BETWEEN THREE ROGUES
By Eric 'Erico' Lawson
Thirty-Four: Princes of Arcadia
Daigo Tokugawa knew from a young age that all the lands under the Blue Moon would be his to rule one day. The servants called him 'young prince' and his father, a serious man most of the time, would remind him of his duty. For all that his father was serious, he would also smile and laugh when he was in private with his son and Daigo's mother.
He stopped smiling as often after the night that Daigo's sister was born. Moegi was brought into the world at the cost of her mother's life, and for a time, it seemed a poor trade to Daigo. But then his father brought him out of it.
"One day, you will rule this land, my son." Mikado Tokugawa said to him, while they stood by the rail of their royal barge during a goodwill tour of the distant islands and settlements. "You will be given great power, but you must always use it wisely. You must be a protector to your people, for that is the duty of the Emperor. We spend our lives in service, keeping them safe and preserving the peace. That is what is most important in the life of an Emperor, Daigo." Then he had smiled and ruffled his hair. "And no matter what happens, my son, look after your sister. It was not her fault that your mother died. She is a gift, the last gift your mother gave to us. Can you do that? Can you treasure Moegi, can you keep her safe?"
Daigo remembered feeling disappointed in himself for ever despising his baby sister. He was seven years old then, and he made a new vow. He would be his sister's guardian. He would be her hero.
At first that meant keeping vigil in her rooms when she was sick, helping the nursemaids when she cried because of an ear ache or the rash that every child seemed to get when they were a year or two of age. She would calm down more readily when he held her, and when she got older and started to talk, there were some nights his sister would walk from her room to his because she had a bad dream. After the sentries got tired of catching her and taking her back, Daigo showed her how to use the secret passages between his rooms and hers, as his father had showed him how.
When Moegi was six and Daigo was thirteen years of age, his training in the ways of combat began in earnest. Like his father, he studied the way of the sword, the ancient code of lordship and honorable service. In magic, he had no great talent to speak of. The bulk of his focus was not in the ways of the Blue Moon, which granted power over the winds and the waves, nor in the much rarer talents of healing with the strange green moonstones that the most adventurous of explorers and traders were sometimes able to locate along the Great Stone Curtain in the far east. No. What little spiritual power Daigo held was wrapped up in the strength of his body and the strength of his talents in combat.
When Moegi was seven and her studies in writing and numbers also saw a greater focus in etiquette and household management, Daigo was the first to see that she wasn't happy. He could not keep her from the role she was born to, but he did make it a goal to make her smile more often. When she became fascinated with the tale of Daqat the Westerner and the Princess Kikue who had been stolen away by him, Daigo found himself conscripted into her extracurricular learning. She learned to speak the Western tongue, and Daigo, eager to keep a smile on his precious sister's face, learned as well. Though he was nowhere near as talented in it as she would become because of her earlier start, he became passable enough that it became a fractured secret language between them.
When Daigo turned eighteen and reached the age of majority, his status as Crown Prince was formally recognized by the Imperial Court. Fully trained and eager to prove himself, Daigo dismissed the idea of a royal tour and instead decided to serve on a vessel of the small but proud Imperial Navy. His argument was sound. How could he command such men, the guardians and caretakers of their people, with no understanding of the challenges they faced, the weapons they used, the ships they sailed? He saw the vast breadth of his father's domain and his future responsibilities first as a sailor and then with progressively higher ranks until after three years, he was serving as the second in command of the Dragon's Breath, a twelve gun ship of the line responsible for patrolling the trade routes between the outer islands and the inner domain.
When Daigo was eighteen, he learned that Yafutoma had very dark shadows within it.
The worst of them were closest to home, and they took everything from him.
Tenkou Island
Northern Yafutoman Airspace, Upper Sky
189 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape
Mid-Morning
One upside to being exiled, and being the commander of a pseudo-air pirate/resistance movement was that barring major events, Daigo got to set his own hours. As a young man, his schedule had been obsessively planned out for him, typically starting with waking up before the sun had even risen for early morning exercise and training. He'd learned the value at last of sleeping in, now that he no longer had the weight of being prepared to rule an empire sitting on his shoulders. Especially when he'd shared more than a moderate amount of rice wine with his fellows who insisted on serving him as bodyguards.
Officially, his home was labeled as 'Exile Island', and had before its abandonment, served as a monastery to a group of cloistered monks who practiced meditation, wholeness of body and spirit, and had forsworn martial combat for unarmed defense. The aged structures, built with an ancient and skilled form of wood joinery that worked without nails or glues, had held up even when the monastic order had died out. Shortly after, the island had been reclaimed and repurposed by the dynasty before the Tokugawas as a long-term prison for outcasts and foes too dangerous to leave alone, but too valuable to put to the sword. The first resident had been a nobleman's daughter who had tried to elope with a younger brother of the previous dynasty's crown prince. She had died four years after her arrival by suicide, broken-hearted at the news of her beloved's marriage to another and the birth of a son that was not hers. Such was the grief felt by his great-uncle that the man had, against the wishes of his new wife, sponsored the placement of an elaborate rooftop garden with plants capable of surviving at the high altitudes. Those gardens had been the means of keeping the island sustainable for its various guests over the years, guests that ran the gamut from criminals who were never formally charged or acknowledged for various reasons to simple embarrassments that the ruling family preferred to put out of sight and mind.
By the time Daigo arrived, the gardens had picked up a wide variety of herbs and foodstuffs which had been allowed to run wild and go to seed. The experience of learning how to garden for his own meals had been a humbling one, but necessary when the ships that had been supplying him stopped coming without warning. One more insult laid at his door. And speaking of insults…
His home was typically quiet at this time of day, but now Daigo found himself groaning as he heard Jao and Mao shouting out in the courtyard. Were those two idiots training again? They'd run back to him fuming with tales of Westerners in a great metal ship that bested their patrol, and a crew able to match them in combat days ago, and it was possible that they'd decided to brush up on their skills. But that didn't explain the other shouting he heard, in a combination of Yafutoman and…
Daigo yawned and kept his eyes closed to try and fend off the light that spilled in and worsened his headache. That didn't sound Yafutoman. And there were female voices. There were women in the Tenkou, but the ones he heard weren't them.
It was a few more seconds before he placed the other language he was hearing, and the jolt of it made him snap his eyes open.
The Western Tongue.
Hangover be damned, he lurched out of bed and stumbled out of his room and through the first floor of the building until he reached the thick front doors. He pushed them open and shivered a little as the cold air from the outside hit the skin of his bare shoulder and scarred chest, which made the old injury pucker a little. Daigo found himself staring as Jao and Mao, the classic fight-happy knuckleheads, were in a standoff with a small band of tired, but still dangerous seeming people of wildly differing dress and appearance, along with…
"Moegi?!" Daigo blurted out, which had the much appreciated effect of getting everyone else to shut up and stop threatening the other with their fists and their weapons.
They all looked like hell, but Moegi was especially ragged. By the Blue Moon, his sister had become a stunningly beautiful young woman in the years he'd been in exile. But her once pristine robes were dirtied and her hair was out of its coif in a few places. He'd never seen her face so gaunt and marred by sorrows as it was now. Moegi had always been bright in his presence as a girl, and even when they both were older that the weight of their responsibilities settled into place, there were secret smiles and conversations that he and his darling little sister had for themselves alone. There was none of that brightness in her now, and it set him on edge and made his head pound all the worse. Relief shone on her face for all of two seconds before absolute grief replaced it, and she rushed towards him, sobbing openly.
Just as he'd done for her when they were young, Daigo found it the easiest thing in the world to open his arms and let her crash into him at speed before wrapping her up again.
"Moegi. What are you doing here? What's wrong?" He asked her, looking over her head to the four people who had come with her. The four Westerners.
"Oh, you have to be Daigo." The red-haired woman spoke in the Western tongue, but with an unfamiliar cadence that took him a moment to place and reorder. Moegi must have caught him blinking to make sense of it, because she spoke next.
"Brother. There are many things to discuss, but you need to know two things before we go further. First, these four are not our enemies, but something closer to friends."
"Verily." The yellow-haired girl in the silver dress and veil said, stepping forward from her other comrades and bowing. "What the Princess Moegi speaks is truth. I am Fina, and beside me are my dearest friends and allies in the world, Aika, Captain Vyse of the Blue Rogues, and Enrique, exiled from his homeland and now fighting against it. As we hope you will also."
Daigo's hangover reached truly marvelous levels of pain at that revelation, wondering why his sister and these four strangers would come to him looking so disheveled and worn and pleading for his help. Did they know of his Tenkou? No, they couldn't have. Even now, Moegi was staring at the pair with open confusion, looking between them and Daigo with an unsettling focus.
He swallowed. "Moegi, what was the second thing I need to know?"
Moegi opened her mouth to speak and froze, tears coming to her eyes again. She looked to the Westerners, and it was the yellow-haired man, Enrique, who answered in the Western tongue. His face was full of regret and rage.
"My homeland of Valua, a corrupt and evil empire bent on ruling the world, has invaded Yafutoma. Our ship and our comrades are captured and Minister Kangan Kurowei has allied himself with the invaders, and deposed your father."
Daigo blinked as he picked through the words, cursing how rusty his talent in the Western tongue was, how he'd let it lapse, and how much it had clearly changed in the two centuries since the time of Daqat.
"Are you telling me that...That Kangan has betrayed our people? That Yafutoma has fallen to an invading force?" He looked at Moegi. "Does father live?" She bit her lip and could not speak.
"We do not know." The Lady Fina confessed. "When it happened, it was all we could manage to save your sister and escape. She told us that we had to come and find you."
His head pounding, Daigo thinned his eyes to slits to keep out the blazing sunshine. "Inside, please. We have much to talk about."
The view of the great Yafutoman Empire was much different out among the islands than in the royal palace or within the walls of Yafutoma City. The crew of the Dragon's Breath was stiff around him at first, and he found himself a little put off until he realized that the crew didn't quite know how to act around him. He was their Prince, and that role usually required obeisance and kowtowing, but he was acting in a role as their equal or military superior, subordinate only to the captain.
