De Minimis Non Curat Praetor (The commander does not bother with the smallest things)

General Risai quickly perused the encoded document written in the strange characters from the other world that Yuka had taught to her little bevy of spies. It was so very unlike the writing style she was accustomed to, which relied on complex characters and many of the same sounds could have a thousand different meanings based on which character was used. The code was based on sound rather than a depiction of the object or idea, each character represented one of in some cases several sounds and they were strung together to make out what the word would be if pronounced aloud. It was also easy to switch out the different characters for each other, so that in the unlikely event a turncoat would get hold of a missive, the resulting message would make no sense unless they had the key. It had been a marvelously effective code for many years now.

:A useful thing that, and so easy to cipher,: Risai thought.

The latest intelligence read that the armies that had been posted long the pass-route to Cheinlen had assembled and moved further north. At last report they had just started to move west, and were presumed to have been ordered back to shore up fortifications at the gate-pass to Tungjou.

:That place already has a full blue unit, and the yellow unit that just put on the march will bring its strength up to a full white unit of ten thousand soldiers. Sheesh, where is their commander going to put them all, the barracks in that fortress are only designed for a single blue unit. They're going to be packed in like sardines since trying to make a winter camp is about out of the question with the way the weather is right now.:

She had just informed his majesty of the movements and he had adjusted the strategy for that area of the campaign. With his usual expertise he had turned a disadvantage (superior numbers and a fortress) to an advantage. 'The Fortress and pass might give them the high ground,' he'd said. 'But if we strike quickly, we will catch them at a moment when the soldiers have not yet settled in and will be disorganized and easier to defeat.' Having all of those fighters crammed into one small space would be like a kit of foxes attacking a chicken coop from all sides, the soldiers would be lax and undisciplined thus less able to mount an effective defense with everyone stumbling all over everyone else.

The army was all but assembled now, all that was left was for the king to appear in the full court that evening and set things in motion. Risai couldn't wait. The troops under her were all but dancing in place in their eagerness to be off. They had been waiting to be ordered to the campaign for years and it had been a source of general frustration to them to never be given the order to march. They and everyone knew that the provincial governors were not acting in the best interests of Tai, and the last thing any man or woman of Tai had a taste for was a long, drawn-out political feud... blood feuds were more the taste in this northern land.

:On one hand, I can see the good points. The superior infrastructure here in the south and the better job-markets have had the effect of clearing the north of most of the civilian population. Both Taiki and Yuka were concerned that the people should not suffer from war, but really, this nonsense has gone on for long enough!:

Risai would have been pleased if even Yuka had decided the head the army rather than engage in a protracted diplomatic running-dance.

:But maybe that's just the Tai in me talking.:

It was well known that the people of Tai enjoyed a good fight almost as much as they enjoyed a good ale or a good meal. Soldiering wasn't just a profession but more like a natural, national calling.

:I will at least hand her some points for good sense, the guild of hunter-warriors had some effect in channeling the worst of the brawler's energies as well as taking down the youma population.:

Though of course, they had their downside as well. The city guard was often left to clean up the messes that members of that lot often got into on a night of prolonged drinking and trouble-making.

:She's an astute politician, and she has managed things by manipulating the economy and gem-prices on the international market that I would have said were quite impossible... but she's difficult to really like,: Risai thought to herself.

The Royal Consort was cunning, and manipulative. She never used her abilities in a detrimental fashion, Risai had never seen her abuse her powers, not once. She could have chosen to live in a great deal of luxury, but she always believed that the palace budget was better spent on boosting Tai's economy. Even her wardrobe was quite frugal, she re-dyed and reused fabrics rather than buy new pieces, and she didn't have extravagant jewelry or decorations. Risai had seen for herself how hard she worked to make things better, but all the same Risai couldn't bring herself to like Yuka for it.

:Part of it may be a soldier's dislike for politicians,: Risai admitted.

No matter how well-intentioned, Yuka was still cunning and manipulative, so it was hard to trust her, even with the evidence of all Risai had seen the girl put herself through to save Taiki's life. Part of her still had this nagging, lingering doubt, the thought that she might have taken up the proxy-marriage as a way to take control of the throne. She might actually be working with Asen to keep Tai destabilized and that was why she had never ordered the troops assembled and marched into the north to take it herself. As much as Risai understood Consort Yuka's reasons for not engaging the superior armed forces in the north to concentrate instead on stabilizing the economy, the soldier in her insisted that the girl should have taken the direct approach, should have marched in and reunified the lands and put an end to matters for good.

