Chapter One
Chapter One
Setsura returned to the manor house. As he approached the door, a crisscross of gashes tore across it and it flew to pieces. The gateposts severed in half. The roof crashed to the ground.
Setsura hadn’t lifted a finger.
The tranquil, black-clad figure was the embodiment of dark beauty. And yet everything around him shattered themselves to pieces. This Setsura was the veritable God of Death, come dancing down out of that darkness.
The concubine’s mojo should have started working by now, but it might as well be dew under a desert sun. He entered the corridor. Slashes ran down the walls and ceiling, decapitating rows of sculptures and suits of armor, littering the floor with every step he took.
Kikiou was in the basement, in his research and development laboratory. The appearance of the scholar and warlock was hard to believe. The limbs jutting out of his shoulders and pelvis, his elbows and knees, were twisted backwards. The metal rings of his power source were bent and deformed, raising a shrill screech with every revolution.
The result of Yakou’s blast of qi.
The question of the “accidental” nature of that “friendly fire” was, for the time being, beside the point. There would be no censure or revenge without first putting himself back together again.
“It’s time to settle things with that kid,” Kikiou seethed, as he tottered toward the back wall and tugged with difficulty on a rope hanging from the ceiling. With the creaking of gears, a portion of the wall opened horizontally. A hidden door.
Had anybody other than Kikiou witnessed it, the reaction would have been startled cries. Whether that surprise expressed delirium or dismay might well depend on the person.
In front of the demolished old man was a forest of arms and legs. Thousands grew out of the floor and walls. All of them—elbows, thighs, shoulders, knees, wrists and fingers—wriggled and swayed, beckoning to him.
The aged and spotted appendages of old men were there too, along with those of young women and men. Looking closer, it was apparent that they jutted through holes in the floor and walls, or hung by thin threads from the ceiling. If anything, the overwhelming sight of this grotesque warehouse of human parts was reminiscent of strange plants sprouting from a rock wall.
After ensuring that the door was closed, Kikiou rested his staff against the wall and proceeded to a foot cabinet at the other end of the room. Turning around, he grabbed hold of the handle and opened it by shifting his whole body forward.
The foot cabinet was filled with metal rings. The condition of those deepest in were impossible to tell, but of the ones closest to him, a good two-thirds—approximately two hundred on the right—were bent and rusted. The remaining hundred or so glistened with oil and polish.
He caressed the dividing line between the old and the new. “Four thousand years has brought us this far,” he murmured. “Worn out, wrecked, rusted. They have held up well. But we have many frightful enemies in this world. One hundred more. I must give Princess a place of peaceful repose before they are exhausted. A place fresh with life where the people breathe in spells and miasmas instead of oxygen. I surmised that this city would best serve such purposes, but as expected, it will not go down without a fight.”
He returned to the squirming arms and legs, examining the room with bright eyes, like a cook perusing an array of ingredients. He then shifted his stance, and grabbed his right wrist with his deformed left hand and jerked it back and forth.
The arm separated from the shoulder. He cast it aside, and selected a right arm from the array on the floor. Reversing the action he’d just taken, he attached it to the shoulder without a hitch. It took another five minutes to reinstall the left arm and legs.
When he got to his feet and turned back toward the cabinet, a low hum directed Kikiou’s eyes toward the ceiling.
“That beast has broken in. How did he find his way here? My bones should repel his threads and the rings still turn, but—of course, that bastard Yakou!”
He retrieved his staff and left the warehouse, closing the hidden door. He raised his right hand. A section of the ceiling misted over, forming a translucent disk, upon which was projected a map of the manor house. A side view of the floor revealed a moving point of light.
“It can be nobody else but that dark star. Oh—the ceiling and walls are caving in. Setsura, you bloody bounder, you intend to destroy the manor house. Not on my watch!”
He swung his staff. From somewhere came the resonating sound of engines winding up, the manor house’s defensive shields kicking in. The room plunged into darkness. Sparks rained down from the ceiling, along with the sound of shattering glass.
“What the hell is this?” Kikiou’s shouts bordered on screams. “What is going on?”
Setsura paused in front of the staircase leading down to the basement level. He turned around. Yakou floated there in the air a dozen or so feet behind him, his big wings spread wide.
“We appear to have arrived at the denouement,” he said with a curious smile, even mischievous.
“Are you here to get in the way?” Setsura asked.
“Nothing of the sort! I wanted to see with my own eyes. Think of me as a mere spectator. I told you where to find Kikiou’s room, after all. Still—” Yakou cast a meaningful glance around him. “This place is rigged with booby traps from top to bottom. But you haven’t stumbled into a single one. I assume you are taking measures?”
“I traced the power conduits back to the source and sent a wire into the generator room. I cannot vouch for any of the more minor details, but everything should be coming to a halt soon enough.”
“You’ve got that much up your sleeve? That’s going to put that old man in a bad mood.”
Setsura didn’t answer as he approached the stairs. “You are not going to try and stop me?”
“Nobody has ordered me to stop you.”
