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almondinflowerSummary: Another death occurs, and Waya meets with Shindou's grandfather.
Notes: 3800 words, alarmingly reflective of the way I think. Spotting of typos and inane verb/adjective repetitions would be appreciated. T_T
Chapter 1 here.
When light and dark are still a blur,
who can see through to their source?
I was up early the next day. I went to the kitchen and put water on to boil, then tugged open the slats of the venetian blinds, allowing a pale bluish light to filter in. Over the breakfast counter I saw Le Ping sprawled out on the sofa, his limbs further spread than I'd thought possible on that small piece of furniture. He was belly-down, one arm hanging over the edge of the seat, legs scissored at an odd angle. A subtle, oddly endearing snore emitted from him with each breath.
A minor sleep shortage never hurt a teenager, I decided, and reached up towards the shelf where the wireless sat, switching it on. The news was just starting. Le Ping started to stir the moment the announcer's scratchy, masculine voice came on – in tandem with the low whistle of the kettle reaching optimum temperature, it was starting to get pretty noisy in here. I got out two tin mugs and shook some tea leaves into each, and when Le Ping padded over, finally awake, I tipped steaming water into both and handed him his drink.
“It's hot,” he complained. He was alert and bright-voiced. Evidently a morning person. Fortunately, so was I.
“Shut up and drink. Caffeine first thing in the day is good for your critical faculties.”
“What about breakfast?” But he drained the mug in one gulp anyway, then immediately started a choking fit when it had trouble going down.
“Idiot.” I thought about thumping him on the back to make him suffer more, then decided it was too dangerous. Instead I went to the sink and filled a glass with water for him, just in case (at this point I had no idea whether it would make the problem better or worse.)
On the wireless, the man speaking paused, before continuing in a speedier, excited tone: “...and in breaking news, the body of the Ouza was discovered in the Shrine of Profound Darkness early this morning. Zama Ouza, aged 51, was in the middle of a three night vigil as part of the preparation for this year's midsummer festivities when tragedy struck suddenly and mysteriously last night. While the Council of Oligarchs has yet to release an official statement regarding the death, police sources have confirmed that foul play is a possibility.”
Sometime during that announcement, Le Ping had managed to stop coughing. His brow furrowed tight as we both went still for ten or so seconds, listening hard; but that was all the wireless had to say on the subject. I turned it off after the conversation switched to baseball and weather forecasts.
“So what do you think?” Le Ping broke in impatiently. “That sounds way suspicious. And far too coincidental.”
“It could be nothing. For all we know, Zama Ouza's fondness for port finally caught up with him, and he died of liver failure. But, I reckon I ought to be taking a professional interest anyway. Get dressed, we're going to the Council House.”
He was already extracting clothing and towels from the luggage he'd left open on the floor. He moved quickly, I'd grant him that.
“It's just weird; you know what I told you about Lu Li last night--” he said, halfway through the bathroom doorway.
“Yes, yes. Don't jump to conclusions. And leave the toilet seat up when you're done, I prefer it that way.”
#
We decided to walk to the Council House. At our pace it took thirty minutes' travelling time. A gaggle of journalists and inquisitive third parties had already formed around the marble steps at the entrance when we got there, and as I came closer I saw that a temporary barricade had been erected across the white portico that fronted the building's bronze double doors.
I pushed my way to the front of the crowd and came up to the first row of columns, where several Council staff in black and white robes were standing guard. Pausing, I checked whether Le Ping had made it through the flock of bystanders. I needn't have worried, from the looks of things; the kid had extremely talented and annoying elbows.
I nodded at a titian-haired young man who was lolling against the barricade. “Hey Komiya,” I said. “Do you think you could let me in?”
He blinked owlishly at me. “Oh hey, Waya. Long time no see. Guess you're here for the Ouza investigation? Did they call you in?”
I shook my head. “I'm here on my own. Can I come and have a look?”
“Sure, no problem. The Shrine's closed off at the moment, but I'll leave you to figure that out on your own. Is that your twin brother?” he asked, squinting at Le Ping, who was stomping his way towards us.
“No way!” Le Ping glared at Komiya. “Do I look that ugly to you?”
I smacked Le Ping on the head. “Tell me that the next time you beg for us to pull a switch.”
Komiya was studying Le Ping's throat. “That's a Yihian Imperial neck ring,” he said confusedly.
“He's a Yihian Imperial Diviner. I know it's hard to believe. Is it okay if he comes with me?” I asked. “He's smarter than he looks. Maybe we can trick old man Kuwabara into thinking he has double vision.”
Komiya arched a brow at me. “You're smarter than you look, too. ”
“I'll choose to take that as a compliment,” I said, stepping over the barricade. “Thanks, Komiya; I owe you one.”