:Her constant dithering seems cowardly!: Risai thought to herself.

She knew the girl wasn't dithering, that she even sort of had a plan in fact, but it felt like her refusal to go on the offensive was the mark of a weak coward who was too afraid to confront the problems directly.

:I know that I will not be the only one relieved that the proper king is back on the throne. Finally! We can have done with this instead of putting up with her useless politicking.:

She had known that Gyousou Saku would do what was right and necessary. He would lead the armies successfully and at last bring an end to all of this stupid sabre-rattling. For the first time in many decades, Risai could at last see an end to the extended wait, and a new hope for the future. However, now that she was free to contemplate that future, a strange thought occurred to her.

:I wonder what his majesty will do with the Royal Consort,: Risai wondered.

After all, it hadn't just been a marriage of convenience, but one made out of necessity and arranged by his kirin completely without Gyousou's permission. The Royal Tai had awoken from his sleep to find himself with a surprise consort. A woman who had interceded, unlooked for and unasked by him, a stranger (and a kaikyaku from another world no less), who had been using his authority and his name to do what she wished done with Tai.

:Granted, I do not believe that Tai would have survived if she had not done as she did, but still...:

If she had not intervened,Tai would, in fact, still be at the non-existent mercy of General Asen, who had apparently been doing his very utmost to completely ruin the kingdom and keep it ruined. It was hard to feel grateful for all that she knew the girl had done when Risai had to put up with the constant nagging frustration of being held back by her. The general had brought up many, many many times (to the point where they were surely both sick of it) that Yuka should do to the northern shuukou as she had done to the southern provinces with the armies of En and Kei, that was, to assemble Tai's troops who would come to the royal banner and march on the north.

:She's very intelligent, I still don't really see why she wouldn't take up arms. It's not like she's never been in a battle before! She is not incapable of it, and I would have been there to advise her strategy. She could have gathered the loyal soldiers in the five provinces that answered to her!:

It seemed like she always was insulting Risai's abilities by not letting her take on the armies of even just one province... preferably Jou, her home-province.

:That girl is guided too much by our merciful kirin,: Risai thought.

The girl wasn't spineless. When it came time to fight, Yuka never hesitated to make a kill-strike. It was a very, very closely kept secret that Yuka possessed prowess as a fighter. It was kept a secret because much of her character depended on deceiving her enemies into underestimating her.

:Ever since the beginning, since she sent Asen into imprisonment in exile instead of executing him outright, that girl has shown herself to be too lenient, too unwilling to engage an enemy and defeat him properly. The shuukou would never have taken her so lightly if she had just taken even one of them on!:

"You are frowning, general Risai," Gyousou remarked, entering the empty war-room where the General pored over the large map and sand-table set up for thier war strategy.

Risai conscientiously smoothed her face.

"It is no longer a concern, your majesty," she replied. "It is good you have returned. The army is assembled as you have commanded and is ready to move. We can march directly after the council meeting, this very night."

Gyousou chuckled, and looked over at her, not unkindly.

"It has been a long time in coming, it seems."

"Yes!" the general agreed with heartfelt emphasis.

Gyousou regarded her with a long, patient look and seemed like he might have said something but shook his head and clearly decided to broach a different subject

"Our future opponents are economically weakened, and will be weakened further by their incipient loss of leadership, though I doubt very much they will remain so," he said. "However their martial strength is still superior to the numbers we can field by nearly three to one. Added to this, they have the advantage of terrain, and... it is often said that engaging in combat in the north during the winter time is a stupid way to kill off an army."

"I know you will find a way to win this, your majesty," Risai said, conveying her absolute faith in him.

He sighed, looking unusually dubious for him.

"The more I come to see and grasp the situation, the more I come to only be able to hope that you are right."

"Your majesty, you are without doubt the greatest military commander our kingdom has ever produced," Risai protested to his crazy-talk. "If ever there were ever one who would triumph against these odds, it is you."

"General, I hope you do not think me cowardly to say this, but this is a war I am hoping we can win without fighting," Gyousou said.

