Seijin moves like water, like wind. Old teachings come back to mind as they glide over the plateau, things learned in the monasteries and palaces of an earlier China. But this is not China, whatever the claims made by Beijing, and not any calendrical time: this is between. Seijin, looking up, sees Himalayan heights in the far distance, barely distinguishable from cloud, and the stones shift underfoot, now golden, now gray. Seijin smiles and casts a handful of coins on bare earth.
Resolution. But with changing lines.
Oh. You don't say.
The coins turn to leaves as Seijin watches and a sudden gust of wind carries them away, spinning them out across the plateau to cloud-mountain. Seijin sighs. To think that this had been intended as a rest.
"What do you think?" Seijin says out loud. "Stay, or return?"
Female self steps out, long black hair whipping in the wind of between. "What does it matter? We can choose our time of return."
"Within limits," male self says, emerging beside her. Seen in a dark place at night, perhaps there wouldn't be all that great a difference between them: the hair, the slanted, opaque gaze, the scaled armor. Female self is of slighter build, and looks young, but in fact female self was always dominant, until the Riders came and she went into hiding for a while, no more than a hundred years or so, but enough to give male self the upper hand. Seijin's smile widens. Interesting times.
"Within limits, true." Female self is earnest, brow furrowing. "But there is still a great deal of time. The Emperor of Heaven has only just been crowned. We could not have acted before that."
"Still, the contract is running now," male self says.
"You are so impatient."
"We have wasted time before. You have to make a choice. Stay in between forever or act. Which is it to be?"
"I could wish for between," female self says, a little wistful. "I get tired of all this running around."
Seijin, hollow on the plateau, laughs. "All right. I've listened. You both have your way. Another night here and then we return to Earth."
Female self is reabsorbed. Male self hesitates, only for a second, but it's enough to make Seijin frown. Obedient as a hound, male self slides back into place and Seijin is once more liminal, but complete.
This time, the palace does not take so long to reach. Between shifts and rearranges: it can take days to cross the plateau, or only a few hours, and there's no predicting it. But shortly after the conversation, Seijin comes around an outcrop of granite and there it is: the Shadow Pavilion, towering and gray as the rocks on which it stands. Seijin bows, once, then climbs the long flight of stone steps and knocks, once, at the doors.
"Who comes?"
"Lord Lady Seijin." And bows again.
The doors—ancient, the color of twilight, made of wood so weathered that they more closely resemble stone—creak open. The Gatekeeper stands within, barely visible even to Seijin, but a glance over the shoulder shows that night is not far away and that tends to leech the Gatekeeper of whatever shades it might possess.
"Do you seek entrance, to this your own abode?"
"I do, if it is the Pavilion's wish." A ritual exchange, but one that a person must take care to perform correctly. Not everyone gains access to Shadow Pavilion and with night on the way, that's not a good thing. Even if you are Seijin.
The Gatekeeper says, "Then enter," and stands well back as Seijin glides in. Seijin follows the Gatekeeper upstairs to a room, one of the best suites, although this has not been requested. As the Gatekeeper moves hastily away, Seijin wanders across to the window and looks out across between.
Night is coming fast, visible as a shadow gliding over the land. But the mountain peaks are still touched with the fire of the sun, glowing rose-gold, and there is a crescent moon hanging over Himalaya, sharp as a silver tooth in the oceanic sky. Female self pulls hard, wanting to stay.
Time to retire? Seijin muses. It's become a familiar argument in recent years but this latest contract, this is too magnificent to refuse. After this—if one survives it—would be the perfect time to retire, the crowning glory of a long, long life.
How often, after all, is one contracted to kill a god?