The Twelve Kingdoms: Dreaming of Paradise

by Fuyumi Ono

  "Treason is not a sin? I cannot imagine you making such a claim before the Royal Kei."

  "Not in a million years," Sei said, with a wave of his hand. "I'm not saying it isn't a sin. Just that, considering the late Royal Hou—"

  Gekkei nodded. "His Highness certainly did execute many of his subjects for breaking the law. No matter how trivial the offense, the death penalty was always the verdict, and the grave the end result. No consideration was given to circumstances. Leniency was out of the question. A single infraction was the same as a death sentence."

  "I have heard as much."

  "His Highness was a stubborn idealist. If he was willing to put his life on the line in his pursuit of righteousness, he saw no reason to demand any less of his subjects. He came to categorically believe that no matter how minor the offense, everyone should agree that every sin deserved the death penalty."

  Gekkei smiled painfully. "Prior to the accession of His Highness, I had occupied a position at the lowest rungs of the bureaucracy. During the time that the throne was vacant, the Imperial Court was a cesspool. Only His Highness remained clean and pure. Even when swords were brandished in his face, he made it clear he would choose death over dishonor."

  "That is quite impressive."

  "Earning his trust became synonymous with living a sinless life. Any man with a true heart esteemed that trust over any promise of fame and fortune."

  Those who respected Chuutatsu were elated by his accession. They looked forward to a world ruled according to justice and virtue, to creating a kingdom in governed according to the Rules of Heaven and bound according to the rule of law.

  "We set out to create a world uncontaminated by the slightest speck of corruption. Not even the slightest hint of iniquity would be allowed. Sadly, Chuutatsu was never able to translate this image in his mind into reality."

  "The image in his mind—"

  "Chuutatsu was the kind of man he imagined himself to be. Despite this—or because of it—unrepentant ministers were given a free rein. As long as they deferred to him in the proper manner and mouthed the things he wanted to hear, he convinced himself they must be as righteous as he. As he had no ulterior motives and no hidden agendas, he assumed that those who looked pure on the outside must be pure on the inside. You could call it a noble failing of sorts."

  And the worst of them all was Chuutatsu's wife, Kaka. The face she showed him was one of unbesmirched beauty. Her heart was as black as coal.

  "His Highness had every intention of creating a pure and proper kingdom and became increasingly incensed by the impure and improper world he was faced with. The laws became more draconian, the penalties more severe. And when the Taiho fell ill, His Highness grew even more frantic in his quest to make things right."

  "He was going to make things right with law and punishment?"

  Gekkei nodded and smiled grimly. "Up till the very end, it never seemed to dawn on him that he was going to lose the throne and his life because of the shitsudou. In that sense, he was utterly selfless in his devotion to justice as he perceived it."

  Except that death swept the country like a plague. The reckless Chuutatsu made no effort to protect his own interests. His quest had been perverted into a pursuit of martyrdom in the name of justice. The terror turned indiscriminate.

  "If it went on, I feared that the people of Hou would go extinct. I do not exaggerate. At the rate that things were falling apart, there soon would be no one left to execute. Somebody had to put a stop to it."

  Gekkei was not trying to steal the throne. He never once thought of removing Chuutatsu in order to replace him—simply that there was no other way to stop him.

  "And once I had stopped him—in the worst way possible—my duty was done. Or so I thought. Under normal circumstances, we would be tried and convicted as traitors. Or erased from the Registry of Wizards. But do that, and as you said, there would be no one left to run the kingdom. The best I can do to make recompense is retire to my provincial palace. Do you find that so strange?"

  The Kei general only gave him a long and hard look.

  "What?"

  "Oh, nothing. The Chousai filled me in about the Royal Hou, but only the rough outlines. He left me with quite a different impression."

  "A different impression?"

  "Based on what I heard from the Chousai, I'd formed the image of a hard, cruel man. But after listening to what you had to say, I can see that it's not that simple." Sei nodded to himself. "You seem to be saying that the Royal Hou was something other than an unpardonably bad man. So perhaps that is source of your guilt?"

