Four Quarters

West

For Dewi

Sanzou's robe swished against the deep dew-laden grass of the forest. It'd be filthy by the time he was finished this patrol. A pain. He was getting tired of this wild-goose chase. The villagers had been seeing apparitions- marsh gas and fairylights. There was nothing in these woods but animals and birds and themselves. He regretted now having split the four of them up. It would take that much longer to collect them all again. And he felt irritated here alone, without Gokuu's comforting chatter to distract his thoughts and keep him company. Five more minutes and he'd stop for a cigarette and head back to Hakkai's section of the for--

His senses jumped and he swung about swiftly, gun aimed and firing at the loops of crimson energy that came bounding out to entrap him. They dispersed at once, even as Sanzou registered whose they were. Back where they'd come from was a figure, a solider darkness in the darkness beneath the trees. The sense of enormous psychic energy there was clear as a beacon on a hilltop.

"You!" the figure said in surprise, stepping into view. It stopped a wary distance from himself. "Genjou Sanzou, the Master of the Law."

"Prince Kougaiji," Sanzou acknowledged him.

"Why are you here?" Youkai arrogance spoke under the neutral forms of speech. Youkai and royalty, talking to short-lived mortal commoner, and thinking itself superior to a Sanzou. Or simply superior to Sanzou.

"Looking for a pack of renegade youkai in these woods. Yourselves, I take it?"

"No. We're looking for them too," Kougaiji answered, as if he hadn't registered the insult, or didn't think Sanzou's insults worth registering. Dumb or arrogant or both. "But I'm not getting any sense of them."

"Not here," Sanzou snorted. "I might have known."

"Mh," Kougaiji agreed. "A waste of labour." There was a pause.

"Well?" Sanzou said.

"Well? Time to collect our people and go."

"A good idea," Sanzou agreed. Neither moved. Then both relaxed a little, not less hostile, but resigned.

"North," Kougaiji said, as if answering a question.

"Fine," Sanzou sighed. "I was going that way myself."

"You don't have to come with me," Kougaiji pointed out, as he turned and began walking.

"As long as I trust you as little as you trust me, I do," Sanzou retorted, not trying to hide the annoyance in his voice.

"Who've you got in that quarter?" Kougaiji asked.

"Hakkai."

"Mn." As pleased as Kougaiji was likely to be by anything.

"You?"

"Yaone."

"Hmpf. At least it's not your sister."

"She's here, over in the East. We'll meet her later."

"Not first thing?"

"No. Just as the monkey isn't first on your agenda."

"Mh." Thinking what a pain it'd be to pull Gokuu back home if he was enjoying himself; and equally, what a pain it'd be if he wasn't. Complaints either way. Why me, God? Well, count your blessings. He'd have Hakkai's company before he had to deal with Gokuu. Or Lirin. With another sigh, he set out northwards, Kougaiji silent at his side.

They moved through the thick forest, wary of the root-tangles that disturbed the ground far away from the main trunks of the trees. The night was chilly and unpleasant here under the canopy of branches, where even the pale moonlight never reached. Sanzou felt cold under his robes, even through the supple leather of his bodysuit and the long leather gloves. He shivered and cast a sideways glance at his companion. Kougaiji didn't seem to register any discomfort at all, even though his chest was open to the air and his feet in their pointed slippers were bare. Come to that, Gojou in his half-youkai body was quite happy to wander around in sleeveless shirt and vest at all seasons of the year, when even Hakkai and Gokuu in their human forms had to bundle up warmly.

"Oi," Sanzou said. Kougaiji turned his head. "Aren't you cold like that?"

"No," Kougaiji said. "Of course not."

"'Of course'?" Sanzou lifted an eyebrow at him. "It's a cold night."

"If you say so," the prince said indifferently. "It feels fine to me."

"Youkai physiology, I suppose," Sanzou mused. "Where do youkai come from, anyway? The gods mated with the animals of Under Heaven, wasn't it, and begot the race of youkai?"

"Is that the story the humans tell?"

"It would seem to be true. You don't feel the cold any more than the beasts do."

After a moment Kougaiji said neutrally, "Now, our legends say the gods made the human race from mud. That's why you melt in the rain."