Daigo settled the matter at dinnertime the first evening by asking the captain, in full view of the crew working through their rice bowls, to treat him as any other sailor in the fleet. A wave of something akin to relief passed among the men, and while there was still some polite reticence, they were more willing to meet his gaze and give him a nod or even a punch on the shoulder.
His experience in serving on other ships had lent him an air of quiet confidence and command that Daigo found fitted much more naturally than the blind deference usually due to royalty and the high-ranking members of the Court. For their part, the men who served under him found him, in time, of being someone worthy of respect and needful of camaraderie. Their patrols had been routine, and signs of piracy had been nonexistent. Officially, they were part of a larger group of scout ships serving under a rear admiral. Unofficially, the Dragon's Breath had orders to keep well clear of any actual engagements or dustups, something that Daigo found out three weeks after being assigned to it and overhearing the communications officer complaining to the captain about the 'Milk run assignment.'
That directive didn't last long once Daigo started doing his job. It said something about his crew that most of them felt as chafed by it as he did. They were a patrol ship, a ship meant to travel fast, strike fast, and deal with minor troubles. The larger vessels of the Yafutoman fleet were powerhouses, vessels full of men and cannons, with the Emperor's Own weighing in as a first-rate with thirty-six cannons arrayed along two gundecks. They were the ships that got called in when the trouble was serious, when a statement needed to be made. Problems had to be found first, though. And that? That, Daigo finally convinced his captain, was something that they were all ready for. He'd trained the men even harder, drilling the cannon crews, getting even the most clumsy sailor able to point a sword and a spear in the right direction and not lose hold of it when they went up against an enemy attacker. They had gone searching for pirates, and found themselves stumbling on the edges of something bigger. A smuggling ring.
It began, strangely enough, with a village that they stopped at to refill their water barrels and buy some more rice. It was small and run down and the people were afraid of them, something that confused Daigo and turned his stomach. Curious as to why, he first tried asking around and got only silence and pursed lips and heads that shook, dismissing any hint of something being wrong. His next idea bordered on the crazy, but it was one that his captain signed off on, the man being as concerned as he was.
The Dragon's Breath left the village that evening, but a token squad made up of Daigo as the commander and a half dozen other sailors who Daigo had trained up in martial combat and had volunteered for the duty stayed behind, vanishing into the fields and the rice paddies. Their vigilance paid off when a different naval vessel parked there, smaller than the Dragon's Breath at only six guns. A dozen men disembarked from it and passed through the village as the bulk of the civilians ducked inside their houses and averted their eyes. Daigo and his small band followed the other party of Yafutoman sailors, who were dressed in slipshod fashion and swaggered with an air of cruelty, up away from the small village and its harbor, and up into the highlands clear of the rice fields.
There, they found a different kind of field entirely, one of poppies, worked by farmers bound together by rope and iron collars and guarded by rough-looking men that brandished whips and wore ragged swords at their belts. It made Daigo's blood boil. The sailors off of the ship that had parked left the secret poppy fields with bags of product that, under proper supervision, were turned into potent painkillers used by the Yafutoman healers where green magic was not available or would not be of use with the more crippling and often terminal illnesses. The production of poppies was restricted and heavily monitored and licensed, a measure meant to stop the flow of another byproduct. Opium was a scourge upon the land that left its users debilitated and hopelessly addicted, wasting away as they chased the insensate condition it created.
Daigo sent one sailor, the stealthiest among them, to trail the other party of sailors back to their ship and to confirm the name of the vessel and to get a look at their command crew if possible. The other five, Daigo kept at his side, waiting for an hour for the ship to depart and fly away before they struck.
Of the cruel guards, some were killed trying to defend themselves. Some were injured and captured, and a few at the end wisely surrendered, realizing that they were going up against trained and deadly opponents. Daigo freed the enslaved farmers and had them tear up the fields, piling all the plants together and then lighting a bonfire that sent black smoke curling up into the clear night sky.
He and his men returned with the freed farmers and the now imprisoned guards of the camp in tow, and the village cheered and wept for the return of their missing family members, whose fates and survival, miserable as it was working the poppy fields, had been bought at the price of their silence.
The next day, the Dragon's Breath docked once more, and Daigo made his report. The witnesses were interviewed and scroll after scroll of personal accounts from the villagers and interrogations of the guards were made for the records.
Not sure of who they could trust, their documentation and the prisoners they kept locked away belowdecks for the time being, and they sent no message up the chain of command. It was clear that the navy had been suborned for personal profit. Until they knew just how deep the rot ran, it was better to say nothing that might alert their prey. Forewarned was forearmed.
The ship that had docked the night before had been a scouting vessel, the Blue Gale. The Dragon's Breath sailed out, in defiance of their orders to avoid trouble, with a mission to find the ship and arrest its crew for conspiracy and violation of every law on the books regarding the raising of poppies.
Daigo felt his world growing darker, and he used the memory and the letters written to him by his dear sister to remind him of why he was racing headlong into danger.
'You must be a protector to your people, for that is the duty of the Emperor.' Daigo pulled strength from his father's words of long ago, and trained the men harder still. They would need to be ready for anything, the captain said, and Daigo agreed with the older man wholeheartedly.
He could not have known how unprepared they would be for what they would find.
Tenkou Island
Lunch
To Daigo's surprise and immense relief, the Lady Fina proved to be a stunningly effective mage and wise woman, sussing out his headache seconds after they came inside with Jao and Mao bringing up the rear and scowling the entire time. She had a passable, but slightly archaic knowledge of the Yafutoman tongue, while everyone else in her party spoke the Western tongue exclusively. Moegi was able to bounce back and forth between them quite handily, and between his sister and the woman in silver, Daigo had soon given Fina permission to try and heal him.
Her hands glowing silver and a faint gleam of that aura ringing around her blue eyes, Fina took away his hangover and his migraine and even the aches in his body in a matter of seconds. It exhausted her, and Daigo saw again just how ragged they were, how much they had pushed themselves to even get here safely. He barked at Jao and Mao, and in short order, mineral water and cold preserved fish and vegetables were brought out while the pair that considered themselves his trusted bodyguards scattered into the kitchen to cook up some rice and some soup. The Westerners and his sister fell upon the small repast quickly, and Daigo was discouraged to learn that it was their first true meal in three days. Since Yafutoma had fallen. Since they had escaped capture and saved his sister from the same.
He owed them for that alone. He might never be able to pay them back for everything.
While the full meal was served and consumed, Daigo used the time to speak to them, improving and re-learning his very rusty Western tongue, which they called Mid-Ocean tradespeak, and getting a broader picture of their time in Yafutoma. Jao and Mao's anger towards them made a little more sense now, as it became clear that these four young people were very dangerous under the right circumstances, when pressed into it, and their ship was even more so. A ship that now was in the hands of a foreign enemy who had flown into the heart of his father's empire and laid off of the harbor with every gun pointed at the heart of it.
Small wonder that they were all so downcast and desperate. Daigo found himself reeling at the news of upwards of twenty metal ships like the one that had been Vyse's, ships far more advanced than that of Yafutoma's navy. Deadlier. Ships meant not for war but for outright conquest. He wanted to press them further, but he could see how bone tired they all were, so he relented, and set them up in some extra guest rooms. One for the men, one for the women, and a third, closest to his, for his sister.
Moegi refused to sleep right away, though. Long after the others had thanked him and gone off for some much needed rest, she sat with her legs folded underneath her at the low-set dining table and drank more of the green tea that Jao had prepared for them all.
"Not what you thought you would wake up to this morning, was it?" She finally asked him. That thin hint of humor beneath her once more schooled expression was enough to make Daigo snort and raise an eyebrow in her direction.
"I'm not certain how I'm supposed to react to all of this." Daigo muttered, pouring himself another saucer of rice wine and scratching at his chin after. "After all his years of scheming behind the throne, Kangan has revealed the depths of his treachery. Yafutoma has fallen. Father is, if not dead already, soon to be dead. Kangan would not risk killing him directly, but I can see that snake allowing our father to wither in captivity until he surrenders the crown and the Mandate of Heaven. His life would be forfeit afterwards. The Tokugawa Dynasty is ended, and we are nothing more than an afterthought now."
Moegi sat up a little straighter and stared at him. "So what do we do now?"
"Do?" Daigo snorted, throwing back his saucer of alcohol in one snort. He swallowed and let the burn eat away at his throat and his sinuses before shaking his head. "You are safe, and I can keep you safe. Beyond that, I think there is little that you can do."
"We can fight, brother." Moegi insisted. "This is why we came here. I knew that you could help us. Especially now that I know you have friends in the Tenkou."
"The Tenkou were a nuisance to the Yafutoman navy, and to Minister Kangan." Daigo dismissed the idea sourly. "Against these great metal ships from a foreign land? What chance do we stand? No. Even if we stood a chance, how willing do you think the Tenkou would be to aid these four Westerners you have allied with, when they are responsible for sinking other Tenkou ships and killing the men on them? Even if they were to fight now, their ship is lost."
Moegi's black eyes flared with anger. "Your people need you. Yafutoma needs you. There is no one else who we can turn to! Are you so afraid that you won't do anything?!"
Daigo ground his teeth together, and then pointedly ran a hand across the enormous scar on the front of his broad chest, the thick line that went from his right shoulder and down towards his navel. "I have done more than most would ever dare, dear sister, and I have paid for it." With his title. With his future. Nearly with his life. "Why should I act now and risk my life, the lives of the few Tenkou who I know of that might listen to me?"
"Because if you do not, then Yafutoma will die. And if Yafutoma falls, the world falls with it!" She snapped at him, reverting to Mid-Ocean right after. "Are you still the brother I remember, or just a bitter man willing to sit and drink sake while everything burns around him?!"
Were it anyone else who yelled that at him, who accused him of cowardice, Daigo would have slugged them for the impertinence. He rolled his shoulders, cleared his throat, and glared back at her. "You're more fiery than I remember."
