The Lily Thieves Part II for Sagely-Sea!
Title: The Lily Thieves Part II
Author: arysthaeniru
Recipient: sagely_sea
Pairing/Characters: Sanada/Tezuka, Tezuka/Shiraishi, Atobe, Yukimura, Fuji, Echizen
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, mentions of prostitution, more plot than romance
Disclaimer: I don't own Prince of Tennis. If I did, Echizen would have more family problems >>;
Summary: Tezuka and Sanada are knights of the country and King. While robbery isn't their usual sort of job, this is no ordinary robbery.
Notes: Thank so much to my beta who told me when I was a fool and to all the people who helped me with characterization of people I’ve never attempted before.
Tezuka adjusted the scarf around his neck to hide the slight bruises on this neck and was silently grateful of how cold it was in early morning. He supposed it did count as morning at 2am, even if he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sleep a little.
It was harder, however, to hide the slight bruises along his wrist from where they’d accidentally collided with the headboard of the bed. He hoped that Sanada wouldn’t notice, but his fellow knight wasn’t stupid.
As he rounded on the training yard, on his way up to their shared room, he saw Sanada quickly slicing up a doll of straw, with more pent-up fury than he usually had for simple training. Tezuka waited until Sanada lowered his broadsword to enter the training ring, with his own sword. “Spar?” he asked, to the panting Sanada, who seemed thoroughly warmed-up.
Sanada glanced up at Tezuka’s layers of clothing and just raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t warmed up, I’ll smash you.”
Tezuka just picked up a practise sword, in response. He wanted to spar, and Sanada wasn’t the sort to turn down a victory, especially not when he was so angry at something. Sanada just shook his head as he picked up his wooden sword and settled into stance, as they circled each other.
“What did you find?” asked Tezuka, as he moved his sword cautiously in circles, to make it a little more difficult for Sanada to predict his next move.
“I almost caught them.” said Sanada, with gritted teeth as he lunged forward towards Tezuka’s chest. “I was outside the Taki mansion since it’s got the best vantage point of the area and I saw two suspicious people entering the Atobe mansion and I ran over there. But I missed them and by the time I got there, they were already escaping over the roofs. By the time I would have gotten there, they would have escaped.”
Tezuka frowned as he easily deflected the shot and moved forward to try and get to Sanada’s head. “Did you catch a glimpse of them?”
“Nothing concrete.” Sanada backed away quickly, making Tezuka’s shot miss and tapped Tezuka’s arm with a speed that Tezuka couldn’t achieve without warming up. “Only enough to know that one of them had blue-black hair.”
“Yukimura.” Tezuka remembered, as they reset their positions. “From the nursery also. Did he not have that shade of hair?”
“Indeed. Nevertheless, this means that the Atobes got robbed, though I have yet to confirm with Atobe himself, since I am sure he is asleep now.” Sanada said, as he attacked from the get-go and Tezuka easily parried his lunges.
Sanada had come straight to the training grounds after his failed attempt, then. Tezuka doubted that the other planned on sleeping at all and he frowned as he twisted his wrist to throw Sanada off-balance and tap Sanada lightly on the chest. “Will you be functional today, Sanada?”
“Well enough.” sad Sanada, as he righted his stance and looked down the shaft of his sword. “What did you find?”
“I tried to talk to the girls. I was denied, since I said that I didn’t wish to sleep with them. I was told to come back this morning, after the majority of their paying customers are gone.” said Tezuka, as he lunged forward, into a lilting attack. He rarely attacked in his fights, but Sanada wasn’t going to move, he knew.
Sanada blocked the shots. “We’ll go together then. And Shiraishi?”
“Told me I should investigate the nobles and not the brothel. He also said something about giving him time before he can give us anything substantial. He practically admitted to being a thief, but said that we wouldn’t have evidence to convict him in a jury-court.” Knights didn’t have a good reputation among the people, there was no way for the knights to win without clear eyewitness proof. “He says there’s something in the dirty history of the nobles.” Tezuka dodged Sanada’s quick-fire attack, and swept for Sanada’s feet.
Sanada stepped back instantly, which Tezuka hadn’t been expecting and he quickly hit the side of Tezuka’s neck. The scarf fell away from it’s careful arrangement and Tezuka staggered back a few feet, quickly tucking the scarf back into place. But it was just a little too late, Sanada’s face had frozen in slight shock.
