And Life Is Full Of Partings
"So it's started? I won't stop it and I won't save you. This battle belongs to all of you now."
---
The shackles weren't like Homura's. They weren't graceful or elegant. They were heavy and efficient and short-chained. They kept Tenpou's arms behind him, rather than allowing any flowing gestures or meaningful waves, and while they might demonstrate the respect -- or even fear -- that Litouten and Zenon had for them, they made it hard to sit down comfortably.
"Guard's still there," Kenren reported, not for the first time.
"Anh. So they're not coming to fetch us yet." Tenpou pointed one foot at the flagstones next to him. "Have a seat."
Kenren dropped down in a swish of leather coat. "We're screwed, aren't we."
Tenpou deliberately misunderstood. "We have friends who'll be looking for us."
"Yeah." Kenren patted his hip pocket automatically, as he'd been doing perhaps four times an hour since they'd been locked in the cell. His cigarettes failed to miraculously appear this time, just as they had done all the times before. "We do. But -- shit, Tenpou. We've both pulled fast ones before, but doing what Litouten's just done, open arrest like this -- if he could do that, he might do anything."
I underestimated him. "He might," Tenpou agreed. It takes a very special sort of mind to completely ignore the rules and playing board and pieces, and simply use a sword on the opponent. A sword called Nataku. "He might have us executed."
"Yeah." Kenren contemplated the opposite wall.
"Too late now."
Kenren half grinned. "It always was, Marshal. We both knew that."
Tenpou's heart lifted oddly. "I suppose we did."
"You reckon it's going to be official or unofficial?"
Tenpou considered. "Official. We're going to be an example."
"And the charges?"
"Does it matter?"
"Hell, yeah. What if Goujun walks in? What if your friend Konzen's managed to get some sort of hearing?"
Tenpou shifted position so that he was leaning against Kenren, feeling the other man's body warm through the layers of clothing, an inch of heat against the miles of cold stone walls around them. And what if not? He'd wondered about death for far too long now. He'd seen other people meet it, from deliberate action or from pure chance, and still he knew nothing about it. What happens then? What's beyond that sudden moment when the light goes away and the body is emptied? He didn't want to die, but that had never stopped him wondering.
And what if? He wanted to live. No. I'm not giving up yet.
"We can have Zenon called," he suggested. "Have him questioned. Even if he's gone down to Earth, they should be able to locate him. Failing that, we get Goujun-sama to challenge Litouten's evidence -- that is, we suggest that he does so."
"Failing that?"
"We dive down the chamber pot and swim for safety?"
Even in the darkness of the cell, even with his eyes shut, he could feel Kenren giving him a very expressive look. "Marshal, I like staying clean."
"Oh yes. I quite forgot." He smiled. "Excuse me."
---
When the guards came for Kenren and Tenpou, they left the shackles on them, and didn't even offer them the chance to clean themselves or brush off their clothing. Kenren spared a thought for Tenpou, whose white lab coat had suffered more than his own black greatcoat, then glanced over the troop of a dozen men. He didn't recognize any of them. Fair enough; Litouten really would have to be a moron to put some of the Western Army on this detail.
The men were avoiding his gaze. Shit. That was bad.
He followed Tenpou up a winding succession of stairs, some of them painfully familiar -- why yes, this was the flight which he'd been helped to fall down several times on his previous visit to the cells. It was enough to make a man nostalgic.
Zenon wasn't with the squad this time. Guess he's got something more important to be taking care of for Litouten. Or perhaps it was a precaution on Litouten's part. A subordinate who wasn't around couldn't be conveniently questioned. Damn.
They were on ground level now, and sunset light was streaming through the windows that they passed. He hadn't thought that they'd been that long in the dungeon. It hadn't seemed like most of a day.
He was in step with Tenpou, of course, though neither of them chose to glance at the other. The guards around them held to a slow ceremonial pace -- look, here are the condemned prisoners, being marched through the palace as a fine example -- and the whole thing had the air of a funeral cortege. Except that nobody dies in Heaven.
But there are always exceptions. Tenpou would probably be able to quote them if someone let him near the records piled in his study, and if anyone could dig him out once he'd started checking them, and been distracted, and started on another paper trail in search of fascinating mortal wars . . . The thought made Kenren smile.
The audience hall was full of courtiers and senior officers. He kept the cheerful smile pinned to his face, but his eyes flickered from side to side as he and Tenpou were marched up the main aisle, to where Litouten stood before the Emperor's throne. Nobody was talking. There wasn't even the usual half-whispered buzz of comment and carping.
They're all too scared, he thought, too scared even to make the noises that would please the Great Minister. And then he saw who was standing next to Litouten, and his stomach clenched with some of the purest and most absolute rage that he had ever felt.
Homura. Their toushin taishi. Damn it all to hell. He had never thought that much of the kid, but he hadn't expected such a betrayal as this.
---
Tenpou wished it was possible to adjust his glasses. As it was, with his hands manacled behind his back, the usual small movements of his hands, the casual polishing of lenses, the little gestures of shifting his glasses up the bridge of his nose, all were impossible. He had no way to make those casual indications of how harmless he was, or to buy a few moments of time to think.
You knew he was ambitious. Homura's eyes burned with impatience to be doing. To be killing. You knew who he was and what he was, and you put him into this position, and you were not there when Litouten spoke to him, and Litouten has managed to deceive older men than he is, and now you may just have arranged your own death, Tenpou Gensui. Though, come to think of it, why not simply use Nataku? What had happened in their absence?
He and Kenren both went down on one knee before the Throne, before the guards could have any excuse to force them down and demonstrate their lack of proper behaviour. He was grateful for Kenren's silence.
Though right now I need a cigarette . . .
"Before your throne, Majesty, you see the two criminals," Litouten declaimed ringingly. Clearly they'd missed the beginning of the speech. Tenpou hoped the charges were going to be summarised at the end. Come to that, he hoped this wasn't going to be the sort of show trial that had the criminals brought on stage directly before their execution; he'd read about a few of those, and while they usually displayed good stage management on the part of the organisers, it reduced his and Kenren's chances.
So was Litouten going to want to see them squirm, or was he going to be expedient about it?
Tenpou was used to life-and-death chances, but those had always been elsewhere, Under Heaven, with weapons to hand, and not quite so utterly helpless, and not with Kenren's life so ultimately at stake besides his own. He swallowed down a moment of fear, and tried to think of it as a technical problem, as distant as his scrolls and documents. Something which he was reading about, which had happened to someone else a long time ago.
