Why Use a Sword? — 11
When we reached the house, there were things I had never seen before. Clothes, food, and a clutter of tools besides. The Heavenly Demon, it seemed, had not realized that Soo had met the previous cult leader's daughter. A relief. Easier in my mind, I carried her into the room and set her down.
Soo startled at the things waiting there, started toward them, and then stopped short. I looked at her, wondering if something was wrong. She hesitated, and pointed at the clothes.
"May I touch them?"
So that was it. She thought they belonged to someone else. I went to her, took her by both shoulders, and turned her to face me.
"Soo. The Heavenly Demon gave you to me. Unfortunately, that means from now on, you are mine."
Strictly speaking, I had kidnapped a child who still had parents. What else was there to do? It was already too late. Soo looked at me as if to ask what on earth this person was saying. She was still too young for talk of ownership. Even so, she was a harvester now, and it would not take her so very long to grasp what I meant. Body and mind both would sharpen, and she would take it in quickly.
"You don't understand?"
At that she ducked her head and answered, very small, that she didn't. Nothing for it, then. I would have to put it simply.
"Think however you like. Move however you like. Live however you like."
Not freedom. License. That is what I want of people: to live exactly as they please, until they can bear the causality that comes back to them.
"However I want?"
I was about to tell her yes. Then a man's faded memory lit up. It insisted I say this part — that only if she knew it could she give me warmth for longer.
Well, then.
"However you want. But you must never forget that what you do, you have to answer for. Understood?"
Soo nodded and ran at once to where the new things were, opening this and that as if she had been given a gift.
And yet taking responsibility is not license, but freedom. Or so I thought, until another memory rose: that one has to know responsibility in order to commit license all the more thoroughly. Just as the one who kills more people is not the ignorant murderer but the owner of a company that exploits them, killing people in great numbers is never against the law so much as above it.
That sounded rather like being told to stand above the law. But by that point, the memory said, license and freedom become the same word. It was not exactly wrong, so I accepted it.
I left Soo pulling the new things out one after another and sat down in the house.
Ah.
The wall toward the kitchen held a faint warmth. Well, of course. There was a fire that never went out; it would be strange if it were not warm. The child could sleep here. Winter might be another matter. Come to think of it, winter was on its way, and I was not sure Soo would survive it. Later problems could wait for later.
Now, then. Shall I try learning this thing they call martial arts?
Memories, I have. All five of them besides Soo had trained systematically, and Eunjae would know it best of all. I drew the arts out of their memories, laid those memories out, and gathered up every scrap of technique I could. Perhaps because they shared a root, a great deal of it — Eunjae's arts included — came to much the same thing.
The problem was the part they called gathering qi. And what is qi, exactly?
Come to think of it, I have a mage's memories, and still I could not use magic at all. Easy or complicated had nothing to do with it. I simply could not perceive mana. There is nothing to be done with what is not there.
So I moved my organs the way they had, and there was not the slightest sign of anything stirring. Remaking a noisy heart the way Rebecca had was a little too unsettling for that. The Rebecca who came back to life had neither light nor warmth, and I could barely perceive her. When the first world fell into the place where I am, I do not know what became of her. I am still digesting the first world's memories, but I know by instinct that Rebecca is not among them. So I would rather not remodel this body, if I can help it.
I need a way to use martial arts. I shift my innards this way and that, and still I see no way to obtain this qi.
Then should I try the method Eunjae used? I am inside this body, so if I try the way she used to draw me out of the upper dantian and put me to use, something might come of it.
Mm. Mm. Mmmmmm...
No. I have the memory, so I remember every sensation from then, and still it will not move, because something important is missing.
Say a river floods, and all sorts of things are swept away downstream on the water. I remember exactly how every one of those things moves. But I do not know the water. Only the part that is the water is cleanly empty. Copy it all I like, and nothing comes out. Grant that I can imitate the inside of the body — what good is imitating when there is no water? I remember the way of moving, at least. I simply cannot follow it through, because partway along there is no force to push the body onward.
Or perhaps, if it were only the form, I could imitate it somehow? But if I am going to do that, I would be better off using the techniques warriors used in other worlds. The way the warriors of the first world fought.
No. The professional fighters of the first world, knights and their like, rely on special methods just as martial arts do. Which is to say, I cannot use them.
Does this even make sense? I am a fairly powerful monster, and all I can do is make harvesters?
Honestly.
Then again, I had already been unlucky from the moment I was slammed down onto a bare floor with nothing on it.