#
The maze of hallways and passages within the Council House was all too familiar to my feet. I hurried on, Le Ping right behind me, eyeing the coffered ceilings, the heavy dark carpets, the gilded mirors lining wide corridors. As far as I could tell, nothing had changed in the last two years, save for my relationship to the State of Ki.
“This place is kind of...small,” Le Ping pronounced, after we'd made it past the initial stretch of vestibules and were well into the labyrinth of doors and staircases that led to the interior shrines.
“Compared to the Yihian Palace I suppose it is.” I spotted Nase and Fuku coming out of a meeting chamber and rounded the corner rapidly, so as to avoid meeting them. I hate awkward conversations. “Not quite so many concubines and ladies-in-waiting to house. Nearly there now."
We carefully stepped over a wooden doorsill that I'd tripped over several times during my time here as a novice, took a shortcut through a servant's passageway, and then we were there – in the Sky's Origin, a hexagonal domed room that terminated at its highest point in a massive oculus, a circular hole left completely open to the elements.
As boys we'd snuck into this place together, Isumi and Shindou and I, to hold midnight feasts and and review our studies and then finally, when we got tired, lie on our backs on the black marble floor, watching the stars.
I shook off memory and surveyed the current situation. The Sky's Origin was teeming with people: diviners, policemen, servants, senators. I searched the throng of familiar faces, trying to spot someone I could question for more information. Touya Akira was standing next to a tall urn, amid a group of senators twice his age. He angled his head slightly as I glided past, and his green eyes widened briefly when he spotted Le Ping, but he set his jaw, and continued talking to the grey-bearded man in front of him. Typical. I moved on.
A few yards away, State Diviners Morishita and Saeki were holding a lively and heated discussion. Morishita appeared thunderous, his arms folded across his chest.
Well, that wouldn't do either. My footsteps quickened.
“Waya?” I turned at the sound, but it was Le Ping who had been accosted, by a young, sleepy-gazed man in an indifferent haircut. Le Ping was glaring, throwing off the young man's cotton-sleeved hand.
“Of course not. Isn't it obvious who the superior version is?”
“Yes, one of us has brains and the other doesn't,” I interrupted acidly. “Fuku, this is Le Ping; you've probably heard Isumi raving about him before. Mini-Waya and all that.”
“I remember!” The puzzlement in Fuku's face cleared a little. “But Waya, what are you doing here?”
“Can you get us into the Shrine of Profound Darkness?” I asked.
He frowned and then pointed at the northern end of the room. In front of the oval door set into the wall there hung a long yellow band of crime scene tape. “The police have been there all morning. The only people who've been allowed in are the State Diviners.”
“Who's in charge of the investigation? Amano? That's all right, I'll clear it with him.” Possibly, I added mentally. Amano was pretty used to me bowling my way into police business anyhow. “You coming, Le Ping?”
As we ducked beneath the tape barrier, it occurred to me that having a Yihian Imperial Diviner enter the Shrine of Profound Darkness unauthorised might possibly be grounds for a diplomatic incident. Ah well, too late now. Le Ping was probably hunting for new notches on his belt of bratty achievements anyway.
Pushing the door open, I breathed the air of the shrine, and let the old feeling of fear-which-was-not-fear envelope me.
The Shrine of Profound Darkness is the heart of the Council House. It is biconvex in shape, floored and walled in obsidian, and completely bare except for nine larger-than-life Weiqi boards, arranged in a perfect square, all made of smoky garnet with black grids drawn in tourmaline. There is something about the room's acoustics that absorbs all sound, so that even at that moment, with half a dozen police detectives and several diviners in official robes pacing around, it felt unnaturally hushed.
The lighting in the shrine is always dim. It took some time before I could see anything clearly, and by the time my eyes had adjusted, I noticed Ichiryuu Kisei advancing on me.
Immediately I dropped into a genuflect, reaching out to pull Le Ping in to the same position – but there was no need, the kid had noticed and was already kneeling. I let my arm fall away from Le Ping and fixed my eyes downwards.
“Stand up,” said the Kisei sharply. “What are you doing here?”
In my head the Kisei had always been a bald, genial man with a ready supply of bad jokes and terrifying powers of divination. Right then all I could remember was the terror. I pulled myself to my feet, gaze still lowered. I tried not to feel fourteen years old.
.
“Waya!” The sound of Amano's voice reassured me a little, just enough that I could lift my head. “You'll have to excuse him, Kisei; he's a private detective, one of the best. He's helped us with dozens of cases in the past.”
“Has his presence here been authorized by one of the State Diviners?”
“My apologies,” I said. “I thought it was best to come here as soon as possible, while the evidence was still fresh.”
Ichiryuu humphed and peered at Le Ping. “And who are you, his brother?”
