Chapter Text
Gekokujo ( 下克上):
‘those below overthrowing those above’; the seizure of power from an existing authority by their political inferiors through military means
*
“What do you think the chances are of us finding a white-haired boy who could pass for twenty-two around these parts?”
“Slim.”
“Well.” Ieiri Shoko’s mischievious look was one that anyone who knew her well would know to fear. “Want to wager a guess what the reward is if we do?”
“No,” Iori Utahime replied, taking a delicate bite of her onigiri. She was famished, and if she had been at liberty to she would’ve shoved the whole ball of rice into her mouth and eaten it in a single bite, but Shoko had been especially irritating today, and she felt like firing back. Primness annoyed her business partner more than almost anything else. “I don’t think that I will.”
“You’re not fun anymore,” Shoko told her, pouting.
“I’m perfectly fun. You used to think so.” Utahime wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of pouting back. “You only stopped thinking so because your oaf of a husband stole your personality and replaced it with his.”
“He did not.”
Utahime maintained a cool, composed silence. Shoko had learned the fine art of sulking until she was attended to from the aforementioned oaf of a husband, and Utahime knew now not to give her what she wanted.
“I was serious, Utahime,” Shoko went on after it had been too long since she’d said anything. “The fortune we’d make if we found a boy like that would be enough to live on for a year.”
“Since when have you ever cared about anything so practical?”
Shoko smirked. “Wouldn’t it be fun?”
“No,” Utahime said crossly. “I don’t think so.”
Another pause. This time, she was the one to end it.
“And no white-haired man I’ve ever met could even begin to pass for twenty-two.”
Shoko smiled like she knew she’d won. “Well, I know of one.”
“You do,” Utahime said flatly, neither asking nor agreeing.
“I have a contact.” There was something a little wicked in the sweetness of Shoko’s smile. “A very usefulcontact.”
Utahime was glad not to be the one of their outfot responsible for information brokering. “You can’t keep a straight face,” Geto-san had told her the only time she had ever offered – Shoko had agreed. She hadn’t minded being insulted, for once, since she’d never learned the art of changing shape to wheedle the right secrets out of someone the way they both had. “And what did this contact of yours tell you?”
“Really, Utahime, you shouldn’t look so suspicious. I’m an expert.” She laughed. “All I did was bat my eyelashes. I’ve got a husband, remember?”
Unfortunately. Utahime respected Geto Suguru in a professional context only, and begrudgingly at that; her personal estimation of said husband was rather low. Glib as could be when it was called for, in all other circumstances he reminded her of the boys who’d pulled her hair when she was young. What on earth Shoko saw in him beyond his vexing good looks was entirely incomprehensible to Utahime. “I don’t look suspicious,” Utahime said calmly. “Only curious.”
Shoko’s eyes lit up. That was the wrong thing to say.
“That there’s a kitchen boy on the Zenin estate who happens to fit that description.” Shoko, who wasn’t usually nearly this animated but knew she was irritating Utahime and enjoyed it, twirled a lock of her hair around her finger. “Age unknown, family unknown, name unknown – everything unknown, practically. Except” – she smiled – “for his remarkable, ah, coloring.”
“His white hair, I take it you mean.”
Shoko nodded. “They say he’s no older than we are, but everybody at the estate calls him Shiro.”
“Not his real name, I would guess,” Utahime commented. It could be, but it seemed too literal to have been bestowed upon him by someone with an image to maintain. Surely a daimyo could’ve done better than naming a son after the color of his hair.
“No, Utahime, did you miss everything I just said? It’s because of his hair.” Shoko had never been a particularly patient woman. “They took him in when he was ten, and he’d already gone grey. He says he can’t remember what color hair he was born with.”
“Your informant seems to know this Shiro well,” Utahime said, trying to sound as if she couldn’t care less one way or another.
“He does.”
“So you’ve been making eyes at the Zenins’ kitchen boys again?”
“I don’t make eyes at them. Suguru wouldn’t like it.” Her expression soured. “Well, no, that’s a lie. It’s more like it would be an affront to my impeccable taste in men to-“
“Shoko, get to the point.”
“If we can manage to get our friend Shiro to give up his glamorous life as a kitchen boy,” she said, “all we have to do is train him to say the right things, and we’re set.”
Utahime was, at very least, intrigued. That was, unfortunately, how she ended up in most of the quagmires Shoko and Suguru liked to drop her into when life was boring or money was tight. “And what things would we be teaching him to say, exactly?”
“Oh, did I not tell you?”
