“What did you do with Natsuko?” Shuixing asked.

“The Empress ordered that she be dealt with separately,” Tatsuda said.

“We became Shikijiman citizens so we could be tried with her! You tell the Empress that we’re not going until she tries all four of us at the same time!” Shuixing said, her voice loud and authoritative.

Sofiane put a hand on her small shoulder, heaving in anger.

“Shui, I don’t think this is the hill to die on…”

“I don’t know what that— that— tedious Empress is up to, and I refuse to be separated until I know.”

The guards grimaced. Tatsuda folded his hands and cleared his throat. “Out of respect for the great poet Kurashi, we will ignore Her Imperial Majesty’s name being slandered, however—”

“Fuck her. I’m staying right here,” Shui said, folding her arms.

Tatsuda exhaled and with an uncomfortable expression, motioned for a guard by the door to open it. Into the room floated a monkey on a cloud snacking on a golden banana.

“Hey guys! Uh, sorry about this, but the Imperial Banana-distributer told me to go ahead and have the Yishang draw up a little event for us… so… yeah,” Saruga said, reaching back to scratch his butt.

Sofiane paled. “This— this is a private event, right? There wasn’t an announcement to the Heroes or anything, r-right?”

Saruga shrugged. “The Yishang didn’t tell me to go advertise it, but I can’t speak for my fellow Pengwu.”

That was how news of important, interregional events was spread: Your friendly neighborhood Pengwu told you. That was why it’d been so important to have Zhidao around in the early days, Shui thought. She wondered if that information stream went both ways. But…

Why hadn’t she ever thought of that before?

It seemed like such an obvious fact that the Yishang could receive information from the Pengwu. However, just like how it never occurred to her before that strange, empty dungeon that debris should probably not dissolve into the ground mysteriously, obvious things were sometimes so obvious they hid in plain sight. But that also meant the Yishang weren’t omniscient…

Did she already know that? Or did she just feel like she already knew that? Things were starting to get fuzzy.

“Shui, are you okay?” Sofiane asked, putting his hand on her back to steady her.

“O-Oh, y-yeah, just a little dizzy,” she said.

“Enough delay. If we don’t get moving, we’ll be the ones in trouble,” Tatsuda said.

Protesting and dragging their feet wouldn’t get them anywhere. Now that this was a Yishang-sanctioned event, their usual powers were sapped. It didn’t matter if they were as strong as Daisy, if the Yishang marked a certain area as being part of a story event, Heroes were equal to each other, and barely stronger than a Non-Hero. Combine that with the fact that Abilities were locked unless the Yishang let you use them (felt as a kind of “cue”) and suddenly Non-Hero guards were a deadly threat. Their katanas and halberds weren’t a design aesthetic anymore.

Worse still, there was a rumor that this “event” state was one of the few instances—along with dimension-jumping—where permanent death was possible. No one had confirmed this, since going along with the Yishang’s implied script kept you safe (and usually entailed a handsome temporary boost in Use-Number anyway), but important villains such as the Entropic Axis’ Generals, when they were killed during an event, did not reappear.

Sofiane ruminated on this as they were led from their cells through the streets towards the palace complex. More Non-Heroes came out to watch this time, pointing and whispering at them as they passed. Shui and Pech barely noticed, but Sofiane was simmering with humiliated rage. The Empress had earned his respect, but not these glorified set dressings. These peasants ought to be averting their gaze.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The palace complex was swarming with even more Non-Heroes, mostly servants and guards hurrying about trying to spruce the palace up. Sofiane’s fear was that this was in anticipation of hosting a bunch of Heroes. What did Sadako stand to gain by making this a big public thing? Or maybe she hadn’t expected the Yishang to turn this event into a big thing and was scrambling to get things ready?

Or maybe she thought it would draw Yuna out.

Sofiane couldn’t picture Yuna falling for such easy bait, or wanting to subject herself to being inside of an event where her enormous stats and overpowered Abilities couldn’t help her. In fact, he wondered how many Heroes would come at all if they thought a homicidal Natsuko was still waving her bottle around. He was pretty sure the bottle could still do the job whether there was a special event or not.

Through the tumult in the courtyard, they were led once again into the main palace building and then off to a different wing which housed a much larger court accommodating an audience of several hundred people along with mats for kneeling bureaucrats and officials. At the far end was the Hibiscus Throne, moved from the other chamber. It sat empty.

