(For various reasons, this chapter took a great deal of rethinking and reworking. A big thank you to
Sunny and
MetalDragon for their remaining patient throughout and for their help with the editing once the finish line finally approached. Thank you to all of the people on Discord who helped me hash my ideas over and who contributed input.)
AUGUST 11, 2016 ATB
KIRIHARA TOWNHOUSE, KYOTO HONORARY SETTLEMENT
0550
The summons – and a summons it was, regardless of the invitation's polite wording – had come well before dawn in the hands of a private courier, who seemed quite surprised to find the lady of the house wide awake when he arrived.
Of course she had been awake; how could anybody sleep, after the delivery the evening before of such momentous news?
Lady Sophie had politely accepted the invitation and had bidden the courier to return to his master to convey her reply. Almost before his car had retreated down the driveway leading away from the Sumeragi Compound she had followed on his heels, accompanied only by Lady Annabeth, her official guardian and unofficial Britannian minder, and a token pair of bodyguards.
That this little retinue was merely a token to keep up appearances was reaffirmed upon their arrival at the Kirihara Townhouse, a sumptuous Britannian-style residence in the most trendy neighborhood in the Kyoto Honorary Settlement. There, in a flurry of polite courtesies and diplomatic flourishes, the Kirihara household servants had effortlessly peeled Lady Sophie's attendants away, sending the small trio to a side parlor off the reception room to enjoy prepared refreshments, while the lady herself was ushered into the "Master's Study" one floor up.
Kaguya knew that study well. She could call its dark wooden paneling and heavy limbed antique furniture to mind immediately from long memory. It could have been ripped from some stately Charleston manor, or perhaps purchased whole from one of the nouveau riche imitations studding the piney hills above Holy Angels, disassembled, and shipped with furnishing included straight to Area 11, to Japan. It could have been the study of a particularly humble scion of the Greater Nobility, or perhaps the lair of some vaultingly successful commoner magnate.
But only Kirihara Taizo, once the Minister of International Trade and Industry in the Kururugi Cabinet, now the Chairman of the Numbers Advisory Committee, and always Lord Taizo of the ancient Kirihara Clan, CEO of the Kirihara
Zaibatsu, could have put that ineffable stamp on the room. More than the furnishings or the paneling, it was that stamp that Kaguya knew, the invisible web spun by the master of the Six Houses of Kyoto, first among nominal equals.
How could she not? It had been in rooms marked by that stamp, filled by that presence, where she had learned all she knew about manipulation and subterfuge, about how numbers could dance and figures could lie, how a slip of the tongue could be just as sharp-edged and dangerous as a finely honed blade.
More than the faded memory of a man now six years gone, it was the mark of her
father that stained those walls.
Unbidden, Kaguya sat in the same seat she had always sat in. Took the same place she had always been put in.
My hands, she noticed distantly as she exchanged greetings with the man and accepted a hot drink,
are shaking.
"I assume that you have heard the news by now, Kaguya," Taizo said, dispensing with the minimal pleasantries after only a few minutes. "It seems as if our Britannian friends have encountered quite the misfortune."
"Indeed, Lord Taizo," Kaguya murmured, slipping back into the familiar cadence of childhood as she sipped quietly from the steaming mug of
matcha cradled in her hands. The heat was soothing on her throat and against her still faintly trembling hands, warming even though the summer's wet heat had managed to infiltrate even the opulence of the grossly misnamed "townhouse." "One wonders whether Field Marshal Milburn will attempt another relief, or if the Fort Aurelian garrison has already been written off entirely?"
"'One wonders,' eh?" Taizo looked up from his Britannian-style coffee to quirk an incredulous eyebrow at Kaguya. It was almost jovial, though to Kaguya's familiar and wary eye, the incredulity and humor barely went skin-deep. Those dark eyes, like shining pebbles hidden within a mossy bed of concealing wrinkles, glimmered. "Well, if 'one wonders' as much, I can certainly answer. With what army would the field marshal, Duke Joseph, try to break the siege? The army already tied down in garrisoning cities across the fragment of Indochina remaining in Britannian hands?"
He's talking too much, Kaguya noted, Taizo's usual economy of words absent this morning, in their place an ebullient loquaciousness.
Why? Is he in a good mood? Drunk? Is he… nervous?
That was a frightening prospect, both to the part of her that was still a child and still identified him as the father she had lost, and to the rest of her, that he had honed into a diplomat, a financier, and in true Britannian fashion, a murderer. Taizo was always controlled, always scheming, always weaving a new plot.
If he is nervous…
The old man snorted, as if to drive the very thought from her mind. His hot breath, heavy with an amusement that Kaguya was increasingly convinced masked something else, was almost bull-like in the dimly lit study. Suddenly, the dark walls seemed far too close, almost claustrophobically tight.
"No, Kaguya," Taizo continued, answering his own question, "Duke Joseph has no intention of throwing away the rest of his forces. He sent the strongest Britannian field army ever deployed to Asia into the jungle, and watched it disappear down that stupid highway the Chancellor forced him to waste time building."
"You sound almost sympathetic to the field marshal's plight," Kaguya pointed out, her tone neutral yet attentive. It was an empty response, a mere observation. A placeholder, to keep her hand in the conversation. A response as bland as her smiling face, such as her true guardian had taught her to offer, that revealed not a contour of the topology of her own thoughts.
Judging by the way those ever-mobile eyebrows, so bushy, twitched up towards his bald pate, that guardian recognized the trick he had taught her and approved its use. The small smile, a twitch of gray lips, could have been paternal in its pride, if it wasn't for those ancient eyes in that broad, wizened face. Still glimmering, still assessing.
Another small test passed.
"Do I?" Taizo asked, and yes, he was amused, at least to a degree; the amusement could mask something else, certainly masked something else, but the geriatric spider still enjoyed watching the flies twitch. His ancient voice, already cracked with age, cracked again with a sort of gloating satisfaction. "To give the man his due, Duke Joseph possesses middling skills as a commander; enough so that his baton is not entirely unearned. But, Kaguya, a general must be more than a blunt instrument, baton or not. At a certain point, a general cannot be merely a strategist; he must also become a politician."
Like Tanya? Kaguya silently asked, remembering the way the other girl had effortlessly commanded the attention of both the blue-sashed soldiers and her own bodyguards, how it had taken almost her full will not to lean back from the furnace raging below that shaggy blonde hair and behind those lambskiller blue eyes when that girl had leaned across the table, getting into her face as she demonstrated how close she had gotten to the first man she had stabbed.
A street rat who built her own army and crowned herself lord of all she surveyed? Like that, Lord Taizo?
"The Duke of Vancouver," the old man continued, seemingly lost in his sneering reverie, "found himself in control of an Area in all but law by dint of his failure as a political operator as much as for his generalship. The only reasons why a noble unchained to the Imperial Family by blood or marriage would be granted his command are visionary excellence or political impotence. In Vancouver's case," Taizo snorted again, and Kaguya pushed away the thought of how the wet heat pressed against her face, "there is little reason to suspect that he earned the 4th Army with his
reputed strategic wit."
So… is this just gloating, Kaguya wondered, concealing her curiosity behind a sip from her rapidly chilling tea, timed just as the master of the Taizo clan took another sip from his coffee to avoid any hint of disrespect by looking away,
or is there a lesson hidden behind the indulgence? That a general must be a politician is hardly revelatory – politics and war are simple extensions of one another – but what does that lesson mean now, in application to the monumental defeat the Britannians just suffered and coming from the mouth of a man who has always dominated from the boardroom and the Cabinet, but never from the head of an army? Is it a simple comment on the quality of leadership we should expect from the Britannians? An insight into the nature of Britannia, Social Darwinism sowing the seeds for its own collapse as trust from within withers? Something else entirely?
What would Tanya have to say about the news out of Indochina? What lessons would she pull from the slew of random details and panicked reports my agents have passed on to me?
It was far from the first time Kaguya had asked herself some variant of that question. They had only met once, but thanks to the plethora of reports she had requested on Tanya both before and after their meeting, and thanks to the Shinjuku leader's own surprising candor during their short meeting, Kaguya felt like she had a decent handle on what her…
What? On what my acquaintance thinks? My ally? My contractee?
Yes, Kaguya noted,
contractee works, as far as our current relationship goes. She buys material from me, all the guns and bullets and food and whatever that her people need, and in return she has promised to provide muscle on demand, but that's not really all…
Contractee worked, but it fell short of the role Kaguya saw for Commander Hajime in their shared future. Contractee was too mean a descriptor, she decided;
Warlord fit much better.
Regardless of our exact relationship, I still feel like I understand how she would react to most of the recent developments that have crossed my desk. She would have celebrated Pulst's death, I'm sure; he was never a friend to anybody save himself, and a holy
terror to the Japanese as the Minister of Economic Development. She would have mourned the butchery in Yokohama, especially since she would so clearly see her own home and her own people in the accounts of whatever survivors managed to flee north to the Tokyo Settlement.
But what would that shrewd, bloody-minded, yet – when it came to her own people – surprisingly compassionate girl think, when she learned of the broken Knightmares and the long bloody chain of men sinking into the thick jungle mud?
When I spoke of Japan, she burnt with passion, Kaguya recalled, nodding internally to herself as she watched Taizo fuss over his coffee mug.
Indeed, she matched the fire that burnt in my heart with equal measure. Certainly that fire will prompt jubilation when the news of the Chinese victory over Cavendish's Column reaches her, assuming she hasn't learned about it already…
Somehow, that estimation rang hollow in Kaguya's ears, off in a way that her previous two guesses were not.
Because she will have come to the same conclusion that I have, Kaguya thought bleakly, tightening her grasp on her traditional clay cylinder of a tea mug to keep the treacherous shakes away from her hands.
Because a crisis of this magnitude cannot go unexploited. Someone will
exploit it in Area 11, and the Britannians in their temporary weakness will not be able to immediately quash the first embers. When other groups realize as much, when the great groaning mass of Japanese and reluctant Honoraries realize as much, the fire will spread… But once that easy tinder is burned, Tanya will ask herself, just as I
asked myself last night, what then?
"So in your estimate, this defeat stemmed from the field marshal's lack of political dexterity?" Kaguya asked, automatically picking the conversation back up as Taizo settled back into his chair, his cup refreshed. Though she had posed it as a question, Kaguya knew her mentor well enough to see the conclusion he was reaching for, and so concurred in advance with it.
But asking instead of stating will put the onus for speaking that conclusion aloud on him, rather than myself, Kaguya noted, the portion of her internal monologue plotting her course through the conversation cool and detached.
After all, it behooves a woman in my position poorly to lay the fault for the defeat on the duke's inability to stand up to the unreasonable demands of his superiors, lest my own self-appointed superiors begin to wonder.
The rest of her internal monologue was screaming itself hoarse as she imagined a vengeful Britannia, the great leviathan wounded but all the more dangerous for its pained, lunatic rage, slashing back down on the reborn Japan, still fragile as it shook off clinging shards of eggshell and spread soft wings.
In her mind's eye, Kaguya could almost see the incendiaries falling in their thousands already.
"Clearly," Taizo snorted again, and then coughed when the snort dislodged something in the back of his throat. The wizened schemer had been suffering badly from allergies this year, Kaguya recalled.
"Clearly," he repeated, spitting the word out in lieu of spitting out the stifling post-nasal contents of his throat. "The order to build that damned stupid fort came from the Chancelry, allegedly on the advice of a Baron Harrison, a man who reportedly failed his way to seniority with commendable efficiency. Duke Joseph is at least rumored to have been smart enough to resist the drivel that spews from Harrison's mouth when it spewed from the mouth of a social inferior alone, but apparently lost his courage when the same blabber was regurgitated via the Second Prince's mouth instead."
