Chapter Eighty-Eight

Damn it, Kurogane thought, stalking past half a dozen people. Whenever he got close to someone, they retreated against the wall, faces turned down to avoid meeting his glare. Many of them were palace servants—Tomoyo kept her personal staff, but Kendappa had dozens of disposable subjects working for her every hour of the day, and many of them had little to do but fawn over the new arrivals to Shirasagi Castle. Which roughly translated into a lot of curious eyes peering in to see the injured vampire Kurogane had brought with him.

They all must have sensed his frustration, though, given that none of them peeked their heads into the little room to check on the boy. He sent a brief prayer to the gods that they would at least have the grace to wait until someone invited them in before intruding.

The kid's living quarters was quite a walk from his own, for various reasons. The first reason was that, in the event he wasn't there when the boy woke up, the kid wouldn't wander into his room without being intercepted by one of the servants. The second was that the princess and the mage would be less inclined to wake up every five minutes in the night to check on him if he was far away. They'd barely been keeping it together as it was.

Instead of returning to the room he'd occupied whenever he was guarding Princess Tomoyo, he passed another set of doors and knocked on the wooden frame of the walls. "Mage, you in there?"

"Coming!" the vampire sang, sliding the door open a moment later. In his arms was a basket of laundry, recently folded. "Good morning, Kuro-pon!"

Kurogane gritted his teeth. There was so much wrong with what he'd just witnessed—first the laundry basket, when there were dozens of servants just standing around waiting for orders, and then the nickname, resurrected after months of disuse. Any other day, Kurogane would've criticized both those things.

Not now. Not when things were finally returning to some semblance of normalcy, not when things were so precariously balanced between harmony and disaster. He would not do anything to ruin their fragile peace now, not even yell at the mage. "The kid's awake. And not paralyzed anymore, apparently."

Fai's smile died, and he set the laundry basket down. Even after just three days of near-constant smiling and cheeriness, the frown looked unnatural. Better that way, Kurogane decided.

"You spoke to him already?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Somewhat."

Fai arched an eyebrow, trying to decipher his response. Kurogane waited. "So, you talked to him, and he talked back? Or did you talk to him and he didn't say anything? Or . . ."

The ninja shrugged. "He didn't say much."

The mage still didn't smile. "You didn't like his answers?"

"No. I didn't. So you're going to talk to him instead."

Fai smiled again, looking faintly sad. "I think he'll be glad you were watching over him, once he gets used to the idea of traveling with us again."

"Whatever." He turned away from the door and stalked back over to his room, letting his hand rest on Souhi's hilt. It was nice to be in a world where he could carry his sword around without getting strange looks.

It was nice to be home.

His room was simple—a square box with few pieces of furniture. A straw mat was pushed up against the far wall, soft enough to sleep on, but not so soft as to swallow him up. There was a stand for his sword, though he only left it there when he slept, given the group's propensity to vanish from one dimension to the next without warning. On the wall hung a few simple tapestries, one with his family name, and one declaring his rank. Apart from that, there was not much he had in the way of permanent possessions.

He sat down on the straw mat, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes. Though he'd often claimed to get headaches from the mage's constant chatter, this was the first time he'd ever gotten a headache over the boy.

That was a disaster, he thought, dropping his forehead into his hands and exhaling.

The kid's words echoed in his ears: "I didn't think anyone would care."

Kurogane rarely felt guilty. He hadn't felt guilty for slaying hundreds of assassins over the years, and he hadn't allowed himself to feel guilty over his failure to protect Suwa from demons. His primary reaction to anything unpleasant was anger. Now that anger doubled back on him, ripping him apart from inside. He'd never had an apprentice before the boy, had never deigned to share his trade with anyone before. Even without teaching experience, however, such a complete failure struck a hard blow against his pride. Not only had his first apprentice run away, he'd done it because he'd thought no one would care enough to miss him. I should have seen, the ninja thought, not as an accusation, but as a simple fact. I should have known something was wrong. I should have fixed it.

The room was quiet for a while. Then, Kurogane stood and walked out, trying not to frighten the servants again. The time to be angry had come and gone. Now he had to make things right.

He slid one of the doors open and went outside.

Syaoran tucked Seishirou's cloak under the blankets when he heard the door open. A single, blue eye touched on him for a moment before his visitor entered.

"Kuro-rin said you were awake."