Risai looked at him in surprise, taken aback. She knew that the enemies numbers were greater than their own, but she never once doubted her soldiers abilities or their eagerness to finally be undertaking their real duties to Tai. She certainly had not expected to hear such words from the mouth of her king, the famous general whose single defeat on record had been more of a victory than a defeat.

"I have read over some of the intelligence reports from the north, the one's concerning why the armies of the four provinces will not fall in line under the Royal Banner."

"Oh. That."

Someone, Risai suspected the actual Minister of Summer, if not the Province shuukou themselves, had leaked that the Royal Palace was being administered, not by the rightful king of Tai, but by a mere Royal Consort. Yuka had been still quite young at the time and had not gained her current level of political acumen, so neither she nor Taiki had thought to stop the tale from spreading. In the north the rumor that their kingdom would fall into the hands of not just a mere Royal Consort but a woman (and there had been outright riots when it was discovered the woman was a kaikyaku from the other world) had caused the already tenuous rift to shift into a full break in the kingdom.

In truth, Risai often felt a bit sorry for the young Consort. Up north, her name was spat on and dragged through the mud. She was accused and assumed of taking all sorts of lovers, some of them even hanjuu, while her husband was unable to prevent it. "Whore" was actually one of the nicer terms they used to refer to her. Risai had never once seen a single shred of evidence to support that belief (and if anyone would know, it was the woman in charge of the Consort Bodyguards). By report she had never even once looked too long at a man, and comported herself in all ways like a properly married woman.

:Though I have come to strongly suspect that the Royal Consort is in fact... untouched.:

It seemed like a very, very strange thing to go for so many decades without satisfying the appetite. Risai had had many lovers over the years, since the military life tended to treat sex on the same level of eating or sleeping, an urge that came and went and should be fed when time called for it and not bothered with otherwise.

"They aren't true, your majesty," Risai hastened to reassure him.

It would not do if her king was made a laughingstock by implication that he was a cuckhold.

"Not even her bitterest enemies can accuse her truly," she added. "And they've made every attempt to try it."

There had been one shocking incidence where one fellow actually tried to manufact the evidence of an affair that he could not come by naturally. Yuka had used some sort of strange otherworld detecting techniques involving traces left behind by fingertips and cloth analysis to prove the allegations utterly false.

"I would not have assumed so," Gyousou replied with dignity. "However, having the Royal Consort teamed up with a kirin to run the country seems to have become an enormous bone of contention. I hope I do not sound hopelessly naive when I say that I hope that when the soldiers in the north see the throne properly restored they decide to simply fall peacefully back under my banner once again."

"You think they're going to just raise their arms and surrender?" she said in surprise.

"I can hope," Gyousou said dubiously. "Taiki has urged me to at least give them the chance."

"Will that not interfere with your plans to catch the armies by surprise?"

"Your intelligence reports suggest that it is already too late for that," Gyousou replied. "It was a fragile hope to begin with, and was never really a serious part of my strategy from the start. Neither is this, by the way, but every battle we do not have to engage in leaves us with better resources for the ones we must fight."

"And while you are away fighting, your majesty?" Risai questioned. "Will you leave the court as it was? Will having that girl in place, manipulating everything, not be seen as essentially the same thing?!"

Gyousou looked back at Risai calmly, a single eyebrow raised. She had been shouting there at the end, her true feelings having gotten the better of her.

"I apologize for raising my voice in your presence, my king," Risai said , bowing deeply in apology.

"You do not like her?"

"I am never fully certain I can trust her, your majesty," Risai said with reluctant honesty. "She has given every appearance of being trustworthy, but I have seen her operate and I know that she is sly and cunning. She relies a great deal on deception. Part of me always wonders if she is deceiving me. After all, I thought that Asen was an admirable, upstanding general of Tai and I was pleased to call him a confederate, but then..."

She gestured vaguely to the map.

"It makes me uneasy that she spared his life," Risai added. "I know that Taiki asked her to do it, and that she has to lead in conjunction with him, never able to override his authority as Taiho and it has sometimes been a major setback. Taiki will always plead for mercy... I know all of this, but..."

"You think that she should have requested that you to have him quietly assassinated," Gyousou said shrewdly.

