Ch6: Dying Dynasty

A legendary philosopher of Kan had once said, "If the King loves music, it is well with the land." Maybe that was so in Kan but clearly, Gyousou thought, that philosopher had never been to Tai!

Gyousou was currently sitting in his main office with his fingers stuffed in his ears, trying to simultaneously block out the irritating refrains drifting from the corridor and word a petition to restore the Oushi training budget, which had been severely cut in his absence. He had just finished his rough draft and was reviewing it for errors when the door swung open and in walked a man dressed in so many layers with so many bobbles and sashes and furs that he had to walk sideways through the door. Behind him trailed an simply, but elegantly, dressed woman with free-flowing honey spun gold hair.

"General of the Left! I've been meaning to talk to you!" the King of Tai said.

Gyousou bowed. "Your Majesty, Taiho, as it pleases you."

"As you know, the gardens of the outlying palaces are in terrible, terrible disarray," as a matter of fact, Gyousou didn't know. There was no reason for him – or anyone really – to need to go to one of the outlying palaces as anything that could be found there would be better found in a more central, easily accessible location. "It pleases me to undertake a project that will restore them to their former glory," as far as Gyousou knew, nobody had ever bothered to take much notice of those gardens since the founding of the world, "and I am looking for a team of workers who are free to do so and as Tai is peaceful at the moment…" he trailed off, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

Absolutely not, Gyousou thought, "I regret to inform Your Majesty that kyuuki were sighted at a hamlet three miles from Shajun and I must dispatch…"

"Pah! Let the provincial army handle it! There's no need to mobilize my guard."

"With all due respect," the music was giving him a headache and his voice took on a testy edge, "but because ten years ago Your Majesty cut the provincial army recruitment funds, right now the provincial army is completely taxed trying to build floodgates for the spring." Springs in Tai were both joyous and terrifying, as the huge snow melts often flooded the rivers and destroyed property, particularly if there was a sudden onset of warm weather causing the snow to all melt in the course of a few days.

"It's just a couple of youma, right? They just have to send over a squadron to swing their swords around and chop them up, then head on back and keep building the floodgates. I need those crystal gardens built, if my musicians are kept in those drab quarters their music will be melancholy and substandard."

So that was it. The outlying palaces, those rarely frequented buildings located on the edge of the Inner Palace, must now be the living quarters of the absurdly numerous Imperial Court musicians. Before Gyousou could think of a diplomatic answer that would change the king's mind, KyouOu was called by someone from a nearby office, probably to complain about a budget cut, which was currently the chief concern of everyone in this military section of the palace.

Tairin remained standing tranquilly in his office and Gyousou turned to her hesitantly. As per usual she was gazing off into the distance with melancholy, seeing never returning days from her foalhood with her first liege. She was currently thinking of the late king reading her bed-time proverbs from dusty tombs when she was small, and the happy memory was overshadowed with the deep sorrow she carried knowing that that man had abdicated to save her from the horrible death that her shitsudou had made inevitable, thus losing his own life. Naturally, this made it horribly awkward for anyone to try to talk to her at any time about anything, and she never took the initiative to begin the conversation. Even Gyousou was not immune to the unapproachable Tairin. "Taiho, could you perhaps consider petitioning His Majesty to decrease the numbers of musicians?"

Tairin merely recited dully, " 'Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.' Let His Majesty have his musicians and he will be more motivated to work."

"His musicians are cutting into other people's workload with their nonstop playing. No one can concentrate on work when all they can think of is the never ending song playing in the background!"

" 'When music and courtesy are better understood and appreciated, there will be no war'. It is better for the military officers to be listening to music when they are working, as it will result in less bloodshed."

This, Gyousou thought, was why one should never go through the bother of attempting to reason anything with a kirin: the bloody pacifists never understood. Whenever he tried to tell Tairin something she'd glumly quote some obscure proverb her first king had shared with her that she thought addressed the present problem, until he wanted to burn all manuscripts of the philosophers of Kan and force her to give some real, thought-out advice. He was sure that the reason so many kings fell early was not just because of their own incompetence but also because the 'holy kirin' was as susceptible to flaws as a human.

KyouOu walked sideways back into Gyousou's office, exclaiming, "Why all my military officers feel their troop of look-alike metal stick bangers needs a budget raise is beyond my comprehension. A sub-commander in the Right Guard just accused me of trying to starve his soldiers to fatten my concubines. Imagine the nerve!