Tezuka met Sanada’s gaze coolly as he settled back into stance. “Still, we shouldn’t give up investigation on the brothel, since I don’t fully trust his words. Especially since he seems to have some sort of trauma surrounding slavers-”
“So you don’t trust his words, but you trust him in other ways?” interrupted Sanada, looking a mixture between affronted and angry. He wasn’t in ready stance at all, his sword dropped at his side.
“He fulfilled his end of the bargain. I had to fulfill mine.” said Tezuka, pursing his lips, as he lowered his sword.
Sanada’s jaw tightened and he looked somewhat furious and simultaneously sad. His sword trembled in his grip and he took almost shaky breaths, as the cold night breezes whipped past them both. Tezuka just watched, with a slight frown. He both admired Sanada’s ability to let those emotions free and wondered at the folly of letting everybody know the deepest parts of Sanada’s passion.
“You obviously have something you want to say, Sanada, so say it.” Tezuka said, simply, as he placed the practise sword aside.
Sanada just shook his head, his teeth gritted. “You’re more than that, Tezuka. You didn’t need to...you know...you could have exchanged something else.”
Tezuka didn’t reply; he knew it was more than that, and he just wanted to hear Sanada say what he’d been wanting to hear for a long time.
“Just...why would you even make an exchange like that?” asked Sanada, his anger spilling out. “Doesn’t it hurt your pride?”
That hadn’t been what Tezuka had been wanting to hear. Tezuka couldn’t stop the slight twitch of his eyebrows at the absence of words. “Because duty overrides pride.” Sanada knew that well, even if he wasn’t always good at upholding it. “We should go investigate the girls and then we should do some serious research into the background of the nobles, as well. Shiraishi spoke like there was only a limited amount of vict-”
“Did you like it? Or did you like him?” asked Sanada, as he met Tezuka’s gaze, still looking supremely confused.
Tezuka’s eyes shut for a slight moment. Sanada knew him so well, but still managed to summarily miss the point. He wondered how that happened. “You’re letting your guard down, Sanada, we have work to do.” he said, avoiding the question.
“I don’t care.” Sanada uttered. “I’ve been training and fighting for this kingdom since I was fifteen and I have been training single-mindedly since I was six. You were training since you were five. We’ve given our lives and souls to the kingdom, we’re allowed an hour to ourselves, Tezuka.”
Tezuka’s jaw tightened. He knew that Sanada was right. It was two in the morning, the King was hardly going to begrudge them this, but he didn’t want to talk about it. Not when Sanada was still clueless. “Does it matter so much to you?”
Sanada tilted his head back, until it was cloaked in shadow and sighed. “Yes. Yes, it matters to me, Tezuka.”
“...I could have liked him. But I did not. And I could have liked it, had it not been something I was only doing for duty.” said Tezuka, simply, as he circled his fingers around his bruised wrist. “Is that enough for you?”
He couldn’t see Sanada’s face, but his fists had stilled and he looked the picture of serenity. It probably wasn’t an accurate representation of Sanada’s internal feelings. Tezuka just sighed and started to walk away from the training grounds. Maybe a few hours of sleep before he had to go back and talk to the girls would do him some good. Perhaps his dreams would tell him something about the culprit. The subconscious was supposedly better at this sort of thing than real people.
“Wait, Tezuka.” came Sanada’s voice from behind him and Tezuka turned around. Sanada’s brow was soaked with sweat and he looked torn. “You...” He trailed off and screwed up his eyes, with a growl of frustration. “Just forget it. Sorry. Sleep well.”
Tezuka pursed his lips and didn’t turn to leave. Instead, he stepped forward and gripped Sanada’s shoulders. They had been so close to something. “Just say what you want to say. It isn’t like you to dart around what you want to say.”
Sanada just shook his head, and his cheeks were flushed. “It’s nothing important. Forget it, Tezuka.”
“Then I’ll speak.” Tezuka said, his eyebrows pulling down into a deep frown. “I have waited four years. I have danced around the issue for four years, and I have patience, but not for this extent. You were going to ask me a question and the answer would have been yes.”
Sanada’s eyebrows pulled down, as he looked down at Tezuka. “Would have been? Is the answer still yes?”