Kaguya wrinkled her nose at that mental image with unfeigned disgust, happy at last to give her own, much more personal, disgust the slightest window of expression.
I wonder if they will even bother retaking the cities, her gloomy mind supplied.
Why bother, when all the Britannians truly want is the damned Sakuradite?
"And of course," Taizo continued thoughtfully, appearing to be lost in the depths of his cup, peering down into steaming coffee adulterated with milk, the Britannian habit persisting even now, "the emergency dispatch of an armored brigade and two infantry divisions also arrived with the Chancellor's seal, just the same as the initial orders did, just as the approvals for the budgetary overruns and the late hour additions to Fort Aurelian did. Schneizel wanted to save his investment, and like the amateur general he is, immediately resorted to the blunt deployment of overwhelming force to save himself from his foolishness. And Duke Joseph did nothing but dutifully follow his orders, all without uttering so much as a peep of protest."
…What am I supposed to say to that? Kaguya wondered, her conversational navigator stalling out as the silence stretched on.
What is the point of this conversation? She also wondered, that question almost snapped out by the increasingly despondent part of her mind that dreaded what this conversation was building towards.
We both know what happened, we both heard the news…
Think, Kaguya! Think! Taizo is nervous, you realized that as soon as he tried that jolly old man act. He wanted you off balance, that was why he summoned you so early… He's talked a lot, and said very little, but what substance there has been has all emphasized how reactionary Britannia has become, will become… Duke Joseph waited for orders and, when they came, only followed orders… Schniezel reinforced failure and compounded his original mistake…
Something clicked in Kaguya's mind as she remembered her earlier internal question, about why a man who lacked anything approaching military experience would be pontificating on generalship. Schneizel was, after all, far from the only politician who lacked anything beyond a surface level understanding of the military sciences.
Another such man sat across the low coffee table from her, clothed in a Britannian-style dressing robe and drinking Britannian-style coffee.
So this is it, Kaguya realized, a numb sensation spreading up from her belly, retracing the warm path her sipped tea had blazed down her throat.
The Britannians will never, in his estimation, be weaker than they are right now. The JLF is swollen with new recruits and increasingly responsive to a clique of highly aggressive officers; moreover, Yokohama proved that the Britannians will not stop until they slaughter us all. They will never be weaker, and we will never be stronger. And Kirihara Taizo has always been a man to make his own opportunities, to seize whatever advantage he can secure.
It all makes sense, when I think about it like that.
And it did. It made
so much sense. More than sense, the prospect of rising up
now, striking back against the hated, weakened enemy
now… it felt
right, deeply so. Kaguya remembered Japan, for all that she was certain that just as many Britannian mannerisms had crept into her personal habits as had crept into Taizo's, and she longed to see her country free again.
He has no intention of waiting for some lone spark to rise up and set the entire forest on fire; he is no general, but he has generals on retainer, just as Schniezel is and does. And just as Schniezel did, he is preparing to send off his orders to ensure that the fire touches off all at once, guaranteeing an intense blaze. A blaze enough to resurrect the phoenix from its ashes… A fireball of sufficient intensity and luminosity that people across the world might mistake it for a sun rising at last from dark night, rising again furious and free…
But what comes next? asked a voice with equal intensity, as frigid as midwinter corpses stacked in the bed of a ramshackle truck, bound for interment with the rest of the unwanted waste of Britannia.
Once the gamble is placed, once the glorious blow is struck, what comes next? What will the cost be, for that momentary rebirth? Will you stake an entire nation's existence, that Japanese intensity will outlast Britannian vengeance? And even if the fire of outrage gutters in the Britannian soul, what about gnawing hunger for Sakuradite? Can will alone outlast a potentially fatal threat to all Britannia holds dear, a threat that their world-conquering war machine might stall?
"Fortunately," Kaguya heard through her rushing thoughts, as Taizo continued his musings aloud, his attempts to reassure himself above all else now as shrill to Kaguya's ears as a tin-whistle, "even Duke Vancouver's limited success and mediocre performance is likely beyond the reach of our illustrious Viceregal-Governor."
"As you say," she replied, gratified that her voice had somehow escaped her rapidly constricting throat without betraying her. "Prince Clovis, after all, has no military background to speak of, and is advised primarily by officers of the Purist Faction, who are broadly held in jealous contempt by their peers."
"He lacks both the cleverness to stand back and let his military advisors take the full measure of responsibility onto their own shoulders, as the Viceroy of Area 10 chose, and the wisdom to actually choose competent advisors instead of sycophantic fools hopelessly bound to a futile ideology," agreed Taizo, nodding with such satisfaction that Kaguya almost screamed. "Undoubtedly, he would see it as below the dignity of his royal status to simply sit back and allow his generals to run the Area into the ground on their own accord. Besides, the man's the worst kind of micromanager; ever present wherever he is least helpful. No competent general would stand for such interference."
Would Colonel Kusakabe? Kaguya wondered.
Or is he also a fool bound to a self-defeating ideology? Considering who his orders will apparently be stemming from, Lord Taizo, I have my suspicions, though I have never had the misfortune of his acquaintance.
"As you say," Kaguya repeated, wondering at how rapidly everything that had seemed so solid even in her own fragile double life as a Honorary Britannian debutant and as a secret bankroller of rebellion had fallen apart. The Chairman of the Numbers Advisory Council and the secret master of Kyoto House had likewise led a double life for more than half a decade without betraying himself, and even before then, he had been a formidable presence in the halls of power of Republican Japan.
And yet here he is, speaking to a captive audience, unable or unwilling even now to cross the threshold and openly state his intentions. Minutes are running through our fingers like sand as time hurdles on, and yet here we sit in this townhouse, him talking but not speaking, me nodding but not listening.
But now, Kaguya considered,
he is trying to convince himself that Britannia's strength is ebbing, and that Clovis is too incapable to adequately defend Britannian dominance over Japan. That means Lord Taizo is, in fact, not
fully convinced on such points already.
Her stomach lurched, and it took all of Kaguya's careful self-control to hold her tea down.
"Lord Taizo," she began, drawing on years of lessons in manners, in deportment, in the respectful way an inferior wheedles truths and concessions out from their unwary superior, "why did you want to meet with me so early in the morning? What prompted you to call this meeting?"
"What," Taizo asked, looking up from his coffee to shoot a sardonic look her way, "did you want to be caught napping when the Day of Liberation dawned?"
"Indeed." The word fell tonelessly from her lips as Kaguya's heart plummeted again. The look on Taizo's face was not triumphant, nor was it eager. Instead, it was… resigned. Old. Not tired, but… not energetic.
Not a reassuring look on the face of the chessmaster standing ready to overturn his board at last and set it on fire. "So, today's the day, is it?"
"We will never be stronger," Taizo remarked, echoing Kaguya's thoughts. Perhaps he had been following the same paths as she, paying just as little attention to their conversation as she had. For a moment, Kaguya wondered if that was the reason for his nerves; that he too had concluded that he was not the right man for this job. "The Britannians will never leave us, and if this generation passes without a fight, there will be no Japan to liberate."
"They will kill us," Kaguya replied, simply but with a heartfelt sincerity she didn't have to force. The words escaped gracelessly through her lips, and from each utterance more bubbled forth, pressure given vent at last. "You realize that, Lord Taizo? If we do this… If we call for a general uprising against the Britannians, they will kill us all once they retake the Home Islands. There will be no Japan, just as you say, but there will be nobody who can even claim Japanese ancestry still alive here on whatever burnt rocks are left! Only the refugees in the camps in China and Europe could claim to be Japanese, and they would be only a fragment of a fragment! Lord Taizo, if we do this… If you do this…!"
"Throwing in with Munakata's faction at this late date, Kaguya?" Taizo asked, rhetorically, as it turned out, for he continued relentlessly on. "What other choice do we have, would you say? Letting this opportunity go to waste would be foolish in the extreme.
"The best of the Britannian Army is battling its way through the Middle Eastern Federation while the second raters are tied down in Sumatra and Malaya, or are scattered across three continents in pick-penny garrisons. The Britannian Navy is dueling the Chinese and Europeans across two oceans, from the Malaccas to the Canaries. Their Knights of the Rounds are scattered from Persia to Pendragon. Even without counting the two infantry divisions and the Knightmare brigade Schniezel just threw away, the Britannians are overstretched and exhausted from fifteen years of constant conquest."
Even after almost eight decades of life, Kirihara Taizo was still a big man, still broad across the shoulders. When he leaned forward, craggy face set in hard lines below his sloping, wrinkled brow, it was as if Mount Fuji itself had stirred from its tormented sleep to bear down upon her.
And in the face of that pressure, Kaguya was eight years old again and an orphan, head of a clan of one, cowering before the brooding pressure of her new guardian. His word had been law for years now, scraping away what he had disapproved of and reshaping the remainder to enshrine Old Japan behind protective Britannian walls.
That word spoke once again, brooking no defiance, and Kaguya knew Taizo spoke the truth when he said:
"We will never get a better chance at restoring Japan."
I can't argue against any of that, Kaguya thought dismally, feeling like a stranger in her own body. Her head swam, her hands as numb as a corpse.
He's correct, as far as he's gone. But he hasn't gone
far enough, hasn't thought
far enough, if that is the entirety of his argument.
"Lord Taizo," Kaguya replied, clinging to the structure of formality, anchoring herself back in
herself, pushing through her dizzy despair and trying to argue what could laughably be called her case, "I agree that this moment of unexpected Britannian weakness presents an incredible opportunity. But…" she swallowed, trying to articulate her thoughts.
What were her thoughts? Hadn't she been resolved that any sacrifice would be worth a free Japan? It had seemed that way, when she had heard the news of the Sniper's death in the company of Bradley Dean, when she had resolved to honor the soon-to-be slain of Yokohama as martyrs.
"But…"
Sacrifices are only justified retroactively, came the grim rejoinder, and it came in Tanya's voice, surprising Kaguya not in the least.
If the sacrifice of a nation only buys a month or two of freedom before the hammer falls, then that sacrifice was worth very little, because it bought very little. Renegotiate before committing to such a foolhardy exchange.
"Before we inform the JLF of our support for a general uprising, before we call in all of our debts with the other resistance groups, before we ask our people to take up whatever weapon they can find to kill the invaders…"
Before we ask them all to die for us, for me, "I humbly ask what end you envision, Lord Taizo."
"What end indeed…?" The old man echoed, tilting his head back as if the answers were written on the ceiling's dark paneling. "Lady Kaguya, how many more years do you think the people of Area 11 will remain Japanese? How many generations will it take before the name "Japanese" is just as irrelevant as "Iroquis" or "Quebecois"?
"How long until we all become Elevens in truth, just as the Mexicans became Fives? How long can a national identity last, without a homeland? Our shrines and temples are burnt; where will we offer gifts and prayers to our ancestors? Will we continue to entomb their bones in garbage pits?"
"Eulogies for Japan from Lord Taizo?" Kaguya asked, almost disbelievingly. It seemed so… trite. What were the worth of eulogies for a dead country, coming from a man already one foot in the grave? "And don't think that I'll accept a question for an answer. This uprising… What is the point of it? What will it accomplish? Surely you, you who have survived the rise and fall of cabinets, you who survived Conquest and collaboration, have a plan to survive past the uprising!"
Kaguya realized she was breathing hard, panting for breath. She hadn't raised her voice, but the effort to keep her tone level, sane, polite even had pulled the wind from her lungs all the same. She felt like she was drowning, the way the pressure on her chest crushed her, the way her thin throat sucked for air like a long slender straw.