“No, Shoko, you didn’t.”
“Sorry.” She wasn’t: this was a grand reveal, carefully plotted for maximum effect. She’d always been conniving; marriage had taught her theatrics to add to the mix. “Remember that daimyo with the huge estate near Nara who got deposed a couple of years back?”
Utahime raised an eyebrow. “Lord Gojo, I presume you mean?”
“Was there another?”
“No, but that was twelve years ago. It hardly seems like it would be relevant anymore.”
“Twelve, sure, that sounds right. Anyway. Do you remember how the entire Gojo line was supposed to have been wiped out?”
She could feel a headache coming on. “The same Gojo line famous for its naturally white hair?”
“Well. They had allies.”
“Allies,” Utahime said drily, “who I’m going to assume are offering a reward for the return of a member of their family who they’re convinced is still alive and around the age of twenty-two?”
Shoko laid her chin against Utahime’s shoulder, blinking up at her like she used to do when they were children and she wanted something. “You’re so smart, Hime-nee.”
“You’re very predictable, Shoko,” she replied. “I would wager however much Suguru won in his last game of shogi that you learned about the reward, asked every single one of your contacts if they knew a boy with white hair, and started plotting to pass him off as the Gojo heir.”
“You’re a conwoman, Hime-nee,” Shoko protested. “You can’t be offended when I try to con people.”
“Trust me,” she sighed. “My objection to this idea isn’t a moral one.”
“Then?”
“I think it’s insane,” she said flatly. “Do you have the foggiest idea of what you would be getting yourself tangled up in if you said you’d found the lost Gojo heir?”
“I have an idea, but it would only be a problem if I got caught, which” – she smirked again – “I never do.”
Utahime almost wished she could dispute that. “You never used to be this disagreeable.”
“What are you talking about, Hime-nee? I’m delightful.”
“You’re spouting nonsense and smiling like you’ve done something clever.”
“Nonsense? Nee-chan, this is a chance we’ll never get again. The one spouting nonsense is the one saying we skip out on it.”
“At least most of your nonsense wouldn’t get my head lopped off by a rival daimyo,” Utahime huffed.
“But what if it worked?”
**
“You can’t seriously think that this is a good idea.”
“…why?” Geto asked, clearly mystified. “It’s lucrative.”
“And here I thought you had the sanity to value keeping your head attached more than a sack of coins.”
“You’re so cynical, Hime-nee,” he said. She wrinkled her nose – only Shoko had earned the privilege of that name, and she didn’t consider it to be one that marriage or eight years of life and work together could pass on the rights to. “Why are you already assuming we’d get caught?”
“Because this is insane,” she said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you think that every scam artist around has already had the same idea?”
“Oh, of course. But how many of them are going to find a boy with white hair?” Geto shrugged. “Sure, there’ll be the ones who try hair dye, but they’ll be found out.”
“But they’re going to be expecting impostors,” she protested. “It would be almost impossible to get them to believe-“
“Even though we have a boy within our reach who matches the Gojo heir’s description perfectly?”
“And that’s the other problem. This Shiro,” Utahime started. “How do you know someone else isn’t trying to do exactly the same thing with him that you are?”
“Mm…we don’t, but we’ll make a better offer.”
Utahime crossed her arms. “You realize that there are easier ways to please your wife than running a con that could cost us all our heads, right?”
Geto feigned offense. “Hime-nee, I’m hurt.”
“By what, exactly?”
“That you think I’m only doing this for Shoko-chan.” He grinned, smug. “Believe me, if I want to please her-“
“Shut up, Geto-dono.”
All this time and she’d never dropped the honorific, never used his first name – never mind that it would be highly uncustomary. He’d wanted her to call him Suguru since they’d started working together, and Utahime, too well-bred to have thought of such a thing, had refused. It was a prickly issue.
“Look, Utahime. Opportunities like this are rare.” He’d dropped the act, clearly. So he was serious about this. “And we can pass that Shiro boy for the Gojo heir. I’m positive. So what do we have to lose?”
“Our he-“
“No, no, you’ve already made that point. Get a new one.” He waved his hand dismissively in her direction. “Anything besides heads?”
So much that it made Utahime’s head spin. The respectable cover that let them carry on scamming and conning without anyone being the wiser, for one. The comfortable if unpredictable life they’d built together against all odds. Ordinary life, health, and sanity if they were cast into a dungeon for their deception. She would never wash or braid Shoko’s hair again, nor Shoko hers. She’d never again wake up on the futon across from theirs to smile fondly at the way they clung to each other in their sleep. The songs her nursemaid had sang to her as a little girl, known only to Utahime, would be forgotten, and no graves would mark their resting place as proof of having walked this earth.