"It's been almost ten years." Moegi said back to him, tears coming to her eyes. "You have suffered, Daigo. I know this. I can see it on your body and in your eyes. But do you think that I haven't? Without you there to protect me? I went from being promised to Kangan's worthless son to watching my world collapse around me. You weren't there. But those four from the west...Prince Enrique...they were there."
She stood up, smoothed out her dress, and slipped her hands into the sleeves of her robe, bowing formally to him. "I think I shall retire, after all. I leave you with one last thing to consider. What does it say about Prince Enrique and the other three Westerners that they are willing to stand up to this Valua and fight on regardless of the danger, when you are not?"
Eyes blurry with tears, Moegi walked past him and in the direction of the room set aside for her.
Daigo sighed and poured himself another saucer of sake.
It could mean that they were better than he was.
Or perhaps it meant only that they hadn't learned the bitter lesson yet that he had.
The Dragon's Breath caught up to the Blue Gale two days after leaving the village and the still smouldering poppy fields behind them. Pretending to be just another ship, they raised a flag of hailing along with an invitation for a meeting between the officers. Such offers were common among ships in the fleet, and were typically a means of sharing libations. As Daigo and his captain had hoped, the Gale took the offer and slowed down so the slightly larger Dragon's Breath could pull up beside them. Mooring lines were tied up and a hooked bridge raised between them so the captain and first officer of the other ship could come aboard. Their crew, having been briefed and prepared, quickly got out flasks and jugs of their own, eager to 'share' with their opposing sailors.
Half an hour later, the inebriated crew of the Blue Gale had been subdued and the captain and first officer of that ship found themselves under arrest. The bags of poppies that Daigo's man had seen their crew walking off with were located down in the hold, and the crew logbook, course logs and captain's journal were all brought aboard as well. They had enough evidence for the Blue Gale to be impounded and its officers, if not the entire crew, brought up on very stiff charges. When pressed for the names of any other contacts that they were working with, however, the Gale's crew remained tight-lipped. They caught enough from the ship's records to see where they were headed - the woods along the base of holy Mount Kazai.
His captain urged for caution. They had no idea what they were flying into. They had no idea what kind of forces might be massed there. An entire den of pirates? More corrupt naval officers and sailors? And the evidence they had collected, there were procedures to be followed, and it would not do to lose all of it. Daigo found there was wisdom in the man's suggestions. Or perhaps they were carefully worded orders. The Blue Gale tied up and towed behind them with a token crew to watch the tightly bound crew in the hold, they sailed for the Roshu Naval Base along the northern wall that surrounded Yafutoma City and the islands that surrounded it, due to Roshu having a permanent judicial presence. It took them a day to offload the personnel they'd arrested and to supply the judicial administrators with the mountain of evidence that they had collected. In the face of it, the crew of the Blue Gale at last looked fearful. That, at least, was worth the time they spent waiting for all of the evidence to be unloaded, catalogued, and the charges formalized. A member of the naval judiciary was even tasked with flying with them to act as observer, primary witness, and to ensure that evidence collected in their upcoming raid would be held above suspicion.
The delay had been necessary, yet it proved to be costly. By the time they arrived at the coordinates indicated on the Gale's navigation table, there were only burning ruins left where a long, single story building with a makeshift loading dock for airships had been. It smelled strongly of a poppy processing building, the sweet and yet acrid sting of it forcing them to keep upwind as the poisonous vapors wafted up and away in the black smoke. They swept around the site and went looking for the culprits, but found none. The opium processing den had turned into a dead end.
Things were worse when they flew back to Roshu, and learned that both the captain and first officer of the Blue Gale had been found dead in their cells, both having apparently hung themselves with their own clothes. There was enough evidence to convict the other men of the Gale, but none of them knew who their contacts at the opium facility were, or anything of any other conspirators. 'An unfortunate loss,' the words were bandied about. Daigo seethed, knowing even without proof what had happened. Someone higher up had cut off the exposed elements of their operation to save themselves from being exposed.
The Dragon's Breath resupplied and went off on assignment again, with fresh orders to travel someplace well clear of any real danger or difficulty.
Daigo tendered his resignation, but kept in contact with his crew via messenger post. He had an opium smuggling ring to uncover, and it was clear that it could not be done through normal means. Amidst the protests of his former shipmates, against the wishes of his father who had told him in no uncertain terms to return back home and to not go poking his head around into this seedy and illicit business, Daigo slipped out of view of the world.
His last letter was written to Moegi in the Western tongue, their secret language. I must save our people. Have faith in your brother. Be safe.
Tenkou Island
After Dinner
The evening meal had been civil, although stiff. Vyse had looked like death warmed over, and hadn't even stayed to sup properly. As soon as he'd packed up three meals' worth of rice and grilled fish with vegetables, he'd wandered back in the direction of the rooms set aside for them. Enrique had deflected Daigo's curiosity, smiling gently and telling him, with a crisp translation from Moegi, that the other two women were still too tired to make a formal appearance and that Vyse had volunteered to bring them their meals. Moegi had excused herself not long after, claiming fatigue. Daigo knew that much was true, at least, she hadn't been faking how exhausted she was. How exhausted they all were. It left him alone with Enrique, who watched him with curious eyes, but held off from battering him with questions. While they were eating, at least. It was after, when Daigo had switched from rice wine to a more soothing blend of green tea with herbal accents that Enrique spoke up. Daigo found himself glad for the practice earlier in the day, for even with it, he felt like much of what the prince of Valua was saying to him was being lost in translation. The nuance, at least.
"You look very strong." Enrique volunteered carefully. "Do you study the sword?"
Daigo blinked, looking to the thin and tapered blade that Enrique had at his waist. "Not like yours." He conceded, a halting but accurate answer. Enrique smiled back at him.
"Can we train? Morning tomorrow?"
"With this goings on?" Daigo countered. Enrique shrugged.
"We will fight Valua when we are strong. I must keep my skills sharp."
Daigo found himself flummoxed at that, but the stale air of the interior of his 'prison' did not make for a rational conversation. "Come outside. We talk more there."
The former prince of Yafutoma felt better the moment he slid the paper door open and they stepped out into the night air. He breathed in deeply and expanded his chest, marveling at how easy it came. The massive scar from his shoulder and down the right side of his chest had forever been an aggravation he'd long since learned to live with, how the tough tissues that had healed through skin and muscle and sinew tugged at him. In the course of her healing, the Lady Fina must have done something there as well. The scar remained, but it no longer tugged. It no longer hurt. He could breathe more deeply, and somehow he suspected that he would still be able to even at lower elevations. It was freeing in a way he'd long given up on, and to Daigo, that added bit of freedom was so very sweet.
That was perhaps the one good thing about being exiled, though it had taken him a long while to realize it. He was free in a way that he had never been in the whole of his life; free to wake up when he wanted. Free to do what he wanted. Free, if not to go where he wanted, to live how he wanted. He had lived with a measure of peace knowing that he could still chip away at the corruption festering beneath the surface of his homeland with a freedom he'd never had as its crown prince.
Yet now his sister slept in the room next to his own, Westerners from a dark empire had arrived and conquered Yafutoma with aid from within, and his father…
He had a strong feeling his father was not dead, but not enough to rely on it thoroughly. He didn't know what was going on. He didn't know.
Ten years of exile had taught Daigo the value of patience, of waiting for the right moment to strike. That hard lesson made him stand and reach for the discarded sleeve of his robe, which had forever hung loosely because he hated the feel of fabric across his scar. He slipped it on, breathed, and felt no pain or discomfort.
"The yellow hair one. She is good healer." Daigo told Enrique placidly.
"The best." Enrique said, smiling. "She can even revive the dead." Daigo's head snapped over to him in disbelief. The other prince shrugged. "I do not lie. She and Aika both know the ways of the Green Moon, but she has been teaching Aika and our doctor the ways of the Silver Moon as well."
That there were six Moons over the world, and that the Blue Moon which had been their only reference for so long was not all but just a part of that mystery had been another thing that Daigo was still struggling to grip with. But it was hard to refute the evidence, given how Valua was said to be under the lands of the Yellow Moon.
"She loves you. She cares for you still." Enrique said, breaking Daigo from his ruminating. "She never forgot you, even when she was forbidden to speak your name."
Daigo looked to the other man who was perhaps a year or two younger than himself if he had to guess. "My sister spoke to you often?"
"Getting here took three days." Enrique said, raising an eyebrow. "We had little food and water on board and there were five of us. None of us felt like doing very much, not after watching Yafutoma burn as we escaped. So, we talked. I think that she knows more about the rest of Arcadia than anyone else in your lands now. But she always said - you were needed. That you could help us." Enrique drummed his hand against the side of his sword. "Was she wrong?"
Daigo hummed. "What is possible?" He countered. "Just one ship, just one beat back Jao and Mao's small fleet that watched the borders."
"Why were they?"
"What?"
"Watching the borders." Enrique explained. "Daccat sailed 200 years ago. Nobody came since."
Ah. Well, Daigo could see the confusion. "Jao and Mao are Tenkou. They were not there for you. They were looking for others."
Enrique thought about it. Daigo could see the moment when he caught on. "Kangan. He had men loyal to him?"
"Tenkou do not fight to conquer Yafutoma." Daigo scratched at his chin. "They fight to save it."
"From wicked men." Enrique rumbled. "These Tenkou. I think we should meet them. Vyse should."
"Why?"
"Blue Rogues fight to save the world from Valua, and the evil that rules it. Tenkou fight to save Yafutoma from the same." Enrique shrugged. "We will fight them again. If they could help...We would welcome it. I do not know how close you are to them, but Jao and Mao know you. Maybe they can tell their leaders we are wiling to help."
Daigo sighed. "Westerners invade. Now other Westerners want to help."
Enrique rolled his shoulders. He looked up at the stars, huffing lightly in a way that Daigo knew meant that the foreign prince was struggling to keep his wind in him. He must have lived most of his life in the middling altitudes. No, likely all of it.
"Yafutoma must not be conquered. Yafutoma must stand." Enrique told him. "From one exiled prince to another, Daigo, I say this. Your people need you. Moegi took us here because she cannot do this alone."
Daigo shook his head. "I am just a man in exile."
