While the Daimyo of the various lands rarely if ever stepped out of their borders, once in a season two Emissaries (one from the Daimyo, the other from the Kage) from each of the Great Nations as well as quite a few of the smaller ones would go to visit another Great Nation.
In the summer it was Lightning's turn to host, in the fall Earth's, the winter was saved for the desert land of Wind, and Fire got the Spring. Water didn't want foreigners in its governance even during peace time, so they only sent Emissaries.
Funnily enough, it was theirs that were the first to arrive.
They did not say much.
According to Sensei, they never did.
Sakura noted down their arrival nonetheless, and beside her Juro began pulling out their documents regarding Water, hoping to find the biographies of the possible Emissaries located somewhere inside to match with the newly revealed names.
After Water came Wind, and Sakura listened with interest from the small room next to the court as Fire's closest allies reintroduced themselves. Throughout the Land of Fire names of plants and the like were most popular, but in Wind their children tended to be named after entertainment—games, and dance, and fun—or after weaponry. Their Emissaries, Odoriko Kasui from the Daimyo and Toreda Fupu from Suna, didn't seem to be bucking that trend, and Sakura found it kind of funny; if she was living in the middle of a desert, she rather thought she'd want to name her child after something living, but then she got to stare at living things every day.
Wind had only just arrived when the next Emissaries, the team from Lightning, were announced, which made Juro audibly whimper. He certainly had the hardest job right now, while Sakura's transcript was fairly straightforward to do at the beginning but would become more difficult to keep up with throughout.
Still, Lightning's arrival wasn't exactly something she was pleased about either.
Sakura was very, very happy the rice paper protected her from sight.
Only Shin was in a position to be seen, and even then he (as an aide) was not going to be introduced. Both Juro and Sakura had been kept in the smaller room for just that reason—Yamanaka eyes and hair were too distinctive, and the average ninja was either rail thin or built of muscle; anything else was a clear sign of a kekkei genkai.
The Nara, at least, weren't visibly that unique. They were all generally brown-eyed and dark-haired, and they tended towards thinner frames; they could exercise for years, be able to bench press mountains, and still look like they'd run out of breath fetching firewood. Sakura looked a bit like that herself, right now, but that was more due to her age than anything else—the Yamanaka as a whole tended to have body types somewhere in the middle.
Regardless, the hope was that Shin—who looked vaguely like he could be from anywhere in the Fire Nation—would not entice Lightning into doing anything stupid, into starting another war when the wounds from the last one were only just beginning to scar. The act of hiding their more noticeable kekkei genkai likely did little, if anything, to help in that venture, but it still felt better than doing nothing at all.
Lightning was followed by the final Emissaries to arrive, the team from Earth.
Introductions were quick and to the point.
Emissaries from the smaller nations—Grass, Hot Water, Rice, Whirlpool—had come in between the larger ones, and Sakura had made sure to note down their presence and statements, as was her duty, but they, and everybody else, knew that they were nothing compared to the heavy hitters; they were there as a courtesy, little else (with the possible exception of Uzu—Konoha had pushed really hard for them to be considered one of the great villages, and while the effort had failed the bond remained strong enough that they still had as much of a say as any great nation in the politics of Fire.)
The Emissaries from the other nations would only stay for one week, and court would only be held for five of those days, so after Earth had settled in it took little time for the court to begin in full.
.
The court session, of course, had to begin with speeches.
The first was from one of the many courtiers (apparently the current favorite), lasted about ten minutes, and could be boiled down to 'peace good, war bad.' Sakura wrote that in the margin of the transcript.
The next was from the Daimyo himself, his quarterly formal address on The State of the Nation.
It could be boiled down to 'peace and prosperity good, war and anarchy bad.' She wrote that in the margin too.
Then came introductions, with everyone but the servants and aides having to stand in turn to be recognized and, if it was their first time in court, formally introduced.
Then, finally, came the actual work.
Wind wanted a better tariff agreement.
The rest of the day was spent trying to narrow down what, exactly, they wanted to be changed, though nothing would actually be cemented until the final days. The talks were boring, long, spoke around requests instead of directly asking for anything, and spent at least half an hour accomplishing what could have been done in a sentence. At least that would make the day's summaries easier.
It was the second day when things began to become interesting (which, in the context of diplomacy, was never a good thing.)
It was Iwa (another fantastic sign, not at all stressful) that made it so.
"And do you have any evidence?" Sensei asked, butting in (quite rudely, but the rudeness would be excused by those that mattered.)
"And what evidence would you like me to give?" The Iwa Emissary simpered. "You would simply explain away any I tried to bring forward."
"Any," Sensei said, not backing down.
Iwa, in traditional Earth fashion, had accused Uzushiogakure of planting spies in their village. Ignoring that spies were an assumed part of life, ignoring that Uzushiogakure had actually found Iwa's spies in 25 K, a mere four years ago, there was still the issue that Iwa and Uzu were at literally opposite sides of the earth.
What, exactly, was Iwa's deal?
