The mage was ushered into their private rooms first while Kurogane silently stood aside in the hall, but as soon as his own notions of bare minimal civility allowed it he nodded a perfunctory thanks to the servants and dismissed them, shutting the sliding doors in their faces with a decisive clack. Ignoring his remaining companion for the moment, he quickly scanned the room as he had all the others they'd been escorted to and through this night. And not just rooms but terraces and audience chambers and endless corridors too.

Yasha's kingseat was vast and unnecessarily sprawling to Kurogane's mind; too many sharp corners and shadowy alcoves where enemies could hide. The bath house had been a welcome respite but by the gods he was happy to finally be left somewhat alone so that he could stop and take full stock of their situation.

Their landing had been into a harsh, almost alien landscape of moonlight and shadow, blood and blades, but it had proven to be only a way-station of sorts. The actual country they were now guests of reminded Kurogane so strongly of home that he had to struggle against a tendency to relax his guard. Focusing on remaining vigilant as behooved him in a strange - no matter how familiar - world helped distract him from the persistent pang that he refused to acknowledge as homesickness.

It had been a long strange journey thus far, and he predicted darkly that it would turn out to be far longer and stranger yet. The ninja was used to being on alert for danger, even for days and weeks on end at times, but this was different. He had no way to predict when he would get home, whether it would be tomorrow or ten years from now, and until he was home there was no security for him. There was no trusting another to watch his back while he caught a few hours of sleep. Not really. Not the way he had when at home, alongside men and women who had paid for his trust countless times over with their own blood. On this journey he fought alongside his companions, slept in their presence, ate food they'd prepared and downed drinks they'd poured for him but never truly relaxed.

He would have given much to be able to spend even one hour with his hand loose around a cup of rice wine, familiar scents and sensations drawing the tension out of his shoulders while letting a well-known voice wash over him without needing to pay much attention to the words.

At least this new world seemed safe enough, as far as he could tell after just a few hours. It was not home, but it was not bad either. The quarters they'd been assigned were several cuts above average, in point of fact; sturdy furnishings devoid of too-fragile carvings but polished to a glossy sheen, everything clean and in good repair, and little luxuries like down-stuffed cushions and elegant paintings scattered about. They had been welcomed as honored guests, and their quarters showed it.

The front room was a great open rectangle with hardly any shadows to investigate, and he quickly moved on. The single set of doors that led further in opened into a more private space, at first glance much the same as the other room but to Kurogane's eyes obviously meant to be their sleeping quarters. There were sliding doors set into the walls that he guessed would open to reveal storage space as well as low work tables and various chests and drawers and folding panels.

Half the room was left clear, leaving room for bedding to be spread out when they were ready for sleep. He walked each woven panel that made up the floor as he had in the first room, making note of the feel of them under his feet and where the support beams were while looking into the closets and pressing against the walls here and there. He frowned narrowly while scrutinizing the ceiling and then finally dropped his eyes to the man who'd followed him into the second room.

He'd noticed the mage eyeing him oddly at one point, long stares at his face and a few glances down at his sword. Once he'd had a chance to get a good look at the man in decent lighting Kurogane had stared as well, unnerved by the inky blackness of eyes that had often caught him by surprise before with how light and sparkling they could be in certain lights. The ninja then realized that the mage had been looking to Souhi to reassure himself that the man who'd caught him was indeed the same Kurogane he'd been traveling with and not this world's own version.

He picked up a small rectangular mirror off of a table now and glanced in it to confirm that his eyes too were turned black before handing the glass to the mage. Fai seemed disturbed by his blue eyes gone so dark, not just surprised or curious, and spent some time staring into his own reflection. Kurogane left him to it while pondering over how to give a situation report to someone whose language he knew not one word of, and after a minute of poking around and considering options, he gathered up some writing materials from a chest of shallow drawers and spread them out over the largest table.

The most important item was simple enough to communicate. After waving Fai over, Kurogane tapped him lightly on the chest and made a show of shushing him even though the blond hadn't made a peep. The ninja then pointed to himself.

"I'll do all the talking, got it?" he asked, just for the sake of saying something as part of his pantomime. Fai nodded understanding and made first an odd little sealing gesture over his own mouth, then a duck-quack sort of hand-flap after pointing to Kurogane.