"You won't accept a question for an answer?" For a moment, Taizo's fey mood broke and Kaguya steeled herself even as she fought for air, fought for composure, against the impulse to shrink back, as the hard-faced titan of her youth swam back into focus through her blurring vision. "Well then, Kaguya, I will simply say this: I would rather my bones rest in Japan than in Area 11. How is that for your answer? Japan will live. I will see the sun rise again. I was born in Japan, and I will die in Japan."
"So that's it, then?" Kaguya rose to her feet, the lingering shreds of propriety deserting her. "It's all just an old man's dying wish? That's why you're risking everything we've built up and husbanded now on a final hurried push? What happens when the Britannians come back, Lord Taizo, assuming we even manage to push them out of Tokyo? They defeated the Republic – what will ensure the JLF won't meet the same fate? Or what if the Chinese or the Europeans invade, after both we and the Britannians have expended our strength?"
Abruptly frustrated with herself, that she still couldn't bring herself to fully confront the man, Kaguya balled her hands up into fists.
"You don't have a p-plan!" The accusation came out splintered, almost broken. "You don't have a plan for this… this uprising!" Finding her voice, Kaguya glared down at the living fossil. "How could you have a plan? Nobody expected the Britannians to lose that bad, or the Chinese to actually be competent for once! You didn't see this coming – nobody did! You're just… just reacting! Just like Schniezel did! Why do you think this will go any different than the Chancellor of Britannia's attempt to buy victory by just
throwing people at the problem!?"
"What would you have me do?" Taizo asked, almost bemused. Kaguya found the sudden detachment in his eyes deeply frightening. Before those two shimmering pebbles, as dark as rocks at the bottom of a well, her momentary outrage guttered. "You know as well as I do the mood of our countrymen, and in particular the disposition of Colonel Kusakabe and his little clique. News of Nghia Lo has certainly reached his ears, and he will see nothing but an opportunity to replicate Niigata on a nationwide scale. Would you have me squander the Six Houses' influence in checking his ambition, consigning you and I to the same impotence that has overcome Munakata?
"Face it, Kaguya," and this time, when he chuckled, Kaguya saw the man who had replaced her father again, just for a moment, but not this time the terrifying presence. Instead, she saw the man who had taught her how to sharpen her teeth against the other clanheads, who had applauded her when she duped Britannian inspectors and factors with her apparent childishness into sloppy negotiations. The one who had given an orphaned girl the weapons necessary to become a power all her own. "As soon as the last
Sutherland collapsed into the Indochinese mud, this was inevitable. Not only in Area 10, but in Areas 9 and 12, and what's left of 10 and 13, others just like us and just like Kusakabe are preparing to unwind seventeen years of Britannian conquest.
"An old man's stubbornness or not, Princess," and now Taizo was leaning forwards, detachment vanished from his eyes, as he spoke to her not as Kaguya or as Lady Kaguya, but as the last sprout on the great tree of Yamato, "this has gone beyond you and beyond me now. One way or another, someone – probably Colonel Kusakabe, no need to beat around the bush now – will fire the first shots against Britannia, with or without us. Past that point, the cycle of escalation and retaliation will continue, until either they or we are all deceased. Our choice now isn't whether or not we should start the general uprising, but whether we shall ride this wild horse or be trampled below its hooves."
"You still haven't answered my question, Lord Taizo, and I don't believe for a moment that you are throwing some long-prepared plan into action," Kaguya doggedly replied, fire replaced by a certainty just as firm as her mentor's, still glaring down at the old man as she tried to ignore how pointlessly academic this conversation suddenly rang in her ears. "You have simply attempted to shift responsibility for the actions you clearly intend to take away from yourself and onto the inevitability of history. So be it. If the uprising must happen, then surely there must be a plan for the aftermath. If this uprising you forecast succeeds, if the sun rises on
a Japan again,
what comes next?"
Surely you have an answer! The silent addition was near begging.
You have always had an answer, have always articulated the importance of deliberate action! Surely, Taizo, you won't prove a hypocrite now, at this latest juncture?
"I am sorry that you find my answer inadequate, Lady Kaguya," Kirihara Taizo said, leaning back in his armchair once more as his fervency again cooled to the same resigned detachment as before. "I hope that you will understand my intentions once the heat of the rising sun again graces your face in a liberated Japan. Now," and he was looking down at her again somehow, for all that she stood tall upon her own two feet, "will I have the cooperation of the Sumeragi Clan in this undertaking, when I go to meet with the other clanheads in half an hour? Or will I have to begin this great undertaking alone?"
At last, Kaguya heard something familiar in Taizo's voice, something that belonged to the shrewd old man, the pillar of her childhood and the foundation of Kyoto House: It was the language of negotiation, of the forging of clauses and the establishment of contracts. Meat and rice to Kirihara Taizo.
And the milk she had grown up upon.
"Oh?" Kaguya angled her head inquisitively, merchant instincts coming to the fore through the emotional turmoil. "What can the House of Sumeragi offer the great Master of Kirihara? I thought you were already resolved to your plan, or at least to whatever shambles you've thrown together."
"Lord Tosei and Lord Tatsunori are a spent force," Taizo said bluntly. "Neither is in any position to push back against anything I should propose, not with the House of Munakata losing all leverage over the functional portion of the JLF's leadership and the severe damage its finances sustained during the Christmas Incident, and not with how hollowed out the House of Osakabe has become. I hold both seats in the palm of my hand.
"Lords Yoshino and Kubouin are a different matter; while central and southern Honshu might dance more or less to my tune, Lord Kubouin has an iron hold on the north, and on Wakayama and Nara. The hidden shrines and the militant brotherhoods both adore him… And they both hate me. Lord Yoshino married a southerner, and she's delivered Kyushu and Shikoku into his hands."
Kaguya nodded along, sinking as best as she could into the familiarity of the exchange. The names and facts were nothing new, nothing she hadn't heard before in so many other meetings in this study, where she and Taizo had planned out their strategy for upcoming general meetings with the other heads of the Six Houses.
"The House of Hidenobu and the House of Hiroyosi could provide formidable stumbling blocks for a general, Japan-wide uprising on their own," Taizo continued, gesturing broadly over his lukewarm coffee. "If Lord Yoshino holds himself aloof, not only does that mean the Britannians could plausibly withdraw to form a redoubt on the southern Home Islands, but that the Kagoshima Settlement will remain unscathed and the Fukuoka and Kitakyushu Naval Bases will remain in Britannian hands. That would sound the death knell for a reborn Japan, just as much if Hokkaido, Aomori, Sendai, and everything south of Osaka remain in Britannian hands because Lord Kubouin was unable to convince his supporters to follow my plan.
"This uprising must include all of Japan, or it is doomed."
"'We must all hang together, lest we hang singly,'" Kaguya replied in Britannian, quoting from her lessons about Washington's Rebellion. She idly wondered who among Kyoto would play the role of Franklin, the Judas. Though in a way she supposed they were all traitors, to one master or another. "How do you propose the House of Sumeragi assist you with your goal to set all of Japan ablaze, Lord Taizo? Unfortunately, I lack a southern wife."
"True, but you bear the Imperial Bloodline," Taizo retorted, his gaze knowing as Kaguya felt a familiar creeping discomfort at the mention. "Whoever you marry will be the next emperor, when the time comes, and his children will be of the Blood. While that might not matter so much in Nagoya or Yokohama or Tokyo, it still matters a great deal to the peasants working in the fields of noble estates… and it matters even more to those following the Path of the Gods in Wakayama and in parts north of Fukushima. With your approval, the House of Hidenobu will have to follow me or lose control over at least some of their followers."
It didn't take long for the gears to click into place in her mind. "And with Hidenobu, Munakata, Osakabe, and Sumeragi at your back, the House of Hiroyosi will have no choice but to join in your effort, lest they either fall to our own knives or those of the Britannians," Kaguya concluded.
As she tested the weight of the idea in her own head, she had to admit that there was some merit to Taizo's hastily thrown together plan. Denying the Britannians a safe staging ground for any reconquest was still putting the cart before the horse to a degree, but it indicated at least some thought beyond the immediate push to dislodge the Britannians from their settlements. Of course, the plan still rested on the massive assumption that the foreign invaders would even bother with such niceties instead of simply slagging every square inch of the Home Islands.
So, Kaguya thought,
I do have some measure of power here after all, in spite of all of his efforts to render me a helplessly passive observer to the unfolding of my own fate. He could take his own assets and whatever he salvaged from Munakata and Osakabe up in his hands and throw them at the Britannians, but to have even the slightest hope of success, he needs my back-up.
Of course, she noted,
he seems determined to advance his plan and is already resigned to die, so if I back out he will still drag us all down. I doubt I can truly stop this mad gambit of his, but perhaps I can wrangle out some concessions before I truly bind myself to this ride to damnation?
"An interesting proposition, Lord Taizo." The words sounded alien, almost like birdsong. The familiar melody of hemming and hawing over details here and obligations there. So small in this moment, but still the fulcrum around which everything else swung. "What are you prepared to offer in exchange for the full and public support of the House of Sumeragi?"
"The throne."
Kaguya blinked.
Did I hear him correctly? He would back my enthronement in my own right, not just the enthronement of my husband-to-be…? Not since 1771 has Japan been ruled by a woman. Coming from Taizo, never one to promote equality between the sexes… It's a shocking offer.
"The… throne?" she asked, probing for confirmation. "Didn't the Britannians destroy it?"
"Yes," Taizo admitted, grimacing. "
Takamikura and
Michodai both burned, and soldiers scrapped the gold for themselves. But, I offer you the Chrysanthemum Throne, Princess, and not just in name, nor as a cipher for your eventual husband. When I die, I will die without a heir; should I predecease you, all of my wealth and all of my power will be yours, along with your own formidable holdings. I cannot guarantee the loyalty of all who serve me and take my money, but you will have that money to buy soldiers of your own.
"I said that I would see the sun rise on Japan, but I see no reason to resurrect the pretense of the Republic, sham that it was. When we drive out the Holy Empire, Princess, join me in returning Japan to the true way, to the proper way."
A throne? Kaguya could have laughed, but there was nothing remotely funny about the seriousness of the situation. But still,
he thinks he can buy me with a throne?!
What, in the name of all gods great and small, is the point of a throne if the cost is my nation's future? Taizo, you have all but told me to my face that you mean to see the Japan of your memories come again even if it takes a mountain of bodies to buy that momentary
glimpse!
But seeing a country,
her country, its desolation outlined in the unyielding planes of Taizo's face, Kaguya knew that nothing she could say would turn back the old man now. After years of bowing to Britannians, Lord Taizo had succumbed to a moment of hope, and now he was caught in that cruel vice.
In a way, she considered, searching that faded face, so familiar and yet a stranger still,
I can sympathize. All of this, this last desperate gamble… This is Lord Taizo's suicide, extended out across the land he has guided for the better part of a century. An entire country turned into a pyre… And now, he has handed me a candle of my own and asked if I would care to join him atop the bonfire, an empress of the dead.
A horrid image passed before Kaguya's eyes, of sitting in Taizo's private office atop the Mount Fuji mining complex, sharing a last drink while, far below, Tokyo drowned in a tsunami of fire and steel.
But this represents an opportunity as well, Kaguya told herself, shoving the sight of fire and the taste of fine sake away.
Not so much with the rest of Kyoto House – for all their jockeying and factional games, they are Taizo's equals in their fixation on the past and on their own fates – but for all those that Kyoto House shall trot me out before. I've always resented my blood, resented how my heritage always outweighed anything that I could ever be or do of my own ability, but if I can fashion it into some rope to pull my nation away from the edge, from self-immolating in their millions… He may not see a road mapped out to secure Japan after the uprising, but that does not mean such a path does not exist.
