Yatagarasu Series
Volume 7:
The Raven's Paradise
Author: Abe Chisato
Epilogue: A Parting Gift
“Well, you’ve done it now,” the Yellow Raven said as he sank into an armchair behind his desk.
Karyō sat on the other side of the desk. He’d just given a rather unsatisfactory report.
“How goes the search for Mr. Yasuhara?”
“We’ve mobilized all of the Yamauchishu who were on standby. We haven’t found him yet.” Karyō’s tone was composed, but his face was mottled red with rage.
Guards had been posted at the main entrances and exits of the Underground. At almost the same time as Yasuhara Hajime’s abduction, numerous sightings were confirmed of figures emerging from multiple exits carrying large bundles. When the guards received the first report and gave chase, they found nothing but wrapped melons and live chickens.
Karyō’s reports from the field were scattered and fragmentary. The Yamauchishu had yet to determine just how much stuff had left the Underground at once. It was likely that they’d smuggled out their hostage in secret and that he’d never be found.
The elite of the Yamauchishu had been deceived by children. This was a terrible day.
“The mastermind of this plot is a child?” Haruma asked as he seated himself at the Yellow Raven’s side. He appeared visibly shaken.
The Yellow Raven gave him a thin, bitter smile. “We still don’t know who told them that Mr. Yasuhara holds the rights to Mt. Ara. The true mastermind is likely that person, not the child. In any case, the boy certainly set all this up in coordination with the others who fled the Underground carrying bundles.” He drummed his fingers lightly on the armrest.
Every adult in the Underground had a clearly defined plan that they were to use in situations like this. Surveillance had been meticulous, with instructions to report any suspicious movement immediately and a generous reward promised for information on any trouble brewing. Until now, there had been nothing unsettling reported.
Even if the children had wanted to act, the escaped horses from the Valley shouldn’t have been able to assist them. Most likely, the adult renegades had proposed the plan first, with Tobi as a variable they expected to be useful and didn’t mind losing if he wasn’t.
Tobi had performed considerably better than the Yellow Raven would have expected.
In all probability, the original plan had been simpler. If the renegades had secured Mr. Yasuhara in the first attack, they would have gone straight to the Underground to hide. The Imperial Court had detailed maps of the Underground, but there were too many small connecting passages to monitor them all. The plan had likely been to use the children to disrupt the Yellow Raven’s spy network from the start.
Chihaya’s arrival had thrown a wrench in that plan. Chihaya was no friend of the Imperial Court, but he wasn’t an enemy, either. He wasn’t the kind of man who could be persuaded to join the cause of the renegades. He had moved purely to protect Mr. Yasuhara. Ironically, they had fled directly into the Underground, where the attackers’ allies were lying in wait.
Yorito and the others had encountered the children immediately upon entering the Underground. That couldn’t be a coincidence. The children had been positioned to receive the renegades when they brought Yasuhara Hajime in. Chihaya and Yorito had brought Hajime as expected, but not the children’s allies.
Tobi had understood the situation at a glance. He had improvised, deciding to play innocent and follow along with what Mr. Yasuhara wanted. He’d bided his time, waiting for the first opportunity to get the original plan back on track. He had gotten Mr. Yasuhara alone, and then he’d acted.
While the adults had been growing mutually suspicious of one another, surveillance of the children remained lax. Everyone knew that the children would become horses one day; guarding and reporting on them was dull work.
The Yellow Raven learned of this gap in his spy network too late to do anything to fix it. The children knew that they would be underestimated, and they’d exploited that. The Yellow Raven found himself admiring Tobi’s determination and subterfuge, but he couldn’t waste time on those emotions.
“Is Mr. Yasuhara still alive?” Haruma asked.
The Yellow Raven snorted. “They won’t kill him. He’s too valuable. They’ll use him as leverage. We should expect them to send us a list of demands sooner rather than later.”
There was a knock at the office door. “An urgent message for you, sir,” the guard at the door said.
“Send them in.”
A Yamauchishu entered briskly, saluted the Yellow Raven, and then said, “Just now, a boy claiming to be the head of the Underground appeared at the nearest guard outpost. He requests an audience with the Yellow Raven.”
The Yellow Raven appeared amused. “So he’s come in person, has he?” Tobi had guts.
He watched the Yamauchishu extend a golden necklace forward in both hands.
“The boy says he has secured the person of the Yellow Raven’s honored guest. As proof, he asked that this be delivered to you.”
The guard set down the necklace with a metallic clink on the desk. Haruma picked it up and brought it to the Yellow Raven with reverent care.
The Yellow Raven pinched the heavy chain. A rugged ornament dangled from it, the pattern on it like fern leaves. The necklace was gaudy, graceless, and gold-plated. It was definitely familiar.
“They have Mr. Yasuhara. No question,” the Yellow Raven said. At least they didn’t deliver a finger, he thought morbidly.
“What do you want to do now?” Haruma asked.
The Yellow Raven narrowed his eyes. “It would be inconvenient if Mr. Yasuhara died before handing over the rights to Mt. Ara to us. And I find myself interested in this new Underground boss.” He paused. “We’ll hear Tobi out.”
“Will you meet him in person?”
“Yes. Bring Tobi here. Treat him with the utmost courtesy.”
Karyō and the Yamauchishu left the room immediately. The Yellow Raven watched them go, then looked down at the necklace in his hand.
He clicked his tongue. “Yorito is such an idiot sometimes. We have to get Yasuhara Hajime back, and quickly.”
***
“To think it would come to this…”
Yorito and Chihaya found Sanji trussed up in a storage alcove with his hands bound behind him and a cloth gag stuffed in his mouth. Sanji had almost managed to remove the gag on his own. About two hours had passed since Hajime’s disappearance.
The Yamauchishu stationed outside the Underground had gone immediately to inform the Yellow Raven of what had happened. The search for Hajime was underway, but the children were making diversions in disconnected passages, so it wasn’t going well.
Yorito felt each minute tick by like an hour. He’d failed so miserably. He tried to accept what had happened as he forced himself to go through the motions. He couldn’t un-lose Mr. Yasuhara. He had to find him no matter what. He was vibrating on the inside, tense and worried and angry at himself.
“Did you know that Tobi was colluding with horses outside the Valley?” Chihaya asked Sanji.
Sanji shook his head. “I didn’t know. I swear it.”
His wife worked at one of the women’s workshops. If he gave anything away, there was no telling what would happen to her.
“I didn’t betray you,” Sanji said. “I never would.” His hands were shaking from rope burns or general distress. “They’re good kids. I had no idea they were planning this. If I’d known, I would have stopped it somehow. Tobi knew that. He didn’t trust me.”
“We need to get Mr. Yasuhara back,” Yorito said. “Where would Tobi go? Do you have any idea?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.” Yorito’s voice came out louder than he’d intended. Chihaya put a hand on his arm.
“Don’t panic,” he said. “Blaming him won’t solve anything.” He dropped to one knee so that he could look Sanji in the eye.
Sanji had been sitting on the ground since they’d untied him. He showed no inclination to move.
Chihaya waited for Sanji to look up before he said, “Tobi was in contact with people who attacked Hajime. You would know them, too, if they came from the Valley originally. Right?”
Sanji drew in a sharp breath. He nodded. “A man approached me. His name was Jūzō. He worked for one of the old bosses. When the Underground was broken up, he was young enough and quick enough to slip past the pursuers. He’s been gathering scattered people from the Valley ever since, waiting for an opening to attack.”
“You reported this?” Yorito asked.
Sanji nodded. He’d reported Jūzō to the Yellow Raven months ago. “Jūzō wants to take the Underground back. He wants it very badly. He’s been spoiling for a fight for years. I tried to talk him out of it. The Imperial Court has comprehensive maps of the Underground and the Valley, and we don’t have many fighters here. Even if Jūzō and his men recaptured the Valley, they’d never hold it for long. It would just be a repeat of what happened the first time.
“But Jūzō has too much pride. Everything is about respect with him. He called me a coward and disappeared.” Sanji’s mouth twisted. “He’s short-sighted and stubborn, and he isn’t a good planner. That’s what I thought at the time, anyway. I never even imagined a boy half his age would show him how to do it.”
Yorito’s thoughts moved quickly, processing all the information Sanji had just told them.
Jūzō’s group had a hostage to negotiate with. They would move him somewhere secure. The children who’d been creating the distractions in the passages were gone now; they’d scattered based on some pre-determined signal.
The Yamauchishu was chasing them, but they were chasing the wrong people.
