A moment later, Kobe Hikaru stepped out of the shrine on the top floor of the castle keep and onto the outer gallery.
Night wind poured into his sleeves and stirred his pale long hair. He simply stood there under the eaves, in no hurry to go.
The conversation was still replaying in his head.
Taigen Sessai's request — he had neither accepted nor refused it.
Saying he would do what he could had been the truth, all the same.
Whatever else was true, Imagawa Yoshimoto was now one of his most important partners.
The arrangement across the three provinces, the offerings out of Suruga, the placement of the Twenty-Three Demons, the expedition of the five-thousand-strong fleet — every one of them rested on the framework of cooperation with the Imagawa clan.
Imagawa power far outstripped Hojo power.
The Hojo had given him the standing of a true god and Musashi Province. The Imagawa gave him real resources, real troops, and the name and faith that came with offerings.
Two legs to walk on. He could not spare either one.
And set beside the Hojo, who liked their safe corner and wanted nothing more than mastery of Kanto, Kobe Hikaru leaned toward the Imagawa… his enemies were not confined to Kanto.
If Imagawa Yoshimoto died, the loss to him would not be small.
And Okehazama — how long from now was that?
Reckoning from the historical knowledge he had carried over from before, the battle of Okehazama had happened in the year 1560.
He was not entirely certain what year it was now, but there was at least some stretch of time left.
Enough time, too, for him to grow to a point where most human armies would not frighten him.
When that day came, giving Imagawa Yoshimoto a hand would cost him nothing at all.
Provided — it did not endanger himself.
If, when that day arrived, he was facing a larger threat — Hagoromo-Gitsune, Muzan, or something else — then he would put himself and Kikyo first.
Taigen Sessai understood that much as well.
When she said it was enough, there had been no expectation in those eyes. Only calm.
The calm of someone already dying.
As for changing history… honestly, he had been changing history from the first day he arrived.
The changeover of Uesugi Kenshin had not reversed the larger current, but the details had shifted.
Inuyasha's death was proof enough of that.
Butterfly effects were everywhere. Every step he took ground the original course to pieces.
Would Okehazama still unfold the way history said? Was Oda Nobunaga even alive?
What was the situation over in Owari?
He didn't know.
He wasn't worried either.
Hesitating and second-guessing would only cost him the unbridled nature that belonged to a demonic fiend.
Besides, all of that was a matter for later.
Right now —
Kobe Hikaru's train of thought broke off.
Not right now. Right below him… several floors down inside the castle keep where he stood, toward the main hall, something was rippling.
Spiritual power.
Faint, but distinct.
Not Kikyo's spiritual power — hers was a deep pool, remote and still, familiar to him by now down to the level of instinct.
Nor was it like any spiritual power he could sense through that so-called spirit-sight and Spiritual Intuition gift he had bestowed at a distance by way of the Shikon Jewel.
This spiritual power was naturally weaker than Kikyo's.
A good deal weaker.
But a little stronger than Tsubaki's.
Not by much — and yet Tsubaki had come out of the Tahoto, which made her a prodigy among shrine maidens in her own right.
In other words, if the owner of this spiritual power was young, then she was very likely a prodigy as well.
And its purity was extreme, carrying a sense of… an orthodox, distinguished school.
Yes. Exactly that — orthodox and well-bred.
If he had to find a comparison — the spiritual power of shrine maidens, Kikyo included, was like a wild spring, natural and unshaped.
This one was like temple water run through filter after filter and regulation after regulation. Clean. Orderly.
"So this is an onmyoji, from the Onmyoryo in Kyoto?"
Only an onmyoji felt like this — using spiritual power the way a shrine maiden did, but relying on far more spell formulas to transform it.
In a single instant, Kobe Hikaru had his answer.
He remembered the matter both Hojo Ujiyasu and Imagawa Yoshimoto had mentioned — the Kyoto Onmyoryo was preparing an imperial decree that would grant the daimyo of every region the authority to establish their own onmyo offices and carry out exorcism at their own discretion.
Behind that decree lay Kyoto's answer to demonic fiends running wild across the land.
It was also a sideways devolution of power in response to Uesugi Kenshin's earlier march south under the banner of "purging yokai" —
But what was the deeper purpose of the decree?
Did it have to do with Hagoromo-Gitsune?
With the Shikon Jewel?
A great yokai lay coiled beneath Kyoto itself. There was no chance the Onmyoryo knew nothing about it, and they had chosen this precise moment to issue a decree and send out an envoy.
Kobe Hikaru did not believe the two were unrelated.
So he did not leave.
The crimson oni mask dissolved from his face without a sound, and his pale features sank into the shadow beneath the eaves.
Blood mist spread out from under his feet, a layer thinner than paper, seeping downward along the wooden bones of the keep.
Blood became his eyes, and his perception unfurled.
Spreading down toward the main hall below.
The hall was broad, floored with dark tatami, and the lamps on the two rows of iron stands filled the space with light.