"You are more than that, Daigo Tokugawa." Enrique glared at him. "You think I do not know exile? You were forced. I left on my own. Neither of us are the men we were before." The other prince's face softened and he set a hand on Daigo's shoulder, having to reach up to do so. "I am not less than I was. I am more. I believe this of you, also." He smiled then, warm and knowing. "We do not run away. Blue Rogues never run, not from danger that is great."
The wording was strange and Daigo chewed through it. "I hear that wrong?" He asked hesitantly. Enrique shrugged.
"Probably. Moegi is learning. And teaching. Let me…" Enrique took in a breath and when he spoke again, it was in stilted Yafutoman. "Blue Rogue, not walk from great danger." He shrugged. "We need her." The yellow-haired prince laughed sheepishly. "Moegi better at this."
There was a spark of admiration and...oh. Attraction. The prince was attracted to his sister. Daigo batted down the urge to challenge him to combat then and there, there was no need. They would be sparring in the morning anyways, and it would be days before any of the Westerners would be strong enough to do something stupid and dangerous. They would, though. They had that fire about them. A fire Daigo was learning was stronger than his own.
Enrique said goodnight and walked back inside, yawning as he did. Daigo stayed out in the night air, enjoying the feeling of the cold breeze and the glimmer of the stars in the milky band of the sky above, and the gleaming blue moon shining brightly as ever.
He heard the settling of the rooftop above him and sighed.
"Jao. Mao."
"Yes, boss?" The first of the pair asked softly.
"Send a message to every one of our agents on our fastest ships." Daigo instructed them. "To every Tenkou. Tell them that the First summons them. Tell our agents in Yafutoma City to learn all they can and report back. Tell our shipmasters that the First orders the fleet mobilized."
"Yes, boss." Then they were gone with only the smallest clatter of feet on the lacquered wooden roof.
Daigo, the banished prince of Yafutoma, the Lord of the Tenkou, stood in the dark of the night. He breathed in deeply, savoring the feel of a chest without pain in it and a head steadily clearing of the aches he'd lived with for too long.
The last of the Tokugawa dynasty stirred beyond the sight of the invaders and the traitors of the land.
He had lived as the crown prince, with his every need and whim taken care of. He had served as an officer of the fleet, where the essentials were covered, but a hard life of service was expected. The first month of his time operating on his own, in secret, was the hardest. Relying on his name, on royal assets, would have exposed him. Daigo needed to be as a shadow, and he didn't know how to, or how to survive on the streets.
Others did. Others who walked in the shadows when they had to saw what he was doing, what he intended, and took pity on him. None more than those of the Setsu clan, who he was surprised to learn were trained in the ancient arts of stealth, assassinations, and unseen combat. Osuma and Raiko had both sought to leave the life behind them, and had been his first point of contact after he almost got his ass handed to him by a group of thugs who worked as strongmen for the opium dens. They left out the training and lessons specific to their clans, but they gave him a handle on how to approach, see, and survive the seedy underworld of Yafutoma that he'd never known of. Daigo found himself grateful to them, and there was a soft spot in his heart for their two girls, Kirala and Urala. Looking at them, Daigo saw glimpses of his own sister, who was only a little older than Kirala.
They hated what was being done, but they could not act themselves. The Old Clans and their old ways were known to those in power. The Setsus had once served the dynasty before the Tokugawas, their silent defenders and blades in the night. When the Tokugawas had assumed power, the old ways of poisoning and assassinations were outlawed. Daigo remembered his history lessons, how the last dynasty had become decadent, more concerned with their own amusements than with the well-being of the people. He remembered how the Old Clans had been their puppets, both willing and forced. Those who had been most complicit with the tyranny and brutality of the former reign had been hunted down by Daigo's ancestors and killed, often with the help of those who had been less obedient pawns.
The Setsus had been one such clan who aided the Tokugawas. Their reward had been an 'offer' to retire from a life of blood and assassinations. The result had been a shift of Yafutoman society itself. Poisoners became master physicians. Silent blades became guards and messengers for his ancestors. Osuma was a skilled carpenter, and his oldest daughter Kirala seemed eager to follow in his footsteps.
But clearly the old ways had not been forgotten, even if they weren't used. They couldn't be used. They were known to the dark powers that gripped Yafutoma's underworld.
Daigo was not, and he could move and act freely in all the ways the Setsus couldn't. He left their home behind, wished them the best, and then never sought them out again. Their survival depended on going unnoticed, unsuspected.
Out of the dark corners of Yafutoma City, Daigo became a vengeful spirit. Opium dens were overturned and burned down, their patrons sent fleeing in escape while the dealers and the workers were interrogated and killed. He needed to know who was pulling the strings on the tangled web. It was a deadly game, and soon another name was fearfully whispered in the streets.
They called him the 'Wind's Blade', a scion of the Divine Wind. Those who'd been affected by the Opium dealers, whose families had been torn apart by it revered him. Those who had gained power from the suffering of others reviled him. It was frustrating work, with haphazard roadblocks thrown up to try and slow him down. Were he anyone else, it would have. Daigo's education allowed him to see the pattern of it, how the warehouses and the ships that were 'burned down' before he could get to them to find evidence were tied together. He had feared the conspiracy extended up into the upper echelons of the military, and was disturbed to find that he had been right, but only partially. His scope had not been wide enough.
Fearful whispers, faint traces of logs glanced at and replaced, all of it led to him uncovering a meeting of the powerful figureheads behind the dark scheme. A group too large for him to face down alone, with two high-ranking nobles of his father's Court and the second-most powerful admiral of the Yafutoman fleet and their bodyguards meeting in an old stronghold to the south along the Great Walls.
He sent word to the Dragon's Breath, a ship that his six month-long vendetta had cleared of any suspicion of wrongdoing. He called for the aid of his old crew in striking a blow and ending the madness of the opium smuggling ring once and for all.
Perhaps if he hadn't been so tired, he would have seen the trap for what it was. Perhaps if he'd been more alert, the Dragon's Breath would have been spared the surprise attack of cannonfire from hidden emplacements set up specifically to neutralize their covering cannonfire. Perhaps if he hadn't been so exhausted, that last stroke of Lord Gaozi's blade wouldn't have caught him and torn through him from shoulder nearly to navel as his own sword separated the miserable cur's head from his neck.
Perhaps if he had been the man that everyone thought he was, The Wind's Blade, Daigo Tokugawa could have escaped with the surviving crew from his old ship before reinforcements from the fleet, drawn in by the roaring fires that burned like signal flares in the dead of night, arrived to arrest everyone they could.
Being royalty spared him from a quick and painless death.
It would not save him from the real danger.
Tenkou Island
190 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape
The power of youth. Daigo often marveled at it, but it was on display and burning brightly after the four Westerners who had come with his sister had some decent meals and a full night and day to rest and recuperate. The morning spar he'd hoped for with Enrique had been enlightening in its own regard, for there was grace and elegance in the way that the exiled prince of the land of the Western invaders moved. A swordsman learned to read another in how they stood and how they moved, and from Enrique, Daigo got the strong impression that his strength did not lie in unstoppable force, but in directed blows - that Enrique could, if he put his mind to it, land a stab with that slender and tapered blade of his with the unusual guard any place he wished to. The followup spar between Enrique and Vyse, which took on more of a quality of training than an outright match, showed him the strength of the Blue Rogue as well. Ferocity and speed and daring, a crosspoint to Enrique's cooler-headed style, but with refinements that Daigo picked up on quickly. Enrique had been training Vyse in his way of swordfighting and combat.
Daigo wondered what the results of that blending of elegance and dual-sword dancing would be. His curiosity was brought to an end after their midday meal when Moegi, who had been disappointed last night and now looked furious today, pushed her dish away and announced, in very authoritative tones in the Western tongue, that since it was clear that Daigo had no intention of being useful, that they would be departing and he could get back to the business of being exiled.
The fire in his sister's red and puffy eyes startled him. Moegi had always been bright and intelligent and eager, but yesterday and today, she was nothing like the little girl he remembered. She had spoken of knowing his suffering, and then lambasted him with her own. She had accused him of cowardice, of hiding away because it was easier, or perhaps because he felt he had done enough, or because it was hopeless.
It was still hopeless, but at Moegi's words, the other four stood with equally darkening faces. Daigo's jaw dropped as he realized that each of them were following her lead.
"You - you can't." Daigo stammered.
"Can't I?" Moegi said crisply in Yafutoman, raising an eyebrow. "Our father is captured. The Blue Lands are in peril. Invaders walk the streets of the capital city and stroll through the palace. And you claim it is hopeless. Stay here then. I will not linger in hiding and leave my people to suffer. I was willing to suffer the indignity of marriage to Muraji Kurowei. You think me afraid to risk my life in battle? In this, I am happy to take a page from the rules of Vyse and his friends, their guide of conduct. They never give up. Neither shall I."
With another uttered phrase in the Mid-Ocean language to her companions, Moegi walked out of the dining room, intent on leaving the estate and returning to the small, small ship that they had come in on. Daigo found himself stumbling and scrambling to follow them.
"You have no plan!" Daigo pressed her, as Vyse stepped ahead of them and made for the thick wooden doors that would take them to the front courtyard.
"I am told by my new friends that they are quite good on...oh, what was the way they put it, 'thinking on the flying?' Something like that." She replied. Vyse pushed the massive doors open and they marched out into the stone courtyard that he and Enrique had sparred in that morning.
"You have no intelligence, no information! You don't know where to begin!"
"As Vyse has said, any good rebellion starts on the outside and works its way in."
"You have no ship!" He yelled at her as she kept on walking, arms in her sleeves with a devil may care attitude as they passed under the archway that served as the entrance to the once-temple that had become a home for exiles. Any further and they would be walking the long paths from one stone island to another which led to the small docks at the end of it, a distance from the actual mansion itself. A docks set up that way so that any exile who was brought here would suffer a long walk to arrive at their new home, a long walk to think and reflect and to suffer. Like he had.
"Then what did we arrive in, brother?" Moegi asked him curtly.