“Do you know any of Jūzō’s hiding places?”
“I’ve been living down here since—” Sanji gestured at his missing leg. “I don’t know anything about what he’s been doing outside the Valley.”
A wave of despair crashed over Yorito. He shook himself and forced himself to think. What would he do if he were on the other side of this conflict?
The Underground had hundreds of exits. The Yamauchishu knew this. All of them were guarded, but not with the same frequency or quality. We assume Jūzō would try to move Hajime out, Yorito thought, but they have no reason to do that. The Underground was defensible and had many hiding places. The city would be dangerous for unaffiliated horses and commoners without employment.
If I were Jūzō, I might decide the safest place was the one I knew best.
Hajime was still in the Underground somewhere. Any attack the Imperial Court made there would be disadvantageous; Jūzō’s people knew the terrain better than they did.
“What will you do?” Chihaya asked.
“We’ll work based on the assumption that Hajime is still in the Underground.”
It was a gamble, but not much of one. Yorito’s connections were better in the city than Jūzō’s were, so if he was wrong, he’d learn about it soon. But if he was right, and they moved now, there was still a chance to retrieve Hajime.
The city search was being conducted by the Aerial Army of Heaven and the Yamauchishu. Yorito knew the Underground better than most outsiders, so he was in charge of the search here. He also had Sanji, who was a native.
“Sanji, we need locations. If Hajime is still here somewhere, they would have taken him to a place that’s hidden and easy to defend against a larger attacking force.”
Even if they found Hajime, they’d be walking into an ambush. There didn’t seem to be any way around that.
Yorito had to get Hajime back. He couldn’t undo his mistakes, but he could try to prevent this situation from getting any worse.
***
Tobi carried himself well.
He was escorted into the Yellow Raven’s office by two Yamauchishu. This was necessary, of course, but it looked absurd.
Tobi stood in the center of the office like he belonged there. His gaze met and held the Yellow Raven’s. “I offer my greetings to the Yellow Raven. I am Tobi, the leader of the Underground.”
The Yellow Raven wasn’t used to being looked in the eye. Most Yatagarasu were too frightened of him to try it. He was pleased by Tobi’s bravery. “I am honored,” he said. “I never believed that the leader of the Underground would deign to visit me in person.”
It would be easier to play along than to push against Tobi’s laughable claim to authority. Tobi believed himself a leader, and the Yellow Raven indulged this polite fiction. There was no need to be rude, after all. The Yellow Raven wasn’t troubled about being outmaneuvered by a child; that would make him a hypocrite. He liked interesting opponents. Most people who opposed him were boring and predictable.
“I confess myself a bit surprised at the circumstances of our meeting,” the Yellow Raven said. “My dealings with the Underground have always been honorable, yet I find you here negotiating with me over a hostage you kidnapped. This is unprecedented in my experience. How shall we proceed?”
“If you hadn’t been dishonorable first,” Tobi said, “I could have responded in kind. I regret that the situation has deteriorated so far, but that is not my fault.” His tone carried weight and something like genuine grief. “You broke the non-aggression pact first. Not personally, of course. I should be speaking with the Golden Raven directly.”
“That can’t be done. His Imperial Majesty has granted me full authority in this matter. My words are his words.”
“I can’t accept that. I do not believe that the Golden Raven agreed to break the non-aggression pact. I would like to ask him about it in person.”
“I’m telling you that I will hear your demands,” the Yellow Raven said. “You didn’t come here just to make conversation. Let’s hear it. What do you want?”
Tobi’s eyebrows furrowed—a crack in his armor. He took a deep breath and then said, “I have only one demand, and it is a simple one. Release your hostages, and we will release ours. To be plain, I demand that you release the horses and the women currently held at the work sites and workshops. Let them go, and send no pursuers after them. After I’ve confirmed that you’ve kept your end of the bargain, I’ll release Mr. Yasuhara to you unharmed.”
The Yellow Raven had anticipated several possible demands, but he had not predicted that Tobi would ask for this. “You’re asking me to allow the restoration of the Underground and the Valley, then?”
Tobi shook his head. “We’re trading hostages. Agree not to pursue our freed people for one day, and I’ll release Mr. Yasuhara to you. You can do whatever you want after that. I won’t ask for more.” Tobi looked at him steadily. “One day is enough. We’re not outlaws. We keep our word.”
“You’re telling me to trust you without a guarantee,” the Yellow Raven said.
“That’s why I came myself. You can keep me until Mr. Yasuhara is returned to you. I won’t try to escape. If my people don’t return Mr. Yasuhara safely, you can do whatever you like to me.”
So Tobi had come here to offer himself as a hostage. Doubtless he believed that the Yellow Raven would take him hostage anyway. He didn’t seem afraid, merely resigned.
The Yellow Raven clapped his hands in appreciation. “A splendid proposal. Very well.”
Haruma made a sound of poorly suppressed alarm to his left.
Tobi blinked.
“Very well,” the Yellow Raven repeated. “For our part, we require that Mr. Yasuhara is returned safely, with no harm done to his person. We agree to your demands, leader of the Underground.”
“Yellow Raven—” Haruma hissed.
“However,” the Yellow Raven said pleasantly, talking over his attendant. “I should warn you that things will not go the way you expect.”
Tobi’s expression stilled.
The Yellow Raven grinned.
***
Sanji identified ten locations as possible strongholds. They were spread across a wide area, and some of the connecting passages were narrow enough to require crawling. It would be time-consuming to survey them all.
Yorito, Chihaya and Sanji scouted the locations by lantern light. Sanji’s gait was uneven and erratic, which slowed their progress. The tunnels looked alike in the enveloping darkness. The ceilings were low and the walls were jagged. They eliminated three locations before midnight, with seven to go.
The lantern gave them away before they took ten steps into the latest passage they were surveying.
Three children lurked in a gap where the ceiling dropped down to meet a massive boulder. This place was a natural choke point. The boulder was smooth-faced and offered nothing to grip, making it close to impossible to climb.
The moment their light appeared, the children peppered them with arrows.
“Don’t slow down! Shoot like you mean it!” Mitsu yelled.
Yorito and Chihaya threw themselves behind a rocky outcropping as arrows cracked against the stone around them.
“Looks like we guessed right,” Chihaya muttered.
“Let’s talk after we’re through.”
Yorito risked peeking further down the passage. The three children were positioned in the gap between the ceiling and the boulder, covering every angle of approach.
In daylight, they could have transformed and fought their way through. At this hour, that option was unavailable.
“What’s on the other side?” Yorito asked Sanji.
Sanji answered in an exhausted, slightly frightened voice. “An old armory. The children have been carrying arrows in there for days, so they have a lot of ammunition.”
“Are there any other exits?”
“This is a dead end, as far as I know.”
This was a solid place to make a last stand.
“This could be a decoy,” Chihaya said. “Or a trap. Hajime might be elsewhere, and if that’s true we’d be wasting a lot of time and resources here.”
“We need to break through and confirm that.”
“Please don’t hurt them,” Sanji said. “They’re just children.” He grabbed Yorito’s sleeve with both hands in desperation.
“We’ll try not to,” Yorito said. “I can’t promise you anything, unfortunately. They’ve attacked us, and we must defend ourselves.”
Chihaya nodded. “We do what we must so that they don’t kill us. And we try not to kill them.”
Yorito put out the lantern. He communicated with Chihaya using hand signals in the half-darkness, conveying timing and planned movements. Then Yorito moved, stepping out from behind the rocks and running toward the boulder. Arrows flew at him instantly. He twisted left, dropped his shoulder, let two go past him, and then knocked a third down with the flat of his sword. He was drawing their fire on purpose while Chihaya got ready.
Chihaya passed him by moments later, a short knife clenched between his teeth. He ducked low, driving straight toward the narrow gap where the children were shooting. The children were directly above him and couldn’t find a good angle to shoot directly down. Chihaya was also a distraction at close range.
Yorito changed course and ran directly for Chihaya.
Chihaya’s hands extended out, fingers laced together. Yorito stepped into them without slowing. He shot straight up over the boulder, reaching just high enough to land in the gap above it. He grabbed the bow that was about to shoot at him, twisted his body sideways and moved through the gap.
The children followed him into a low-ceilinged cavern that smelled like cedar wood and iron filings. Arrows lay neatly stacked in long wooden boxes that were about knee height. Two boys and a girl approached him. The girl carried a small paper lantern in one hand. All three children carried bows, and one of the boys carried an axe.