His eyes strayed to Homura. The toushin had no uncertainty about him at all. Idly he wondered what Litouten had promised him, and if there was any way to counter it.
Really, Marshal, you'd negotiate on the brink of death, wouldn't you?
Of course I would, he answered himself silently, and almost smiled.
Litouten was coming to the end of his peroration. Offenses against the good order of Heaven. Well, that could fit anything. Disobedience to proper authority. The Great Minister, of course, being that proper authority. Conspiracy and treasonous intention against . . . Nice elision there; Litouten was having to work on the superlatives, but since pretty much any potential treason reflected all the way up to the Emperor himself, it could be charged as such.
". . . and with the greatest of sorrow at the profound betrayal of trust inherent in the actions of these treasonous offenders against your merciful rule . . ."
Something must have happened to Nataku. That was the only thing which would explain his absence. Of course, Litouten might have both toushins yoked to his rule, and deliberately have chosen Homura to execute the two of them in order to watch their faces while he did it. Still -- it seemed something of a risk, and indeed this whole affair felt a little rushed. He wondered why.
And you'd be curious on the brink of death, too?
Of course. Well, of course.
". . . can only recommend their immediate execution."
What a pity. Litouten was going to be expedient.
Tenpou weighed his chances of a desperate appeal, and felt Kenren tensing beside him -- and then paused at the sudden deeper silence which had gripped the hall, broken by the quick pulse of striding boots on the marble floor.
---
It was apparently true. Goujun took the scene in at a glance. Tenpou Gensui and Kenren Taishou on their knees, his men chained like common criminals, and the Great Minister Litouten on the steps above them, satisfaction in every line of his face and posture. The toushin taishi Homura stood nearby, large hands folded around the hilt of his drawn sword. Surprise on all their faces, even the Emperor's own, at this sudden intrusive entry of his.
Well and good. He bridled down his rage, difficult as the task was, and strode through the silent ranks of kami towards the throne. They shifted aside, even though he stayed in the centre of the aisle, as though they could feel the blaze of his wrath from several paces distance.
He stopped besides his Marshal and his General, glancing down at them for a moment to be sure that they were unharmed. A few bruises, apparently, but nothing else. The General's mouth curled into an inappropriate smirk, as though he were remembering the last time that Goujun had been forced to retrieve him from imprisonment. Perhaps he had done something to warrant it this time, as well -- no, Goujun could not believe that even he would be so foolish, or put the Marshal in this sort of danger. As for the Marshal, Tenpou Gensui's eyes were dark behind his glasses, as dark as the iron beneath the mountains, and there was something in them which was like a warning.
Foolishness. It seems I am only just in time.
"Imperial Majesty," he said, and gave the proper obeisance. "I come to ask by what right two of my officers, under my command and in my service, are brought before you in this way, against the known custom of Heaven, and without the established law. They have been arrested without due process, and taken into prison without their superior officer being informed; they have been brought before you without proper trial," a guess, but Litouten's face said it all, "and I believe them innocent of any accusations of treason."
For Tenpou Gensui might do many things, but the deliberate betrayal of Heaven was not one of them. He knew this; he remembered earlier conversations with the kami, the look in the man's eyes, the understanding and acknowledgement of responsibility.
"I respectfully ask your Imperial Majesty's consideration in this matter," he finished, and waited for the Emperor's reply.
Litouten turned to the itan Homura, and said simply, "Cut him down."
And apparently the Great Minister had lost his mind before the whole court . . .
Homura moved in a flicker of motion, as quick as a serpent, and
this doesn't happen
his blade slid into Goujun's chest
this can't happen
and blood ran out down the blade and onto the hilt and this was impossible, a dragon could not be slain so easily. He raised a hand to catch at the sword, but weakness was pulling him down to the ground, and he knew more than felt himself slip to his knees as the sword slid out of him again.
The toushin Homura was looking down at him with a strange mixture of humour and casual efficiency, as though killing one of the dragon kings
but we can't just die like this
were nothing more than any piece of slaughter. Tenpou and Kenren were both saying something, he could hear them through the hammering of his blood in his ears, and as he slumped further down he saw Tenpou's face for a moment. The sheer appalled rage in the kami's eyes was clear and absolute, and self-directed as much as at Litouten and the toushin.
So this was what it was like when Heaven fell.
My brothers. If not . . .
It was darker than the deepest seas here. He had come to protect his men, he had business here that was not yet finished. Goujun was still trying to speak when the silence finally closed over him.
---
"You bastard!" Kenren struggled to get to his feet, never mind the Emperor, never mind propriety and everything else that went with it, never mind any hope of proper appeal or mercy. He just wanted to reach Homura and wipe that stinking ignorant smile off his mouth. His action took the guards by surprise, stunned as they still were, and he managed to be standing face to face with Homura before they could jostle into action. "He never did anything to you," he spat at the toushin.
Homura shrugged, and didn't even bother to take a step backwards, as though to emphasise Kenren's utter irrelevance. He shrugged. That was all.
The guards had him by the shoulders now, and forced him down to his knees again. Goujun lay in front of him and Tenpou -- what, you felt you had to go first or something, Goujun-sama? Really, it wasn't necessary -- and the blood that stained his white raiment was the same shade as his open, blank crimson eyes.
Litouten had taken a couple of steps up towards the Emperor, and was speaking hastily and quietly, just a shade too softly for Kenren to hear. Justifying his actions, probably. Promising evidence that Goujun was implicated. Getting permission to go on to the main event.
He tilted a glance sideways, and saw that the guards were restraining Tenpou as well, their hands forcing his shoulders down so that he couldn't even try to get to his feet. Well, screw that escape attempt. Hell, we were screwed anyhow.
Tenpou looked up and met his eyes. There was the blazing anger which he knew so well how to recognise, yes, humming like a wheel in a millrace, but there was also something which he was less used to, and that was the other's knowledge of failure. He remembered Tenpou's voice once. It happened that I let a man of mine die . . .
"Hey," he said softly, under the buzz of horrified whispered conversation, "I knew what I was doing, right? Now if a certain officer of mine had done what I wanted him to and kept his sorry ass out of trouble --"
"Hnh." Something went out of Tenpou's face, leaving behind the anger and the intelligence and all the other things he had known, but no longer that dreadful despair. "Still . . ." He nodded towards the Dragon King. "I wish . . ."