Shuixing, Sofiane, and Pechorin were led past the audience seats towards their own mat on the floor facing the throne where they were made to kneel.

“They better not make me kneel the entire time,” Sofiane grumbled. Even he could hear the impotence in his voice. Dear gods did it suck being in an event.

Shuixing knelt on his right, her arms neatly folded in front of her and her eyes wide in an expression that he couldn’t pin down as frightened, focused, numb, or in a trance, but some combination of all four. It all seemed very dire.

“Let’s go, Kurashi! Beat the charges!”

Sofiane and Shuixing turned their heads to witness thirty or so leather-skinned fishermen barging into the courtroom with flags and banners with things like “Free Pechorin ‘5,” “Pechorin did nothing wrong,” and “poetry isn’t illegal” written on them. Sofiane resisted the urge to rub his eyes at the bizarre assembly. Pechorin himself nodded their way and after the fisherman sat down in the audience declaimed,

“Though animals chew

The proud willow, leaf-by-leaf—

Its roots remain strong.”

This made the crowd go absolutely wild. Not just the fishermen, but the bureaucrats filing to their seats. The state-officials in charge of the prosecution sweated and mouthed oaths at this refined and eloquent plaint. To Sofiane and Shuixing, this poetry thing had seemed like a joke, but apparently Pechorin stumbled onto a cheat skill for navigating Shikijiman politics.

The atmosphere once the fishermen showed up became strangely light, as though all of this was less a trial for illegal border crossing and treason and more of an informal get-together of peers. The “peer” part was what really rubbed Sofiane the wrong way. These random Non-Heroes were assuredly not his peers.

While Sofiane was seething, Shuixing leaned across him to ask Pechorin, “What’s going on? Isn’t this supposed to be some kind of dictatorial kangaroo court?”

“Oh, right,” Pechorin said. “I forgot to mention to you all, but the guards were telling me last night during the haiku party that the totalitarianism thing is a joke. They keep up appearances to make the Empress happy, but no one actually cares. They don’t really have the state capacity to do all that surveillance anyway.”

Sofiane scoffed. “You really believe that? When I was sneaking over to the evidence locker, I saw cells full of—”

Pechorin waved his hand. “Oh, they rotate turns being the oppressed masses. There’s a sign-up sheet for who has to spend the night in jail so that the Empress gets to feel like she’s ruling with an iron fist because her prison is overflowing.”

Shuixing blinked and shook her head. “So… What is all this about then? The Empress is taking this extremely seriously.”

Pechorin chuckled. “So long as she feels like she’s tricking people, she’s easy for the other Non-Heroes to manage, since people who are convinced they aren’t fooled are the easiest to fool. And the Empress ends up convincing herself she’s a puppet-master when she uses Saruga to exploit the Yishang, as if the Yishang themselves aren’t aware of what she’s doing.”

The way Pechorin was explaining this sounded like it was lifted verbatim from what the prison guards had been telling him. Shuixing nodded numbly, not quite sure what to make of it all. By the way the fishermen were loudly trading insults with the court officials over each other’s poetic sensibilities, the idea of the Empress’ “iron fist” did seem a bit silly. But something else bugged her…

The bottle.

Natsuko’s bottle was still missing. Probably in the hands of the Empress. And it didn’t matter how much of a joke she was to the other Non-Heroes, having that bottle alone made her scary. And then there was the Empress’ order that Natsuko be, “dealt with separately.” Shui had been sure the bottle was meant for Yuna earlier, but now she wasn’t so certain. For as much as Natsuko had irritated her recently, the thought that she might be force dimension-jumped by the Empress was a horrifying one.

“All bow before the Honorable Judge, Minister of the Left,” announced a herald.

Everyone except Sofiane and Shuixing prostrated themselves.

“Are they gonna say his name, or…?” Sofiane muttered out the side of his mouth.

“That is his name,” Pechorin said.

“I hate Shikijima…”

Minister of the Left emerged from a side room with the quiet shuffle of a shoji screen. The unassuming grandpa was draped in garnet robes and kanmuri hat with a sheathed sword belted to his side. He was assisted by the same herald to a seated mat in front of the throne facing the court. The room was silent in reverence for the geriatric official who was wetting his dry, wrinkly lips.

After a moment, Minister of the Left broke the silence. “Num. Num. Eh… what was this about again?”