Well. Sitting around chewing old memories wasn’t getting any work done. Justin drew in his feet and stood up.
“Prominence?” Tzo said with concern – personal concern, more than professional.
“It is what it is, Tzo,” Justin said, and shrugged. “That’s adulthood; one damn thing after another, and getting back up and dealing with the next. Let’s go see how Lover Boy is doing.”
“As you wish, Prominence. But. . .you’re crying again.”
“I miss my wife,” Justin simply said, wiping his eyes with his fingers.
“Er. . .Prominence?” said the guardswoman, moving out from behind the counter and offering him a handkerchief.
“Thank you,” Justin said, “Trooper. . . .”
“Eiko, Prominence,” she said, circling her forehead and moving back.
Note to self: find out the correct name for that gesture.
“And you?” Justin said, looking at her partner.
“Teyu, Prominence,” the guardsman said, stiffly at attention.
Justin cleaned his face with the cloth, grateful his nose hadn’t started running. “I might need it more today, so I’ll have it cleaned and give it back to you later,” he told Eiko, holding up his other hand as she opened her mouth to refuse. “No, Eiko, I’m not going to keep it. If you really must give me something, I only arrived here this morning, and my local clothes are all brand new.”
Her face lit up. “Yes, Prominence!” she said, sounding thrilled.
“And you might consider offering Lead Norodo and Senior Niri an in on that,” Justin added, folding the handkerchief and tucking it into one of his guayatunic’s lower pockets. Justin suspected it was egotistically, narcissistically rude to suggest someone do some personal Riben embroidery for you, but on the gripping hand, the level of deference he was being shown made him think no one would dare to do it without an invitation. And he wanted some, dammi!
“Yes, Prominence!” Eiko. . .gushed, really. So he was probably right, and his status was sufficient to override the impropiety.
“Carry on, then,” Justin said, turning and leaving the room.
He reversed himself in the hallway, snapping his fingers, and went back in again. “Budge over,” he told Teyo, who scrambled to oblige. Justin tapped a few characters into the search box, selected the correct track from the drop-list, and hit play.
He gave Eiko a last nod and left.
# # #
“Jusutin!” Taiko said, where he was lying on the floor of the Right’s Captain’s Quarters, bundled up in some Riben futon-analogues, straining to rise against the chiurgeon-troopers’ hands holding him flat. “Are you hale!?”
“Tai-bro. That’s my question. I’m fine; I beat her like a drum wrapped up in a cheap rug. With the Dawn’s assistance, that is; credit where credit’s due. How are you?”
“So I’ve been told,” Taiko said, ignoring the query, his eyes scanning Justin’s body for any signs of evidence to the contrary.
“Taiko, I told you - I’m fine,” Justin huffed. “I know better than to hide things like that. It’s stupid. She barely touched me, and Tsukanu never even got the chance. Oh, never mind,” he added, as Taiko continued to scrutinize him for damage, “you’re not going to be sensible. Who’s the guard-in-charge here?”
“Senior Obu, Prominence,” one of them said. He had red hair like Ozu’s, only longer, and was two or three inches taller and beefier all around.
“Related to Ozu?” Justin asked him.
“I’m his older cousin, Prominence,” Obu said respectfully. But there was a smidgen of worry tucked behind it.
“Good,” Justin said. “He seems very intelligent, so I’m reassured to hear that you’re family.”
“Thank you, Prominence,” Obu said, his expression lightening.
“Taiko’s condition?” Justin asked.
“Your Kokyu is well enough for conversation, Prominence,” Obu reported. “He was struck in the head, severely enough that I would not move him for a few hours, despite having received one of the new restoratives you’ve had us brewing. If necessary, he could be carried in a litter.”
“Excellent,” Justin said, relaxing some too. “Can you give us some privacy?”
“Yes, Prominence,” Obu said, gathering up his two assistants by eye. “We’ll wait outside.” They stood and filed through the door.
Justin sat cross-legged by Taiko’s side; Tzo imitated him on the other.