"Yeah." Kenren left it at that.
"Execute the sentence." Litouten had turned away from the Emperor, and was giving orders again. Kenren glanced at the Minister for a moment, then looked away. He wouldn't give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing his last resentment. He glared up at Homura instead.
I always thought it'd be on the battlefield Down Under, or maybe in a pretty woman's bed. Figures that I had to screw up.
"Any last words?" Homura asked, balancing the sword between his hands as though it weighed nothing at all. Lighter than a feather. Heavier than a mountain? No. He doesn't know anything about that. Probably he was supposed to gratify Litouten with a plea for mercy, or the Court with some sort of last words to Tenpou, or Homura himself by just looking up at him.
"I hope your next fucking cup of wine chokes you," Kenren said, and looked down at the ground in front of him.
Darkness.
---
Perhaps the blood would stain the floor permanently; there was enough of it to gratify Litouten's wildest dreams of shaking Heaven. Tenpou chose not to look at what was left of Kenren after that single downward blow of Homura's sword.
He looked around him instead, at the courtiers shocked into silence, the Emperor on his throne as though it removed him from the rest of the Universe, the marble of the ceiling and the walls, the sleeves of his guards and their hands on his shoulders, Litouten smiling and smiling and smiling as though he would never stop, Goujun-sama still with that expression of surprise and astonishment on his face, the blood that was slowly staining its way across the white skirts of his own lab coat, as though he were a man packing his bags for a long journey.
Homura sauntered over to stand beside him. The toushin's sword was a beautiful thing, a flame forged into the shape of a blade, with ripples moving down it like dragons twisting deep within.
"A pity," he said quietly, too softly for Litouten to catch the words unless the Minister chose to strain to hear. "But we all knew this sort of thing might happen. I'll make sure it's quick. The least I can do for you, Marshal."
Tenpou met Homura's eyes, and they were full of fire. Half a dozen things to say spiralled through his mind, but he set them aside one after the other, all of them too petty or too small against the immensity of this change, this shaking of the foundations of Heaven. You don't realise what you're doing, and I am not sure which of us to blame for this; me for offering it to you, Litouten for giving you a better price, you for listening to both of us, or all of us for creating this between us and letting it play itself out. I could pity you. You're going to have to live in what you've helped make.
"It won't be quick," Tenpou said. These things will work themselves out, and the only thing I know now is that blood will be involved. There was a ripple of movement and voices at the edge of the hall. He paid it no heed, and turned his eyes from Homura to look at Goujun-sama instead. It was another piece of anger to take with him; that this person, the least involved, the one who had chosen nevertheless to act for what he believed to be the proper reasons, the proper order of Heaven and Earth, had been the first to pay. "But I will remember the thought in any case --"
Darkness.
---
The child enters the chamber at a run, panting and gasping, having followed the furious presence in white -- scary -- who knew so precisely where he was going. He fights his way through the legs of the courtiers in front of him, the guards, the mob, to see the blood and the bodies.
"Ken nii-chan. Ten-chan . . ."
The itan screams. The burning inside him will not accept this. It runs through his body in rioting fire until the diadem around his head is singing with the force of its vibration, taut against his skin and
shaking
itself
to
pieces
and it flies apart and the sound as its broken pieces ring against the marble floor cuts through the commotion of his unseemly entrance and is audible even through his scream.
The air around him is full of heat. People are burning.
The monster smiles. Chaos is loose in Heaven.
---
Homura looked up as he shook the blood from his sword, and moved one casually fastidious foot away from the spreading pool on the floor, wondering what the confusion over towards the door was. He recognised the child, of course -- the little itan pet of Konzen Douji's -- and for a moment he spared a fragment of pity that the child should see such things. Reason enough for him to scream. Reason enough for him to cry.
Perhaps someone should summon Konzen Douji to take his pet away.
The blast of raging energy which abruptly roiled around the itan shattered the crowd like a stroke of lightning, sending them running in all directions, screaming and babbling like sheep. Homura leaned on his sword, and curiously watched the guards running towards the itan a bare second later; just as much sheep in their own way, easily directed and commanded.
He looked down at the bodies at his feet. And I -- I am the wolf of Heaven . . .
There was barely time for him to react, barely even time for him to register surprise. The itan came through the soldiers like a child running through flowers, ripping them apart as he ran, and any courtiers who had not yet managed to get out of the way, all of them, casually, eagerly, his eyes glittering and golden and far stranger even than the youkai whom Homura had cut down in the past. Blood trailed from his long-nailed hands, dewing the bodies which he left behind, and he came for Litouten with all the speed and grace of a perfect storm.
Homura brought his blade up in a low sweep, and it rang against the itan's claws, and the air around the two of them hummed in sympathy.
Litouten was screaming for help. Yes, that was it. He was calling Homura to defend him, and truly, Homura would have listened, but he had no time to do so, because now he was fighting for his life.
And -- and he isn't even particularly trying to kill me -- he just wants to get past me --
This was wrong. He was the toushin taishi and this could not be happening.
If he had previously thought that he was fast, he was now taught otherwise. One moment the creature was directly in front of him, clawing at his face, and he had to parry and twist aside, and the next moment it was curving round him, moving too fast, and he had to spin and drop and try a neck-or-nothing strike to force the other a pace back, and only in the next breath did he feel the cool air against his skin of his back, and the fresh running blood where a long claw had sliced skin open.
Footsteps behind him, running away. Litouten trying to escape, of course, and why should the Great Minister stay and hold his ground when there was a toushin here to do the killing for him? Except --
The creature jumped directly over him, hanging poised in the air for a single long breath, just that fraction too fast for Homura to be able to stop him. It took Litouten down as a hound takes down a hare, coming down on him in a bright flurry of teeth and claws that only gave the Great Minister time for a brief scream.
---
Konzen stood in the archway and watched the butchery.
His aunt's voice echoed in his mind, returned to haunt him now that it was too late.
this animal -- ferocious for all that it's so small
"Gokuu," he said.
It had taken too long to follow the child, let alone the Dragon King, and then the great crowd trying to flee through the doors, forcing him back and making him fight for every step forward as he had never had to fight before, Konzen Douji the Bodhisattva's nephew, and all of it to find them all dead, and this transformed Gokuu playing in the blood. The Emperor fled, and all those courtiers or officers with any sense gone with him, and all the rest dead. Dead, here in Heaven. Killed. Slain. By Gokuu.