Le Ping said haughtily: “I am Le Ping of the House of the Golden Dragon, a servant of the Eternal Dynasty, one who watches order and observes chaos, here as a representative of the Son of Heaven.”
I made a wholehearted attempt to sink into the earth and disappear. Grounds for a diplomatic incident? Le Ping was a living diplomatic incident.
The Kisei's eyes narrowed. “You wear the imperial torque. Why wasn't I notified of your arrival?”
“My apologies, Kisei. I was the one who received the notification from Yang Hai, the Yihian Privy Minister of Internal Affairs.” The voice cut into the conversation like a tempered blade slicing through air. Touya stepped into our circle, a thin neat dark figure. “The letter was directed to the Meijin's office, and since it was labelled as requiring immediate attention, it was passed on to me.”
Okay, that was new information. I was about to shoot Le Ping a death-glare for withholding facts from me, when I caught the faint surprise that passed across the boy's face. Aha, so Yang Hai had outplayed him this time.
“Detective Waya is also here at my request,” Touya continued.
Judging by the expression on his face, the rumours about the Kisei's jealousy of the younger Touya were true. “Well, if you've chosen to let them in, I'll leave it up to you to handle it. Your responsibility, do you understand?”
Touya bowed. “Please don't worry. I'll handle this to the best of my ability.”
The tension seemed to linger in the air a while; then the Kisei shrugged and stepped back. “I have to go for a meeting,” he said, walking towards the door. “Touya, if you could prepare a report on this for the Council. Including our two unexpected guests.”
“Certainly.”
With Ichiryuu gone everyone relaxed a little. I smiled at Amano, said: “Could you tell me what you've discovered so far? I notice they've already removed the Ouza's body from the shrine.”
“Of course.” Amano reached into a coat pocket and brought out his beloved notepad. “I'm glad Diviner Touya thought of getting you involved. Should have thought of calling you earlier. Divination mysteries are your specialty after all.”
“...is this a divination mystery? I thought we were still thinking good old mundane murder.”
Amano checked his notes. “There were no signs of a struggle, and no marks on the Ouza's body except for what looked like third-degree burns on his fingers. Small and round, as if the divination stones had started burning him. The doctors said we couldn't rule out a sudden unexplained cardiac arrest, but still-- he wasn't known to have any health problems. Oh, and he was sitting in seiza when the diviners discovered him this morning. Frozen in perfect position, with his hand outstretched to play. There was a black stone stuck between his fingers. It left a burn mark when we peeled it away.”
Sharp intake of breath from Le Ping.
“I was keeping vigil outside the entrance with Saeki from midnight last night, until dawn, when we found Diviner Zama's body,” said Touya. “We were watching the whole night. And besides that oval door, there is no possibly entryway to the shrine.”
I automatically resented the fact that he looked perfectly fresh and alert despite having stayed up all night. Old trigger reaction, finding new things to hate about Touya every time I saw him. “Well, you never know, it could be a ghost.”
Touya's eyes flashed.
Le Ping was examining the central Weiqi board in the three-by-three square. “This is where he was working when he died, right?”
I followed him over. The board featured an intricate but incomplete divination pattern. A few stones appeared to have fallen off the board into the floor – two white pieces near the eastern side of the board, where the body outline of the Ouza had been chalked out, and a black one that appeared to have just barely rolled off the western edge of the grid. Two uncovered bowls sat nearby, one filled with black slate stones and one filled with white clamshell.
“We've also collected the black stone that the Ouza was about to place, as evidence,” said Amano. “I can show it to you later, if you drop by the station.”
I puzzled over the arrangement. “Le Ping, can you read that board? It looks meaningless to me, but if you account for the four missing stones... then there's about a hundred possibilities.”
Le Ping nodded. “But most of the possible readings wouldn't make any sense in this situation, right? Like, there's no way the white stones would be in the upper left corner for a love prediction, or even here-- there's definitely only about twenty readings of this board that seem likely.”
“Eighteen,” said Touya Akira, coming forward. Le Ping scowled at him. Good to see that Touya's talent for pissing people off was still in full force. “Please don't forget that given the unusual circumstances and location of the divination, we should still be prepared for unexpected readings.”
“Has anyone measured the chaos-order balance in the room, to calibrate the divinations?” I asked.
Touya nodded at the southwestern board, where Ochi and Ashiwara were placing stones. “The State Diviners are trying to determine that right now.”
“Looks like we'll have to wait, then.” I studied the board again, rapidly memorising the pattern of the stones. “Inspector Amano, is it okay if I ask you a few more questions?”
“Certainly. Perhaps it'd be better to do this outside? My men are still examining the scene, and it's getting a bit crowded in here.”
“I'd like to discuss this board with Diviner Touya,” said Le Ping, throwing a challenging stare at Diviner Touya.