Sanzou snorted, but his mouth crooked in its own little smile. "Well," he conceded, "they do say we're 98% water, and the rest is earth, so..." He shrugged.

Kougaiji flashed him a sideways glance, amused and surprised, but said nothing, and they continued in silence.

The trees about them were beginning to thin out. The solid black canopy overhead disappeared, and the great watery moon appeared to light their steps. They found themselves walking through new growth forest, with small larches and maples dominated by the occasional ancient giant.

"This is where the northern quadrant starts," Kougaiji said. "Do you sense your man anywhere about?"

"No. You?"

"Nothing. No disturbances, but-- nothing."

Warily they moved through the scanty tree covering, senses out and alert. That calm dark trail that meant 'Hakkai'-- Sanzou couldn't feel it anywhere. Damn, Gokuu's better at this than me. Any youkai is. But then- if there were no youkai in the woods to be found--

"He must have gone back to our rendezvous point," Sanzou said. "With nothing to fi--" and didn't finish the sentence, because Kougaiji had stopped dead in front of him, head up.

"What's that?" Kou murmured, voice tense.

"What?"

"There." He pointed with a long-clawed finger to the base of a huge oak ten metres away. In the uncertain moonlight, Sanzou made out disordered clothes, white skin, dark hair. Two bodies on the ground, unmoving. Sanzou stopped, heart missing a beat. But-- no sense of violence, no feel of blood. Not what it looked like. Felt in fact more like-- oh. He squinted to see in the uncertain light. Well, well, well. Well, in that case--

He became aware that the youkai prince was as motionless as himself, just as Kougaiji realized the same thing. They exchanged dubious looks. Then in mutual unspoken agreement they backed away silently without even rustling the grass. They turned south-east and went on walking.

"He'd spend the next week apologizing and I'd wind up hitting him," Sanzou said at last. "He already says 'sumimasen' too much. Gets on my nerves."

"Mh," Kougaiji said. "She's tried seppuku at least once before. Oh yes- you were there. I've told her not to do it again, but you know what warriors are."

"Pig-headed," Sanzou agreed. "Bad grasp of reality."

"I wouldn't put it that way," Kougaiji said, taking obscure offence on Yaone's behalf. "They just live in a different reality."

"A different illusion," Sanzou said with asperity.

"Different from the illusion you live in?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Everyone has something they want to believe in, something bigger than themselves. Yaone's honour is what gives meaning to Yaone's life. What right have you to pass judgment on its value? You have your own illusions keeping you alive, or else you'd be dead."

"Crap. I live because I'm alive and I have no illusions about that at all."

"Because you're alive? That's the only reason?"

"What more reason would I need?"

"Possibly none." The youkai's mouth crooked disdainfully. "But sheer force of habit seems a bad reason to get out of bed in the morning."

"Hmp. What gets you out of bed then?"

"There's something I need to accomplish, and it involves sending you lot back where you came from."

"You miss your father so much?"

Kougaiji said nothing.

"That isn't it, is it?" Sanzou went on. "The first time we met, back in that town, you left without settling the matter because you didn't want the locals to be involved. Very commendable. But I had to ask myself, if Prince Kougaiji is so tender of the welfare of the human race, why does he want to bring his father back-- the youkai who'd have wiped us humans from the face of the earth?"

The silence went on.

"You aren't going to tell me?"

"My reasons are mine," Kougaiji said. "They don't concern you. But there are greater goods that transcend the smaller, and that's why I'm-- helping to bring him back. In the meantime, there's no reason to kill innocents unnecessarily."

"Very merciful. 'I'll give you people a few more months to enjoy your lives before my father has you for dinner.'"

"I make my decisions and I take the responsibility for them," Kougaiji said. "But I don't murder for the fun of it, as you do."

"I kill to protect myself. Since you will keep on sending agents out to kill us."

"Is that what you tell yourself? Then I suppose that's what you believe. But I'll tell you one thing, Genjou Sanzou, the thing that any youkai can sense about you. You smell of death."

Sanzou shrugged. "No surprise. I can't count the number of your followers I've killed."

"That's not what I meant. Your hands could be totally clean of blood and you'd smell the same way."

"You're raving. Do you even know what you're talking about?"

