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mikkenekoTitle: The Heralds of the White God chapter 9 - Heir to the Throne of Ceres
Rating: M
Warnings: Angst, argumentation.
Summary: In which Syaoran takes a stand, and Fai is nominated for an unexpected new job.
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Sakura, Sakura. His whole body cried out her name in fear and longing - the sight of her hand passing through his, of her slim form disappearing into that cloud of darkness - was burned into his vision. He'd nearly broken his neck coming down the stairs from Sakura's rooms, and even standing still his breath still rasped in his lungs and his heartbeat pounded in his ears. Everywhere he'd looked the palace was in chaos, people scurrying around, but nowhere any sign of Princess Sakura; with hope fading and panic growing in his chest, he'd at last sought out the Wizards he so despised. If one magic user had snatched her away, then another one could bring her back, couldn't they? He had to get her back - "You have to find her!" he burst out, looking beseechingly around the room at the white-robed figures there. "You have to do something!"
He barely registered the fallen body of the king, all his attention reserved for the pale-haired wizard kneeling beside him. A burst of anger washed through him at the sight of Fai Flowright - the wizard had been right there, outside of Sakura's room, and he had abandoned her to go chasing after stupid Ashura. If only he had gone up the stairs instead of down, then he could have saved her.
If only Syaoran had moved a little faster, been able to grab her hand -
The wizards were staring back at him with varying expressions of dawning realization and horror. The white-haired one with thick glasses fell back a step, expression closing down as he muttered arcane words under his breath. The other, a young man appearing no older than Syaoran himself, rounded on him with wide green eyes blazing with anger. "You!" he spat at Syaoran. Blue light began to bloom around his fingers as he traced words in the air. "So you're the one who intruded on our princess!"
Who did this kid think he was, looking down on Syaoran for daring to be friends with Sakura? "At least I didn't stand by and do nothing!" Syaoran stood up, hands balling into fists, and met their angry gazes head-on with a glare of his own. He had no reason to be afraid of any Ceres wizards, not anymore; not when these stupid, perverted, unnatural idiots had allowed Sakura to be taken away.
"Hisoka," a voice cut across the young wizard's angry accusation. Fai Flowright moved quickly into the other wizard's path, reaching out to catch his arm and still his hand mid-motion.
The wizard turned to him in outrage, blue light sputtering and dying. "Why are you defending -"
Fai answered in a long, quick, softly-spoken stream of Ceresian that Syaoran couldn't understand. He stood between Syaoran and the other wizards, facing towards them, so that Syaoran could not see his face either; but at least the other wizards seemed to listen to him. Several times their glances darted from Fai, to him, and back again. Their expressions went from outraged, to shocked, to horrified, before smoothing into an impassive blankness. It couldn't be said that they relaxed, exactly, but at least they stopped trying to attack him.
"Kid." His teacher's low, taut voice cut across the argument, and Syaoran tore his gaze reluctantly away from the others to look up to meet Kurogane's narrow red glare. "This figure you saw - how sure are you of what you saw? Did you see any identifying features, anything that might give a clue wherethey are now?"
"No, nothing! She's just gone!" Syaoran shook his head in frustration, and turned his angry impatience back onto the wizards. "Why aren't you looking for her? She could be hurt, or scared, or, or dying for all you know! Don't you even care about your own princess?"
"Shut your mouth!" Hisoka shouted at him. Fai shot him a look that was full of warning, but he shrugged irritably as he continued to glare at Syaoran. "You don't know how we feel the Princess. How could you? You're just a - "
"Hisoka," Fai said in a low, tense voice; the wizard shut his mouth, visibly fulminating. But Syaoran would not be silenced.
"You don't know anything about how I feel, either," he said, unable to contain the feelings bursting inside him. If he let himself think about Sakura anger wavered into anxiety, a panic that almost threatened to choke him. To think that he would come all this way, come halfway across the world to find the one person who was the most special in the world, and then to have her snatched away - it was too much to bear. "I love her!She's the most important person in the whole world - the most beautiful, warm, and kind -"
"Syaoran," Kurogane muttered, grabbing his arm and pulling him back. "Go back to your rooms. This isn't the time or place for this."