Tezuka just nodded and tilted his head up a little, as Sanada hesitantly leant forward to kiss him. It was softer than Tezuka had been expecting, but not unwelcome. Sanada’s eyes were shut as they both pulled away to catch their breath and Tezuka thought that this was probably the closest he could get to happiness in a society like theirs and with a thief running through the city of the King. Considering how Sanada’s arms tightened around his waist and he pulled Tezuka into another, more passionate kiss, Sanada felt the same.
Tezuka’s hands slipped under Sanada’s loose training-shirt, to run his hands along Sanada’s sides and up Sanada’s back, while still kissing, which led to the unfortunate consequence of Sanada’s teeth almost skewering Tezuka’s tongue. Tezuka just glared. “Don’t get careless.”
(X)
It wasn’t often that Tezuka went entirely without sleep, which was why he felt like like he was going to fall asleep right there in front of the girls. The three of them looked just as tired as Tezuka felt, however, which is why the five of them were perched in the comfortable chaises in the waiting room of the brothel.
Still, even if Tezuka was fairly tired, he was still able to think. The girl in the middle, Jasmine, looked like a female version of the nursery worker, Yukimura, with wavy black hair and a pretty smile on her tired face. The other two, with long brown hair, looked less familiar, but the fact that Jasmine looked so similar to Yukimura put him on edge.
They were dressed like the typical brothel workers, as he had seen the swathes of silk and transparent cloth, but Sanada had kindly asked them to cover up since it was cold, and they had happily covered themselves in blankets. But not before Tezuka had noticed the fact that all of them wore beautiful jewels, that looked just a little too elaborate.
“So what did you knights want to talk about, anyway? Manager seemed pretty convinced that you two weren’t here for sex.” said Sakura, who looked the eldest of the group.
“Are you related to a nursery worker at 201 nursery, Yukimura?” asked Tezuka first, to Jasmine. She didn’t react, just tilted her head to the side as she thought and shook her head. “Nope, sorry. Why?”
“Idle wonderings.” said Tezuka, firmly. Perhaps lying ran in the family. “Have any of you heard of the Lily Thieves?”
“Kotoha was talking about it, I guess?” asked Sakura, with a slight shrug, as she scratched her neck.
“Some of my customers have been complaining about it, but I don’t really pay attention.” said the youngest, Rose, with a slight flush to her face, as she tucked her hair behind her ear. “I have other things to worry about.”
“You have to remember that we live in the brothel all the time. When we’re not working, we’re sleeping. It’s difficult to keep up on gossip or news around the city unless the boss says something.” said Jasmine, completely evenly, without any of the guilty tells of her comrades. If anything, that made her more suspicious to Tezuka.
“Would you be able to tell us who your main recurring customers are among the nobles of our City?” asked Sanada, his voice a little harsh.
“Hmmmm...I guess, but I mean, why would you care?” asked Sakura, her eyes flickering up to meet Sanada’s with a slightly amused look.
“We’re conducting an investigation, all alleys of questioning must be undertaken. Now are you going to obstruct justice or follow my orders?” asked Sanada, hotly. Tezuka just leant back and watched the girls write down names, with slight looks of thought. They seemed to have difficulty remembering the names, or perhaps, with just writing. He wondered whether they’d ever had an education as extensive as he and Sanada had had.
“We go to Atobe after this, then after the nobles?” Tezuka whispered to Sanada’s ear.
Sanada nodded, as Jasmine finished her list first and the other two quickly wrapped up, handing the lists to the knights. Tezuka noted as he picked up Rose and Sakura’s lists, that the people who had been targeted so far, were on both of their lists. A quick peek over Sanada’s shoulder at Jasmine’s list showed the same result.
“There’s a common denominator.” muttered Sanada, and Tezuka just nodded grimly. “Thank you for your time, ladies.” said Tezuka, as he got up and bowed. “If you would wait for a little while, we need to discuss some things and see if we have any follow-up questions.”
“Fine.” said Sakura. “But make it snappy, we’re all dead and we need our beauty sleep.”
Tezuka pulled Sanada outside quickly, with a nod to them. “The common denominators we’ve already seen are all here. Atobe, Oshitari, Katsuo, Sengoku, Suwabe, Sasabe.” he said, tapping to the names on the sheet. “But there are six other names on this list that are the same. There are only three more thefts set to happen.” said Tezuka, with a deep frown. “Which means there’s something more to it.”