  "I wouldn't disagree with that." But even as he spoke, Gekkei had the feeling that Sei was saying something entirely unexpected. He still stood convicted by his crimes. But somehow "guilt" didn't quite describe what occupied his thoughts. At the same time, to deny it was indeed guilt felt like a lie as well.

  He was lost in his thoughts until Sei's words hit home again. The general said, a faint smile on his lips, "I guess I have a pretty straightforward view on life. I'm fine by whatever's best for the people. If that means taking down a king that's oppressing the people, I'm fine with that too. Our rulers exist for the good of the people, the same way soldiers like ourselves exist to fight. A soldier who can't fight should find something else to do. And if he can't admit it to himself, then his friends and officers should make him see the light. I think it's the same with kings and empresses, though it's even harder for them to face the truth about themselves."

  "I am a coward."

  "That's not what I meant. I'm from Baku Province in the Kingdom of Kei. To tell the truth, I'm a hanjuu."

  Gekkei blinked at this sudden confession. "A hanjuu? And a general?"

  "Yes. Before the reign of Her Highness, hanjuu could not serve in the government. Naturally that included generalships. As foot soldiers, yes, but they could not rise through the ranks. Yet I was appointed to the Baku Provincial Guard."

  "Despite being unable to win promotions?"

  "The Province Lord of Baku said he didn't care. The previous empress had expressed little interest in matters of government at all. Civil servants busily fattened themselves at the expense of the people. They couldn't care less what the Province Lords were up to, so neither did my liege care."

  Sei chuckled. "A bit of forgery, an unfortunate tear in the koseki record where my hanjuu status was mentioned. Nobody was bound to check anyway, my lord said. And if persons in high places did take a second look, it'd be passed off as a clerical error, or a case of mistaken identities. And if somebody got really insistent, then a little money might change hands and that'd be the end of it."

  "But—that's—"

  "Yes, doing the wrong thing for the right purpose. Letting the ends justify the means. I couldn't help questioning his character at first. But even the Baku Province Lord shrank from striking the Late Empress directly."

  A firm expression came to Sei's face. "I believe he was truly conflicted. In particular, after the Late Empress ordered that all the women be driven from the land. In one way or another, they nevertheless chose to remain. When this became apparent and the word came down to arrest and execute them, his consternation only deepened. Baku Province faces the Blue Sea, and the women to be exiled gathered in the port towns. Nobody wanted to leave. But they would be killed if they remained, and so they had no choice but look toward foreign shores. This grieved the Baku Marquis considerably, and he concocted excuses like the ships weren't rigged and there weren't enough of them. Or everybody was willing but weren't able to go all at once. Or they were just waiting their turn and these things took time. He made up excuse after excuse, all the while stiffening the defenses around the port towns. Luckily, things resolved themselves before anybody's bluff was called. But that he would go to such lengths must have meant he was resolved in his own mind."

  After this soliloquy, Sei craned his head to the side, as if unsure about what he had just said.

  "Or rather, when push came to shove, he was
resolved to consider the possibilities. He never once talked about actually targeting the Late Empress. Yes, when I think back about it now, the one remaining question was how the Baku Marquis would react if the women he was protecting were killed. Listening to your story, I have the feeling that was the one thing he was not willing to do."

  "You think so?"

  "I thought so at the time. Perhaps because regicide is such a drastic step. My lord had every intention of saving his people. But no intention of seizing the throne for himself and calling himself king. I remember thinking at the time that it's not the kind of thing a man can do unless he's got that burning desire in the gut."

  He gave Gekkei a smile. "But you did decide."

  Gekkei was momentarily at a loss for words.

  "If the Province Lord had told me to assassinate the Late Empress, I probably would have saluted and followed orders. But I don't think I could have acted on my own. While I certainly thought that the suffering of the people demanded that something be done, that was a decision better left to the Province Lord. And if he commanded it, I don't think I would have given it a second thought. Nor do I believe I would have worried about it afterwards or blamed myself. Not just because my commanding officer would have born the responsibility. Fact is, I'm not as smart as guys like you. The moral import of what I was doing simply wouldn't have sunken through my thick skull."