Syaoran shook his teacher's hand off his arm, looking up at his teacher in accusing betrayal. "How can you take their side in all this?" Maybe his friends in Edo had been right all along, that the great Kurogane of Suwa had become nothing but a wizard's toy. "I -"
Kurogane grabbed Syaoran back and forced him around, fingers digging into his shoulders and pinning him under his glare. "Half a dozen people have just been killed here," he hissed in a vicious undertone. "And the King himself is injured, maybe dying. This - is - not - the - time for temper tantrums and melodramatic confessions of love, do you hear me? Get out of the way and let them do their damn jobs!"
Syaoran looked down, shaken and ashamed. But when the anger receded, the terrible fear took its place. "But the Princess is important, too," he said lamely. "Finding her should be their job, too!"
Fai rose to his feet to face him, his expression grave. "We have every intention of searching for the Princess," he said. "From what you say, she was taken from her room by means of a magical portal. We need to study the place where she was taken, learn from the magical residue. But it may take time, several days, and we have other -"
"That's not good enough!" Syaoran said passionately. "Several days before you even start to find where she is? That's too long! If you won't go to find her, I will!"
"You?" Hisoka said in utter scorn. "What are you going to do? You're just an ignorant little nihonjin, who doesn't even know himself."
"You can't stop me!" Syaoran shouted back.
"We can't stop him," Fai said. "Let him go if he wants to so much."
"But he -" Hisoka began incredulously. Fai turned his head to look at him, and snapped out a phrase in liquid Ceresian that made the man fall back, subdued and frustrated.
Syaoran glared at Fai. "And what about you?" he said scornfully. "If you loved Sakura at all, you'd search for her too!"
Fai turned back towards Syaoran. His face was closed and stony, impossible to read. "I cannot leave Ruval now," Fai said; his voice was strange, almost mechanical. "I can't leave Ashura's side during his illness. I must remain here."
"Fine! Sit here and rust, then!" Syaoran said, anger warring with a kind of vicious satisfaction. "I'm leaving."
"Good riddance," one of the other wizards muttered, just loud enough - and in the right language - for Syaoran to hear. Fai motioned the other wizards to silence again.
"Syaoran," Kurogane began, and the use of his name shocked Syaoran. When he looked at his teacher again he realized that the big man was limping, favoring his sword arm; he must have been injured in the fight with Ashura. He looked exhausted. "Look, kid, be reasonable. You don't have a chance of actually finding her. Wandering around at random in the wilderness is just going to get you killed."
"I can't do any worse than if I stay here and do nothing, can I?" Syaoran shot back. "Don't worry about me. I'm not a child any more, I can take care of myself. I won't die, not before I find Sakura and save her."
"Do you have any idea where to start looking?" Fai asked him, his golden eye watching Syaoran with a strange intensity.
"How should I have any idea, if you don't?" Syaoran replied, not entirely truthfully. He did have an idea - somehow - of which way he needed to go, an almost subliminal tugging of a current under his skin. But he was not about to share that feeling with these clowns. "I'll find her. Just you wait and see. But I'm not going to be doing it for you."
He jerked around without waiting for a response, ignoring the voices raising in argumentative Ceresian behind his back. Let them argue, and dawdle, and waste away their time with useless magics. He walked quickly through the hallways, ignoring the guards who turned and called out to him, ducking under hands that reached for him. He broke into a run as he reached the stairs, boot heels pounding on the slate tiles in time with the furious thoughts raging in his head. Let them - He was going to find Sakura, when nobody else could. He was going to find her, and keep her safe. He was going to bring her home.
They'd moved the fallen king into a side room, away from the blood-slicked floor of the conference chamber where everything had come crashing down. Fai now had three other mages helping him, but apart from him and two of the guards, no one else had been allowed to follow them. Kurogane wondered why he had, except that perhaps no one had quite dared to stand in his way. He still felt the urge to stay close at hand just in case Ashura woke up again, although that seemed less and less likely as time went on.