Imagawa Yoshimoto sat straight-backed at the head of it.
Her junihitoe of interwoven deep purple and gold looked especially splendid in the lamplight. Layer upon layer of fabric spilled from her shoulders, lending her sixteen- or seventeen-year-old frame a stateliness that did not belong to that age.
Her dark brown hair was gathered into a knot behind her head, a few loose strands hanging by her ears and catching the light.
Her right hand held the folding fan painted with pines and cranes, closed, resting on her knee.
Her expression was composed.
The textbook bearing of a province's ruler receiving a guest from outside.
Seated across from her was another young woman.
Very young. She looked a year or two younger even than Imagawa Yoshimoto.
She wore standard onmyoji dress: a white kariginu with a deep black hitatare over it, and a haori across her shoulders embroidered with a pentagram crest.
Her hair was dark chestnut, falling to her waist, bound loosely with a black cord; several strands had slipped free of the knot to lie against the sides of her neck.
Her face could be called pretty, though not the kind that stuns at a glance — small, even features, a nose neither high nor low, thin lips, a chin slightly pointed.
Only her eyes were large.
Large to the point of being out of proportion.
Their colour was an extremely pale amber, near transparent in the lamplight, as though holding a film of honey.
At the moment those eyes were darting everywhere — up to the crossbeams of the ceiling, over to the vase in the corner, across to the gorgeous robes of Imagawa Yoshimoto opposite her — anywhere at all so long as it was not Imagawa Yoshimoto's face.
On her knees lay a bamboo scroll, tied with a vermilion cord, and from the knot of the cord hung a bronze plaque engraved with a pentagram and a sun-and-moon mark.
The official token of the Onmyoryo.
Imagawa Yoshimoto studied the fidgeting girl onmyoji before her and tapped her fan twice against her knee.
"So—"
Yoshimoto spoke, her voice neither hurried nor slow. "The Onmyoryo's own, the current Walker of the Tsuchimikado house, came all the way from Kyoto to Suruga in person — simply to deliver me an imperial decree?"
"Y-yes! That's right!"
The girl onmyoji straightened her spine, her voice clear but strung tight with nerves.
"Lord Onmyo no Kami has instructed me to convey the following — the Kyoto Onmyoryo formally authorizes the daimyo of every province to establish local onmyo offices and to deal with matters of demonic fiends within their domains at their own discretion. This is the original of the decree. Please examine it, Lord Imagawa."
She held the bamboo scroll out in both hands.
Imagawa Yoshimoto did not take it.
The handle of the fan rapped once against the tatami.
"What is your name?"
"Tsuchimikado Miyu!"
The girl answered fast, like a pupil reciting a lesson.
"Daughter of Tsuchimikado Hisanaga, head of the Onmyoryo and Onmyo no Kami. Currently apprentice onmyoji of the Onmyoryo, dispatched by order as envoy to the Tokaido—"
"That will do."
Yoshimoto cut her off.
The folding fan spread open, hiding half her face.
Behind it, her gaze was taking measure.
Tsuchimikado.
That surname carried no less weight in Kyoto than the name Imagawa carried in Suruga.
The Tsuchimikado were the house that held the reins of the Onmyoryo.
A distinguished line of onmyoji running unbroken since the age of Abe no Seimei, they governed the entire onmyodo system of the Eastern Isles — divination, exorcism, the calendar, astronomy, geomancy, all of it under their authority.
Only one other house, the Keikain, could contend with them at all, and even they fell far short.
In an age where gods, buddhas, yokai and demonic fiends lived side by side, the authority of the Tsuchimikado surpassed that of a fair number of daimyo.
And the Onmyoryo, as an organ answering directly to the Kyoto court — though the wars had shrunk its power drastically — still held exorcism techniques and onmyo arts that no daimyo in any province could afford to overlook.
This was, after all, an age in which demonic fiends truly existed.
And an institution like that had sent an apprentice onmyoji to deliver a decree.
An apprentice who was also the head of the house's own daughter.
Imagawa Yoshimoto looked at the girl in front of her, who could not even hold a steady seated posture.
She knew this would not be so simple a matter.
"Tsuchimikado Miyu."
Yoshimoto said the name again, and her tone had changed from idle to formal. "I will accept the decree. But before that — there is something I want to ask you."
"P-please, ask."
"The Onmyoryo didn't send you merely to deliver a decree, did they."
Tsuchimikado Miyu's big eyes blinked twice.
Something unnatural crept into those transparent amber pupils. "…There is one more thing."
She lowered her head, and her voice grew small.
"Lord Onmyo no Kami says that within Kanto there is… something requiring attention. An, um, anomalous yokai aura reading."
"He hopes Lord Imagawa will cooperate with the Onmyoryo's investigation."
An anomalous yokai aura reading.
Those words hung in the hall for three full seconds.
Imagawa Yoshimoto's fan snapped shut.
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