Dear reader,
Some volumes of A Traveller's Guide to Tyrnarra my publisher will sell openly in the markets of Frae City and Lograth. Some he will sell from a back room with the door not quite closed. Letters from Biozuri is the second sort, and the door does not close because the Hearts of Emarrea would consider the gesture rude.
I have visited the Heartcourt every spring and autumn for sixteen years. I have been welcomed at festival tables, fed at the House of a Thousand Flavors, given lodging by Hearts who knew very well I was going to write about them, and on one notable evening corrected on a misattribution by the Heart in question, who suggested I revise the column before it went to press. I did. (She was right.) The kitsune do not consider gossip beneath the dignity of governance. They consider it the texture of governance.
What follows are dispatches from a court that wants to be written about. May the kingdom of Emarrea remain as marvellously themselves as they have ever been, and may the rest of Talan continue to under-estimate them at its own expense.
The ruling body of Emarrea: a living polycule of between four and nine Hearts, each a monarch in their own right, bound to each other by love, trust, and public acclaim, not by bloodline or conquest. Each Heart oversees one of the kingdom's nine great pillars and wears a richly embroidered ceremonial sash, a Tail: in that pillar's colour. When the court runs short of nine, the remaining Hearts wear multiple Tails, carrying the responsibilities of absent peers. The more Tails a Heart wears, the greater the honour, and the heavier the burden.
| Pillar | Portfolio | Symbol |
|---|---|---|
| Crimson | Military & War | A fox's head crowned with a laurel of crimson silk. |
| Azure | Diplomacy & Foreign Relations | Two entwined fox tails over a calm wave. |
| Golden | Commerce & Wealth | A fox's paw clutching a golden coin. |
| Emerald | Nature & Stewardship | A fox curled within a wreath of ivy. |
| Ivory | Law & Justice | A fox's mask split black and white. |
| Violet | Magic & Mysticism | A fox tail wreathed in stars. |
| Rose | Arts & Festivals | A fox dancing with a ribbon. |
| Sapphire | Knowledge & Education | An open scroll beneath a fox's gaze. |
| Onyx | Secrets & Shadows | A fox's eye half-hidden in shadow. |
Succession · The Growing Circle. Hearts choose heirs from any walk of life: noble-born, commoner, foreigner, lover, rival, friend, anyone they believe embodies the spirit of the kingdom. The heirs form the Growing Circle, living alongside the Hearts and learning. When a Heart retires, dies, or steps aside, one heir is elevated by unanimous consent and a public celebration.
Spectacles of Selection. In times of crisis, or if the Heartcircle falls below four members, a new Heart is chosen by public courtship, sacred duels, or festival trials: multi-day national spectacles blending politics, performance, and romance. (The current Onyx Spectacle, see below, is the smaller per-pillar variant; the crisis-trigger Spectacle is rare.)
The Passing of the Tails. The transfer ritual. The retiring Heart removes their Tail before the gathered people and personally drapes it across the new Heart's shoulders. Both a transfer of authority and a declaration of unity, witnessed by the kingdom. The Tails are enchanted silk that shimmers faintly in torch- and moonlight; some are centuries old, passed through dozens of Hearts. Losing a Tail in battle or theft is both a political crisis and a personal disgrace.
Courtly life. The Heartcourt is famously dramatic. Romances between Hearts, lovers brought into the circle, shifting alliances, and passionate debates are played out in public view. Political disputes are resolved through open negotiation, often accompanied by wit, poetry, or friendly competition. Major decisions are announced during grand festivals, where citizens may petition the Hearts directly, a tradition that keeps the court rooted in the people's voice.
The Heartcircle currently sits with seven Hearts seated and two pillars vacant. What follows is each seated Heart in turn: who they are, what they carry, the two or three moments that the kingdom has come to associate with them, and what Golivander's Letters from Biozuri has said about each.
Poised, dryly funny, half the year on the road to Frae City and the Lautaran trade-courts. The kingdom's window outward, and the Heart who has best learned that silence is itself a position. Raised in the Saiken-Veksir spice-trade family of three generations' standing; she signed the inheritance over to her younger brother the day the Azure Tail was offered. He still sends her quarterly statements she does not read.
