Chapter Seven

We followed Patchouli’s directions. We had no reason to trust her, but nor did we have any other lead. We had to go where she told us, or wander around the mansion aimlessly.

Reddish-brown carpet covered the floors. The walls were tall, hung with the occasional landscape or portrait painting, lined with marble pillars. Sparklamps were suspended from the ceiling, like the ones lighting the library. The ambiance said that Scarlet was a person of power.

Marisa jogged down the hall, hand clamped on my wrist, dragging me past all of it. We made it to the stairwell and started climbing.

“Marisa,” I said, trying to slow her with my weight. “All those mean things you said about me in the library - you were just trying to trick Patchouli, right?”

She looked back at me. “Nopes. You really are fat, dumb and stupids.”

“What?”

Marisa laughed. “So adorable, Reimus! Insecures like kittens needing momma’s loves. Come ons. Gotta meet Lady Scarlets.”

She pulled me up the stairs. We made it to the top floor and ran into the hallway. As we went, I noticed fairy maids coming out from behind doors and around corners. They followed us, but from a distance. They muttered to themselves as we passed.

“Oooh. They’re going to meet the chief maid.”

“She’ll cut them into ribbons.”

“It’ll be a good show, at least.”

“We get to see her beat up someone else for a change.”

I tried to ignore them.

---

We came to the double doors. They were big and ornate, suggesting an important room on the other side. A line of light seeped out from under the doors, casting white over the hallway carpet. Marisa and I looked at each other.

“Readys?” she said.

“No,” I said. “Let’s do it anyway.”

She nodded. I took hold of the left doorknob, and she grabbed the right.

“On threes,” she said. “Ones.”

“Two.”

“Threes!”

We pulled the doors open. Ivory-colored moonlight flooded over us. I felt a breeze by my ear, then heard a thunk sound behind me. I looked back and saw a knife stabbed into the wall, its rounded bottom still wiggling from the momentum of being thrown.

I froze. The base of the knife was etched with the letters S I.

---

The observatory was a huge, circular room with a glass dome for a ceiling. Either the mansion sat below a hole in the sky mist, or some magic allowed the observatory to pierce it. The full moon shone with unreal size and brilliance, taking up a third of the sky. I could see it in detail, craters and valleys and plains painted into its white surface. This lit the room like the daytime sun. No stars could be seen hanging in the sky, only solid night as a backdrop to the moon.

The walls were papered with illustrations of stars, constellation charts, maps of planetary orbits, astronomical equations. Scattered around the room were bits of furniture, lounge chairs, velvet-cushioned couches, tables stacked with papers and books. It looked like a place to relax and gaze at the sky, as well as a place to study it.

Every feature of the room paled to the one person standing in it. Here was the assassin, the mansion’s chief maid.

I stared at her before I could believe what I saw. Here stood a girl, barely older than me. She was tall, beautiful, but not inhumanly so; this was no youkai. She wore a maid’s outfit, complete with apron and skirt. Her hair was silvery white, or made so by the moonlight. Two small braids on hung either side of her face. Her arms were folded, holding a throwing knife in each hand. Her shadow stretched out from her feet, like a monster familiar reaching out and strangle her enemies.

Worst of all were her eyes. Cold blue. Killer’s eyes.

“It’s you,” said Marisa.

The girl bowed her head to us, keeping her knives ready.

“Welcome to the Scarlet Mansion,” she said. “I’m the chief maid and Lady Scarlet’s personal attendant. My name is Sakuya Izayoi. I’ll be your executioner this evening.”

---

I wouldn’t let this faze me. So far, Scarlet’s servants had been more talk than action. Meiling had muscles, but no brains. Patchouli had magic, but worried about saving face more than protecting her home. As for Izayoi here, she had style. She pulled off a great murderess-of-the-moon image, making serial killer and devil’s servant seem like sexy career choices. She could throw knives around.

Was that enough? Maybe, but my adventure up to now had taught me one thing. To fear is worse than death. I would rather die with pride than live a coward.

I stepped into the observatory, my gohei in hand. Marisa came in behind me.

“I’m Reimu Hakurei,” I said. “I’m here—”

“I know why you’re here,” said Sakuya. “It doesn’t matter. This is for Meiling.”