"Revere the Empress," Kaguya said in a voice that she didn't recognize as her own, that she didn't recognize as Sophie Sumeragi's, even. "Expel the barbarians."
"By your will, My Empress," Taizo affirmed in a voice that reeked of the same gloating satisfaction as she had heard earlier in his meanderings regarding the Duke of Vancouver. "I summoned the other heads before you arrived – they should already be waiting for us, down in the dining room. Let us not keep them waiting for us any longer."
AUGUST 11, 2016 ATB
COUNCIL OF NOTABLES, SHINJUKU GHETTO, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
0930
"Leaders of Shinjuku, luminaries of the Chamber…" Behind the lectern in the center of the former middle school gymnasium, I raised my hands in greeting. "Salutations to you all. Thank you for heeding my call and attending this emergency meeting."
Irritatingly, my audience was far from silent. Murmurs swept in swirling eddies across the seated men – and they were almost all men, and most well above the average age in Shinjuku to boot – as members of the Council of Notables conferred with one another and their aides. The full Council was in attendance, or as near to its hundred-head strong muster as could be scraped together at two hours' notice. Supplementing the assembly was nearly three times their number in assorted hangers-on, all packed into the reclaimed shell of the old Shinjuku Junior High School.
Pushing past my annoyance at being disrespected
again by these useless old men, I continued on with my speech.
After all, I consoled myself,
this could very well be the last opportunity they will ever have to ignore
me.
"I am sure most of you have heard the wonderful news from Indochina," I said, knowing full well that everybody present had eagerly devoured any scrap of information they could discover, myself very much included, "but I will relay it now for any who have not been so blessed.
"Rejoice!" I called, hands rising even higher into the air, as if I was reaching for the sun itself. "Britannia has suffered a grievous defeat! Bogged down under mud and inept leadership, the invaders have squandered an entire field army! The armies of the Chinese Federation yesterday butchered two entire divisions of infantry and a full brigade of Knightmares at a place called Nghia Lo!"
Cheers rose from the crowd along with a crashing wave of applause, which I contributed to gladly, making a point of keeping my clapping hands in full view of the crowd, reinforcing this moment of harmony. Though our interests diverged in many ways, everybody in the room benefitted from the death of Britannians and the ruin of their formations.
"Yes," I declared as the cheers began to die down, calling on just a hint of my magic to lift my voice over the raucous din, "the so-called Holy Empire has experienced a cataclysmic defeat in the Chinese jungles! Even now, Britannians from the soldiers in their barracks to the murderer called Clovis in his throne room tremble, imagining the fate that has befallen their brothers in arms!"
Another cheer rose, this one harder edged. It was a joyous sound still, but in it I could hear the baying of hounds, ready to leap for the bear's throat now that the scent of blood had filled their nostrils.
Time to rein the pack in.
"Many people across Japan, and across the other nations enslaved by Britannia, will see this weakness and decide that now is the time to strike. That now is the hour long awaited for, come at last."
And now there was silence, or the closest thing to it the frankly awful acoustics of the old gym could manage. A sea of keen-eyed faces gazed back at me, watching my every move, assessing my every gesture and weighing every pause.
"This…" I drew out the moment, "is not so."
Clamor rose from the audience as, indignant, men began rising to their feet, yelling over one another. Eyes fired with passion, faces red with anger at the denial of the nectar, so close they could almost smell it, filled my vision.
Behind me, even over the cacophony, I could hear the faint sounds of my bodyguards tightening their grip on their rifles. Standing directly at my back, I heard Nagata swallow hard and could imagine the way my old comrade – the only other person in this room who had been with me in that first basement hideout so long ago now – was picturing his wife and child, wishing he was back home with them instead of facing down the mob of the petulant fools I had humored for so long.
"Be silent!" I boomed, drawing on my magic in earnest this time to effortlessly overwhelm the useless noise. "Pretend, at least, to possess the dignity worthy of being called 'Notable' among the long-suffering people of Shinjuku!"
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Hajime?"
That lone voice, refusing to knuckle under, came from one of the few men still on his feet. Nishizumi Tsutsumi, Councilor for Central Kamiochiai, stood, fists at his side, glaring balefully at me and, I realized, at Nagata standing behind me.
"Britannia will never be weaker than it is today!" Councilor Nishizumi proclaimed, his voice, roughened by years spent bellowing orders at sailors and honed by guiding the gangsters he had commanded through the brutal turf wars of Shinjuku, carrying throughout the so-called Chamber of Notables wherein the Council of Notables met with equal ease as my own. "We should kick them
now, while they're hurt and bleeding! That army was their fist, not only for Indochina but for any uprising here in Japan! That army is
gone, which means we have a chance!"
"Do we?" I demanded, my eyes narrowing as I glared at my old enemy. That he was my enemy, I had no doubt of. First he had tried to undermine the structure of my organization, both by casting aspersions on the character of Nagata, my chosen agent, and then by attempting to swindle extra supplies for his constituency at the expense of the rest. Then, he had made a public show of reconciliation in the wake of the Yokohama Massacre, throwing all responsibility onto my back and washing his hands of the hard work of governing in a crisis.
And ever since I took over for Naoto, he's been part of the clique muttering against me, I knew.
Always saying that I was weak, that I was foolish, that I was disloyal. That I was a whore's daughter, a Britannian in all but language, a stupid girl who should have known her place… My enemy, offering himself up for special attention at last.
"And what would you say we should do, Councilor for Central Kamiochiai?" I continued, leaning forwards over the lectern and pretending I wasn't standing on a wobbly box to achieve the height necessary for such a maneuver. "Should we throw ourselves into the teeth of the Tokyo Garrison, slaughtering as many Britannians and Honoraries as we can before reinforcements converge and crush us all, squandering the work of months in hours? Perhaps we should push a grenade into the hands of every child with the strength requisite to pull the pin and direct them to find a Britannian – any Britannian – to take with them into the afterlife?"
"And what would you have us do, oh great Commander Hajime?" came the sarcastic reply. "Cower and die in our homes? Piss on this last chance to breathe free Japanese air so we can choke on Britannian smog in a month?"
Frustratingly, the crowd of Notables and lackeys murmured approvingly at his rejoinder. It was the response most of those present would have given, I knew, just as readily as Nishizumi had given it.
The answer of old men who rest content that, when the Britannian hammer comes down, they will be among the last to die, I thought, sneering from behind my mask of command at the whole flock of carrion eaters.
Fortunately for the people of Shinjuku, they will not have the chance to enjoy such a luxury.
"I would give the people of Shinjuku a hope to see a month from today, rather than die within the week," I replied curtly, allowing a small measure of my contempt to leak out. "Make no mistake, honored Notables, the Britannians
will be coming to Shinjuku. One way or another, that much is inevitable. The question is whether we are prepared to wage the long war I have been preparing this entire city for, or if through hotblooded foolishness the work of months as well as any tactical advantage will be offered up in blood sacrifice for a mere double handful of Britannian corpses."
"If the Britannians are coming to Shinjuku no matter what we do," one of the other Notables chimed in, rising to his feet, "it would be better if we were to choose the time of their arrival. If we send out a few small forces to attack the barracks and neighborhoods nearest the gates of the ghetto before retreating back within the walls-"
"And mark ourselves out for special attention once the Britannians recover their wits and start attacking anything that makes them say boo?" It was enough to bring me to tears. All of these fools had no idea what they were talking about, had no idea what war was like,
truly like. Before the Conquest, Japan hadn't gone to war in two generations, and the Conquest itself had lasted a month. The Britannians had barely broken a sweat seizing the Republic of Japan.
None of them had seen what I had seen in a different life, in a different world. None of them had done what I had done, had watched as massed artillery devastated the very land and killed entire cities.
Nobody here knew war.
Nobody but me.
It has to be this way.
"Now hear this!" I raised a hand again, but not in greeting. Behind me, the line of soldiers from the Internal Affairs Force in their blue sashes and Sun Guard
hachimaki took a step forward, still-safed rifles at present-arms before their chests.
The room again grew silent.
It was, I reflected,
ironic that yet another turning point in my life would unfold here, in this building.
While the structure had once been the Shinjuku Junior High School, before it had become the meeting Chamber of the Council of Notables it had housed the Shinjuku School for Elevens, an institution I had so briefly attended. It had been in that school, where Britannian instructors dispatched by the Area Administration worked to convert Japanese children into dutiful Honoraries, that I had learned I would never have the chance to work within the Britannian system towards anything I would consider success. A path to a potentially peaceful life stymied before it could even begin, all due to discriminatory fiat.
In a way, I suppose it was in this old school hall that I became truly Japanese once again, before Naoto and Ohgi ever met me.
It was a bitter thought. I had been forced onto this path of rebellion, of fighting against the state and against institutional power in favor of a chaos I could only barely control at the best of times. While I was far past the point of turning back now, I still couldn't help but wonder at the counterfactuals. If I had succeeded in becoming an Honorary, could I have made something of myself, that teacher's candor be damned? Turned my Britannian features into an asset, rather than a constant burden?
Would my mother, hanging on my coattails as I left the ghetto to find a place in the Honorary neighborhoods of the outer Settlement, still be alive today?
That was a
truly bitter thought. As was the knowledge that, even though I had considered myself as Japanese both before and after that pivotal moment, my blonde hair and blue eyes had always marked me out as an interloper among my own, just as much as Kallen's own crimson hair announced her own Britannian heritage. I'd had to work so hard to stay alive in the long hungry years in the streets, struggling for every calorie I could find, the usual leniency shown to children gone when the people saw the face of an enemy among them. Even after I had proven myself, the likes of Major Onoda and Councilor Nishizumi had still looked down upon me for reasons as nonsensical as blood and birth, in Onoda's case not even deigning to speak to me directly when we had first met.
Never again.
"By my authority as a Triumvir of the Kozuki Organization, by my rank as a Commander of the Sun Guard, by my works as the founder of the Rising Sun Benevolent Association, and by the oaths sworn by every living person who bears arms in Shinjuku, I declare a state of emergency. All Sun Guard units are now placed under the direct command of my appointed officers, my Leadership Commission, and myself. All resources stored within Rising Sun depots or distributed from that same organization's kitchens are now requisitioned by the same to preserve the common good in the face of such overwhelming catastrophe.
"This Chamber," and I tried hard not to smile, and mostly succeeded, "is hereby declared dissolved for the duration of the emergency, as is the Council of Notables. Should any of your
advice be required, citizens of Shinjuku," oh, it was a joy to no longer require myself to honor the silly title Naoto had granted them, "I shall seek you out to ask for it."
They hungered for war with Britannia? Fine! I would give them all the war they could stomach, starting with a stiff and long-delayed serving of martial law.
May they choke on it.
Though my feet were firmly on the ground, or at least an old tinned-beef crate, I felt like I was flying as the burdens of long days and sleepless nights fell away. Like the king of old, I had cut through the Gordian Knot of my domestic problems.
There would be issues, of course. There were always issues. Judging by the mounting volume of voices as more and more of the former Notables rose to their feet, the issues were already beginning to arise. Fortunately, I had planned for such an eventuality, or at least, prepared. "Planned" was such a strong word, especially since I had thrown all of this together over a sleepless night, determined to steal a march on the Council before their clear inadequacy doomed us all. Already, agents and officers from the IAF and other trusted squads of Sun Guards were fanning out across Shinjuku to announce the new orders and to begin distributing new work assignments to the units most tightly enmeshed in the patronage of various Notables.