“The nobles’ dirty history that Shiraishi was talking about?” asked Sanada, as he glanced through the list and nodded. “Once we confirm with Atobe about his house missing their prize jewel, we can head to Inui and ask him about the nobles on the list. But did you notice something about the jewels they were wearing? They’re far too expensive and elaborate for something that a lower class brothel could afford to provide its workers.”
Tezuka nodded at the confirmation of his previous thoughts. “I agree, those gems do not seem normal. but I have heard of nobles giving their favoured girls jewels.”
“When jewels are being stolen across the city, we can’t rule this out. I haven’t actually seen any of the jewels before they were stolen.” said Sanada, with a nod. “But. The headpiece that Rose was wearing looked a lot like other pieces inside Suwabe’s collection.”
Tezuka nodded, with a slight frown. “Then we take the jewels and ask the nobles about whether they’re the right ones?”
Sanada shook his head. “You said it yourself, we need more proof. Let’s arrest the thieves first. Then we’ll come back here with evidence about their motives and take the jewels.”
Tezuka nodded. “You’re free to go.” he said, looking back at the girls. “We may return for further questions.”
The girls just nodded and dispersed into the clouds of curtains that concealed the other exits out of the large room. Tezuka sighed. He was spending far too much in these places.
(X)
Conveniently, Atobe had gone to visit Inui in the infirmary. Tezuka wasn’t quite sure why; as far as he knew, Atobe and Inui didn’t really interact beyond anything arbitrary. Still, Atobe was at Inui’s bedsides, seemingly in deep conversation until Sanada and Tezuka arrived,
“Tezuka, you look dreadful.” said Atobe, with a frown as he walked forward to peer at Tezuka’s face. “Have you been sleeping at all?”
Sanada rolled his eyes, as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Obviously not, since these robberies occur at night.”
Atobe just sneered. “About that, what happened to preventing my father from getting robbed? He’s most displeased about the missing diamonds.” He sniffed and looked expectantly at Sanada.
“We missed them. Our hunch wasn’t enough.” said Tezuka, quietly, to avoid the angry yell that was sure to come from Sanada. Sanada and Atobe always managed to anger each other in some way, especially when it involved their families. Still, it was confirmed that the robbers had managed to get the diamonds from Atobe’s home.
“That’s rare.” said Inui, from his bed. “Generally Tezuka’s instinct is 95% accurate.”
“My instinct has told me many things but we have no real proof as of yet.” Tezuka said, ignoring Atobe and Sanada’s glaring contest. He pulled out one of the sheets with the circled names. “What news do you know about the people who’ve already been robbed, that link with the names on this list?” It might have been the only time that Tezuka was willingly going to ask for Inui’s gossip column and he wasn’t missing the look of sheer wonder on Inui’s face.
He almost grimaced as Inui started babbling. He nodded helplessly, trying to catch keywords about the sheer amount of gossip that Inui knew, but stopped him as he heard the word slavery. “Wait, go back. Slavery, tell me about slavery.”
Sanada frowned and Atobe paled. “Those rumours are unsubstantiated, Inui!” he snapped.
“What rumours?” asked Sanada, looking quite concerned. Tezuka pursed his lips and turned to Inui. Inui looked a little concerned of Atobe’s glare, but continued. “There’s rumours about a large group of nobles funding a group of slavers in order for cheaper entertainment around the City. Pretty boys and pretty girls are taken from their parents who are too deep into debt and sold to the slavers. They’re groomed into being anything. Servants, prostitutes, adopted children...”
“My father did not fund something like that.” hissed Atobe. “My father is a good man. He’s one of the more generous landlords in this country about rents and letting people use his land.”
That was fairly true, but Atobe’s father was also the richest man in the country and it wasn’t inheritance money. Atobe’s parents were old money, but they had become very, very rich during Atobe’s father’s time as a Lord. Money like that wasn’t made from altruism.Luckily, Tezuka didn’t have to voice those thoughts, since Sanada did it for him.
“How well do you know him, really, Atobe? He’s always working and I’ve rarely heard of you two interacting beyond the large dinner parties he throws.” said Sanada, seriously. “He’s also been cheating with your mother with several prostitutes.”
The other knight snorted bitterly. “And of course, because he can cheat on an arranged marriage made for the sole purpose of preventing civil war, you think he can put innocent children into a slave ring? Because those are two things you can equate together.”
