The mansion announced itself before you arrived at it.
Not through gates or signage, through scale. The specific scale of a building that had been designed to make everyone approaching it understand the distance between themselves and the person inside it. Toshi got out of the car and looked at it with the mild interest of someone who had seen large buildings before and found them informative but not intimidating.
The agents escorted him inside.
Jeriko led.
Toshi followed with his hands in his pockets and the posture of someone on a casual walk who happened to be walking through a corridor that cost more per meter than most buildings cost in total.
The room they brought him to had a throne in it.
Not a ceremonial one. A functional one, the kind that a person actually sat in regularly because they had decided this was an appropriate chair for their daily life and had enough power that nobody had told them otherwise.
Jeriko sat in it.
He produced a cigarette with the practiced ease of someone for whom this was a habitual gesture and lit it with the specific leisure of someone who owned all the time in the room.
"Sit," he said.
Toshi didn't move.
"Cigarette?" Jeriko offered.
"I don't smoke," Toshi said.
"You're missing out." Jeriko exhaled. "As bad as the pink smoke is for you, and it is bad, genuinely, it really does give you a good high."
"What do you want, Jeriko?"
Something shifted in Jeriko's expression, not offense, recalibration. He looked at Toshi with the specific attention of someone reassessing a subject.
"I wanted to have a chat," he said. "With Shogun's hero." He tilted his head. "I saw what you did with that parasite last week. How you moved. Most people didn't even see it, you were going too fast." He paused. "Remarkable."
"If you brought me here to flatter me," Toshi said, "I'm not interested."
Jeriko's voice found a different edge. Not loud. Pointed.
"You've been ignoring my father's invitations," he said. "That's rude. Considering he's your president."
"Yeah," Toshi said. "Not interested in working for a corrupt government."
"Corrupt." Jeriko looked at his cigarette. "That's a strong word. We're all doing our best to keep the people of Dragon Hive safe from parasites. That's the priority. That's always been."
"Can you say the same for the ghettos?"
Jeriko paused.
"I think about the ghettos all the time," he said.
"Bull," Toshi said.
Jeriko looked at him.
"Bullshit," Toshi said. Simply. Without heat. The tone of someone stating something they know to be true and don't need to perform certainty about.
Jeriko was quiet for a moment.
Then something moved in his expression, not anger, something that coexisted with his composed presentation and was more personal.
"Tell me," he said, his voice finding a specific register, "how is Butter doing. I really do miss her lovely shea butter smell." He smiled the smile of someone who had decided to use a person as a provocation. "She's even thicker these days. My little chocolate sundae, scytherians should be in submission to high value men like myself."
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Toshi looked at him.
"I don't think she's interested in spoiled rich boys." he said. "She's occupied with my sister."
The cigarette in Jeriko's hand compressed.
He didn't move otherwise. His face held. But the cigarette compressed between his fingers with the specific force of something that had been redirected from somewhere it wanted to go.
"Disgusting, this is the problem with you liberators, you know nothing about order." he said quietly.
He set the cigarette down.
"Listen, Toshi." His voice returned to its controlled register, the pleasantness back at the front of it. "My family doesn't need a man like you. Understand that. We could protect Shogun ourselves, you just save us the trouble and do the labor. But." He looked at him directly. "We could make you disappear any minute. Any minute we decided to. You understand that."
Toshi looked back at him.
"Yeah," he said. "I hear you loud and clear."
He paused.
"But understand something. I was sent here by the God Joy. So I fear no man." He said it the way he said things that were simply true, without drama, without the performance of bravery, just the fact placed plainly. "Not Montego. Not Pyraz. Not you."
Jeriko looked at him for a long moment.
Then he leaned back.
"The liberation type," he said. Something between amusement and contempt. "You know we really are opposites, Toshi. I am a Hammerian. We believe in order. In hierarchy. In the natural structure of things." He crossed one leg over the other. "You bow down to a deity and call it freedom."
"I believe in freedom for all," Toshi said.
Jeriko clapped once.
Slowly. Twice.
The door opened.
A woman entered.
She moved with the specific quality of someone who had learned to move in a way that didn't draw attention to themselves, which drew attention to itself if you were looking carefully. She was young. She carried a glass of wine. Around her neck was a chain.
She crossed to Jeriko and placed the wine in his hand and stood at his side.
Her face was the face of someone who had decided not to be present in the room they were required to be present in, the specific interior absence of someone who had gone somewhere else and left only the body behind.
Toshi watched her.
Jeriko. He kept his face still. The specific stillness of someone pressing something down that wants to come up. You little man. How dare you.
Jeriko watched Toshi watching her and smiled.
The smile of someone presenting something they know will produce a reaction and waiting for the reaction.
"What's wrong, Toshi?" he said pleasantly. "You seem upset." He looked at the woman beside him. "This is Ulen the Amazon. She likes being here. This is her choice to live under the authority of a high value man." He looked back at Toshi. "Go ahead. Liberate her. Remove her freedom to choose."
Toshi stood.
Jeriko "That's what I thought, I hope to add your sister Mora and her lover Butter to my collection real soon."
He walked toward the door.
"Don't walk away from me," Jeriko said. The pleasantness gone now. "I'm not done with you."
Toshi stopped.
He turned.
The Lumen Saber arrived in his hand without ceremony, not summoned dramatically, just present, the light of it filling the corridor at the specific intensity of something that had been waiting patiently and was now awake.
He looked at Jeriko.
"You gonna do something about it?" he said.
Jeriko sat in his throne with his wine and looked at the saber and at the man holding it and at the specific quality of stillness that Toshi Zenko produced when he had stopped being casual.
Something moved behind Jeriko's eyes.
Not fear exactly. The recognition of something he had underestimated and was now fully estimating.
He smiled.
"I see," Jeriko said. "It's clear you have no intentions of joining the government." He leaned back. "We could have given you the perfect life, Toshi, we are funded by one of the the richest men in the world, Lux Wig. The things we could have offered you..." He shook his head with the theatrical regret of someone who doesn't feel the regret they're performing. "Oh well. We won't be sending any more invitations."
He looked at the saber.
At Toshi behind it.
"But know this, Toshi Zenko." His voice dropped to something that was trying to be a prophecy and landing somewhere between promise and threat. "One day your guts will be under my hammer. I am Jeriko the Hammerian." He met his eyes directly. "I will be god of this island and Butter will be my Godess."
Toshi held his gaze for a moment.
Then he let the saber dissolve.
He turned and walked out of the Pyraz Mansion into the Shogun District morning with his hands in his pockets and the specific composure of someone who has been told something they intend to remember and have filed it in the correct place.
Behind him the mansion continued being what it was.
Ahead of him the district continued being what it needed him to be.
He walked toward the south.
Butter and Mora were already there.
He'd clear the eastern approach.