“This is the manor house of the Princess you serve.”
“Kikiou built this castle. Call it his birdcage. She doesn’t much care for it. She prefers dancing beneath the moon and sleeping on a blanket in a wild field. That is much more to her liking.”
“And to do so, she drinks blood at a whim and toys with the hearts of men. You surely know of the Hsia and Shang Dynasties.”
“That is a question for the living. I never would have taken you for such a sentimentalist. Can you place the human race anywhere but at the center of your thoughts? Even considering the people of this city?”
“This city?”
“This city. No matter what the life form, none shall be discriminated against because of shape, nature or disposition. Isn’t that the meaning of liberty?”
This time, Yakou’s expression darkened. He seemed to be anticipating Setsura’s next words.
“There is also the liberty not to condone such liberties.”
“Exactly. And are you speaking of yourself?”
“Everybody seems to forget, so I shall remind you. My employer is Doctor Mephisto.”
“I know.”
“Your employer and one of her followers humiliated him. He hired me to clear his name, to search out the location of this world. That is the extent of my involvement here.”
“Then why not return and inform your beloved doctor.”
“Would Kikiou be content to wish me a fond farewell?”
“No. But if that is the case, what have we been fighting about until now? I find it hard to believe it was part of the original job description.”
“I included that for free.”
“I see.”
“And one other thing.”
“What would that be?” Yakou beat his wings and settled down next to Setsura. He was getting intrigued.
“Enough with calling me Mephisto’s paramour.”
“Got it,” Yakou said with a wry smile.
Setsura continued on for thirty more feet before coming to a halt again. A black lacquered door was set into the wall.
“Here we are,” Yakou said. “I would go in fast. Kikiou should be lying in wait. You may have wrecked the generators, but the backup specter reactors are still purring away.”
Setsura probed with his devil wire, but found no gaps or entry points. The only other option was to cut through. The air hummed. The sound seemed to stick to the rectangular door. It should have been divided and quartered diagonally, corner to corner. Except that the dark “X” on the black wall welled up, as if in bas-relief.
Setsura leapt sideways. The black fluid poured down on where he was standing. It wasn’t water. It wasn’t any normal substance. Setsura perceived its true nature at once.
It was darkness.
He jumped up again. Manipulating the devil wire strung in from the outside, he landed at the foot of the stairs. The darkness pressed forward. The hallway transformed into a murky rectangle.
“We’d better get a move on.”
Yakou reached out a hand. Setsura waved it off as he jumped to the top of the staircase. While he was in the air, the blackness sprayed upwards, staining the exits, and receded like a tidal wave.
Yakou groaned midflight, and heard an echoing scream from out of the earth. He shouted in admiration, “Did you cast your devil wire into the darkness, Setsura?”
The shadowy figure didn’t move. As the darkness poured out, without a moment’s hesitation, he’d flung the devil wire through the door and into the room, searching out Kikiou, and severing what he found.
Setsura knew what—not from the scream—but from the subtle quivers telegraphed along the wire. “The right hand,” he said. “The left foot. The left hand and right foot.”
Yakou sighed a soft sigh.
“And the head.” The black fire seemed to be rising from Setsura’s body.
“You satisfied?” Yakou asked, as if addressing another person entirely.
Not averting his eyes from the submerging darkness, Setsura said, “I severed both his hands, but they had been recently attached. If I do the same to the neck, will he return it to the way it was?”
Yakou looked at the wreckage around him. This was the heart of the manor house. A good half of it was totally destroyed. The genie’s fury at work.
“You really made a mess of this place.”
“The door has closed,” Setsura said.
He wasn’t making conversation. That they had conversed as much as they had—an exchange between two people with total disregard for the other’s existence—was by itself strange enough.
“He can swap heads too? A handy man. For a man of flesh and blood to survive four thousand years would require a lot of replacement parts. But what about the brain?”
Brain cells inevitably aged. Prolonging the life of them was the true mark of a scholar and alchemist.
“Sir Kikiou seems to have made his retreat. Shall we wait?”
“Not me. Perhaps a thread or two.” Setsura slowly turned to Yakou. “But there is something I wish to ask you first. Princess’s casket at the bottom of the lake—can it be brought to the surface?”
“Unfortunately, only Princess and Kikiou can answer that question.”
“Then there is nothing more I need from you.”
The line connecting the man on the ground and the man in the air was invisible to the eye, yet still cast off fiery sparks.
“Weren’t you going to make a better person of me?” teased Yakou.
“Will you sit still and take your medicine like a good boy?”
“That is unlikely.”
“In that case—”
“Yes, in that case—”
The following silence went on longer than either of them could tell. Something started at Setsura from a corner of the pile of rubble, divided neatly in two and disappeared. At the same time, from the same pile of rubble came a strand of devil wire. Before it could split Yakou’s head asunder, it dissolved into its constituent atoms.
A time-lag attack similar to that on display earlier in the courtyard. But they could already read each other’s moves before they made them.
