoe Gen but another young man dressed in blue. His features were quiet, and there was something about him like a bamboo grove after snow. When he stood beneath the lantern, even the wind seemed to move around him. Ren took the jade pendant she had worn against her skin since childhood and thrust it into his hand. "Take him a message for me," she said with complete directness. "When I come of age, I intend to marry Konoe Gen." The young man blinked, then smiled, and though the smile was slight it was somehow unforgettable. "Very well," he said. "I'll remember it for you." His name was Otowa.
The war lasted another two years. Shirakawa Domain sent men and grain and helped Konoe Gen secure the Tokaido. Several of Ren's brothers died in the struggle that remade the country. By the time the cherry blossoms opened again in Kyoto, Konoe Gen had entered Nijo Palace and become the new shogun with command of all military power. The Shirakawa house stood high in merit, and Konoe Gen himself came to take Shirakawa Ren as his bride and name her his lawful wife. Ren believed she had at last been granted the stubborn devotion she had cherished in secret since girlhood. On their wedding night, she pushed aside the curtain, ignored all propriety, and flung herself into his arms like the same wild girl who had once run after the wind. Looking up at him, she asked, "Konoe Gen, do you remember me?" He let her embrace him. He let her kiss him. But his expression stayed calm, remote, and he only said that the new regime had just been founded and there was no need to cling to old etiquette. After the lamps were put out, the person who came to her was quiet and gentle. The scent of pine on him was cool and clean. When his hand came to rest on her back, it was as careful as if he feared she might shatter. Ren, blushing in the dark, whispered, "Do you like me?" The man beside her did not answer directly. He only bent and kissed her.
By the time she woke the next morning, Konoe Gen was already gone. Ren assumed it was merely the reserve of a shogun and thought nothing of it. She even excitedly asked her maids whether anyone had saved a cup of wedding wine for Otowa. She still remembered the young man in the corridor who had accepted her pendant, and she had not forgotten that when her wedding day truly came she meant to treat him to a drink. But life in the new shogunate was nothing like what she had imagined. Konoe Gen rarely came to her residence. Old ministers had not yet been purged, the northern domains were restless, and the court nobles in the south were wavering. Before long, the shogunate welcomed a noble lady of distinguished birth as a secondary consort to soothe the political winds. The first time Ren burst into the audience chamber, she saw Konoe Gen himself helping that lady to her feet, a slight smile on his lips that Ren had never once seen turned toward her. She stood in the doorway as if someone had emptied a basin of ice water over her head. Konoe Gen glanced at her only once and said in a voice so calm it was nearly cruel, "Otowa, escort the Lady of the House back. And explain to her what decorum means."
The flowers all along the path were opening in noisy abundance, but Ren felt only a tightness in her chest. She had never learned the twisting rules of the women of the inner chambers, nor had she any desire to. She asked Otowa only one thing. "Did you drink my wedding wine?" He said that he had. "And the message I asked you to carry all those years ago," she asked then, "did you truly give it to Konoe Gen?" Otowa held the horse's reins, the knuckles of one hand faintly white, and answered very softly, "I did." She had meant to ask more, whether he had been glad, whether he had found it difficult, but when she saw how unnaturally still his eyes were, all strength to go on suddenly left her.
Soon the noble consort conceived, only to miscarry three months later. Overnight, rumors swept through the women's quarters that the shogun's wife had harmed her out of jealousy, unable to bear the thought that another woman might give the house an heir before she could. Shirakawa Ren was thrust straight into the storm, and Konoe Gen did not thoroughly investigate. He merely suppressed the matter with cold efficiency. From then on, she remained his lawful wife in name only. In truth she was thrown into the most distant residence in the palace. She fell gravely ill there, and even so dragged herself to see Konoe Gen. For the first time she laid aside every scrap of pride and asked him, "If you cannot come to me often, then give me a child. At least then, in the long nights to come, I will have something to keep close." Konoe Gen lowered his eyes and after a long silence said only, "Go back. I am tired." In that instant Ren found that she no longer wanted to cry. Standing in that hall of blazing lamps and looking at the man she had loved for so many years, she felt something inside her grow slowly, entirely cold. "If that is so," she said, "then let me go." Konoe Gen did not try to keep her. He only lifted a hand. And when she walked out, the person waiting beneath the corridor eaves was still Otowa.
Life in the detached residence was quiet. The plum trees were old, the winds cold, and only Otowa came and went from time to time. He shielded her from the negligence of the palace women. He brought her sweets and seasonal fruit from outside the palace. When, on a whim, she climbed a tree to pluck green plums, he stood below holding her outer robe, worried and helpless all at once. She tossed fruit down to him and he fumbled to catch it; she laughed from the branches with a freedom she had not known since before her marriage. As those days gathered one upon another, Ren sometimes found herself staring at Otowa without meaning to. She had always kept Konoe Gen in her heart, but a human heart is not forged of iron. The one who watched the wind with her, drew her robe close about her shoulders, and caught every small fit of temper with patient hands had always been Otowa. She simply refused to admit it.