I cut Eunjae's techniques into pieces and feed them, little by little, to the harvesters still alive. The best of them right now is Eunchun. Next is Jeonyang, then Byeongil, then Gapjae. Of course, if they actually fought, there is no telling who would survive. This is only a measure of how much of Eunjae's memory each of them holds. From today Soo will receive Eunjae's memories as well, so the youngest will be Soo.
If I can manage it, I wonder whether the martial arts might be cut more cleanly out of Eunjae's memory — cleanly enough that, from Yasle's memory, I could take only the method of summoning me.
Hehe.
Of course I have not given up on falling upon this world's shamans and making harvesters of them. But one must always assume the worst: the assumption that I cannot obtain their arts. I cut the thought off there. Instead, watching Soo poke through the things in high spirits, I checked how the other harvesters were moving.
First, Gapjae. He has guardian watch — the sentry duty they call the Protectors — about once every three days, so for all his plans he has little time to move freely, and the hours that are empty fill up with errands. The lord of the Elixir Hall keeps summoning him and setting him to work. Elixir, as in the herb of immortality; hall, as in a government office. He is lord of the richest and strongest hall of all, and he is testing whether Gapjae can be brought over to his side. Gapjae knows it, so he works hard. He understands that what he is doing is getting his face remembered.
Bamboo, third in rank. Sun, fourth. Crane, the eighth, and Stream, the ninth. Five halls in all are scheming to drive out the current Heavenly Demon.
For reference, the Elixir Hall is medicine — ordinary cures, refined pills, and narcotics alike. Bamboo is the intelligence service. Sun tends the religious face of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, Crane is logistics, and Stream administers, as a whole, the land on which the cult stands. The hall lords in question hold the right to the byproducts that come of their halls. Were this an ordinary religious order, Sun ought to be the strongest, but here force comes first, and so its prestige is badly thinned. In short, one may think of it as the office that manages the villages around the cult.
Following along behind Gapjae's eyes, I am gathering the cult's affairs one piece at a time. He really is an excellent harvester. Thanks to him, I have learned that the Heavenly Demon is far less steady than I thought.
For reference, Turtle, second in rank, is Eunchun's, and Mountain, sixth, is Byeongil's. Byeongil has all but given in to the other five's persuasion, so strictly speaking more than half of the cult's Ten Hall Lords are laying plans to remove the Heavenly Demon. Turtle, besides, is the ports, and Mountain is minerals. A young woman who comes to the cult's main compound is made a slave; a man without talent for the martial arts is posted out to one station or another. Among those, Mountain is little different from an execution ground. Criminals are sent to the mines, are they not? It is the same here. But the side that first closes its hand on the profit from selling ore makes a great deal of money, which is why its rank among the Ten Halls sits so high.
Taken all together, the structure is remarkably specialized. The system that rules it is precarious.
While Gapjae hands me all of this, what of Eunchun, probably the strongest of them in raw strength alone? He has sunk into amusing himself with women. Not that Eunchun is a wicked man. Climb suddenly to a high seat, though, and take what that seat can give, and one is bound to grow careless — and a woman has slipped into the gap. Deer, the fifth. That hall specializes in brothels, and through his eyes I watch a woman introduced by its hall lord make a toy of him.
Listening in, it is exquisitely cunning. She wears at his heart by stressing how Byeongil, who completed the Heavenly Demon Dominion Manual, is envied by the people of the cult, and then, saying that she herself is not like that, she toys with Eunchun's feelings. She plies him with drink and drugs until he can hardly keep his senses, and lies down with him.
The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, aswarm with plots and guile. A young man strong in nothing but strength was finished in an instant. Eunchun's future does not look bright. Honestly, he was the one I had thought would thrash about the most, so it is a considerable shame.
Byeongil, meanwhile. On that side, work is already underway to enshrine him as the next Heavenly Demon. While they lift him up with all this talk of how he restored the Heavenly Demon Dominion Manual — or did he? — they whisper that the current Heavenly Demon does not know how to use the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. In other words, that he is not the real thing. And so Byeongil eats the spiritual medicines sent by the hall lords who mean to betray the Heavenly Demon, and shoots up at a startling pace. Watching him swallow every dose without a scrap of suspicion, his prospects are none too bright either.
Last of all, Jeonyang. He is tempering the Heavenly Demon Divine Art under the Heavenly Demon's own instruction, one teacher to one pupil — thoroughly enough that even if Byeongil should appear on the pretext of that art, Jeonyang could stamp him flat with it. And yet through no one's eyes can I see any movement from the previous cult leader's daughter.
That something will happen before long is certain, but it may take longer than I expected. Whatever is going to happen.
I turned my gaze back to Soo, who had worn herself out playing and fallen asleep leaned into my arms. So much for getting up in the night. I drew a blanket over her.