When the "friend" Taki-sama has brought home, like a stray carelessly rescued from the rain, expresses shock that he was part of Murakumo's crew, Suguri barely refrains from striking him across his insolent mouth. "This has always been my place," he rages silently, but holds his temper in check. He will not injure his lord's chosen knight for a mere insult to himself.
Taki-sama was the Reizen from the moment of his birth, conceived against the chance that the lord would fall in battle. When he took his first breath, the previous Reizen already lay buried in No Man's Land with so many others of their dead. Though his mother remained at court, Taki was raised on his own land, so that he might know it. He had been entrusted to them, and they ensured that he became a lord they could honor.
The Reizens had always been warriors and border-lords, and so in turn the men who were their sworn vassals had known they might one day need to put aside their chosen tools and follow their lords into battle. For Suguri, this was no less true, though his duty had proven more all-encompassing than most. He still remembered the day Hasebe had looked him over carefully and said, quietly, "Taki-sama will need a doctor to see to his care when he comes to us." Suguri had understood and had arranged to leave for medical school within the week. And when Taki was grown and the time came to act a soldier once again, he took up arms without flinching, though he had learned to love to heal.
It had also been Hasebe, acting as regent, who selected Taki-sama's companions, choosing carefully from those high enough to do him no insult and tied so tightly to the Reizen house that they would offer no danger from ambition or vanity. Moriya's younger son was his first selection. Suguri approved. If the boy proved anything like his older brother, already underfoot as a cadet, he would be quiet and intelligent. The Date boy, the next chosen, came from an excellent family and no one ever offered even whispers of his father's disloyalty. Suguri could only hope he would prove as dutiful as his sire. It was the last selection, one he watched Hasebe agonize over while he and Uemura exchanged concerned glances at their superior's unaccustomed uncertainty, that gave him true pause. It was not that Suguri could say anything against the Azusa family, at least nothing firm enough to contest the choice. He could even understand the potential advantages of this choice. But the boy was half Eurotean and when Suguri thought of him, he remembered a battlefield drowning in blood, and potentially divided loyalties that might destroy his lord.
He was not comforted by his first sight of the child, blameless as his behavior seemed. All three boys had been brought to the summer residence together for their presentation to Taki-sama, and Azusa and Moriya, four years old but conscious of their honor, had stood Date between them trying vainly to keep him still and neatly clothed. Suguri had supposed then that there was still time for the Date boy to grow into a proper understanding of his dignity; but it was Azusa who he watched most intently. The boy's clear understanding of the importance of their presentation should have mollified him, but all he saw was that foreign yellow hair.
That night, he dared to go to Hasebe and argue, warned that Taki might someday find a knife at his back and it would be to their blame. Hasebe was not such a fool as to deny the risk, and even did him the courtesy of offering an explanation.
"Did you ever think," he said, "of what value there might be for Taki-sama in understanding our enemy? Or that this might bind that boy to our lord strongly enough that we need not fear him? Even if we kept him far away, outside the intimate circles, he could always turn and strike at us when war comes and we can no longer leave him where he might do no harm."
With the years that passed, having seen Azusa grow into a loyal, thoroughly un-Eurotean man, Suguri came to recognize the wisdom of Hasebe's choice. He was happy to share the small space inside Murakumo with the young man, trusting that he would help watch over Taki. Moriya, too, lived up to his early promise, and was still quiet and thoughtful if a little too given to dreaming. As for Date, well, he was a good, devoted soldier. Suguri would not deny that.
When the boys were not in attendance, Taki was often left to Suguri, who saw to it that he understood his duty to his land and people. If Suguri scanted on open affection, it was only because he, the son of minor nobility who owed the Reizen line all they had to give, could not presume so high. Taki-sama was a solemn, careful child who never seemed to feel the lack.
He never caused them trouble, save once that Suguri heard about only second-hand. Hasebe alone went with Taki to the imperial coronation. On Taki-sama's other short visits to the palace, he had been watched by his mother's people, taken out of their hands entirely by rank and protocol. But on this occasion, he needed his regent beside him to offer their obeisance to their new emperor. From any other boy, the incident might not have merited even a mention, or any memory at all. But Suguri had expected to hear only of the the careful correctness of his vows of loyalty to his uncle, and of his solemn grace in his ceremonial dance, which he had watched Taki-sama practice so diligently. Discovering that instead he had thrown everyone into panic and disarray by vanishing only minutes before he was to perform was as astonishing as if a river had turned and begun to run upstream. That he returned in time and danced as flawlessly as expected was reassuring, but Suguri watched him more closely for a time, searching for signs of growing fecklessness. None presented themselves, and Taki-sama instead continued to grow into a man he was proud to call his lord.
Uemura tells them that Taki-sama's knight has entered the country before, as a guest for the Emperor's coronation. Suguri remembers Taki's one other strange, willful start and wonders at the coincidence, but tells himself it cannot possibly be anything more.