(The first section of this chapter refers in a mostly obscure fashion to methods of torture edging towards the slightly sordid. Mostly it should be troublesome to people with overactive imaginations more than anything. Read with care please.)

Chapter Twenty

Matters of Communication

In an agony, he lay on the floor of Suzaku's shrine, terrible, everlasting pain coursing through his body. He screamed - he knew he did, his mouth open and his throat strained. But there was no sound. His master had made sure of that.

The great dark form curled sensuously around the golden statue of Suzaku. It did not yet have a form of its own, the dark being that exuded a sort of anti-aura about itself. You could not glow with the dark, for that was not logical, but this did. He did, and the power within the formless dark reverberated through the shrine. As his neck bent backwards, almost to the point where he could feel the bones cracking with the pressure, Jiu kept his eyes on his master, the black dragon that was draped over the golden statue so its lustre was drowned out. It was an almost obscenely invasive scene, one that Jiu himself would have revelled in if his master was not angry with him.

After what felt like hours, the pressure on him lifted, and he lay there, breathing hard, tears pouring down his cheeks as he struggled to get to his knees.

"It is necessary to punish you like this, my unwise servant," said his master's voice, echoing inside of him - as soothing and intimate as the voice of a lover. "You understand that, don't you?"

He nearly sobbed, but controlled himself, his pallid form shaking violently as he finally managed to get to his knees, and remained that way, his heaad bowed in respect for the god. "Yes... yes, master."

"You failed me, and so I must punish you. The girl was in your grasp. Had you not wasted time, you would have had her."

"Yes, master."

"But you will not fail me again, will you, Jiu?" The voice took on a stern note, even though it continued to remain within him, almost carressing him. He shivered, not out of pleasure though his body reacted against his volition. It was not the most that his god could do to him. There were other ways of bending a human being to a god's will. Bt that this was the most base, most corporeal held special significance. This was about punishing, about branding and making sure Jiu knew the consequences of his failures. He knew the consequences, and knew he deserved them, and so he did not object.

"No, master," he said, his voice shaking as his body arched backwards.

The formless darkness approached him, its cold, clammy touch scraping against his form frigid, sharp icicles might have. He shivered, more from fear than from the cold, as the advance progressed down a more sordid path, though compared to the terrible pain from before, this was tolerable. Tolerable, but terrifying, for he knew it was only the beginning and what had happened before would not compare to what was to come. "Master..." He shuddered, tears flowing freely, as he began to writhe. "Master please..." His breath hitched as the pressure in his chest bega to rise.

"Let us send a message, Jiu," said the voice, silkily, and he closed his eyes as though to prepare for it, though this was a futile gesture, as he well knew.

The silenced screams wrenched from his throat, as he was forced to remain motionless, arched and exposed. As the characters began to appear on his chest, the flesh splitting apart to give way to the shapes, the blood trickled down gently, leaving vermilion trails along the length of his body.

Hikari woke up a long time before Reishun came to shake her awake, her dreams giving way to a certain kind of pain, some of which was concentrated in her arms, some in her head (which she assumed had something to do with the sake) and some that she couldn't identify at all - a very distant awareness of something that she couldn't quite reach. It was very far away and her own physical discomfort seemed to draw her back.

She had a feeling she'd had a good dream, an enlightening, meaningful, adventurous dream. Though she closed her eyes to will herself back to the safer place, as the pain in her arms returned, inching over the fading influence of the sake, she found that she could neither sleep nor remember. She didn't want to move either, so she just lay there for a long time, waiting to be given a legitimate reason to be awake, and staring at the ceiling.

What had happened the night before? She knew there was a certain amount of sake involved, a taste she'd found quite foul until it had started Doing Very Nice Things to her brain and taking away the somewhat horrendous sensation of a sharp, pointy device going in and out of her already wounded flesh. She tried not to be in a foul mood even before the day had begun - who knew what kind of strange things would happen today, after all - but it was hard to remember how fortunate she was to not have been injured at a different location, or that no huge arteries had been sliced into half leading to her death by blood loss, or that the solider had been shot before he could bring the sword down harder than it had fallen, severing her wrist entirely. The pain mounted steadily, becoming a dull throb that exploded sharply everytime she tried to move her arms. Another reason to stay right where she was.

It became a tedious wait, and by the time Reishun came to wake her up, she was cranky from the wait and the pain and the lack of knowing what the heck she was supposed to be doing.

"Good mooorning," came Reishun's sing-song voice and Hikari scowled.

"Murf," she said, with great annoyance.

"That's the spirit! How are you feeling?"

Hikari opened an eye and looked at Reishun with misplaced fury. She felt lousy, nauseous fromt he drink and in a great deal of pain from her wounds, which seemed to be increasing steadily. With some effort, she made a grunting sound.

"Yes," agreed Reishun, not sounding terribly sympathetic. "I guess that only goes to prove that you should not drink."

