Author's note: About time I put up chapter two, don't you think? For once, I have little else to say. Except that I can't wait for the Saiunkoku art book!

When Doctor Tou had seen who was standing in the door to his rooms at such a late hour the small man's wrinkled face had gone slack with shock. Seien tried to blurt out an explanation, but the words made no sense, and he gave up. "Help him!"

The doctor snapped into action. "Inside!" he said succinctly, and Seien was only too happy to have orders to follow.

Ryuuki whimpered when Seien eased him down on the wide bench the doctor indicated, and Seien's gut wrenched. "I'm sorry, Ryuuki, I'm so sorry-- just raise your head a little, just a little--" he lifted Ryuuki's head with one hand, careful so that the hair wouldn't catch, and slid a pillow under. That small task done he stared at his younger brother helplessly, full of a frantic energy that was tearing him apart from within. Ryuuki's eyes were screwed shut, his face as white as new paper.

"I'm okay," he whispered; the litany had become both slower and softer. It did nothing to reassure Seien. Things were so far from okay that he wanted to laugh at the absurdity, but giving voice to the terror inside him would have shaken him to pieces. "I'm okay. I'm okay."

Doctor Tou appeared at his elbow and handed him a shallow bowl full of a milky liquid. "Have him drink this," he instructed.

Seien took it, suddenly suspicious. "What is it? Is it safe?" he sniffed the contents. "It smells foul!"

"By the heavens, Your Highness, I'm a doctor!" Anger touched Tou's voice as he leaned over to cut the red-stained skirt of Ryuuki's robe away. "It will make him sleep, that's all."

"Ryuuki-- here, sit up, sit up just a little, you need to drink this, come on . . ." Seien supported Ryuuki's thin shoulders with one arm and held the rim of the bowl to his brother's mouth. The youngest prince tried to drink but gagged on the bitterness, and Seien soothed him quickly. "All of it, all of it, you're almost there--"

Watching Ryuuki's face relax as the medicine took effect was both a blessed relief and an agony beyond telling. When his eyes fluttered closed, Seien turned where he crouched, then came to his feet in sudden anger. Doctor Tou laid a thin, wickedly sharp knife on the table, then held up a long needle and began threading it with a strange, stiff cord. "What are you doing? What do you need a knife for, isn't he hurt badly enough already?"

"Oh, for the love of--" the doctor raised his eyes to glare, then focused on something behind Seien. "Perfect timing! Get him out of here, I have a patient to attend to."

A large hand gripped Seien's elbow and pulled him around. He snarled and swung, but stopped the motion when his eyes caught and held on General Sou's steely gaze.

"Come, Your Highness. The doctor knows what he's doing. We'll only get in his way." The general was missing his customary hat, and his grey-shot dark hair hung shaggy around his shoulders.

It took a moment for his meaning to become clear to Seien. "But-- no! No, I have to stay with Ryuuki!"

"There's nothing you can do for your brother right now." The general towed him effortlessly in the direction of the door, and Seien was forced to follow or lose his feet. "We should leave Doctor Tou to his work."

"Wait-- let go, I can't leave him alone, it's not safe--" Seien twisted, straining to see his brother. He glimpsed Ryuuki's face, peaceful despite its drawn paleness. Doctor Tou was using the thin knife to slice through the crude, blood-soaked rags of Seien's robes that wrapped his leg, and the long wound beneath was--

Sou shut the door firmly and released Seien's arm. "Your brother is in the best possible hands, Prince Seien. You need not worry on that account. And you and I will stay out here in the hall, where we'll be close but not underfoot." The general easily hefted two chairs from the hallway and set them against the closed door. "Here, have a seat."

Seien sat as Sou lowered himself down into his own chair, but sprang back to his feet only a second later, too restless to stay still. He paced back and forth, and Sou watched him stolidly. "Why don't you tell me what happened, Your Highness?"

Seien tried to force his racing thoughts into something that resembled order. "It was after. After the banquet. Ryuuki came to meet me-- why did he come to meet me? I told him to stay in the archives, why did he come?" The thought was an agony. If only Ryuuki had stayed in the archives-- if only the banquet had ended earlier-- if only he had left before it was finished!

Sou's voice was patient. "So he found you afterwards?"

"We were walking back together. I thought we should walk through the gardens-- I was just saying we should walk through the gardens-- then-- Shouten came, and-- Shouten." Just saying his older brother's name sent a wave of rage through Seien, so strong that it clouded the edges of his vision. "I'll kill him. That bastard. With my own hands, I swear it." His fingernails cut into the palms of his hands, but he couldn't loosen his fingers.