There would be plenty of work to do, starting with the dispersal of the angry crowd that was quickly descending into an enraged mob. Plenty of tunnels would have to be dug, deeper under Shinjuku and fanning out in all directions headed
away from the Settlement's core. New ratlines, new escape routes, new bunkers and new spiderholes, dug from the old mud of Kanto's plain. Stocks of supplies and munitions needed to be consolidated and reportioned to subterranean caches across the breadth of Shinjuku, keen eyed watchers had to be assigned to the observer posts keeping a wary watch over the gates into Shinjuku, and a thousand other tiny things had to be handled in preparation for the inevitable attack.
Nagata was leading me away, I noticed, callused hands on my shoulders as he guided me, in the middle of a knot of armed men in blue sashes, towards the door out of the hall.
"Take her to Inoue's Office," I heard him say, Ohgi and Naoto's old friend, the ever-reliable designated driver of our organization. "Get her there now, and send reinforcements. We'll hold them here."
Ah, yes, Inoue. How could I have forgotten to include Inoue in my plan? It was all moving so fast, now that the balloon had well and truly gone up. At the center of my web, I had been kept busy, so busy, keeping all the wheels greased and the gears turning. Some things had slipped while I was busy, it was clear. Like sleep, or informing Inoue of what I was doing.
Yes, I decided as Nagata turned his back, the gymnasium doors closing between him and me,
going to Inoue's would be a fine idea. She's the quartermaster, so her office will be the best place to coordinate the newly centralized administration of the free city of Shinjuku. No more need to listen to any carping from any of the old bastards Naoto picked to mismanage their little slices of Shinjuku. My city, finally, at last.
At last, I thought dreamily, my enhancements hiccuping,
at last we will be free.
Ah, nostalgia, I vaguely thought, my mind flitting back to the first time I'd found myself visiting Inoue's former den, on a quest for information about the underground Shinjuku economy.
She forced me to eat that time too, I recalled,
and it was probably soup then too.
Experimentally, I raised a heavily laden spoon to my mouth, blew on it, and took it in. The soup was warm and thick, vegetable broth full of barley and vegetables and scraps of meat. Delicious and nourishing.
"So," Inoue said from the other side of the narrow table I had once sat down with her and Naoto at, breaking the tense silence that had filled the narrow office since my IAF bodyguard deposited me here with a quick muttered explanation of the meeting's events in Inoue's ear, "care to tell me what you were thinking, Tanya? Because… Because I'm frankly at a loss here. I thought you didn't want to be the sole source of authority? The one everybody was depending on?"
"I don't," I grumbled, spooning up another bite. "But that's happened anyway. I just formalized what was already the case."
"...Perhaps," Inoue allowed, folding her arms across her chest. "Keep eating," she snapped as I made to put my spoon down. "Don't take my demand that you explain yourself as an excuse to escape a meal. You can eat while you talk."
"Fine, fine," I acquiesced, taking another bite of my soup. It was quite tasty.
How long has it been since I last ate? I tried to recall.
I think Chika forced me to eat a roll for breakfast…
"So…?" Inoue prodded.
"So, I didn't want it to come to this, but I couldn't let those idiots just throw everything away," I answered, taking another bite as Inoue looked expectantly at me. "I knew they would be eager to strike at Britannia – understandably so – but I couldn't allow them to take our forces out from behind prepared fortifications just to launch an impulsive assault without achievable objectives. That would be insanity."
"I can see that," Inoue nodded thoughtfully, "but surely you could have waited until they actually… proposed that plan? And I am certain you could have delivered that message in a less confrontational manner. Perhaps if you had explained your concerns, they would have listened?"
"They would not," I flatly denied, fingers tightening around my spoon. "I know them, Inoue. Not individually, and not really as people, but I know their kind… Stubborn, ignorant, proud old fools… That Nishizumi of all people would be the one to stand up and say what they were all thinking demonstrates their collective intelligence. But, you are correct," I conceded, frowning, "I should have let them put their foot into the trap before I pulled them back, but… Between the raw stupidity of it all, the fact that I knew that, stupid or not, most of the idiots would love it, and the way that I
know that some of them, despite everything, still see me as a Britannian because of my blood…" I shrugged, staring into my soup. "I couldn't trust them to see the sense of it. I couldn't trust them to back down if I didn't force them to submit immediately. Done is done."
"Tell me more about your plan for the defense now," said Inoue, smoothly switching topics. "Based on what your man reported, it doesn't sound like you're very optimistic about our chances, when the hammer finally falls?"
How do I answer a question like that? I wondered, taking another bite to buy time.
Defeatism is unacceptable. But…
"I am very confident in our ability to ward off the Britannians, at least initially, should they roll into Shinjuku like they did Yokohama," I explained, gesturing with my spoon. "Based on the reports Junji's assembled from eyewitness testimony, the Britannian reprisal in Yokohama was conducted by perhaps a brigade's worth of infantry backed by a few squads of Knightmares and a few… special elements."
My mouth twisted at the mention of this last group. That was, apparently, the euphemism used to describe the Army detachments who collected and processed prisoners. Perhaps a better name for them would be the "Slaver Corps" or similar.
"All told," I went on, "just about five thousand soldiers equipped with small arms and backed up by a handful of armored cars and Knightmares, plus a sufficiency of trucks. If that's what they send to pry us out of Shinjuku, we will slaughter them. Anti-armor missiles, mines, snipers, machine-gun nests – as soon as they entered the kill zone, they'd be finished."
"So…?"
"So what happens after that?" I retorted, trading Inoue a question for a question. "What happens next? In all likelihood, and considering how the Britannian forces in Japan have operated to date, they'll send in a significant force of Knightmares. While we will have lost the element of surprise, this still wouldn't concern me overly much. We could handle it. But then what happens once we handle
that, once we prove ourselves a legitimate threat?
"They'll deploy the artillery." This time, I hadn't needed Inoue's prompting to answer my own question. "The Knightmare can be quite dangerous in urban areas, I'm sure of that. The sheer utility of the Slash Harkons is enough to convince me of that, along with the formidable amount of firepower any Knightmare can bring to bear. But while Knightmares can be made to operate in cities, artillery is specialized in
killing cities. And once whichever idiot Britannian is placed in command of the initial efforts gets punted, and once someone serious is put in charge, well…"
My mind was again in Arrene as I spoke, and in faded memories two lifetimes old. Memories of black and white pictures of destruction in history books, and memories of news anchors talking about cities with names like Grozny and Sarajevo.
"They will shell us into submission, Inoue," I said, fingers tight on my bowl and my spoon. "Grid square by grid square, they'll hammer us until the rubble bounces. Then they'll send in light infantry to scout the remains, and anytime they find anybody still alive they'll pull back and shell the place again. When they find the entrances to our tunnels, our basements, and our bunkers, they'll throw poison gas down into our holes.
"Even if we don't die from the poison, any food and water not stored in air-tight containers would be contaminated, so we'd get the choice of starving below or being shot aboveground. Our only reprieve would be the sheer size of the
mountain of shells destroying Shinjuku utterly would require. But even that only means that any commander with half a brain will keep us bottled up until their next munition ship or whatever arrives in Tokyo Bay! A ship loaded with fifty thousand shells would be the sure death of everybody here.
"By the time the guns fell silent for lack of ammunition, there would be nothing left of Shinjuku."
"...How do you know this?" Inoue asked, brow furrowed as she stared at me. "That wasn't what the Conquest was like at all."
"It's not like the Conquest is the only war humanity has ever waged in the modern age. Certainly not the only one Britannia has launched," I pointed out, still staring into the dregs of my soup. My appetite had fled me once again. "The Conquest was merely an explosion of overwhelming power against a criminally underprepared foreign state. A state that collapsed almost as soon as the fighting started.
"In comparison, an operation conducted against us in earnest would be the quashing of a fully prepared and organized rebellion whose members are willing to fight to the death. In such affairs, nobody can afford half measures. Besides, if I had to pry a determined organization such as ours out from an urban environment and I cared neither for the population nor the mess I would create, this is how I would go about things."
"Alright," Inoue nodded. She still looked dubious, but mercifully she didn't press further. "So… Why not attack the Britannians now, if that's what will happen if we turtle up? In fact, why bother trying to defend Shinjuku at all? Why not just… abandon it?"
Abandon Shinjuku? My mind reeled at the prospect as my eyes snapped up from my soup bowl to meet Inoue's questioning gaze.
Leaving behind the memories of years of pain and deprivation, the memories of a slow death of a people… of my mother… Leaving behind all of the hard work, of watching hope dawn in eyes and fat beginning to plump out gaunt cheeks…
Instinctually, I rebelled at the idea.
Shinjuku is mine. My home, my territory.
How dare the Britannians try to push me out? How dare Nishizumi deny me its mastery? I have taken it and remade it as best as I could in the image I saw for it. How dare they?
"How?" I asked, half-indignant, and immediately went on the offensive as I ignored the ridiculous feelings bubbling in my heart. "We've already been doing our best to smuggle people out, sometimes hundreds at a time, but we still have two hundred thousand people here. A fifth of a million. If we all tried to leave at once… it would be chaos!
"How would we provide transportation? Where would we even go once we found the means of conveyance? A flow of hundreds at a time can be distributed across the emptied spaces of rural Japan without serious economic dislocation or privation. Two hundred thousand, though? Starvation would walk in our shoes. We'd die on our feet before we ever made it to safety.
"Besides, how could we escape the Britannians' notice? They would just follow us wherever we ran and would kill us on the open road, if they didn't just shell us on our way out."
Hopefully that's enough to satisfy her.
"As for just attacking the Settlement haphazardly and inflicting what damage we can…" I shook my head, my eyes slumping back towards the cold dregs, the sudden spike of passion exhausted. "I don't even know where to begin with the errors in that…
"Why throw away the element of surprise at a time like this? Why mark ourselves out for special attention once the Britannians finally get around to taking their vengeance? What could we hope to achieve with our makeshift bombs and small arms before the defenses of the Viceregal Palace crushed us into the dirt?"
"...So, that's it, then?"
Inoue and I both jumped slightly in our seats, turning to look where the voice had come from. There, sitting in a previously empty corner of Inoue's office, Chika sat crosslegged on the ground, staring up at us through the round discs of her spectacles.
"If we stay here," the girl, my aide, said, her voice flat, "we die. If we leave, we die. If we attack, we die. If we defend, we die."
"Yes," I answered, succinctly but not curtly. "Most of us, at least. I plan on accelerating evacuation efforts as best I can until the last hour, and to drag the defense out for as long as possible to buy more time for people to sneak away and vanish into the countryside.
"Shinjuku will die… but it won't die quietly. Its death throes should be more than loud enough to distract Britannia from refugees escaping into the night." I paused, then added, in as gentle of a voice as I could manage, "Would you like a place in the next group out, Chika? If you want to go… That's fine with me."
Rising, the sister of the Yokohama Sniper crossed the office and sat down in the empty stool by my side.
"Not until you go," Tanaka Chika replied, the smile on her face a ghost of the happy girl I had first met, before her sister had left her to find her destiny. "Until you leave Shinjuku, there will be hope. And where there is hope, there is a chance."
I couldn't find it in myself to point out her folly.
AUGUST 11, 2016 ATB
APARTMENT ABOVE STUDENT COUNCIL CLUBHOUSE, ASHFORD ACADEMY
1100
"Out of love for the truth and from a soul-felt desire to break the scales set over the eyes of the chosen people," Lelouch wrote, his ballpoint scratching over the yellow pages of the legal pad, "I, Father Alexander of the Holy and True Anglican Church, shall administer correction to the whore who garbs herself in the name and miter of the Church of Britannia, both in the destruction of the corrupt bishops who labor in her service and in the following attack upon her fallacious and heretical doctrine."