“If you'd like,” Touya replied coolly. I managed a weak grin as Amano and I headed out. Hopefully when I came back to pick up Le Ping neither of them would be deceased or permanently maimed.
#
Shindou's grandfather was thin and old but less withered than I'd expected. His handshake was brisk, his voice firm. When I introduced myself as an old classmate of Shindou's, his demeanour was equal parts friendly and cranky. He brought me to the wooden porch overlooking the backyard of his austere, traditional home. We sat cross-legged and drank jasmine tea from china cups. There was a torreya Weiqi board next to the wall.
“You're the novitiate,” he said. “Morishita's protégé, right? The one who testified in the Sai tribunal.”
I inclined my head. “Guilty on all counts. Although I stopped being a novitiate after that.”
“Because of the verdict?” When I confirmed it, the old man sighed. “You're a good boy, but you needn't have. I was there, I saw it too. Council did the best they could with what they had. My daughter's never gotten over it, but doesn't mean that they made the wrong choice.”
“The best they could wasn't good enough,” I said, eventually.
The old man sighed. “Ghosts are always difficult to manage. And the older they are the more dangerous they are. This dead diviner, this Sai – he's been haunting Weiqi boards for a thousand years. That shows an immesurable determination.”
“Have you tried to look for Shindou in the last two years?”
“He lived in Yih for a while, in the countryside. His mother went to see him last autumn – that was oh, eight months ago? But that's the last time we heard from him; he moved elsewhere. Hasn't written to us since.” His face turned dark. “Mitsuko said that when she was there the ghost looked almost solid. She could actually talk to him.”
“Sai – taking corporeal form? That's incredible.” How much had Shindou and Sai learned in two years? What could they do with a Weiqi board, nowadays?
“It's wrong, is what it is.” He turned a hawklike stare on me, and I was reminded briefly of the way Shindou looked when he had his mind set on something. “The dead are meant to stay dead. And the dead who want to live again are the worst kind of dead.”
“What if he was right, though?” The reason I'd quit the novitiates in the aftermath of the Sai tribunal. Not just because Shindou was my friend, not just out of guilt, but also because-- “I don't mean that he's right about wanting to be immortal. But about wanting to find the pinnacle of divination. The true human purpose of watching order and chaos.”
“I'm a medium, not a diviner. All I know is that he wanted to stay alive longer than his allotted lifespan. And that's wrong for any ghost. I don't care what his reasons were. Hikaru was a good boy. A normal boy. I told Masao he had the talent, that he should have been trained at the temple, but they wanted him educated in the modern way. So of course the ghosts visited him. They always do, when there's somebody who'll listen to them.”
“Shindou was.” I hesitated. “Shindou was the most talented novitiate I knew. Even when he was divining on his own, without Sai's help, his intuition for the board was brilliant.”
He snorted. “That's meaningless to us now.”
“Is he still in Yih, do you know?”
“Perhaps. I can tell you one thing, you'll find Hikaru some place where the spirits are strong. Certain geomantic outlines of chaos and order are favourable to the dead.”
“Is that so.” I stood. “Thank you very much. I'll keep you informed if I manage to find Shindou.”
“Thank you. I'd like that. For his mother's sake, at least.” But, I thought, observing the way the lines on his face shifted, he was grieving his grandson as much as anyone else was.
Feeling awkward, I made my farewells swift.
#
Le Ping was practically bouncing off the walls of the front vestibule when I got back to the Council House. In the end he'd spent the entire day there, analysing divination readings, while I headed first to the police station, to the hospital and then to visit Shindou's grandfather.
“Have you gone to see the body already?” he demanded. “I want to go with you!”
“It's in the morgue. The clerk there wasn't too convinced by my credentials when I introduced myself; we'll have to wait until the autopsy report comes out, from the looks of things.” I was poor at assessing bodies anyway – there weren't nearly as many homicide cases in P.I. work as one would imagine. “It'll probably take at least a few days.”
Le Ping's face fell. “But we won't have time for that!”
“Patience, kid. What do you mean, we won't have time--” My sentence fell away as I felt a familiar, knifelike presence behind me.
“We're going to Yih,” said Touya Akira.
On to Chapter 4.
Notes: 3800 words, alarmingly reflective of the way I think. Spotting of typos and inane verb/adjective repetitions would be appreciated. T_T
Chapter 1 here.
When light and dark are still a blur,
who can see through to their source?
I was up early the next day. I went to the kitchen and put water on to boil, then tugged open the slats of the venetian blinds, allowing a pale bluish light to filter in. Over the breakfast counter I saw Le Ping sprawled out on the sofa, his limbs further spread than I'd thought possible on that small piece of furniture. He was belly-down, one arm hanging over the edge of the seat, legs scissored at an odd angle. A subtle, oddly endearing snore emitted from him with each breath.