This was of course the way they talked. Hikari knew that, and she generally liked it - picking on one another instead of talking about fuzzy bunny feelings was a lot more comfortable for her. But she was cranky and upset, and the fact that she wanted more than anything for her mother to pat her forehead and give her a hug made her even more cranky. "I'm coming," she said, coldly to Reishun.

Reishun, mildly taken aback, cleared her throat. "Um, okay - I'm going to go talk to the Shenwu, alright?"

"Fine! I'm coming!" she cried, annoyed, gearing up for an argument.

But Reishun didn't sound angry at all. "Take your time," she said, gently, so that Hikari felt immediately guilty. Damn it. Before she could tone down the annoyance and seek out a more human tone, Reishun had left, leaving her to dress herself. This turned out to be even more of a pain, because being drunk seemed to have made her revert to her old habits. She found that she had to unfold her clothes and put them on over her undershirt, and that all of these movements caused her a stupid amount of pain.

"Kowaiineechan need help?" asked a tiny, immensely kind voice from beside her.

"No, I don't, I don't need any help, just leave me alone!" yelled Hikari, and found herself feeling much, much worse as the little orb floated out of the cave with a notable sniff. Furious with herself. Hikari put her arm through a sleeve and nearly yelped as the stitches seemed to be cut further into her flesh. Then, as she put her other arm in the sleeve and found herself confronted with the process of tying it all up, she felt stupid, because really, she could have used some help. It was with great difficult and no small measure of cursing, that she finished. Feeling miserable and unhappy and a little nauseous, she headed out.

It was, of course, still raining, though it wasn't pouring as it had been the night before. A cold and steady light rain fell, making it a frigid morning. Though there was no trace of sunlight, it was growing lighter in general, a lesser degree of grey that cast no shadows but made the shapes of the trees and the rocks distinct fromone another.

As Hikari stopped at the mouth of the cave, regarding the world with great disdain, she found that the strange woman that had saved them waiting for her. She was not armed as she had been before, though she carried a pack slung over the shoulder with something long and suspiciously sword shaped sticking out of it. It was somewhat gratifying to note that the girl looked as cranky as Hikari felt. They regarded one another with mutual misplaced irritability and seemed to derive some pleasure from this.

"Reishun?" asked Hikari, and the girl jerked her head to the right.

Hikari followed the jerk to find Reishun, Nyan Nyan standing beside her holding her hand, speaking with the Shenwu and his wife at the mouth of their cave. As Hikari watched, the woman handed Reishun what looked like a bundle of clothes and the latter bowed in gratitude before turning to look at Hikari and the disgruntled woman, urging them over. With silent irritation, they stepped out in the rain and trudged up to the Shenwu's cave.

"The Hei Xiong Ren would like to give you these gifts - in order to help you with your quest," said the Shenwu, as they came up, smiling in the way he did, with the skin crinkling around his face as though speaking of how much effort the gesture was.

"Food," clarified Reishun, smiling at Hikari pleasantly, though Hikari could only manage a nod in turn. "And cloaks. Here." She handed one to Hikari, tossing the second one to the woman without looking at her. She caught it midair and opened it out. They were made of some kind of animal hide, and were somehow oily, enough to protect them from the weather.

"For cloudy skies," said the Shenwu, smiling at Amefuri, who scowled, but bowed nonetheless. As Hikari struggled to open hers without actually having to move her arms, Nyan Nyan bowed to the Shenwu and then proceeded to give the Shenwu's wife a really big hug.

"And a horse," began the Shenwu, once they were cloaked, but Amefuri cut him off.

"No," she said, flatly, and not particularly politely. In fact, her tone was so abrasive and abrupt that even Hikari looked at her with some surprise. "You have such few horses - you need them, and we'll buy some from Shishants'un. "

The Shenwu didn't seem bothered by her coarseness. He took her hands. "It is kind of you to care. But we have enough, and your quest is more important."

"We'll make the same time on foot as we would with one horse between the three of us."

"Yes, but one of your party is injured," he reminded her, gently.

Hikari would have gone red at the accusatory look that the woman threw at her, if she hadn't been feeling as cold as she was. She opened her mouth to say that she didn't need a horse and could manage to get to this village on foot just fine, but the Shenwu let go of Amefuri's hands and stepped back, as though declaring the matter closed entirely. As Hikari watched, the young woman bowed low.

"Thank you, then," she said, and though her words were polite in her tone, they came across as sharp. The Shenwu didn't mind and nodded. "For everything," she added, even more sharply, looking furious. It occured to Hikari that she really did mean what she said. Before a further analysis could occur though, she said, "I'll go saddle the horse." And without waiting for a response, she turned and marched off.

Hikari raised both eyebrows and looked at Reishun. "She seemed a lot nicer when she was saving our lives," she said.

