Part 18

The city of Dramathen Heero found ugly but oddly soothing as if the city was designed to bring a sense of peace to those who visited it. It was a city of wide avenues and sprawling boulevards, of fountains and parks, and polished wood verandas on which women sat wearing veils and sipping cold drinks in the summer heat surrounded the low slung houses. A few men and women braved the hot streets under parasols high over the solid mud streets on sandals. He wiped the sweat on his forehead angrily with a sleeve. In Dathyl there was always a cool breeze from the sea, or a cold wind in winter. Dramathen was stifling, and the people wore a thin unlined silk that was almost see-through but he was from Dathyl and they did not dress so lightly. He wore a stout wool coat and tried to ignore the trickle of sweat than ran down between his shoulder blades and left a damp patch at the small of his back. Shifting uncomfortably on his horse he tried to ignore the sensation that he had soiled himself where the sweat had soaked through his underclothes.

Loping in front of him, like a big cat, was the Senshi Fiore, who had met them at the gates to guide them to the Dairai. He had white hair and he didn't look as if the heat affected him. He had plenty of flattery for Duo, and he spoke in unaccented Dathylian but he was never less than formal with Heero. He had the impression, from the way Duo had laughed at his words that he was teasing him. When he had approached them Heero had assumed, because of the colour of his hair, that he was an old man, but he was no older than Mamoru. "Perhaps, sir, we would prefer to walk the remaining distance, as it is not far at all," Fiore said softly, "and it would mean that my Senshi could water your horses before they are stabled. They are almost sweating up a lather in this heat." Heero looked for the barb before he slipped from the saddle, "I would not have the emperor say I maltreated your horses when you each have a pair of perfectly good feet." Heero waited for it, the sly aside that would cause Duo and Minako to cackle with laughter, but it didn't come. Before he could continue someone else spoke.

"Fiore-Senshi," the woman said stepping out from between two trees, at her heels was a small child, little more than a baby. Her voice was quietly deferential and her hair was a pale platinum blonde that looked like spun lamplight in a braid like a rope down her back. She wore an unlined obebe embroidered with silver thread in delicate starbursts. She looked like a merchant's wife walking her child. She was, Heero also noticed, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was almost arrogantly beautiful with the perfection of her features. "It is fortuitous that I met with you." She wore no jewels or cosmetics that he could see, but her hair and her eyes that were the colour of pansies, and her skin was the colour of wintry cream. "Will you escort me back to the Dairai, I fear I have lost my way." When she spoke she made the language sound like the babbling of a small stream over rocks, full of soft liquid syllables and sharp vowel sounds. The child at her heels was tugging her hand with one hand, eager to be on, and the other held a candy cane to his mouth.

"Daiyamondo- Khatha." He said simply, "It will be my honour to guide my lady." Yet Heero couldn't miss how soft Fiore's eyes became as he looked at her even as he registered the name, Diamond, the first of the Jeseul, the greatest Hentai in the world, the Khatha, the fair one. A woman whose beauty was as famous as her wit. Minako and Duo had spent hours talking of her with some kind of reverence and Heero had listened as he and Mamoru practised their arms. It was said she could destroy a man as easily with a glance as with a quip. He had not expected to see her in all the time he was in Dramathen; such was her fame. Fiore bent down and picked up the child who was contentedly fixed on his candy, "It will be an honour to guide you too, little Senshi." The child was, Heero noticed, dressed like a Senshi. He was thanked with a sticky smile.

The Dairai of Dramathen was a giant house of sliding panels built around a central courtyard through which women glided and men loped. When they entered they were greeted at the door, as they removed their shoes, by a woman in a formal black obebe embossed on the back with the golden crest of the D'Cevni and it fell in a pool behind her. A golden crown rose from the back of her neck and around which her hair was wrapped. "I am Takajo, Joshu of this place. I am here to lead you to the apartments prepared for your arrival. Baths have been drawn. Minako-sama," she acknowledged her with a bow of the head, "her majesty has asked that you attend her immediately. Fiore-Senshi, if you will, it is time for Master Genji to bath and bed."

"Kuso," Genji swore clearly and Fiore flinched. "Don't wanna."

"I'll take him," a woman in a grey cotton obebe said coming forward, woven into the fabric was the D'Cevni crest, so this woman, Heero noted, was a servant. "Come on, baby," she said taking him with competent arms.

"Kaasan!" He protested, "Don't wanna."

"If you're good and have a bath I'll tell you a story." The woman in grey said shifting him in her arms, she was a small woman and he was a large baby, large enough to walk on his own.

"Kakkoii," he said. "A good story," he added. "Then bath then bed."

"No, baby," she corrected tapping him on the nose with a finger. "Bath then bed then story."

"Iie," he protested, swearing, but Alister knew this woman wouldn't be thwarted as she carried him away.

"What does Kaasan mean, Takajo-Joshu?" Duo asked. It surprised Heero that he guessed correctly which honorific was attached to her name.

"How would you say?" She began, pausing to look for the word.