"I know. You humans grow your deaths inside of you. Your young ones have very small deaths, tiny and hard to discern. Older people have larger ones, that begin to show on the outside. And the very oldest of you have a death that's almost larger than they are. When your deaths grow big enough and ripen, you die. You seem to be young in years, but the death you carry within you is enormous. It's almost reached its full fruition, and soon it will have you entirely."

"You wish."

Kougaiji shrugged. "What's that saying you have? 'Talking to him is like praying into a horse's ear'?"

"And I hear tell that youkai smoke narcotics instead of tobacco. Listening to you, I can believe it."

The forest was yielding to pine trees, and the ground underfoot had become easier to walk on, carpeted in many years' layering of needles. The need to keep one's eyes fixed downwards was gone, and they both walked faster, irritation adding to their speed.

"I knew you humans were arrogant, but you surpass them all," Kougaiji said, hands thrust angrily into the pockets of his silk jacket. "Anything that you don't want to hear, you dismiss as hallucination. And when that hallucination kills you, I suppose you'll deny that you're dead?"

"You're the one who thinks men can't live without illusion," Sanzou retorted. "And you hug your illusions to you like a child with its toy. The wise prince Kougaiji, concerned leader, conscientious brother, devoted son. Where would you be without him? What would happen to you if you freed your followers and your family of the need to feed that image? If you stopped leeching like a vampire off their love and their loyalty--"

"Enough!" Kougaiji roared. "Who are you to talk? Why do you think your men follow you?"

"They don't follow me. They're travelling with me because that's what we were ordered to do by my masters. I don't need them and I'd be a hell of a lot happier if they'd just disappear, but I wasn't given a choice."

"You have no attachments to them? They've taken no oaths to you?"

"I have no attachments to anyone, and of course they've taken no oaths to me. Don't be stupid."

"Then kill them."

"What?"
"They're in your way. They impede your course. You have no attachment to them but the gods have loaded them on you. Kill them."

"One of these days, I will."

"You talk a lot, monk. How often have you said that, and what comes of it? Wind and air."

"You talk a lot, Prince. How often have you sworn to bring down the Sanzou-tachi? And what comes of that? Wind and farts."

"You--" Kougaiji said thickly, but even as he spoke sound came through the trees up ahead. Sanzou's head and Kougaiji's jerked forward, and they moved as one in that direction.

"Jan-ken-PON," the voices said in unison as they approached the little clearing where a campfire burned brightly. "Ai-kou-deshou! Ai-kou-deshou! Ai-kou-deshou! Ai-kou-deshou!"- desperation beginning as each round ended in a tie. "Ai-Kou-DESHOU!!"

"I won!!" Gokuu yelled.

"Hennnh. That's cause I let you," Lirin sulked.

"What are you two doing!?" Kougaiji demanded as he strode into the firelight.

"Nii-san!" Lirin blanched.

"Sanzouuu..." Gokuu moaned, eyes huge as Sanzou stalked in behind Kougaiji.

"Time for all good children to be in bed," Sanzou said tightly, with the spark of anger in his eyes that Gokuu knew so well. "Is this what you do when I'm not there to keep an eye on you? Brainless ape!" and he whacked Gokuu upside the head with his harisen. Gokuu cringed, arms up.

"Sanzou, I--" Oh God, how do I talk my way out of this one?

"You've been here all along?" Kougaiji was asking, towering above his sister. "With him??!"

"Ahhh- uhh-"

"Are you out of your mind?! What the hell do you think you're playing at?"

Oh God, he's mad. Just cause it's one of Sanzou's...

"I'm not a kid, Nii-san! You always treat me like a kid just cause I'm small, and I'm tired of it!"

"I treat you like a child because you act like a child. Have you forgotten what you were supposed to be doing here?"

Unh? He doesn't care that I'm half undressed? "B-but I did look for the youkai, Nii-san. I looked all over. And I couldn't find any, so..."

"So you lit a fire to draw the attention of any men in these woods and roasted some chestnuts to draw the attention of any monkeys in these woods- and spent the rest of your time playing janken with the monkey who showed up, yes!?" Kougaiji roared. "Fool! Will you never learn?!"

"Uhh- ahh-" Lirin sat dumbfounded, staring up at her brother.

"Hey-" Gokuu said, distracted from his own dilemma. "Who're you calling a monkey?"