Tezuka’s jaw tightened. “It’s one of the only leads I have, Atobe. I hope I’m wrong.” he said, tightly. “Who were the other alleged people involved in the ring, Inui?”
“Kadowaki, Saotome and Kiraku.” said Inui, as he glanced at the list. Three people exactly, didn’t that match up?
“You’re seriously believing this?” asked Atobe, with a dry look. “Slavery is banned in this country. Our lords may do some questionable things, but they’ll not break the King’s law like this.”
Sanada threw Tezuka a sharp look and Tezuka sighed. “That’s not true, Atobe. There are slavers from other countries using our country as feed-base. Technically, since they’re not of our country’s, they can operate here.” Tezuka said, sharply. He hadn’t wanted to mention this, they’d kept it covered from even the King himself, in order to keep the two Echizens safe. “They shouldn’t have been able to get into the country at all, however, especially not with people. But I understand how they would be able to do it now.”
Inui bolted up, with horror. “There are slavers operating this country?”
Sanada nodded, looking vaguely guilty. “They can operate. They shouldn’t be, though. Tezuka and I put enough slavers into the ground a year ago, that they shouldn’t have been to recover and even if they do, they’ll think twice before entering.” he said, seriously. “Actually, one of those people I killed was Saotome’s son, but I always thought that he was a rogue outlet, not part of the family business.”
“Why are you all accepting this so easily?” demanded Atobe. “Get some proof before you accuse my father of anything!”
Sanada looked like he was about to say something and Tezuka stepped on his foot discreetly. He didn’t want to expose Echizen to Inui or Atobe. “We will. But in return, I need something from you.” Tezuka said, quietly. “A description of all of the jewels stolen. We have a time-limit, or I’d do it myself.”
Atobe nodded. “Fine, I can do that. Go investigate the slavery. But you’ll see my father’s innocent.”
Tezuka just nodded and grabbed Sanada’s hand to pull him out of there, with a short nod to Inui. The moment that they were out of earshot, Sanada turned to him. ‘You don’t think that Atobe’s father is innocent, do you?”
“Shiraishi told me there was something in the background of the nobles. But we have to question it, he could be trying to deflect attention or even frame them for the slavery ring problems.” reasoned Tezuka, squeezing Sanada’s hand and letting it go. “Which is why we’re going to see Echizen. He keeps an eye of the slave rings, he’ll know about which nobles are involved with helping them in and out.”
“Why hasn’t he done anything about it, then?” asked Sanada, looking incredulous.
Tezuka just tossed Sanada a grim look. “He’s a child, Sanada. He’s still scared of the slavers.”
(X)
“I’m not scared of them.” snapped Echizen, as he adjusted the hood over his face. “I just don’t want to draw attention to myself. Stick one of those bastards in front of me with no repercussions and I’d stab him so hard that I’ll cause an earthquake.” he said, cockily.
Sanada snorted softly. “But do you know the details of the slavery ring?”
“I might.” Echizen said, his golden eyes settling on Sanada, looking expectant. Tezuka had to stop himself from smiling a little as Sanada scowled and forked out some money.
“Alright, so, there are a bunch of grunt work around it, but it’s a money-making business. The slaves are taken from this country, all groomed up and prettied up in other places and then returned back here. Thing is, you’ll always be able to know that they’re a slave, because they have markings.” Echizen looked around the shady tavern for a bit, before he pulled up his sleeve to show the brand, forever burned into his skin. He tucked his hand away quickly.
“The brands are different for the different slaves to throw off anyone investigating, but in reality, they’re all the same slave ring that work inside our country.” Echizen, with a frown. “The people in charge are slippery though, they know how to cover their tracks. Nobody’s really sure. Only rumours around here.”
Tezuka’s jaw tightened. “But you know more.” he said, reading the glint in Echizen’s eyes.
“There’s a group of nobles in charge.” said Echizen. “They’re the ones making sure that the border smuggling is easily done. The people in top switch out a lot, though.”
Tezuka slid forward their list. “So these names mean...”
“Oshitari senior and Suwabe senior are definitely involved.” said Echizen, as he glanced down at the circled names. “Atobe senior hasn’t been sighted, but he’s there. Sasabe’s been sighted at the border when he’s supposed to be elsewhere and Katsuo senior’s almost certainly involved since his men are inside the area. Sengoku junior’s not been seen, that’s just a rumour. Mmm, Kadowaki senior and Saotome for sure, Nanako has Saotome’s family animal on her wrist. Kiraku senior...he’s from a foreign country and his family’s circumstances of getting into the country were shady. The others are pretty clear, though.”