The power of youth burned in these four who had saved his sister and now warped her mind with their strange ideas. The power of youth, and the boldness without wisdom that youth held. The intent without planning that youth was famous for. They would leave here and they would be killed and the desperate escape that had spared them from the coup would be for nothing. Moegi would leave and she would suffer and she didn't care. Or rather, she cared more about Yafutoma than her own welfare.
Like Daigo once had. He could not let it happen again, and he pushed ahead of them, racing, and flung his arms out to bar their path.
"Three days!" He begged them in Mid-Ocean tradespeak, throwing out the first number he could think of. Three days until the first of the Tenkou he'd had Jao and Mao race to contact late last night would be in a position to arrive. "Please. Three days. I will found help! Please no leave!"
The party of Moegi, Enrique, Vyse, Aika and Fina stopped and watched him for several long and, honestly, agonizing seconds.
Moegi's steady and unbreaking face of grim determination melted into an easy smile. "Well. Since you're offering, how can we refuse? Very well, brother. Three days. That will give us time to provision and plan, at least."
Then she inclined her head slightly and spun around on her heels, stepping back into the courtyard of his home with such ease that Daigo blinked and was left gawking.
Enrique muttered something under his breath to Vyse and made a soft noise, and the Blue Rogue that bore a scar under his left eye snorted and started chuckling just a few notches below a full belly laugh as they spun and followed.
Daigo blinked and stared as the two Western girls, Aika and Fina watched Moegi walk away and then looked at one another with knowing expressions.
"What just happened?" Daigo said aloud, a question he uttered for nobody but himself. The two young women overheard him, and the Lady Fina giggled behind her hand before responding in Yafutoman.
"Moegi knew that her honorable older brother wouldst not dare let her leave unprepared for the trials ahead of us. It was just a matter of forcing you to admit it and prodding you to do something about it. In short, Daigo Tokugawa? You have been played." As Daigo opened and closed his mouth, searching for a response to that, Aika busted out into a full out laugh and extended her arm out. Fina hooked her own through her companion's and the two women strolled back inside, fairly sauntering with their hips swaying back and forth in time with their good humor. They must have been very good friends indeed, for how closely they stood by each other as they walked along.
Well. Three days to convince them not to run off half-cocked. And his sister had known all along he would cave. He settled on an open smile.
By the Blue Moon, he was proud of her.
He wasn't quite sure how he didn't end up dead. The healers who got to him in time were able to keep him alive and prevent him from suffering the dead blood sickness and the fever of the brain, but the pain medicine derived from the opium poppy left him woozy and only vaguely aware of his surroundings. When Daigo came to, he found himself back in the royal palace, in his rooms. But he was not free. Armed guards stood outside of his door, and he was not allowed to see his father. Or even his sister. The healing they had given him was incomplete, and the stitches along his shoulder and chest tugged at him as badly as the wound did. He would live, but he would bear the mark of the corrupt Lord Gaozi's sword for the rest of his days. It didn't take him long to realize that something was very wrong, that they were only waiting for him to not be on death's door before the next phase of it began. When his father's Advisory Council finally summoned him, he could stand, but still felt weak as a babe. The fire that had sustained him had guttered out, bled from the wound sewn up and packed tight with a wrap that smelled strongly of the most pungent medicinal herbs available.
Standing in his father's court, Daigo found himself in the unenviable position of the accused before the full Council, with his father seated on his throne, Minister Kangan Kurowei perched off of his right side with a hand gripping the top of the throne, and the full array of one dozen advisors, nobles all, kneeling along the carpet that led to the throne in tall hats with dark hoods that covered their faces and hid their identities. And there, pale as death off of her father's left, was his sister Moegi, dressed in mourning garb that confused him. Why did she mourn? For who?
The answer came as soon as Minister Kurowei opened his mouth.
"Crown Prince Daigo of the Tokugawa bloodline. You stand accused of the crimes of murder of soldiers and high nobility, outlawry, destruction of property. In the name of His Illustrious Imperial Majesty Mikado, you shall be tried for these crimes."
"Crimes." Daigo scoffed. "It should not be a crime for good men to fight against injustice. It should not be a crime to try and put an end to the illicit growing, smuggling, and dealing of opium never cleared for true medical use."
Kangan stroked his long and slender mustache, his dark black eyes sizing up the prince. "If this were so, then why did you resign your commission? Why lurk in the shadows as the outlaw publicly known as the Wind's Blade when you could have investigated in the open?"
"I did." Daigo snapped at him. "While serving aboard the Dragon's Breath, myself and the crew of that brave ship uncovered the start of a smuggling ring. But it was not enough."
"So you turned to outlawry. But you speak of some great conspiracy, Prince Daigo. Where is your evidence of this?"
"Outlawry was all that was left to me!" Daigo protested. "We had evidence. We had the evidence and we passed it on to the judicial administrators at Roshu and left in search of the next leg of the supply chain. We found their hidden smuggling base in flames and when we returned to Roshu, the evidence had been lost, the witnesses killed! There is a corruption at play within the military and nobility both, a corruption that is powerful and runs too deeply to be take on through normal means!"
"Preposterous!" One member of the council shouted out behind his black hooded hat, keeping his face pointed directly ahead to the other side of the carpet and the other council members present. Tradition said that only the Minister and the royal family could look at the accused, and the accused could not look at any of them. Only his status as crown prince allowed Daigo the leeway to do otherwise. "The crown prince would accuse the nobility of deceit and treason to the jade throne? The crown prince has been taken by madness, my Majesty!"
"Do not think to discredit me by claiming I am bereft of my senses, councilman." Daigo growled to the hidden man, who flinched in spite of the fact that his identity was preserved. "On my own, in secret as my only means of uncovering injustice, I found that high-ranking officers of the fleet had been working with nobility who either turned a blind eye or aided it outright. I know of villages whose farmers were captured and put to work on illegal opium fields. I know of ships like the Blue Gale who were wholly complicit in the transferring of cargo. Sky-General Judou and Lords Hamabusa and Gaozi were caught red-handed in a supposedly abandoned fortress, and attacked us in earnest. We fought them with all we had and brought them to justice. I bear the scar of Lord Gaozi's sword, and that should be evidence enough for this council!" Daigo patted the bandage over his chest and ignored the flare of pain it brought.
Minister Kurowei shook his head slowly. "We are the beloved people of the Blue Moon. We are protected by the Divine Wind, and we are a people bound by our laws. Laws that you have broken."
"The laws were meant to protect all, not a few clinging to misused and abused power!" Daigo roared at him, hissing as it tugged at his stitches and forced him into labored beathing. "When evil men can hide behind the laws, then the laws are useless and must be cast off!"
Kangan stood a little taller. "You hold yourself above the law, Daigo Tokugawa?" He uttered, doing him the dishonor of foregoing his title. "Not even a crown prince has such power! Only His Imperial Majesty may claim to be above the law as the chosen of the Divine Wind and the Mandate of Heaven!"
Another of the hooded council spoke up then. "Your Imperial Majesty, the crown prince dishonors himself! He dishonors your dynasty! He accuses without evidence!"
"He holds himself above the law! He acts outside of it!" Another declared loudly.
"He cannot rule after your passing, Imperial Majesty! He will never receive the Mandate of Heaven!"
"Cast him out! Revoke his status!"
"Execute him!"
"Exile him!"
"Banish him!"
"Deny him!"
"Dethrone him!"
Daigo, stunned by their cries, found his eyes bouncing between all of the hooded imperial advisors. Surely they were not all part of the Opium conspiracy! No, while some of them were playing a part, others must be reacting out of fear, or because they felt it right. He looked up to Minister Kurowei and froze when he saw the thin smile underneath the wiry Chief Advisor's mustache. It was a predatory smile. It was a triumphant smile. It was a smile that nobody but Daigo saw, and in seeing it, Daigo at last realized the truth.
Gaozi and Hamabusa and Judou had been powerful pieces of the conspiracy, and he had suspected they were not alone. He had been looking for the others of their status who were complicit with them, and never suspected that someone of even higher status might be pulling the strings. The corruption ran straight to the top, to the meager step below himself and his father, one step not quite so meager after all.
He opened his mouth to speak, and Kangan cut him off. "You would accuse everyone in this room of such dishonorable conduct to justify your wild and lawless crusade! No, the Mandate of Heaven clearly does not rest with you." Kangan turned to his father. "Your Imperial Highness, your council of advisors has spoken. We have given our opinions. It now comes to your judgment with the wisdom of the Blue Moon to decide. What is to be done in this terrible matter?"
Daigo felt ill, and his blood roared in his ears as he looked at Kangan Kurowei, the spidery betrayer in the middle of a web of deceit and illegal wealth and abused power. He looked to his sister, who sat with eyes full of tears that expressed emotions she could not otherwise.
He looked to his father, a now elderly Mikado Tokugawa, and saw…
Resignation. Disappointment. Daigo's heart collapsed.
"Daigo Tokugawa." The Emperor Mikado said in a low and grave voice, and the room fell silent. None dared breathe. "For refusing your father's orders, for acting outside of the law, for the murders you have done, I must pass judgment on you. I renounce your title as crown prince. But your blood is still royal, and must not be shed. I banish you to Exile Island in the northern reaches. There, you shall live out your days, never to return. When you are gone, nobody shall speak of you, and your name will be forbidden in these halls. This is the will and the sentence of the Emperor, and no man shall argue against it."
Daigo slumped to his knees, staring at his father. Damnit, why couldn't he see?! Why didn't he realize…
His father had never looked so tired before, though. Or so devastated.
"Leave us." The Emperor said quietly, and as one, the hooded council members stood from their kneeling positions, bowed, and backed away to the side rooms. Kangan lingered a moment longer, but under Mikado's withering stare, he too finally bowed and departed.
Moegi stood and raced to him as soon as everyone was gone, sobbing softly against her brother's uninjured side. "I'm sorry." He heard himself saying, a hollow and hoarse message as he stroked her arm. "I'm sorry, Moegi. I tried."
He looked away from her and up to his father who still hadn't moved from his throne. It was as if the man was frozen to it. Without anyone else present, the unshakable man seemed to deflate a little more. He'd only ever seen his father that sad when he had been a boy, after his mother had died. There was something more this time, though. There was guilt.
