The Torii-lights of Orbis were famous throughout the Satellites. It was the Night Circle that people often spoke of when they reminisced about their visit to the capital city. As the sun faded behind the bend of the Yellow River, as the western sky deepened to purple and the first stars appeared, a procession of dozens of in'torii clothed in yellow-hemmed robes filed from each of the several shrine of the city. Lishi watched with her family, Zoushi (tending to her mamaqin) and the other onlookers as one group of light-torii left the Guji's Shrine, proceeding east and west along both sides of the Main Boulevard as they passed the gates. The in'torii each went to one of the tall, black iron poles erected several strides apart along the boulevard. There they paused, chanting and performing intricate motions of hands and fingers as the wind-horns blew a mournful dissonance from the towers. Finally the in'torii lifted their hands high, fingers spread wide open, and the yellow-glass globes high atop the poles flared and illuminated as if a tiny sun had been born inside them. The in-torii clapped their hands once and moved to the next light poles, repeating the spell. Around the entire long loop of the Main Boulevard and the Four Bridges, the daily ceremony was repeated until all the lamps were lighted and the boulevard that encircled the inner city was ablaze with pools of false day.
"When I was at Hanoi, I swear I could look to the south and west from the high slopes and see Orbis at night, miles and miles and miles away, like a necklace of stars fallen to the ground and glittering there." Lishi's papaqin Deng smiled at her, his arm slipping around her shoulders and pulling her tight to his side. Lishi forced herself to return the smile and to remain in his embrace though she ached to pull away. No more. Not after tonight... "Seeing the lights always made me think of you and your mamaqin, safe there. And I wondered if one day it might not be you in the procession every night, lighting the lamps. You always played at being a torii, even when you were just a child—do you remember that? And now..." His smile transformed into a grin tainted with greed. She knew his thoughts: an ei'torii could command a dowry of her own for the family... "They won't waste an ei'torii to just light the Boulevard, will they?"
Lishi shook her head, starting to pull away, but Deng hugged her tightly again as the in'torii moved on to the next lamps and the crowd that had gathered to watch the procession began to thin. She felt his fingers cup the side of her breast, but before she could react, his arm slipped from her. Deng crouched down in front of Lishi's mamaqin, seated in her carry-chair. Her mamaqin's eyes were open, but they saw nothing and tracked no one. He put his hands on hers, folded on her lap. "We're proud of our Lishi, aren't we, Tao?"
The woman didn't reply. She rarely spoke anymore, and when she did, no one could understand her. Her eyes seemed to search for something past his shoulder. Another of the coughing spasms struck her and she hunched over, the cough rumbling and liquid in her lungs. Deng took a kerchief from the pocket of his jōe and dabbed at the mucus around her mouth.
I will need to help her again tomorrow. "Papaqin? We should be going to the shrine," Lishi said.
Deng stood slowly and nodded to the quartet of hired servants with them; they took up the poles of the carry-chair once more. They proceeded across the street into the plaza where, just this morning, everything in Lishi's life had changed. A female acolyte was waiting there, approaching them as they crossed the Boulevard. Lishi recognized her: Fan shu'Yufeng, one of the current third-years who—unlike Lishi when she'd been there—had been plucked by the torii from the common rabble of the acolytes and given special tasks at the shrine. Even though Lishi was the senior student, in their few encounters Fan had treated Lishi as she might have some merchant's apprentice. Tonight, Fan seemed subservient and overawed by her task. She kept her head down, refusing to meet Lishi's gaze.
"This way, Ei'Torii shu'Ling," Fan said. She stumbled over the title, and her face reddened. "The Guji is awaiting you and your family."
" 'Ei'Torii shu'Ling.' " Deng chuckled as the acolyte led them toward a side door of the shrine. "That has a wonderful sound, doesn't it, Lishi?"
"Yes, Papaqin," Lishi admitted, watching Fan as she turned and started to walk toward the shrine, wishing he sounded more pleased for her and less for himself. "But I don't know if I'll ever get used to it."
"Oh, you will. And more. I'm certain of it. One day soon it will be Hu'Torii shu'Ling. This is Inari's will; this is our reward for the trials He sent us. I always knew it would come."
Lishi nodded at her papaqin's confidence, though she knew that Deng's certainty was new and fragile. True, Inari had sent trials enough to their family: the deaths of her two younger siblings to Red Pox six years before, followed closely by the loss of Lishi's older brother Dailai the next year, serving with the Patrol in one of the border skirmishes with Jingsu. Then Papaqin, a mid-level bureaucrat within the Department of Provincial Commerce, had been assigned to the town of Hanoi only to have his position eliminated within six months. Since then, he had held a variety of positions within the Orbis government, each of them of less status and lower compensation as Tao and Deng were forced to squander their savings and rely on the largesse of the shu'Ling relatives to avoid the shame of becoming wei'Ling or worse.
Lishi thought the nadir had come four years ago when Tao had been stricken. That had seemed the final blow. Her apprenticeship to the Inarian Faith had been her papaqin's desperate attempt to salvage something from the unrelenting downward spiral of the family's fortunes.
The healers had all said that her mamaqin would die, and Lishi had watched her fail. When Lishi was little, she had often put her hands on her mamaqin's temples when she complained of headaches, and there were always words in her mind that she could say, words that would take away the pain. You always played at being a torii... She had, and Lishi knew now that it was the early manifestation of her Gift, an instinctive use of the Misogi.
It was also wrong. The Confessions, the laws and regulations of Inarian, explicitly said so. 'To heal with the Misogi is to thwart the will of Inari,' the torii thundered in their Liturgy from the High Oratory in the shrine. Lishi, always devout, had stopped as soon as she realized what she was doing.
But...
She couldn't watch her mamaqin die. After the last healer Papaqin had hired left in defeat, Lishi finally put her hands on her mamaqin again and spoke the words that came—carefully, tentatively, letting the Misogi ease the pain, letting Lishi bring her back from the death spiral she was in, but not all the way back: because that would be too visible and too dangerous. Lishi parceled out the relief, feeling guilty both for her misuse of the Misogi and because she didn't use it as fully as she might.
Then came the true shame. The worst of it all. Her papaqin... First it was just words and hugs, then he came to her for the more intimate comforts that Tao had once given him. Too young and too immature and too trusting, Lishi had endured his long, careful seduction, knowing that if she told anyone, the shame would destroy the family utterly, that it would be her mamaqin who would suffer most of all...