Suddenly, something was wrong. I couldn’t tell what. My body bucked against itself, like it was trying to evict my innards. My breath caught in my throat. My knees weakened.

Marisa turned to face me, as if to ask what was wrong. She looked down at my legs, and her eyes widened with horror. She slapped a hand over her mouth.

“What…?” I said. I looked down at myself.

One of Sakuya’s knives was embedded in my left thigh. It pinned my dress to my leg. A bloody red stain spread into cloth around it. I took a second to realize that a blade was sticking in me. The pain hit.

A wailing, agonized cry came out of my mouth, Geeyaaagh! It was as much surprise as pain. I panicked at the thought of a foreign object penetrating my flesh. I reached down and grabbed the knife by its rounded base, meaning to pull it out, but touching it caused the worst physical pain I had yet experienced. I yelped again, falling onto my backside.

“Reimu!” Marisa yelled. She knelt beside me and held my shoulders. Her hat flew back off her head, as if blown by a gust of wind. Yellow strands of her hair lifted up before settling back down. Her hat flew straight back and stuck against the wall, pinned there. Marisa only noticed when she heard the thud of another thrown knife hitting something. She put her hand on her head, feeling her hat was no longer there.

Sakuya walked towards us, her shoes sinking into the carpet.

“Surrender,” she said. “Now.”

Marisa got on her knees, putting both hands on her apron and bowing her head.

“We surrenders!” she said.

“Good.” Sakuya stood over us, her arms still folded. I never saw her hands move when throwing, never saw the blades spin through the air. Maybe she was youkai after all. No human could move that fast. She still held two knives, the same as when we had walked in.

All of this was afterthought to the agony happening in my leg. I could feel each heartbeat pumping blood out the wound. I was crying and breathing hard, in shock from being stabbed. My whole body shook. Marisa leaned against me, trying to absorb my tremors.

“Let’s get that tied up,” said Sakuya. “You’re ruining the carpet.”

She bent over, as if to examine the knife in my leg. Marisa held a hand up from her apron, bringing her last spellcard up with it.

“Love sign!” she yelled. “Master—”

With that last word, her throat moved against a blade in Sakuya’s hand. The maid was behind her, pointing another knife into her back. The sharp steel poking her didn’t surprise her as much as Sakuya herself did. One instant, she was in front of Marisa. The next, she was behind and had her in a hostage hold. There was no movement between the two.

“Don’t try that again,” said Sakuya.

The spellcard was then two pieces of paper, the bottom half floating down to settle on Marisa’s apron. They crumpled into ashen powder from what little energy she had gathered for the spell.

Marisa looked at her hand, stunned. Where the spellcard had been one second ago, now a thin groove filled with blood across her palm. She stared at the cut with the disbelief of a person who sees her wound but feels no pain. Sakuya’s knives were so fast and sharp that human skin simply parted to them.

“Understand?” said Sakuya. She stood, leaving a small bloody spot on Marisa’s neck. “Your lives belong to the mistress.” She turned to the door and yelled, “Fairies! Get in here!”

“You didn’t…” I said. It was hard to push the words out. “You didn’t mean to kill us.”

“You’re right.” Sakuya stowed the throwing knives in her skirt pocket. “I lied. I’m not your executioner, yet.”

She lifted her skirt up, showing another weapon strapped to her thigh: a small knife, but unlike the ones she had been throwing. This one was in a sheath and had a handle. She pulled it out, revealing a blade of black metal, and touched its tip to Marisa’s neck. I saw her move this time, but she was still so fast that Marisa couldn’t raise an arm in defense.

“You’ll die when the mistress wishes it,” said Sakuya.

Marisa looked like she wanted to say something, but her mouth hung open. Her eyes fluttered closed. She fell onto her side, unconscious.

“Poison,” I breathed.

“Of a sort,” said Sakuya.

She pricked my neck with the knife. I couldn’t have stopped her. I jumped at the quick needle of pain, but then felt nothing at all. Even the wound in my leg was a hundred miles away. I flopped onto my back, but couldn’t feel the floor under me. Even staring straight up into the bright moon, my head filled with darkness.