Yorito struck the axe wielder’s wrist with the hilt of his sword to make the boy drop the weapon. The second boy drew a knife from his hip and brandished it in front of him, his bow discarded on the floor. Yorito disarmed him similarly.
That left Mitsu, the girl. She had a large stone in one hand that she swung at Yorito’s head.
Yorito caught Mitsu’s wrist and turned her momentum against her. She spun, and then he tripped her so that she fell. Yorito brought her down and knelt with his knee on her shoulder, pinning her in place.
“Stop. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“It hurts! Let go of me, you Red Cord bastard!”
“Let go of Mitsu!” one boy yelled.
“That’s not fair!” the other called out.
“Stop fighting and I’ll let go,” Yorito said to all three of them.
Chihaya’s head appeared over the edge of the boulder. He took in the scene and then nodded. “Is everyone all right?”
“More or less.”
“Are you two acrobats or something?” Sanji’s voice drifted up from below.
“We found the armory,” Yorito said loudly enough for him to hear.
The armory was exactly what Sanji had described. There were hundreds of arrows, bamboo tubes full of water, and a small store of dried food. Hajime wasn’t here, and there was no sign he’d ever been here.
This place had been prepared over a long period of time. Tobi had been working against them from the very start. Yorito felt commingled admiration and grief. He had never been trusted in the Underground, and he never would be.
“Are there more places like this?” Yorito asked.
“Ask them,” Chihaya said. He looked the three children over with an expression that was strict, but not unkind.
Mitsu set her jaw. The two boys had stopped shouting and were watching Chihaya with wary attention.
“Where’s Mr. Yasuhara?” Chihaya asked.
Silence.
“The Yellow Raven will retaliate. You understand that. Who put you up to this?”
Mitsu’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t underestimate us. Nobody put us up to anything. We thought it up ourselves.”
Chihaya said nothing.
“We’re trying to help our families,” Mitsu said. “No one else can.” Her voice trembled slightly. “Kuma is outside right now, creating more distractions. Red Cords killed his dad and his brother. He knew he’d be caught, and he still took the most dangerous job. He wants to eat his mom’s cooking one more time.” Her chin came up, fierce and defiant. “Who cares about retaliation at this point? Do your worst. If we sit here doing nothing, we’ll never see our families again.”
The boys expressed their agreement with Mitsu through their body language.
“Give everyone back, you coward!” Mitsu shouted.
“The Yamauchishu won’t hurt them, will they?” Sanji asked when Yorito and Chihaya brought the children out of the armory.
“No matter what you do to us, we won’t betray Tobi!” a boy shouted.
“If you’re going to kill us, then kill us. We won’t say anything,” Mitsu said, fuming.
“You’re not like us.”
Sanji looked at the children with sadness in his eyes and said no more. He’d expected something like this to happen one day, but he couldn’t honestly say that he’d been prepared for it.
***
Yamauchishu and Aerial Army of Heaven soldiers swarmed the entrances to the Underground. Tents were pitched on open ground.
Yorito submitted his report and transferred custody of the children to a group of Yamauchishu.
A liaison gave Yorito news of what was happening in the city in a clipped, formal tone. “The Yellow Raven accepted Tobi’s demands in full. At noon today, the horses at the work sites and the women at the workshops were released.”
“It’s already happened?” Yorito asked, stunned.
“It has.”
The children heard that. Their faces were stricken.
Chihaya didn’t react at all. He stood at Yorito’s shoulder, as still as a statue.
“And Mr. Yasuhara?”
“The hostage exchange will take place at noon. Tobi gave himself over to the Yellow Raven as a guarantee. He’s trading himself for Mr. Yasuhara. I don’t know where the exchange is taking place; that’s being kept secret. The Yellow Raven said that he would reach out to you directly when the time comes.”
The children would be freed. Tobi would remain captive. Mr. Yasuhara would come back. Tobi had negotiated the terms, and the Yellow Raven had decided to honor them.
Yorito felt something in his chest loosen. He wasn’t relieved, exactly. He hadn’t realized until this moment just how much he feared the worst possible outcome. Now that he knew that wouldn’t come to pass, he could breathe deeply again.
He found, to his own mild surprise, that he was glad Tobi had won.
The captured children remained quiet for a moment, and then Mitsu spoke.
“Tobi’s prepared to die.”
“He’ll be turned into a horse,” one of the boys said.
“I know,” Yorito said. “They take the children once they’ve grown up a little.”
“Red Cords only take the very small ones or the ones who’ve grown up.” The boy’s voice was rough. “To make them into horses. Did you think we wouldn’t notice?”
Tobi had known his own time was coming. Running away would have made him just another ruffian with a short lifespan. He’d decided on this course of action to help the Underground while he still could.
“But why those demands?” Yorito asked. “The horses and the women.”
“Tobi was thinking about what comes next,” Mitsu said with shining eyes. “Even if we took back the Underground, the Yellow Raven would just take it back again. He said we had to free our people first, before anything else could happen.”
For the hostage situation to end, all of the hostages had to be freed at the exact same time. Everything else would follow after.
“And we need to make the Yellow Raven think we’re worth negotiating with. If enough horses and women are freed, that’s real fighting strength for us. They won’t capture us all again easily. We can keep negotiating while we remain a threat. The Underground itself doesn’t matter. Tobi’s been planning to abandon it from the start. We’ll scatter into small groups and make it impossible for them to catch us all. We’ll create a new non-aggression pact with the Yellow Raven.
“So we have to keep our word,” Mitsu said. “Or no one will negotiate with us. And we have to watch carefully to make sure your side keeps theirs.
“Besides,” Mitsu added with a trace of pride, “if we take raven form and fly, we can spread across the entire territory in a day. We might find more allies in the other territories, too. Tobi doesn’t think the way Jūzō does.”
Sanji’s face was bloodless. “Jūzō is fixated on taking back the Underground. Doesn’t that put him at odds with Tobi?”
Mitsu opened her mouth, then closed it. She appeared uncertain of herself for the first time. “That… I don’t know. Tobi was the one dealing with Jūzō.”
“Will Jūzō release Mr. Yasuhara?”
The children looked at each other.
Yorito did not like what he saw in that look. “We need to move.” He approached the Aerial Army of Heaven soldiers nearby and said, “Report that Tobi’s intentions and Jūzō’s may not be the same to the Yellow Raven. Request reinforcements for the Underground search. Take the map with the marked locations that Sanji can identify. We’ll mark more probable sites.”
Even as he said this, Yorito knew reinforcements might not help. Knowing that Tobi and Jūzō disagreed might not help, either. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that Jūzō had moved Hajime outside the Underground. Even with Sanji guiding them, the cave system was complicated enough that a stranger handed a map would lose half a day just learning to read it.
There was nothing to do now but search. Dawn was near.
***
The room Tobi had been placed in after the negotiations bore no resemblance to a cell. The rice mat flooring was clean and had been replaced recently. He had a water pitcher and a tea kettle. There was a guard on the door, but Tobi wasn’t restrained in any way.
Tobi had been certain they would throw him into a hole. Finding himself in a guest room was disorienting.
At about sunset, he received an invitation from the Yellow Raven to eat supper together. He wasn’t given the opportunity to refuse.
The Yellow Raven’s chambers occupied an out-of-the-way corner of the Imperial Court, and they were not what Tobi had pictured for a man of his rank. The floors were all cold stone. The receiving room contained a high-legged desk stacked with documents, its lacquer chipped from long years of hard use. A second desk, smaller, sat to one side for the Yellow Raven’s personal attendant. There were no large furnishings aside from those. The receiving room was spare to the point of austerity.
Tobi was guided to a corner stacked with rice mats that were used in place of cushions and chairs. Tobi sat on one, and the Yellow Raven sat across from him. The meal was served promptly on wooden trays.
“Eat. It’s not poisoned,” the Yellow Raven said.
Tobi stared at the tray that had been set before him. It contained a bowl of rice porridge mixed with assorted grains, pickles, and small fish simmered in soy sauce. It was almost exactly what he ate in the Underground: plain, filling, the kind of food that sustained rather than impressed. But it had been set out on a beautifully lacquered tray with the careful formality of a dignitary’s meal.
Tobi watched the Yellow Raven eat. “You’re having the same thing as me?” he asked.
The Yellow Raven shrugged. “This is what I usually have.”
“I figured you’d eat something more extravagant.”
“There are occasions for that. But gluttony shortens your lifespan.” He brought pickles to his mouth with a precision Tobi associated with people who had been taught to eat with proper manners before they were taught much else. “A body accustomed to rich food stops knowing what it actually needs.”