The nickname startled Syaoran. In Infinity, everyone had been so on edge, so ready to hurt each other. Syaoran had suspected, even then, that Fai's use of the ninja's full name had been meant to distance him from everyone.

Fai closed the door behind him and approached, moving slowly, but without hesitation. He sat down next to the mattress, tilting his head up to look at the ceiling. "So, did he tell you what happened after you passed out?"

"Yeah . . ." Syaoran waited to see if the magician would say anything more, not sure how Fai would react to his presence despite their brief contact in Cirrus. When several minutes passed between them without a word, Syaoran spoke. "What world have we landed in?"

Surprise flitted across Fai's face. "He didn't tell you?"

Syaoran shook his head.

Suddenly, Fai was grinning. "We're in Nihon. Kuro-pin's home country."

Alarm flashed through him, though he couldn't think of a concrete reason why he should be afraid. Perhaps it was because, now that Kurogane's wish had come true, the ninja would likely want to stay here. That meant . . . He'll never know how sorry I am. He probably doesn't even want to see me, now that he knows I'm alive.

Syaoran brought his blankets closer to his chest. His shirt had been taken away to some other place, probably to be washed or discarded, depending on the extent of the damage. He was wearing the pants he'd had in the previous dimension, though they'd apparently been washed since he'd been asleep. He'd already checked to make sure the metal bolt from Sakura's leg brace had been returned to him. It had been put back in his pocket.

"Don't worry," Fai said, resting a gentle hand on Syaoran's head. "Everything's all right. Whatever monsters lurk beyond the borders, this part of the world is relatively safe."

Syaoran nodded, though the words seemed to be tempting fate. He wasn't especially concerned about the world itself, anyway. If he'd been left to rest, chances were they weren't in any grave peril. Not like the last world . . . he thought, lips sinking into a frown.

"Smile!" Fai sang. "You're alive and not paralyzed. We should be celebrating."

Syaoran looked down at his legs, remembering how horrified he'd been to lose feeling in them, even for a few minutes. "Yeah . . . But how?" What price did they pay to let me walk again?

"Your vampire blood, most likely. I mean, I'm pretty sure humans don't recover from injuries like that, especially not so quickly. And even if things that happen before the transformation can't be healed . . ." Fai raised his fingertips to his eyelid, indicating the eye the Other had ripped out and eaten. Syaoran repressed a shudder. "Wounds you receive after you become a vampire heal quite easily."

"So . . . That's all? My vampirism kept me from being a paraplegic?"

Fai nodded.

Syaoran was struck with the notion that Seishirou had known all along the injury wouldn't last. That's why he was able to speak so casually—he knew I was going to be fine. "I . . . That's a relief."

"In a way, it was lucky. Even though Seishirou caused all that damage, he gave you the power to heal."

Syaoran nodded uneasily. He was the one with the most insight onto Seishirou's failed plan, and still, it would take him weeks to put every detail together with any degree of confidence. But right now, any conclusion the others made was impossible to rule out.

"Did you ever figure out what Seishirou meant when he was talking about magic?" Fai asked. "I was curious."

Syaoran thought about it for a moment. In hindsight, the answer was much more obvious. "He said that certain emotions, like anger and hatred and frustration, can increase the potency of any magical spell. He was trying to provoke me into attacking him with my magic."

"Oh. Why?"

"I . . ." He hesitated, not sure whether he'd be able to tell the truth for this one without having to give a long explanation of Seishirou's plan, but unwilling to lie when his relationships were already so fractured. He sighed. "To fulfill the requirements his wish."

Fai's face softened, and Syaoran wondered how much more the magician understood than he was letting on. Probably a lot. I'm sure he understands magic better than I do. Probably even better than Seishirou did.

"Hatred and pain do increase the strength of your magic," Fai said, serious for once. "But they also poison you from within, leave you brittle and broken so that everything else hurts you in turn."

"Fai-san . . ."

"There are better sources of magic," the magician went on, his gaze a thousand miles away. "Anger and frustration, yes, but also a desire to protect someone, no matter what you have to face because of it." Fai tilted his head back and smiled. "Though I don't think that'll be too much of an issue anymore."

Syaoran was about to ask Fai where his certainty came from when the door slid open. He looked up, almost gasping at the figure that appeared there.

Fai looked over to their unexpected visitor. "Ah, I was wondering when Kuro-pon would send you in, Sakura-chan."