---

I slept for a time, but not long. Soon my body pulled me back to the waking world. I wasn’t happy with this. The real world was a bad place, full of my pain and mistakes and stupidity. I was too weak to stay away from myself. Slowly, I awoke.

I lay on something cold and hard, stone flooring. The air coming into my lungs was bitter and dusty. I tried raising a hand to rub the life back into my eyes, but my wrist caught on something. I heard a jangle of metal.

I opened my eyes. There was little light, only some weak moonlight through a barred window, but my eyes had already adjusted to the dark. I looked down at myself, saw iron shackles on my wrists and ankles. They were bound to metal rings in the floor by chains, clinking every time I moved. My skirt soaked through with dried blood, but the knife was no longer in my leg. It still ached with each beat of my heart, but no new blood was came out. The skin around the wound was tight. My leg had been bandaged.

“You awake, Reimus?”

I looked towards the voice. Marisa was on the other side of the room, bound to the floor like I was. She sat against the wall, her legs halfway crossed under her dress. She had lost the bow on her braid at some point, and her hair hung around her face and over her chest. She looked miserable.

“Yeah.” I tried to sit up myself, but the pain in my leg flared. I decided to stay lying down. “Are you okay?”

“Better than you ares,” she said. “Looks like I gots some crow-eatings. Reimu’s rights. Never should’ve come out heres.”

“No,” I said. “Even if it didn’t end well, coming out here was the right thing to do.”

“How comes?”

I looked at her. I had never heard Little Miss Confident question herself like this, but couldn’t blame her. We were defeated and captured, waiting for some faceless scarlet woman to pass judgment. Anyone would be scared.

“You said it yourself,” I said. “It’s better to die trying to fix the problem than die when it overcomes you.”

“Guess sos,” she said, looking down at the floor, “but doesn’t feel like its. Feels like I screwed ups, got us killeds no reasons.”

“Don’t feel that way.” I said. “I’ve been worse on this trip than you. Remember after we got away from Patchouli, I asked if meant the things you said. You know why I asked? Because you were right.”

“Not dumb or uglies—”

“That’s not what I mean. The part about me being a useless burden, that was true. You wanted to do the right thing, and I’ve been whining and dragging my feet every step of the way.”

Marisa shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s too little too late now, but if I had pulled my weight from the start, maybe we wouldn’t be here.”

“Not your fault, Reimus. Knew this probably end badlys, even if had to trys.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

We were quiet for a minute. The sky mist outside tainted what little moonlight made it in the room, casting dark shapes on the stone floor. They melded and changed, shadows of morphing clouds.

“If this is the end for us,” I said, “then I need to tell you: you’ve been the best friend a miko could ask for. Thanks for sticking around, even if I didn’t always deserve it.”

Marisa’s shoulders bucked once as she let out a weary snort-chuckle.

“Too hard on yourselfs. Wouldn’t be arounds if Reimu’s weren’t my favorite things. But it’d be nice to hears when not waiting to dies.”

“You’re right. I’ll get better at that, if we make it out of here alive.”

“Gotta confession toos,” she said. “Drinking bunyip wines wasn’t some master plans. Just wanted to get drunk with miko-friends.”

I let out a pfft noise. “I should have known. I have sake back at my shrine. It’s not bunyip berry, but it’ll get us plenty drunk. So if we get home in one piece….”

Marisa grinned, flashing her teeth. “That’s a date, girlfriends.”

Then, for no good reason, we both started laughing. There was nothing funny about our situation, but we laughed anyway. It might have been our last defense against going mad from mortal fear.

We fell silent when heard a light knock knock sound.

---

“Hey,” a voice whispered into the cell. “Can you two hear me?”

Marisa and I traded looks, worried. This was either our death knell or the sound of freedom, but our captors wouldn’t whisper through the door. They would barge in, knock us around, maybe kill us on the spot. So I answered.

“Yes? Who are you?”

“A friend,” the voice whispered. A rectangular hole opened in the door, about four feet off the floor, letting light into the cell. A pair of bright red eyes peered through the peephole. They looked at me first, then Marisa, then settled back on me.

“I have the keys,” the owner of the red eyes said. “Keep quiet, okay?”