"While I cannot provide you with bodies—it is unfortunately true that Uzushiogakure uses seals on their spies to ensure the complete disintegration of their bodies if caught—" (the Uzu Emissary did not agree, and did not agree quite loudly, so the Iwa Emissary raised her voice) "—if caught—we can assure you, from one Great Nation to another, that this is true."
Sakura really, really didn't like this.
Iwa knew this wasn't going to work—there was absolutely no reason it should—so the important question was why they were doing it at all.
In past sessions, Sakura knew, Iwa had focused primarily on control of many of the more minor nations and their economies, accusing Fire and Konoha (not entirely incorrectly) of mercantilist policies and having puppet states. Its focus on Uzu was new, and worrying.
In the margin of the transcript Sakura made a note to ask Shin about the faces of the other Emissaries—while Uzu's, Konoha's, and Fire's responses were predictable, it was possible Iwa was attempting to fish for support from other nations to weaken Fire or Uzu in some way.
The Uzu Emissary was speaking now, denying the claims of disintegration seals (that was a new one, Sakura would admit. She hadn't heard of it before, but then Konoha and Fire as a whole were very pro-Whirlpool.) They went on to deny the use of spies—a statement which was unlikely to be true to begin with, and even more so after Iwa was caught spying on them—and reminding the others of the many, many problems with baseless accusations.
While Sakura couldn't see anything through the rice paper walls, as far as she could tell most non-Fire agreed.
The end-of-day briefing was not fun.
The jounin and chuunin paced, upset and not knowing what to do, and made plans to meet with several families, to meet with the Whirlpool Emissaries and, ideally, with the Daimyo himself.
While nothing got resolved in the briefing, one of the chuunin was sent to run back to the Kage that night, instead of the end of the week as planned—the unusual behavior far too much a sign of something to ignore.
The next day dawned far too early, and all too soon Sakura found herself back in the tiny room, listening to the voices of those on the other side of a sheet of paper and trying to make sense of what they were saying and what they meant.
The attention was still focused on the Daimyo, of course, and theoretical actions that the Emissaries wanted the Daimyo to take, but now the Delegates from Earth, Lightning, and Water huddled in a corner and Hot Water (one of the smaller nations Fire had, in the past, been accused of puppeting) hovered near them, never close enough to be confronted outright but far too close for comfort.
There's an art to losing. There's an art to nearly everything, Sakura thinks, but losing is one that is particularly difficult to master.
Not, mind you, because it is terribly difficult to lose.
It is rather simple to lose to begin with, and adding an adverb to that (gracefully, redeemably, appropriately, unflinchingly, momentarily) is usually fairly straightforward too.
The problem is that losing is... well, it's failure. And when one is failing their attention is usually on THAT, rather than ensuring they're failing in the best way possible.
Generally speaking, Konoha wants its ninja to learn how to lose early. Not, again, because they want them to fail, but because failure is to some extent inevitable so you might as well learn how to do it the best way you can.
Sakura learned how to lose in games, in spars, in school competitions, and in fights over chores.
She had not yet lost in any impactful way, but now, sitting at the desk beside Juro, she was overcome with the feeling that she—that the entire diplomacy corps—were in the midst of failing, of losing, and would refuse to realize it for far too long.
By the time they realized, really and truly, that they had failed they would have no chance at failing gracefully, redeemably, appropriately, unflinchingly, or momentarily.
On the other side of the rice paper one of the diplomats laughed, and Sakura stared down at her notes. Today was not a good day to be Konoha.
.
At the end of the week each of the Emissaries from the other nations left one by one.
Nothing had changed in the past few days, at least at a purely legislative level—the tariffs were the same, the currency exchange rates steady, the smaller nations still as relatively powerless as always.
And yet it did not feel like nothing had happened.
The chuunin had come back from Konoha with orders from the Hokage—monitor carefully, and try to draw support.
Sakura found those orders stupid, and ignorant of the actions already being taken.
She was too smart to voice her objections aloud.
The Daimyo, as far as he went, seemed content to ignore the different-new-unnerving-not good, in favor of hosting a party on the final day of the Emissaries' stay.
Sensei had come back from his meeting with the man with no good news; Konoha was shouting "smoke!" and the Daimyo was saying "just a cloud."
Sakura thought he was an idiot too, but if she ever said that she'd be twice as much of an idiot at least.
At least Lightning didn't try anything, both Kumo's and their Daimyo's Emissaries apparently on their best behavior.
Wind seemed more or less content too; apparently there had been higher than usual rainfall in their neck of the woods that year, so they were less desperately clinging on to the edge of survival than usual.
(This was, of course, a terribly unfair mischaracterization. But it was true that their survival depended largely on trade, and trade was all too quick to disintegrate in the face of warfare, be it physical, economic, or some other kind entirely.)
The nations, and the people that made them up, would continue on, unaware at least in the immediate future of what, exactly, the north was planning.
None of Konoha was happy with that, but their hands were far too tied to audibly complain.
Instead, the Delegation, chinmoku included, threw themselves into part two of the Spring session: internal matters.