"She is a nice person," said the Shenwu. Then, as both Reishun and Hikari just looked at him blandly, he smiled, his amusement stretching out his face further. "Under the rudeness, she can be a nice person," he amended, before shaking his head. "You must change your bandages whenever needed - keep checking your wound. If it opens up, see a healer in one of the villages. I don't think it will," he added, catching Hikari's look of alarm, "but it never hurts to make sure. In a few days, it should be alright to take out the stitches - I've told Reishun how to do that, but if you are near a healer, that may be better."

"Thank you," Hikari nodded, finding that now that she was not delirious from the pain or drunk, she had a more difficult time speaking before this very organised, very wise and at the same time somewhat maternal, wrinkly man. "I-" No, that was it. This was just babble. Now she did go a little red. Why didn't she have something intelligent to say? "No, just...thank you."

The Shenwu nodded, beginning to turn away, when Hikari realised that she could ask him something, and then perhaps she would seem like less of an idiot. "Wait!" she cried, a little louder than was necessary. The cloaks worked very well, she found, for her blood seemed more capable of retaining its warmth, especially in her cheek area. Argh.

"Yes?" he prompted, gently, though Hikari was very aware of the amusement in his eyes - as well as Reishun's incredulous but greatly amused gaze on her.

"I- well, your sake. I mean Sairou's sake. The sake in general?" she said, frowning as she felt the hopeful cause of her speaking out - to not look like an idiot, that is - wither and die. "It- I could see things. I mean, I could see more things. I could see two of Reishun and- no, wait, not in the ... drunken way, you know, but in the ... way of Reishun having two souls- no. Not two souls. But-"

"You could see the one who came before her?" asked the Shenwu, sounding surprised by this.

"...yes." Why was her voice so tiny, now? "So I wanted to - I mean is it the sake?"

"I've never heard of the sake giving people the ability to see something like that," said the Shenwu, frowning at her. The expression suited him a lot better. "Has it ever happened before?"

"No," said Hikari, and then frowned, because that was not, strictly speaking, true. "I mean yes, it has. The first time I saw Reishun, for a moment. And then... when ...Amefuri-san dropped down from the tree. But never so clearly as with the sake, last night. I saw them so vividly. It doesn't make sense, does it? The sake numbed the pain completely, but it made my vision ... clearer."

The Shenwu was silent for a moment, considering this. "Maybe," he said, finally, "in lowering your normal senses, and rationality, if you don't mind me saying so, it allowed you to see what you otherwise cannot, but have the ability to." Catching Hikari's look of surprise, he tilted his head slightly. "Maybe you should think of it as an ability. The holy objects are known for making their holders more intuitive, more powerful."

Hikari bit her lip. "But I saw three shadows where I should have seen one when I looked at ... looked at Amefuri-san," she finished, saying the name awkwardly, as though unsure of what honorific the woman deserved. It seemed safest, but it sounded a little stupid. "What does that mean? Shouldn't there be two?"

"That," said the Shenwu, looking almost regretful about being unable to share this with Hikari, "is really not for me to say."

"So you don't remember anything after you turned away from waving at me on the hill?"

Subaru shook her head, though she had already answered the same question five times now. Waking up early in the morning, as she always did, she had been confronted with the certainly unusual but not particularly surprising sight of two grown men, lost to the world on her verandah, and three bottles of Sairou's finest.

Even Subaru had to admit, despite her mild annoyance (her husband had just died and the two idiots who were supposed to be taking care of her were drunk and passed out in her verandah), three whole bottles were quite impressive. Tokaki had found that, while tending to a wounded horse, one bottle of the sake blended with the horse's meal was usually enough to make him calm enough to approach. So three, between two men, was quite amazing. The only person she'd ever seen pull a feat like that was Kokie - but then Kokie had been large and round enough to consume generally larger quantities of food and drink without it being particularly surprising. This past experience told her what to do, and she made excellent use of her broom in waking them up.

Now, thoroughly scolded, properly laundered and somewhat less in pain from their experiment, the two men confronted her and their bowls of soup with more apt and solemn expressions. At least, Tasuki seemed solemn - he appeared to be handling his drink a lot better than Taka, who looked solemn as well but also as though he was on the verge of keeling over and dying. His soup remained nearly untouched, though Tasuki had made good progress with his. Really, Subaru thought, looking at him kindly, his repetitive questioning could be forgiven, because of the sincerity in his eyes and the weight of his burdens.

"I don't get it," he said, presently, setting down the unused soup spoon. "Those memories are just... missing?"

"Well, she is a hundred and fifty %^*#)# years old."

Subaru eyed the broom and then Tasuki, and though she met the twinkle of amusement in his eyes and appreciated what he was doing, he had the good sense to go back to hiding behind his soup bowl now.