A minor sleep shortage never hurt a teenager, I decided, and reached up towards the shelf where the wireless sat, switching it on. The news was just starting. Le Ping started to stir the moment the announcer's scratchy, masculine voice came on – in tandem with the low whistle of the kettle reaching optimum temperature, it was starting to get pretty noisy in here. I got out two tin mugs and shook some tea leaves into each, and when Le Ping padded over, finally awake, I tipped steaming water into both and handed him his drink.
“It's hot,” he complained. He was alert and bright-voiced. Evidently a morning person. Fortunately, so was I.
“Shut up and drink. Caffeine first thing in the day is good for your critical faculties.”
“What about breakfast?” But he drained the mug in one gulp anyway, then immediately started a choking fit when it had trouble going down.
“Idiot.” I thought about thumping him on the back to make him suffer more, then decided it was too dangerous. Instead I went to the sink and filled a glass with water for him, just in case (at this point I had no idea whether it would make the problem better or worse.)
On the wireless, the man speaking paused, before continuing in a speedier, excited tone: “...and in breaking news, the body of the Ouza was discovered in the Shrine of Profound Darkness early this morning. Zama Ouza, aged 51, was in the middle of a three night vigil as part of the preparation for this year's midsummer festivities when tragedy struck suddenly and mysteriously last night. While the Council of Oligarchs has yet to release an official statement regarding the death, police sources have confirmed that foul play is a possibility.”
Sometime during that announcement, Le Ping had managed to stop coughing. His brow furrowed tight as we both went still for ten or so seconds, listening hard; but that was all the wireless had to say on the subject. I turned it off after the conversation switched to baseball and weather forecasts.
“So what do you think?” Le Ping broke in impatiently. “That sounds way suspicious. And far too coincidental.”
“It could be nothing. For all we know, Zama Ouza's fondness for port finally caught up with him, and he died of liver failure. But, I reckon I ought to be taking a professional interest anyway. Get dressed, we're going to the Council House.”
He was already extracting clothing and towels from the luggage he'd left open on the floor. He moved quickly, I'd grant him that.
“It's just weird; you know what I told you about Lu Li last night--” he said, halfway through the bathroom doorway.
“Yes, yes. Don't jump to conclusions. And leave the toilet seat up when you're done, I prefer it that way.”
We decided to walk to the Council House. At our pace it took thirty minutes' travelling time. A gaggle of journalists and inquisitive third parties had already formed around the marble steps at the entrance when we got there, and as I came closer I saw that a temporary barricade had been erected across the white portico that fronted the building's bronze double doors.
I pushed my way to the front of the crowd and came up to the first row of columns, where several Council staff in black and white robes were standing guard. Pausing, I checked whether Le Ping had made it through the flock of bystanders. I needn't have worried, from the looks of things; the kid had extremely talented and annoying elbows.
I nodded at a titian-haired young man who was lolling against the barricade. “Hey Komiya,” I said. “Do you think you could let me in?”
He blinked owlishly at me. “Oh hey, Waya. Long time no see. Guess you're here for the Ouza investigation? Did they call you in?”
I shook my head. “I'm here on my own. Can I come and have a look?”
“Sure, no problem. The Shrine's closed off at the moment, but I'll leave you to figure that out on your own. Is that your twin brother?” he asked, squinting at Le Ping, who was stomping his way towards us.
“No way!” Le Ping glared at Komiya. “Do I look that ugly to you?”
I smacked Le Ping on the head. “Tell me that the next time you beg for us to pull a switch.”
Komiya was studying Le Ping's throat. “That's a Yihian Imperial neck ring,” he said confusedly.
“He's a Yihian Imperial Diviner. I know it's hard to believe. Is it okay if he comes with me?” I asked. “He's smarter than he looks. Maybe we can trick old man Kuwabara into thinking he has double vision.”
Komiya arched a brow at me. “You're smarter than you look, too. ”
“I'll choose to take that as a compliment,” I said, stepping over the barricade. “Thanks, Komiya; I owe you one.”
The maze of hallways and passages within the Council House was all too familiar to my feet. I hurried on, Le Ping right behind me, eyeing the coffered ceilings, the heavy dark carpets, the gilded mirors lining wide corridors. As far as I could tell, nothing had changed in the last two years, save for my relationship to the State of Ki.
“This place is kind of...small,” Le Ping pronounced, after we'd made it past the initial stretch of vestibules and were well into the labyrinth of doors and staircases that led to the interior shrines.
“Compared to the Yihian Palace I suppose it is.” I spotted Nase and Fuku coming out of a meeting chamber and rounded the corner rapidly, so as to avoid meeting them. I hate awkward conversations. “Not quite so many concubines and ladies-in-waiting to house. Nearly there now."
