CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The next morning Thalia was scheduled to go on patrol with Seizo. It was usually a little calmer when she worked with someone other than Tetsuya, since the photographers were not quite as eager to get ten thousand candid shots of her with every other member of the Shinsengumi; they preferred the happy couple themselves.

They did enjoy following her when she was with Captain Okada, however, since he had achieved his own brand of notoriety in his enthusiasm for his work. The gossip rags loved to speculate about whether the ‘Lovely Lieutenant’ had tamed not only the Demon Vice-Commander, but also the wild beast holding the title First Squad Captain. Okada never blew up a building or created a gratuitously violent uproar when she was with him, which stood in contrast to his usual behavior. He was even becoming more attentive to the concerns of the general public, and much of it seemed due to her ‘gentle influence’.

Privately there was much amusement throughout the Shinsengumi about this idea, since Thalia could be at least as enthusiastic about violence as any of them; but publicly, they enjoyed watching her reputation grow its own legends.

So far the rumors of Thalia’s demonic prowess had been dismissed as paranoid or envious delusions by most of the press in Edo. No one could believe such a petite, charming, beautiful woman could really be behind the rumors of broken bones, dislocated jaws, or worst of all broken minds, though these and worse rumors swirled around her in subtle eddies.

All they knew was that she had saved their citizens from hijackers and been embraced by the Shinsengumi; she was a figure of high drama, romance, and mystery. As such, she had collected many fans and relatively few enemies.

On this particular morning, the photographers following them were treated to the spectacle of some blue-garbed Mimawarigumi pulling up beside the Lieutenant and Captain of the Shinsengumi, approaching them on foot, and after a brief conversation conducted in tones too low to hear, pulling them both into their steam-powered carriage. Anyone lucky enough to get pictures of that went gleefully straight back to his or her office to get them developed and properly credited.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Thalia fumed in the back seat of the Mimawarigumi carriage.

“Why are you upset, Lieutenant?” one of the officers asked with a condescending smirk. “We’re just following orders, and there’s nothing wrong with consulting each other, is there?”

“Some consultation,” Okada snapped. “You threatened to deploy poisonous gas in a public street if we didn’t come with you.”

“You want to know why I’m upset?” Thalia asked in a dangerously soft voice. “Let me explain it to you – here, lean your head over the seat,” she suggested. A brief struggle ensued: Thalia pulled the officer’s head over the seat by his hair, did not let go when she leaned back to plant her booted feet on his wrists after he tried to grab her, then punched him repeatedly in the face.

Seizo and the Mimawarigumi officer in the back seat with them tried to intervene, but ended up arguing with each other instead. The driver did not seem overly perturbed by all this uproar, and in fairly short order they arrived at Mimawarigumi Headquarters.

Thalia threw the door open and stomped out of the carriage as soon as it slowed down enough. She was in a fine temper, and nothing Seizo could say calmed her in the least - not that he was trying very hard.

Commander Natsume Ishida stood in the entryway to the main building, looking mildly surprised at Thalia’s eruption from the vehicle.

“Natsume-san,” Thalia called up to him, giving him a sharp, angry smile. “You will, I trust, have an excellent explanation for the abduction of two Shinsengumi officers off a Kabukicho street in the middle of the day.”

“Abduction?” he repeated as if shocked. “Oh, no, my dear. I’m afraid there has been a misunderstanding. We’ve brought you here for a consultation, you see – it’s meant as an honor. Perhaps my subordinates were too forceful in their enthusiasm; do try and forgive us, Lady Cairde.”

“Lieutenant,” she corrected, still glowing with rage. “And if you think I’m buying that steaming pile of bullshit from you, you better think again.”

The officer Thalia had used as a punching bag was slinking away to the infirmary with blood all over his uniform from his face, his wrists both temporarily useless. The other two stood awaiting further orders.

They later explained to their Chief that they hadn’t expected Thalia to be the violent one, but as it turned out, the captain had tried to help them calm her down. If he hadn’t gotten in her way somewhat, the punching bag would have been in the hospital.

At this point, however, Captain Okada had given up on trying to calm her and was simply enjoying the spectacle of her in a wild temper. He was more accustomed than she to the abuse of power in which the Mimawarigumi regularly indulged; there was no real accountability for them, and trying to fight them had only ever brought trouble upon the Shinsengumi instead. There were separate rules for the elites and the peasants; that was the way of things.

Natsume came down to meet them, his face a picture of concern apart from his eyes, which remained cold, like those of a fish. Thalia had nicknamed him Pufferfish because of his unpleasant arrogance and those cold fish-eyes, which had made the chief officers laugh.

“Tell me, Lady – I do beg your pardon – Lieutenant Cairde, what can I do to make it up to you? I feel just terrible that this has upset you so much,” he said.

Thalia was sorely tempted to recommend that he do unspeakable things to himself with a toilet brush wrapped in barbed wire, but thought better of it and at last got hold of her unruly temper, reining it in.

“To start with, Commander, you can explain what this is about. If we’re here for a consultation, let’s consult. I imagine this has to do with Sekiguchi Teiji, whom you commandeered from under our noses last night?” she surmised, her turbulent oceanic eyes boring into him just as icily as his into her.

“My, you do make us sound like an unlawful group of scoundrels,” Natsume remarked with an artificial smile.

“Funny how that happens just from stating facts,” she snapped. It was at this juncture that she suddenly recalled she was not, in fact, the senior officer present. She looked over at Seizo and winced. “Ah, forgive me, Captain Okada. I seem to have lost my temper completely.”

“Which I have thoroughly enjoyed observing, Lieutenant,” Okada said, winking at her. “Don’t worry, we can always commit seppuku later. Meanwhile, I agree with you. If we’re here to consult, let’s do so. Natsume-san, what’s this about?”

“Your … subordinate … is correct in surmising that it’s about Sekiguchi Teiji, Captain Okada,” Natsume confirmed. “We understand the Lieutenant has a way of getting the exact truth from even the most stubborn and uncooperative prisoners. Sekiguchi has had a way in and out of the Royal City for years, and we wish him to tell us what it is, so we can close it. Unfortunately, he has not seen any reason to share that with us, although we have tried to provide him with a few that should have been rather compelling.”

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While he spoke, he had been leading them down a long corridor, then down a long curving stairway of polished white marble. The size and grandeur of the place was dizzying, Thalia thought. She did not like it; she did not like the Commander, and she did not like the sound of what he was saying.

“Compelling reasons?” she repeated dubiously.

Natsume had stopped outside a thick oak door, which now he opened, inviting her to step into the room. Okada Seizo had one hand on his katana, not liking the feel of things any more than Thalia did; he stayed on the threshold.

The barely restrained anger that had already been roused in Thalia woke again when she saw what was happening in the room. Sekiguchi was strapped to what looked like a backboard used by medics, and suspended head-down near a fire, which someone was stirring with a poker. The wound he had been recovering from was bleeding again, and he had clearly sustained new injuries.

The patch he usually wore on his blind eye had been moved to cover his good eye. Despite all this, he was calm. His jaw was set but stoic, and he would never think of begging them for anything, she knew. He might have lost his mind, but he was still a samurai by training.

“One would think, would one not, that his remaining eye would be of greater value to him than a secret he will no longer be able to use anyway,” Commander Natsume said. “We covered it to remind him what blindness will be like. We’re also burning a pocket into his skin where he can keep the eye in the future, until it rots.”

As Natsume said these words, one of the attending officers took the hot poker and laid it almost delicately against an already ugly burn on Sekiguchi’s chest. He did not make much of a sound, though his jaw clenched and all his muscles contorted from the pain. The smell of burning flesh rose with the sound of sizzling.

Thalia saw in Sekiguchi now not only the criminal lunatic who had nearly killed her beloved, but also the little boy, the young man, and the grandfather she had known in times past; the lover who had rescued her out of enslavement to Rome and taught her to fight them.

In addition to that, she saw a victim of torture. Her eyes changed and her teeth lengthened as quickly as thought, and she was across the room even before Seizo could blink. He had never seen her anywhere near losing her temper before, even in the interrogation rooms at their own headquarters, and it stunned him though he knew from reading her file what to expect.

Her foot shot up and connected violently with the torturer’s shoulder; he cried out in pain and surprise, dropping the poker into her waiting hand.

“What is the elite police force of the Shogunate doing with a torture chamber in these enlightened times?” Thalia demanded, her voice expanding into the jaw-clenching harmonics of her Fury.

Natsume gave a weak laugh. He had not expected quite this level of violence from her, despite all he’d been told. “Surely you’re not objecting to the use of force, Demoness?” he asked.

It seemed the rumors of her violent side had reached him after all.

“I’m objecting to lack of justice, lack of respect for human life, lack of basic ethics,” she said, rage pulsating in her voice. “You have here a man who loves to torture those who cannot defend themselves,” she said, indicating the poker-wielder. She had seen into his mind and was enraged at what she had found there. “It’s how he gets his rocks off. He’s a violent sadist. Such a person is considered fit for interrogating prisoners? Is this how you handle your responsibilities, Commander?”