She fell silent for a few moments, her hands clasped on her lap and her shoulders covered with a shawl. It was nearing midday, but she felt cold. She knew why she felt cold. Being a hundred and fifty %*$*) years old meant you learned a thing or two about your physical reactions. When Tatara had died, Subaru had been cold for a whole week, her feet freezing so much that Tokaki had devoted most of his time to rubbing them for her and heating pans of water for her to soak them in. It hadn't helped, because she wasn't really cold because of a physical ailment, but it had been extremely sweet. It was because of him that she'd been able to walk to the gate to find him ogling at some random woman passing by, and ironically enough, because of his indiscrete behaviour that the cold spell had ended.

Certainly she was miserable that no one would rub her feet and not being able to constantly chatter with Tokaki - but Subaru was wise enough, and frankly old enough, to really look at death as the next step rather than some sort of terrible catastrophe. Which was more than she could say to Taka or Tasuki about it, both of whom sat looking at her as though she was about to explode with over-feminine emotion. Idiots, she thought, fondly, aware that having someone to make soup for and sweep brooms at was probably quite helpful.

"I don't forget things," she said, turning to Taka. "I have a very clear memory. And I'm not hurt or anything. Really, Taka," she added, with a certain emphasis. "But the memories and the letters are missing. Although I don't really know what anyone hopes to get out of them."

"But those are the letters that Empress Houki wrote to you," Taka said, a hint of impatience in his voice, as though he did not want to push her because of her tragedy, but as though he thought she was losing her marbles. Really, it was probably not wise to smile, but Subaru couldn't help it, shaking her head.

"You did really think that Tokaki was the only seishi in the household, didn't you?" The flash of pain on Taka's face at the mention of his mentor was unmistakeable, but Subaru pressed on firmly. "I am not entirely as foolish as you believe me to be, Taka. Those letters were not written in the common script."

Both men frowned, looking up. "You mean, a code-" began Taka, but Tasuki's sudden yell cut him off.

It was just unfortunate that his bowl of soup was nearly full still and that being hungover made him jerkier than before.

"This is why you should have eaten it," Subaru told him, once he had stopped looking terrorised by the hot soup on his lap.

"Because I should have known Tasuki would make an unearthly sound and make me spill it?" demanded Taka, glaring at the bandit while Subaru hid a grin. One really had to wonder when that moment of transition had occured, in which Tasuki had become the more even-tempered of the two.

"Calm down, Obake-chan," said Tasuki, pleasantly, making Taka growl.

"It's an old script that only some women use, now," said Subaru, cutting in before greater tragedies occured, vis-a-vis the soup and Taka's pants. (1)

"My crazy sisters use it sometimes," explained Tasuki, quite cheerfully. "But very badly. They're such %*&!( foul-mouths that they probably only know the %*%*( dirty words. Actually, they may just have made most o' it up - people in my village can't %*%#() read, ya know, so it wouldn'ta %*%*) mattered. I 'ave five o' 'em," he added, by way of explanation for Subaru, who was looking at him with her eyebrows raised somewhat. "Sisters, I mean, not villages, 'course."

"At any rate," Subaru pressed on, turned away from Tasuki, who remained fairly oblivious to any disapproval, "it is a script rarely used now. Few people can read or write to begin with - even in the upper ranks - and women should spend their time cooking and sewing, rather than in literary pursuits. The only reason I know the script is because my grandmother taught it to me, before I was to be married. She said it was a way of sharing secret grievances about my husband with my friends. Of course, then I married Tokaki instead, and he didn't really have a problem with being told of my grievances in clear, usually loud, tones," she added, with a soft smile. Taka's face was twisting again, and so she pressed on. "Anyway, your Empress is another such practitioner. And if that's not enough, our letters were very indirect."

"Indirect?" asked Taka, biting his lip and looking very uneasy.

"Yes. When I had to tell her that something unpleasant was brewing in the political climate here, I spoke of the weather and my mother-in-law."

Taka and Tasuki wore identical expressions of incredulity. Subaru shook her head.

"Oh, don't worry - she did understand, because she wrote back to tell me about how she had lost the earrings her mother-in-law gave her, and that the weather was edging towards bad, but that they had enough umbrellas."

Their expressions didn't change, and she raised an eyebrow.

"Empress Houki does not have a mother-in-law. Don't you see?" They clearly did not see. They looked so utterly befuddled that Subaru felt far more fortified about the coded letters. "Men," she muttered, under her breath, leaning back in her chair.

Taka rubbed his eyes in frustration, though not before he realised that his hand was still covered with soup. Finding no dry or clean space on himself, he proceeded to wipe his hand on Tasuki's shoulder. A small battle ensued, by the end of which Taka's soup had been put to even better use, and leaked out from under the bowl on his head. Subaru wrinkled her nose.

"Anyway," said Taka, through gritted teeth, "are you sure they - whoever it was that put you in the cellar - couldn't have known that?"

"Who the hell would know that?" muttered Tasuki, snorting. "But maybe they %*%*$() yanked it out o' yer head like yer ^*^*#)) memories."