Daigo stared at him, afraid to voice it. He went for something more neutral but which still veiled his unspoken question. "I thought that an Emperor's first duty was to protect his people. Not the powerful."
Mikado breathed out slowly and looked away. "Sometimes, my son...Even Emperors find themselves powerless. You would have been a good one, if you had been a little more patient."
"You should have just let me die then." Daigo blurted out, heedless of how it made Moegi whimper.
"No." Mikado shook his head at that, looking back up with fire burning behind his eyes. "You are still my son. Do you think I could bear to lose you?"
He should have been burning with rage, his blood should have been hot. Through the pain of his injury and the revelations of the spider at the heart of the Opium conspiracy who had outmaneuvered him, Daigo found nothing but cold stillness, a chill that left his blood frozen.
"You just did." Daigo said, and hugged his sister awkwardly one last time. "I'm sorry, little sister. Please. Try and remember to smile for me." He whispered to her.
"Take me with you." She begged him, a girl of 11 whose world was falling apart because her brother was being sent away. "Please, let me come with you."
She couldn't go. He couldn't stay. Daigo pressed a kiss to her forehead, found enough strength to smile at her, and pulled himself back up to his feet.
"Be good. Do better than I did." He said to her, and then turned and walked away from the throne, his back turned to it in blatant disregard of tradition and honor.
Mikado Tokugawa said nothing as he left. There was nothing left for either of them to say to each other.
Tenkou Island
192 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape
Daigo had begged his sister and her Western friends to hold off on leaving for a grace period of three days. Following that day when he had 'been played' as Fina put it, they had ended up only needing two.
Fina and Aika had been providing healing sessions with him when he wasn't busy sparring with Enrique and Vyse, or spending some much-needed time with Moegi. They had a great deal to catch up on, and while he knew a few days wouldn't make up for his ten year absence from her life, he took it as a start. The other thing that he did with his time was to practice his Mid-Ocean language skills constantly. Moegi had spurred it on by telling her four companions to speak nothing but, which came as a relief to the men and to Aika, and prompted a knowing smile from Fina who was at least bilingual. He doubted that he would be as casually fluent in it as Enrique and the 'Blue Rogues' who were with him, but he would make a good showing of it. At least Fina was complimenting him on speaking in complete sentences now.
The day that everything changed for the weary Blue Rogues who had come with his sister, the women were inside of the estate tending to the midday meal with Enrique assisting them. It gave Daigo a chance to spar against Vyse, both with their swords and their words.
"So, how's the chest feeling?" Vyse asked him casually.
"Better." Daigo hummed, because the further treatments that Aika and Fina had given him had left the scar intact as he wished, but done even more to take the aches away. He felt better than he had in years, and the missing strength that the scar tissue had taken away from his arm had even returned. He was using both his sword and his scabbard to match Vyse in his dual-sword style, and he used the scabbard to knock one blade, glimmering with a spell that blunted its sharp edge, off to the side. "Are you and your companions rested?"
"Rested and restless, Daigo." Vyse said, bringing one sword across in a horizontal slice that Daigo backstepped to avoid. "The reprieve has given us a chance to get some wind back in our sails, but we still have work to do."
Daigo hummed and then let out a fierce cry, charging at Vyse with a flurry of strikes from scabbard and blunted katana alike. "I said I would find help. I am finding it."
They were both sweating, and Vyse pulled back, stowing his blades before reaching for a waterskin. He took a long drink and handed it over to Daigo before speaking again. "Really? Because you've been spending all your time with us, and you haven't exactly gone anywhere. Can you go anywhere, or is there something else to your exile I haven't seen yet? If there was a spell that could keep you bound here, I think Fina would know it. Or Moegi would."
Daigo snorted and took a drink. After he swallowed it down and wiped his mouth, he grinned at the young and bold man. "I learn to like it here. Compared to cramped bunk on a ship, this place is very good."
Vyse hummed, taking the waterskin back and capping it. "You're part of the Tenkou, aren't you? Jao and Mao, I remembered them. They're Tenkou. So if they were here, you're important to them."
Daigo's heart skipped. So. Young as he might be, Vyse was nobody's fool. He had forgotten that countless times over the past few days, seeing only a young man that seemed barely any older than he himself had been before his exile. Yet this was a man blooded in a warrior's ways, who served as a captain among air pirates in his own skies that owed allegiance to none but his own sense of morality. This was a man whom others vowed allegiance to freely, even the prince of the land he and his kind had declared war on. Vyse was young and impetuous and perhaps relied a little too much on luck, if the stories that Moegi had shared of his exploits were more than fanciful lies, but he was intelligent.
"This...this island is known to them." Daigo told Vyse quietly. "Jao and Mao were using Exile Island when I was dropped off and abandoned. After I fought them, we made agreement. I would allow the Tenkou to use this island as resting place, and they would bring things I did not have."
Vyse hummed again. "Seems to work for you. Decent of you to give them some space."
"Yafutoma calls us Tenkou criminals." Daigo told him.
"And Valua calls us pirates. But we're Blue Rogues. Kingdoms don't always like people with power who aren't loyal to them. But we're loyal to each other, to freedom, and to happiness. And that's enough to fight an empire and save a kingdom." Vyse folded his arms and grinned at him, looking unshaken by the events of the past week. Grimmer, to be certain, there was tension in that smile that looked out of place, but he refused to bow to it.
Daigo shook his head, staring at the boy. "Who are you? To speak so?"
The grin Vyse wore gained its missing luster. "I am Vyse, Captain of the Blue Rogues, son of Dyne who was the First Blue Rogue. I fight to save the world from Valua's aggression, so that people can laugh and fly in freedom. I am friends with two princes who live in exile, I am a legend that people fear or flock to. I am myself, and nothing more."
Daigo sighed. "You are prince yourself." He said, seeing all too clearly now what he had been missing. The utter charisma the man bled...Daigo almost felt guilty enough to throw himself into the abyss, if Vyse would but ask for it. Vyse laughed and rubbed at the back of his head, and Daigo pressed the point. "Some royalty inherits. Others...made. Like first Tokugawa, my ancestor. He took the throne."
"I don't want a throne." Vyse shrugged. "Not sure I believe in them. But if they have to stand, I want the people who sit in them to be good people. Like Enrique."
Daigo laughed at that, a short and barking noise. "You are kingmaker, then?" Vyse shrugged again, presumably unwilling to argue the point.
That was when movement beyond the great wooden arch of the courtyard drew their attention, and Vyse and Daigo walked outside of them to take in the view of the long and winding pathway down to the docks. Vyse gaped, and Daigo laughed at the man's incredulity.
"You can be surprised after all." Daigo said to him as they looked at three ships moored at the docks beside the small escape ship that Moegi and the Westerners had arrived in...and a sky swarming with half a dozen more.
"You aren't just some low-level rest stop for them, are you? Your friends?"
"I am First. The First of the Tenkou." Daigo agreed, folding his arms. "Not all here, though. More coming yet. I told all to come."
"Moons bless it all. You have a fleet."
"A small fleet. I hope it will be enough. We will still need a miracle."
Vyse let out a triumphant shout and smacked Daigo in the side of the arm. "Oh, trust me, prince. I've done more with less."
Vyse's brown eyes glowed with the promise of a battle not yet fought, a revolution in the making. Daigo shivered to stand beside him.
Vyse was a kingmaker, indeed.
The journey to Exile Island was long. They used the worst ship in the fleet to take the once-prince to his new and permanent home, and a storm that seemed to follow them made it even more miserable, bouncing him around.
He was shoved off of the ship onto the age worn docks with crates and barrels of supplies, the clothes on his back, and one last mercy from the captain, his old katana and shortblade. To be used in self-defense, or as the corrupt Minister Kurowei likely wished, as the means of ending his own life.
After climbing the long sets of bridges and islands up to Exile Island proper, Daigo was beginning to tire enough to consider giving the bastard the satisfaction. Or he had been up until he found a pair of young fighters just a year or two younger than himself lounging in the courtyard, who demanded his sword in exchange for his life. That was enough to stir the fighting spirit that had empowered the 'Wind's Blade' on his crusade once more, and despite their fierce style of unarmed combat, he bested them, falling to one knee in exhaustion after while they lay groaning from the bruises and lumps that his blade, used while still kept inside of its scabbard, had given to them.
"You are strong. Where did you find such strength?!" The first of them spoke between heavy gulps of air.
Daigo huffed, leaning his weight against his sword. "Fighting the opium smugglers. Not that it did any good. Who are you? And why are you here on Exile Island?"
They called themselves Jao and Mao, twin brothers, and they resentfully informed him that this was their home as much as it was his. That they were descended from the survivors of the order of monks who had called this island home long ago, and the stories of it being abandoned and then reclaimed had been wrong. The previous dynasty had attacked the monastery, seeing it and the monks who trained there as a threat to their power. The martial arts of unarmed combat had long been a part of basic Yafutoman military training, but Jao and Mao's skills were far greater. Theirs hadn't been meant for warmups or for a basis of experience into weapons training. Daigo saw it as another lie heaped onto the pile, and so he came clean to them about who he really was, and why he was exiled.
To his surprise, Jao and Mao were only more impressed, and begged to join him.
"Join me?" He said, confused. "I am in exile. If you wish to stay here, you are welcome to."
"No, master." Mao shook his head and righted himself long enough to get into a kneeling position. "Our people were scattered to the winds, and yet still we remembered our ways and learned in secret. We never forgave those who came before the Tokugawas for their insult, but saw no need to reveal ourselves to the Tokugawas either. Not when the Old Clans were told to find new means of living. We know of you, Wind's Blade. The village you saved? We had friends there."
"I wish I could have done more." Daigo told them regretfully. "I tried to stop it through lawful means. But the men behind it all were too powerful. They could delay our work. Burn evidence. Control and have men executed while in prison to silence them. I fought alone and killed three of their leaders, but missed the true threat. Minister Kangan Kurowei is at the heart of it, a poison killing Yafutoma from within."