We carefully stepped over a wooden doorsill that I'd tripped over several times during my time here as a novice, took a shortcut through a servant's passageway, and then we were there – in the Sky's Origin, a hexagonal domed room that terminated at its highest point in a massive oculus, a circular hole left completely open to the elements.
As boys we'd snuck into this place together, Isumi and Shindou and I, to hold midnight feasts and and review our studies and then finally, when we got tired, lie on our backs on the black marble floor, watching the stars.
I shook off memory and surveyed the current situation. The Sky's Origin was teeming with people: diviners, policemen, servants, senators. I searched the throng of familiar faces, trying to spot someone I could question for more information. Touya Akira was standing next to a tall urn, amid a group of senators twice his age. He angled his head slightly as I glided past, and his green eyes widened briefly when he spotted Le Ping, but he set his jaw, and continued talking to the grey-bearded man in front of him. Typical. I moved on.
A few yards away, State Diviners Morishita and Saeki were holding a lively and heated discussion. Morishita appeared thunderous, his arms folded across his chest.
Well, that wouldn't do either. My footsteps quickened.
“Waya?” I turned at the sound, but it was Le Ping who had been accosted, by a young, sleepy-gazed man in an indifferent haircut. Le Ping was glaring, throwing off the young man's cotton-sleeved hand.
“Of course not. Isn't it obvious who the superior version is?”
“Yes, one of us has brains and the other doesn't,” I interrupted acidly. “Fuku, this is Le Ping; you've probably heard Isumi raving about him before. Mini-Waya and all that.”
“I remember!” The puzzlement in Fuku's face cleared a little. “But Waya, what are you doing here?”
“Can you get us into the Shrine of Profound Darkness?” I asked.
He frowned and then pointed at the northern end of the room. In front of the oval door set into the wall there hung a long yellow band of crime scene tape. “The police have been there all morning. The only people who've been allowed in are the State Diviners.”
“Who's in charge of the investigation? Amano? That's all right, I'll clear it with him.” Possibly, I added mentally. Amano was pretty used to me bowling my way into police business anyhow. “You coming, Le Ping?”
As we ducked beneath the tape barrier, it occurred to me that having a Yihian Imperial Diviner enter the Shrine of Profound Darkness unauthorised might possibly be grounds for a diplomatic incident. Ah well, too late now. Le Ping was probably hunting for new notches on his belt of bratty achievements anyway.
Pushing the door open, I breathed the air of the shrine, and let the old feeling of fear-which-was-not-fear envelope me.
The Shrine of Profound Darkness is the heart of the Council House. It is biconvex in shape, floored and walled in obsidian, and completely bare except for nine larger-than-life Weiqi boards, arranged in a perfect square, all made of smoky garnet with black grids drawn in tourmaline. There is something about the room's acoustics that absorbs all sound, so that even at that moment, with half a dozen police detectives and several diviners in official robes pacing around, it felt unnaturally hushed.
The lighting in the shrine is always dim. It took some time before I could see anything clearly, and by the time my eyes had adjusted, I noticed Ichiryuu Kisei advancing on me.
Immediately I dropped into a genuflect, reaching out to pull Le Ping in to the same position – but there was no need, the kid had noticed and was already kneeling. I let my arm fall away from Le Ping and fixed my eyes downwards.
“Stand up,” said the Kisei sharply. “What are you doing here?”
In my head the Kisei had always been a bald, genial man with a ready supply of bad jokes and terrifying powers of divination. Right then all I could remember was the terror. I pulled myself to my feet, gaze still lowered. I tried not to feel fourteen years old.
.
“Waya!” The sound of Amano's voice reassured me a little, just enough that I could lift my head. “You'll have to excuse him, Kisei; he's a private detective, one of the best. He's helped us with dozens of cases in the past.”
“Has his presence here been authorized by one of the State Diviners?”
“My apologies,” I said. “I thought it was best to come here as soon as possible, while the evidence was still fresh.”
Ichiryuu humphed and peered at Le Ping. “And who are you, his brother?”
Le Ping said haughtily: “I am Le Ping of the House of the Golden Dragon, a servant of the Eternal Dynasty, one who watches order and observes chaos, here as a representative of the Son of Heaven.”
I made a wholehearted attempt to sink into the earth and disappear. Grounds for a diplomatic incident? Le Ping was a living diplomatic incident.
The Kisei's eyes narrowed. “You wear the imperial torque. Why wasn't I notified of your arrival?”
“My apologies, Kisei. I was the one who received the notification from Yang Hai, the Yihian Privy Minister of Internal Affairs.” The voice cut into the conversation like a tempered blade slicing through air. Touya stepped into our circle, a thin neat dark figure. “The letter was directed to the Meijin's office, and since it was labelled as requiring immediate attention, it was passed on to me.”