They ate in silence after that. The porridge was good: thick and savory, not much different from what Tobi made himself when the Underground had decent stores. He found that strange, and then stopped finding it strange because he was so hungry. When both of them had finished eating, the Yellow Raven’s personal attendant appeared with tea.
The tea was fragrant, slightly bitter, and hot enough to warm Tobi from the inside out.
The Yellow Raven set his cup down.
“Half of the women stayed,” he said.
Tobi looked up. He didn’t ask why. He just said, “Oh.”
“Was that unexpected?”
“No.”
Some of the women displaced from the Valley had chosen the workshops as their new home. Of course he’d expected that. Going against the Yellow Raven was dangerous. He wasn’t troubled by the Yellow Raven’s news. Two days ago, he had seen the workshops himself—not as a captive, but from the outside looking in. Living conditions there were fairly decent. He hadn’t known that before.
“A lot of women would think that kind of life is better than being a prostitute,” Tobi said. “Many of them were poor with no other way to survive. I can’t argue with logic like that.”
“Even if the Underground’s supply chain suffers for it?”
“The Valley is supposed to be a refuge. That’s what it was built for. It’s a place for people who run afoul of the nobles’ laws. If the women who stayed in the workshops have become your people, then I’ll ask you to look after them now.”
The Yellow Raven met his gaze. “You don’t need to ask me that. I’ll take care of them, of course.”
This was a very strange conversation. Tobi had expected to hate him above all else, but the Yellow Raven seemed like a reasonable man. Tobi felt nothing toward him but vague bewilderment. Why were they on different sides of this conflict?
The Yellow Raven looked away before Tobi did.
There was a silence. Then the Yellow Raven said, “I expected more to stay, to be honest.”
Tobi stared at him.
“I was certain they would all stay.”
Tobi shook his head. “You’re noble through and through, just like Yorito.”
“Don’t compare me to him,” the Yellow Raven said, smiling faintly. He gestured toward the door. “Let us meet again tomorrow at the appointed time. I hope our agreement will be fulfilled.”
“Yeah, that’s what I want, too.”
As the guards led Tobi out, he heard the Yellow Raven murmuring quietly to himself.
“Comparison is the thief of joy. How irksome.”
Tobi turned to speak to him again, but the door was already closed.
***
The search for Yasuhara Hajime was not going well.
They swept every passage Sanji knew of and found nothing but more decoys and ambushes. The amount of planning the children had done was quite impressive. They made diversions and refused to give up any information regarding Hajime’s whereabouts.
At the edge of the Underground, about an hour before the hostage exchange was to take place, Yorito and Chihaya discovered where Hajime was being held. Sanji guided them to a passage near an exit that opened into a hollow where faint natural light leaked through a crack too narrow for a person to pass through. This passage was close to the surface, shaded and quiet.
They heard voices before they reached the opening. Not the controlled quiet of children keeping watch; something less guarded and more emotive. People were arguing, and they’d stopped worrying about being overheard.
Yorito signaled Sanji to stay back. He and Chihaya moved forward through the narrow tunnel. They looked down into a hollow and saw four people: three men, one boy. One of the men was very tall and broad, with a scar cutting through his left eyebrow. This was likely Jūzō.
Yasuhara Hajime stood behind Jūzō, trussed up thoroughly with rope. He kicked his feet out, restless and irritated. His expression was one of mortification.
Yorito was relieved that Hajime was still alive.
The men and the boy were still fighting, and now they weren’t even bothering to whisper.
“That’s not what you said!” It was Taka—the boy with the chipped tooth who had come to tell them dinner was ready on the night they’d first arrived in the Underground. “Why aren’t you releasing him? It’s already past the time!” His voice broke on the last word. “They’ll kill Tobi!” Taka wailed.
Jūzō put a heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Tobi did his part. We can’t change things now.”
“What does that mean?”
“This human still has his uses. We can’t just hand him over to the Yellow Raven.”
The other man punctuated this by nudging Hajime in the back with his foot. He didn’t glance Hajime’s way; he used his foot to verify that Hajime remained where he’d been put.
Taka’s mouth fell open. “You’re going to abandon Tobi?”
“He worked hard for his friends,” Jūzō said. “But freeing them isn’t enough. If we’re going to take back the Underground, now is the time. We regroup and restore what we had in the past, before the Yellow Raven finds out what we’re doing.”
“Tobi said that won’t work! He said that if we break a promise once, they’ll never negotiate with us again!”
“That’s a child’s shallow logic.” Jūzō’s voice was flat. “The Yellow Raven won’t keep his promises; we already know that. We have to make them come to us.”
“You liar!” Taka raised his fist.
The man standing beside Jūzō shoved him roughly aside.
Taka hit the ground and started crying.
Yorito looked at Chihaya. Chihaya signaled for them to move. They worked out a planned sequence in the space of a few hand signs, timed themselves, and then dropped down.
Jūzō and his companion had time to look surprised.
Chihaya put Jūzō down before Jūzō could react. Yorito got the other man in a choke hold and held it until the man stopped fighting. The confrontation was over inside a minute.
Taka stared up at them with his mouth open.
“So Tobi’s sacrifice goes completely unrewarded,” Chihaya said in a defeated voice.
Yorito was already across the hollow, cutting Hajime’s ropes. He pulled the gag free first, and Hajime coughed.
“Are you hurt?”
“Water,” Hajime said. “And I need to take a dump.”
***
The location Tobi chose for the exchange was the embankment work site—the same place they had visited for the inspection, which felt like a lifetime ago.
The basin below had a clear view in all directions. Tobi could fly; Hajime couldn’t. Tobi would signal from the top of the embankment that he was free, and then Hajime would be released. If the Yamauchishu moved on Tobi as he flew away, they’d been warned that archers would target Hajime. This was not the clean exchange of hostages that Tobi had hoped for, but he knew better than to trust the Yellow Raven.
His escape plan was already made. Somewhere nearby, Jūzō’s people had dug a cache with food, water, and a hidden entrance to the Underground. Hopefully he’d be able to reach this cache without being caught. He’d done what he’d planned; what came next was uncertain. He might wind up living in his hidey-hole for some time. He wouldn’t mind that, because at least he’d be alive.
Tobi looked up at the sky.
The rainy season had just ended. The air had been washed clean by a brief morning shower. The sunlight was sharp, and the shadows deep. The scent of water hung in the muggy air. In the intense blue sky above the work site, fluffy summer clouds gathered on the horizon, looking solid enough to land on. A white heron drifted through the sky, unhurried, indifferent to what was happening below.
The wind blew cool against the back of Tobi’s neck, lifting the hair from his sweaty skin. Most of his hair had come loose from the tie since this morning.
The automatic clocks chimed the hour. It was noon—time for the hostage exchange.
Tobi looked out over the embankment. The basin below was empty. Tools had been tidied away, and the stables were quiet. The Yamauchishu and the Yellow Raven had withdrawn to a respectful distance, as agreed.
Tobi stood up to his full height and waved both hands above his head. “I’m safe! Release the hostage!” His voice carried across the basin.
There was no answer.
“Jūzō! It’s me. Release the hostage!”
He waved wider, putting the strength of his whole body into the motion. He kept shouting until his throat ached. The basin remained still and silent below him, nothing moving but the shadow of the clouds crossing over the work site.
Tobi’s last shout came out thin and hoarse, barely audible even to him. He lowered his arms. Sweat soaked his collar. A tear ran down from his chin and hit the cut stone below with a sound that echoed in the silence.
He hung his head. He understood what had happened, but he couldn’t give voice to it.
“What a shame,” the Yellow Raven said. He stood almost close enough to touch Tobi, and he sounded genuinely remorseful.
Tobi laughed hysterically. “No,” he said. “I should have expected this.”
“I didn’t expect you to give up so easily,” the Yellow Raven said.
“I brought this on myself.” Tobi understood he’d been abandoned, but he didn’t despair. He hoped that Jūzō’s people had kept their word and that the horses and women were somewhere safe. He hoped that Yasuhara Hajime was safe.
The Yellow Raven regarded him for a moment. “You call yourself the Underground’s boss, and you refuse to fight? How disappointing.”
“I have no way of fighting you.” Tobi wasn’t the Underground’s boss because of his strength or his ability to fight. He’d been appointed to his role by the previous Tobi, and the previous Tobi was dead. Without his own people here to believe in his right to lead, he was nothing.
“Well. I figured this might happen.”
Tobi looked at the Yellow Raven sharply. “You knew, and you still accepted my demands?”