There wasn't supposed to be death in Heaven; it was not how things were. Someone must have invited it in, held the door open to let it come walking down the marble corridors and leave this unseemly
I will not let the magnitude of what has happened touch me, I will not let it stop me, but how can such a thing happen, how can all the laws be broken, how can people I know be turned into lumps of flesh
foulness behind it.
Tenpou. Kenren Taishou. Goujun-sama. Goujun-sama at least was seemly in his death, and might have been sleeping if not for the blood.
Blood was everywhere. It was so omnipresent that it almost overran the senses and became merely part of the background, as natural as the silk and marble.
Tenpou and Kenren -- their heads were separate from their bodies
but that would mean they're dead
and the bodies were lumps of meat, but the faces, the faces were still recognisable, still open-eyed, and it seemed so utterly wrong that heads could be separate from bodies like that and it meant that they were dead
and they're gone
and this was not a thing that could happen in Heaven.
Konzen held himself together and clung to composure, wrapping himself in it for as long as was necessary.
"Gokuu!" he called, louder. He could see the toushin Homura standing to one side, breathing in great gasps of air, blood running from a long gash across his back, a burning sword unsheathed between his hands.
Gokuu turned to look at him, golden eyes slitted and fey.
"Stupid monkey." His sandals were loud on the marble floor as he walked towards the child. "I told you to stay with me."
"Don't." Homura's voice cut through the air like a blow. "It's insane. Stay back."
"What? So you can . . ." He nearly said, kill him, and then he looked at Homura's eyes for the first time, saw the blazing rage and offended pride and sheer fear-spawned horror there, and realised that was exactly what Homura wanted to do. "No," he answered himself, and his voice made the air tremble just as Homura's had done.
"It's insane."
"He's Gokuu," Konzen said, and deliberately turned away.
A breath of air rippled through the room as Homura raised his sword again. "Don't be a fool, Konzen Douji."
Konzen looked at Gokuu now, at the child he had thought that he knew. The stupid monkey. The little creature from Down Below where things were simpler. He didn't have the time to spare for regrets for Tenpou or Kenren or even Goujun-sama now; their deaths seemed all of a piece with this greater devastation, all of it embodied in this sudden change in Gokuu from natural kindness to bloodstained smiles.
Can I be the sun for you? It's the other way round. Stupid monkey, did you think you could leave me behind that easily?
"Gokuu," he called. "Get over here! You and I have unfinished business."
Gokuu moved in a quick gust of wind, faster than Konzen's eyes could follow, and was standing in front of him an instant later. There was still no recognition in his eyes; he tilted his head like a child who has seen a new toy, and reached one hand out towards Konzen's hair.
The stench of blood filled Konzen's nostrils, and he struggled not to gag. In what was simple instinct rather than calculated thought, he reached out to touch Gokuu's forehead, to try to calm him.
this animal
Homura's cry of warning came at the same moment as Gokuu's blow, a long-clawed swipe that cut across Konzen's body from breastbone to hip, that ran across him like a scream of agony and took the strength from him and left him falling to the floor. Stupid -- the provoked animal reacted on instinct too, it saw you move, it hit out -- Gokuu, you idiot, how am I to look after you if you keep on doing things like this --
-- and now the pain was going away and taking the sunlight with it, but it was too soon, he had to look after Gokuu, and he hadn't finished, he hadn't finished, damn it . . .
---
The creature turned away from Konzen Douji's body to look at Homura again.
Well, that settled it. It was insane. It had struck down the only person who had tried -- who would try -- to treat it like a rational entity. Homura knew his duty.
"Gokuu," Homura said, his voice caressing, and watched it focus on him.
But the wound on his back was bleeding, and it said, the creature is faster than you, this creature is stronger than you, and if you go against it you will die.
"No. No, I will not be made light of again." He spoke as much to himself as to the monster. He had set aside these fears when he chose to take Litouten's offer, when he accepted his position and power. He was no longer the child who sat in a prison cell and dreamed of sunlight, no longer the powerless wanderer of Heaven, no longer -- and it had been so long since he thought of her -- the lover who had been helpless to save Rinrei. He was Homura, and the word Homura meant power now to anyone with understanding. "I am Homura, I am toushin taishi, and you have offended Heaven."
His words rang in the quiet chamber.
And as I break you, he vowed, so I shall break Heaven and anyone who dares resist me.
It attacked in a whirl of claws, each blow hard enough to stagger him, and first he was retreating one pace, then two, and each step was a fracture in the wall of his courage.
Step. A blow. A line of blood. The knowledge that it could touch him. Step. Another blow. Muscle ripped. The knowledge that he could be touched. Step. And the darkness was waiting behind him, the silence of prison walls, the knowledge of helplessness, and still he could not reach it, he could not wound it, he could not even make it hesitate.
It had no fear of the flame of his sword -- no, it had no fear of anything of his, it had no fear of him. It was not a thing of Heaven.
Thoughts fluttered and stormed like bats. If he could not defeat this creature, what then? He was the toushin, Heaven's executioner, the warrior dipped in blood, the powerful one --
Litouten's tool, something at the back of his mind whispered, or the tool of anyone who chose to use you
-- the strong one admired by all --
the sword feared by those who feared your master
-- respected --
feared
-- powerful --
as powerless as ever
-- the man --
the child.
Perhaps, perhaps if he released his own shackles . . .
The thought in itself was a great widening breach in the wall of his determination, an realisation of defeat. The fraction of hesitation which came with it was enough for the creature to grasp his left arm at elbow and wrist, and twist it till bone and sinew cracked and tore, and it smiled at his cry of agony, it smiled, and it didn't even know who he was, it couldn't care less who he was, the word Homura meant nothing to it, it simply struck down an enemy. It tore at his flesh and he bled, it slammed its fists into him and his bones shattered, it beat at him and he knew that he had lost and that he was as void of power as he had ever been. It struck him down to the floor and it wound its hands into his chains as a child might, and he did not have the strength to try to force the biting chain from his own throat as the world slowly flowered into light.
Why should help come now? Homura wondered slowly as the light took the creature in its hands and cast it down to the floor and tamed it once again. . It's too late. They've all gone. And life is full of partings.