"That's not even possible!" snapped Taka, glaring at Tasuki with rage that no one could have denied a bloke with soup coming out of his years. But Tasuki didn't reply, looking at Subaru - and after a second Taka turned to look at her as well. On her face was the well known expression that people carry when something fat and obvious sitting on their shelves, having eluded their perceptions for unknown reasons, became known to them. An 'aha' moment, with perhaps a ding! Taka wondered, obscurely, what the universal sign for an idea having presented itself was in a world with no lightbulbs. Whatever it was, was flashing right over Subaru's head wildly. "Is that possible?" he asked, slightly uneasily.

Subaru opened her mouth and then closed it. Somehow, that which would have looked like a really stupid goldfish impression on anyone else was eloquent on her face, and spoke volumes. No, it said. It was possible. Or in the very least, it wasn't probable - but the improbability of it probably made it all the more probable. But since it was so improbable, the expression was all the communication the matter was going to get, without a little more prompting on Taka's part, because Subaru obviously felt awkward speaking of such insanity.

"Bloody hell," said Tasuki, mildly, and Taka could only nod along.

Subaru shook her head. "It really doesn't make sense."

"But it's possible?"

"It's... no. I don't think it's possible."

Because she looked a lot more troubled than she had when Taka had told her about what had happened with Tokaki, Taka leaned forward. "Are you sure?" he asked, looking at her steadily.

"Yes," she said, with some impatience, raising an eyebrow as the investigative look on his face.

"But you were looking like-"

"Oh, for god's sake, Taka."

Her eyebrows spoke to him now. They said, 'back off, you infantile excuse for a celestial warrior - I know what I'm talking about, even if I don't really know, and it's entirely perplexing. Fool.' Taka cleared his throat and leaned back.

"It is impossible. I've seen it done before, with my own eyes, but the only man with that ability died over a hundred years ago, Taka. His name was Yuen Xiao Li and he was a Byakko seishi. He died before Byakko was summoned and-"

"And there's no way he could have been reborn to this life?"

"We would have known," said Subaru, looking somewhat reluctantly at Tasuki for confirmation.

A moment later, even more reluctantly, he nodded. "It's true," he said, "we felt 'em come back - it was very weird, actually. Sort of like ... when they left, but different."

"What he means," said Subaru, feeling obligated to translate to more comprehensible terms, "that when our fellow warriors are reborn, we feel them come back, but in some ways, because they are starting new lives, it is also a reinforcement in some ways that your friends are truly gone."

Taka eyed Tasuki, whose lack of cursing belied his casual, non-soup-covered disposition. He knew his friend well enough to know that Subaru's practiced understanding of his pain wasn't helping him. On the other hand, Subaru spoke of it as though she had gone through it. Distantly, he remembered that Tokaki and she had mentioned that two others had been reborn to this life. "You said two others-" he began, but she cut him off.

"We did feel them come back, even though we didn't know who they were. But we were led to them. Well," she amended, "one of them was led to us. But Kagasuki was not one of those two." Subaru looked at Taka firmly. "It isn't him, Taka. We would have known."

It was difficult to argue with her. She was weirdly rational for someone who had just lost her husband of over a hundred years, but she clutched her shawl with such vehemence that it would have been mean to push her on the matter. More importantly, she regarded him with such a reasonably annoyed look that he was somewhat alarmed. But he was a seishi and brave enough to push the matter even when both people sitting before him looked like they wanted to pour another bowl of hot soup all over his lap. "Is there another explanation?" he asked, tentatively. "Sometimes, the only rational expression, no matter how improbable, is the answer-"

"The most ^&*%&( rational explanation," interjected Tasuki, with a vehemence Taka would later recognise as protectiveness, "is that she got whacked on the head with somethin' when the bloke was robbin' her letters."

"But-"

"Here," said Tasuki, smacking him in the chest with his spoon, not speaking unkindly. "Have the rest ' my soup and shut up and tell me what the %*%* we're gonna do about Chichiri."

"How-" How does one shut up and tell you things at the same time? he was going to ask, but this time, he found the spoon shoved into his mouth.

They reached Shishants'un by what felt like afternoon - though Reishun was only judging the passage of time by the signs her stomach gave her, by means of feeble but comfortingly familiar pangs of hunger. The day remained soggy and dreary, like a bowl of old, grey soup that no one wanted to touch. The rain still fell, and if Amefuri's stubborn sulkiness was any indication, it would continue to do so for the next week or so. At least the cloaks seemed to keep them mostly dry, though a cold dampness crept into everything they touched anyway.

It had been a relatively silent journey thus far. Hikari had tried to be conversational, bless her, but she had made the mistake of addressing Amefuri as 'Amefuri'.

"That isn't my name!" the girl snapped.

"We're not going to call you 'No Name'," Reishun had said, trying to sound reasonable, but the girl had glared so much that they'd dropped that subject.