"Then let us help you." Jao declared, rising back up to his feet and handing Daigo a precious crystal of minor healing that sparkled green. "You are no longer alone. You know how to fight. You know how to lead. And the people of Yafutoma are tired of being taken advantage of. We are tired of being ruled by corrupt men who use the strength of the sword to justify their power."
"Hence, why you wish to claim 1000 swords." Daigo smirked, patting his own. "You will not have mine."
"Keep yours, master." Mao told him. "We take only the swords of our enemies."
They wished revolution. They wished to take back their homeland. Daigo did not disagree with that, but it would take tempering. They needed to learn how to fight properly. Not just hand to hand and with weapons, but with ships, if they hoped to truly strike a blow against the corruption. Jao and Mao were right. They really did need a leader.
How gracious of Minister Kurowei to provide them with one.
"We need a name." Daigo said to them both. "A name for ourselves. Something that will inspire, but keep our identities hidden. I cannot be the Wind's Blade, I cannot be the Prince. If this is to work, then I must be, for whoever they send to check up on me, a harmless exile carrying out the sentence my father set on me." He made a face there. "And in all honesty, I feel like I could lose myself in a jug of rice wine if I let myself go."
"Do not do that, master!" Jao exclaimed. "You must be the first of us!"
Daigo blinked. Smiled. "Very well. Then I shall be the First."
"The First of what, master?"
Daigo considered his choices. There were many stories and myths of the time of the ancients, and among them were tales of creatures between man and bird, they who had been feared at first and who became protectors and guardians. The Tenkou.
They would be feared by their enemies as they became the guardians of the people of Yafutoma. His father had told him, often, that he must be a protector to his people.
Fate had put him here on this island, next to these young men. Fate had guided him to this. If he did not have the Mandate of Heaven…
He felt a breeze roll by, and felt something else settle on his shoulders. The blessings of the Divine Wind.
"The First. Of the Tenkou."
Tenkou Island
196 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape
The First had called for them, and the ships kept coming. For nine years, they had been building themselves up. They had spies and agents in every village, telling them about the ships and the soldiers who were cruel, who created press gangs, who acted as lords instead of guardians. The Tenkou fleet and forces fought small skirmishes, hit and runs, claiming no territory. The Tenkou struck only at the transport ships identified as participating in the opium smuggling trade, at the military vessels known to be corrupt. They were a motley bunch, made up of grief-filled farmers and bitter prisoners, even soldiers and guards who had walked away when they could not stomach it. On the surface, Yafutoma remained placid and docile, its people obedient and subservient. To corral such a band into a cohesive force would have been a daunting undertaking. It was a challenge worthy of a prince, and led by their First and his most trusted lieutenants Jao and Mao aboard the Tenkou flagship, the Yin-Yang, the guerilla campaign had held off the worst of Kangan's predations and atrocities.
The threat they faced now was so much worse, so much bigger. It had become a fight not for the soul of Yafutoma, but for Yafutoma's very survival and freedom. There was a frisson of anticipation in the air that every Tenkou member felt, from Taka with his bladed knuckle claws to Souta with his curved falchion. At the heart of that building pressure was Daigo and Moegi and Enrique and Vyse and Aika and Fina, six of them arranged around the large dining table subverted from its usual purpose to become a tactical map. The empire was in chaos, Daigo and the others learned with every new spy report that filtered in. The once quiet estate now buzzed with a steady hum of conversation and movement, even at night. Moegi had complained about it, too used to the quiet hallways of the royal palace. The Blue Rogues and Prince Enrique, however, weren't bothered an inch by it.
"Another report, First." One of the Tenkou messenger runners gasped out as he burst into the room. Daigo glanced up from the map with current Yafutoman fleet deployments and estimated troop strength, which now included additional markers for the mighty Valuan warships as well. Daigo took the message, unrolled it, and read it once before handing it over to Moegi to translate to their Western allies.
"The small skirmish force that Jao and Mao dispatched to draw the fleet off to the western provinces paid off additional dividends. Two Valuan ships were sighted with them." He said aloud for the benefit of the other Tenkou members in the room, and quickly made an adjustment on the map to reflect the deployment.
"Is the Delphinus still being locked down in the harbor?" Vyse asked.
Daigo shook his head. "Spy reports say it is being manned by Yafutoman soldiers loyal to Kangan, with Valuan advisors. Muraji put in charge of it." He noted the open concern on their faces, and he smiled at them. "Report from early this morning says your people still on board. Held belowdecks."
"The hold, most likely." Aika mused. "Best place to stash close to 40 people and still keep them close."
"Everything hinges on the Delphinus." Vyse pointed it out again. "If we can get back on board our ship, and take control of it, we can meet the Valuan force head-on."
"One ship against eight - sixteen?" Daigo started and corrected himself, glancing at the map and the two Valuan ships which had been peeled away on a wild chase.
"You will find, Prince Daigo, that the Delphinus is a ship without parallel." The Lady Fina answered him primly. "And it is not as though we will be fighting them alone. The Tenkou are with us, are they not?"
"We are, Lady Fina." Daigo answered her. "To the last man, the Tenkou are with us. This is what I made them for, to protect our homeland when nothing else would. But these metal ships of yours...The report I just received spoke of casualties as well. How ineffective our normal cannon shells were against their armor. Magic cannonballs and our homing rockets alone were effective."
Fina turned and translated for Vyse, and the Blue Rogue rubbed at his chin. "You were always outgunned, though. Even when you were fighting against the Yafutomans that were corrupt, yes? So don't fight like we will. Fight like you have to. The Valuan ships can't go as high as yours can, trust me. Jao and Mao used that trick on us and we struggled to find a way around it."
"Hm. Strike and fade. Um. What is word?"
"Skirmish?"
"Skirmish...yes. Skirmish tactic." Daigo rolled his bare shoulder. "Probably our safest play anyways. So. We get you on board your ship, somehow, and try to serve as a distracting force while you hammer away at them?" He asked, guiding the remark to Fina. Another translation later, Vyse nodded.
"What do we know of the city?" Enrique questioned him. "How are they faring?"
"There was some trouble in the city early. One of the Valuan ruling officers, he made trouble. The woman officer had him and the men with him dragged out of the city and punished. There are still Valuans there, but not so many. And they are hers."
"Vigoro got the shit kicked out of him?" Aika growled. "Good."
"Belleza is a hardliner and a firm believer in Galcian's agenda, but she is not needlessly cruel." Enrique nodded. "The people would suffer less with men stationed there that served under her. But if Vigoro is not a part of the occupation, then he will be stationed as part of the Armada. And his ship is nothing to sneeze at. The Draco is a terrifying beast of raw firepower. He mounted a gun from the Grand Fortress on the front of it, and had the whole forward compartment of his ship converted to hold the shell for it. A single shell. He bragged about it enough at Court. If he hits the Delphinus with it, he could well cripple us. His more standard armaments would chew through the wooden vessels of the Tenkou in short order."
Daigo nodded, watching the other Tenkou officers in the room as Moegi translated for the foreign prince and paying close attention to how many of them winced or flinched.
"It is a terrible risk." He said loudly, capturing the attention of them all. "But our homeland has been invaded, not by pirates like Daqat who wished to steal and fly away, but by an empire that would strip us of everything of value. We can do no less than our best. We will fight as well as we can, and we will fight in our way."
While Moegi translated again, the doors opened and another messenger came racing in, wheezing slightly. "Stairs." He gasped, holding up another bound scroll. "A message from the palace spies, First."
Daigo took the note, read it, and frowned. "Hm." He looked to Moegi. "The Maga Sphere is missing. Kangan claims that you took it. He has Valuans convinced this."
Moegi frowned. "We did not have time to take it."
"Which means that he must have hidden it away." Aika said. "I can understand why he wouldn't want the Valuans getting their grubby mitts on it, but that won't make the Armada very happy. It's the primary reason they came at all."
"Moegi said that it was once used as the symbol of succession." Enrique pondered. "Perhaps he means to use it to solidify his rule now that he has taken power for himself."
Fina, looking suddenly pale, leaned forward against the table with a glazed, panicked look. "I hope that's the only thing he plans on using it for." She looked to Moegi and Daigo. "How well known are the stories of Bluheim, the Blue Gigas that flew the skies of the Blue Moon? Because he's buried in the Mount Kazai crater lake under solidified lava flows right now."
Daigo blinked at the question. "Gigas? There is a monster like the ones you have fought in our lands? Inside the sacred mountain?"
Fina breathed out. "So. There was no knowledge passed down of it?"
Daigo shrugged, reverting to Yafutoman. "If there were, I had no knowledge of it."
"With any luck, nobody else in Yafutoma knows of Bluheim either." Fina murmured, still pale, but recovering. "But our luck regarding Gigas has been woefully lacking."
"If I know the Valuans, they aren't going to let Muraji go flying off in my ship on his own." Vyse said, changing the subject. "They'll keep it protected inside their formations where it can cause the least amount of trouble."
"This will be harder for us then." Daigo murmured. "By now, the Valuans must surely be aware of how Yafutoman ships can go to greater heights than their own. If we find your ship in battle, they will be looking to the skies, and can attack us before we could get close."
Vyse frowned and drummed his fingers on the table. "Your ships. They can go higher. Which means that your engines and atmospheric condensers have a greater range than Mid-Ocean technology does." He leaned over the table a bit, facing Daigo. "Are your ships capable of flying lower?"
Daigo blinked, thought about it, and nodded. "I believe so, but we do not enjoy it. It is...different." Slightly warmer. A heavier feeling to the air. A darkness that the middle skies and the upper skies did not possess, and cloud cover often above. And the abyss below, a looming black void that beckoned and threatened. No Yafutoman ship dipped below the clouds if they could help it.
Vyse thought about that. "Do your people talk of that capability?"
"Not if we can help it." Daigo admitted. Vyse smiled at his response.
"Then I think we have our winning move."