At first Ashura had thrashed and moaned in his strange, magical-induced slumber, hands curling to claws that slashed the air as though seeking to draw blood for it. Gradually, though, he'd quieted under the intense focus of the four wizards; they did not seem to be doing anything, speaking no words and drawing no symbols, but Kurogane felt the presence of magic like a thick perfume in the air.
"Hisoka," Fai said suddenly. His voice sounded strangely blurred, as though he were speaking underwater. "Stop. You're going to get pulled in."
The smaller wizard just hunched his shoulders and leaned forward even further, his eyes closed but his attention clearly on the comatose figure of his king before him. Fai shook his head, groggy like a sleeper waking up from a dream. "Hisoka! You can't help him if you get caught in it too. You're putting too much of yourself into the link. Break it now!"
Still no response. Fai ground his teeth in frustration, then whipped his head around. "Kurogane!"he called.
Although he didn't say anything else, the force of his frustrated emotions lashed Kurogane into action. He understood that Fai could not move right now, could not break contact with Ashura; and he understood what Fai wanted him to do in his place. He strode forward and grabbed the young man by the shoulders, starting as he felt a cold shock go up his arms. He pulled the young wizard Hisoka backwards, breaking his hold on the King of Ceres, and a hoarse cry broke from the boy's throat as Kurogane dragged him away. "No!" he shouted, struggling in vain against Kurogane's sure grip. "No, you can't - I have to save! He's hurting, I have to - !"
"He's only trying to help you, kid," Kurogane said; the despair in Hisoka's voice and face put a lump in his throat. In some ways this young man reminded him of Syaoran, except that he didn't have the boy's sturdiness. He seemed like a hot temper poised on a thin wire, and as he wrenched his attention around to glare furiously at Kurogane, for a moment he thought the wizard would lash out at him.
Instead, all at once, the boy broke down, collapsing against Kurogane's arm like a marionette with his strings cut. "It's not fair," he said, his voice suffused and choked with frustration and misery. "It's not fair that I can't help, when he needs me. Why can't I…? After what he did for me…"
"Did for you?" Kurogane said cautiously, his attention arrested by that fragmented sentence. He kept on pulling Hisoka gradually away from the fallen king and his attendants; Fai and the other two had rearranged themselves in a triangle around Ashura, so intent on their work that they seemed worlds away.
Hisoka seemed to have collapsed on himself, silent tears streaming down his desolate face. "Ever since I was a child," he said in a hushed, choked voice, "I always see things I shouldn't. Hear things I shouldn't. I could hear, I could hear what people were really thinking. And they hated me for hearing. Monster, demon, unnatural... I don't know how to say... They all thought so, and because… because I hear them hating me.… I thought they were right on me.
"They kept me, they locked me in the room with wooden bars and never let me out, fear that I'd hear something I wasn't supposed to hear. And I thought they were right, they were right to fear and hate me. I hated myself too. There was no one, anyone… never no one who thought anything else… until the day Ashura came."
All his air ran out on that last breath, and Hisoka sank slowly down into a huddle on the floor, eyes closed and head bowed; Kurogane couldn't tell if he had passed out or what, but he was silent from then on. Kurogane stood away, shaken and uneasy; he glanced over at Ashura, only a sliver of his face visible beyond the frantically working mages, and then away.
He'd known for some time that Ashura had rescued Fai from terrible imprisonment as a child; that was at the root of why Fai adored him so, tore himself apart in an effort to please and satisfy his king and savior. He'd resented Ashura's manipulations, the way he blatantly relied on Fai's gratitude to control him; and deep down a part of Kurogane always suspected that Ashura had no more altruistic motive in saving Fai than convincing an impressionable young boy to serve him. Fai had certainly served him well enough, over the years, to repay any kindness.
It had never occurred to him - outside of a few passing references in other conversations - that the other Wizards of Ceres had been rescued from situations similar to Fai's, and that they would share a similar devotion to their king. It made sense, in a way, that children with frighteningly powerful magics might often find themselves abused, feared, outcast or locked up. Too often people feared powers they couldn't understand or control, and fear bred cruelty.
If Ashura had indeed spent thirty years combing the lands for such children and rescuing them, then it was no wonder they all looked at him with such reverence. Why they all held their loyalties and obeyed him, no matter how distasteful or disastrous his orders. Yukito's rebellion earlier that spring, when he rode to the defense of Nihon, must have been harder for them than Kurogane could possibly imagine. Kurogane, who had from the beginning regarded Ashura as a rival or an enemy outright, had never considered how very much they must love their king.
Across from him, Fai straightened his spine and hitched his shoulders with a deep gulp of air, as if surfacing after some long dive. "Enough," he said, and although his voice was hoarse, it didn't sound so far away any more. "We're walking on ice that breaks under our feet. More cracks appear even faster than we can seal them. Pull back."
Soft groans of defeat answered his statement, and the two wizards - Yukito, and a tall broad-shouldered man with short sandy hair - slumped backwards. "What can we do?" Yukito asked in a subdued voice.
"Work with me to put him in a deeper sleep for now," Fai said, exhaustion evident in his voice. "When all the others are here, we can make another attempt to lift the curse and heal his mind. In the meantime, the best we can hope to do is slow the damage as much as possible. There are too many other things we need to attend to now."
They bent over Ashura again, although a sense of weary defeat filled their postures. This time, whatever they were doing seemed more external; they muttered softly, and lines of light sprang from their fingertips, enveloping Ashura in a cocoon that looked like crystallized water.
Kurogane didn't follow all of that conversation, but the misery that Fai emanated told the story clearly enough. He saw the same shocked, numbed look of horror and grief on every face, and he felt somehow terribly responsible, even though he had been no more than a bystander in the tragedy that had played out a few hours ago. Still, he felt keenly that he should have been able to stop it somehow. Failure in his duties to guard and protect did not sit well on Kurogane's shoulders, and he wrestled with unaccustomed guilt at the feeling.
He felt a sense of loss, too, although in a different way. Ashura had seemed like a fixture of the universe, a cosmic force against which Kurogane had set himself. Although their rivalry had never been friendly, it was always respectful, each mindful of the other's strengths. But that was all gone, now that the clever, forceful, domineering King of Ceres was brought low. The Ashura he had loved to hate was simply not there any longer.
He ought, he realized with a dull surprise, to be happy; he'd finally fought Ashura and won. But once the rush of triumph at surviving a deadly battle had passed, Kurogane mostly just ached.
Kurogane shadowed him as he entered the main hall, and Fai was grateful for his lover's support. He could still feel Kurogane's pain, a dull aching echo of his own, and the weary thought occurred to him that he really ought to round up Kakei to examine his wounds. Kurogane hadn't complained, and he was still upright and moving smoothly enough, but that could just be Kuro-tan's usual stubbornness in the face of injury. There was no reasoning with him once he got like this…
He stared around the chamber, his mind a momentary blank as he was between tasks - giving up on Ashura for now, unsure what to do next. All of the bodies had been removed to some other room, to be laid out in some more dignified repose than their death had granted them. A group of guards and servants were laboring now to clean the blood and gore off the stone floor. In the corner near the fireplace, a handful of other wizards were hard at work marking off a section of the floor and constructing a divining apparatus there. Fai well recognized the device, having used a similar, more portable version of it to survey the wards of Nihon on that fateful mission last fall.
"What are they doing?" Kurogane asked, following his gaze over to that corner of the room. His red eyes narrowed, and his muscles tense. "That smell…"
Fai gave him a tired smile. "Not really so much a smell," he said. "All magical expressions leave behind traces - like tracks, or like ripples in the water. With any luck, we'll be able to use it to divine the source of the portal that was cast into the other room."
"So you can find him? We could trace him?" Kurogane said, anticipation electrifying his voice.
Fai sighed, then shook his head slightly. "I don't know," he said, trying to keep the defeat from bleeding into his voice. "I hope so, but… we're all children, you know, when it comes to conjuration. Our enemy is a master. I doubt he will have been careless enough to leave any trail that we can follow. And as for the other spell he used…" Fai frowned, thoughts catching on that second question. How had he realized, so quickly on touching Ashura, that the chaos inside his mind was caused by a curse? Why had it seemed somehow familiar to him, that degenerative pattern of madness and bloodthirst? Where had he encountered something like that before…?