Compared to the pace of the first week, the rest of the session seemed to slow to a crawl. The court itself tended to disband one or two hours earlier, and much more time was spent on private one-on-one meetings, meetings that Sakura did not have to transcribe. She did have to attend a few of them, now—with Lightning gone the need to prove loyalty, strength, and respect by showing off the lineage of chinmoku had become much more important—but she (and her teammates) suddenly also had free time.
Their first few bits of free time were spent where they spent everything else: the living quarters.
Shin wrote. Juro read his medical textbooks. Sakura bounced around a bit, feeling locked up, before settling down to do some writing of her own—she had some ideas about how to test Arden's understanding of science in her own world, and wanted to map out the plans as specifically as possible before making the attempt.
Sometimes they'd spar. There was time for it now, between oohing and aahing at one courtier's art collection in exchange for increased support regarding the tax on imported water and carefully slogging through the 83 (83!) introduced amendments to the same tax.
Sakura still sucked at sparring compared to Juro and Shin, but not by as much as she had previously—Juro had yet to get a good grasp at how to use his kekkei genkai in enclosed spaces, the only training areas they had access to, and while Shin's burgeoning shadow control was good it tended to exhaust him quickly and he was always too eager to use it instead of conserving energy. Sakura still had to deal with the burden of a smaller and less strong body, but she was quite flexible and fast and was now averaging three to five 'mental snags' per spar (three against Juro, who was better at hiding his eyes, and five at Shin, who had to use his eyes to control his shadows for the time being and was therefore almost guaranteed a period of weakness.)
Still, Sakura found being more or less stuck to the same few rooms whenever she wasn't working more than a little frustrating, and quickly found herself going stir-crazy.
"Would you stop?" Shin snapped, not looking up from his most recent attempt at poetry (it was a popular art form in the Capital, and Shin had been certain it would be a breeze to translate his storytelling capabilities over to the new hobby. He had been wrong, which had infuriated him enough to abandon fiction writing entirely, at least for the moment.)
"Stop what?"
"Bouncing."
Sakura didn't think that was very fair. She wasn't bouncing, she was pacing. Admittedly, she was pacing to a rhythm, but that didn't make it bouncing.
"I'm not bouncing."
"Then stop whatever it is you are doing!"
"Breathing? Loving? Existing?"
"Sakura," Shin glared at her.
From across the room, in their shared futon, Juro snored.
"What?"
"Sakura."
"I'm bored!" She knew she sounded pitiful and annoying, whining like that, but it was true—she was bored.
Anyway, she was nearly ten years old. It didn't seem particularly fair to her that she was still being locked up (never mind that Shin and Juro, eleven and twelve respectively, were too.)
"Go to the onsen then."
Sakura sighed. It was a good suggestion; while it would do little to alleviate her boredom, it would at least get her out of Shin's way so he would stop glaring at her.
She left.
Sakura didn't particularly like onsens. She was one of remarkably few that didn't—they were treated almost as the number one worldwide pastime, as far as she could figure. But to her personally, they just…didn't seem that pleasant.
The heat and steam and wetness seemed to press down on her chest, for one, and for another the whole 'relaxing' aspect was less relaxing and more (shocker) boring.
It was like meditating without the benefits.
Sakura didn't even like meditating to begin with.
Still, the walk to the onsen would be nice, and it was one of the few trips she was allowed to take unaccompanied.
She grabbed the necessary toiletries, told one of the three chuunin currently in the living quarters of her plan, and took off.
The shinobi quarters were in what seemed to be a good part of town; it was small but bracketed on either side by the lodging for samurai leaders and a small temple to the mythical founder of the "Great City." A large wall—one of the oldest in the city—butted against the back of the building, and the windows in the front gave view to a great many courtier homes, the kind that were only used as a residence during court sessions compared to the far larger, continually occupied, ones that bordered the Daimyo's own residence.
The onsen that was shared by the part-time residences and military quarters was large, decorated liberally in jade, and only three blocks away using an L-shaped route.
Sakura headed straight for it.
Unsurprisingly the women's side of the onsen was deserted. The courtiers, if they didn't actually live in the Capital, saw little point in carting their families around for every court session, and the samurai didn't have any women to begin with. Sakura was sure that the number of women who actually used the onsen numbered around a dozen, if that.
The men's side was far more crowded, raised voices and hushed whispers as various members of the court used the location to get to know each other, make and break deals, and push their various agendas.
This purpose was unfortunately well understood and encouraged, so small seals (donated by Uzu many years ago) ensured that all of the upperclass onsen had protection from any eavesdroppers and peepers.
(The good part of that was that Sakura could therefore not be given the duty of sitting in the onsen all day, every day, to gather information, but she supposed the additional information would have been beneficial to Konoha as a whole—especially because most other methods to dissuade listeners-in were no match for chakra.)
All of that meant that, for Sakura, there was no purpose to the onsen but its intended use.
Wasting no time, she stripped and sank onto a bench inside and sighed into the heat, hoping it would be time for her next shift before this too drove her mad.
(Sakura changed her mind. The lack of spying just left her bored; they should get rid of the Uzu sealing just to give her something to do.)