She could no longer refuse when her father returned from the front. The old lord came to Kyoto and learned at once how badly his daughter had been treated in the shogun's palace. Furious, he stormed into the palace as if he carried a drawn sword and laid down three terms before Konoe Gen. First, Shirakawa Ren must be restored as the lawful wife in full. Second, until Shirakawa House had an heir, the shogun must sleep in her residence. Third, the case of the noble consort's miscarriage must continue to be investigated. Shirakawa House controlled the grain of the Tokaido, and Ren's remaining brothers still held troops. However unwilling Konoe Gen was, he had no choice but to agree. From that day on, "Konoe Gen" came to her every night. Yet Ren slowly began to feel as though this man had been split into two. One half was cold as snow and grudged even an extra sentence. The other gathered her into his arms when nightmares woke her, bent and kissed the old pain in her back when it flared, and wiped her tears away in silence. She could not tell which one was truly Konoe Gen. She only felt her heart being torn a little more each day. At last she went to Otowa and asked, "How can one person be like two?" Otowa lowered his head and said he understood nothing of men and women. But the sunset was red that evening, and the light on the edge of his ear made it seem as if the calm in him had faltered for an instant. Ren looked at him, and something in her own chest misstepped too.
Not long after that, she conceived. When Konoe Gen learned she was pregnant, he lost his composure in a way he never had before. He held her hand so tightly his own palm dampened with sweat, as if alarm outweighed joy. Then in the next moment he seemed to remember something, muttered that state affairs required him, and turned away. Ren assumed he would come back later. Instead, from that day onward, Konoe Gen never again set foot in her residence. He only sent her a green jade hairpin and said he had specially chosen it for her from among the tribute gifts offered by the domains. Ren was overjoyed. Wearing the hairpin, she gathered up her skirts and ran all the way to the audience chamber because she wanted to ask Konoe Gen if it suited her. But before she reached him, she glimpsed through a screen a woman in violet leaning barefoot and lazily against the shogun's seat, smiling as she called him simply by his given name. Standing beside her was Otowa, his face white. Ren froze where she stood. She thought she had finally discovered Konoe Gen's true beloved. So it had never been that he could not love, or that he had no desire for women. It was only that from the start he had wanted someone else. She forced herself to walk out, and when Otowa caught up and tried to support her, she seized his hand so hard her nails nearly cut him. "I regret it," she said.
That night she burned with fever. When she woke the next day, there was a lotus-wood hairpin and a plain note beside her bed. On it was written only: Among all things, this alone is most like longing. She recognized the hand as Konoe Gen's, and yet not quite. When Otowa came to see her, he finally explained in a low voice that the woman in violet was a former attendant from the old shogunate. She alone knew the whereabouts of the old treasury and the secret tunnels, and Konoe Gen was merely using her, hiding her inside the palace to coax the truth from her. Ren listened, and her heart only grew more confused. She knew there was still more left unsaid. It was like a cloud covering half the moon, more unbearable than complete darkness.
Winter came on. The plum blossoms in the imperial garden opened in extravagant profusion. Ren, despite her pregnancy, suddenly wanted the highest branch. She climbed onto the boughs and, seeing Konoe Gen and Otowa approach side by side in the distance, laughed and waved the plum branch, calling out his name. Then her foot slipped and she fell. In that weightless instant, she looked instinctively toward Konoe Gen. He stood in the snow and wind without moving at all. It was Otowa who moved. Without a second's hesitation, he sprang upward and caught her firmly in his arms. As he held her, his whole body trembled, terror locked in his eyes as if he had been a single heartbeat away from losing everything. The fall did not harm the child, the physicians said; it was a miracle. But lying in bed afterward, Ren felt as though a great hollow had been opened in her heart. Late that night, the familiar person came as usual and gathered her into his arms. She lay with her eyes shut, breathing in that deeply familiar pine scent, her fingers tightening little by little. Once the breathing beside her had steadied into sleep, she slipped out and lit the lamp. The flame shook. On the bed, the man sleeping there had a refined, weary face. He was not Konoe Gen at all. He was Otowa.
Ren felt something inside her shatter so violently she could almost hear it. She had not yet spoken when torches flared outside until the whole courtyard blazed white. Konoe Gen stood beneath the eaves with a coldness in his eyes that Ren had never seen before and gave the order in a carrying voice. "The lawful wife, Shirakawa Ren, has had illicit relations with the retainer Otowa and stands accused besides of plotting against the shogunal bloodline. Imprison her at once. Shirakawa House is to be charged as well, its military authority stripped and its property seized pending judgment." That very night Ren was dragged to prison. She had imagined many times how she might lose favor, how she might be abandoned, how she might grow old and be forgotten. Never had she imagined the truth would look like this.