---
"So it's started? I won't stop it and I won't save you. This battle belongs to all of you now."
---
The shackles weren't like Homura's. They weren't graceful or elegant. They were heavy and efficient and short-chained. They kept Tenpou's arms behind him, rather than allowing any flowing gestures or meaningful waves, and while they might demonstrate the respect -- or even fear -- that Litouten and Zenon had for them, they made it hard to sit down comfortably.
"Guard's still there," Kenren reported, not for the first time.
"Anh. So they're not coming to fetch us yet." Tenpou pointed one foot at the flagstones next to him. "Have a seat."
Kenren dropped down in a swish of leather coat. "We're screwed, aren't we."
Tenpou deliberately misunderstood. "We have friends who'll be looking for us."
"Yeah." Kenren patted his hip pocket automatically, as he'd been doing perhaps four times an hour since they'd been locked in the cell. His cigarettes failed to miraculously appear this time, just as they had done all the times before. "We do. But -- shit, Tenpou. We've both pulled fast ones before, but doing what Litouten's just done, open arrest like this -- if he could do that, he might do anything."
I underestimated him. "He might," Tenpou agreed. It takes a very special sort of mind to completely ignore the rules and playing board and pieces, and simply use a sword on the opponent. A sword called Nataku. "He might have us executed."
"Yeah." Kenren contemplated the opposite wall.
"Too late now."
Kenren half grinned. "It always was, Marshal. We both knew that."
Tenpou's heart lifted oddly. "I suppose we did."
"You reckon it's going to be official or unofficial?"
Tenpou considered. "Official. We're going to be an example."
"And the charges?"
"Does it matter?"
"Hell, yeah. What if Goujun walks in? What if your friend Konzen's managed to get some sort of hearing?"
Tenpou shifted position so that he was leaning against Kenren, feeling the other man's body warm through the layers of clothing, an inch of heat against the miles of cold stone walls around them. And what if not? He'd wondered about death for far too long now. He'd seen other people meet it, from deliberate action or from pure chance, and still he knew nothing about it. What happens then? What's beyond that sudden moment when the light goes away and the body is emptied? He didn't want to die, but that had never stopped him wondering.
And what if? He wanted to live. No. I'm not giving up yet.
"We can have Zenon called," he suggested. "Have him questioned. Even if he's gone down to Earth, they should be able to locate him. Failing that, we get Goujun-sama to challenge Litouten's evidence -- that is, we suggest that he does so."
"Failing that?"
"We dive down the chamber pot and swim for safety?"
Even in the darkness of the cell, even with his eyes shut, he could feel Kenren giving him a very expressive look. "Marshal, I like staying clean."
"Oh yes. I quite forgot." He smiled. "Excuse me."
---
When the guards came for Kenren and Tenpou, they left the shackles on them, and didn't even offer them the chance to clean themselves or brush off their clothing. Kenren spared a thought for Tenpou, whose white lab coat had suffered more than his own black greatcoat, then glanced over the troop of a dozen men. He didn't recognize any of them. Fair enough; Litouten really would have to be a moron to put some of the Western Army on this detail.
The men were avoiding his gaze. Shit. That was bad.
He followed Tenpou up a winding succession of stairs, some of them painfully familiar -- why yes, this was the flight which he'd been helped to fall down several times on his previous visit to the cells. It was enough to make a man nostalgic.
Zenon wasn't with the squad this time. Guess he's got something more important to be taking care of for Litouten. Or perhaps it was a precaution on Litouten's part. A subordinate who wasn't around couldn't be conveniently questioned. Damn.
They were on ground level now, and sunset light was streaming through the windows that they passed. He hadn't thought that they'd been that long in the dungeon. It hadn't seemed like most of a day.
He was in step with Tenpou, of course, though neither of them chose to glance at the other. The guards around them held to a slow ceremonial pace -- look, here are the condemned prisoners, being marched through the palace as a fine example -- and the whole thing had the air of a funeral cortege. Except that nobody dies in Heaven.
But there are always exceptions. Tenpou would probably be able to quote them if someone let him near the records piled in his study, and if anyone could dig him out once he'd started checking them, and been distracted, and started on another paper trail in search of fascinating mortal wars . . . The thought made Kenren smile.
The audience hall was full of courtiers and senior officers. He kept the cheerful smile pinned to his face, but his eyes flickered from side to side as he and Tenpou were marched up the main aisle, to where Litouten stood before the Emperor's throne. Nobody was talking. There wasn't even the usual half-whispered buzz of comment and carping.
They're all too scared, he thought, too scared even to make the noises that would please the Great Minister. And then he saw who was standing next to Litouten, and his stomach clenched with some of the purest and most absolute rage that he had ever felt.
Homura. Their toushin taishi. Damn it all to hell. He had never thought that much of the kid, but he hadn't expected such a betrayal as this.
---
Tenpou wished it was possible to adjust his glasses. As it was, with his hands manacled behind his back, the usual small movements of his hands, the casual polishing of lenses, the little gestures of shifting his glasses up the bridge of his nose, all were impossible. He had no way to make those casual indications of how harmless he was, or to buy a few moments of time to think.
You knew he was ambitious. Homura's eyes burned with impatience to be doing. To be killing. You knew who he was and what he was, and you put him into this position, and you were not there when Litouten spoke to him, and Litouten has managed to deceive older men than he is, and now you may just have arranged your own death, Tenpou Gensui. Though, come to think of it, why not simply use Nataku? What had happened in their absence?
He and Kenren both went down on one knee before the Throne, before the guards could have any excuse to force them down and demonstrate their lack of proper behaviour. He was grateful for Kenren's silence.
Though right now I need a cigarette . . .
"Before your throne, Majesty, you see the two criminals," Litouten declaimed ringingly. Clearly they'd missed the beginning of the speech. Tenpou hoped the charges were going to be summarised at the end. Come to that, he hoped this wasn't going to be the sort of show trial that had the criminals brought on stage directly before their execution; he'd read about a few of those, and while they usually displayed good stage management on the part of the organisers, it reduced his and Kenren's chances.
So was Litouten going to want to see them squirm, or was he going to be expedient about it?
Tenpou was used to life-and-death chances, but those had always been elsewhere, Under Heaven, with weapons to hand, and not quite so utterly helpless, and not with Kenren's life so ultimately at stake besides his own. He swallowed down a moment of fear, and tried to think of it as a technical problem, as distant as his scrolls and documents. Something which he was reading about, which had happened to someone else a long time ago.