Utahime hadn’t pressed for details, but she knew them without asking: the kind of men desperate to find the Gojo heir had to be so powerful that even the threat of retaliation from the Gojo Clan’s usurpers wouldn’t frighten them. They had to want to raise up an old ally again – it couldn’t possibly have been the kindness of their hearts that compelled them. He was a symbol of their power to shape the world to their will, a warning not to try to unseat them, and a valuable ally in battle all at once. That made him a thing far too important to be caught lying about, and anyone who did…well. Utahime would rather not be the one to learn how she would die if it were her.
“Geto,” she sighed, massaging her temple, “give it up.”
“Shoko is right, Hime-nee.” His voice was gentler now – deny it as she might, Iori Utahime was the nagging older sister that his parents hadn’t given him, and he didn’t want her to think he was blithely leading her to her death. “We can pull this off.”
It was hard not to be a little convinced by a voice like that – that was Geto Suguru’s own kind of magic. He could talk anyone but his wife into just about anything.
“I need to meet him first,” she finally conceded. “This Shiro.”
Geto broke into a grin. “Now that I can understand.”
**
“Jiji!”
Shiro swore under his breath. That damned nickname – it seemed that, for all his tireless efforts to stamp it out, anyone with half a measure more of power than he had was determined not to let it die out. Maki, a servant of some rank whose actual position he could no more easily figure out than he could learn the closely-guarded secret of her family name, was one of the most egregious offenders, and she never said it quietly. Oh, no. When she wanted to summon Shiro, she had to shout.
Determined to ignore her, he didn’t look up from the pot he’d been ordered to scrub. Someone had forgotten to rinse the rise before cooking it last week, and the last person to wash it – probably Minamoto, who would do anything to get out of a job – had been able to get away with leaving the sticky residue that remained to dry. But, of course, it had been made out to be Shiro’s fault when the busybody head cook had discovered the poorly-washed pot and demanded that somebody take responsibility. Since nobody had believed him when he’d insisted that he was innocent, scrubbing out the caked-on rice residue had fallen to him. Fine. Some things had to be borne.
But that wasn’t one of them.
It was bad enough that they’d named him after the color of his hair, as if it was the only thing about him worth noting. The head cook’s favorite nickname for her was a step further. Shiro doubted he could possibly be much older than twenty, but thanks to his superior, half of the kitchen servants addressed him the way they’d address a shabby old beggar or, worse, their grandfathers. Yes, my hair is white, he always wanted to tell the gawky types who took to the name a little too quickly – move along. He didn’t have to answer to it.
“Jiji!” Maki called again. “Are you deaf? Someone’s asking for you!”
Shiro didn’t want to give in, but that intrigued him. Nobody ever asked for him – nobody even knew who he was, really. He couldn’t imagine why that would’ve changed. “Who?” he called back.
“Doesn’t matter who!”
“But-“
“Shiro,” one of the kitchen girls said gently, “you should go.”
“But I don’t know-“
“It’s probably the rice merchant again,” she pointed out. “They always ask you to carry in the deliveries, don’t they?”
Shiro deflated. Of course that would be why he had a visitor – there was always someone who could use a strong young servant’s help. “I guess,” he said sullenly, letting his scrubbing rag drop into the tepid water at the bottom of the pot and hastily drying his hands on his coarse kimono before he stalked through the kitchen and the hall to the engawa, where Maki – the lout – was waiting for him.
With a woman.
A beautiful one, at that, with glossy dark hair and warm eyes and a delicate face only made more striking by the broad scar across the bridge of her nose. She wore a finer kimono than anyone of low enough standing to have been brought to the kitchens should have and her lips were pursed skeptically.
Shiro’s eyes widened. That was not the rice merchant.
“The lady says she’s got business with you,” said Maki, who had never possessed and likely would never possess anything remotely resemblant of manners. “Can’t imagine what.”
Shiro had many things to say to that, but he couldn’t seem to get any of them to come out. Surely his visitor would have something to say about Maki’s rudeness, anyway. But she didn’t.
“You’re Shiro,” she said instead. “I’m Iori Utahime.”
“Um,” he stammered, “it’s…a pleasure to meet you, Iori-gimi.”
“Iori-gimi?” she arched an eyebrow. “That seems excessive.”