All other subjects followed suit. Reishun sensed that Hikari was in too much pain to be conversational when people were going to snap at her - which probably meant that she was in a lot of pain, because it was rare that she didn't have something unpleasant and critical to say. Even Nyan Nyan didn't speak. The silence was edging towards being oppressive, when they stopped for lunch, under the shade of the forest just on the outskirts of the village.

Before Reishun could so much as put her pack down, Amefuri declared that she wasn't hungry and she'd get the horses from the village while they ate. Coming from her, 'ate' sounded like a synonym for 'wasted time for pointless petty needs like the useless people they were', but she didn't wait around for any responses to that, stalking off.

Reishun sighed, and headed to help Hikari down from the horse. The fact that the girl didn't object to this at all (though she did meet Reishun's assitance with a furious sort of scowl) indicated that the pain in her arms wasn't getting any better.

"Are you in a lot of pain?" asked Reishun, as she set Hikari down on the ground under the shade of a large tree, though it was an obvious question. But even if all she drew from the girl was a crabby response, she would be happy; she knew that if the silent sulking went on any longer, she would simply sit down on the ground and howl like a three-year-old.

Hikari seemed disinclined to answer, and Reishun watched her out of the corner of her eye as she tethered the horse roughly to the tree. Then, with a great huff, she replied, "Do you want to know what coffee is?"

The Nyan Nyan orb floated out in interest, as Reishun raised an eyebrow.

Hikari spoke almost reverently. "It is this glorious, amazing substance, right? It's ... rich and delicious and bitter, but in the best possible way - sort of like sake, but ... really, really much better. You take one sip, and suddenly, it's like you're awake. I mean you think you're awake now, but you're not - not without coffee. With coffee, there is a stampede of clarity, a ... a deliverance of energy! I mean... the pain in my arms is so terrible that I'm spouting poetry, and what the hell could be worse, right? But with coffee? A little bit of coffee? I could deal with it. I could deal with it just fine!"

She paused, looking at Reishun with huge, intensely emotional eyes, almost as though challenging her to contradict her passionate outcry against the absence of caffeine. But Reishun was mostly beyond words.

"I really," said Hikari, conclusively, "really want a cup of coffee." Then, she slumped against a tree trunk and placed her arms carefully on her lap.

Reishun, still unable to form an appropriate response, nodded and stood there feeling a bit like she did when someone decided to be poetic around her. Cart-of-Potatoes-Man, her husband-to-be, had once tried to do this, and she had experienced a similar state of awkwardness, though admittedly, this was a lot less amusing. It was probably the closest that Hikari would ever come to saying that she wanted to go home, in a more-or-less sincere manner.

With a sigh, she sat down next to Hikari, quiet for a few moments, before rummaging through her bag to bring out some food. "Settle for an apple?" she said, and as Hikari snorted, she put one on her lap. Then, as a few moments passed, and nothing happened, she adjusted her seating so she was facing the young girl, and, ignoring the redness of Hikari's cheeks entirely, lifted the apple to her mouth so she could bite into it. "So how pretty was he?" she asked, with a grin, of sorts. "You know, the 'one who came before me'."

She was rewarded with a grin and a glorious description of what sounded like a beautiful man. They made a meal of a couple of apples each, and though it wasn't as substantial as roasted fish or even soup or something warm in general, it left them fortified. An adventure without food would have been an exceptionally dreary affair, Reishun concluded. She shared this with Hikari, who then launched what would have turned into a lyrical epic poem about the merits of caffeine, if Amefuri had not returned halfway through with two horses. Reishun, perhaps with some presumption, tossed an apple to her, but found it tossed back with much ingratitude and a certain amount of condescension.

"Save it," she said, in her abrupt manner. "And choose your horse. Are you two done?"

Without really waiting for a response, she produced a stick and squatted down in front of them, making wriggly lines on the ground. It was a second before Reishun realised what she was doing, not because she hadn't seen a map before but because there was very little connectivity between her sentences. Really, some people were just... weird.

If Hikari found it at all annoying that their otherwise pleasant conversation had been interrupted in this manner, she hid it very well behind the mask of supreme interest in the wriggly drawing. "It's a map," she said, after a moment, even producing a grin (and making Reishun scowl just a little - though why she was scowling, she really wouldn't have been able to say).

"We're here, at Shishants'un," said Amefuri, once again with no preliminaries. "It is mostly a hilly terrain beyond this. We won't stick to the main road because it's not safe. The Comamnder's allies are looking for you and-"

"But we left those behind, right?" said Hikari, forcing her to stop and look up. "If we just make good time then-"

Amefuri raised an eyebrow, directing a look of 'what, are you a moron?' at Hikari that made Reishun angry, though the young girl raised both eyebrows without seeming bothered by the condescension. After a moment, Amefuri sighed in resignation, sitting down properly as though preparing for a longer conversation than she had initially intended. It was not a gesture of defeat, as Reishun almost hoped for (really, she wasn't particularly fond of the cranky, rude, obnoxious woman, she'd decided), so much as it was something along the lines of a mutual understanding. A sensation similar to that which she'd experienced post-pigpen in the context of Hikari and the Empress rose and then fell as she squished it.

