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Nuriko told me they were approaching the palace. He could tell how excited I was, I think, and that was why he teased me with it so.

Nuriko was a treasure. It was still difficult to think of him as a man, even though he now dressed like one. There had been a problem with that, at first. The sudden absence of Lady Kourin from the court had been marked with more than one strange glance and the whispers of intrigue. I did my best to quell the rumours, but some things are beyond even an Emperor's power. Finally it was he who had come up with the solution.

"I've been telling them I'm Kourin's brother, Ryuuen," he told me when I asked him about it. "And that with my coming here to be a Suzaku Seishi, my sister is needed at home." There was sadness in his eyes when he said it.

"Is Kourin coming back once Suzaku is summoned?" I asked neutrally.

He stared at me for a moment, shocked, and I felt that surely I had done something hideously wrong. "I h--I won--I don't know," he stammered, and abruptly vanished on some task.

But he was cheerful now, returning every few minutes with the message that Akane and the others were just a little closer. Now they were specks, now he could see them on the rise, now they were approaching the city gates....

And finally they arrived.

"Akane!" It was all I could do not to throw myself from my throne and run to her. "You're back!"

"Hai." She was tired, and it took far too long for her to come close. I let decorum fall, once she was within reach, and enfolded her in my arms. She rested her head wearily on my shoulder. "We are back."

"I missed you," I whispered into her hair. "I was worried...Nuriko said they'd sent assassins...."

Akane nodded as she pulled away. "They did. But they ones they sent were taken care of. But we should start our search again as soon as possible."

"Of course." My heart sank, but I agreed. I could not put selfish wishes above the welfare of my empire. "You can leave again in the morning."

My mind determined, without my asking it to, that it was only my imagination that Nuriko stood against the wall with an expression of unveiled hurt on his face. He wouldn't have wanted me to see it anyway.

"He really loves you." Resignation in Nuriko's voice, and a deep abiding hurt. It had dimmed our reunion, and that bothered me more than I admitted aloud. Nuriko was my friend, and I felt bad enough for him.

"I'm sorry." I sank down onto my bed and my legs throbbed in relief. There was not a muscle in my body that did not protest my late treatment of it. "Nuriko...."

"I know," he interrupted gently, settling next to me and reaching over to knead my weary shoulders. A sigh that I'm not sure which of us it came from, soft and sad. "We're all lonely here, Akane," he continued. "I can't fault him for trying to escape to you--I can't fault you for it, either."

We're all lonely here. How true that was. My eyes stung, and I blinked to hide it, and leaned tentatively against Nuriko's strong, slender shoulder. "I'm still sorry."

Just as tentatively, he wrapped his arm around my shoulders. "I told you," he said, "I know."

A long moment's pause, and then, "I know...and it's all right."

I couldn't stop crying.

I'd gotten so twisted around inside, I wasn't sure who had really betrayed whom. The knot in the pit of my stomach warned me I had made an awful mistake, and somehow I knew Nakago would not let me back out. He'd pretend to agree, speak so softly and calmly, and I'd end up doing what he wanted anyway.

It was true that I owed him my life and my safety here in Kutou. I was grateful for that, yes. But I was afraid of him.

"I can't hurt her," I had told him finally. "I can't kill Miaka--I couldn't! And before you say it--no. Not even after everything that's happened. I can't."

It had frightened me when he only nodded, and said, "Very well, Yui-sama. We need not do her any harm." I could almost hear the "for now" he did not say at the end. "But it is of utmost importance that we prevent her from summoning Suzaku. Perhaps you will agree to an alternate course of action?"

I was curious. "What do you suggest?"

Nakago's lips tightened into a small smile. "How do you feel about Tamahome?"

I felt the blush that spread over my face and turned it pink. How had he known that my heart started pounding and my palms sweating when I saw Miaka's dark-haired companion? I had avoided admitting that even to myself. "He's very attractive..." I stammered tentatively.

Abruptly I understood what he was suggesting. "If I could have Tamahome--Miaka couldn't summon Suzaku--" I swallowed, conjuring before my eyes an image of the handsome Suzaku seishi. "And it's only fair!" I blurted bitterly. "Why should she be the one to find love here?"

Nakago's smile seemed less frightening, suddenly. He bowed. "Then it shall be so, Yui-sama."

He walked away, and suddenly I felt warm. Soon my twisted, bitter loneliness would ease.

I would not kill Miaka. But I would not forgive her, either. After all, isn't everything fair in love and war? I would break her heart the way she had broken mine. Then she couldn't summon Suzaku and we'd be even...we could go back to the way things used to be between us.

That, I realised, was what I wanted most of all.

It had been a long night--too long a night--for all of us. I sat on my bed for a long time after Nuriko left, mulling over the events of the past two days as if they were part of some great cosmic puzzle, and I was but missing one crucial piece.

Real life--even tenuously real life--is seldom so simple as even the most complex of puzzles.

It was almost a relief when I heard the scream. At least it was a thing tangible, something I could hear and verify and react to. I raced from my room, almost bowling over Nuriko, both of us a few steps behind Hotohori, all three of us running full pelt for Miaka's room.