Tenkou Island
197 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape
Morning
The fleet of the Tenkou had assembled at last. Forty ships strong, but all of them wood as opposed to the metal of the invaders. From fishing vessels that had been converted to junks and transports where cannons had been hastily installed, the largest of them was the Yin/Yang, which stood at only two-thirds the size of a 'Valuan Cruiser' as Enrique and the others told it. The surprise came from the six other ships that had joined them; six ships of the Yafutoman fleet who had refused to bend to Minister Kurowei's ascension to power. Six ships captained by loyal sons of the lands under the Blue Moon who had drifted about in singular unity in the midst of confusion who hadn't known where to go or what to do until they came across a Tenkou vessel...and instead of attacking it, had raised a flag of parley, vying for one desperate plan. They had sought to ask the Tenkou for their help in fighting back against the Western invaders.
They should have consulted with Daigo in his role as the First before bringing them, but their time was too precious, and Daigo would have made the same decision himself. The captains of the fleet had taken one look at Daigo, recognized him, and fallen to their knees. Exiled prince or no, he was Tokugawa. He hadn't even been able to ask it of them before they swore themselves to Daigo's cause.
Forty-six ships, with only 10 of them truly geared for open battle in the skies against the Valuan's forces around Yafutoma City and whatever Yafutoman vessels had been suborned to the cause. It was a desperate gamble with everything that fate and fortune had allowed Daigo to amass over the course of his exile. It was a gamble that they had to take, for the sake of Yafutoma and the world of Arcadia as Vyse reminded him soberly.
Despite Daigo's queasiness, Vyse somehow kept smiling. Refuge in audacity, he called it when questioned. Who would think that any of the Yafutomans would fight against Valua's superior firepower and armor? Nobody sane. Blue Rogues dared much, he was learning.
He had gathered as many captains to the courtyard of what had been meant to be his final resting place as could be squeezed in. It was meant to be a chance to speak to them all one last time before they set out for Yafutoma City, one last chance to rally and inspire the men and women of the Tenkou and the men of the Loyalist Fleet with stirring words. That was when Vyse struck, stepping forward with Fina and Aika at his side while Moegi lingered back beside Prince Enrique. Comfortably close to the yellow-haired man, in point of fact. Then Vyse started speaking, and Fina translated right after, focusing the eyes of every Yafutoman in the courtyard to the Westerners who were their allies instead of invaders. Many of them stared and squinted at Vyse, and to the three-cornered black hat he wore with its red and blue-ribboned tips.
"Prince Daigo." Fina said with a smile, carrying Vyse's words to him in unerring and perfect Yafutoman. "We are proud to stand with you, and proud to see that so many of your people stand with you as well. Exiled or not, it is clear that you are a ruler among your people, for you look first to their welfare. Their love and admiration for you has never been so clear as it was these past days, and especially this morning. Your Tenkou are made of people who had to learn how to defend their homes and their families and their freedom, and your forbearance in how you made war against Kangan Kurowei's conspiracy speaks to your character. In all the ways that matter, the Tenkou act so closely to the Code of the Blue Rogues that you might as well be one. It is with that in mind that I, Captain Vyse of the Blue Rogues, son of Dyne who was the first of the Blue Rogues, offer you the chance to become one."
Daigo inhaled as the courtyard gasped. Some made to argue, but Daigo held up a hand, silencing them.
"I could not swear allegiance to another power. My duty, my responsibility is to my people." He waited as Fina passed it on to Vyse, and waited further as the young man with his tousled mop of brown hair beneath the hat so similar to Daccat's own thought it over.
"Blue Rogues have no kingdom, Prince Daigo. We hold no lands of our own. We are citizens of the world, and are united by how we act and how we fight, and what we stand for. Centime sails the skies of Ixa'taka and now serves to help their people defend themselves. My father sails Mid-Ocean and the skies of the Silver Moon, where there was never a unified governing. And Clara of the Blue Rogues patrols the skies elsewhere, as she chases after her love. Being a Blue Rogue would not take you away from your people. Enrique is still the Prince of Valua, exiled as he is, and for all that he fights the corruption of his own homeland with us, his first care is to his people who suffer and struggle. Becoming a Blue Rogue does not mean you would walk away from your people. We never have, and we would not ask you to do so. You are our friend and our comrade, and today, I would ask you to become more. I would ask you to become our brother in arms."
Daigo swallowed at the reassurance. "Then...yes."
Fina swallowed. "Then kneel." Shaking a little, Daigo did so.
The courtyard went silent again, and Daigo watched as Vyse drew out his first sword and let the point rest against the cobblestones. There was no magic at play, no spell being cast, but there was ritual in this, and the air felt weighted from it. Vyse spoke softly, and Fina spoke loudly, his words in her voice while Aika gripped Vyse's free hand and Fina set an arm over the Blue Rogue's shoulder.
"Prince Daigo Tokugawa of the kingdom of Yafutoma kneels before this body, hereforth to declare himself as a Blue Rogue. Now he sails towards a new horizon and seeks the blessings of the Moons as he takes the Oath of the Blue Rogues. Are there any here who would speak against him receiving it?"
Daigo found his eyes looking around even as his neck stood locked into place. He wondered if any of his people would protest.
None did, and he looked to Vyse's companions, and to Moegi. Enrique's face was drawn into a tight smile of pride, and there were tears in Moegi's eyes as she clutched at the Valuan royal's hand and looked back at him. She was proud of him, and she was happy for him, and she was here.
"Hearing no voice of dissent, let us continue." Fina went on with solemn cadence. "Who would sponsor this man?"
Enrique stepped forward. "I, Prince Enrique du Valua and a Blue Rogue under Captain Vyse, sponsor this man!" He declared loudly.
Aika raised her free hand. "I, Aika of the Blue Rogues, sponsor this man!"
Fina cleared her throat. "I, Fina of the Silvites, friend and ally to the Blue Rogues, sponsor this man."
Moegi took a trembling step forward, and the hush grew even louder in its silence. "I, Princess Moegi Tokugawa, sister of my beloved brother, sponsor him."
Jao and Mao let out a cry right after, pounding fists against their chests. "We, the servants of our master Prince Daigo, First of the Tenkou, sponsor this man!"
The rest of the Tenkou captains and the captains of the loyalist fleet who had joined them spoke almost in unison after that, a hot rush of noise that left Daigo's eyes burning with tears and a lump in his throat.
Vyse raised his sword and spoke, and Fina's translation followed. "And I, Vyse, Captain of the Blue Rogues, proudly sponsor this man, the first of the Yafutoman people to swear the oath. You are beloved by your people, and I have no doubt you will be a Blue Rogue without peer under the Blue Moon. Prince Daigo of Yafutoma, speak the Oath of the Blue Rogues and take your place among us."
He nodded to Fina, who let go of his shoulder and swept around him to kneel next to Prince Daigo. Her hand went to his arm, her smile a brilliant thing that made the lump in his throat even tighter.
"Repeat after me." She said to him, and took in a breath as Vyse spoke lines that Daigo heard and understood in part, but which Fina made clear. In slow fashion, Daigo did as he was bidden.
"Blue Rogues leave nobody behind. Blue Rogues never back down from a greater danger. Blue Rogues always help out those in need. Blue Rogues never give up. And Blue Rogues Fly Free."
"BLUE ROGUES FLY FREE!" Aika and Enrique and Vyse and Fina all shouted that last part in Mid-Ocean tradespeak, a shout loud enough, powerful enough to wake the Divine Wind. Caught up in the moment, every Tenkou in the courtyard shouted the same right after in Yafutoman.
Vyse brought his sword down onto Daigo's shoulders, a gentle touch of the point on both of them, before drawing his 'cutlass' back away. His smile was one of satisfaction, and hesitance.
"So was the Code, as first written by my father, the first of the Blue Rogues. In my travels, I have reflected often on the Code, and have found it a good guide, but lacking. I still work on it, but I have two more lines I would have you speak, if you are willing."
Daigo nodded once. Vyse's words spoken through Fina went on.
"If you would be Free, then live to make others Free. If you would hold Power, then defend the Powerless." They were oaths that Daigo tumbled around inside of his mind, and found no fault with. Weren't they so very close to what his father had taught him a good ruler did anyways? He spoke them and felt lighter, looking between Enrique and Vyse and seeing in the both of them the same light of rulership that he possessed. A Prince of Yafutoma, a Prince of Valua, and a Prince of no kingdom but the open skies. The breeze kicked up around him, and Daigo shivered, feeling divinity and fate aligning again.
Vyse sheathed his blade and held out a hand to him. "Stand, Daigo. Welcome to the Blue Rogues." Daigo took his hand and stood, and found himself with an armful of Moegi as she raced to him and embraced him with happy sobs. So different from the tears she had shed in his arms when she and her Western friends first arrived. The courtyard erupted in deafening noise. Enrique was right behind her, extending a hand to him in congratulations. Daigo laughed and clasped his arm.
When they all finally let him go, Daigo pulled out his sword and held it aloft, pulling himself together and bursting with pride. Pride in his people. Pride in the Blue Rogues who had come to help save his homeland. Pride in his sister, who had never forgotten him and who was so much stronger than anyone had ever conceived.
"Today, we are all united. Tenkou, Blue Rogues, soldiers of the fleet, none of that matters! We make for Yafutoma City where the invaders from the West sit and wait for their doom. You all know the plan, you all know what must be done. Their ships are stronger than ours, more durable, but they lack the resolve that burns in our hearts! Today, I declare you all defenders of Yafutoma! Today, WE are the agents of the Divine Wind! Now go! Get to your ships, we sail to battle!"
The captains of his makeshift fleet bellowed and raced for the archway and the long path down to the docks. In three days' time, they would arrive outside of Yafutoma City. In three days, a reckoning would come.
Daigo looked to his sister and to the Westerners. "Moegi. I have better clothes for what will come in my ship. Vyse and company? You can't expect to fight in that small ship you came in. You're coming with me. I'll get you on board your ship."
"We are with you, Prince Daigo." Vyse reassured him, and Enrique nodded as well while Moegi and Fina and Aika grinned also.
Prince Daigo Tokugawa was returning home, still disgraced but unable to do any less. He would not be alone. He was the Wind's Blade. He was First of the Tenkou. He was a Blue Rogue.
He would never be alone again.