I wonder if this is how Martin Luther felt, Lelouch wondered as he stared down at the expanse of the paper before him, hungrily awaiting the caress of his pen.
Perhaps I should emulate him and send the congregants out with hammers and nails? It would certainly be a rather direct delivery, and without any need for the post office to facilitate either…
"Point the First: the man Charles," and Lelouch permitted himself a small smirk at the petty joy of describing
That Man as such, "of late styled the Emperor of Britannia, is not God. This should be self-evident, as no man can
be God, save only for the Carpenter, whose nature as both wholly man and wholly divine is the cornerstone of our faith. The Britannic Church claims that upon his coronation at the hands of his chosen Archbishop of Rochester, the man Charles ascended both to the throne of Britannia and to the throne of God on Earth.
"Not only is that second institution a sign of creeping popery within the rotting edifice of the Britannic Church, but such a transformation equates the renowned deviant and predator Warren of Tucson with the Baptist and even more ill-fittingly, Charles with the Carpenter. This is clear blasphemy of the highest degree.
"Point the Second: Just as the True Church is the bride of the true God and no other, so to can one man be the spouse of one and no other. In the past limited exceptions were made in times of great distress and to those whose lives rested entirely in the hands of almighty God. That is wholly divorced from the lustful doctrine of polygamy devised by Warren of Tucson to justify his unholy craving for the flesh of the wives and daughters of other men, and embraced by the man Charles during his campaigns to secure his blood-tarnished crown. Indeed, it is entirely antithetical to the very spirit of God and heresy to the True Anglican Church."
Which would presumably make Nunnally and I bastards, what with Mother being the hundreth woman he chose to marry. Lelouch gave an internal shrug. Compared to everything else he had to worry about, possibly attainting himself as a bastard was far from the top of his list of concerns. If anything, the illegitimacy would be a slight but welcome degree of separation between himself and Nunnnally and
That Man.
"Point the Third," Lelouch began, frowning slightly as he began writing the blatant and distasteful yet necessary falsehood, "the Britannians are beloved by God and are his chosen people, their royal line declared Defenders of the Faith by the Papacy before that institution fell into unrighteousness and European decadence.
"The Church is meant to serve the needs of that chosen people, and should be the first, last, and eternal refuge of every Britannian in need of succor and aid. That the state Church is overrun by thieves and embezzlers, con men and swindlers, whoremongers and slavers, is emblematic of the fall from grace and reflects the withdrawal of God's grace from the church who claims to act in His name.
"Point the Fourth-"
"Hello, Brother."
Swiveling around in his office chair, Lelouch smiled as his sister rolled through the doorway connecting his bedroom to the rest of their apartment. Beside her, the ever faithful Shinozaki Sayoko stood in the shadow of his little sister's chair, hands meekly folded over her white apron. To Lelouch's approval, the Japanese woman's eyes were active and roving the corners of his room, checking for assailants even here, in the heart of the Lamperouge siblings' private sanctuary.
Commendable in her diligence and ever faithful; what else could one ask for from a servant?
Ever faithful at least, so long as I remain in congruence with the interests of the Ashfords, thought Lelouch, chiding himself for the momentary lapse as he met the maid's restless eyes with a slight acknowledging nod before refocusing his attention on his sister.
She was Milly's sworn servant first, after all, and her loyalty to Reuban in particular is obvious. So long as I keep the Ashfords close and tend to their interests, she should have no reason to betray Nunnally and I.
Although, at this point any plans on my part to intentionally betray the Ashfords may as well include gouging out my own eyes, for all the good they'll do me, Lelouch admitted.
One way or another, I have bound my fate to their own, and it is entirely too late for me to think about double crossing them now.
Especially not when Milly has proven herself such a capable partner in… Rebellion? Revolution? Crime? Let's just say a capable partner and leave it at that.
"Good morning, Nunnally," Lelouch said, greeting his sister with a smile he knew she could hear in his voice. "How goes your morning? How was class?"
"Saying it was educational would be something of a stretch," his angelic little sister opined, her face twisting into a frown. "All anybody, Mrs. Swainn included, could talk about was the news from Area 10. All of the asides and exclamations from people looking at their phones made focusing on Chaucer quite difficult."
"Hmm… perhaps I should bring this up with Milly?" Lelouch muttered darkly, frowning in consternation at this report of poor performance from the staff. Tuition at Ashford was quite expensive and instructors were well compensated, so there really was no excuse. "No matter the distraction, such a performance is unacceptable.
"In fact," he turned to glance at the waiting maid, "Sayoko, would you mind finding Milly for me and asking if she would care to join us for lunch?"
"Certainly, Master Lelouch," the maid murmured, bowing low. The door closed behind her with a light click.
"No matter the distraction?" Nunnally asked, resuming the thread of their conversation as she leaned forward in her chair, her eyebrows elevated though the lids remained closed over her eyes. She was, Lelouch realized, clearly mimicking some inquisitorial authority, leaning forward to peer dubiously at a subject.
I wonder if she is imitating some memory of Mother? "Tell me, Brother, have you turned on a TV today? I scarcely think
distraction is the best word to describe the pandemonium."
"Oh, yes," he waved off her incredulity with a laugh, "I know
what the distraction is, rest assured of that. Momentous or otherwise, it remains irrelevant to this circumstance. You deserve the best education money can buy, Nunnally. Something, I assure you, that Reuban and I have invested no small amount of money and resources into. If Britannia can't handle suffering its gravest defeat at the hands of a foreign enemy since the days of the Little Corporal, then perhaps they should stop sticking their hands into beehives, hmm?"
"Then surely you must already be scheming how best to exploit that great defeat, since you already know of it," Nunnally persisted, unwilling to be put off by his humor. "Come, Brother, out with it. What's going through your head?"
"Oh, very well." He truly could never deny his sister a thing. Besides, her interest in his thoughts was gratifying. Bringing her in on his plans had truly been a wise move.
Besides, Lelouch thought, feeling a worm of guilt squirming in his breast,
Nunnally hates being left out, and I was going to tell her anyway, once I came to a decision… Perhaps she can assist me in choosing my next step.
"To say that the cock-up in Indochina is a significant development would be underselling matters. This is…" Lelouch sighed, leaning back in his chair as he tried to put his feelings into words,
"...unprecedented," he decided at last. "In the truest sense, at least in this century. Even during the Emblem of Blood, the Army and Navy had little trouble fighting against non-Britannian enemies despite laboring under at times conflicting orders and a fractured home front. Admittedly, the struggles in the North Atlantic and South Pacific played to the Navy's strengths and the attempted uprisings in South America were hilariously poorly organized for all their scope, so it was hardly a case of dire straits for the Armed Services.
"Regardless, the illusion of Britannian supremacy remained fully intact, even as the succession conflicts raged. This… Well, it isn't quite the Humiliation of Edinburgh again, but it might well be the closest thing to it."
I can only imagine the flurry of activity that must have ensued in Nanjing and Paris when the news arrived. I wonder if even the Eunuchs anticipated their field marshal's success? Perhaps the news came as great a surprise to them as it must have come to Schniezel. And speaking of Schniezel… What the hell was he doing, allowing something like this to happen? Was being a renowned politician not enough for him, so he chose to play his hand at generalship as well?
"Every enemy Britannia possesses will jump at this," Lelouch prophesied, closing his eyes and lifting his chin as he tried to imagine all of the dominoes across the world the defeat might send sprawling.
"While the forces lost are paltry compared to the full might of the Armed Services, the material element will matter less in the next few days than the perception of disarray in Britannia's projects. Besides," Lelouch continued, Nunnally almost forgotten as he allowed his mind the liberty to gallop down this tangent," the Armed Services and the Army in particular are already heavily committed: between Cornelia's expeditionary army in the Middle East, the struggle in Malacca and Malaysia, the garrisons across the Pacific Rim and the constant need to keep a sufficient home guard to keep the nobles in check…
"Well, the loss of an infantry corps and an armored brigade is a blow that cannot be shrugged off completely. Especially not here in Area 11, where Clovis is apparently in dire need for Knightmare pilots."
"You expect brother Clovis to be left incapable of action?" Nunnally inquired, Lelouch opening his eyes just in time to watch her head tilt inquisitively to the side. "He was already worried about his strength and if the units that could have reinforced him will be filling the holes left by Elphinstone's Column, well… dear brother Clovis was never the most audacious of men, was he?"
"Certainly not the most farsighted," Lelouch agreed, nodding his head as his thoughts turned to a blond boy who could never come close to measuring up to brothers his elder or junior. "When we played against one another, he tended to veer between overly aggressive maneuvers that cost him badly needed material and overly conservative defensiveness that cost him initiative and time. His time as viceregal-governor has been much of the same."
"Hmm…" Lelouch opened his eyes to watch as Nunnally raised a finger to her chin where she began to tap it thoughtfully against the corner of her mouth. "Poor,
poor brother Clovis, so full of fear… Do you expect him to lash about wildly, or turtle up within his defenses, Brother?"
This from the girl who was enjoying the peaceful imagined beauty of birds building nests together not so long ago? A distant part of Lelouch noted.
Is this new, or has she always been so… sharp?
"Both," Lelouch answered firmly, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. "First the one, then the other. I expect that he will be immediately terrified by the prospect of a seaborne Chinese invasion; it would be Clovis's worst case scenario, as he would be stuck defending Japan's Sakuradite reserves from an assault by a credible peer army and would bear full responsibility for the loss of those reserves. Assuming that the Chinese don't immediately attack across the Sea of Japan, which while a possibility I doubt will be their next move, he will attempt to demonstrate how unafraid he is by aggressively attacking any threat within reach."
"Since the Japanese will certainly be hearing the news, brother Clovis will likely have no shortage of threats to target," Nunnally noted. "And I assume, Brother, that will not be the end of his worries? I am not sure I fully agree with you about the Chinese not invading, by the way, but I'm willing to set that to the side for now."
"How kind of you," Lelouch drawled, smiling at his sister's "allowance" and the haughty way she had drawn herself up in her chair to deliver it.
"But yes," he continued, rubbing his hands together, loosening up the incipient cramp that had been just starting to trouble him when Nunnally had distracted him from his writing, "I anticipate a very busy few days for Clovis. For a start, Tokyo has a new bishop. Or, at least, a new man to wear the miter, though he's very much of a sort as the unlamented Fattest Man in Area Eleven was. Unsurprisingly, the Church appears just as stubborn as any true Britannian institution to learn from its mistakes."
"A new bishop?" Nunnally raised her eyebrows again, curious. "That's a curious first point to jump to when listing Clovis's woes. I would have suspected you would think first of the Japanese and their insurgents."
"They are also a factor, but I was thinking mostly of how we would be taking advantage of the situation," Lelouch explained, pointedly using the inclusive pronoun as he smiled fondly at his sister. He knew she couldn't see it, but he hoped she could hear it in his voice. "That was your question, wasn't it? What I was planning? Well, the new bishop is scarcely better than the last, and already there are mutterings from the Commons about him.
"Plenty of people downloaded and saw the evidence of institutional corruption we provided, and a promotion from within is hardly a sign of any change. And if Clovis is unwilling to provide change, the resulting discontent could mount rapidly. Especially if we help it out and continue to evangelize."
"How wonderful, Brother!" A sweet smile, innocently gleeful, happily spread across Nunnally's lips. "When will we be striking this new bishop down? Killing Pulst yielded significant dividends for your church, after all! Proving that you can replicate your achievement will surely undermine brother Clovis's Administration even more!"
Blinking, Lelouch started and shot a disbelieving glance at his sister, who smiled happily at him from where she sat in her plushly appointed wheelchair.
How quickly she jumps to murder! Lelouch marveled, shaking his head incredulously.