“Tzo told me a little about your history,” Justin said, jumping feet-first straight into it. He leaned forward and put his hand over Taiko’s mouth just as it was opening. “No, shut up, I don’t really care, except for how it’s turned out useful to me. The Dawn also told me that having beat Taisa, I’m technically qualified to claim a Hokyukko’s powers. Except that for reasons, I need to do it through a mana-fueled Minor Wish, instead of his or any of his family’s power. And now you may speak,” he finished, taking his hand away.
Taiko stared up at the ceiling in thought. “I’m. . .not sure what you want me to tell you, Brother,” he finally said.
“Let’s start with the barriers, then,” Justin said. The old monk’s fingers tightened on the edge of his covering. “What?” Justin said, pointing at them.
Taiko’s eyes shifted to Tzo, then back to Justin again.
“Oh for pity’s sake. . .” Justin grumbled. “Taiko, you have my permission as a Prominence of the Dawn to reveal any secrets. . .no, dammit, that won’t suffice, will it. I don’t have any actual authority. Let me think, then. . . .”
“It has to do with the Celestial Palaces, correct?” Tzo said. “Specifically, their method or methods of flight?”
“Wait what?” Justin said, taken by surprise. Taiko actually flinched.
“Our excellent Kokyu here was the only one of us to not react as markedly when you asked Pei about it,” Tzo said. “He was very good, very bland, but that itself stood out to me.”
Note to self, repeat and emphasize: never underestimate Tzo, Justin thought.
“So Hokyukko barriers can exclude atmosphere – er, the air – and are both light and strong enough to not only resist its external pressure, but thereby provide a lifting force as well?” Justin said.
“You know why it works?” Taiko gasped. “You understand the theurgy?”
“Theurgy, pffft, what theurgy?” Justin said. “Masters of technical arts and crafts, remember? Or, I mean, we couldn’t do that exact trick yet ourselves; we didn’t have strong enough physical materials, let alone real force fields. But people had been theorizing about it and doing the math long before I was born. We’d long understood the physics involved and had been using it in cruder ways for a couple of centuries. Until we developed superior alternatives, that is.”
Tzo was moving his flattened hands up and down in front of him, first staring at them, then past them into space. “The volume is. . .empty. . .” he said. “. . .like hulls keep water out, but they sink deeper with more weight. . .but air is everywhere; it would just. . .flow in, and it does have weight, because we feel it when the wind blows. . . .”
Justin found himself holding his breath in suspense, watching Tzo grappling with the concepts involved, and silently cheering him on. It felt like watching Galileo, or Newton, or someone similar from Earth’s history, struggling to achieve a great scientific insight. And even though the man didn’t appear to understand mass or density as a separate - or rather, separable – abstract qualities, he was nevertheless making progress despite that.
“. . .but water presses back harder, the deeper you push with an oar, or a pole. . .because – because there’s more weight – pushing back - the deeper you go? Strong enough materials, you said. . .external pressure – air has weight – does water also have a. . .lifting force, you said, inside it, against oars and poles? And deeper water has greater lifting force – air has depth!? Yes! It must! And that’s why it’s harder to breathe the higher one climbs! Not because the air gets heavier, but because the air has less weight! Because – because - there’s less of it to breathe! And – and an empty Shrine - with no air in it - would have no weight – the air would push it up just like water pushes, resists - a pole!”
As he watched Tzo wring the basics of buoyancy flight almost literally out of the air itself, from barely a handful of oblique hints, Justin felt his eyes prickling. It was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen in his life, a moment of pure analytic brilliance so glorious that it was bringing him to tears. Again.
“Dawn forgive me,” Taiko whispered in fear - the old monk was far less enraptured. “O Rising Lord, I have kept my oaths, I have told no secrets of the Stars, I. . . .”
Justin put his hand on Taiko’s shoulder. “Calm down, it’s not your fault. If anybody’s responsible, it’s me. And some men – no; some minds, I should say – simply can’t be stopped. Besides, he’s figured out the essence of it already, so if anything bad was going to happen, I think it would have.”
“But. . . .” Taiko quavered.
“Sol probably planned this too,” Justin said. “Because if things go the way I’m planning, there might be an increasing supply of unemployed Hokyukko in the near future, which would be bad, but a shipping and travel revolution based on Hokyukko-powered vacuum airships is gonna be freaking awesome to watch happen. In addition to fixing the unemployment issue.”