His eyes strayed to Homura. The toushin had no uncertainty about him at all. Idly he wondered what Litouten had promised him, and if there was any way to counter it.
Really, Marshal, you'd negotiate on the brink of death, wouldn't you?
Of course I would, he answered himself silently, and almost smiled.
Litouten was coming to the end of his peroration. Offenses against the good order of Heaven. Well, that could fit anything. Disobedience to proper authority. The Great Minister, of course, being that proper authority. Conspiracy and treasonous intention against . . . Nice elision there; Litouten was having to work on the superlatives, but since pretty much any potential treason reflected all the way up to the Emperor himself, it could be charged as such.
". . . and with the greatest of sorrow at the profound betrayal of trust inherent in the actions of these treasonous offenders against your merciful rule . . ."
Something must have happened to Nataku. That was the only thing which would explain his absence. Of course, Litouten might have both toushins yoked to his rule, and deliberately have chosen Homura to execute the two of them in order to watch their faces while he did it. Still -- it seemed something of a risk, and indeed this whole affair felt a little rushed. He wondered why.
And you'd be curious on the brink of death, too?
Of course. Well, of course.
". . . can only recommend their immediate execution."
What a pity. Litouten was going to be expedient.
Tenpou weighed his chances of a desperate appeal, and felt Kenren tensing beside him -- and then paused at the sudden deeper silence which had gripped the hall, broken by the quick pulse of striding boots on the marble floor.
---
It was apparently true. Goujun took the scene in at a glance. Tenpou Gensui and Kenren Taishou on their knees, his men chained like common criminals, and the Great Minister Litouten on the steps above them, satisfaction in every line of his face and posture. The toushin taishi Homura stood nearby, large hands folded around the hilt of his drawn sword. Surprise on all their faces, even the Emperor's own, at this sudden intrusive entry of his.
Well and good. He bridled down his rage, difficult as the task was, and strode through the silent ranks of kami towards the throne. They shifted aside, even though he stayed in the centre of the aisle, as though they could feel the blaze of his wrath from several paces distance.
He stopped besides his Marshal and his General, glancing down at them for a moment to be sure that they were unharmed. A few bruises, apparently, but nothing else. The General's mouth curled into an inappropriate smirk, as though he were remembering the last time that Goujun had been forced to retrieve him from imprisonment. Perhaps he had done something to warrant it this time, as well -- no, Goujun could not believe that even he would be so foolish, or put the Marshal in this sort of danger. As for the Marshal, Tenpou Gensui's eyes were dark behind his glasses, as dark as the iron beneath the mountains, and there was something in them which was like a warning.
Foolishness. It seems I am only just in time.
"Imperial Majesty," he said, and gave the proper obeisance. "I come to ask by what right two of my officers, under my command and in my service, are brought before you in this way, against the known custom of Heaven, and without the established law. They have been arrested without due process, and taken into prison without their superior officer being informed; they have been brought before you without proper trial," a guess, but Litouten's face said it all, "and I believe them innocent of any accusations of treason."
For Tenpou Gensui might do many things, but the deliberate betrayal of Heaven was not one of them. He knew this; he remembered earlier conversations with the kami, the look in the man's eyes, the understanding and acknowledgement of responsibility.
"I respectfully ask your Imperial Majesty's consideration in this matter," he finished, and waited for the Emperor's reply.
Litouten turned to the itan Homura, and said simply, "Cut him down."
And apparently the Great Minister had lost his mind before the whole court . . .
Homura moved in a flicker of motion, as quick as a serpent, and
this doesn't happen
his blade slid into Goujun's chest
this can't happen
and blood ran out down the blade and onto the hilt and this was impossible, a dragon could not be slain so easily. He raised a hand to catch at the sword, but weakness was pulling him down to the ground, and he knew more than felt himself slip to his knees as the sword slid out of him again.
The toushin Homura was looking down at him with a strange mixture of humour and casual efficiency, as though killing one of the dragon kings
but we can't just die like this
were nothing more than any piece of slaughter. Tenpou and Kenren were both saying something, he could hear them through the hammering of his blood in his ears, and as he slumped further down he saw Tenpou's face for a moment. The sheer appalled rage in the kami's eyes was clear and absolute, and self-directed as much as at Litouten and the toushin.
So this was what it was like when Heaven fell.
My brothers. If not . . .
It was darker than the deepest seas here. He had come to protect his men, he had business here that was not yet finished. Goujun was still trying to speak when the silence finally closed over him.
---
"You bastard!" Kenren struggled to get to his feet, never mind the Emperor, never mind propriety and everything else that went with it, never mind any hope of proper appeal or mercy. He just wanted to reach Homura and wipe that stinking ignorant smile off his mouth. His action took the guards by surprise, stunned as they still were, and he managed to be standing face to face with Homura before they could jostle into action. "He never did anything to you," he spat at the toushin.
Homura shrugged, and didn't even bother to take a step backwards, as though to emphasise Kenren's utter irrelevance. He shrugged. That was all.
The guards had him by the shoulders now, and forced him down to his knees again. Goujun lay in front of him and Tenpou -- what, you felt you had to go first or something, Goujun-sama? Really, it wasn't necessary -- and the blood that stained his white raiment was the same shade as his open, blank crimson eyes.
Litouten had taken a couple of steps up towards the Emperor, and was speaking hastily and quietly, just a shade too softly for Kenren to hear. Justifying his actions, probably. Promising evidence that Goujun was implicated. Getting permission to go on to the main event.
He tilted a glance sideways, and saw that the guards were restraining Tenpou as well, their hands forcing his shoulders down so that he couldn't even try to get to his feet. Well, screw that escape attempt. Hell, we were screwed anyhow.
Tenpou looked up and met his eyes. There was the blazing anger which he knew so well how to recognise, yes, humming like a wheel in a millrace, but there was also something which he was less used to, and that was the other's knowledge of failure. He remembered Tenpou's voice once. It happened that I let a man of mine die . . .
"Hey," he said softly, under the buzz of horrified whispered conversation, "I knew what I was doing, right? Now if a certain officer of mine had done what I wanted him to and kept his sorry ass out of trouble --"
"Hnh." Something went out of Tenpou's face, leaving behind the anger and the intelligence and all the other things he had known, but no longer that dreadful despair. "Still . . ." He nodded towards the Dragon King. "I wish . . ."