On the night before her execution, the prison door opened again. The person who entered was not the aloof shogun she knew, but a woman with her long hair down. She had shed men's clothing, and her beauty was so vivid it seemed almost unnatural. She was the woman in violet. She was Konoe Gen. Sitting beneath the lamp, she spoke with terrible calm. She had once been the orphan of Kyoto's Konoe house. In the last years of the old regime, her father and brothers had been falsely accused of treason and her entire family destroyed, leaving only her to escape alive. Later she had taken a mountain master, learned the sword, learned stratagem, learned how to live as a man. Otowa was her fellow disciple, older in the discipline than she was and far cleaner in heart. He had grown up in the snow mountains with no ambition in him, only loyalty. So she had taken him with her when she descended the mountain, and used him as blade, shield, shadow, and all the other borrowed things she required. She borrowed Shirakawa House's grain and men to launch her cause and sat beneath the mask of a man on the shogun's seat. Yet in the end she was a woman. To hide that truth she had to prop one lie upon another. Taking Shirakawa Ren as wife had been to steady Shirakawa House. Bringing noblewomen from the other domains into the palace had been to disperse Shirakawa influence. As for the wedding nights and every tenderness that followed the extinguishing of the lamps, none of those had ever been given by her own hand. "Every time the lamps went out," Konoe Gen said, "the one who entered your room was Otowa. I thought he would go on doing as he always had, living his whole life as nothing more than my shadow."
Ren could hear her own teeth begin to chatter. So the one who had embraced her in the deepest part of night had always been Otowa. The warmth she had clung to in her coldest hours had not been some accidental tenderness from Konoe Gen. It had been another person slipping her his entire heart in secret. Konoe Gen went on. The child in the noble consort's womb had been killed by her own hand. She would not allow any woman to bear Otowa a child, and she could not bear to let his gaze come to rest on anyone else. The jade hairpin sent to Ren had once held poison too, but Otowa had quietly replaced it with the wooden hairpin in the night. In the garden, when she saw him lose all control for Ren's sake, Konoe Gen had finally understood that the shadow she herself had raised could no longer be held. So she set a trap: one move to reclaim Shirakawa House's military power, one move to sever Otowa's longing, one move to push Ren and everyone who knew the truth straight toward ruin. Ren listened, then raised her head and asked only one thing. "Where is Otowa?" Konoe Gen fell silent for a very long time, as though the wound in her had only now begun to truly hurt. "He knelt before the hall for three days and nights," she said at last. "He begged to trade his life for yours. I agreed. After thanking me, he drew his blade and killed himself before my eyes." Ren was too stunned even for tears. The woman before her looked at her and the coldness returned to her voice. "But there is still his child in your womb. Until you bear it, I will not let you die."
So Shirakawa Ren was not executed. She was secretly confined instead in a villa in the western hills. In the spring of the following year she gave birth to a son. The baby was placed before her only for a moment before the maids carried him away, saying he would be raised under the shogun's name. At dusk, Konoe Gen sent a cup of wine and a letter. The wine was poisoned. The handwriting on the letter was Otowa's. There were not many words in it. He wrote only that he remembered a spring long ago, at the end of a corridor, when the youngest princess of Shirakawa House had thrust a jade pendant into his hand and tipped up her chin as she ordered him to carry a message to Konoe Gen, saying that once she had come of age she meant to marry him. It was the first time in his life anyone had dragged him into the center of her heart with such heedless force. Afterward he had spent years serving Konoe Gen as shadow in every way: speaking for her, walking for her, embracing Shirakawa Ren for her. Only one thing he never dared do, and that was speak his own name aloud. He wrote that he had kept the jade pendant hidden against his body all those years, because for a man who had lived his life as a shadow, it was the only thing he had ever truly possessed. By the time Ren reached the last line, she could no longer bear it. She pressed the paper hard against her heart. Outside, spring grass had only just begun to grow, and wind moved through the paper screens like the evening wind of the Tokaido long ago. She lifted the cup without hesitation. The wine was slightly bitter, but in her throat it felt like a long, quiet snowfall. Just before closing her eyes, she thought suddenly that if, in the corridor that year, she had first caught hold not of Otowa but of Konoe Gen, perhaps everything might have been different. Then she understood at once that there are no such ifs in this world. In this life she had loved someone too dazzling, and she had also been sincerely loved by someone too quiet. In the end, when all the lights had run out, the one who went with her to the very end was still the man who had always lived inside the shadows.