Yes, it is, and should do, but no, I’ve only been taking advantage of your plan, Sol’s voice cut in, this time almost balmy as a summer’s morning.
I did not put Taiko directly in your path. He was stationed at the North Temple and ran from there to replace Kokyu Sinar in the West when Tomu changed direction at the gates.
Please tell my Kokyu that his oaths remain unbroken, that he retains my favor, and that I do not mistakenly Inlighten my worshipers. His choice to face the danger they all thought you were, in his brother monk’s place – in addition to his other valiant acts in my service over the past two decades - earned him the status he now possesses. He is praiseworthy in my sight.
You yourself are an element that surpasses the merely chaotic, Justin. I cannot exhaustively predict your actions to the degree you have assumed. You bring disruption wherever you go, but I have repeatedly watched you also leave a better world in your wake as you do.
I did not raise Taiko up so you could better help me. I raised Taiko up so we could better help him.
Sorry, Justin thought, now feeling ashamed of himself.
No offense given, no apology needed, no regrets apply. Based on the information you had, your suspicions were neither irrational nor unjustified, and yet you chose to trust me in spite of them. And I choose to place my trust in you as well.
That potion’s about to expire, by the way. You might want to lie down before it happens.
Sol’s presence vanished again. Justin pulled one of Taiko’s less critically supportive rolled-cloth pillows out, turned ninety degrees, and lay down beside the blanket-bundled older man, tucking the cushion under his own head.
“Everything’s fine, nobody’s getting blasted with divine distemper,” he said. “Taiko, your oaths remain unbroken, you retain the Dawn’s favor, he doesn’t Inlighten his worshipers mistakenly, you’re praiseworthy in his sight. I’m lying down because he warned me the potion’s about to expire and suggested it. Tzo, get Obu back in here and have him check me over and wake me up as soon as possible, right away, Tzo; I still have two – no, a few important god-chores to do today. . . .”
Sure enough, even as he was speaking a great, sleepy wave of lassitude poured over him, and his eyes closed of their own accord.
# # #
Thousands of fathoms below, a tiny trickle of mana flowed into the entity bound and sealed within the spherical formation of inscribed crystals. Somewhere in the world, several bodies of its progeny had absorbed a minuscule amount of another being’s essence. It was a necessary part of the exchange needed for the expenditure of what remained of their own, according to the fundamental laws of the cosmos. Furthermore, as they were dead, almost the entirety of what passed into them then dissipated into the materia of the world.
Now that magic involved had run its course, a fraction of it had been passed along, or rather up, to their creator, through the entity’s innate sorcery. And though only a sliver of the fraction of that minuscule amount recovered penetrated the weakening formation. . .and though the processing of that by the entity was likewise slowed to less than a snail’s pace. . .it was still enough to trigger a warning glow on the wall of the formation’s monitoring station deep within the High Court’s underchambers.
The priestess on duty made a note of it in the log and went back to gossiping with her friend about the exciting, disturbing, possibly heretical events taking place in the city proper to their west. The true importance of what the formation guarded had been kept secret from the beginning, as a means of security through obscurity, and had long since been forgotten by almost all.
The priestess was not technically failing in her diligence, or at least no more than the High Court overall had been failing in that over multiple millennia. The monitors’ sensitivity had originally, deliberately, been set so high that false positives were a common occurrence. Common to the degree that a summary of them was kept and they were investigated in mass four times per year, once per season, instead of as-they-appeared.
Had the sealed entity been less clever itself, the trickle of mana would have awakened it enough to then trigger other, far more notable warnings. But in the last moments of its binding, it had put its outer self into a trance state indistinguishable from that to which it was being subjected. . .while its deeper core continued to work the great enchantment that would make it unstoppable in this world, once and for all, concealed behind that deception.
And so, excruciatingly slowly, and all the more undetectably for it, the tiniest speck of the sliver of the fraction of the minuscule amount of the essence exchanged, hardly more than the equivalent of a magical molecule, was integrated into that working.
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A really long drawn out way of saying they f*cked up Lol! Very apt for a cultivation world of sorts.
is this not foreshadowing of foreshadowing of foreshadowing?