"You," Sanzou snarled, and thwacked him again. "Can't you keep your shiftless ape-mind on one thing for five minutes? You're supposed to be patrolling, not playing janken for chestnuts!!"

"Enh- uhh-" Gokuu stared at Sanzou. He thinks it's normal for me to be half-naked?

"Put your shirt back on," Kougaiji commanded, hustling Lirin into it. "It's cold out there."

"And you get dressed," Sanzou said, kicking Gokuu's clothes at him. "Building a fire like that-- It's a good thing you didn't burn the whole forest down."

"I- uhh-" Gokuu got his shirt on. "But Sanzou- I was cold--"

"Baka!"

"And hungry!!"

"Shut up!" Sanzou shoved Gokuu's tunic over his head.

"But I was starving, Sanzou," Gokuu said, head emerging through the opening. "I'd be dead now if I hadn't met Lirin-"

"Good riddance."

"But Sanzou--"

"Let me go," Lirin said petulantly as Kougaiji did up her buttons. "I was fine. I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself."

"Baka!" Kougaiji said, at the edge of his patience. "Where are your earrings? You know you're not supposed to take them off, ever. What on earth were you thinking of?"

"I don't like them. They keep getting tangled in my hair and pulling my ears."

"Then I'll get you some studs. But for now you keep these on, understood?! You need their protection." Kougaiji was pushing them into Lirin's earlobes while she squealed

"I don't need protection. I can protect myself. And anyway, Gokuu was with me. There'd be two of us if anyone came along."

"You wouldn't have heard them even, you were making so much noise together."

"Uhh- yeah. Well. Sorry."

Gokuu adjusted his cape. "OK, OK. I'm dressed now. Stop hitting me, Sanzou."

"Hmph. Now come on. We're going to collect the others and leave."

"Leave? But--"

"But what?" Sanzou asked in no friendly tone.

"But there's all these chestnuts left still--"

"BAKA!"

"But Sanzouuu," Gokuu whined. "I don't wanna go tramping all over the woods looking for Gojou and Hakkai. I'm hungry. I'll finish my nuts and just go straight back to the jeep, OK?"

"Yeah!" Lirin moved onto the offensive. "We were having fun and you came and interrupted us. It's warm here with the fire and it's cold out there in the woods, Nii-san, I don't want to go wandering all over looking for Doku Nii-san and Yaone-san in the dark, I'll stay here with Gokuu and finish dinner and meet you at the peak in an hour, OK?"

"Not OK," Sanzou and Kougaiji snapped.

"But Sanzouuu-"

"But Nii-saaan-"

"Quiet!" Kougaiji and Sanzou yelled, then turned their heads to glare at each other, as if blaming the other for echoing him.

"On second thought," Sanzou said, recovering, "do we want to have them whinging at us for the next half hour? Frankly I don't think I can take it."

Kougaiji frowned deeply at Lirin. "There's that. But I don't know now that I trust you in these woods alone. I thought you had more sense than you've shown tonight."

"I'll go with her if you like," Gokuu offered. "Drop her off on my way to the jeep."

"If you're late we're leaving without you," Sanzou said.

"Yeah, yeah. I won't be late. Don't worry. You go off and get the others and I'll see you in thirty minutes."

"How do you know when that'll be?" Sanzou asked.

Gokuu favoured him with a contemptuous look. "When the moon is over there," he said, pointing to the exact spot where the moon would be in half an hour. Sanzou concealed annoyance.

"Fine," he said.

Kougaiji hesitated. "If you're not there in time I'm coming back to get you," he said to Lirin. "And you'll stay inside the castle for the next month."

"Honestly," Lirin said. "You're not my father."

"Until you've got a father, I'm the one who looks after you," Kougaiji said grimly. "Unless you want Gyokumen Kyoushu to decide when and where you spend your time."

Lirin subsided. "OK," she said.

Sanzou and Kougaiji gave them a long dubious look. Then, resigned, they turned and left the clearing. Behind them, shrill on the misty air, came the voices "Jan-ken-pon! Ai-ko-deshou! Ai-ko--"

After several minutes, Sanzou said, "Think they'll ever grow up?"

"Taking their time about it."