No argument. I heard the door’s lock working, but slowly. Our savior was trying to minimize noise. The lock clicked free, letting the door swing outward. The cell lit as the door opened. My eyes had to adjust to the light from a sparklamp, held by a youkai girl.

“There we go,” she said.

Marisa and I stared at her. We had seen several youkai on our trip here, but this one was stranger than most. She was shorter than Patchouli, making her seem young. She wore a pink, puffy dress and matching hat. Her hair was short and cyan blue, contrasting the red of her eyes. A pair of wings came off her back, but not translucent fairy wings. These were dark and leathery.

“What?” she said. “You act like you’ve never seen a bat youkai before.”

I was certain that neither Marisa nor I had seen a bat youkai, especially not one who looked like a pretty schoolgirl otherwise.

“Sorry,” I said. “We’re both hurt and exhausted. Are you here to free us?”

“Oh yeah!” said the youkai, as if remembering something important. “Look at what I got.”

In the hand that wasn’t holding the lamp, she held up a metal ring with two keys.

“I found this in the observatory,” she said. “Seems that maid Sakuya dropped it when she was yelling at some fairies to drag you down here. So I did some sneaking around, and ta-da!” She came over, knelt down beside me. She used one of the keys to unlock the shackles on my wrists and ankles. One at a time, they popped free.

I scooted to the nearest wall and used it to brace myself so I could stand up. It was slow, and my leg hurt like a screaming demon, but I had to bear it.

“Thank you,” I said, “but who are you? Why are you helping us?”

“Call me Remi,” said the youkai girl. “We’ll talk on the way out. Gotta hurry.” She went over to Marisa, tried to undo her shackles. She put the key in and jiggled it, but it wouldn’t turn. She tried the door key, but it didn’t work either. She tried the first key again, twisting it as hard as she could. They key even bent slightly, or seemed to.

“Darn it,” she said. “I didn’t think they’d be keyed different. Must be one of Sakuya’s other key rings.”

“Then lock me back up,” I said. “I’m not leaving without Marisa.”

“Stupid miko-girls!” Marisa spat. “If one can get outs, then get outs! Halfway better than both being heres!”

“No! If you were free, would you leave me behind?”

“Bet your butts! Just close doors and I’ll be quiets. No one’ll notice you’re gones. Then you come backs and save mees.”

She was doing that whole being right thing again. One of us free was better than both of us locked up. I had a chance to come back and free Marisa, a small one, and that chance would be zero if I didn’t take what I could get.

I wanted to give Marisa a hug of assurance, but I couldn’t walk across the cell.

“I’ll come back,” I said. “If I have to raise an army to raid this place, I’ll do it.”

“We don’t have time for this!” said Remi. “Sakuya or her maids might come by any minute.”

“Good enough, Reimus,” said Marisa. “Now get out of heres!”

I nodded. Clenching my jaw at the pain in my thigh, using the wall as a crutch, I hobbled out the door after Remi. She led me into the hallway, then she closed and locked the cell door behind us. She slid the peephole shut, putting Marisa back into darkness. It was necessary, but I hated it.

Remi had brought my gohei, left it leaned against the wall before coming into the cell. She handed it to me.

“There,” she said. “Now you look like a miko - a dirty and beat-up miko, but oh well.” She turned and headed down the hall, beckoning me to follow. “Come on!”

---

Like most youkai, Remi could move faster than me. Even though her legs were shorter, she could outrun me on my best day. Having a wounded leg didn’t make things better. I had to limp along, leaning against the wall with every step. It demanded a lot more stamina to walk with my injury.

“Not so fast!” I whisper-yelled up to her. “Where are we going?”

She looked back, slowing down so I could catch up. Her wings flapped gently as she walked. She led me down a stone hallway through the Scarlet Mansion’s dungeon. We had passed other cells, all empty, their doors hanging open.

“We’re going upstairs,” said Remi. “The observatory has a secret exit that leads outside the manor grounds. While we’re up there, we can check to see if Sakuya dropped any other keys. I doubt it, but maybe.”

I nodded, but I cringed at hearing the word stairs. Walking on even floor was hard enough.

“So answer me now,” I said. “Why are you helping me?”

“Not all of Lady Scarlet’s servants like her,” she said, “especially since that gunk in the sky showed up. Some of us have even run away. I was thinking about leaving too, but today I heard about you and your friend. What better way to give Scarlet a bloody nose than to free her prisoners?”