"I take it that the esteemed first prince was somehow responsible for your younger brother's wound?" The general's voice was mild, and yet somehow its very calmness served to cut through some of Seien's anger.

"He had a sword. He attacked me. Ryuuki--" Seien wiped at his eyes and noticed for the first time the dried blood that stained his hands. Ryuuki's blood. "He grabbed Shouten, and then-- I should have been the one protecting him! If only I had been faster-- I sent him away, I didn't even notice when he came back!"

"Prince Ryuuki is a very brave boy."

"I failed him. I couldn't protect him. It happened so fast, so fast . . ."

"Prince Seien." The general's tone was stern. "I'm sure there was little you could have done, aside from what you did do-- you brought His Highness to someone who could help him. Self recriminations serve no purpose and will not change what happened."

At that moment a servant skidded around the corner of the hallway. The man nearly fell in his hurry to halt when he saw Seien, and his eyes went wide.

Sou rose to his feet when Seien tensed. "I'll deal with this," he said, and went to talk to the man.

Seien paced back and forth in front of the door. His breathing slowed, gradually, and with it his racing thoughts. Worry for Ryuuki was foremost in his mind. He replayed the encounter with Shouten over and over again; saw again his older brother sending Ryuuki staggering back down the hall and the merciless descent of the sword. Felt again the thick slipperiness of Ryuuki's blood between his fingers as he wrapped the long sword-cut. He forced himself to think of it, even as his stomach twisted and roiled. It had been long, nearly the entire length of Ryuuki's thigh. Deep, too, though it had been hard to tell with so much blood welling up.

A sword wound like that was a grave injury. Would Ryuuki be able to recover? Air rasped in the back of Seien's throat and he choked. Suddenly a thousand memories poured through his head: Ryuuki's light footfalls as he eagerly ran towards Seien; Ryuuki tripping over the too-long hem of his robe and then recovering with a laugh; Ryuuki shuffling his feet through the fallen leaves in the garden; Ryuuki chasing a sheet of practice writing stolen by the wind. Were they memories only, now? Would Ryuuki run again, shuffle his feet, explore the gardens he loved so much? Would Ryuuki even be able to leave his bed?

The sound of the door opening brought him around in an instant. Doctor Tou stood in the doorway, wiping his hands carefully on a towel. Spatters of red marred his sleeping robe: Seien hadn't noticed that Tou wasn't dressed when he had arrived, too frantic over the precious burden in his arms. "How is he?" he demanded, feeling Sou's solid presence returned at his elbow, quietly supportive.

"He's sleeping. A very bad cut, but at least it was straight. I've cleaned the wound and sewn it closed, and the bleeding has mostly stopped."

The wrinkles that seamed Tou's face seemed deeper, somehow, and he looked very tired and worried. Seien's heart twisted. "Will he recover?" he asked, dreading the answer. "Will Ryuuki be able to walk again?"

"I can't say," Tou said heavily. "But the important question right now isn't whether or not the young prince will walk. It's whether or not he'll live."

The world went very still and silent around Seien. His voice, when it came, didn't sound like it was his. "What?"

"He is weaker than he should be, and I do not like the look of the wound. There is too much redness, too much swelling. A heat has entered through it and moved to his lungs. He's taken a fever, and it's getting worse." Tou shook his head. "Any one of these things is bad, but all of them together? The signs are not good."

"He was cut on the leg," everything that Seien could see was sharply defined, the contrast between shadow and light shockingly extreme. "Men recover from leg wounds all the time."

"Men, Your Highness. Not eleven-year-old boys. The shock to his system is profound, and he lost a great deal of blood. If I can restore his equilibrium-- if he can survive the next few days, then it is likely that--"

The words stopped making sense. Seien pushed heedlessly past Doctor Tou and walked into the room beyond. The doctor had moved Ryuuki to the bed, and the youngest prince's tangled hair was carefully arranged to one side of the pillow. He had been covered with a blanket, hiding his injured leg and the ruin of his robes. There was a flush to his cheeks that contrasted sharply with his unhealthy pallor, and even though he slept, his breathing was short and faintly uneven.

There was a firm hand on his arm again, but Seien barely noticed. He couldn't even manage to be grateful when that hand caught him as his knees gave out and guided him into a chair. Someone was speaking to him, but the voice was just a strange buzzing in the background. His entire existence had narrowed to the faint sound of air being drawn and released, the near-imperceptible rise and fall of a narrow chest.