"You!" a voice shouted with purest loathing, and Fai jerked out of his stupefied trance see someone striding towards them. Or rather, towards Kurogane, as he barely gave Fai a side-glance.
The newcomer was a man that Fai recognized after a moment's pause as Tennou Adamite, Lord Taishakuten's eldest son. He was tall for a Ceresian - although not as tall as Kurogane, of course - and sandy-haired. His normally pleasant and open features were distorted now by grief and rage. "You did this!" he shouted, voice full of frustrated fury. "You killed my father - attacked our king!"
"I did not," Kurogane said stonily, his eyes narrowed to slits.
"You liar! Half a dozen servants saw you attacking the king," the lordling shot back. "You must have murdered Lord Taishakuten - Lady Kisshouten, my aunt -"
"By the time I got here, he was already dead," Kurogane denied. "I fought Ashura, yes, but only in self-defense. He attacked me."
Tennou's face twisted in a sneer. "Our most beloved lords dead, my father dead, hacked into pieces, and our king struck low - and their murderer walks free! Why are we allowing this outrage to stand? Guards! Seize him at once!" he shouted.
He looked around, futilely seeking support; there was some shuffling, but no one stepped forward in response to his demand. Tennou bared his teeth in a snarl. "If no one else has the guts to do it, I'll challenge him myself!" He threw back his ornate, fur-lined cloak, and his hand went to the richly jeweled sword hilt at his side.
Kurogane stood up to his full height, and Tennou paled and took a step back. Fai recalled now that Taishakuten's heir was considered nice enough, but also something of a wimp, especially when compared with his father. "I bear no ill-will against anyone in Ceres, and I swear that I have not raised a hand to anyone here except in self-defense," he said, in a calm voice that nonetheless carried over the whole chamber. "But if you come at me with steel bared, then I will respond in kind."
"Lord Tennou, we don't know that he is the culprit," one of the guards protested nervously, hovering right on the edge of getting between them. "There were no witnesses except His Majesty himself - by the time anyone got here everyone was dead, and the two of them were dueling. And his sword is clean of blood - so there's no evidence… "
Tennou actually stamped his foot in impatience, handsome face flushed with an ugly rage. "Of course he cleaned it before anyone could take the evidence! You're not seriously suggesting that our own king would turn on his own clan lords? What a ridiculous idea!" he shouted. "The true murderer is obvious! Here he stands at the scene of the slaughter, sword still blatantly in hand! What more evidence do we need?"
"Enough of this!" Fai snapped, spinning around to glare ferociously at the young intruder. "This is not some rustic country court or mountain tribunal. We have no need to rely on speculation or circumstantial evidence. King Ashura is in no state to testify - his mind and memories are unraveling even as we sit here talking. But there is still a witness to the events of this last hour - the Nihon delegate himself."
"You would trust his word?" Tennou sputtered in outrage. "He'll lie! Of course he'll lie! It will take force to makehim speak the truth!"
"Such primitive and brutal methods are not necessary," a second voice put in coolly from the side, before Fai could respond to this. Yukito stepped forward, his face a grim mask; at this time the albino's features were no more white and bloodless than anyone else in this room. "He cannot lie to magic."
Yukito and Fai exchanged a long, grave look; then Fai nodded slightly in Kurogane's directions, then turned away. Fai was Kurogane's lover, and everyone in the palace knew it. Fai could not be in charge of this questioning; even if he used magic to confirm his reports, he would always be suspected of lying or cheating to protect Kurogane. Yukito was a neutral third party, and he at least would be trusted.
"Lord Suwa," Yukito said in a loud, formal voice, "I need to touch your mind, to show everyone here your memories of the last hour's events. I apologize for the intrusion, but we must be able to see what really happened."
"Why are you asking permission? I've got nothing to hide," Kurogane shot back in an equally loud voice, aiming his words at the crowd of onlookers. Yukito nodded gravely, and reached up - almost on tiptoes to match Kurogane's height - to press his fingers against Kurogane's temples. As Yukito's power unfurled - sensed rather than seen, an invisible force bridging the distance between them - Fai reached out his own in response, preparing to relay and amplify the vision so that all present in the room could view it.
