Author's Note: I'm really rather terrible with the Saiunkoku AUs, it's a little ridiculous just how many of them I have lying around. I even have a Saiunkoku – Dark Jewels crossover, if you'd believe that . . . unfinished, and likely to remain that way, though I've occasionally considered posting it anyway. Anyway, this one has been up on livejournal forever, and since I came across it while going through some of my old documents I thought I might as well post it. It has more parts, most of them disconnected, but I'm not sure if I'll ever finish this one, either. Demon Hunter and Cyberpunk are my two main projects, and those will be finished . . . some day.

"Your Highness, you haven't left the archives in three days." Shouka set the plate of somewhat lopsided manjuu buns at the young prince's elbow. "Surely someone is looking for you and wondering where you are."

Ryuuki never lifted his coin-yellow eyes from the page in front of him, even as he reached out to take one of the buns. "Aniue has to worry about himself the most right now," he said, his young voice unusually serious. He sounded much older than his meager eleven years could account for, but the constantly building tension within the palace had aged everyone who lived enclosed by its walls. "No one else will miss me."

He was right, and they both knew it. Shouka allowed himself a small sigh as he watched Ryuuki read. The prince's lips moved as he sounded out an unfamiliar word. The text was hardly one Shouka would have expected: an in-depth regional history of one of the cities in Kou Province. "Are you still looking for information on that assassin, Your Highness?"

"I know I'm close, I just know it." Ryuuki shuffled through the pile of sheets at his elbow with ink-stained fingers. The crooked columns of his handwriting scrawled across them childishly, but there was nothing childish about the thoughts they outlined. "People say that the Black Wolf never left a trace, but it's not true. Not when he served the Emperor, not when he did so many important things. Nobody's ever looked in the right places, that's all."

"Is that what you're doing?" The prince had been unaccountably serious at his studies over the past few months, and his questions had grown increasingly focused. "Where are you looking, then?"

"Financial records and local histories. I already cross-checked all of the Black Wolf's known activities with the Imperial expense accounts."

"The Imperial expense accounts?" Shouka raised his eyebrows. "Your Highness, aren't those records restricted by the Department of Finance?"

Ryuuki's happy, self-satisfied grin was astonishingly childlike after his previous words. "I stole them!"

"You--" Shouka's mind caught up with his hearing, and he gave Ryuuki a stern look. "Ryuuki-sama."

"It's fine, nobody saw me! And since the records are from so long ago, nobody's even noticed they were missing. They only use them once in a while, they were covered in dust when I took them."

Shouka shook his head fondly: Ryuuki was truly irrepressible when he was determined. "And how will the records help you find this man?"

"Even the Black Wolf needs to eat, right? And traveling costs money, too. Of course it wouldn't be written down as payments for the Black Wolf, that would be too easy. They would have called it something else, but all the money has to come from the Treasury, so it has to be written down. And he got paid, too, nobody works for free." Ryuuki ran his finger along a column of ragged figures. "All of these payments must have gone to the Black Wolf."

Shouka examined the numbers, each carefully marked by date and reason, then linked to one or another of the famed assassin's known activities. "And how do you know that these numbers are the correct ones?"

"They all occur within two or three months of the Black Wolf's missions. They're all over a certain amount-- that must be his pay. And they're all written down as item purchases that are mostly unnecessary and which shouldn't have cost that much even if they were real. I compared them to other purchases to be sure."

Ryuuki was entirely correct, Shouka had to admit. The amount of research he had done over the past month was staggering, no less so than his understanding of what to look for and what he found. "This is very impressive, Ryuuki-sama. But these are just numbers. How will they help you find the Black Wolf?"

"They're not just numbers, they're dates and travel expenses. I drew a map--" The prince ruffled through his sheets and pulled out a folded document that proved to be a careful copy of the official provincial border map used by the Emperor.

This was even more incredible than the theft of the records. That map was one of the most valuable Imperial possessions, meticulously detailed and accurate to the smallest degree possible. "You stole the Emperor's map, too? Ryuuki-sama--"

"I just borrowed it a couple of times so I could make a copy! No one even noticed it was gone." Ryuuki was pouting in an attempt to escape censure, and hurried onwards. "But see, using the expenses and times I guessed the travel distances and plotted them on the map." A series of overlapping circles radiated from carefully marked locations to intersect each other. "Some of them aren't quite right;I must have made mistakes, and they're only guesses anyway. But there are enough of them close to each other that I can tell that the Black Wolf must have been based here, in the capital."