“My apologies, Iori-“
“Utahime, if you must.”
That felt wrong, but he wasn’t in the mood to challenge her. “Can I help you, Iori-gimi?”
The thought that she’d come all this way to see him made Shiro’s head spin. What fortune – or what misfortune, depending on how one looked at it. And, of course, on the still-unknown nature of her business with him.
“Have you heard of the Gojo Clan?”
Shiro nodded mutely, unsure if speaking would be wise. He’d listened in on enough conversations at banquets he’d served to keep abreast of things like that, even if they’d happened long before his memories stopped.
“And,” Utahime went on, “are you aware of the rumors that Lord Gojo’s heir might’ve survived?”
Only as often as Maki, bored of her duties and looking for somebody to torment, had teased him about his white hair and his absent childhood memories. Had she ever even once been an accurate model of little sister behavior, he was infinitely grateful that his parents, whether he could remember them or not, had died before the heavens had granted them a daughter.
“I am,” he replied.
“And the reward being offered for the person who finds him?”
Shiro raised his eyebrows. If she was going to disregard every rule of proper conduct, so would he. “Am I correct to think that you want me to pose as this Gojo heir so you can collect the reward and you’re here to try to talk me into it?”
“Well-“
“That would explain it.” He smiled wryly. “No wonder you have no manners. You’re a con artist.”
“I’m not a con artist,” she muttered under her breath. “And I have perfect manners when I need to. I just happen to have observed that they don’t hold much weight in this household.”
“That’s just Maki,” he informed her.
“Perhaps, but I find it refreshing.”
That would be a first. “You haven’t denied being a con artist, though.”
“You could really be the Gojo heir,” she deflected. “You certainly look the part.”
“Oh, really? No one’s ever said so!”
Shiro was surprised at the sarcasm in his own voice – hard as it had been, he’d learned to shut himself up most of the time, and an unfamiliar lady of far higher birth than his was certainly not the person he would have expected to find himself being so impolite to. Regardless, there was something about her that invited it.
“You’re impertinent,” she told him. “They say that the last Lord Gojo was the same way.”
“Do they really?”
“No.” She smiled. “I just hope that it is, because you need to resemble him, and I doubt that we could train that out of you.”
“Is that a challenge, Iori-gimi?”
Her smile told him that it was. “No, it’s a fact.”
Shiro supposed she was lucky that he was exactly stupid enough to let a challenge like that provoke him to consider abandoning his post and his reason to get himself involved in a scheme that anyone would know was going to end in disaster. Stupid, or maybe just desperate – it wasn’t as if the life he lead right now was getting him anywhere.
“Do I get a cut of the money if we fake it good enough?”
“You won’t need it.” Utahime smiled, knowing she had her man. “If you succeed, there’s nothing in the world that you won’t have the money to buy.”
“Mm, fair.” He was beginning to like this idea. “So what exactly would this impersonating-the-Gojo-heir thing involve?”
“Impersonating the Gojo heir,” she replied.
“Yes, but-“
“It was actually my business partner who found you,” Utahime interrupted. “I was against it, you know. I didn’t see a reason to risk losing my head if we were caught. But, well…the problem with living with con artists is that they’ll talk you into anything if you give them time.”
“Oh?”
“My only condition was that I had to meet you first,” she went on, “even though my partners think they have all the information they need, and I honestly can’t say I’m impressed, but I will say that if you’re willing, you look the part, so…”
“How exciting,” he deadpanned. “My hair color is finally good for something besides insults and nicknames.”
“Are you willing?”
“Hmm…” he stroked his chin. “Shouldn’t I meet these partners of yours first?”
**
“He has no manners.”
“I could’ve told you that,” Utahime sighed, because Geto truly never did listen.
“I love it.”
Utahime, pacing, paused. “Eh?”
“He’s going to be perfect,” Shoko cackled.
“Uh-“
“We’re keeping him,” Geto told her.
“Wait, Geto, the whole point of this is not to-“
“We’re keeping him,” Geto and Shoko told her in unison, hands on their hips. They had a creepy way of synchronizing when they ganged up on her like this.
“Fine,” Utahime conceded.
She wished she could go back to the three hours yesterday when this harebrained scheme had seemed like a good idea, because the closer it came to becoming a reality, the more inclined she felt like walking into the ocean in January.
“See?” Geto smiled, his eyes closing like they always did when his smiles were cheekier than they were sincere. “I toldja she’d come around.”
Not really. But Utahime had a sinking feeling that she didn’t really have a choice.