Okay, that was new information. I was about to shoot Le Ping a death-glare for withholding facts from me, when I caught the faint surprise that passed across the boy's face. Aha, so Yang Hai had outplayed him this time.
“Detective Waya is also here at my request,” Touya continued.
Judging by the expression on his face, the rumours about the Kisei's jealousy of the younger Touya were true. “Well, if you've chosen to let them in, I'll leave it up to you to handle it. Your responsibility, do you understand?”
Touya bowed. “Please don't worry. I'll handle this to the best of my ability.”
The tension seemed to linger in the air a while; then the Kisei shrugged and stepped back. “I have to go for a meeting,” he said, walking towards the door. “Touya, if you could prepare a report on this for the Council. Including our two unexpected guests.”
“Certainly.”
With Ichiryuu gone everyone relaxed a little. I smiled at Amano, said: “Could you tell me what you've discovered so far? I notice they've already removed the Ouza's body from the shrine.”
“Of course.” Amano reached into a coat pocket and brought out his beloved notepad. “I'm glad Diviner Touya thought of getting you involved. Should have thought of calling you earlier. Divination mysteries are your specialty after all.”
“...is this a divination mystery? I thought we were still thinking good old mundane murder.”
Amano checked his notes. “There were no signs of a struggle, and no marks on the Ouza's body except for what looked like third-degree burns on his fingers. Small and round, as if the divination stones had started burning him. The doctors said we couldn't rule out a sudden unexplained cardiac arrest, but still-- he wasn't known to have any health problems. Oh, and he was sitting in seiza when the diviners discovered him this morning. Frozen in perfect position, with his hand outstretched to play. There was a black stone stuck between his fingers. It left a burn mark when we peeled it away.”
Sharp intake of breath from Le Ping.
“I was keeping vigil outside the entrance with Saeki from midnight last night, until dawn, when we found Diviner Zama's body,” said Touya. “We were watching the whole night. And besides that oval door, there is no possibly entryway to the shrine.”
I automatically resented the fact that he looked perfectly fresh and alert despite having stayed up all night. Old trigger reaction, finding new things to hate about Touya every time I saw him. “Well, you never know, it could be a ghost.”
Touya's eyes flashed.
Le Ping was examining the central Weiqi board in the three-by-three square. “This is where he was working when he died, right?”
I followed him over. The board featured an intricate but incomplete divination pattern. A few stones appeared to have fallen off the board into the floor – two white pieces near the eastern side of the board, where the body outline of the Ouza had been chalked out, and a black one that appeared to have just barely rolled off the western edge of the grid. Two uncovered bowls sat nearby, one filled with black slate stones and one filled with white clamshell.
“We've also collected the black stone that the Ouza was about to place, as evidence,” said Amano. “I can show it to you later, if you drop by the station.”
I puzzled over the arrangement. “Le Ping, can you read that board? It looks meaningless to me, but if you account for the four missing stones... then there's about a hundred possibilities.”
Le Ping nodded. “But most of the possible readings wouldn't make any sense in this situation, right? Like, there's no way the white stones would be in the upper left corner for a love prediction, or even here-- there's definitely only about twenty readings of this board that seem likely.”
“Eighteen,” said Touya Akira, coming forward. Le Ping scowled at him. Good to see that Touya's talent for pissing people off was still in full force. “Please don't forget that given the unusual circumstances and location of the divination, we should still be prepared for unexpected readings.”
“Has anyone measured the chaos-order balance in the room, to calibrate the divinations?” I asked.
Touya nodded at the southwestern board, where Ochi and Ashiwara were placing stones. “The State Diviners are trying to determine that right now.”
“Looks like we'll have to wait, then.” I studied the board again, rapidly memorising the pattern of the stones. “Inspector Amano, is it okay if I ask you a few more questions?”
“Certainly. Perhaps it'd be better to do this outside? My men are still examining the scene, and it's getting a bit crowded in here.”
“I'd like to discuss this board with Diviner Touya,” said Le Ping, throwing a challenging stare at Diviner Touya.
“If you'd like,” Touya replied coolly. I managed a weak grin as Amano and I headed out. Hopefully when I came back to pick up Le Ping neither of them would be deceased or permanently maimed.
Shindou's grandfather was thin and old but less withered than I'd expected. His handshake was brisk, his voice firm. When I introduced myself as an old classmate of Shindou's, his demeanour was equal parts friendly and cranky. He brought me to the wooden porch overlooking the backyard of his austere, traditional home. We sat cross-legged and drank jasmine tea from china cups. There was a torreya Weiqi board next to the wall.
“You're the novitiate,” he said. “Morishita's protégé, right? The one who testified in the Sai tribunal.”