The Yellow Raven didn’t answer immediately. He looked out at the far edge of the basin, where Yatagarasu in raven form were flying in for a landing. A sound between a scream and a cry, ragged and uneven, carried on the wind in broken pieces.
Horses. There were close to a dozen of them flying toward the basin—not in formation, but wild and separate, each one on its own chaotic path. Tobi heard their cries clearly from where he stood.
The nearest horse lost altitude mid-flight and dropped like a stone. Tobi felt the ground shake a little beneath his feet as the unfortunate horse descended with a sickening thud. The horse beat their wings once and then went still.
More horses fell out of the sky. Some managed to land cleanly, but most didn’t.
The basin flooded slowly with fallen horses.
***
Yorito and Chihaya were already in the air when Taka started screaming.
“You have to hurry! They’re going to kill Tobi!”
They flew toward the work site at speed. It was long past the time for the hostage exchange. Taka rode Chihaya with both fists clenched in his feathers. Hajime rode on Yorito’s back.
They encountered a flock of horses in the air, their flight patterns alarmingly erratic. Yamauchishu didn’t fly like that, and neither did trained horses.
Yorito processed this situation as a possible attack. These might be Jūzō’s people, revealing themselves against the Yellow Raven.
Within moments, Yorito knew that his first guess was mistaken. The horses weren’t flying toward them. They were flying toward the embankment.
Flying toward it and falling, one by one.
Yorito looked more carefully at the nearest horse. They weren’t crying out. They weren’t moving aggressively. Their whole body shuddered periodically. Their eyes were a pale, washed-out gray, the nictitating membrane drawn fully across them. They were white-blind and panicked.
“Yori, watch your sides,” Hajime said with unsettling calm.
Yorito looked to the left and right and discovered more horses encroaching on his space. They were all flying toward the embankment, though, and not at him. None of them paid Yorito or Chihaya any attention whatsoever.
Because they couldn’t. They were blind.
The horse nearest Yorito fell. He watched it all the way down—the drop, the impact, the stillness afterward. He landed at the basin’s edge a moment later, releasing Hajime and returning to human form.
Chihaya landed beside him.
Horses were down everywhere, some still moving, some not. Those still living were convulsing, their wings beating violently, their beaks clacking open and shut with a sound like the grinding gears of a child’s mechanical toy. White foam spurted from the beaks of some of the fallen.
“These are my dad and the others!” Taka called out. He stood at the edge of the nearest cluster of fallen horses, his voice barely audible. He called out names as he identified horses.
“Dad? Big brother? Hey! Why? Why are you—?” His voice broke. He started running, going from horse to horse.
Yorito didn’t move. He didn’t know what he was looking at yet. Some small part of him hoped that he was misinterpreting what he saw.
“He did it,” Chihaya said beside him.
“Did what?”
“The same thing he did when he attacked the Underground.”
Yorito understood before Chihaya finished speaking.
He looked at the nearest horse. They were shaking, foam at their beak, one wing half-extended and unable to fold.
“Poison.” His own voice sounded strange to his ears. “All of them? All of the freed horses?”
More horses fell from the sky in ragged groups, dead or dying.
Chihaya surveyed the basin with a pained grimace. “This is why I stopped serving the Imperial Court.” He raked a hand viciously through his hair. “The good people always die first. The only people who don’t die are the ones who get good at surviving.”
The Yellow Raven stood atop the embankment, looking down from a great height. He appeared entirely relaxed in his priest’s robes and cloth-of-gold stole. His hair was unbound and blowing in the wind. Aside from his hair, he was as still as a statue.
Chihaya looked up. “It’s been a while, Yukiya.” His voice was cold. “How does it feel to control all of Yamauchi?”
The Yellow Raven didn’t look at him. “Hah. It feels pretty damn awful, Chihaya.”
***
Chihaya went up the embankment first, moving fast. Yorito followed a step behind with Hajime.
The Yellow Raven was still, his empty hands at his sides. His personal attendant, Haruma, stood at his right shoulder. His competence at anticipating needs was evident in his bearing and the bag of necessities he carried. Yamauchishu loomed behind them both, silent and unobtrusive. At their feet, sitting down on the bare stone and staring blankly at the basin below, was Tobi.
“What is this?” Chihaya’s anger seeped through his careful mask.
“The yōrō’s poison is slow to take effect,” the Yellow Raven said. “There are individual differences in how quickly it takes hold. The ones who came back to the work site likely felt it sooner than the others.” He glanced at the basin indifferently. “We didn’t calculate the doses precisely enough, it seems.”
The sounds of the dying were carried to them by the wind. Taka had stopped calling out names in favor of wordless cries.
“That isn’t what I asked.” Chihaya stepped forward. “I’m asking what possessed you to poison them all.”
“Calm yourself, Chihaya.” Haruma stepped between them. “These horses were spared the death penalty on the condition that they perform labor for the Imperial Court. Since they would no longer be working if they left the embankments, that condition was rescinded, and the original penalty was reinstated. The horses have the same intelligence as any Yatagarasu. They understood that leaving the work site would result in this consequence.”
“And knowing that, they still left,” the Yellow Raven said quietly. “And so they got what they deserved.”
Tobi jerked upright as if he’d been struck. Then he lunged at the Yellow Raven.
A Yamauchishu caught Tobi by the collar. Another appeared at his side, and they pinned Tobi’s arms behind his back and forced him to his knees.
“Die! Die, you bastards!” Tobi yelled, fighting uselessly against the Yamauchishu. He lowered his face to the stone below him and wept.
Chihaya’s forehead furrowed. “I went and saw those women myself. I saw the workshops, and I saw the labor site. And this is what comes after that? Don’t tell me that you think this is merciful, Yukiya.”
“You’ve changed a lot, Chihaya.” The Yellow Raven’s tone was almost curious. “In our Keisōin days, you hated that your sister was forced to stay in the Valley. I recall helping you with that.”
“That was Akeru, not you.”
The Yellow Raven’s sigh was almost a laugh. “I don’t know what you’re so angry about. Do you think it would have been better if those women had stayed prostitutes? Compared to spreading their legs for money, tilling fields and gathering medicines is more dignified—there can be no argument about that. I gave dignity to whores. You don’t have to thank me, but you have no grounds to resent me.”
“You have no right to decide how people live their lives,” Chihaya said. “No one does. Not you, and not me.”
“We won’t agree.” The Yellow Raven waved his hand dismissively. Then he looked at Yorito. “You’ve been quiet.”
Yorito was shaking. “This… it’s too far, even for you.”
“When did you become important enough to condemn the Yellow Raven?” Haruma asked shrilly. “You’re an incompetent fool who couldn’t even keep watch over a ridiculous human.”
Yorito gasped as he remembered the first attack on Hajime. The Kuisaru… hadn’t moved like Kuisaru. Not at all.
He remembered the sword wounds on the villagers. Their village had burned, but they had died some other way—and not by Kuisaru attack.
The Yamauchishu who had grabbed Tobi first was quick like the Kuisaru attacker Yorito had seen. Quick, graceful, and silent.
Yorito drew his sword before he had time to think things through and slashed at the Yamauchishu, who dodged.
“The Kuisaru didn’t attack us in the pleasure district,” Yorito gritted out. “That was you.”
No one said anything. No one had to.
“The Kuisaru haven’t existed for a long time,” Yorito said. “The extermination campaign wasn’t for the purpose of killing Kuisaru at all. You’ve been killing Yatagarasu who resist you and calling them Kuisaru. The burned village near the Touke Territory checkpoint—those villagers were from the Underground, weren’t they? You retaliated against them, and then told everyone they were Kuisaru.”
The Yellow Raven raised an eyebrow. “You only figured it out just now?”
Haruma made a placating noise. “There, there. He was raised in the new accelerated course and has little to no experience with real Kuisaru. The disguise that fooled him was well made—real fur, real weapons. It was worth the trouble of making it.”
“Indeed,” the Yellow Raven said. “All such costumes are made from Kuisaru corpses and the weapons they left behind.”
Yorito felt his world shift around him. “Why? Why have you been deceiving people for so long?”
“Because it is necessary.” The Yellow Raven was unflappable. “If incidents caused by those who defy the Imperial Court were honestly reported as such, there would be fools who found reasons to sympathize with them. But if those same incidents are attributed to Kuisaru, then the Yatagarasu have a common enemy to fight. People need something they are allowed to hate without reservation. They will always find something, so it’s better to give them a unifying target.”
The Yellow Raven came close enough for Yorito to see his own face reflected, pale and small, in his eyes.