"I would have done it, and gladly!" Risai replied hotly. "I can't imagine a reason why she would not, except maybe she was young at the time, too softhearted, or that she lacked conviction. She refused to head north, and she refused to remove him from the problem. She consistently refuses my advice on military affairs whenever Taiki asks for greater mercy. How can I not help suspecting her when she spends so much time avoiding just taking care of the matter directly?"

"Spoken like a true citizen of Tai," Gyousou said with warm approval. "You and I will never take an indirect route, when a direct one is available. Diplomacy, it is agreed, has its place, and generally that place is right behind a good fight to settle the matter. It is a given then that someone who spends so much time trying to make omlettes without cracking open the eggs would seem suspicious. But, she's a kaikyaku, and I understand that the kingdom she hails from relies entirely upon trade rather than military strength to maintain itself. Given the complexity of the situation and the limited, divided powers of the co-leadership, I think she may have been what the situation required."

"And when the situation requires her no longer," Risai pressed boldly. "Will you remove her?"

"Taiki has given me to understand that it will not be a question," Gyousou replied shortly. "The girl has her own plans to move on when she is no longer necessary to protect Tai and its kirin."

Risai was taken aback, the wind truly taken out of her sails. All of her suspicions seemed so pointless now, since they relied on the girl being grasping and devious enough to make a true bid for power and hold it as long as possible. Now, Risai was left with a disconcerting feeling of abandonment as well as a good deal of insult on her kings behalf.

"What? She's just going to leave?" Risai said, feeling a trifle used and offended. "She invokes your name as her husband to stand next to the throne for decades on end and now that you are wakened she decides it's no longer convenient to have a husband and she's just going to abandon you?"

"A moment ago you wanted her gone, now you're offended she will not stay," Gyousou said, sounding amused.

"Leaving under her own power, and so shortly! It's almost as though she's decided you're somehow not good enough for her!" Risai stated, irritated on her kings behalf. "She's been married to you all this time, the least she could do is actually try to be a wife for once."

"We both know that it was a marriage of necessity, and she wasn't marrying me as a person, she married her will to save Taiki and that alone. The lengths she has gone to to honor her bonds should humble us both."

"I'll be humble when she comes to her senses," Risai replied smartly. "You are a fine king, much too good for her. She should be the one who is humbled. She has been doing this and that saying "my husband, my husband" all these years and now when it comes time to act the part she's... she's..."

"Probably a nervous young woman," Gyousou supplied gently.

Risai looked the other way, abruptly guilty. The main speculation among even her bodyguards was that Yuka was indeed a "flower bud," a "winter blossom," a "drifting snowflake." Her battlemaids thought it was sort of cute that, even in her advanced years, the Royal Consort's cheeks pinkened and she quickly changed the subject when the topic of what went on between the winter furs came up.

"And besides that," Risai pressed. "She's a security risk. There isn't anyone, even myself, who knows the ins and outs of the imperial court as she does. If there is a single piece of gossip about the least of the palace staff or administration that she is not aware of then it isn't worth knowing. If she takes this information to another kingdom-"

"It won't do a whole lot of good there," Gyousou replied, unconcerned. "Unless a kingdom is failing and Youma are crawling everywhere, which, sadly we cannot really deny at this point, the affairs and going's on of other royal kingdoms are of little concern to outsiders. I doubt very much that a foreign court will be much interested in the inner workings of Hakkei Palace or of the other province's in Tai."

"Well what about her new gems? She's the only one who knows how the seed-gem was made and she's the only one with the master seed. If she leaves with it, there goes our trade in them."

"Tai is not solely dependent on those new gems," Gyousou pointed out. "We have managed fine for centuries without them, and the supposed income we will bring with them is currently merely speculation."

"Well what about-"

"I'm not going to keep the girl here against her will," Gyousou said firmly, forestalling any further argument with a hand. "She's more than earned her freedom and has every right to it. When she has fulfilled her part in my plans, she will be free to go if she wishes. I owe her that much at least."

Risai said nothing more on the matter since her king had firmly closed the subject, however she could not help thinking privately

:It just doesn't seem right. His majesty is ten times her worth, she should recognize that fact and not act like her connection with him is such a burden. She should love him as much as all of us in Hakkei Palace do. It's impossible to believe she doesn't feel anything for him at all, especially after she's spent time talking to him. I can't imagine that. It's not right.: