The morning had returned to its usual patterns. No one came to knock at the door and enter without summons. No people coming around me to fuss with me insincerely, giving me plates of food and taking off my clothes to put on ones unfit for any kind of movement, and pulling through my hair. Taira had told me to sit through it, “just this once,” he said. It was twice, but I suppose that was my own fault for picking some girl to marry.

  He hadn’t planned for me to do that more than anyone else had.

  Now it was quiet. Empty. Too early for anyone but the servants to be awake. No servants coming in to put their hands upon me and feed me wasteful amounts of food. In a few hours, they’d make their rounds and do those things to every room but this one. That was fine.

  I slung the obi over my shoulder, putting my hand to my nose, blocking the leftover smells of all the women.

  “Good morning,” Taira bowed shortly.

  I nodded, handing him the obi so he could tie it. Instead he pushed me back inside.

  “What are you doing?!” I asked.

  “Keep your voice down. You’ll wake the wives.”

  “Answer me then!”

  “We need to get you ready.” He said.

  “Ready for what? I already did the stupid Choosing.”

  “Yes, and you chose someone.”

  “So what?”

  “So…” he said, leading me not to my room, but to my room, but to the baths. “You need to meet the man they’ve put over your engagement.”

  “Why are you dressing me up to see some old man?” I wasn’t trying to marry him.

  “I cannot be your only ally in this palace.” He said.

  “You are.” He was my only ally in the world. The only one alive, anyway.

  “If your engagement discussions go well, you’ll have at least one.”

  “Then what’s the point of all this?” I asked.

  “He’s going to be responsible for securing this alliance,” he said. “At the very least, we want him to feel he has a reason to push you as a candidate.”

  “His reason is that it's his job.”

  “That isn’t enough.” He said, putting his hand in the water.

  “It’s still warm. Probably from the older wives.” He said.

  He took off my clothes, and I stepped inside. I didn’t care if it was warm. I didn’t want to be here at all, but I did choose someone. Maybe that was a mistake. He took my hair out of its tie, pushing my head back into the water and running his hands through it, and other things. The smells at least, weren’t as bad as yesterday’s.

  “Hurry it up,” I said. “We still have training to do.”

  “I will.” He said, wringing the water out my hair and brushing through it with his mother’s comb.

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  “That should take care of the smell.” He said. “The oils aren’t in your hair, or on your skin anymore.”

  I grunted. It was hard to tell, this place being full of so many other smells.

  “You can get out now.” He said. I did, letting him pull my clothes back and tie the obi around me to his satisfaction. At least there were no ridiculous decorations being forced on me this time. “Did they feed you today?”

  “They did not see me today.”

  He shook his head. “Of course.”

  “I don’t want them to see me.” Neither should he. They only made his work difficult, treating him with the same contempt as me.

  “It doesn’t matter!” He said. “At the very least they should be feeding you.”

  “I can feed myself.”

  “You should be worrying about matters of education.”

  “I don’t need education.”

  “You are a Prince, Ryuunosuke. You could be Emperor one day.”

  “Prince to what people?” I asked. You couldn’t rule people who did not want to be ruled.

  “To me,” he said.

  I moved toward the palace exit. “Let’s eat then.”

  “You don’t need to do that today.”

  He put food in my hands. Not from the forest, but from the kitchens. Things not even he could craft.

  “There’s plenty from that feast of yours,” he said, sitting beside me. “No need to hunt for a while.”

  “Where are you going then?” I asked.

  “I’m not permitted to eat that.” He said.

  “Your Prince is telling you to.” I said.

  “Then I suppose I have no choice,” he said, glancing at the palace guards, the only ones awake at this hour apart from us. “We should do this somewhere else.”

  “Why?”

  “This isn't proper for you to do.”

  “Your name makes it proper enough.” I said.

  “My name isn’t what people remember.”

  “It should be.”

  Taira. The only properly respectable name I’d ever come across. The only one worth remembering.

  It wasn’t the same as eating what was hunted, too easy, like there were strings attached, but there were none. Not for me. If they were tethered to him, he would say nothing about it, but there would be evidence to speak for itself.

  “How many days until we go back out to hunt?” I asked.

  “About a week, I’d say.”

  That was more kitchen food than I’d seen meant for myself since arriving here, and to think, it had been thrown together to appease foreigners. Or maybe tradition. Though no one here cared much about either.

  Maybe deciding to discuss marriage brought on some good things.

  So we went through the extravagant side of the palace, more so than the others, outside a room much the same, and inside was even worse. Full of so much stuff it was hardly practical for getting anything done.

  “I am Fujishima,” the man bowed. “I will be working to secure you a fine engagement.”

  His eyes did not meet mine, staying elsewhere on my face, but that was more than most managed. His robes were dyed deeply, silk, and embroidered elaborately. His skin was untouched by the sun, and his hands unaffected from labor. A man who could only be useful for something like this.

  Taira had no reason to worry over such a person.

  “Do your work then.” I said, taking my leave.