There was a moment of distorting vertigo, where the world seemed to race around him. Then he saw, dim and remote and slightly foggy, the entrance hallway outside the chamber. He heard a distant, far-off scream; the vision blurred for a moment and then resolved itself by the two doomed guards pounding urgently on the wooden panel doors. Kurogane's voice roared, an odd tinny rumble in the memory, and the watchers gasped as his sword swung around to unleash a blast of energy at the locked doors.
When the chamber door blew apart, Fai was startled by the surge of emotions accompanying the image. Shock and disbelief, disgust and pity and horror ran over him like a wave, rippling outwards through his audience. When the first guard approached the mad king Fai wanted to close his eyes, to block out what he knew was about to happen, but he could not. He felt Kurogane's grief for them atop his own, strangers whose names he'd never even known - but he still grieved for their deaths, two more ordinary men who had faced combat beside him and not come out alive.
Watching the duel with Ashura was not as painful as Fai had thought it would be - it all happened too fast, and at least he already knew that both men had survived. But when Yukito broke the contact and stepped back, the images dissolved into colorful blobs before clearing from his vision, he was gray and shaking. Similar looks of daunted dismay echoed on the faces of the other wizards who'd shared the vision, while the non-magical members of the audience mostly just looked confused and overwhelmed.
"You have all witnessed," Yukito said in an unsteady voice. "These are the events of the last hour as Lord Suwa saw them."
"These memories also corroborate with the fragments we were able to recover from Lord Ashura," said Aoki, one of the three who had been helping Fai tend to Ashura. "It seems confirmed beyond reasonable doubt."
"Let's put this matter to rest, then. Lord Suwa is cleared of all suspicion," Yukito said. "He arrived at the scene of the crime after the deaths had already taken place, and fought His Majesty only in self defense."
"This is ridiculous!" burst out Tennou, his voice incredulous and scornful. "All we've seen has been some pretty light show! Nothing has been proven at all!"
"It's been proven to our satisfaction," Yukito said through gritted teeth. "The satisfaction of the Wizards of Ceres."
"And what is your satisfaction worth?" the young lord demanded, stepping forward with his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. "Everyone knows that the Wizards serve their own aims above anyone else's - not even the kingdom's, not even the King's! My father was always suspicious of your motives, your refusal to submit yourselves to the proper authorities. Why should I trust your word on anything? How do I know that you weren't all in on it - that you weren't part of the plot to eliminate your rivals for power in the first place?"
A babble of angry shouting rose up around the room, and several of the guards surged forward - whether in protest of Tennou's actions, or in support of them, Fai could not tell. But this disturbance had gone far enough. Fai stepped forward, radiating every ounce of authority he could muster; the clamor of voices abruptly hushed, and Tennou faltered.
"Lord Tennou, you are understandably upset over the tragedy that your clan has suffered," Fai said in a clipped voice. "But we are all in the middle of a crisis here. If you have nothing better to offer than wild accusations and hysterical rantings, you may remove yourself."
Tennou quailed in the face of his authority, but then seemed to gather himself for a second wind. "You have no right to send me anywhere, wizard!" he shot back defiantly. "As the last - as the last - as the most senior remaining representative of the noble clans of Ceres, I have every right to call for justice. What possible authority do you have to deny me?"
"Well, among other things," cut in a new voice, dry and paper-thin. An old man, wrinkled and white-haired, stepped into the discussion; Minister Galladon, the highest ranked official of the administrative branch of Ceres, charged with the day-to-day tasks that kept the government running. None of the ministers had been present in the disastrous meeting with the lords of Ceres, and so their legislative body had escaped mostly unscathed. "With Princess Sakura missing, he is the only acknowledged heir to the throne of Ceres."
This statement prompted another outcry of tumult; Fai felt Kurogane's gaze boring into him like a hot iron. He grimaced and raised one hand to rub at the rising headache in his temple; he ought to have foreseen this.
"But he was revoked by Ashura, in full view of the court!" someone else shouted. "Minister Galladon, you can't be serious!"
"A technicality," the old Minister answered. "It was proclaimed, but it was never written into law, and until the King signs it, no legal change has been instituted."