"What do you know about the man we're dealing with?" asked Amefuri, almost as though she was testing them.

"Um," said Hikari, who had once spoken of nervousness in the context of an exam - Reishun began to see what she meant and resisted the urge to pat her on the head. "... he's mean and he can cause a lot of pain?" she finished, frowning at the severe look Amefuri was giving her. Reishun was beginning to suspect that the severity was not an expression, really, but just the way her face was.

To her surprise, Amefuri nodded. "Alright. You know he's ruthless," she translated. "And he's very influential, and has spies everywhere, especially here, in Kutou, which as a country ... does not exist anymore." When they both looked confused, she scowled. "It's not one country, it's a lot of them - there's a lot of- you know, there isn't one king, there are a lot of small... petty idiotic people who think they should be king."

"Small chiefs," translated Reishun, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes," she snapped, for no reason"And the Commander's men are here serving as cheap mercenaries, spies, petty lords- anyone who could instigate more war. Not that they needed much encouragement," she added, flatly. "So they don't need to follow us here. They were following you on the other side of the Shoryuu river because if they had caught you there, it would have been much simpler. There's no jurisdiction in Kounan to protect you right now."

"And there is here?"

"No," said Amefuri, giving Reishun a mildly annoyed look. Even without her weapons, she looked very much like a warrior, and she seemed to treat them as soldiers as well. "Here, you are bounty. If there was so much as a hint of what we're after, or what you are," she looked mildly accusatorily at Hikari, "then every stupid chief in this stupid country would try to kidnap you and bargain with you or worse. If we know nothing else about the Commander, we know that he doesn't care about the glory so much as the effectiveness of his policy. He only wants you dead - he doesn't care how he does it."

Silence, interjected with the gloomy rain, followed this statement as both Reishun and Hikari looked at her, perplexed and suitably alarmed.

"Well, that's very pleasant," said Hikari, finally.

"This is not a laughing matter," said Amefuri, very severely.

"Do I look amused?" demanded Hikari, looking more stressed than anything.

Reishun patted her on the shoulder. Really, Amefuri made the place sound like a deathtrap, even if she probab;y had good reason for it. But it wasn't this that she was focusing on, though perhaps she should have been more paranoid about people hiding in trees and trying to kill them. She was thinking instead about the harsh words they'd exchanged on the cliffs the night before. It was the stupidest thing to think about, but there it was: she, Amefuri or Wu Ming, or whatever the hell they were supposed to call her, had been wrong. She would have had them believe that there was no hope at all, but any possibility of success lay in them staying alive and finding the other Shinzaho. So she was wrong, because there was some hope - there had to be, after all, even if she herself didn't believe it. Why would they be fighting so hard if there wasn't any hope? 'Haaaah!' she thought to herself, and felt a lot better.

"What the hell are you grinning about, Reishun?" demanded Hikari, making her blink to realise both girls were looking at her with incredulous, cranky expressions on their faces.

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head and clearing her throat. "Nothing at all. You were saying?"

Giving her a deeply suspicious look, Amefuri began again. "So we're here," she said, and they all leaned forward again.

"I hope you know the way you're fondling those letters is sort of obscene."

The commander stopped, his hand still in between the sheafs of parchment, and looked up to regard the man before him. He was slumped in a chair, looking much like a bag of bones that had been tossed there, and he sat there in a manner that was deliberately disrespectful. 'Filthy' was not a strong enough term for the sight he presented. His long hair was matted with dirt that in the light from the lamps in the commander's room looked exceptionally vivid, and from where he said, Xiang could see the blackened undersurface of his nails. The obnoxious grin completed the picture. He was a vision in annoyance.

"Remind me again why I haven't killed you yet, Yuan." There was a throbbing in his chest, though he ignored it.

"The pleasure of my company?" smirked the man, quirking an eyebrow.

One had to admit he had a certain novel charm about him. No one that Xiang knew would dare speak to him in this manner, testing his patience. They needn't have bothered. He'd had a very long time to hone his powers of perseverance and very little about human beings surprised him at all. At least this man was somewhat entertaining. And useful, as it happened, though the letters he had brought for him were mostly just very dtailed missives about the domestic pursuits of two women in different countries. "So, other than an insight into the socio-political differences between our countries, what do these letters tell me?"

"I thought only women could read those. That does cast a certain light of comprehension on your behaviour." Then, as the Commander only looked at him, he shrugged. "I suspect you could read between the lines or something. Why would the Empress of Kounan and one of the last two remaining first generation Byakko warriors correspond with one another? It's hardly likely to be about soup recipes, is it?"

