The Dragon King left us standing on the bank of the Kamo River, just inside the bounds of the city. It was only a short walk to the Spring Palace. We almost ran in our hurry to get there.

When we arrived at the saké house, the gates were closed. One of the girls showed her head above the wall.

“What is my name?” she asked.

“Akemi,” Surei answered. “Why are you asking? Just open the gate.”

After the gate opened, Akemi explained, “We can’t trust our eyes around a shapechanger, so we have to make sure it’s really you. Professor’s orders.”

Surei nodded. “That’s excellent thinking.”

“Have there been any other attacks? Is everyone all right?’ I asked.

“It’s been quiet,” she assured me.

Professor came hurrying up. “Good. You’re back. I trust the visit went well?”

“It was … interesting. We learned a lot,” I answered.

“Good,” Professor responded. “You will have to tell me all about it when we have the time. We have been busy setting up defenses here. We have some nasty tricks planned if those two do show up again. Let me show you.”

He took us around and showed the traps they had been working on. Professor’s knowledge of defenses combined with Mouse’s contributions would provide a rude shock to any intruders.

Surei was pleased. She congratulated Professor on their work.

We were both famished from our journey. “Yoshi, would you get us something to eat and meet me in my office?”

When I joined her, she was standing with her back to me, looking out into the garden. She had changed into her usual robes.

She turned around and cleared her throat. “When you first arrived here at the Spring Palace, I told you I didn’t get involved with men because they were inconstant. It is clear you had some hopes that—”

“Surei,” I said, “I understand, and I am sorry.”

Surei leaned forward and put three fingers over my lips. “I told myself I couldn’t trust you, that you had run away before, and would do so again. The truth is I was afraid. I was afraid when you saw what I had become, you would be disgusted. The girl you knew was dead. I couldn’t be what you wanted, and I wasn’t ready to try and recapture what we once had.” She took a deep breath. “But when you played the flute at the Dragon King’s palace, I realized young Yoshi is still alive in you, somewhere. I was astonished to discover young Surei, or at least something of her, is still alive in me, also.”

She started walking around the room. “We can’t revive what we had.” Reaching into a cabinet with some scrolls, she pulled out a wax envelope and laid it on the table in front of me.

The envelope contained a wrinkled piece of paper. I removed it and smoothed it out on the table between us. It was the page of poems she and I had exchanged in the inn when I first left the capital. The paper I had discarded in the garden months before. I looked at her in surprise.

She sat down and stared at the paper. “I found it after you left for Akiko’s that day. I couldn’t bear to think you’d carried it for all those years only to throw it away.”

She looked up at me. “We can’t go back. We will never be those people again. But that doesn’t mean we can’t go forward to make something even better. In memory of young Yoshi and young Surei, and in the hope we can someday begin anew, take this and keep it safe for us. We don’t know what is going to happen in the next few days or even if we will survive, but I wanted you to know how I felt.”

I stared at the paper for a moment, then picked it up, slid it inside its wax envelope, and returned it to its accustomed position next to my heart. I raised my head. “Surei, I just want to say I am glad I came back, and I am sorry it took me so long. Thank you.”

After a few moments, an awkward silence was broken by a new voice. “Ah, granddaughter, there you are.” I almost smiled with relief at Kuzu-no-ha’s interruption.

She walked in and sat down, uninvited, as was her custom. “I visited Shirakawa Palace yesterday,” she said.

Surei looked at her sharply. “Oh?”

Kuzu-no-ha wiggled around on the floor, getting into a more comfortable sitting position. “Yes, I overheard Jushichin and that onmyouji talking.” She smiled at me. “They are convinced that you are a powerful onmyouji and the person that has been foiling their schemes.”

I wasn’t sure whether to scream with frustration or laugh at the confusion of our enemies.

Surei did laugh. “They think that Yoshi is an onmyouji?”

“The onmyouji couldn’t believe that a woman could learn onmyoudou. But that doesn’t matter. They are going to be performing their spell this evening. The onmyouji plans to imprison Akiko’s spirit and control it to access her power.”

Surei tensed up. “We can’t let them do that.” She turned to me. “We are going to have to stop them. We need a plan.”

I shrugged. “First, we will need to get into Shirakawa Palace. After that, we have to find where they are doing the ritual and then try and stop them. I don’t know what else we can plan for. We don’t know what is in the palace.”

Surei said, “I think if we dress like country bushi we might be able to get in simply enough. There are hundreds of them milling around the place, and they can’t all have gotten to know one another this fast. With any luck, we will simply walk in. If not, you can talk about wanting to join up or something.”

“If I could wear some armor for this it would help. Most country bushi wear armor.”

“Go ahead and wear it. I will just dress as a boy. I can be your servant or something.” She paused and then started looking through her scrolls. “Before you put it on, bring your armor here. I have an idea.”

When I got back, Kuzu-no-ha had left and Surei was chanting while grinding some ink. “Put them down and play something martial. I want to try enchanting them.”

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I pulled out my flute and began to play a marching song as she painted the character for tiger on each piece of armor. Then she began to dance. At first, she imitated the strike of a tiger while chanting something under her breath. Then the dance began to change and I could no longer tell what she was trying to do. The tiger characters glowed brightly. Another character appeared beneath them and intertwined itself. It was the character for a turtle.

She stopped dancing and stared at the armor. The characters she had written had disappeared.

“I wonder how I did that,” she mused. “I really need to work on control.”

She looked at me and smiled. “Maybe this is even better.”

I walked over and picked up the helmet. It didn’t look any different.

“Put it on,” Surei suggested.

Somewhat uneasily, I put my armor on. It didn’t feel any different.

We went out to the training yard and I whacked on some training dummies. Nothing seemed any different.