"Minister, this is quite premature," Fai said loudly, overriding the next round of protests. "I can assure you that King Ashura is notdead, and neither is his heir, Princess Sakura. There's no need…"
"There is every need," Galladon interrupted him, his expression irritated. "Alive or dead, the Princess is not here; nor would she be suited to taking on the burden of authority even if she were. We must have a strong, legitimate authority to take command of Ruval in the midst of this crisis. To deal with further assassination attempts, or," and his aged, rheumy blue eyes turned without favor towards Kurogane, "renewed trouble from our nearest neighbors, should they learn of this turn of events."
Kurogane glowered, but said nothing to actively refute the Minister's point; from the grimace twisting his mouth, he was thinking much the same thing. No treaty had yet been signed with Nihon either; nor would it be, with their goodwill offering gone missing. If Amaterasu learned of the events of today - that the fearsome King of Ceres had been struck down - a renewed attack from Nihon was almost a guarantee.
The minister turned back to Fai and continued. "Can you tell me, Wizard, when will His Majesty be fit to resume command?"
Fai opened his mouth, but the words stuck in his throat. He hesitated, looking to Yukito and Aoki for support; but neither of them seemed willing to speak, either. "It's too early yet to say," he hazarded.
Galladon was watching his face closely, and did not miss a minute of this byplay. "Say this, then: will he be recovered by tomorrow, or the next day?"
"No." Fai shook his head, echoed grimly by the other two.
Galladon nodded in satisfaction. "Then we must convene a council, with at least a quorum enough to make binding decisions, in order to determine who will take command during this emergency." He glanced over at Tennou without favor. "Lord Tennou, you may of course attend, and present your case during the council, along with whatever witnesses you choose to accompany you."
Fai's breath hissed between his teeth, grinding his jaw as he thought about all the delays this would inevitably entail. There were so many other things to be done, and Sakura - at the same time, he knew that Galladon was right. Ceres would need a leader during the upcoming crisis, somebody who both knew what had to be done and had the authority to do it. And in order to legitimize that authority, there was going to have to be some kind of council to ratify it. "I understand, Minister," he said, doing his best to keep his voice civil. "But can this wait? We still need to take His Majesty to his chambers and ensure that he is safe there, and the missing princess takes priority over everything else…"
"I didn't mean right this minute," the Minister said dryly. "Go about your tasks. I will organize the council to take place tonight, after the seventh bell. It will take at least that long to dig up enough warm bodies to make this respectable."
That would give them less than ten hours to do everything, or at least get things to a state where they could be put on hold for however long the Ceres-style debate dragged out. "Of course," he said. "We will be there."
He turned away from the counselor, his head spinning, and staggered slightly on his next step. A strong hand caught his elbow, and he looked up to see worried red eyes boring into his. He mustered a smile for Kurogane, knowing even as he did so how false it must look painted on his face. "Hey, you okay?" Kurogane asked him. "Relax. We'll get through this. I'll help."
"Yes…" Fai brought a hand up to massage his face, trying to ease the pounding headache that now raged there furiously. He wasn't thinking. He had to use his resources. Here he had at his right hand, literally, the best warrior in Suwa, a powerful natural sorcerer with a resistance to hostile magics and long experience dealing with demons. Kurogane had better things to be doing than to babysit him…
The decision clicked over in his head, and he took a breath and then laid his hand over Kurogane's on his arm, squeezing slightly. "I'll be all right," he said. "I have to go oversee the containment spells in Ashura's room. Go with the doctor, let him look you over and treat your injuries."
"I'm fine," Kurogane growled, and Fai grinned. Puppy was so predictable.
"Humor me," he said. "Once Kakei has scolded you and loaded you down with smelly salves for your bruises and advice you won't follow, come back and meet me here. We need a chance to talk alone. There is something I need for you to do for me."
"Anything," Kurogane said immediately, and Fai's smile turned a little sad.
"Ah, I knew that you would say that," he said, and patting Kurogane's hand one more time, he pulled his arm free. But what would Kurogane be saying once he asked it - that was another story.
~to be continued...
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