"Nice for them to be able to afford to," Sanzou said disgruntled. "The only advantage I can see to being youkai is that you don't die after sixty years."

"Do you?"

"Of course."

"I mean you, the Sanzous. They say your flesh confers immortality. Doesn't that mean--"

"Nice to still believe in fairytales," Sanzou mused. "It grows old and dies just like anyone else's. Soon, if I'm to believe you. And before you get any ideas about making it even sooner, let me tell you that it doesn't confer anything on youkai but indigestion."

"Rest easy," Kougaiji said. "I wouldn't touch that sour meat of yours if I was starving."

"Sour?"

"Sour. That drug you smoke. It gets into your skin."

"Youkai have good noses. It's true about the animals then?"

"Dokugaku uses it too," Kougaiji said, ignoring the barb. "I've forbidden him to bring the damned things into my presence."

"Dokugaku," Sanzou said thoughtfully. "Who's he when he's at home?"

"My personal retainer. You've met him."

"I've met him. He doesn't look like one of your youkai aristocrats."

"He isn't. A rolling stone that turned up at the palace six years back. I liked the look of him and took him on."

"Just like that? Trusting, aren't you?'

"Just like that. I know quality when I see it."

"No ructions?" Sanzou asked, curious. "Gyuumaoh's son takes on a nobody and gives him the place of honour at his side? I'd have thought that would put a few noses out of joint."

Kougaiji shrugged. "No ructions. They're used to my ways."

"No talk?"

"What kind of talk could there be?"

"What kind do you think? The prince is never without this big good-looking guy at his side. With us, that would mean something."

Kougaiji frowned. "What it means is that youkai aristocrats live and breathe intrigue. I need someone who knows all the antidotes at my table during the day, and someone who's good with a sword by my bed at night. The nobility have all been suborned to one side or another by the time they're five. That's why the nobodies. They're safer."

Sanzou remembered the vendettas and jealousies of the monastery and grimaced. "We're not as lethal," he said, "but the mindset is the same." And nice if he could shut the other monks up about Gokuu the way Kougaiji had apparently shut his retainers up about Doku. "Aren't we getting into the southern quadrant? Where the hell's Gojou?"

"If the pattern holds, he's probably with Doku. Wonder what they've found to do together?"

"If the pattern holds, they'll be wasting their time somehow."

As it happened they were able to hear the voices, loud and happy, long before they saw their owners through the trees. Dokugakuji and Gojou were sitting side by side, apparently swapping dirty stories, with a couple of beer cans crumpled in the grass beside them and the pungent reek of marijuana in the air. Kougaiji stopped. Sanzou stopped.

"What'd I say?" Sanzou murmured.

"If he doesn't realize we're here inside thirty seconds, he's out of my service," Kougaiji said after a moment.

"Give him a break," Sanzou answered, though he was thinking I'll kill the drunken asshole. "He has his reasons."

"For fraternizing with the enemy when he's on patrol?"

"I'd bet that's 'fraternizing' literally."

"Hm?"

"He's Gojou's brother, is my guess."

"Gojou's--"

"Sa Jien. I suppose you didn't know?"

After a moment Kougaiji said, "That's not Sa Jien. Sa Jien was a monster who killed his own mother. I passed sentence of outlawry on him myself. To be slain on sight without sanction against the slayer. He's dead."

"Dead, is he?"

"Very dead," Kougaiji said.

"Dead as that other murderer Cho Gonou?"

"Dead as him."

Sanzou grunted. "So, do we go break up that party?"

"Drag them back to work? You think they're in any state for it now?"

"Depends on the work you have in mind, I suppose." Sanzou sounded disgruntled.

"So?" Surely Sanzou couldn't be thinking the same thing he was thinking. "It might put them more in the mood for it, I'd have thought."

"More likely make them total limp-dicks."

Kougaiji winced at the vulgarity. Still, no doubt now. "You too?" he asked, not quite believing it.

Sanzou shrugged. "Snake knows viper."

"I wondered. Somehow-- I thought it was just us that did."

Sanzou's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Where've you been all your life?"
"I was shackled in a cell for most of it," Kougaiji reminded him.

"Hmph. Spent your time better than some I can think of," Sanzou allowed.

"I was older than him when I went in, probably."

