How I Came to be Here

When I was 10 years old, they brought Haha-ue’s head back from Mura Sabishii Toshi.
 
It was in a fine lacquer box with a letter, stating that she had been found guilty of violations of Imperial trade law, specifically, that inspectors had found more rice on her boat than her manifest reported. The letter stated that she had confessed and “begged in a most wanton fashion” for her life, because the Daidoji are assholes - my mother would not have crossed the street to spit on a Crane, let alone thrown herself at one to save her life. Now she was dead.
 
My father, Kageroku, wept like a child in front of everyone. Then he started shouting at Oji-ue Taka. He was my father’s older brother and lord, but simply expressed his condolences, rather than upbraid him for his weakness and insolence. Finally, Ojii-ue Kagenaga told my father to shut up, which produced a fit of high-pitched screaming, which led to my grandfather backhanding my father. Father fled the room, which seemed to give other people tacit permission to leave. Soon enough, it was me, my younger brother, Nichio, Uncle Taka, and my grandparents. We all just sat there in the awkwardness, my mother’s mangled hair barely peeking out of the box.
 
As much as my father’s hysterics had shamed me, the utter unfairness of it all turned and twisted in my guts. Haha-ue had done her duty to the clan, but because it inconvenienced a gaggle of too-wealthy Crane, she had been dishonored and killed. Now Chichi was ready to side with the Crane and dismiss the family duty to the Crab. My uncle was having none of it, however, and took me out of being tutored at home to be trained at Favorable Tides Inn. That I wasn’t being sent to Yasuki Yashiki, or even a respectable school, produced a loud, but brief argument between Chichi and Oji-ue.
 
Training at the Favorable Tides was strange, and occasionally awkward. Most of the samurai who passed in and out of there were ronin, members of the Scales of the Carp Tekiya. But they had been on good terms with our family for centuries, and took the instruction of the daimyo’s nephew with the utmost seriousness. Outside tutors were brought in to teach me some of the courtly graces - I play a decent game of Go - but the ronin themselves trained me in the use of the sword and the use of gold. Working alongside ronin and their heimin assistants scraped away whatever scales remained on my eyes.
 
Gods and Daimyo and Samurai all fuck things up. Peasants starve, merchants get kessho, and the samurai just keep killing each other and waiting for someone else to pick up the tab. The Buke are murderous thugs with no real talents and the Kuge hide in their castles and hope no one notices that they don’t do anything. I realize how hypocritical I sound: my education and position are thanks to this system, but I am told I am supposed to speak honestly (mostly). It took exactly no nudging at all to get me involved in semi-legal business management.
 
I became a patron for the Tekiya, as well as for a Bakuto gambling den in Sunda Mizu Mura, where I was assigned as a “harbor magistrate.” I advanced by fulfilling the most important rule in the Yasuki: don’t fuck up. I used the two businesses to move money around without garnering excessive attention, and made myself a tidy sum in the process. I was content to manage my little illicit corner of the trade world, but the clan had other plans...