“Look at Yamauchi. Yatagarasu are pitiful creatures who cannot go on living without something to despise. If you give them no target, they will find one of their own—the Imperial Court that protects them, for example. The people at the bottom of this embankment right now are scum who think only of themselves. They make no attempt to understand what we are trying to preserve. If governing were entrusted to them, Yamauchi would collapse within a season. So.” He spread his arms briefly toward the basin below. “Hate is something people need. I merely channeled it. I did not create it.”
He glanced over at Yorito. “You must understand this as a universal truth. The dumbest, most incompetent Yatagarasu is capable of hate, and so is the most capable and intelligent. Our people live with a pride they never had to earn. If that hatred and prejudice were turned on the wrong target, what do you think would happen?”
“But—they are Yatagarasu,” Yorito said. “The ones you killed. The ones lying there. They were our people!”
“They were Kuisaru,” the Yellow Raven spat. “Or they might as well have been. Think about this carefully. Can a group interested only in its own immediate satisfaction maintain any kind of order? That’s a mob. A blight upon Yamauchi.”
He came closer still and lowered his voice. “Such people are our enemies, not our friends. They are Kuisaru, and they are better off as dust beneath our feet.”
Yorito heard his back teeth grind together. “I always thought you were merciful.”
The Yellow Raven shed his mildness for a cold, expressionless mask. “Blind obedience and hero worship is the same behavior pattern as those who hate me in reverse. I thought your nature was different, but perhaps I expected too much of you.
“What will grieving do?” the Yellow Raven continued before Yorito could say a word. “What will lamenting the dead accomplish? No help is coming. There is no salvation. We are in hell. All we can do is try to make a paradise for ourselves and hope it lasts.” He looked at Yorito as though the sight of him was a minor puzzle to be solved. “Come. Laugh with me. Yamauchi is paradise, and it is hell.”
***
“Enough of this nonsense,” Hajime rasped. “I won’t listen to it anymore. " He had an unlit pipe between his teeth and was turning it slowly in his fingers. He appeared supremely satisfied with himself.
“I kept thinking I recognized it, ever since I first heard it here. After being around long enough, it finally clicked.” He started saying the sentence in the language of the Yatagarasu, but switched to Japanese at the end of it. “My old man’s accent was thick. When he talked like that, nobody around us understood a word. I grew up thinking it was normal. But now that I think about it, he wasn’t speaking some kind of weird dialect. It was your language.”
The Yellow Raven’s eyes narrowed.
“Hey, Sessai.” Hajime’s tone was conversational. “D’you have my necklace with you? I’d like it back.”
Haruma was stunned, but he snapped to attention and produced the gold necklace from his breast pocket. At the end of it hung a rough, heavy pendant: uncut, irregular, clearly a piece of something larger.
“Yep, that’s the one.” Hajime took the necklace from Haruma’s hands before anyone could object.
“This is gold from Yamauchi,” Hajime said. “I’m sure of it. A lump of natural gold ore, high purity, nine hundred grams originally. This is a fragment of that lump. My old man left it to me. He told me it would save my life someday.” He grinned wryly. “It’s not really my style, but I kept it on me.”
Hajime turned the pendant over. “It’s been appraised by several institutions. Every one of them told me that it was extraordinarily high quality. For a while after that, people came at me from all directions trying to find out where it had been mined. I told them it was something the family bought long ago, brought in for appraisal only recently.” He slipped the chain over his neck and settled the pendant against his chest. “But there are still multiple samples like this back home. I was the one who helped pack them, so I know that’s true. If those institutions can’t confirm I’m still alive, I’ve arranged it so that samples will be sent out to every contact who might be interested in a mining project, complete with the location of the ore deposit where my old man found them.”
He looked at the Yellow Raven. “If the coordinates of Yamauchi become known in the human world, you’ll have people crawling over every way in and out inside of a year. I assume you don’t want Yamauchi leveled by mining.”
The Yellow Raven said nothing.
“Think it’s a bluff? Kill me and find out.”
The Yellow Raven remained silent. The expression on his face was one Yorito had not seen there before, which was a kind of answer in itself.
Hajime tilted his head. “You were born fifty years too late, Sessai. There was already a man who did what you’re attempting. He used the Third Gate to come to the human world and built his wealth there, acquiring the rights to a mountain that even the King of the Tengu couldn’t obtain by force.” He let that information settle. “He didn’t discover what was in the mountain after he bought it. He knew from the beginning, because he came from Yamauchi.”
Yasuhara Sakuzuke was not a human businessman.
“If it were just me, you might have been able to kill me and be done with it. But you still have to deal with that greedy old bastard.”
The Yellow Raven laughed mechanically. I see. So that’s what Hajime means.”
“You noticed.” Hajime scratched the back of his head. “They told me the character I wanted wasn’t permitted under the registry system, so they wrote it in hiragana in the official records. The kanji character my name uses is usually pronounced saku, meaning ‘new moon.’”
Hajime was King Saku’s son.
Above the embankment, the summer clouds had built higher while the Yatagarasu on the ground stood still. Their shadows moved across the stonework slowly. Thunder boomed in the distance.
Yasuhara Hajime—Yasuhara Saku, King Saku’s son—looked at the Yellow Raven with cheerful, deliberate arrogance.
“I stepped out for cigarettes and ended up here, so I’d like to go back now. Will you let me go?”
The Yellow Raven composed his features and showed Hajime the same easy, polite smile he’d given him when he’d first arrived. “Of course. Have a safe trip back.”
***
The Gate of the Vermilion Bird was usually bustling with activity, but it was quiet today. Yatagarasu stood still in the market, watching events unfold. Merchants, clerks, Yamauchishu—all of them made a narrow corridor of space for Hajime to pass through as he was escorted back to the human world.
People looked on Hajime with awe or wonder as he passed them by. Hajime paid them no heed. A Tengu wearing a mask shaped like a crow’s head guided him to the same kind of cart he’d used to arrive in Yamauchi.
Hajime climbed into the cart, settled his weight, and turned around.
“Hey, Yorito. Are you coming with me?”
Yorito’s eyes went wide.
Hajime shrugged. “Working under Sessai after all this is going to be kinda difficult, right? I’ve got to deal with these people going forward. It would be useful to have your help.”
“That is completely out of the question,” Haruma said before Yorito could reply.
Beside Haruma, the Yellow Raven smiled coldly at Yorito.
Yorito took in Hajime’s expression, which communicated nothing in particular. Then he looked at the Yellow Raven and winced. He untied the red cord binding the sword to his waist and offered the sheathed sword to the Yellow Raven on bended knee with both hands.
“I return this to you, sir.”
Haruma’s sharp intake of breath was audible.
The Yellow Raven stared at the sword. The look in his eyes was like the one Yorito had seen when the Yellow Raven was surveying the embankment full of dead or dying horses.
“Do you understand what this means?” Haruma asked, his voice taut. “Think of your father, your ancestors, generations of service—”
“I know.” Yorito kept his eyes down. “I’m sorry to my parents. And to you, my lord—genuinely. You’ve given me more than I can ever repay. I know it. But I can’t serve you as I did before. I can’t pretend not to have seen what I saw.”
“Then you are a fool,” the Yellow Raven said quietly. “Go.”
Yorito bowed low. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.” He rose to his feet and followed quickly after Hajime. He climbed into the cart just before it started moving.
The Tengu in the crow mask, who was driving, shot Yorito a complicated look. He said nothing.
Hajime shifted slightly to make room without being asked.
The platform of the Gate of the Vermilion Bird receded in the distance. Yorito looked at the faces of the people he knew—people he had grown up with, eaten with, complained to—and could not bring himself to say farewell.
Yorito watched them until the cart turned a corner and the Yatagarasu disappeared from view.
***
By the time the garage door opened on the other side of the tunnel, the air smelled of iron and stone. Evening sunlight slanted in through the windows. The lake outside caught the sun and shimmered. In the middle distance, a floating island sat low in the water. The bridge extending from the far shore to the island gleamed a deep, deep red.
The Tengu in the crow mask ran off to the lodge beside the garage to receive instructions. Yorito and Hajime went down to the lake shore to wait.
The ground underfoot was all pebbles—rounded, gray-white, and pleasant to walk on. They were also a little slippery. The waves lapped against the shore at regular intervals, each wave slightly different from the last. The breeze was cool and carried the scent of clean, deep water.
A mosquito buzzed near Hajime’s ear. He brushed it away lazily. “You were an elite in Yamauchi,” he said, watching the water. “I invited you here, but—is this really what you want?”