  "I don't know if I would—"

  Sei shook his head. "That's what it comes down to. Though I don't think it makes it any less grievous a sin. What I mean to say is, I didn't harbor the specific intent or grasp the enormity of what we were contemplating. But ignorance of the law by itself can constitute just as serious a crime. I could even accept that committing such a sin without comprehending its nature doubles its severity. To resolve yourself with a clear understanding of what the act entailed speaks to the thought you must have given it."

  Sei faced Gekkei and said with a kindly expression. "It says a lot about how much you cared for the people. And that is that kind of person who ought to sit on the throne."

  Gekkei kicked his chair back and stood up. "That's not it."

  "It's not?"

  "I can't see dressing up what we did in such refined motives. I killed the man who bore the Mandate of Heaven. Despite the infirmed state of the Taiho, despite High Highness's apparent lack of a desire to reclaim the Mandate, the possibilities of him doing so were not zero. Yet deciding for myself—sight unseen—that things would only get worse, I assassinated the King."

  Sei glanced at Gekkei, a confused expression on his face.

  "In any other case of high treason, there would be nothing admirable about what I did. The ministers, the generals, and even the Royal Kyou want me to take the throne. And if I do, then I really would have stolen the throne from His Highness. I didn't kill him because I wanted his position. If other methods had availed themselves—"

  Gekkei suddenly stopped speaking. Growing ever more agitated and he spoke, he felt his words becoming twisted and tangled in his head.

  The look on Sei's face didn't change. With a quizzical expression he said, "Was what you did a simple case of high treason? Supposing that it was, weren't you left with no other recourses and forced to act?"

  "Without a doubt," Gekkei groaned, covering his face with hands as he again took his seat. "I'm sorry. I'm not exactly expressing myself coherently."

  "Not at all," Sei answered softly. A long minute later he said to himself, "But of course." When Gekkei raised his head, he gazed at him as if catching in his features the sight of something sad and painful. "You must have really revered the Royal Hou."

  Chapter 6

  Gekkei cast his thoughts back four years, back to a time when he couldn't admit to himself how far Chuutatsu had fallen. How can you drag yourself through the mud like this? he'd wanted to scream at him. How can you besmirch the honor of the throne?

  The unvarnished truth was that Chuutatsu was the worst enemy of the people. His laws were excessively harsh and his punishments excessively severe. Gekkei had feared that if things went on unabated, Chuutatsu would surely loose the Mandate of Heaven.

  The Taiho's illness was already undeniable.

  If it had been in Gekkei's power, he would have steered Chuutatsu back to the Way. But at every turn, Chuutatsu only piled on more harsh laws and made the situation more dire.

  "At that rate, I truly believed the people of Hou would soon go extinct."

  Beneath the patio and beyond a small garden, the Sea of Clouds sparked in the moonlight. Below the Sea of Clouds, the faint lights from the world below spread out toward the horizon. The ground had once been covered with corpses. Instead of the flowers in the spring, the smell of rotting flesh. Elegies instead of traditional folk songs.

  Has the King lost every last shred of humanity? Gekkei raged within himself. The ever-growing graveyards horrified him. The King's actions aroused feelings of bitterness and disgust. And yet Gekkei couldn't find it himself to hate him personally. He was the pure and undefiled minister he had once been, the one righteous man in the corrupt Imperial Court.

  "I wanted His Highness to return to the man he had once been. That was the hope I clung to. But he continued to defy those expectations. I came to believe that it would have been better if he'd been corrupted by the trappings of power from the start. Then I would have expected nothing of him. But he was a selfless ascetic to the end."

  "So you resorted to the high crime of treason because you had no other avenues open to you?"