"Yeah." Kenren left it at that.
"Execute the sentence." Litouten had turned away from the Emperor, and was giving orders again. Kenren glanced at the Minister for a moment, then looked away. He wouldn't give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing his last resentment. He glared up at Homura instead.
I always thought it'd be on the battlefield Down Under, or maybe in a pretty woman's bed. Figures that I had to screw up.
"Any last words?" Homura asked, balancing the sword between his hands as though it weighed nothing at all. Lighter than a feather. Heavier than a mountain? No. He doesn't know anything about that. Probably he was supposed to gratify Litouten with a plea for mercy, or the Court with some sort of last words to Tenpou, or Homura himself by just looking up at him.
"I hope your next fucking cup of wine chokes you," Kenren said, and looked down at the ground in front of him.
Darkness.
---
Perhaps the blood would stain the floor permanently; there was enough of it to gratify Litouten's wildest dreams of shaking Heaven. Tenpou chose not to look at what was left of Kenren after that single downward blow of Homura's sword.
He looked around him instead, at the courtiers shocked into silence, the Emperor on his throne as though it removed him from the rest of the Universe, the marble of the ceiling and the walls, the sleeves of his guards and their hands on his shoulders, Litouten smiling and smiling and smiling as though he would never stop, Goujun-sama still with that expression of surprise and astonishment on his face, the blood that was slowly staining its way across the white skirts of his own lab coat, as though he were a man packing his bags for a long journey.
Homura sauntered over to stand beside him. The toushin's sword was a beautiful thing, a flame forged into the shape of a blade, with ripples moving down it like dragons twisting deep within.
"A pity," he said quietly, too softly for Litouten to catch the words unless the Minister chose to strain to hear. "But we all knew this sort of thing might happen. I'll make sure it's quick. The least I can do for you, Marshal."
Tenpou met Homura's eyes, and they were full of fire. Half a dozen things to say spiralled through his mind, but he set them aside one after the other, all of them too petty or too small against the immensity of this change, this shaking of the foundations of Heaven. You don't realise what you're doing, and I am not sure which of us to blame for this; me for offering it to you, Litouten for giving you a better price, you for listening to both of us, or all of us for creating this between us and letting it play itself out. I could pity you. You're going to have to live in what you've helped make.
"It won't be quick," Tenpou said. These things will work themselves out, and the only thing I know now is that blood will be involved. There was a ripple of movement and voices at the edge of the hall. He paid it no heed, and turned his eyes from Homura to look at Goujun-sama instead. It was another piece of anger to take with him; that this person, the least involved, the one who had chosen nevertheless to act for what he believed to be the proper reasons, the proper order of Heaven and Earth, had been the first to pay. "But I will remember the thought in any case --"
Darkness.
---
The child enters the chamber at a run, panting and gasping, having followed the furious presence in white -- scary -- who knew so precisely where he was going. He fights his way through the legs of the courtiers in front of him, the guards, the mob, to see the blood and the bodies.
"Ken nii-chan. Ten-chan . . ."
The itan screams. The burning inside him will not accept this. It runs through his body in rioting fire until the diadem around his head is singing with the force of its vibration, taut against his skin and
shaking
itself
to
pieces
and it flies apart and the sound as its broken pieces ring against the marble floor cuts through the commotion of his unseemly entrance and is audible even through his scream.
The air around him is full of heat. People are burning.
The monster smiles. Chaos is loose in Heaven.
---
Homura looked up as he shook the blood from his sword, and moved one casually fastidious foot away from the spreading pool on the floor, wondering what the confusion over towards the door was. He recognised the child, of course -- the little itan pet of Konzen Douji's -- and for a moment he spared a fragment of pity that the child should see such things. Reason enough for him to scream. Reason enough for him to cry.
Perhaps someone should summon Konzen Douji to take his pet away.
The blast of raging energy which abruptly roiled around the itan shattered the crowd like a stroke of lightning, sending them running in all directions, screaming and babbling like sheep. Homura leaned on his sword, and curiously watched the guards running towards the itan a bare second later; just as much sheep in their own way, easily directed and commanded.
He looked down at the bodies at his feet. And I -- I am the wolf of Heaven . . .
There was barely time for him to react, barely even time for him to register surprise. The itan came through the soldiers like a child running through flowers, ripping them apart as he ran, and any courtiers who had not yet managed to get out of the way, all of them, casually, eagerly, his eyes glittering and golden and far stranger even than the youkai whom Homura had cut down in the past. Blood trailed from his long-nailed hands, dewing the bodies which he left behind, and he came for Litouten with all the speed and grace of a perfect storm.
Homura brought his blade up in a low sweep, and it rang against the itan's claws, and the air around the two of them hummed in sympathy.
Litouten was screaming for help. Yes, that was it. He was calling Homura to defend him, and truly, Homura would have listened, but he had no time to do so, because now he was fighting for his life.
And -- and he isn't even particularly trying to kill me -- he just wants to get past me --
This was wrong. He was the toushin taishi and this could not be happening.
If he had previously thought that he was fast, he was now taught otherwise. One moment the creature was directly in front of him, clawing at his face, and he had to parry and twist aside, and the next moment it was curving round him, moving too fast, and he had to spin and drop and try a neck-or-nothing strike to force the other a pace back, and only in the next breath did he feel the cool air against his skin of his back, and the fresh running blood where a long claw had sliced skin open.
Footsteps behind him, running away. Litouten trying to escape, of course, and why should the Great Minister stay and hold his ground when there was a toushin here to do the killing for him? Except --
The creature jumped directly over him, hanging poised in the air for a single long breath, just that fraction too fast for Homura to be able to stop him. It took Litouten down as a hound takes down a hare, coming down on him in a bright flurry of teeth and claws that only gave the Great Minister time for a brief scream.
---
Konzen stood in the archway and watched the butchery.
His aunt's voice echoed in his mind, returned to haunt him now that it was too late.
this animal -- ferocious for all that it's so small
"Gokuu," he said.
It had taken too long to follow the child, let alone the Dragon King, and then the great crowd trying to flee through the doors, forcing him back and making him fight for every step forward as he had never had to fight before, Konzen Douji the Bodhisattva's nephew, and all of it to find them all dead, and this transformed Gokuu playing in the blood. The Emperor fled, and all those courtiers or officers with any sense gone with him, and all the rest dead. Dead, here in Heaven. Killed. Slain. By Gokuu.
There wasn't supposed to be death in Heaven; it was not how things were. Someone must have invited it in, held the door open to let it come walking down the marble corridors and leave this unseemly
I will not let the magnitude of what has happened touch me, I will not let it stop me, but how can such a thing happen, how can all the laws be broken, how can people I know be turned into lumps of flesh
foulness behind it.
Tenpou. Kenren Taishou. Goujun-sama. Goujun-sama at least was seemly in his death, and might have been sleeping if not for the blood.
Blood was everywhere. It was so omnipresent that it almost overran the senses and became merely part of the background, as natural as the silk and marble.
Tenpou and Kenren -- their heads were separate from their bodies
but that would mean they're dead
and the bodies were lumps of meat, but the faces, the faces were still recognisable, still open-eyed, and it seemed so utterly wrong that heads could be separate from bodies like that and it meant that they were dead
and they're gone
and this was not a thing that could happen in Heaven.
Konzen held himself together and clung to composure, wrapping himself in it for as long as was necessary.
"Gokuu!" he called, louder. He could see the toushin Homura standing to one side, breathing in great gasps of air, blood running from a long gash across his back, a burning sword unsheathed between his hands.
Gokuu turned to look at him, golden eyes slitted and fey.
"Stupid monkey." His sandals were loud on the marble floor as he walked towards the child. "I told you to stay with me."
"Don't." Homura's voice cut through the air like a blow. "It's insane. Stay back."
"What? So you can . . ." He nearly said, kill him, and then he looked at Homura's eyes for the first time, saw the blazing rage and offended pride and sheer fear-spawned horror there, and realised that was exactly what Homura wanted to do. "No," he answered himself, and his voice made the air tremble just as Homura's had done.
"It's insane."
"He's Gokuu," Konzen said, and deliberately turned away.
A breath of air rippled through the room as Homura raised his sword again. "Don't be a fool, Konzen Douji."
Konzen looked at Gokuu now, at the child he had thought that he knew. The stupid monkey. The little creature from Down Below where things were simpler. He didn't have the time to spare for regrets for Tenpou or Kenren or even Goujun-sama now; their deaths seemed all of a piece with this greater devastation, all of it embodied in this sudden change in Gokuu from natural kindness to bloodstained smiles.
Can I be the sun for you? It's the other way round. Stupid monkey, did you think you could leave me behind that easily?
"Gokuu," he called. "Get over here! You and I have unfinished business."
Gokuu moved in a quick gust of wind, faster than Konzen's eyes could follow, and was standing in front of him an instant later. There was still no recognition in his eyes; he tilted his head like a child who has seen a new toy, and reached one hand out towards Konzen's hair.
The stench of blood filled Konzen's nostrils, and he struggled not to gag. In what was simple instinct rather than calculated thought, he reached out to touch Gokuu's forehead, to try to calm him.
this animal
Homura's cry of warning came at the same moment as Gokuu's blow, a long-clawed swipe that cut across Konzen's body from breastbone to hip, that ran across him like a scream of agony and took the strength from him and left him falling to the floor. Stupid -- the provoked animal reacted on instinct too, it saw you move, it hit out -- Gokuu, you idiot, how am I to look after you if you keep on doing things like this --
-- and now the pain was going away and taking the sunlight with it, but it was too soon, he had to look after Gokuu, and he hadn't finished, he hadn't finished, damn it . . .
---
The creature turned away from Konzen Douji's body to look at Homura again.
Well, that settled it. It was insane. It had struck down the only person who had tried -- who would try -- to treat it like a rational entity. Homura knew his duty.
"Gokuu," Homura said, his voice caressing, and watched it focus on him.
But the wound on his back was bleeding, and it said, the creature is faster than you, this creature is stronger than you, and if you go against it you will die.
"No. No, I will not be made light of again." He spoke as much to himself as to the monster. He had set aside these fears when he chose to take Litouten's offer, when he accepted his position and power. He was no longer the child who sat in a prison cell and dreamed of sunlight, no longer the powerless wanderer of Heaven, no longer -- and it had been so long since he thought of her -- the lover who had been helpless to save Rinrei. He was Homura, and the word Homura meant power now to anyone with understanding. "I am Homura, I am toushin taishi, and you have offended Heaven."
His words rang in the quiet chamber.
And as I break you, he vowed, so I shall break Heaven and anyone who dares resist me.
It attacked in a whirl of claws, each blow hard enough to stagger him, and first he was retreating one pace, then two, and each step was a fracture in the wall of his courage.
Step. A blow. A line of blood. The knowledge that it could touch him. Step. Another blow. Muscle ripped. The knowledge that he could be touched. Step. And the darkness was waiting behind him, the silence of prison walls, the knowledge of helplessness, and still he could not reach it, he could not wound it, he could not even make it hesitate.
It had no fear of the flame of his sword -- no, it had no fear of anything of his, it had no fear of him. It was not a thing of Heaven.
Thoughts fluttered and stormed like bats. If he could not defeat this creature, what then? He was the toushin, Heaven's executioner, the warrior dipped in blood, the powerful one --
Litouten's tool, something at the back of his mind whispered, or the tool of anyone who chose to use you
-- the strong one admired by all --
the sword feared by those who feared your master
-- respected --
feared
-- powerful --
as powerless as ever
-- the man --
the child.
Perhaps, perhaps if he released his own shackles . . .
The thought in itself was a great widening breach in the wall of his determination, an realisation of defeat. The fraction of hesitation which came with it was enough for the creature to grasp his left arm at elbow and wrist, and twist it till bone and sinew cracked and tore, and it smiled at his cry of agony, it smiled, and it didn't even know who he was, it couldn't care less who he was, the word Homura meant nothing to it, it simply struck down an enemy. It tore at his flesh and he bled, it slammed its fists into him and his bones shattered, it beat at him and he knew that he had lost and that he was as void of power as he had ever been. It struck him down to the floor and it wound its hands into his chains as a child might, and he did not have the strength to try to force the biting chain from his own throat as the world slowly flowered into light.
Why should help come now? Homura wondered slowly as the light took the creature in its hands and cast it down to the floor and tamed it once again. . It's too late. They've all gone. And life is full of partings.
---
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