She did not wait for an answer, but turned on the torturer. “Cowards like you never do like to take their own medicine,” she said. “But justice demands that you take a full dose.” With that, she plunged one of her long knives through his foot, pinning him to the floor, and while he was screaming, she thrust the poker through his hand and pinned it to the metal oven behind him. The stink of singed flesh became stronger, and the screaming rose to fever pitch before he passed out and fell, his hand mercifully tearing all the way through to release him from the hot oven.

“He will never use that hand to torture another person as long as he lives. I suggest you have it removed if you wish to prevent infection,” Thalia advised Natsume coldly, eyeing the torturer where he lay on the floor. She then turned her eyes back toward him.

The normally unflappable Mimawarigumi Chief was by now stunned speechless, staring at the man on the floor with his newly mangled hand. “I bring justice on those who are guilty, in proportion to their crimes,” Thalia said. “But this! How are you less a terrorist than he is?” she demanded, indicating Sekiguchi, her eyes glowing white-hot, far hotter than the fire beside her.

“This is the man who nearly killed your beloved,” Natsume reminded her. “He would have killed you both, and everyone else you hold dear. How can you defend him?” He was beginning to sweat, afraid that she would turn her horrifying all-seeing gaze into his bleak soul next.

“Thalia-sama,” Sekiguchi said before she could respond, in a voice that was low but racked with pain, his mouth bleeding up into his eye.

“Let him down at once,” Thalia commanded the officers nearby; they did not even look to their Commander before complying; they dared not waste a moment with her unnerving gaze on them. “How dare you, you bunch of brigands,” she said, addressing Natsume with withering contempt. “How dare you go into a place of healing and abduct someone from our custody to bring him to your torture chamber and undo the work of the physicians for your own gains. How dare you torture a wounded man. You disgust me.”

The backboard – for that was indeed what it was – was placed lengthwise on a table; Thalia went over and first replaced the patch over Sekiguchi’s blind eye. She took his vital signs and checked his wounds, snarling at any Mimawarigumi who moved. Her Fury had faded as she did these things, but it was still present.

“You came, Thalia-sama,” Sekiguchi whispered, smiling up at her a little.

“Indeed I did,” she said in a somewhat gentler voice. “And I promise, the indignities stop now.”

“I did not treat your lover with so much consideration,” he pointed out.

“Since when are you the role model for either of us?” she retorted, glaring at him. “You’re an asshole, Sekiguchi, and a criminal who will be punished for your crimes – and don’t think for a moment that I forgive you. But you’re also a living soul in a lot of torment who started out with noble, honorable intentions. I’m not going to let more torture befall you. That’s not justice.”

As she spoke, she was releasing the straps and testing his bones to see if any were broken. She did not notice the look of regret combined with triumph that crossed his face.

“What will you do?” he asked her softly.

“Get you back to the hospital for an exam first,” she said. “But after that, this time you’ll be moved back to our headquarters with a nurse posted at your bedside.”

Thalia looked up toward Seizo standing on alert in the doorway. His katana was drawn, and though he was not overtly threatening Natsume, it was clear that any move the Commander made would only be accomplished with the express permission of the young Captain’s swift, deadly blade.

“This does not bode well for future collaborations,” Natsume said, sounding petulant, like a spoiled prince experiencing frustration.

“No, it doesn’t, does it?” Thalia agreed with a nasty smile. “Remember this next time you’re tempted to kidnap Shinsengumi officers.”

“Do give my regards to Harada-kun, my dear,” Natsume said as she helped Sekiguchi to his feet, allowing him to put one arm around her shoulders for support.

Thalia stopped on the way past him. “I look forward to the next time you call him that to his face,” she said with fiendish delight. “Really, I do.” She departed on that note, supporting Sekiguchi with an arm around his waist, her Fury dying down as they left Mimawarigumi headquarters, Okada never letting down his guard for a moment.

This paid off several times as they were challenged between the torture room and the gates leading outside; the challengers were warned, since Okada did not wish to shed blood unnecessarily, but if they came on they were cut down. The only time this even slowed them down was in the main hall, where several officers challenged the Shinsengumi captain at once, and he had to fight them all off.

Thalia’s teeth were clenched, and lengthened as she began to transform, will it or no. But she held back, knowing this was for Okada to do and not for her. Sekiguchi observed her with delight and fascination.

“Why do you not unleash your wrath on them? I can see you want to,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate in this case,” she said succinctly.

“Ah. One of the finer distinctions only a dual nature can appreciate, I suppose,” he replied languidly.

Natsume stood looking after them for a moment, then said, “So sad to see people anticipate an event they will not witness, don’t you think? But despite the unforeseen violence, that went almost exactly as planned. Ah, Bradley, do call the infirmary and have them send someone up to tend Raleigh, would you?”

The man named Bradley stood against a wall, pale and shaking, sweat dripping from his brow though he stood nowhere near the fire. “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice quivering.