The Azure Heart, Saemi, has been a Heart for twenty-two years and a diplomat for the entire span. The kingdom understands that she travels well; the kingdom under-estimates how much she listens. I will share a confidence: at the Crimson-Year trade-talks with Frae City five years ago, she sat across from a Cronus-clergy envoy for three full days in silence. The envoy spoke first. The answer she gave was already drafted in the folder under her elbow.
She has, I am told, lately developed a fondness for walking in the Heartplaza gardens at sunrise. She is never alone. I shall not name the Heart who keeps the early-hour pace with her; you all know which Heart it is, and the discretion is the point.
Magnetic big-host energy; built her fortune in the Lautaran spice trade before elevation and never quite stopped running it. Her spice contracts continue to operate; the fortune is what pays for her festival robes. Finances half the House of a Thousand Flavors' menu changes (the Nine Tails of Autumn menu still bears her seal-cipher in the dessert course, courtesy of an underwriting of three seasons' specialty ingredients that kept three chefs of the Cook's Circle from walking out). Her receptions are the kingdom's most-coveted invitations. To Saemi, once: "Being a Heart is interesting work. It is not the work I would have chosen if interesting were what I wanted."
The Golden Heart, Houreni, sent the Rose Heart a lantern. The lantern was made by a Honokage-cult artisan who has, I am reliably told, refused commissions from three Hearts in the past decade because "the work would not be sufficiently meant." This one she meant. It took six weeks. The Rose Heart's unpublished verses are woven into the paper, foxfire-lit so they emerge only at certain angles of the lantern's turn. When the Rose Heart received it, at a Heartplaza banquet so public that the kingdom calls it The Lantern Banquet now, he wept openly. The Golden Heart watched him weep with the satisfied air of a woman who has just won, by gift, what others compete for by courtship.
The Violet Heart was also present. The Violet Heart smiled.
No one in this kingdom does anything by halves and I find it exhausting and enlivening in equal measure.
Eldest seated Heart in living memory; one of the vanishingly-rare eight-tailed kitsune the kingdom holds. Walks the orchards barefoot, slow-speaking. The court's moral gravity. Confidant of every other Heart. Their last partnership ended two decades ago when one of three lovers passed; they stepped out rather than seek a fifth. "I have been loved enough; now I love the orchards." The two surviving Hearts of that polycule still visit them at the kingdom's Birch Grove twice a year. The morning after the kiss, Reien came to the orchard at first light still in court-dress, said only "I do not know what happened," sat, drank tea, and left two hours later having said no more.
The Emerald Heart, Shionori (and yes, the kingdom of Emarrea is the kind of kingdom where one of its rulers carries no honorific and prefers it that way), is one hundred and forty-two years old. They have eight tails. There are perhaps three living kitsune of whom this is true. The chronicle record of Emarrea suggests there has not been a seated Eight-Tail in living memory.
I asked them once whether they intended to keep the seat into a ninth tail. They considered for some time. They said: "I do not think the orchards would forgive me."
I had no response to this and decided I should not invent one for the column.
Freshly a junior professor of jurisprudence at Lograth (Forseti's city) before his elevation; the only seated Heart with formal off-Emarrea training. His doctoral thesis argued that Forseti's law-tradition could be made to admit the kitsune by-consent succession model without doctrinal violation; it is still cited in Lograth jurisprudence circles. Idealistic, energetic, sticks to the letter of the law with the rawness of someone whose academic theory has just collided with kingdom-scale practice. His first ruling as Ivory Heart, six months in, took four hours: a three-lover vineyard contract whose walking-out lover had absconded with the year's harvest in a sealed wagon. The precedent has been cited eleven times since, and the wagon was returned.
The Ivory Heart, Norikaze, was thirty years old when he was elevated. He had until that point been a junior professor of jurisprudence at Lograth, where Forseti's clergy taught him law as a structure of weighed evidence and ratified precedent. He was not, by his own published view, ready. He had said so to the Growing Circle. They had elevated him anyway.
He is by all reports a precise jurist and a man whose hairline I have watched recede half an inch in the eighteen months he has worn the white-and-black Tail. He is also (and the kingdom knows this) the subject of the most-discussed unfinished sentence in court memory. I shall not finish it for him. He cannot finish it for himself. Whether anyone will is, at present, the kingdom's most-watched open question.