"Your Majesty is cutting a lot of our budgets recently," Gyousou said as neutrally as he could manage, "perhaps if Your Majesty were to reconsider the outlying palace gardens proposition for the time being and redistribute the funds…"

"Not you too!" the king cried, smiling and shaking his head. "Ah, general, general, general. How could I forget you are a rugged soldier at heart as well? Alas, woe is me! Surrounded by unvarnished fighters! A country without a beautiful palace is like a woman without jewelry."

"The majority of Tai's women do not adorn themselves with jewelry, having more necessary items they need to spend their finances on, since Your Majesty has increased the tax rate again."

"All the more reason to have a beautiful palace, then!"

"Your Majesty, I mean no disrespect and swear I have no ulterior motives, but the country cannot operate in this manner! Your organizational skills are unmistakeably superb, yet even so if you continue throwing Imperial funds out the window like this and raising the taxes the country will die! Even now anyone with eyes can see the first symptoms. Why does You Majesty imagine there are youma in Shajun in the first place?!"

The king merely laughed, "Soldiers really are a superstitious lot! General, I work my butt off governing the people, the taxes I collect merely pay me my salary. After nearly a century of working on their behalf, it's only fair I get a raise."

The discussions lasted much longer, and eventually Gyousou reluctantly signed twenty of his men on garden-building detail, coincidentally all those who had been slacking off recently. Funny how that happens. Long after the king left his words echoed in Gyousou's ears and for the first time he fully realized that, without some unforeseen miracle, the king's fall was inevitable. He'd thought before that KyouOu would not have an especially long reign and made vague preparation for the eventual demise, but this discussion had thrown into his perspective just how short his reign would last. How long until Tairin was struck with shitsudou? Half a century? A dozen years? Less than that? The king was truly a fearfully brilliant organizer and didn't tolerate corruption or injustice in his officials, yet the country was floundering in debt.

If it was inevitable anyways, would it be better to get it over with quickly?

His charred hometown and Wagai's hanging face, two things he hadn't thought of in decades, flashed into his mind and Gyousou squashed the idea. Revolution too often caused more casualties than it prevented, and who would take over afterwards? With no king suspicious characters would pop into the political arena right, left, and center, all the more so if the king met his end violently and without warning. The soonest they could be dealt with would depend on how long it took to find a new king. Technically he could keep Tairin alive if he killed the king, but a Taiho who lived in the past would just fail to call the future king to account as well. If he killed Tairin it would take five years at best for the next Kirin of Tai to be old enough to choose a king, though eight or so was usually a better estimate. Also, one needed to factor in that the rightful king might not go on a shouzan, thus making the wait much longer as the kirin would need to seek him or her out. No, revolution was an unnecessary, risky business. Better to let the king exhaust the Mandate of Heaven and try to prop up the government from the inside. As long as the king didn't do anything ridiculous like order a massacre it was better to wait him out. Gyousou was not happy with this conclusion as he preferred swift action, but years of command had taught him the importance of patience and he had seen firsthand many times the desolation caused by minor rebellions. A full-blown insurrection would be a thousand times worse.

Sighing in resignation to Tai's impending doom, Gyousou began mentally going through a list of his subordinates, trying to picture who would do best where and planning how to train them to be become pillars in the government after the headstone has fallen.

Thus the years passed just as Gyousou had predicted, until one morning a servant ran into the main hall crying,

"The Hakuchi has fallen, the king is dead!"

Gyousou, along with everyone else in the room, sighed in relief. However Gyousou, unlike anyone else in the room, was at the same time running through the names of those he trusted in his mind and trying to see if there was any place of the realm they were not spread over. It was hard to imagine he had missed an area, seeing for nearly half a century he had been meticulously training bright and virtuous youngsters and sending them as far across the realm as his connections allowed. In these last years when taxes rose to a ludicrous rate and abject characters popped out of the woodwork to devour the dying regime he convinced all his older protégé to take on their own disciples and scatter them as well. Reassured that he had indeed covered all the major areas, he breathed a second sigh of relief and started running through his plans of how to loophole through the tax rates, which could not be officially lowered until a new king was chosen.

Tairin had died ten months earlier of shitsudou and the king had secluded himself in his chamber ordering ever more expensive food, wine, and entertainment as he awaited death in gross luxury. Whoever found some excuse to drop by the king's chambers was always met with the same question, Is he dead yet? At this point everyone knew it would be any day, as no king ever lived more than a year after their kirin died. Therefore, the news that the king had died was most welcomed, as it meant that finally his increasingly ridiculous demands would stop flowing from his feast chambers. The ministers were already all gossiping about who might be the next king, and Gyousou's name could be heard from several directions.