"Mh. He wasn't much more than a kid. Isn't much more than that now."

"Is that why you don't-- Sorry. Not my business." He turned away.

"Who says I don't?" Sanzou asked.

"You do?" Kougaiji jerked back in surprise.

"No." Pleased by the youkai's flush of annoyance, he added placidly, "A kid. Energy and no technique. Why would I?"

"Thought you had a taste for that." Kougaiji turned a meaningful eye towards the red-haired figure in the open. Sanzou's mouth twitched in irritation.

"Don't you? They're brothers after all."

"Half-brothers. It makes a difference."

"Still pretty rough and ready, I'd judge."

"You don't have anything to judge by," Kougaiji said, trumping him. "And if it's refinement you want, there's--" He nodded back in the direction they'd first come from.

"If it's refinement I want, there's you."

Shock tingled Kougaiji's nerves. "There is?" .he said disdainfully, to cover it. Then he looked at Sanzou more thoughtfully. "Well, maybe there is at that... What do you think?"

They considered each other. "I think-- not," Sanzou said at last.

Kougaiji flushed in anger. "And why not?"

"For the same reason as not--" Sanzou nodded in the same direction as Kougaiji had. "I'd have to do all the work."

Kougaiji looked at him a long moment, and an amazing smile spread across his face. "That's what it is, isn't it?"

"Pure laziness," Sanzou agreed.

"Hey, boooe-zew!" Gojou's voice called across the night. "When're you two gonna come out and join the party? We been waitin' for ya to finish saying those sweet nothings to each oth-- OW!!" The tall youkai had smacked his head, hard.

"Pity Sa Jien is dead," Sanzou said sotto voce as they walked forward. "Older brothers have their uses."

The youkai got to his feet with a small smile for his prince. He didn't look at Sanzou. "There's not much beer left," he said, and held out a can.

"This is your idea of patrolling, of course?" Kougaiji asked him, taking it.

"I was looking for the enemy and I found him," Dokugaku grinned.

"And subdued him by getting him drunk." Sanzou sat down abruptly on the grass. "Innovative."

"'M not drunk," Gojou said, from his position flat on his back. "Just happy."

"And doped," Sanzou said acerbically. Kougaiji gave his man a glance as they sat. Dokugaku returned it levelly. Practically stone-cold sober. Kougaiji permitted himself a moment's smug satisfaction and took a sip of his beer.

"Are you"Are you even going to be able to walk to the jeep?" Sanzou was asking snottily.

"'M not asking you to carry me on your back," Gojou sniggered. Sanzou pulled his gun and took aim. "Hey, hey. Just a joke there." He pulled himself up sitting. "You find any youkai in your part of the woods?"

"Just him," nodding at Kougaiji.

"Hakkai?"

"The same, evidently."

"Gokuu?"

Sanzou grimaced. "Don't ask."

"Monkey, huh?"

"Monkey. Other things on his mind."

Gojou grinned lasciviously. "Like what?"

"Food."

"Oh."

"Heennnhh. Quiet night," Dokugakuji saidin a low voice to Kou.

"Let it stay that way," Kougaiji said, putting the can down still half-full. He glanced at the moon. "We have to be going. Lirin will be waiting for

us."

"Mh." Doku got to his feet. He looked down at Gojou, an unreadable glance. "Take care."

"You say that to all your enemies?" Sanzou inquired.

"Yup. Take care to stay out of my way."

Sanzou snorted. Gojou grinned good-naturedly at the tall youkai and his prince. He flipped a hand up. "So long, guys. See ya."

Kougaiji nodded at Sanzou, not unfriendly. Then he turned and headed into the forest, Dokugaku walking a pace behind.

"Alright, sot," Sanzou said to Gojou. "On your feet. We have to get back to the jeep."

"What's got your knickers in a knot?" Gojou asked, getting up lazily.

"You drunk and doped like a cross-eyed idiot."

"You know your trouble, Sanzou? You don't ever relax."

"I've got a job to do, and I'm trying to do it with three empty-headed children dragging at my feet."

"Oh, sorry for being a child, Sanzou-sama. OK OK, I'm coming. Man, you sure know how to ruin an evening."

"Shut up," Sanzou said, "and walk."

MJJ

Nov.2000-April 2001