Most of the circles did, indeed, either run close to or directly through Kiyou, Shi Province's main city.

"And it makes sense, too. The Black Wolf would have to be close to the Emperor-- I realized it as I was doing the map. To keep him secret he would have to receive his orders and money directly. And also, he could guard the Emperor when he wasn't on a mission." There was something fierce about the way the prince spoke, a determination to his words in stark contrast to the childish roundness that still obscured the lines of his face. "No, even the city isn't close enough. He would have to be in the palace, or at least spend most of his time here. Now, if I could just figure out who . . . maybe an official?"

Ryuuki's eyes were unfocused, his fingers tracing an aimless pattern over the map as he thought out loud. "No, an official wouldn't work, everyone would notice if he left his post or disappeared for a few months. The Black Wolf couldn't have an administrative post. A servant?"

The archives were entirely silent but for Ryuuki's voice, empty save for the two of them.

"No, a servant isn't high enough. The Black Wolf would need to move freely, and a servant wouldn't have a travel permit. So it would have to be someone with a good position, but a person who wouldn't be missed if he had to make a sudden journey. Someone who could even join an official caravan or delegation and not be noticed. Not a guard-- someone that no one would ever suspect. A scribe, maybe, or--"

Like an animal scenting danger, Ryuuki's head came up with a jerk. Shouka met his tawny stare with one of glinting red.

"--or a librarian," the prince whispered.

Shouka kept his voice mild and soft. "I don't believe I asked you before, Ryuuki-sama. Just what do you want to ask the Black Wolf, when you find him?"

Ryuuki swallowed, then straightened his back to sit upright, fighting what Shouka knew must be an overpowering need to shrink away. "Teach me," he said, and his young voice never wavered. "I want to ask him to teach me."

"Why?"

Ryuuki paused before he spoke. "Aniue will become Emperor," he said, and there was no doubting who he meant. "But there are things the Emperor can't do, places he can't go. The Black Wolf did those things, went to those places, for Chichiue. But for Aniue, who can he trust to do those things? The Black Wolf belonged to Chichiue-- Aniue will have no one."

"Perhaps the Black Wolf has disappeared because he is no longer needed."

"Maybe he wasn't needed for a long time. But the country has become sick-- everyone says so. The courts aren't working anymore, and every day there are fires in the city. The people are suffering, and Chichiue doesn't do anything. There's lots of things the Black Wolf could do, but he isn't-- why? It must be because the Emperor hasn't given any orders, but why hasn't he? I don't understand at all, but that means that only Aniue can fix things and put the country back together again. I want to help him."

"Surely there are other ways for you to help your brother, other things you can do to support him."

The prince looked down at his ink-stained fingers and bit his lip. "I'm useless," he said. "I can only get in the way, and then Aniue has to protect me-- I don't want to be a person who needs protecting! I want to be of use, I want to keep Aniue safe the way he's kept me safe. If--" there was steely determination there this time when Ryuuki lifted his eyes. "--if the Black Wolf will teach me, then I can help Aniue. I can protect him like he's always protected me-- and it's something that only I can do."

There was no fear in the young prince now, nothing yielding. Only an innate nobility of spirit, the intensity of pure potential wanting only for a hand to give it shape. Shouka had already become that hand when he had accepted Seien's request that he tutor the young prince, and this-- this was both the result and the fulfillment of the duty he had gladly accepted, without knowing what it would someday mean.

Shouka examined Ryuuki closely-- the determined set of his chin, the fingers he had clenched on the edge of the table, the narrow shoulders squared under the pale purple silk of his robe. Maybe there was still one more thing the Black Wolf could do for the country he loved-- and perhaps it would prove to be the best thing he'd ever do.

Shouka stood and gathered up Ryuuki's pile of ragged papers, the careful labor of several long months. "Come to the archives tomorrow night. Dress simply-- no robes, and don't eat beforehand."

Ryuuki drew a breath, short and sharp.

"I will burn your notes and maps." Shouka graced his student with a smile as he picked up the remaining buns on their plate. "They are well done indeed. Your first assignment as the Black Wolf's apprentice is returning the records you stole from the Department of Finance-- without anyone noticing they were gone."