  Gekkei nodded. "Saying that I acted on behalf of the good of the people is probably just an excuse. What actually goaded me into action was the pain that came from loathing somebody I did not want to loath. It wasn't a matter of righteous indignation. More a matter of personal enmity. That's what makes this a run-of-the-mill sin, no matter how fancy a name it goes by."

  "And yet weren't you brought to such hatred for the Royal Hou out of your compassion for the people of Hou? It was your pity for the people that bred such loathing."

  Gekkei shook his head. "I don't think so. It's not that their suffering wasn't on my mind. While watching people get hauled off to the gallows for crimes that barely qualified as misdemeanors was indeed painful, far more trying for me was witnessing the bitterness their survivors bore toward His Highness. Such hate being completely natural and comprehensible only made it all the more unbearable."

  "Unbearable that the Royal Hou should be so hated?"

  "Yes. I am not the ally of the common folk that my followers want me to be."

  "But didn't you make yourself their ally in any case? You wanted the Royal Hou to do right by the people, didn't you? By making their lives better through compassion and wisdom, they would in turn love him."

  This observation caught Gekkei by surprise. "I wouldn't say you're wrong."

  "You wanted the people to love the Royal Hou as much as you once had. To that extent, you were on their side. Their peace was your peace. Their happiness was your happiness. A good king was a king who did the best he could for the people. That that's what you wanted on behalf of the Royal Hou?"

  When Gekkei didn't answer, Sei added with a smile, "As far as I'm concerned, that's the same as acting on behalf of the people."

  His eyes downcast, Gekkei answered, "But if I elevate myself to that position, then I would have in fact stolen it from His Highness."

  He hadn't been able to remonstrate with Chuutatsu. And when Chuutatsu strayed from the Way, hadn't been able to bring him back to the straight and narrow. And so he struck him down out of personal enmity. To then take that which had belonged to his liege and make it his own would be the greatest theft of all.

  "A literal usurpation. No room for excuses."

  "Excuses? Who must you excuse yourself to?" Gekkei didn't reply. Sei continued, "From my perspective, it seems that you are mistaken about to whom you should be offering explanations." Sei immediately retracted the statement. "Sorry. I was letting my mouth get ahead of my head ther
e."

  Gekkei shook his head. He pressed his hands against his temples. "Your assessment is correct. It is His Highness to whom I wish to explain myself, to say that I did not kill him for mean or malicious motives. No matter how despised or detestable he might have become, my intent was not to usurp the throne. That is the apology I would offer. But I would definitely be offering it to the wrong person."

  If he was to apologize, it should probably be to Heaven or to the people. He had trampled on the Will of Heaven, and that sin had robbed Hou of Divine Grace. That what he should apologize for—or at least that was what his head told him.

  "No matter how many explanations or apologies I offer, His Highness will not be there to offer absolution. No matter how well I understand this, it is still the justification I wish to offer, probably nothing but a way of explaining myself to myself. If I add to that an actual usurpation of the throne, those explanations as well would be pointless. And now Shoukei-sama—the last person on earth who would ever forgive me."

  If anything, the Princess Royal would have a good laugh at his expense. You are the traitor who killed the King and stole the throne. She'd already concluded that he'd taken everything that had once been hers out of spite and jealousy.

  Sei asked in obvious confusion, "Shoukei would never forgive you? Why?"

  "Are you serious?"

  "I don't see how it is important whether Shoukei forgives you or not. But now that you mention it, I would ask you to keep in mind that I did come here to see you. Shoukei was the one who identified you as the ruler of Hou. There was no provisional king when she last resided in Hou, but she was sure that by now the position would have been filled. That is why Her Highness addressed her correspondence to you. Shoukei was sure that as long as the Marquis was in change, things in Hou wouldn't spin out of control."

  Gekkei stared at Sei in amazement.

  "That's why Her Highness told me to come here and see what was going on, in order to find out what the Marquis was doing to keep the kingdom intact." Sei smiled at the speechless Gekkei. "I understand how you could hate yourself for striking down the man you revered. Yes, a crime is a crime. However, keeping chaos at bay is as much according to the Way as is repentance."