The Commander's long bony fingers moved through the letters again, flipping them over. He said nothing, though an incline of his head indicated he concurred. "But that does not tell us anything new, does it?"

"How did you become Commander, Xiang?" asked Yuan, reaching for a peach from the bowl of fruits on the table beside him to bite into it. The juice dribbled unattractively down the side of his mouth. Xiang's lip began to curl slightly, but this didn't seem to bother the man. "Your aim is to dislodge the beliefs of the people in the four gods, in all countries, especially Kounan which controls so many resources. And how better to do it, than to discredit the people who represent that glorious time as traitors of the people - a threat to all things progressive, new - all that your stand for, you and your united empire. I know exactly what those are worth," he finished, grinning widely, so Xiang could see the half-chewed bits of peach in his mouth. "And you know what I can do - it would be stupid to kill me."

"For the moment," said Xiang, regarding him coolly, with narrowed eyes, and falling silent as he considered him. He was despicable, there was no doubt about it, self-serving to the point of insanity, arrogant to the edge of complacency. But he was right. There was no need to kill him, not just yet. And if he could complete swiftly the task that Xiang's own methods would take several days to complete, then perhaps there was good enough reason to give him a chance. There was no escape from the castle, not if Xiang didn't want him to leave. The worst he could do would not be the end of his own plans.

"In short," said Yuan, a smirk gracing his features as the Commander's eyes narrowed into slits, "you have a lot less to lose than I do to gain."

Before he could answer, the slight throbbing in his chest became more intense, growing exponentially by the second. He only tightened his hold over the letters, gritting his teeth in fury as he looked at Yuan. "Guards!" he snapped, suddenly, as Yuan watched him, the smirk annoyingly in place. Two of them turned up, men much larger than Yuan himself, towering over him. The bony, filthy man leapt up, but before he could move, they'd gripped his arms. "Toss this maggot in prison!" snapped Xiang, positively growling as they turned and marched him out of the room.

Not a moment too soon, the door closed, and the pain exploded behind his eyes. It was pure force of will that had him getting up and walking unsteadily to the door, breathing through his teeth like a ragged, wounded animal. With shaking hands he undid the clasps of his finely crafted mail. The mail dropped to the floor with an eloquent clatter, his shirt, the front of it soaked in his blood, following. He inched to the round mirror on his wall and looked at himself, and the wounds opening slowly on his chest, taking on the shape of characters as his master, his god, in some distant land, carved out instructions on the chest of another.

Author's Notes: I apologise to the... one or two people reading this, that this chapter took a while; I think broke my deadline twice over. Here are my excuses: the last one sort of broke my brain (this is why one should remember that writing is for fun and not everything needs to be a thesis with footnotes - lesson learned!) and also there was a birthday (I am OLD :D) and national festivals with awesome (but very loud) people (that I love to pieces of course) and I have an exam coming up and I'MSORRY ;-; As a warning in advance, I don't know if the next one will be in time. The exam is on the 15th of September, so until then, possibly, this story will move much slower. But it is all coming, definitely.

Thanks so much to Flashyfirebird for the review and to my bunneh wife for nagging ^^ I couldn't do it without knowing people care enough for me to go on. And thanks to anyone else who's reading. ^^;;

1) Nu Shu: This is indeed a script used in China almost exclusively by women. There is some debate about how old it is and how new it is, but it's quite fascinating nonetheless. I don't want to write a paragraph on it, so for anyone who's interested, wiki it, or go to crystalinks(dot)com(slash)nushu(dot)html. It's pretty damn awesome. In this story - is it totally exclusive to women? I ... don't know, don't think so, but I'm mostly using it as a script that few people know. Fewer, that is, than the number of people who would, realistically speaking, be educated in ancient China.

2) For anyone keeping track, Yuen means Man of Ambition and Xiao Li means Intellectual. And also, Yuan means Source.

3) Shishants'un is an actual village in China, but I may have massacred the romanisation. It should translate approximately to Stone Village.

Keep reading and take care all!

O.D.A.O.S. (Obligatory Disclaimer And Other Shiznit)

This story is based primarily on Yuu Watase's Fushigi Yuugi, but also uses elements from Fushigi Yuugi Genbu Kaiden and some of the Fushigi Yuugi Gaiden books. (Only some elements, though, because of, er, a sort of blatant selective amnesia. So, for instance, Hikari is a girl, which she isn't according to the Sanbou Gaiden.) I will try to stick to manga/anime canon as much as I can. Elements of Chinese and Japanese mythology will probably be employed, also with a blatant disregard for authenticity and mythological autonomy. I apologise in advance - but mostly this fic is supposed to be fun and ... I wouldn't take it seriously. Apologies for stupidity about the Japanese language, but feel free to correct me please - if and when I use stuff like that. Oh, er, and obviously I'm not making any money out of this - I'm just a graduate student with too much time. ;

R&R is welcome and desired and appreciated, even if it's just 'you suck'!

Thanks for reading :)