“So you’re helping me just to hurt your mistress?”

“Well, not only that. It’s good being nice to people, right?”

I smiled. “Yes, it is. No matter why you’re doing it, I’m grateful. I’ve seen a lot of youkai, but none like you. Some of them are mean, and most of them are just dumb, but none of them ever went out of their way to help me.”

She returned my smile. “Not all of us are devils, you know.”

---

We made it to the stairwell, and our progress slowed to a standstill. I had to take one agonizing step up at a time. The pain in my leg flared each time I lifted it. By the time we got to the first landing, I was panting and sweating. I leaned against the wall, fighting to catch my breath. Remi didn’t have the patience.

“This won’t work,” she said. “It’ll be morning before we get to the fourth floor. I’ll carry you.”

“You’ll do what?” I said. “I’m twice your size.”

“And half as strong. Sit in my arms.”

I didn’t know what good it would do, but I obeyed. I didn’t have the strength to keep standing anyway. Remi handed me the lamp, which I held in one hand while keeping my gohei in the other. She came around behind me and knelt down, reached her arms around my sides and hooked her hands under my knees. I inhaled sharply, but the pain was bearable.

“Gonna lift now,” she said. “Alley-oop.”

She stood, lifting me up. I was off the floor, in her arms. Now my shoulders were in her face, so she couldn’t see where she was going.

“How can we get up stairs like this?” I said.

Remi didn’t reply, but she turned and started walking up the stairs backwards, carrying me up like an oversized box.

“Careful,” I said, my head bobbing back and forth with each step up. “Don’t slip and hurt yourself.”

“If I slip, you’ll be hurt much worse than me.”

---

She carried me to the top floor. She kept an even pace the whole way, never running short of breath. It might sound fun to be carried up a staircase, like a child held by its mother, but it just felt weird. When we made it to the top of the stairwell, I was glad to get on my own feet again, even if it hurt.

Remi took the lamp from me and led me into the hallway. I followed, checking around to make sure no fairies or other servants might see us. There was no one. Aside from us and the sparklamp, the halls were dark and empty.

“Here we are,” said Remi as we came up to the observatory’s double doors. She pulled the left one open. I expected white moonlight, like when Marisa and I had come here before. The moon still shone through the glass dome, absurdly huge and bright, but the moon was not white.

The moon was bloody red.

“What?” I said, limping after Remi into the observatory. “What’s this? The moon was normal when I met Sakuya here. Well, not normal, but—”

Remi looked back at me and grinned. “How do you like it? The glass ceiling has been magically treated so it can bend light. It lets us see things far away, like the moon and other planets. It’s like the world’s hugest magnifying glass.”

“The moon,” I said. “It wasn’t red before.”

“That’s another fun feature. The magic can store images for later viewing.” She waved a hand up toward the dome. “This was during an eclipse, where the earth blocked the sun’s light from reaching the moon.”

“How long ago was that?” I said.

“About sixty years.”

Remi snapped her fingers, and the moon changed. It was clear white again.

“This is how the moon looked three hundred and forty-something years ago,” she said. “This is the first picture I took with these enchantments. I take it for granted today, but it was a major feat for me back then. Getting the spells right wasn’t easy.”

I began to realize what I had walked into.

Remi looked back at me, still smiling. Her incisors were long and sharp.

“And this,” she said, snapping her fingers again. The glass dome went solid black, casting us into darkness except for the sparklamp. “This will be your existence once I suck you dry.”

She threw her lamp on the floor, shattering it. There was a flash of light, then blackness. I felt a rush of air go by, heard the door slam shut and lock behind me.

“You,” I said, my voice trembling. “You’re Lady Scarlet.”

“Took you long enough,” she said, now somewhere to my left. “But please, call me Remilia.”

“I don’t care about your name!” I yelled into the darkness. “Tell me why you’re making that mist outside. Tell me why you want to kill all of Gensokyo. Tell me what the hell you are!”

“That last one is easiest,” she said, now behind me and to my right. “I’m a very rare species of youkai. The most famous of my bloodline was Vlad Tepes. You probably know him as Count Dracula.”