That Man was such a fool, to throw her away just because she was "broken". If only he had been wise enough to see her for who she is…
"You are probably correct, dear sister," Lelouch agreed, settling back down, "but I am certain that both Clovis and the newly raised Bishop of Tokyo are equally aware of that particular threat. Security around the Cathedral and the Bishop's Palace will certainly have been tightened since Havelock's last visit. Besides, if the Church can replace a corrupt bishop with a successor indistinguishable from his predecessor in such a short time, taking another head seems a bit pointless. Instead, I was planning a strike against the body of the snake itself."
"The body?" Nunnally angled her head, looking almost avian in her scanning curiosity. Perhaps a hawk, ready to stoop. "Are you going to begin butchering the parish priests and their decadent deacons? They would certainly be easier targets, I suppose…"
"True," Lelouch agreed again, smothering the momentary pang of disquiet at
just how fast his sister was to counter with yet more murder, "but I have similar thoughts about the lower ecclesiastical ranks as I do about their superior. No, the real way to strike a blow against both the money-making potential of the Church and against its authority as an institution is to destroy the Diocesian infrastructure. And by that, I mean burning down the churches."
"Ah!" Nunnally clapped once, her hands coming together in surprise. "I see! Yes, I think I see what you're getting at, Brother! The church is an institution and derives its authority from remaining a firm and immovable institution; if the people of the Tokyo Settlement see all of its properties reduced to ash, their faith in its authority will suffer, and likewise their faith in Clovis!"
"Just so," Lelouch smiled indulgently at his sister's enthusiasm.
We can add arson to the list, then dear sister. "That's just about what I was thinking. Plus, since all of the Diocese's available funding was oh-so-recently donated to a range of charities, I imagine they might be facing a bit of a liquidity crisis. Coupled with a potential reduction in tithing from parishioners who just saw every church in Tokyo burn to the ground, the Church in Area 11 will have far more issues to worry itself about than assisting Clovis in stabilizing his regime."
"It will probably be easier to manage a coordinated wave of arsons than culling the priesthood." Nunnally nodded understandingly. "Very well, Brother, I approve of your plan. You may proceed."
"...Thank you, oh grand and glorious leader," Lelouch chuckled, miming a low seated bow. "Your humble subject rejoices in your approval."
"Ooh, rehearsing for the autumn production, Lulu?" Milly asked as she swept into the bedroom, Sayoko quietly closing the door behind her. "Hey there, Nunnally! Putting Lulu through his paces, are you?"
"It is of crucial importance that the pecking order be respected," Nunnally sniffed, lifting her nose into the air over a poorly concealed smile. "Thankfully, Brother is a good boy and knows who is really in charge around here."
"Of course I do," Lelouch said, turning not only his head to look at Milly but his swivel chair as well, so his sister would be sure to hear the noise of the move. "After all, she just arrived. Good morning, Madame President."
"Good morning, Lulu!" Milly replied happily over Nunnally's squawked outrage. "Gotta say, I'm a bit disappointed to find you two truants conspiring here… without me!"
"Well," Lelouch nodded to Sayoko, who slipped out of the room only to return a moment later pushing another chair into his bedroom, "I would say that you are free to join our conspiracy, but… Well, you already have. So why not sit down and help Nunnally and I figure out our next step?"
"My pleasure!" Milly beamed as she took her seat. "Thanks Sayoko! Tea, please?"
"Certainly, Mistress Millicent," Sayoko murmured, closing the door behind herself again.
"So," the Ashford heiress turned back to the Lamperouges, the smile remaining but firming up into something slightly more serious than her usual teasing expression, "what's the word, Lelouch, Nunnally?"
"Brother has opted to try his hand at iconoclasm," Nunnally brightly replied. "Or, I suppose that's the word for torching churches in particular? Arson is somewhat lacking as a description."
"We have not gotten very far," Lelouch clarified, shooting his sister a quelling look that he was certain she would pick up on somehow, blindness or not. "I was discussing with Nunnally what the next offensive operation should be, but that is honestly not the highest priority at the moment, though it might be the most time-sensitive. Strike while the iron is hot and all that."
"Makes sense," Milly nodded along. "So… Iconoclasm?"
"Burn down churches to diminish the institutional authority of the Church and to advertise the True Anglicans in the process by leaving notes claiming responsibility," Lelouch quickly elaborated, "but while that is certainly important, especially since it will destabilize Clovis in an already shaky juncture, I don't think I can reasonably call it the most important task before us.
"I think," he continued, glancing from his sister to his friend and back, "that the True Anglicans are at something of a juncture. Our numbers are growing rapidly, which is good, but our organization is entirely inadequate, which is not."
Two heads nodded in agreement.
"That is true," Nunnally hummed thoughtfully. "Save for yourself, your Brother Phillip, and Sister Jane over here," she gestured towards Milly, "your congregation is lacking in any form of leadership. Quite an impediment to action, and since your Church is comprised mostly of scattered cells of hidden worshippers, an impediment to a cohesive identity too."
"We also need to figure out something to do with new recruits, converts or whatever you want to call them," Milly noted, scratching at her chin. "We're getting a pretty nice trickle of newbies either finding their way to us or responding to one of our recruitment campaigns. Even the untargeted campaigns, just the pamphlets hidden in books and such, are meeting with solid success. Probably because of the whole 'just assassinated a bishop' thing."
"People always love a winner," Lelouch said, nodding along, "especially when it comes to matters of faith.
Especially," he allowed himself a smile, "when the so-called man of God succumbs to a viper's bite."
"Yes, yes, you were
very clever," Milly replied indulgently, "but since we don't really have a formalized instruction process or really anywhere to put these new arrivals, we haven't been using them to their full potential."
"Sergeant Coffin's militia aside," Lelouch noted. The converted noncom had taken to zealously waylaying any convert with military experience and all but press-ganging them into his rapidly growing militia. "But yes, I understand your concerns, Milly. I think that we can really break the whole problem of our new recruits down into three smaller issues: filtration, education, and organization."
Holding up three fingers, Lelouch began to expand on each. "Since we have been attempting to expand, we have made it easier to find the True Anglicans and to join us, which inevitably presents security concerns. We need to figure out how we can search out potential spies from the Holy Office or the Administration in our new converts." Lelouch lowered one finger.
"We also must devise an actual programme of beliefs, doctrines, and goals." Lelouch ticked off his second finger "Now, the old doctrine of the Church must, by necessity, make up the bulk of this programme, but we needn't be bound to it fully. Considering how my standing with the congregation now has more to do with the assassination of Lazaro Pulst and the pastoral care I have administered and less to do with Father Timothy's inherited mantle, we have some breathing room. We need to educate all of the existing congregation and the converts on this doctrine, once we've decided on what that doctrine will be.
"I have already made a start on this part," Lelouch gestured towards the partial manuscript on his desk, "but I would of course welcome both of your input.
"Finally, organization." The remaining two fingers folded and Lelouch settled back in his chair. "You were completely correct, Nunnally, about the issues disorganization will inevitably bring. Organization is clearly necessary. At least one officer, or deacon or whatever, for every cell seems like the bare minimum to me, along with specialist officers in charge of specific units, projects, or tasks."
"That's a lot of work, Lulu," Milly observed, and then paused as a knock came from the door.
"Your tea, ladies and gentlemen," announced Sayoko, her voice somewhat muffled by the door. "May I come in?"
Milly glanced to Lelouch, who nodded. "Yes," the Ashford heiress said, standing to open the door for the maid, "please come in, Sayoko."
As the Japanese maid and bodyguard arranged the tea service on Lelouch's hastily-cleared desk, a reflective silence fell over the room. That lingered as Sayoko poured the tea, wordlessly adding sugar and cream to Nunnally and Milly's cups as fit their preferences, and continued after the maid had bowed herself out of the room once more.
"Brother," Nunnally said, breaking the silence as she cradled her cup, "I believe it would be best if we each took a piece of the puzzle you have laid out before us to focus on. After all," she smiled, "there are three of us and three areas upon which to work. That's quite handy, isn't it?"
"So it is," Lelouch agreed, returning his sister's smile, certain that she was about to ask for something but happy to go along with her requests. "Do you have a preference, dear sister?"
"Filtration," came the immediate reply. "I have some… ideas, as to how we might potentially weed out the disloyal and undedicated. Give me some time to sort through them, and I believe you will have little to worry about."
"Alright," Lelouch nodded easily. "I have faith in your clever mind. I'm interested in seeing what sort of ideas and theories you come up with."
"Thank you, Brother!" Nunnally smiled sweetly up at him. "Is your faith in me sufficient to allow me to finally help you start handling the practical side as well? These would be my ideas, after all – I would very much like a chance to implement them."
"Ah," the words caught in his throat as Lelouch looked at his little sister once again. Her chair sat in a midday sunbeam, whose golden light caught the fine strands of her ash brown hair in a luminescent blaze that, with her delicate features and soft smile, was positively angelic. Once again, he was struck by just how overbearingly fragile she looked, as if she could be dropped to the floor like the china teacup she cradled and would shatter just the same.
But the hands cradling that teacup know the truth, his mind whispered back to him, recalling Nunnally's particular skill to him,
and while her arms might be thin and her hands soft, there is some muscle on those arms and a few hard-won calluses on her palms, trophies of physical therapy exercises and the times she uses her manual wheelchair to move under her own power. She understands suffering and endurance. She is not weak.
And besides, Lelouch thought with amused discomfort,
considering how enthusiastic she has grown in regards to murder and arson, I doubt that any spy she detected would understand just how much danger they stood in until it was far too late.
"I am not… opposed to handing the theory over to you," Lelouch began, "not in the slightest, in fact. I have confidence in your clever mind, Nunnally. But… I don't know if you will be able to help us put them into practice."
"You do not want me to place myself into danger and you wisely do not want to attract attention to us by bringing a herd of strangers onto Ashford grounds." Nunnally's voice was like a sword as it cut through his hemming and hawwing, steely and straight to the point. "Fine. These are understandable, if disappointing, objections. In that case, I would like you to bring Sayoko in on your plans, Brother, so that she may act as my aide in this matter."
"But then who would take care of you while I was away?" Lelouch protested, this time immediately finding the words. Nunnally's safety was, after all, the one point he would not concede. "It would be unsafe and irresponsible to leave you bereft of help, should something go wrong.
"I don't have any issue bringing Sayoko in on our plan, though," he added, deciding to offer his sister a small win. It was an easy thing to offer, since he had already been planning to do just such a thing at some point. "Perhaps in a similar capacity as yourself, as an advisor. Maybe more once I finish softening the congregation's views on Honoraries."
"And I don't suppose we can just hire another maid to make sure I don't escape my chair," Nunnally quipped acidly, but then frowned and sighed. "No, the vetting would take too long, and your finances are strained enough as is, Brother. I understand, it was a foolish idea. Fine, I will handle the theory for security and filtering, with Sayoko's input. I'm sure she'll be able to help; it seems close to her
other competency."
"In that case," Milly slid back into the conversation now that peace between the Siblings Lamperouge reasserted itself, "I would like to handle the organization of the congregation. After all," and the teasing smile was back as she turned to Lelouch, "I believe that's the traditional remit of the minister's wife, isn't it,
Leland?"
"I seem to remember something like that," Lelouch coughed, noticing how the frown on his sister's face had returned, and for a moment, deepened. "Talk with Phillip. I think that he knows pretty much everybody of the old congregation on some level. His recommendations could work as a short-list for deacons. Although, it might be to our benefit if the cells nominate their own deacons, just so we can be sure they'll choose leaders they'll be happy to follow."