Yorito smiled. “Honestly, I’m still confused. I don’t really understand what I’ve done yet or what I’ve agreed to.”
“Fair enough, I suppose.”
“I know that what the Yellow Raven is doing is wrong,” Yorito said. “I can’t serve him the way I used to. I don’t think I could have stayed.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Hajime crouched down, picked up a flat stone from the waterline, and turned it over in his hand, examining it with absorbed attention. He was thinking about something, but he didn’t voice his thoughts aloud.
“And you? What will you do from here?” Yorito asked.
Hajime exhaled. “If the old man is considered dead even within Yamauchi, he probably doesn’t intend to surface again regardless of what’s actually happening.” He made a vaguely dissatisfied face. “That’s typical of him. But I told you, didn’t I? I didn’t come to Yamauchi just to look for him. I’ll get things sorted here and then go back. I’ll hand over the rights to Mt. Ara in my own good time, as soon as I find a suitable successor.”
He threw the stone into the lake. It hit the water and sank without skipping. Hajime watched it sink.
“What truly has value to you, Mr. Yasuhara?” Yorito asked.
Hajime didn’t look away from the ripples on the lake until the water was still again. “I mentioned a refugee girl before. Do you remember?”
“Yes.” Yorito remembered the interview that Hajime had described about escaping a war zone and thinking the country she’d come to was like paradise, at least initially.
“I used that for years as a reason to keep going. I was in a bad situation, but I had food and shelter and nobody was shooting at me. I considered myself blessed—a resident of paradise.” He shook his head. “But I wasn’t, and deep down, I knew it.”
Hajime pulled the pipe from his pocket, but he didn’t use it. “I was in despair,” he said. “I kept telling myself I had no reason to feel that way. I stopped expecting circumstances to change for the better. I was arrogant and showed contempt to everyone around me. I looked down my nose at the world from my own private paradise. I thought that people who complained or tried to change things were weak and cowardly.” He exhaled slowly. “I mocked the person closest to me—I treated them worse than anyone, and they died.”
He said all this without emotion, as if he’d rehearsed it several times. “I told the old man all that, more or less, and he decided to teach me a lesson.”
“What lesson?”
“He left me alone in the mountains for a while.” He caught Yorito’s expression and waved a hand. “Not Yamauchi. I lived in a vacation villa in the mountains with an enormous television, the newest air conditioner, and a full refrigerator. Everything I could ever want was provided for me. I was young then, maybe ten or eleven. My living conditions there gave me nothing to complain of.
“I thought: this is paradise. I hoped it would go on forever.” A pause. “And then the old man came back.”
Hajime remembered the front door of the villa opening, revealing his adoptive father. “I was glad to see him,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting to feel that way at all, but I was. It was such a relief to have someone else there with me.”
He went quiet for a moment and then said, “I was aghast at myself. Everything I’d been telling myself for years about not needing anyone suddenly rang hollow. I did need people to be happy. How horrible.”
The waves lapped against Hajime’s feet. On the far shore, lights were coming on in the houses.
“What do you think is necessary for paradise? Good food? Nice clothes?” Hajime didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s people, Yorito. Connection with other people is joy. At least for me, it is. It’s not logical. When I was a kid, I hated most people, but the moment I saw one again after a long absence, I was happy. The world I’d been living in was rewritten. It made me frustrated and happy and sad at the same time, this violent thirst for something I hadn’t known I needed.”
The pipe stilled in his hands.
“Since then, I’ve been looking for answers to the questions I had as a child. I still haven’t found them all.” He looked out at the lake. “It’s easy to say this world is hell. All you have to do is give up. There’s even a kind of comfort in that, accepting the worst. But if you’re going to live, why not make life worthwhile?” He smiled faintly. “Paradise isn’t attainable. It’s a goal to work toward. I’d like to see it one day, even if it’s imperfect. Yamauchi has so much hope and promise. The Yatagarasu are people, by my standard. Perhaps one day I’ll find a real paradise there. Maybe the old man prepared me a front-row seat.” He smirked.
Yorito turned this over carefully in his mind. “As a gift for you?”
Hajime made an odd face. “Well—maybe. Or maybe he was just vexed that the Yellow Raven was about to take everything, and decided to throw a spanner in the works.” He pulled his arm back and released another stone into the lake. It hit the water and sank without skipping, the same as before. The ripples spread.
“By sending you into Yamauchi as the Underground’s successor?” Yorito asked.
Hajime turned toward him sharply. “No. That’s not what I said at all.” He appeared unusually flustered. “Rebuilding the Underground and all that—it sounds entertaining to watch, but it’s not my role. I’m just a bystander.”
“You hold the rights to Mt. Ara. You’re not a bystander. You’re the decision maker here.”
“Fine, I’ll stir things up as much as I can and wait and see who brings that man down.” He folded his arms. “But I’m not the one who makes the deals. That’s someone else’s job.”
Hajime’s irresponsibility was almost impressive. “You’re going to pass your responsibilities and duties to Tobi? Is that fair?”
Hajime burst out laughing. “I didn’t say who’d do it all. I wonder who it’ll be.”
They stood there while the last light left the sky, the clouds above the mountains going from pink to violet. The cicadas buzzed in the trees, the whole forest making one continuous sound.
“Um. Mr. Yasu—Hajime. I came here completely on impulse, so I don’t have a single cent to my name.”
“Mm.”
“Since you were the one who invited me, you’ll let me stay with you, right?”
Hajime’s face went through several expressions. “I never thought anyone would actually say that to me in real life.”
“I can cook, clean, do laundry, and manage household finances. I was trained for it. And I’m an excellent bodyguard. I’ll be useful to you.”
A silence. Then, “Fine. You can stay at my place, you freeloader.”
“Thank you very much.”
“I don’t doubt that you’ll protect me,” Hajime muttered under his breath.
The Tengu with the crow mask returned from the lodge, relayed a few basic instructions to Hajime and then went to arrange transport.
Pebbles shifted under Yorito’s feet as he followed after Hajime. The lake was dark and still, the water smooth like a mirror.
Somewhere behind them, Yamauchi adjusted itself to the shape of recent events.
***
Neither Haruma nor the Yellow Raven spoke as they left the Gate of the Vermilion Bird.
The Yellow Raven entered his office and sat at his desk. Haruma locked the door behind them and came straight across the room.
“Yellow Raven. We’ll need to destroy the code token.”
The Yellow Raven handed over Yorito’s sword without ceremony, tossing it more than passing it. Haruma caught it, turned to the slanting light from the window, and checked the knots in the red cord with the focused attention he brought to everything, however minor. Then he smiled.
“Mountain raven,” Haruma said. His grin widened. ‘Mountain raven’ was a code the Yamauchishu used as a short set phrase to convey loyalty. It meant that Yorito had not betrayed them.
The Yellow Raven had read Yasuhara Hajime correctly from their first exchange. The man had concluded that the Yellow Raven was not to be trusted—and he had been right. The fact that he had chosen Yorito as his guide from among all the subordinates arranged in the hall at the Kōrokan was telling. Yorito was innocent of the Imperial Court’s uglier operations. His hands were clean.
Yasuhara Hajime had an eye for people, which was inconvenient, and he had used it with precision, which was more inconvenient still.
The plan had always been to bring Yorito in gradually, teaching him about the necessity of various operations step by slow step. Yasuhara Hajime had forced the Yellow Raven into something more theatrical. It seemed that Yorito had managed to take it all in stride.
“Oh, good,” the Yellow Raven said. “I was worried for a moment.”
“Anyone too stupid to understand our intent couldn’t have pulled off an infiltration in the first place,” Haruma said.
Kitanokōji Yorito had been raised to be exactly the kind of public-facing nobleman the Imperial Court needed—polished, principled, and convincing. If Yasuhara Hajime took a liking to him and decided to transfer the rights to Mt. Ara to him, Yorito would end up fulfilling precisely the role he had been cultivated for.
There was a neat efficiency about the situation that the Yellow Raven greatly appreciated.
“Since we went to the trouble of playing the villain so obviously, it would have been a problem if he’d failed to notice,” ” Haruma added with the air of someone assessing a performance that had required more of him than it should have.
Haruma knew the Yellow Raven better than anyone, but even he couldn’t always tell where performance ended and truth began. He suspected that the Yellow Raven couldn’t always tell, either.
The Yellow Raven cleared his throat. “We’ll leave Mr. Yasuhara to Yorito, then. We’ll need to maintain the appearance of hostility toward us. And we need a backup plan. Find a new candidate for the rights transfer as quickly as you can.”