Neither made a sound, though if the scene being played out was played for the human ear, it would make a sound like the hushed hiss of a cobra.
Setsura’s right fist hung lazily by his side. Then it surged up like a rushing silver snake of water. The beautiful genie’s weapon traced the helix of a spiral galaxy through the sky, landing at Yakou’s feet, where it burst into a thousand strands. A cocoon formed in the air and wrapped around Yakou’s body, entrapping him.
A moment later, the cocoon shattered. Invisible pieces of qi fell all around Setsura. This qi was like a curtain of ball bearings caught up in a tornado. They rebounded outwards, digging into the walls and ceiling.
Setsura vaulted skyward. The arc of his leap brought him to the top of a big tree beyond the shattered roof. The particles of qi gushed out of the walls and ceiling like a froth of bubbles and streaked after him.
By the time Setsura had caught a feel for the physical manifestation of this qi, it was in midair and easy pickings. The silver spears flashed and the balls of qi disappeared.
Yakou sighed and flapped his wings. He flew leisurely through the mottled sunlight to the top of the tree.
The tree normally stood a hundred and fifty feet tall. Now it was almost a hundred and fifty-six, Setsura forming the addition. The wind was strong. His coat fluttered like a wavering shadow as the Prince of the Night came to meet the genie.
“What are you doing?” Yakou asked him as he floated in the air.
“Me?” Setsura asked nonchalantly. “I’m taking in the view.”
Yakou was at a loss for words. The “normal” Setsura had returned. Yakou looked down at the spot where Setsura had directed his gaze. Allies or enemies, a shared state of mind seemed to link the two. The surface of the lake was as crystal clear as the blue sky above. The forest was an unfurling carpet of green so dense it bordered on black.
Setsura Aki intoned, quoting the poet Su Shi:
Rippling water shimmering on a sunny day
Mist-covered mountains shrouded in rain
Like Xi Zi, plain in form or ornately arrayed
Nothing of the West Lake fails to engage
Then he added, “The weather is clear, but Xi Zi is here. She’s a bit of a bitch, though.”
Xi Zi, also known as Xi Shi, a famed beauty from Yue Province in China during the Spring and Autumn Period, where the equally famed West Lake was also located.
“Why did they come to Shinjuku?”
“Either one of you should know that.”
“What are the limits of this world?”
“It does have limits.”
“Has your mistress seen them for herself?”
“I doubt it.”
“It might be a good idea if she did.”
“This is a make-believe world. Every last piece of it.”
“I figured. It gets old after a while. And under the skin.”
“She wanted to live in the real world. The living dead still wish to live.”
“Now you’re waxing bathetic.”
Setsura brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. The wind picked up. He glanced above. Birds flew over his head. A flock of wild geese.
“Like birds flying through the sky. I wonder what’s going to come along next?”
“Who knows?”
“Is that make-believe too?”
“It’s all make-believe.”
“The same goes for Shinjuku.”
“You think?”
“Now and then. What if it was all the dream of a giant clam? Will it wake up and take a look at the real world? Or let it be?”
“The real world is probably a dream also.”
Yakou looked off into the distance. “Our lives and our deaths as well. But don’t dreams have rights, too?”
Setsura nodded. “Well, we’d better get down to business. Shall we settle things here and now?”
“Let’s get down from here. I am in the mood for a cup of tea.”
Yakou glided away, folded his wings, and dropped vertically. Setsura flipped over backwards and descended head-first. Just before hitting the ground, Yakou spread his wings. With the dull pop of a leather ball hitting a glove, the wings puffed out as they filled with air.
Next to him, Setsura had already slowed to a safe approach speed, landing on his feet at the same time—and they dodged to the left and right as something rent the ground between them.
Both pairs of eyes turned and looked at the figure standing in a splash of bright light. Like the moon at dawn and the moon at dusk, the white of day changed to the white of night.
“The two of you make a fine pair,” said Doctor Mephisto. He spread out his arms like a pastor blessing his flock.
“Doctor—what are you doing here?” said Yakou, clearly rattled.
“I arrived with your mistress. She is waiting in the manor house. I saw you two flitting about and followed you out here.”
“Your timing leaves much to be desired.”
“What are you here for, Mephisto?” Setsura asked brusquely. He knew the Demon Physician’s true nature. And also that the number of his enemies had increased by at least one.
“I believe you still have that vial I gave you?”
“Relax,” Setsura said, patting his right pocket.
“Good,” said Mephisto, not looking at Yakou. “See that you use it properly.”
“Since when have you and that woman been treading the same path together?”
“Jealous?” he asked with a straight face made all the straighter by his heaven-blessed beauty.
“You’re really coming up in the world,” Setsura said.
“Be thankful for that,” he answered with equal cheek. “The world is always in need of those who understand how it works. And as for that woman, she brought another with her.”
“Kanan-san?”
“That is what you called her back when she was my patient.”
“We’ll take care of things afterward,” Setsura said to Yakou. He turned around and had taken two or three steps when he said over his shoulder, “Ah, your face is red, Yakou.”