"...Tell him to come find me himself."
From the throne above came words tinged with cold.
Hearing this, Kiyono Sara — who had kept her head bowed all this while — trembled faintly. She pressed her thin lips together, her nails digging slightly into her flesh, let out a quiet breath, and then returned to calm.
Then — for the first time since entering the hall, she raised her head, looked directly into the eyes of the Narukami, and met Ei's gaze.
Inazuma had many officials. Many came to Tenshukaku each day for an audience. But very few ever looked the Narukami in the eye.
Merely being watched by those lonely, purple-aster eyes was enough for any mortal to feel a majesty as heavy as a mountain, with the faint rumble of thunder echoing in their ears.
One does not look directly upon a god.
But Sara met Ei's questioning gaze head-on, without fear, without the slightest hesitation — one might even say with a measure of recklessness and offense:
Her golden eyes were like a lake suffused with sunlight, without a single ripple, holding steady against the light in Ei's eyes:
"His Grace the Grand Pillar is ill and confined to his residence. He is unable to come."
A refusal.
These were words of refusal.
A refusal of the Narukami's summons.
Kiyono Sara's voice was soft, yet falling upon the silent hall it carried tremendous weight. The howling cold wind knocked rime from the wooden shutters, sending sheets of accumulated snow cascading down. Beyond that, Tenshukaku sank into a silence as dead as snow.
"What else did he say."
Ei spoke without expression.
The wind outside was so vexing, gusting against the torii with a grating noise, making even the Narukami feel a touch of irritation.
A hundred years. He had hidden away in that residence of his as though he were dead, and all because of the Vision Hunt Decree and the Sakoku Decree — defying her edicts again and again.
Resigning from the post of general as a protest was one thing. But now he was resigning from the post of Personal Retainer.
This post of Personal Retainer — what difference did it make whether he resigned or not? He had long since holed up in his residence, derelict in his duties. What "Personal Retainer" was there even to speak of?
And now he had sent this girl to take his place. Was this meant to insult Raiden Ei?
She told him to come in person, and he pleaded illness to decline.
The words you spoke that day — the promise you made — were those, too, nothing but empty words?
She gazed coldly down at the young woman below. A composure maintained for a hundred years, now at this moment — "...What else did he give you?"
"There is a letter."
Kiyono Sara drew from her inner lining a letter sealed with wax.
A letter...
In a hundred years, he had never once written her a letter.
Ei beckoned lightly, and the letter lifted itself from Sara's hands, spinning like a snowflake, and alighted upon her own slender fingers.
She broke the seal. But upon reading only the first line, she furrowed her brow slightly.
Very official language.
And very courteous. Very candid. Very respectful.
Very distant.
It was a letter of resignation.
A petition to return one's bones.
...Though I have kept from wrath and served with diligence, in truth my body and spirit are alike spent...
"Now that Inazuma doth enjoy gentle wind and clearing sky, bright heaven and fair air — all by the radiance of the Narukami — I may with quiet heart beg to return my bones and live out my remaining years in peace. Though I have kept from wrath and served with diligence, in truth my body and spirit are alike spent. Though I would fain serve unto my last breath, my deeds grow daily feebler. The years mount, and sickness followeth close. The weight of what I have promised, I fear, shall scatter as water upon sand... My days are not long hence."
Kiyono Sara watched Ei in silence.
"Yet the post of Retainer before the Throne is of grave import. I have raised a daughter, whose nature is virtuous and upright..."
Rrrip.
Ei had read only half before she tore the letter apart.
The snow seemed to stop.
The world was terrifyingly quiet.
"That old wretch truly deserves to lose his head." Ei said coldly. "Retirement? Returning his bones?"
"He conjures these excuses just to humiliate me?"
Her purple-aster eyes remained calm, but in their depths, between the dark violet clouds, there flickered, faintly — a thunder that was not so calm at all.
So that's how it is... Ha.
You guessed it all correctly.
Kiyono Sara listened to the Narukami's words and thought to herself in silence.
Your Grace the Narukami — it is exactly as you predicted.
She alone knew that everything the Grand Pillar had written in that letter was true.
It was not an excuse. It was not an insult. It was not a pretext. Every word was written in earnest sincerity.
Her lord was truly leaving.