Surei looked perplexed. “Maybe there isn’t enough power behind them.” She began to dance.

I felt a rush of energy. The glowing characters reappeared. I hit the practice dummy. The pole broke and the dummy flew across the yard.

We stared after it in astonishment.

“It only works if you dance? That’s inconvenient.”

She sighed and picked up a bokken. “Let’s see what kind of protection it gives you.”

She swung the bokken with all her strength and hit my chest.

I was forced to step back, but I barely felt the blow. “That is really good. That should have hurt.”

“Well, then the spell should help.”

“Do you know what the fans do?”

“In his secret writings, Grandfather speaks about them obliquely. He implies they can act as a defense against hostile magic.”

She drew a seiman onto the ground and began to sway and gesture. “We need to see how much dancing I have to do to work magic.”

After a few moments of dancing, she had gathered so much energy she glowed almost pure white. She waved one hand and a lit candle appeared at the each of the five points of the seiman. I could feel her concentrating through our link, and in very short order, a half-sized monkey appeared in the middle of the diagram on the ground. It gave a brief dance. She released her concentration and the spirit-monkey and the energy disappeared.

“That didn’t seem to take much effort,” I said.

She shook her head. “It didn’t. It was ridiculously easy. I don’t actually need accompaniment or to really dance, just doing a few steps and having the music in my head seems to work.”

She experimented further to determine the limits of her new skills. I couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing, but I could feel whenever she used her magic, and I could tell how hard she was concentrating while casting her spells. With her final effort, she created more duplicates of herself and they danced a few steps together.

When she finished, she walked back over to me. “All right, I think I have a chance against Kamo. What are we going to do with you? See if you can create two of yourself, and then have them spar.”

She began dancing and feeding me power. I could feel it through our connection. “Now,” she said, “try to remember what you did when you were playing the flute.”

I cast my thoughts back. It had been as if there were two of me governed by one mind…

Suddenly, there was two of me. Squaring off, the fight began.

Unfortunately, playing several musical instruments turns out to be much easier than trying to take both sides in a fight. When I tried to attack with one incarnation and defend with the other, I got mixed up and smashed the bokken against my forehead. The pain broke my concentration, and I was left with only one of me.

I heard muffled coughs from Surei as she tried to stifle her laughter.

Let’s try it a little slower this time.

Once more, I imagined myself as two. Concentrating hard and moving very slowly and precisely, I had one of me step forward and the other step back in response. After doing it two or three times, I was satisfied I had it down, so I tried it more quickly.

A flash of movement in the corner of my eye distracted me and my concentration wavered. Both of me moved confidently—and just about broke my nose when their faces smashed together in the center.

I felt the power leave me as Surei stopped dancing and doubled over in laughter.

“This isn’t working,” I said. “I am not going to learn how to control two of me at once in a fight in one afternoon. Let me try it just by myself.”

Surei nodded and began dancing again.

I picked up the bokken and attacked a target dummy. At first, I moved diffidently, but the combat was effortless. I felt power flowing into me through the connection with Surei. Each bit made things easier. Euphoria overcame me and I began swinging away with wild abandon, broad, powerful strokes smashing into the wooden target, overcome by the lust for battle.

I leapt away, as if to avoid a strike, then leapt back to attack. Each movement was smoother and stronger than the one before.

“Yoshi!” I froze at Surei’s yell. She had stopped her dancing and I realized I stood astride the peak of the roof of one of the outbuildings. My feet began to slide out from underneath me. I grabbed a lintel to keep from falling.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You started moving faster and faster, almost reaching a frenzy. Then, you began jumping around, smashing at the target in passing. Finally, you made a tremendous jump and landed on the top of the building.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible. I think you will fare better with the mujina.”

I looked around, trying to figure out how to get down. By stretching out full-length, I was able to keep hold of the lintel and dangle my feet over the edge of the roof. Surei called someone over with a ladder to help me get down. I didn’t tell her about the wild energy and how it affected my thinking. I promised myself I wouldn’t give in to the feeling next time.

*****

The sun was disappearing behind the mountains to the west by the time we arrived at Shirakawa Palace. We walked up the road and watched bushi drilling outside the palace. I studied the gate. The guards were stopping each person who entered and talking with them. We weren’t going to just walk in.

Surei pointed to the gate. “What is happening there?”

The guards were speaking with a large bushi. He grew agitated and began yelling. The guards bowed several times and backed away. The large man stalked through the gate.

I sighed. “That’s Minamoto no Tametomo. He’s as big as Professor and has an evil temper. His father is supporting Retired Emperor Sutoku, so I should have guessed he would be here.”

“I’ve heard of him. He has caused a lot of trouble through the years. Why would anyone use someone that unstable?”

“Tametomo is probably the finest archer in the land. We both hired on to the same army a couple of years ago. He was constantly boasting about his prowess with a yumi. He would let anyone attempt to draw it to prove how strong he was. I tried it once and almost pulled my back out just nocking an arrow.”

I thought for a moment. “I suppose I can tell the guards I am with his group. After their problems with him, they probably won’t try to stop me.”

There was a sudden commotion as mobs of people passed us on the road, running to the gate. They kept looking behind them. At first, the bushi tried to stop them, but the guards on duty were soon overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers.

Surei and I rushed up the hill overlooking Kyoto to see what was going on. A long line of bushi and horses was exiting the east gate. I recognized the insignia of Taira no Kiyomori among the riders.

I pointed to Kiyomori. “Go-Shirakawa is attacking. If we go in there now, we are going to be in the middle of a battle.”

Surei looked at me, then back at the approaching army. “What choice do we have?”

We joined the throng of people and allowed it to carry us inside the walls.

The gates slammed shut behind us.