After that, the conversation - such as it was - got a bit complicated. Kurogane managed to illustrate a moon, the floating castle in the sky and the kingdom of Yama with some simple drawings. Five strips of paper torn away from an edge were balled up and named off one by one to represent their little group. He took the two paper balls that had been designated as the mage and himself and dropped them first onto the floating castle, then nudged them onto the simple drawing of a castle and forest representing Yama, while the remaining three were left off-paper. A timepiece of sorts was drawn onto another page then, with a sun and moon chasing each other around a great circle with marks at regular intervals.

It took a few repetitions, but eventually Kurogane managed to convey to Fai that every night, from moonrise until midnight, they would be returning to the floating island in the sky. Once the mage grasped that concept, he held the remaining three wads of paper above the island and mimed dropping them, quirking his eyebrows up to ask if Kurogane thought their currently missing companions would also land there eventually. The ninja had considered it and couldn't dismiss the theory outright. He had a notion that he'd slipped into that rushing void between worlds just a shoulder's breadth ahead of the mage and yet had landed several minutes ahead. Who knew but that whatever distance had been between them and the kids meant that it would be hours or days yet before they arrived.

If they arrived.

It was also possible that they were become even more separated than before, and that the others were already landed elsewhere, not merely still in transit. What-ifs only led to never-ending mazes of possibilities, however, and so Kurogane merely shrugged in response. During his brief conference with this country's king, he'd explained - among other things - that they were seeking their companions and had given a brief description of the kid and princess, leaving out eye color in case their eyes were also turned black. Yasha-ou had very obligingly promised to put the word out among his subjects and let Kurogane know if two such youngsters were spotted, either here or at the sky-castle. They would have to wait and see.

Putting that aside for now, he next attempted to tell the mage of his sense that they were no longer being watched. There were guards all about the castle and curious servants swarming everywhere of course, but those were not the eyes he was concerned with. It was the faint prickle at his neck that told of interest deeper than mere curiosity or natural caution, darker than simple suspicion or fear of strangers, that was suddenly dissipated.

Kurogane grabbed some more paper and made quick little dots, naming them off as Hanshin Kyouwa, Koryo and so on instead of attempting to draw recognizable scenes. He gathered together their scattered group again and placed them in the first world, and then made another paper ball and hovered it nearby. Pointing back and forth between his eyes and their little paper group got a string of funny little noises and a solemn nod from the mage, and Fai proved his understanding by moving their group to the next world-dot himself and then taking the lone paper wad from Kurogane's hand to make it follow along at a distance.

When they once again moved their own markers to Yama and put the papers for the kids and bun somewhere between the last world and this one, Kurogane closed his fist over the spy-paper. Fai looked at the ninja's hand for a moment, a beat more serious than before. He tapped his own chest, pointed at the shut-away paper and nodded again.

Me too.

One thing more and then Kurogane decided that that was enough for the night. Drawing the piece of paper with the timepiece near once more, he tapped out the current approximate time, mimed putting his head down for rest, showed the blond when they would rise the next day, and then tapped at moonrise.

"We'll join Yama's army at the sky-castle," he said, moving their paper balls to the little spiky inkblot. On impulse he shredded a bit more paper and gathered up two small piles of scraps, one on each side of the inkblot. "Yama, Yasha-ou," he noted, circling one scrap-army with his finger and pulling out the largest scrap to lead it, then adding his paper wad and Fai's to that pile. Fai nodded. Then Kurogane gestured to the other pile of shredded paper and chose a leader for that army as well.

"Shura, and Ashura-ou," he said, and watched as Fai's face froze mid-nod and then quickly melted into a serene smile very like one of the carved wooden masks used in stage plays back home. The mage nodded one more time in understanding and then gave Kurogane a polite, inquiring look of slightly raised eyebrows and mixed boredom and anticipation.

Are we done?

Kurogane gave him a good long glare but to no effect. He could see through the top layer of falsehood but not well enough to actually read what lay underneath. If Fai chose not to give anything away, he only gave away the fact that he was in fact hiding something, and nothing more.

For now, at least, they were done.


Author's Notes: FYI, Fai's distraction in the previous chapter while falling into this world was due to his shock at feeling Reed's surveillance suddenly cut off. I extrapolated his use of magical spidey senses in LeCourt to his having an innate sixth sense similar to Kurogane's ability to perceive "ki". I like the thought that Fai would feel a slight sense of temporary relief while in Yama. He knows that the journey will continue and that his terrible duties still await him, but for now, while he waits for the children to rejoin them, he can have a little bit of a breather.