Norikaze, my publisher sends his sympathies and his subscription rates.
Foxfire master, Honokage's de facto high-priest, the most theatrical Heart. Currently double-Tailed (covering the active Onyx Spectacle); exhausted but will not admit it. Her oldest perfected foxfire technique animates the enchanted-paper memorial that lights Biozuri's Festival of the Fox Lanterns each year; she developed it twelve years ago at the House of Names, working until dawn with Shirae. To her Onyx-candidate Kasumi she teaches: "Illusion is mercy; secrecy is mercy; foxfire is mercy; the trick that ends in laughter is mercy. Choose mercy. The Onyx Heart decides when truth would harm, and when it would not."
The Violet Heart, Yorume, has carried the Onyx Tail for nine months while the Spectacle of Selection runs. She sleeps, I am told, four hours, drinks tea that I have been served on visits and found to be of a strength I cannot reproduce at home, and is by morning at the foxfire-masters' atelier mentoring her chosen Onyx candidate Kasumi.
She is also somehow at court. She is also somehow at the Lantern Banquet. She is also somehow, on the night of the most-public moment in the Heartcircle's recent memory, on a balcony, watching, saying nothing afterwards. She is also, on certain nights I shall not specify, somewhere quieter than any of the above. (I shall not say where. The Heart who keeps that quiet knows already.)
Yorume, the kingdom would like you to sleep. The kingdom would also like the Spectacle to conclude. The kingdom would, on balance, like the Spectacle to conclude first.
Youngest seated Heart; the kingdom's creative explosion. Poet, dancer, host of festivals. Hahane's informal high-priest. The most-publicly-romantic figure in court; the gossip mill's perennial subject. His elevation Spectacle two years ago was a seven-act festival cycle of his own composition titled Cycle of the First Lantern, which the kingdom voted by acclaim before the seventh act ended.
The Rose Heart, Reien, was twenty-six years old when he stood on the Spectacle stage and performed a seven-act festival cycle of his own composition. The kingdom voted by acclaim before the seventh act ended. He has been a Heart for two years, has been loved by three Hearts I can name and one I will not, and has published in the last fortnight a slim octavo titled Of Lanterns and the Lighting of Them that the literate classes of Lautara are already pretending not to read aloud at parties.
Two of the verses, transcribed with his publisher's grumbling permission:
Two lanterns make a path home.
A third lantern is for the friend
who hasn't decided yet whether to come.
Light it anyway. Light it kindly.
You say I am shallow because I dance.
I say you are deep because you do not.
Neither of us has bothered to ask
what the river thinks of either.
The Ivory Heart has not, by any account I trust, read the volume. I find this very hard to believe.
Scholar-archivist, head of Biozuri's House of Names (Yumegatari's archive of every kitsune death across four centuries, each entry annotated with the stories told at funeral; the youngest entries are five days old, the oldest are four hundred and twelve years). Carries the Crimson Tail reluctantly; the only seated Heart who can read the old strategic treatises, and she has read all of them. Heaviest mental load in court.
The Sapphire Heart, Shirae, runs the House of Names, which is a four-century archive of every kitsune death this kingdom has chosen to remember, annotated with the stories told at each funeral. I have read in it. I will not tell you what I read. The archive is hers, and she once told me, kindly but firmly, that "a chronicler who quotes from the House of Names without leaving offering at the lantern is the chronicler I do not next welcome," which I took to heart and now do.
She also reads the Lost-Era strategic treatises that no other Heart can. She has read all of them. When I asked her what she thought the kingdom should build with what she had learned, she said: "A library, Golivander. Build the library. The army can wait for a reason to exist."
She is, in addition, the Heart most often absent from court on the same evenings as another Heart whom I shall, for the third time in this dispatch, decline to name. The pattern has held for twelve years. The kingdom has not yet noticed. I notice because it is my work to notice. I notice and I do not write it down.
Shirae, this dispatch is the closest the column will come.
The Heartcourt is famously dramatic; the structure under that drama is not an equal seven-polycule.
Frictions · good drama, not destructive.
Pure friendships (no romance): Emerald and Sapphire walk the orchards together. Emerald and Golden are surprising friends. Rose and Azure share gossip from Saemi's travels; pure platonic delight.
Two candidates from the Growing Circle compete through public trials of misdirection, intelligence-gathering, and clever-without-malicious trickster-proof. Each is publicly mentored by a sitting Heart. The trials are scheduled to conclude before the next Festival of the Fox Lanterns. The kingdom is genuinely split between the two readings of what Onyx means.
The Onyx Spectacle has produced two candidates, two schools, and one unprecedented run on the box-stands of Heartplaza, which now sell numbered seats for the trial-days. (I attended the third trial. I sat in row C. I have an opinion. I shall keep it.)
Kasumi, mentored by the Violet Heart, is twenty-five years old and has one tail. She has, in three trials, made the audience laugh, made the audience gasp, made the audience uncertain whether the trick had happened yet, and on one notable occasion made the audience cry. Her school is secrets-as-illusion. Her foxfire is, to my eye (and I have seen foxfire in seven kingdoms), the cleanest I have witnessed outside her mentor's own work.
Murasaki, mentored by the Azure Heart, is forty-one years old and has four tails. She has, in three trials, said almost nothing, won twice, and on the trial she lost was widely judged afterwards to have lost on purpose. Her school is secrets-as-information-asymmetry. She is the candidate the merchants prefer. She is the candidate the rest of the kingdom finds slightly unsettling, which is, I suspect, also a vote in her favour.
The seventh and final trial is scheduled before the next Festival of the Fox Lanterns. Place no wagers; the Heartcourt has formally disapproved of public betting on a Spectacle, and the kingdom has formally ignored the disapproval, and I am formally not advising anyone.
Three weeks ago, in Heartplaza at the open afternoon session, the Ivory Heart (Norikaze) and the Rose Heart (Reien) were arguing, as they argue every fortnight, about the trial-rules of the present Onyx Spectacle. Voices rose. The crowd thickened. At some moment the chronicle cannot precisely fix, the two of them kissed in full public view for a single long second, separated, looked at one another, and walked off in opposite directions.
Both have kept silent since. The kingdom is genuinely split on whether this was a one-time eruption never to be repeated, or the first crack in a longer-running, deeply-unspoken thing. Each reading has its partisans. The arguments are conducted at every tea-house, every Catjomin tasting, every workshop in Biozuri's potters' quarter.
The page below preserves the kingdom's open question. Golivander's column, the longest he has ever filed from Biozuri, follows.
Reader, the Heartcourt has had its share of moments. I have been writing this column for sixteen years. I have reported elevations, retirements, marriages, three deaths, one war-vote, and forty-one Lantern Banquets. I have never, in any of those years, written a dispatch I expected the kingdom to commit to memory.
Three weeks ago, on the eighteenth day of the second month of autumn, in Heartplaza at the open afternoon session, the Ivory Heart and the Rose Heart were arguing, as the Ivory Heart and the Rose Heart argue every fortnight, about the trial-rules of the present Onyx Spectacle. The Ivory Heart had taken the stricter view; the Rose Heart had taken the looser. (They had, between them, exhausted the arguable views some time ago, and at this point were arguing primarily for the satisfaction of doing so. The kingdom approved.)
Voices were raised. The crowd thickened, as crowds will. At some moment the chronicle cannot precisely fix (I have spoken with eleven separate witnesses; they do not agree on the precise sequence, though they agree on the fact), the Ivory Heart and the Rose Heart kissed in full view of the assembled people of Biozuri for a single long second, separated, looked at one another for another second, and walked off in opposite directions.
Both have kept silent since.
Reader, I have asked. I have asked carefully and I have asked indirectly and I have asked openly. The Ivory Heart's response, in court, on each of the three occasions I have raised the matter, has been "the question is not properly framed." The Rose Heart's response, asked at the Lantern Banquet, has been to recite a verse he had not previously published which I include here for completeness:
Some questions are mine.
Some questions are not mine.
The kingdom does not always get to know which is which.
The kingdom finds this answer wanting. The kingdom finds it, in fact, wanting more than any answer in the present generation. Three weeks, reader. Three weeks.
What the kingdom is split on: was this a single eruption never to be repeated, or was this the first crack in a longer-running, deeply-unspoken thing? Each reading has its partisans. The arguments are conducted at every tea-house, every Catjomin tasting, every workshop in Biozuri's potters' quarter. I have heard sixty-year-old kitsune put down their tea to argue about it. I have heard the lantern-makers' apprentices argue about it. I once heard a Komo-clergy visiting from Eldara stop on the path to Heartplaza and ask a passing kitsune to explain "the entire situation, please, from the beginning, slowly." The kitsune did. It took an hour. The clergyperson missed her appointment and did not mind.
I have my own view. I shall keep it. I will say only this: the Violet Heart, present on a balcony and known to be the Rose Heart's other public love, has been seen at the House of Names on three consecutive nights since the kiss, and the Sapphire Heart who heads the House of Names has, on each of those nights, locked the public archive an hour later than her usual time. I notice. I do not write down what I notice. Mostly.
Reader, this is a chronicle, not a verdict. The verdict is yours.
Yorimichi, 7 Tails aged ~140, was Crimson Heart through several Dark-Era-residue crises in the late twenty-fourth century MR. She retired at age circa 2522 MR and now lives at Kawaakari as a master Catjomin Sake brewer. Her bottles brew reliably at the Kōmyōzen (six-stripe) tier; her rare Kinkanrou (seven-stripe) editions are the bottles noble courts across Lautara fight over.
She still attends Heartcourt sessions twice a year as an honoured elder; her opinions on the empty Crimson seat are listened to but no longer binding. On the record, she has said the seat should stay vacant "until someone the kingdom would follow into a fight stands up of their own accord." No such kitsune has yet stood up.
Golivander attended one of her tastings at Kawaakari this past summer and filed the following:
Reader, indulge me. I am not the kingdom's tasting-critic. I am the kingdom's chronicler. The publisher's note that prefaces this column reminds me of the difference. I have ignored the publisher.
Yorimichi (formerly the Crimson Heart; presently the most-sought Catjomin brewer working at Kawaakari; seven tails; approximately one hundred and forty years old and looking, in afternoon light through the steam of the bath-house upper pavilion, perhaps sixty) hosted a tasting for ten on the seventh of the eighth month. I was the eighth seat. I was, I will confess, honoured.
She poured five tiers. I shall not number them in order; she would not approve.
The Shirohana was a young one, pale and light, opened with a brightness like the river outside the pavilion. Excellent table sake, the brewer's apprentices' work, served first because "the palate should remember it is still capable of being surprised by a small thing." I was surprised.
The Hanatsuyu opened on stone-fruit and closed on cold cedar. I held my second cup for some minutes because the closing note did not seem to want to be hurried.
The Togetsu I will not describe. It was, simply, the best sake I have ever consumed. I am told that to be a connoisseur of Catjomin is to learn never to say this aloud. Reader, I have chosen to say it. Take this as the chronicle's confession.
The Kōmyōzen, her usual tier, brewed in the still that has stood in her brewery for the eleven years of her retirement, drank like a memory. I cannot put this more precisely. The other guests put down their cups and were silent for some time. The retired Crimson Heart watched us be silent and was satisfied.
The Kinkanrou she opened only because, she said, "the chronicler should know what the noble courts of Lautara fight over before he writes about it." Reader, the noble courts of Lautara are correct to fight. I will not describe this either. Some things deserve to remain in the bottle they were brewed for.
Yorimichi told us, between pours, of the Crimson seat she once held. She told us that she was offered the post in 2487 MR, accepted, served thirty-five years, retired on a morning when she woke up and could not for the first time in those thirty-five years see a reason to put the Tail on. She walked it to the next Heartcourt session and laid it on the table. The Spectacle that followed seated her Growing Circle heir. That heir served twelve years and died on the dais last year of natural causes (a heart-stoppage in his sleep; "a kind death," she said). Her opinion on the present empty seat: "Let it stay empty until someone the kingdom would follow into a fight stands up of their own accord. The kingdom has yet to produce that kitsune. Until one stands up, the seat does its work by being visible."
The pavilion's foxfire-lanterns came on as we finished the fifth pour. The bath-house steam caught the gold. I have written this column three times trying to find a closing that does not over-state, and have failed three times, so I shall just write what I thought as I left:
Some afternoons are not, in fact, for the column.