But precisely because it was true, the Narukami would believe it to be false — some flimsy excuse meant to deceive.
Because after five hundred years together, the Narukami knew the Grand Pillar far too well.
That man — no matter how grievous his wounds, no matter what suffering he endured — would never willingly fall. His mouth would never yield. Like a stubborn young bull, terrifyingly proud. He had been strong-willed his entire life.
If he were truly old, truly dying, there was no way he would voluntarily write things like "body and spirit spent" or "days not long hence" in a letter.
If he wrote such things, there could be only one explanation: just as he had resigned from the post of Grand General before, he was using old age as a pretext to resign in protest!
Conversely, if he had written something like "hale and hearty, strong as ever, terrifyingly so" — then the Narukami would actually have grown suspicious about his health.
But clearly, compared to how well Ei knew the Grand Pillar, the Grand Pillar knew Ei far better...
Sara silently watched the Narukami's fury before the hall, and in her mind surfaced the words from that day's heart-to-heart with Kiyono Raimei:
"Sara, where do you think Inazuma's enemies are...?"
"The Tenryou Commission — lining their pockets, deceiving those above and oppressing those below. I shall go dismantle the Kujou Clan at once..."
"Ha, you're still the same as ever. But if one Kujou falls, there will be a second Kujou."
"You need to think more. Think further ahead... Listen — Inazuma's greatest enemy is not the Tenryou Commission, not the Sakoku Decree, not the Vision Hunt Decree. It is not on the islands. It is in the sky — at the Narukami's side."
"But the Narukami is powerful."
"Heh, powerful? To me she looks as weak as a child. The Fatui are at her side. The Commission's people are at her side. And the words she speaks, the decisions she makes, all determine whether Inazuma lives or dies. While I'm still alive, the Fatui and the Commissions don't dare say much. But once I'm dead, there will be no one left beside her — and then they'll dare."
"..."
"You must go to her side. You must take my place in guarding her. You must protect her from those who would do her harm. You must—"
Sara still remembered — that day, in the snow-light, by the hearth, in the sunlight of the first clearing — the way the Grand Pillar had smiled as he spoke those words. His silver-grey eyes unfocused, as though his gaze were not here at all, but in the distant past, in the cherry-blossom days of a long-ago summer:
"— You must take my place, and stay by her side forever."
"This is the oath that I, Kiyono Raimei, have sworn."
Sara still gazed at the Narukami upon the dais. Clearly, she was angry — a rare thing — or rather, it was fury directed at the Grand Pillar.
Fury at his feigning illness and old age to make a fool of her, the Narukami.
But in truth...
In all the world, only Kiyono Sara understood the Grand Pillar. Understood his heart.
He had clearly arranged everything. He could clearly have been freer. Could clearly have lived with more ease, more liberty.
But he would rather let the Narukami resent him than let the Narukami grieve.
He was willing to leave in the Narukami's heart an image of himself as deceitful, insolent, forever brash and unruly — rather than tell her:
"Hey — I really am going to die of old age."
I'm just an old man huddled by the hearth, wrapped in thick winter clothes, shivering in the cold wind, about to die of old age.
This way, the Narukami could set down the burden in her heart, cast him from her mind, and return in peace to the Plane of Euthymia to continue her pursuit of eternity.
Looking at the woman upon the high dais. Looking at the way she scolded the Grand Pillar. Looking at the way she understood nothing at all.
For reasons she could not quite name, Kiyono Sara felt a stirring of anger too.
But more than that — it was envy. Or perhaps, jealousy?
He had given his entire life to her, from the joy of his youth to the loneliness of his death — and still she did not know.
"Your Grace the Narukami." Sara lowered her eyes and spoke calmly: "What is your answer?"
Ei paused.
A long while.
She said coldly: "Since he wishes to leave, then I shall grant him his wish. You will report here tomorrow."
Having said this, Ei turned away. Her wooden sandals struck the cold floor of the hall.
Snowflakes fell behind her, and she did not look back — not once.
"Go back and tell him: do not regret this."
Ei left the great hall. In the empty expanse of Tenshukaku, only Kiyono Sara remained.
Snowflakes drifted and scattered through the early winter air. Kiyono Sara raised her head.
— As expected, she had agreed in a fit of spite.
Your Grace... everything is exactly as you foresaw.