"That's pretty much what I was thinking!" Milly said with a smile and a clap. "It's just like organizing the organization for one of the festivals! Throw a bunch of people into a committee
here, set up another committee over
there, and then ride herd on the personality conflicts while everybody else handles all the real work!"
"Management is real work too, Milly," Nunnally noted in a mildly reproving tone, but Lelouch relaxed. Whatever bad mood had briefly manifested on his sister's face seemed to have already passed. "Just ask Brother! Sometimes he spends whole
days just 'managing' Student Council affairs. Surely whatever he is doing in that time wouldn't be anything like slacking!"
"Hey now," Lelouch protested at Milly's reproving glare. "I was providing crucial management and oversight. Very important, very crucial."
Lelouch's meager defense earned him the light smack of Milly thwacking him across the shoulders with a rolled up magazine.
"Anyway," he continued, impervious to his sister's giggling and Milly's ineffectual blows, "I suppose that actually coming up with a doctrine will be left to me, as well as a way of passing it onto our church."
"And don't forget the church burnings!" Nunnally hastened to remind him. "The State Church won't just collapse itself, Brother! It is important to be proactive towards the accomplishment of your goals!"
…Something feels off about her enthusiasm. Now, what could it be?
"I agree completely, Nunnally," Lelouch said aloud, smiling indulgently as he considered his little sister. Setting the topics of her suggestions aside, the vehemence of her insistence was decidedly unusual. She almost seemed desperate… "It is of course important to maintain pressure."
Does she worry that I will not listen to her unless she advocates the most extreme options available? If so, it was a pointless concern.
Lelouch would always have time for his little sister.
"Now," he turned to Milly, "I recall you saying that you had a few ideas regarding new outreach opportunities. Let's discuss those before we dive into the organizational framework…"
As the conversation continued and ideas traded back and forth slowly coalesced into something approaching policy, Lelouch's focus kept straying to his sister, and to the weight that still shadowed his back.
Don't worry, Nunnally, he thought, renewing his old vow.
I will never leave you. I will keep you safe, no matter what.
Several hours later, Milly declared that she needed a break and dragged Lelouch outside into the mid-afternoon sun, demanding a walk.
"Enjoy your stroll, Brother!" Nunnally had called after the two of them, doing nothing to save Lelouch from a blonde brimming with pent-up energy.
"Yeah, c'mon Lulu!" Milly encouraged, though the way her lips twitched made Lelouch suspect there was a joke here that he wasn't party to. That or his sister and friend were scheming against him, which was entirely plausible. "Exercise is key to mental health, you know!"
He'd only grumbled a bit as he gave in. It wasn't like spending time with Milly was a particularly onerous burden, after all.
At least as long as she didn't start trying to organize an impromptu party.
The stream of light chatter continued until the door of the Student Council Clubhouse closed behind them.
"Whew!" Milly sighed, and then to Lelouch's alarm sagged against one of the columns of the facade. "Lulu… your sister's getting kinda… scary."
"That's…" Lelouch hesitated, not quite able to to say that the Ashford heiress's feelings were ridiculous. Mostly because, as disinclined as he generally was to criticize his sister, he thought Milly might have a point.
"She is just happy to have a way to help," he said at last. "You know how much she hates being left out. She just wants to make sure she will remain involved."
"I know," Milly acknowledged, her voice serious. "That doesn't make her any less scary. Remember, Lelouch, we're talking about people's lives here. It's not a game."
Alexander lowered into the ground, nine dripping hides serving as his burial shroud. A much younger Nunnally staring up at him with wide eyes, her hands shaking as they reach out for him from below the pinning weight of their mother's crumpled form. A city of the dead in the heat of summer, swollen hands stretching out for help from under shattered concrete.
"I… know that, Milly," he said, and pretended he didn't hear the momentary waver in his own voice. "Nunnally knows that too."
"Yeah…?"Milly peered into his face, then nodded. "Yeah, guess you do."
Uncomfortable under the sudden scrutiny and desperate to not think about True Anglicans, empires, or That Man, Lelouch changed topics to the first subject he could think of. "How did the swim meet turn out? Shirley took the gold again, I bet."
Milly arched an eyebrow at the non sequitur, but, clearly picking up on his discomfort, played along. "As a matter of fact, she did. Freestyle, back, and
breast stroke, our cutiepie treasurer swept them all!"
"It is entirely possible to mention that style of swimming without the lascivious intonation," Lelouch said chidingly, but smiled in silent thanks for Milly's return to form. "Point of fact, I
know you are fully capable of saying that name without sounding disreputable. I've heard you say it before."
"But where's the fun in that~?" came the blonde's rhetorical reply. "You should congratulate her, Lelouch. Seriously. When was the last time you talked to her, huh?"
"Just last Thursday," Lelouch answered quickly, figuratively sweating under Milly's suddenly gimlet-eyed stare. "I had to get her to approve the club budget for the next quarter."
"I meant, when was the last time you spoke to her outside of a council meeting or class?" Milly pressed, unmollified. "For that matter, when did you last hang out with Rivalz? I know you haven't been gambling much lately, but surely you can do something else together."
"I… I've been busy…" Lelouch replied, squirming under the silent yet unrelenting pressure radiating from his co-conspirator. "I… I'll talk to him."
"What a good idea!" Milly declared brightly, the pressure vanishing like dew in sunlight. "He's a good friend. You should pay attention to your friends, Lulu! If you get too sucked down into work, you'll be gray by thirty, and, while I bet you could pull off the silver fox look, might wanna put that off for a few decades."
"I already said I'd talk to him," Lelouch grumbled, "I don't know what else you could ask for."
"Consider bringing him in," Milly replied bluntly, serious again as she caught his eye. "And before you shut me down by saying you'll think about it and then not doing anything, I'll just tell you that he's been feeling at loose ends lately, since the Honorary assistance efforts shut down and Kallen left on that trip with her dad. If you want to encourage the church to soften towards Honoraries, he could be a huge help."
"I'll think about it," Lelouch replied, and then raised a hand to ward off Milly's skeptical expression. "Really, I will. The prospect of involving another Ashford student concerns me, but you do make a solid point."
I also very much doubt that Rivalz would thank me for inviting him into the church on the eve of our launching a campaign of terrorism through arson and assassination. No matter how disgruntled with the system he is, he isn't a killer.
On the other hand, who would have guessed Milly Ashford would have volunteered to join a murderous conspiracy? Hidden depths…
"Alright," Milly nodded, accepting his answer. "Well, with all that out of the way…" she waved a hand towards the verdant grounds stretching out all around them and offering her other arm to him, "I believe you're still under orders to enjoy a stroll, Lulu!"
"Far be it from me to defy that command," he replied, words wry but with a smile tugging at his lips as he linked his arm around Milly's own, his hand ghosting across the top of hers. "Lay on then, Lady Ashford!"
AUGUST 11, 2016 ATB
OLD BENJY'S PUBLIC HOUSE, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
1630
During the early morning hours of darkness on the occasions that forced the Agent to work all-nighters, when moods fae and fanciful overtook him as lack of sleep took its toll, he sometimes imagined himself as a terrier. A rattie, perhaps, small in the greater scheme of things but indefatigable once set upon his query's scent, with paws darting quick and skillfully as they plunged into the dirt, digging down to find the rat his nose told him lurked below.
And oh, how he and his cell-mates had dug over the last fortnight!
"Franklin," a professional woman in her late forties said in curt greeting, sliding into the unoccupied bench across from him in the booth. "You look like shit. When did you get to bed last night?"
"Bed?" the Agent whose name was not Franklin raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, and took a long and pointed sip from his mug of black coffee. His fourth in the last two hours. "What a strange concept, Mrs. Wilbur. How's the mister doing?"
"He looks like shit too," the woman who was not married bluntly replied, giving the grimy menu a desultory once over. "I haven't been here before; what would you say isn't completely terrible?"
"I'd say the Pitt Pot Pie," the Agent replied with a pleasant smile whose apparent guilelessness immediately inflamed his conversational partner's suspicions.
"You would, would you?" she peered at him, the bags under her eyes a match for his own save for the concealer. "You'd recommend it, then?"
"Oh, never," the Agent demurred. "You just asked what I would say isn't completely terrible; I happen to enjoy the alliteration."
Happily, he took another sip of coffee. "So," he continued after a moment, "did Joe manage to schedule an appointment? You know, for the…" he trailed off suggestively, as if delicately avoiding any mention of a particularly embarrassing medical condition.
"Yes, yes, I know," the woman known at times as Mrs. Wilbur snapped, opening her voluminous purse and jerking a stained envelope out. "It took some doing and he needs you to sign off on the schedule. Here," she withdrew a folded packet out of the envelope and thrust it into the Agent's unoccupied hand, along with a somewhat fancy ballpoint. "Just need you to sign on pages two and four, and initial on the last."
"Oh my," the man who some documents claimed had a cousin named Joseph Wilbur said aloud, seeming to pour over the frankly exorbitant loan schedule detailed on the sheets. "I see Christmas isn't coming this year, is it now? Fine, fine," he waved placatingly at the stony woman sitting across from him, as if she'd begun a scolding reply, "never let it be said that I don't take care of family. Here…" the pen moved, "and here… and there you go."
"Thanks," the person who was possibly in their late forties, and also probably a woman, grunted, stuffing the signed papers back into their envelope and the envelope back into her purse. "I'd stick around, but…" she looked around the mostly empty pub, "the atmosphere here is terrible. Tah!"
After the other person left, the man they had called Franklin remained for some time, nursing the steadily cooling cup of coffee as he tried to navigate a rapidly growing digital serpent across the minute screen of his phone. The elegant pen, resting half under the crumpled napkin he had "accidentally" pushed it under while handing the papers back, was inches from his hand but seemed forgotten.
Another cup of coffee and three more games of Snake later, the Agent stood, hand slipping to the pocket of his trousers as he fumbled in his wallet for a few notes, and left the pub.
"Nasty place," he muttered as he strolled along the garbage strewn expanse of 39th Street, hands jammed firmly into his pockets. On the very border of Arcology #3, where almost a tenth of the entire commoner population of Tokyo was housed, 39th was a far cry from the shining boulevards of the Concession above their heads. "Now…"
His hand reemerged from his pocket, the false wooden shell of the very ordinary disposable pen wrapped in his palm. A quick twist and the panels split down the middle, revealing a slip of rice paper scrolled tightly around the tube where the real pen had rested.
Without breaking stride, the secret Leveller quickly skimmed over the note, committing the list of numbers, bracketed in sets of three and separated by comma, and the single column of letters, A to J, to memory. Message received, he pretended to cough and popped the scrap into his mouth, gulping the rapidly softening paper down. One half of the shell went into a storm drain, the other into a burnable trash bin a block away.
Back in his humble apartment in a much nicer quarter of the Settlement, the Agent retrieved a dogeared mass market paperback copy of Hobbes'
Leviathan from his shelf along with a pad of paper and set to work.
Ten minutes later, the man whose sobriquet for the day referenced the supposed founder of his hidden order leaned back to read his society brother's report.
"Target location confirmed. Medical research activity confirmed; vivisection observed after organ implant. Objective remains unclear. Next report at…"
Well, the Agent thought, tearing out the used sheet from the notepad as well as several other sheets below it,
that explains His Ineptitude's fervency to keep this out of the public eye. Why he is concealing his research from the remainder of his Administration is unexplained, though, as is the goal for all of this.
The report was frustratingly lacking in detail, but it was still cause enough for the Agent to claim a personal sense of triumph. Once again, his senses had proven true. The rat still eluded him, but he was unphased. No matter how many layers of dirt and filth the rat spread to cover his tracks, the Agent and his fellow terriers would drag him out onto Level ground.
And then, just like Charles so long ago, his neck will be bared for the chop.