Haruma bowed. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you.”
Their plans were on track. The Yellow Raven let himself settle into his chair and rubbed his temples, feeling the weight of the day upon his shoulders.
Haruma lit a hanging lantern as the sun set, set a cup of fragrant tea on the desk—the best tea, the one kept for difficult days—and placed a small dish of sugared sweets pressed into the shape of butterflies beside it. Creating this tableau was a habit from his student years, when making things pleasant for hard-to-please people had been both a duty and a survival strategy.
“Sorry. As always.”
“Don’t apologize.” Haruma waved his hand dismissively, still smiling. “You must be exhausted.”
The Yellow Raven accepted the tea, feeling a complex wave of emotions. He’d never wanted anyone to serve him. He often felt that way in Haruma’s presence, but the feeling was complicated by the fact that Haruma visibly preferred service.
Haruma’s smile collapsed at the corners. “Well, that was an inconvenient adventure for us. Who knew King Saku would create such unnecessary complications?”
“We should discuss the Underground.”
“Yes.”
The Yellow Raven made his thinking face. “Jūzō is nothing. Small fry, not worthy of notice. The boy is a different matter.”
The plan Tobi had conceived and executed was sophisticated, and not just for his age. Tobi was intelligent enough to be dangerous. He had to be managed before he caused more trouble.
“Maybe Chihaya put the idea in his head?” Haruma asked.
The Yellow Raven remembered his old friend’s face when they’d met at the work site. Chihaya was furious with him, and he’d walked away.
He shook his head. “That’s not like him. It’s not the way he thinks. Tobi’s plan shows some understanding of how nobles think.”
Yasuhara Hajime’s status as the rights holder of Mt. Ara had leaked. That was confirmation that Chihaya wasn’t involved, in the Yellow Raven’s mind. Chihaya would have never revealed that information, not even under torture. That meant there was a traitor somewhere in the Imperial Court.
“We need to tighten security again.”
“Before that,” Haruma said, “there’s something more pressing.” He looked up. “We should ask him directly, don’t you think?”
The Yellow Raven set down his tea and stood up.
***
Tobi sat with his knees pulled into his chest and his head down. He’d been tossed into a dark, damp cell some hours earlier. He shivered as the sun set.
He wasn’t crying. That was the first thing the Yellow Raven noticed.
Yesterday, Tobi had been assigned to pleasant quarters with a comfortable bed and plenty to eat. Today, he was no longer the boss of the Underground, so he had no standing. He could be brought before the Yellow Raven or not as the Yellow Raven chose, and could speak or not as the Yellow Raven permitted.
The cell door between them drew a clear line between Tobi and his captor.
The Yellow Raven took in Tobi’s thin frame and thought about himself at Tobi’s age. He set those thoughts aside before they could shake his equilibrium.
“Do you want to know what happened to the Underground’s children?” the Yellow Raven asked.
Tobi looked up from between his knees, his eyes finding the Yellow Raven through the bars. He managed to look him in the eye without flinching.
The Yellow Raven was inordinately pleased by this. “I’ll tell you.” He sat down on the filthy floor and crossed his legs, bringing himself level with Tobi’s gaze. “They’re in the human world now.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain from the beginning.” The Yellow Raven settled his hands in his lap. “You saw the women’s workshop. Did you notice what was being researched there?”
Tobi said nothing.
“Medicines and provisions resistant to disasters,” the Yellow Raven said smoothly. “Coarse grains that turn no profit in ordinary times, but can be grown where better crops fail, in conditions that would kill almost anything else. The kind of thing no one invests in when everything is going well.” He leaned forward. “We didn’t take your people because we wanted slaves. We took them because we needed labor for something that genuinely matters, and because what they created went back to the Underground’s children. I imagine you noticed that much.”
Tobi gave him a tentative nod.
“Can you imagine why we’re in such a hurry to research these things?”
Tobi didn’t guess.
“The mountain god’s power is waning more rapidly than anyone outside the Imperial Court knows.” He paused to gather his thoughts and then said, “Twenty years ago, the mountain god performed a ritual to restore himself—a temporary measure. For a time, Yamauchi flourished. But that ritual cannot be repeated. We cannot recreate the same conditions.”
What came next was uncertain. Past cases offered a range of outcomes, all of them bad in different ways. The barrier that protected Yamauchi would weaken. The outer layer had already eroded during the war with the Kuisaru. The fraying barrier had been documented for three years before the Imperial Court acknowledged that Yamauchi had less time than initially anticipated before the barrier failed. Epidemics, earthquakes, floods, droughts, and all manner of other disasters would follow.
There was no way to predict when the barrier would fail, but the Imperial Court knew that it would, someday, with certainty. Someday soon.
“Our preparations are generally understood as measures against the Kuisaru threat. In reality, they are preparations for natural disasters. We need to develop Souke Territory before the barrier fails and the other territories become uninhabitable. We know that Souke Territory is the largest and first territory created in Yamauchi, and that it will fall last.”
People were more sensitive to present inconvenience than to invisible futures. The Yellow Raven knew that. He had taken measures that were inhumane with that knowledge, because the alternative—explaining the actual situation, trying to obtain genuine understanding—would have produced panic, political instability, and lost years that would only hasten Yamauchi’s end.
“We are working on the fundamental problem. The revival of the mountain god’s rite,” the Yellow Raven said.
Tobi listened, as still and silent.
“The rite requires humans. But no human with the capacity to perform it currently remains near Mt. Ara. That is why we are raising children—taken young enough that they do not yet know they are Yatagarasu—as humans. If they do not know what they are, they may be able to live as humans forever.”
Tobi’s face moved through a variety of expressions—discomfort, recognition, resistance. Then he said, “You’re insane.”
“Yes,” the Yellow Raven said. “I think so, too.”
Tobi stared at him. “You have some nerve, lying about this to everyone.”
“People who don’t know how dire the situation is have every right to resent me. I’m fully aware of that. What I’m doing is necessary to protect Yamauchi. I will not pretend otherwise or try to dress it up and make it palatable.” He shrugged. “If people want to hate me because they don’t understand the situation, that’s fair enough. People who raise the banner of resistance after learning what Yamauchi faces are another matter. Those people aren’t thinking about Yamauchi or its future. They’re pursuing private ambition and using the Underground’s grievances to do it.”
He gave Tobi a contemplative nod. “You are very clever. The approach you took—it was considerably more sophisticated than anything Jūzō could have conceived. Someone helped you think it through. Who was it?”
The question hovered in the air between them.
“Whoever it was has an educated mind and a specific political ideology. If they are a noble, their purpose is almost certainly to use you and your people to trip me up and seize power for themselves. My methods are not admirable, but my objective is to protect Yamauchi. Theirs is not. Which of us is more dangerous to you should be apparent.”
The Yellow Raven settled more comfortably on the floor. “Give me the name, and I will support you going forward. If you wish to join the Imperial Court, that path will be open to you. If your ambitions lie elsewhere, I will give you resources.”
The Yellow Raven liked Tobi. It was rare for anyone to challenge him intellectually these days. His offer to aid Tobi in the future was honest.
Tobi’s mouth curved in a way that was not quite a smile. “A ghost,” he said.
The Yellow Raven waited.
“The one who guided me isn’t in this world anymore.” The light in Tobi’s eyes was steady and direct. “You killed her, didn’t you?”
The negotiations, such as they were, ended there.
The Yellow Raven stood. He didn’t bother brushing the cell floor’s grime from his robe as he turned away. The guards posted outside came to attention. The heavy door swung shut behind the Yellow Raven.
Haruma fell into step beside him as he walked down the corridor. “You didn’t need to do that yourself.”
“Don’t say that. Of course I did.”
He had gained something, even without the name. A ghost had sent Yasuhara Hajime into Yamauchi—a beautiful young woman who bore a grudge against him.
Yasuhara Sakuzuke had last been seen seven years ago. Allowing for some margin of error, the Third Gate had been functioning until then.
Yukiya considered the situation. Hypothetically, if a woman who had lost a political struggle against him disappeared—dead or vanished, no one had confirmed which—and had used the Third Gate to escape to the human world… what next? She would surely spend the intervening years preparing to return to Yamauchi to settle old scores.
The face of one particular woman came to mind.
“Come to think of it,” Haruma said in a slightly apprehensive tone, “whatever has become of Princess Shion?”
The Yellow Raven attempted a smile and failed. He took a deep breath and then said, “Unfortunately, the dead don’t think at all.”
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