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Arc F1.9 | Chapter 29: Keep That Girl Close

✮ ✮ ✮ A Little While Ago ✮ ✮ ✮Jin’kori was taking too long.

Was the Inner Court a giant, gaping thing that could really benefit from some sort of fast-travel system, like Baalphoria’s exitlines? Yes. Unfortunately, the Inner Court was the sort of place where ever changed.

Seriously, until the recent death of the ryohua’taiyung, the biggest shift to happen even within the of the Inner Court in the last decade and a half was Yujao finding a home for himself within the Inner Court—and within its most powerful faction, no less—had been . The biggest thing to happen before that? Emilia. Before that? Hurinren. Before that? The birth of the princess.

Four people—four fucking people were what had changed in the last fortyish years. Sure, there had been a handful of marriages, too many births to count; none of those people had made any true impact on the Inner Court. Generally, Yujao didn’t know what to do with these facts. There was a slowness to change and then there was whatever the fuck the sludge-like pace of change in the Inner Court was. It was a contrast to the life he had lived on the street, where people came and went days at a time. One day someone would be there, new to the area; the next, they would be a new crime lord, then, Boom! Dead. Vanished. Pregnant with the baby of another crime lord they were somehow at war with.

This was all to say nothing of the lack of change that happened physically within the Inner Court—within the architecture and layout and decor and internal mechanisms of the place. When it came to those sorts of changes… well, honestly, Yujao was amazed that the machine meant to repeatedly sent out xphern messages had even been dismantled. According to Meeho Kun’sai, the dismantling had even been relatively fast: it had only taken a decade to garner enough support to have the machines decommissioned and stored away. This was impressively fast for the Inner Court, where just approving the smallest of repairs to the bloody front gates sometimes took years.

A few years back, the nose of one of the animals carved into it had fallen off. Easy enough to fix, considering the Inner Court contained so much ancient and degrading artwork that there were multiple rongdo dedicated to housing the various artisans. Somehow, discussions about fixing the poor noseless creature had taken years. It still wasn’t fixed because the person the council had decided should fix it had died a few days later. It had been sudden; Yujao wasn’t convinced someone hadn’t killed them. Regardless, back to the council the issue went, along with another list of candidates for repairing the door.

There were no new additions to the list of candidates. There had been two potential candidates by the end of those original council meetings. Yujao didn’t understand why the other potential candidate hadn’t been given the job by default; he’d even read through the council’s minutes, trying to determine if half of the council had hated this other candidate and loved the other. It would have made sense, were both options in such contentious positions, a single vote casting favour onto the now-dead candidate they eventually chose—that would potentially explain why someone might have murdered them, after all.

But, no, that wasn’t the case; they council members had loved both candidates, and while Yujao understood that there was an art to lying and spinning webs of truth and deception in the Inner Court, he didn’t think that was the case here. If more than two people on that council of hundreds actually hated either of those final two candidates, Yujao would be shocked, and it was so, so, stupid that the council had taken the consultation and negotiations for a small break on the front gates all the way back to the beginning, rather than just giving it to the other, final candidate.

The worst thing? That other top candidate was also old! A couple years from now, she might be dead as well! Then! They’d have to go all the way back to the beginning! Didn’t those council members have better things to do?

Hurinren muttered from beside Yujao where he was reading through the various chats, keeping them updated on the situation in Lüshan while listening to Yujao babble about the state of change in their home. Mostly, it was a distraction from the reality that the situation Emilia and her friends had found themselves in was, to put it lightly, a mess. his boyfriend continued, and Yujao knew that. Hurinren knew that Yujao knew that. Hurinren was just trying to annoy him, probably in some attempt to make him explode at so that when Jin’kori actually showed up Yujao didn’t bite her head off.

Seriously, as much as the Inner Court was huge and travelling across it took an inane amount of time, it should not have taken long for the rumai'se to reach them, and was wrong.

Yujao said, plucking his xphern off the table, where it had sat open so Yujao could similarly keep abreast of the situation their friends were in. Messy, messy, messy.

his boyfriend said, accepting a forehead kiss from Yujao before he scurried out of the room.

Meeho Kun’sai asked in the moments before the door slid shut behind Yujao—one of three doors, all closed in order to be sure that no one could linger in the liminal spaces between and eavesdrop of them. When each door opened or closed, a small piece of the decor shifted within each connecting space, alerting occupants who knew where the mechanisms were that someone was either coming for them or attempting to overhear private conversations. The indicators were small, knowledge of them passed down along by patrons and lovers, parents and teachers.

Yujao had noticed such mechanisms without needing to be told, way back when he was a child being brought before the gorankai—who used a similar system to secure their own offices—for the first time. Generally, people didn’t want to attract the attention of the gorankai; Yujao had purposefully garnered it.

His mother had been sick, and he had needed the money to get her medicine. Between crime and prostitution, he had chosen to try his hand at the former before defaulting to the latter. Of course, even small as he had been, Yujao had known that his home’s crime lord might send him to be a child prostitute anyways. Later, he would learn that the gorankai didn’t prostitute children unless they had already been prostituted—either by someone else or their own desperation— they indicated that they wanted to continue within the profession.

the gorankai had told Emilia over a decade later, when Yujao had suddenly found himself her friend. The gorankai had swept a hand over the sprawling district they ruled, poor and stinking, towards the outer edges, where the highest class prostitutes lived and served.