I inclined my head. “Guilty on all counts. Although I stopped being a novitiate after that.”
“Because of the verdict?” When I confirmed it, the old man sighed. “You're a good boy, but you needn't have. I was there, I saw it too. Council did the best they could with what they had. My daughter's never gotten over it, but doesn't mean that they made the wrong choice.”
“The best they could wasn't good enough,” I said, eventually.
The old man sighed. “Ghosts are always difficult to manage. And the older they are the more dangerous they are. This dead diviner, this Sai – he's been haunting Weiqi boards for a thousand years. That shows an immesurable determination.”
“Have you tried to look for Shindou in the last two years?”
“He lived in Yih for a while, in the countryside. His mother went to see him last autumn – that was oh, eight months ago? But that's the last time we heard from him; he moved elsewhere. Hasn't written to us since.” His face turned dark. “Mitsuko said that when she was there the ghost looked almost solid. She could actually talk to him.”
“Sai – taking corporeal form? That's incredible.” How much had Shindou and Sai learned in two years? What could they do with a Weiqi board, nowadays?
“It's wrong, is what it is.” He turned a hawklike stare on me, and I was reminded briefly of the way Shindou looked when he had his mind set on something. “The dead are meant to stay dead. And the dead who want to live again are the worst kind of dead.”
“What if he was right, though?” The reason I'd quit the novitiates in the aftermath of the Sai tribunal. Not just because Shindou was my friend, not just out of guilt, but also because-- “I don't mean that he's right about wanting to be immortal. But about wanting to find the pinnacle of divination. The true human purpose of watching order and chaos.”
“I'm a medium, not a diviner. All I know is that he wanted to stay alive longer than his allotted lifespan. And that's wrong for any ghost. I don't care what his reasons were. Hikaru was a good boy. A normal boy. I told Masao he had the talent, that he should have been trained at the temple, but they wanted him educated in the modern way. So of course the ghosts visited him. They always do, when there's somebody who'll listen to them.”
“Shindou was.” I hesitated. “Shindou was the most talented novitiate I knew. Even when he was divining on his own, without Sai's help, his intuition for the board was brilliant.”
He snorted. “That's meaningless to us now.”
“Is he still in Yih, do you know?”
“Perhaps. I can tell you one thing, you'll find Hikaru some place where the spirits are strong. Certain geomantic outlines of chaos and order are favourable to the dead.”
“Is that so.” I stood. “Thank you very much. I'll keep you informed if I manage to find Shindou.”
“Thank you. I'd like that. For his mother's sake, at least.” But, I thought, observing the way the lines on his face shifted, he was grieving his grandson as much as anyone else was.
Feeling awkward, I made my farewells swift.
Le Ping was practically bouncing off the walls of the front vestibule when I got back to the Council House. In the end he'd spent the entire day there, analysing divination readings, while I headed first to the police station, to the hospital and then to visit Shindou's grandfather.
“Have you gone to see the body already?” he demanded. “I want to go with you!”
“It's in the morgue. The clerk there wasn't too convinced by my credentials when I introduced myself; we'll have to wait until the autopsy report comes out, from the looks of things.” I was poor at assessing bodies anyway – there weren't nearly as many homicide cases in P.I. work as one would imagine. “It'll probably take at least a few days.”
Le Ping's face fell. “But we won't have time for that!”
“Patience, kid. What do you mean, we won't have time--” My sentence fell away as I felt a familiar, knifelike presence behind me.
“We're going to Yih,” said Touya Akira.
On to Chapter 4.
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Date: 2009-08-18 05:41 am (UTC)Ooh, Touya Meijin went off on a quest to find Sai, just like in the manga! And his son has to be the responsible one and assume his mantle, hah. Is Ogata going to make an appearance too? ^_^
And the older they are the more dangerous they are.
Ah, I'm really interested to see where you'll go with this. As much as I like Sai, there are a few panels in the manga where we're reminded just how obsessive and even scary he can be -- especially considering the Japanese belief that the older a thing is, the more powerful and prone to corruption it is. From that perspective, it always amazed me that Sai hadn't become a vengeful spirit. I guess his overall gentle temperament and love for his hosts kept him in check.
For all we know, Zama Ouza's fondness for port finally caught up with him, and he died of liver failure.
:snickers: Did you get this idea from the latest character notes? If so, can we hope to see Kuwabara the gambler?
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Date: 2009-12-02 03:21 pm (UTC)I would love Ogata to make more of an appearance, but it appears that he may have to be the responsible one since Akira seems to be following in his father's footsteps re: hare-brained quests! someone has to be left behind to keep the country functional. :D :D :D
and yes, Zama Ouza's potential liver cirrhosis was inspired by the laters chara notes. :D :D :D *hearts
again, thanks so much!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 03:59 pm (UTC)