Arc 9 | Chapter 397: The Tears that Ruin

Yujao was both made for the Inner Court and very much not meant to be there.

A bastard.

A shame on his family name

—what little remained of it, anyways. Everyone knew whose bastard he was, but no one had dared speak the name of

that man

within the halls of the Inner Court in over a decade. Instead, Yujao used the name that had been given to him by one of the most influential people in the world of Dionese crime: Shukai.

Shukai.

Shu

—tears.

Kai

—ruin.

Shukai

—the tears that ruin.

Certainly, Yujao had ruined the life of the man who had spawned him when he fucked his seed into a prostitute and then had the audacity to be disgusted when the natural consequences of sowing one’s seed appeared in the world.

Fortunately, Yujao had taken enough after his mother that his father had never recognized him, the few times their paths had crossed after he first managed to set his feet into the Inner Palace. They’d met only once before that, when the man had made sure Yujao himself couldn’t further sully the family name. Had he been any younger, nor already had friends and allies who would notice his absence and come calling for revenge, Yujao was sure the man would have cut his head, and not just his balls, off.

Yujao being his father’s son hadn’t mattered to that man.

Yujao was beneath that man.

Yujao should be grateful he was still alive.

Yujao had better never come calling on his father for anything.

He never had. Yujao didn’t need anyone’s help, although the

gorankai

—the moniker of the person who had gifted him the name of Shukai—had always been the sort of person to not care for such formalities. Yujao was someone to the gorankai; therefore, Yujao would receive the gorankai’s aid, no matter what he asked, no matter how he kept his mouth sealed shut.

It was rare Yujao requested the gorankai’s assistance in anything, partially because while their slippery fingers reached into the Inner Court, it was but the barest of touches, the sweep of Yujao’s own presence through the toxic halls of the Dionese seat of power where most of the gorankai’s influence lay. Yujao was power in the Inner Court, and most of the time, he needed no power outside its walls—not yet, anyways. Even in this rare case where he would lay his requests at the gorankai’s feet, Yujao let one of their little chittering birds fly—it would be too obvious if Yujao himself stepped foot outside of the palace that something was amiss.

Yujao had grown up on the streets, but he hadn’t stepped foot there since he officially entered the Inner Court. Occasionally, he accompanied Hurinren elsewhere, but even that was rare. Of course, there was no real reason for Yujao to contain himself so firmly to the Inner Court, other than to be sure no one questioned where his loyalties lay: with Hurinren, with the Blood Rain General and the Princess Supreme, with Emilia.

All this was true: these people were where his loyalty would always lay. It was just unfortunate that after nearly three hundred years, the Inner Court had somehow forgotten where the Blood Rain General himself had risen from. That was perhaps excusable; when someone was as terrifying as the Jiaonai Lo Shintai even the cokrina who inhabited the Inner Court tended to hold their tongues, especially with how close the man had been with generations of ryohua'taiung.

It was, in the end, rather hard to gossip when the lie-seeking eyes of the ryohua were forever searching for those who would denigrate the reputation of the nation’s most powerful soldier, even when said gossip was true.

Whispers about Yujao himself still shifted through the Inner Court, although his friendly, flighty nature had left most people assuming he had been allowed leave to remain in the court solely for Hurinren’s pleasure. Yujao couldn’t deny he and his longtime partner had found pleasure in a great many of the halls and rooms of both the Meoshi zyi Shurong and the Kuwya zyi Shurong, but that wasn’t the only reason he remained there.

Some people knew how much power he wielded—how many of the chittering birds of the Inner Court bowed to him before even the courtiers they were supposedly beholden to. Enough people had no idea that he could almost always find someone willing to let him slip by.

What did anyone care if he slipped into this library or that when he was just as much an empty-headed slut as silverstrains were supposed to be? Somehow, it didn’t even matter that the most well known silverstrain of the Inner Court was known for being unendingly brilliant, if also an impulsive slut.

[

YuYu:

The next time you’re here, you should join Hurinren and I

]

Yujao’s fingers tapped over the keys of his xphern as he looked over the documents one of the many birds he had working in the many libraries of the Inner Court had pulled for him. Ancient documents of war, mostly, mentioning this or that incursion into Lüshan. There were just so many cities, was the problem—ironic, for such a small nation. Dion had far more cities, of course, vast as it was, but they were just cities. Aside from the palaces and a few strategic military outposts, a Dionese city was a Dionese city. There might be a wall surrounding it, but it would be nothing compared to the Huss’tra.

Instead, where Seer’ik’tine had barricaded themselves against the eyes and intentions of the unpredictable Sever, where Lüshan had buried most of its cities beneath the earth, Dion just an army.

A big army.

The sort of army that had left them on the winning side of virtually every war for millennia—assuming the documents and history that existed were to be believed, anyways. As his own history was a mangle of lies, the Blood Rain General’s a slid of whispers meant never to be heard again, Yujao put little stock in anything being true. Half the time, he barely believed his own memory, knowing full well the ease with which a misheard word could warp reality.

This, of course, was leading to the current issue: there were too many Lüshanian cities, and while some of the documents had details of where the entrance to the upper cave system, allegedly left during the cities’ creation, were located, most were in vastly different locations. There was also no record of anyone having ever located the entrance to the capital, which was more specifically what he was looking for. Unfortunately, as Falmíer was almost precisely in the middle of Lüshan, it was a city that had rarely been overtaken by Dion in their long history of conflict.

So, there weren’t even many documents on siege attempts.

So, Yujao had all but nothing, and what he did have, he wasn’t sure he could trust.

Annoying.

Softly, the implant in Yujao’s neck alerted him of a message on his xphern—a gift from Emilia, so he could be notified of messages slightly more discreetly. One day, she hoped to be able to design something that was similar to a Censor for him, so he could send and receive the messages themselves through his mind, the way Censors allowed their users. Unfortunately, while Free Colonier immigrants to Baalphoria could have Censors installed, visitors could not. Emilia might have been able to design a small implant for him and convince Doctor Vickers to install it for him, but even that man wouldn’t dare install a Censor into him.

Slightly annoying, although Emilia had never bothered hooking Censors into the infrastructure xpherns used anyways—something about it feeling profane, as though xpherns weren’t meant to be connected to the OIC System and aethernet that powered Censors in anything more than the xphern-to-aethernet direction that currently existed, should someone be willing to pay a small fortune. Maybe she would make it a proper, two-way connection if there were a more pressing reason than his desiring the ability to communicate with his chittering birds without actually looking at his xphern, but who really knew with that girl.

[

Emmie:

ooh, yes

]

[

Emmie:

please please please yes

]

[

Emmie:

also

]

[

Emmie:

intel~

]

It took several minutes for all the intel Emilia had managed to get out of a clone to come through. His friend might be fast enough with her xphern to occasionally be mistaken as a Free Colonier who used it habitually, but even she couldn’t send this much with anywhere near the speed she would have been able to had he a Censor. Plus, she had to translate it from Baalphoria—or even perhaps Lüshanian, if the clone were being a little mean—into Dionese. Not that he couldn’t do that himself, but his Baalphorian was a perpetually rusty thing.

By the time the last of the information had come through, the chittering bird he had sent off to speak with the gorankai had also gotten back to him, reporting that the crime lord would poke about for any information on the criminal organizations operating out of Falmíer—carefully, of course. Just as the rest of them were having to act carefully, lest they alert any of their governments as to what was happening, so too would the gorankai be sure that their inquiries set off no alarms.

Just a crime lord looking for information as they sought to extend their reach. The timing might be a little suspect, if someone were aware that the groups they were asking after were having some issues with Baalphorians and the Drinarna alike, but nothing too suspicious—after all, such conflict might open the door for a fast strike to destroy the local criminals.

Reading through the details Emilia had sent over, Yujao shifted back through his documents. Most of the entrances were distinct from one another, but many did have little bits in common. Very few of the entrances were located near the spire, for instance. Of the records Yujao had, it appeared that the oldest cities did have a more central entrance, however, and he was left to presume that after trial and error, the Lowdouran—the purported creators of the spires and the underground caverns that now housed the cities—had shifted the entrances to be less obvious.

Falmíer, from what Yujao knew, was a relatively new city. Of course, that still meant it had been around for at least a millennium, but when compared to the five or six millennia that Östrá, one of the oldest Lüshanian cities, had existed, a single millennium was virtually nothing. That was to say nothing of the ten or more millennia the Kuwya zyi Shurong was alleged to have existed for. Given how ancient some of its underground passageways seemed, Yujao thought it likely that

something

had existed there long before even that estimate. Whether or not it was the Kuwya zyi Shurong or something else entirely—perhaps even something from whatever had existed on the land before Dion claimed it—was a more interesting question.

Unfortunately, if any documents regarding that existed, he had yet to find them. Perhaps they existed in the Royal Archives—or the archives that were locked from even the royal family’s eyes, only whispers of myths held within known about what truly lay within them—but he had yet to talk anyone into letting him down there. They’d all been down there before, of course, Emilia slipping them by the guards with this or that skill or just plain old dumb luck.

That girl really was blessed by the aether, as some nations thought silverstrains to be. Not Baalphoria, not Dion, but others.

“Have you found anything?”

Yujao was already smiling when he looked up from the papers spread before him. Hurinren was just as beautiful as he always was: dressed in a fathomless black so opposed to the light pastels Yujao himself favoured; all trim muscle that he had recently been working to define a little more simply because Yujao had let it slip that a little muscle on a man was attractive; dark shadows of makeup edging his eyes, themselves so deep a blue they were all but black. A small scar sliced across his jaw, white against his light-brown skin, left by Emilia when they’d been teenagers and had needed to make it as clear as possible that they didn’t like each other.

They loved each other, of course, even if Hurinren thought his lokiar too reckless, even if Emilia thought her lotyung too serious. To the Inner Court, however, they were reluctant allies simply because they were students to the same teacher, further joined in their love for the same person: Yujao himself. Joke was on the Inner Court—the pair of them were just very good at making the world think they didn’t like one another. It was always a good distraction when they got to fighting, after all.

“Not really,”

Yujao sighed, falling back into the pillows of the room he was occupying, letting himself be cut off from much of the world by ancient etchings that would protect him from probing eyes and other slithering senses. Here, he could research in peace and not raise any suspicions as to what he was doing. In the corner sat a collection of sexual manuals, which would remain in the room once he left, while the documents he had actually been looking through would be slipped back into the secret book exchange—that was also how his chittering bird was delivering said documents to him.

Hurinren’s eyes skimmed over the message Emilia had sent, his mouth a grim line.

“Did the Jiaonai Lo Shintai give you anything?”

Humming, Hurinren pulled a scrap of paper from the stash each room had for notes—not that either of them would dare make notes on anything they ever researched within these rooms. Instead, the man scribbled, sloppy and purposefully different from his normal script in case anyone who wasn’t beholden to them unintentionally caught hold of it once it was slipped into the request slot.

“With this?”

he said, motioning to Emilia’s message.

“Perhaps my lo’lu did give us something.”