With her Censor, Emilia had been able to see them: the common people’s politicians and people of power slipping into those places. Some were there for consenting adults, of course. Others swept towards the buildings that yielded to specific needs, some legal but questionable in their ethics or safety, others quite illegal. Here were these people of power—people who crafted the laws that made those things illegal, both for reasons of true concern and reasons of cruel control, who tugged prostitutes who offered those services before courts and had them punished for simply trying to survive within the cruel world of Dion’s uncountable slums—using their influence to abuse the laws they happily pressed down on everyone else.

Without effort, Emilia had begun rattling off names of dozens of locals who had either turned up dead in the last decade or had been making some… questionable decisions on what they were going to vote for or fund within government and business.

Emilia had concluded.

the gorankai had supplied, answering Emilia’s many questions about their operations—making sure every prostitute, those both young and old, were never forced, knew there were other options, could get out whenever they wanted. Many left; many more stayed, knowing that spreading their legs would allow the gorankai to garner more and more influence amongst the politicians stupid enough to be photographed in the middle of such illegal and immoral activities. It was a power for the prostitutes themselves, in a way, the fate of the city resting on their ability to pull people of power to them.

the gorankai had said later, Yujao remaining behind while Emilia was escorted through the streets by one of their organization’s top officers. Yujao still wasn’t sure if Emilia knew how influential the young man who had accompanied her was, her cheeks pinking over because that man had always been quite pretty—too old for Emilia under either of their nation’s laws, but that hadn’t stopped her from looking.

There was a reason why, despite the complication of it, the gorankai was quietly helping to garner information for Emilia and her friend, slipping through the streets and asking for information on the criminals in Falmíer and for any information about the governmental factions popping up. With how separate their nations were, there was little information to be found; still, they didn’t stop asking around.

Yujao had admitted.

Most people didn’t blankly accept letting children have their autonomy in making such painful decisions about the way their life would lay out before them. Yes, those children helped to shape the city through the use of their bodies, giving the gorankai leverage to demand this or that from everyone who dared touch them. Several years before, that leverage had been used to force a high-powered executive to lobby the government for better schools in the area—he wanted more cheap workers, but he also needed them to be at least better educated; therefore, the schools in the slums got better. Those children that man had indulged in had bought themselves and their friends better futures, and when he had asked them whether they regretted it, none of them had.

one of those children, by then a preteen who had removed themself from the profession because the gorankai never forced anyone to play a specific role for them, had replied.

Yujao did know—he now spent the majority of his time pretending to be flighty and stupid, all so he and his friends could have brighter futures, all so that the cokrina of the Inner Court couldn’t slip poison needles or knives into their flesh. It wasn’t the same as what those children had given up—what people all through the slums that spanned the continent continued to give up—but it was a small sacrifice of himself for the greater good.

the gorankai had asked, turning towards Yujao, their long black hair pooling beneath them. It was impractical, but a representation of their power: the gorankai had no need to do more than wander their chambers and offices and give the smallest of orders, their heir handling most of their business; therefore, what need did they have for sensible hair or clothing?

Of course, this was all a front—the gorankai regularly tied their hair up and slipped into such boring clothing that no one would ever recognize them, all so they could meander through the streets, picking up gossip and intel as they moved.

Yujao had asked, then only vaguely aware of the organization because Emilia was always babbling about her clone friends, while Grenner, who had been quietly trailing them, had required special permission from the gorankai to follow them into the slums.

In the decade and a half since, Yujao had learned that several nations had quite high standards of proof when it came to crimes of various sorts. In Lu Ros, the testimony of children was considered meaningless, while obtaining physical proof of sexual abuse—regardless of the victim’s age and consent—was illegal and releasing any medical information to the courts required parental or spousal consent. In other words, regardless of age, unless someone was abused in public or by a stranger, the chances of receiving justice was effectively non-existent.

Several members of their coren’taz were from Lu Ros, and their opinions on the issue differed so much that they had effectively had to forbid discussions of having to do with Lu Rosi politics and laws from their get-togethers—and the fact that the Lu Rosi heir to the throne seemed to believe these laws were

Well, it was fortunate for Averiana that Emilia had never found out about her beliefs, having not been at that particular get-together, while Yujao had been removed from the room by Hurinren. Yujao wanted to tell Emilia; Hurinren and several others thought it pointless and just asking for problems: there was no way Emilia wouldn’t tell her father, and then, he would be stuck having to interact with the Lu Rosi government and royal family knowing that, at the very least, their heir was a horrible little bitch.

the gorankai who had only just met Emilia and had near instantly been drawn into her orbit had continued, watching Yujao and waiting for him to make the connections he had always been so good at plucking from reality.

Emilia, who looked so young and was so impossibly loved by The Black Knot and their clones.

A small laugh had leaked out of the gorankai.

Yes, Yujao supposed, that was exactly what sort of person Emilia was: someone sweet and stupid who would be rather upset if one of her friends vanished into the abyss of Lüshan’s cave system—a cave system that had been partially responsible for helping her friends find.

Seriously, where the fuck was Jin’kori?