Chichiri was there ahead of us. So was Tamahome, but it was more likely he'd been there all along. He was posed protectively in front of Miaka when we all skidded to a stop inside the door. A man in a black cloak hovered in the air, laughing.

"I only bring a message," he said in a deep voice that had no alternative but to be menacing. "The Kutou army already holds two of your border villages. The advancement will cease on one condition: that the Suzaku no Sichiseishi Tamahome return with us to Kutou. The choice is yours."

We had listened to his speech, but now our paralysis was broken. Tamahome leapt at the cloaked intruder; in one fluid movement Hotohori had is sword unsheathed and in mid-swing. Only Chichiri had any effect; he lifted his hand to his face and a blast of chi brought the spy crashing to the ground. He was too fast for any of us--he leapt over my head and sprinted for the door, and even though Nuriko and I chased him, he vanished into the night. Nuriko threw part of the building at him, but only succeeded in smashing a hole in the wall.

We stood in the crisp night breeze, dazed in our nightclothes, and stared at each other in silence for a very long moment.

Miaka started to cry. She was trying to hide it, but choked sobs and rebellious tears escaped despite her efforts. "Tamahome," she pleased softly, "please don't go."

Tamahome folded her in his arms and drew her close. "Don't worry," he whispered, but it was Hotohori his eyes sought out. Mine did too.

"Of course not," the Emperor confirmed. "We're not sending any of the Suzaku no Seishi into the hands of the enemy. We may not have the army they do, but we're not helpless. We'll deal with this in the morning. Everyone go back to bed."

Miaka looked appeased, and everyone dispersed. I didn't go too far. I waited outside Tamahome's door. I had plenty of time to wait, enjoying the fragment air and worrying over the advance of the Kutou army in my head, while he bid his Miaka a fond good-night.

He didn't seem the least bit surprised to see me waiting for him. He just nodded acknowledgement and took up a pose opposite me.

"You shouldn't lie to her," I said simply.

He shrugged. "The villages Kutou attacked are too close to my home. She'd never let me go if I told her."

I nodded, acquiescence. He continued. "Akane...promise not to let anything happen to her?"

Given the danger we all put ourselves in daily, I should not have given my word so easily, but the vow slipped from my lips with only one barrier:

"As long as you promise to come back."

Tamahome smiled sadly. "I won't say thank you," he said.

I just nodded. "It's all right," I told him. "Neither will I."

Morning came far too early. What little sleep I'd gotten had alternated between foreboding nightmares of a war-torn empire and delicious, too-tantalising fantasies about Akane. It was the first time in my life I had ever been so forcefully reminded--and by my own body, no less--that I was not only the Emperor of a nation, but a desperately lonely young man. I had never been in love before. I wanted to ask someone if my symptoms were normal, if it were to be expected that my heart sped up its pace in my Miko's presence, that I would envision love in her bottomless dark eyes, that my fingers would long to stroke through the silk of her blue-black hair.

But who in all of Konan was I going to find to ask?

So my only concession to my feelings was to embrace her awkwardly as she stood with Nuriko and Chichiri in the courtyard.

"Be careful," I whispered. "Come back to me."

Her answering smile made my heart clench. "Of course I will. With three new Seishi," she promised laughingly. "You take care of Miaka for me. Don't let anything happen to her."

"I won't." It had been Chichiri's idea for Miaka to remain in Eiyo to direct Kutou's attention away from Akane. He'd pointed out that it was really to our advantage if the Seiryuu shogun thought Miaka was our Miko, and that the girl could hardly be safer than inside the palace. Akane was still not pleased with the idea--really, neither was I--but Miaka had tearfully agreed to it, and his point was valid. So Miaka and I, the lonely and bereft, would remain behind.

I bid the others goodbye as well. "Keep her safe, Nuriko," I whispered--my only other friend was leaving as well. He gave me a look, as if to say But of course, baka, what did you expect? and swung onto his horse.

"Ready?" the Suzaku no Miko asked. Her Seishi nodded, and they rode off into the morning one more time.

And one more time, I watched til they were nothing more than specks on the horizon before I returned to the duties that called me.

*********************************

"Hotohori-sama no da!" It was one voice I had not expected to hear for quite some time, and I was suddenly glad to be involved in nothing more complicated than stamping my seal onto some document.

"Chichiri?"

The blue-haired monk flashed me one of his cheerful grins and leaned over my desk. "Something's bothering you a good deal," he said, then paused as if waiting for my explanation.

I gave it to him. At last, I could trust someone with the burden of my heart. He listened to me bare my soul with patience in his eyes, and when I finally faltered to a stumbling halt, he had only a smile for me.

"Why don't you go after them?" he suggested kindly. I just stared at him.

"How--what do you mean?" I stammered finally. It was a good thing we were alone. An emperor is supposed to have more composure than this.

Chichiri smiled, and abruptly--how he did it, or precisely when, I'll never know. There was no blinding flash of light or puff of smoke, it was a far simpler transformation. One second he was Chichiri the monk, in his kasa and prayer beads, and then he was the mirror image of me.

"Go on," he repeated, handing me his hat. "You'll have to hurry to catch up with them."

I couldn't put that hat on fast enough.

On to Chapter 14
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