"Asami is Genji's nurse," Diamond interrupted, "but the empress' son, as such we are all his parents." Her voice was low and soft, "Kaasan means mummy, I think you would say it." There was a catch in her voice, something that sounded, to Heero, like longing. "He calls us all Okasan but she is Kaasan."

Heero watched Duo reach back and squeeze Minako's hand in a gesture of comfort. It seemed that she was grateful for it.

Duo looked at the small woman sitting in the sea of red silk with something of a shock, she looked like Tobin. Her face was laid out in the same manner, her hair was the same almost silky black, though hers was long and held back in an intricate maze of ribbons, but staring back at him, framed by lashes thickened with kohl were the same acid green eyes, they were the exact same shape and as hard as Tobin's. Teishi, the empress of Darie, looked so like Tobin could have walked the boards as Onestra in his place and no one would have questioned.

He was so surprised he forgot to bow until a spear butt took him in the back of the knee forcing him to his face in front of her.

"Farore, iie." the empress said from a mouth with almost perfect rouge. Her skin was whitened, her eyes and cheeks darkened and her lips painted bright scarlet, she looked like a porcelain doll. "These are our honoured guests, but the barbarians of the south not know the way of the court of winds. Please, Minako-sama, sit." Duo was surprised as he tried to compose himself just how clearly he understood the empress of Darie when she spoke only in Darin.

Minako knelt down in a surprisingly graceful gesture on the cushion before her, "By your leave, Heika." She said bowing her head, Minako didn't bow to anyone and Duo wasn't sure he liked it. Minako was as proud as a castle, she did not lightly bow her head.

"You have picked a prize plum, Mina," the empress said and Duo, despite himself blushed, he knelt slightly behind Avili in a position of subservience, she had told him as they travelled here that pomp was essential in Dramathen, that one had to obey the forms even if one found them silly or antiquated. Position mattered in Darie, which meant it was obsessively ritualised, and he didn't mind sitting behind her, it meant that the empress's gaze.

"Adam D'Cevni gave him to me, he called him from the aether and he was so pretty, heika, I just had to keep him."

In her nest of fabric the empress stirred, slightly, causing waves to ripple through the scarlet and gold silk, she reached forward and lifted a small porcelain bowl that was painted with small blue darts and with both hands brought it to her mouth, turning it with one, as the other held it and sipped the contents with real pleasure. "You are blessed indeed, Minako, that you are not cursed with a husband who would take displeasure at such an action."

Minako laughed. "It has been long, heika, since your husband could command you at all, never forget that you are one of us, that you were D'Cevni before you came to the court of winds to claim your birthright."

Teishi tilted her porcelain head, with a small smile, all of a sudden the rich fabric around her might as well have been wound, oozing and seeping blood, and her perfectly painted mouth might as well have been a knife slash. "Correct, but even the empress sometimes must obey."

"Yes," Minako said sadly, "even the empress must sometimes obey." It was obviously something neither of them liked, "and sometimes even we must forsake our toys, Aeka asked me to recommend her to you, I had not realised that you were close."

"We were not," Teishi answered, "but we were allies when no one else was, though we both have husbands we rule our countries alone, sometimes that makes even the bitterest enemies bedmates. Come, Mina, you are welcome in my home, make free of all that you desire, and know there are pleasures in the court of winds that rival no other." She stood, her layers and layers of robes gathering about her like a cloud that swirled around her ankles, but to Duo's shock, her feet were completely bare. It was an instant and powerful reminder that under those billowing red robes that the empress of Darie, one of the most powerful women in the world, was completely naked. He shuffled his cushion slightly closer to Minako as surreptitiously as he could. "Let me abuse my power as empress and clothe your kitten in robes of finest silk so that when you touch him it will be as if through a veil of mist, how brilliant of you, Minako, to find a kitten so like as skittish as a mouse with eyes the colour of sunset."

Minakolaughed. "You may try to steal him, Heika, but he is trained now, he knows he belongs to me."

She put her face alongside Duo's, "are you sure I could not tempt you?"

"No, Heika," Minako said with feigned nonchalance, she had Duo by the hand now and was squeezing it as tight as she could. "He can see the dead, he is mine, Teishi," the name was used as a form of command, "and I will not share him or give him away."

"As you wish," Teishi said backing down in the face of someone she feared.

"As always I serve. But Minako, please tell me the name of this doll, that I might lament in private."

"His name is Shinigami no Duo Maxwell Tennosha," Minako said firmly, "but I call him Duo."

"Appropriate." The empress said, "and he has a Senshisha I trust."

"I do." Duo said, losing his temper with this strange and frightening woman.

"Has he performed the tasks?" Teishi asked. Minako shook her head. "Has me made the vow?" Minako shook her head again. "Then come daybreak he shall perform the Bav'ath'mordell'teraslyn. The twelve foremost warriors of the kingdom shall be assembled, and when the sun rises he will fight to the death for the honour. Then, if he is successful he can make the oath to me." She leered at Duo, "I hope you chose your Senshisha well," she said, "for they don't all survive the testing."

Author's Note

Don't trust Teishi, she's got an agenda and I don't want to give it away but she's playing with Duo because she can, and the testing is important.