The Third Crossing

18. The Court

A month's ban from entering Sun Castle. From wielding jumuns. From donning the pink cloak. That was Akira's punishment.

Going to his mother's house was not an option. She would never understand why her dear son was not allowed to wander the streets of Oyoto wearing the prestigious attire of mages, the devoted soldiers of the Light in His holy war. She would never understand why the guards at the gate of Sun Castle would not let her son enter their sacred headquarters.

She would never understand that the War of the Last Day was a lie.

Akira took a carriage to the city, where he would hop off at the door of the first tavern he would come across. However, the sight of the Shrine of the Dead perched on a nearby hill tempted him to make a slight change in his plans for today. That cup of ale he was yearning for could wait a couple of hours.

To Akira's astonishment, the bald monk—the one Akira had briefly chattered with on Lan's funeral—was standing at the entrance of the shrine when Akira clambered down the carriage. A loud harrumph from the coachman brought to Akira's attention that he should do something he had never done before: pay in coin for a service he had received. Who could imagine that one day he would miss the very pink cloak he had always despised?

"Believe me, I'm a mage," Akira told the coachman, feeling his empty pockets. "You saw me come out from Sun Castle."

"Believe me, I need to eat," the coachman countered.

Akira should have thought this through before deciding not to go back to his mother's house. While he was wondering how to get out of this ridiculous situation, the monk sauntered in his loose robe toward the coachman, and put the fare in the hand of the furious man. The coachman nodded respectfully to the monk, and then he rode away with his carriage.

"You have my gratitude, Your Radiance," Akira said to the monk, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment. "Wait, did you know I was coming? Or was it a coincidence you were just standing here?"

"Coincidences do not exist, son," the bald monk said impassively, his hands clasped behind his back. "It is always fate."

"Can you see fate, then?" Because I believe you are more than you pretend, old man.

The question didn't move the monk, not the tiniest bit. "I only see what I am allowed to see."

I knew it. He is a seer. Akira had a thousand questions to ask such a man. Why was his mind too clouded to pick one of them to start with? Was it the monk's unnerving stare? He didn't need it to actually 'see' through Akira, did he?

"You look lost," the monk stated matter-of-factly, not a hint of empathy in his voice.

"Is that why you are mad at me?"

"You should be more concerned about the Light's fury, not mine."

Not the mood he was expecting for this conversation at all. "What have I done to anger the Light?" He is not referring to my ignoble quest in Hokydo, is he?

"Sometimes it is about what you are hesitant to do." There was a tone of rebuke in the monk's voice. "When the right course of action is plain to you, but you insist on giving too much weight to irrelevant considerations that hold you back."

Why the riddles? Akira wondered, but he didn't dare to ask the stern seer monk to speak less vaguely.

Considerations that held Akira back? Only one crossed his mind at the moment. "Isn't protecting my family a sacred mission?"

"Is it more sacred than protecting the Emperor? The Light's shadow that protects his chosen faction on this earth?"

"I've always been faithful, the Light knows," Akira said defensively.