Sanada’s eyes widened marginally and Tezuka remembered that most of the times he’d used Echizen’s help, he hadn’t brought Sanada along. Still, Sanada recovered quickly enough. “How are you sure of Atobe senior’s involvement?”
Echizen just rolled his eyes. “I thought you were a rich guy, Sanada. You’re supposed to know family crests.” He held out his wrist again, nevertheless and there, on his arm, was a lion. The lion that was prominently featured in the Atobe family seal.
Sanada just shut his eyes. “This was supposed to be a clear-cut robbery case. And now slavery is involved.” Echizen’s eyes narrowed in accusation at Tezuka, upon Sanada’s words. Tezuka ignored Echizen’s look, in favour of explaining everything.
“Shiraishi was a former slave; he too covered his left arm with anything he could and spoke with revulsion of slavery. I’m willing to assume that Yukimura and their third accomplice were also slaves.” Tezuka reasoned. “I also believe the girls we met in the brothel were former slaves, since the robberies seem based around who was sleeping with them. Which means they all hold grudges against the nobles that got them stuck in the slavery business.”
Echizen looked at Tezuka. “It’s been two days since we last saw each other. You got all of that?” he asked, looking quite incredulous and a lot less scared.
“Tezuka’s the best knight in the country.” defended Sanada, with a frown.
Tezuka frowned. “I have no evidence. I have neither seen the brand on Shiraishi’s arm, nor confirmed if the girls are really the reason around the brothels. Neither do we have eyewitness evidence of their robbery of the jewels. I also do not know for sure where the jewels are. I do not even know for sure if Shiraishi, Yukimura and their unknown accomplice are committing the robberies. All I have are assumptions. And now I have more assumptions.” He bowed his head and got up from the table. “Thank you for your time, Echizen.”
Echizen’s eyes stared back at them and reached into the complimentary fruit bowl that the tavern always place, to throw an apple at Tezuka. “Fuji apples. They’re good for looking like you’re going to fall onto the floor and sleep for a century.” he said, with a shrug, as he turned back to his business.
Again, Echizen hated fruit. Why would he be suggesting that Tezuka eat the fruit? It didn’t feel so obvious this time, but Sanada took the apple from Tezuka’s hand, to take a bite out of. “He meant something with the apple, he hates fruits.” said Tezuka, frowning at Sanada eating the evidence.
“The third person’s called Fuji.” said Sanada easily, as they left the tavern. “That was the last thing you mentioned to him.”
Tezuka just twitched at that obvious revelation, and pulled the apple out of Sanada’s hand to take a large bite. Sanada just snorted, and pulled it back for another bite. Evidently, Tezuka was more tired than he felt.
(X)
It was midnight and reaching the cold that Tezuka was sort of grateful for. It made it easier to hide the bites and bruises that still hadn’t managed to fade over the course of the day. He felt utterly exhausted but he was still crouched outside the Kiraku and Saotome estates, watching alertly as the last light of the two houses shut off.
Sanada tapped his shoulder, to get up and jump the gates to enter the sparse gardens on the small estates. “Couldn’t we just sneak inside and watch from there?”
“No, we’d disturb the servants and the nobles if we gave chase to them from inside the house. Besides, you’ve arrested Saotome’s son and almost stabbed Kiraku for their drunk-and-disorderly actions, I doubt they’d be partial to you coming into their homes.” Tezuka pointed out as he gripped the sides of the plaster and brick houses.
Sanada just looked apprehensive as he looked up at the house and Tezuka frowned, as he started to ascend up, using his upper body strength. He didn’t have nearly as much strength as Sanada; if anyone had needed to be worried it was him. “Hurry up.” he whispered. They could escape the houses any time now. Of course, there was the risk that they were aiming for Kadowaki’s house today, but Tezuka doubted it.
“I...ah...” Sanada looked really quite hesitant as he gripped the wall and pulled himself up using the same route that Tezuka was using, his fingers digging into the plaster with more strength, causing slight pieces of plaster to fall and Sanada’s face to blanch. His eyes shut as he went up and Tezuka frowned. “Eyes open, otherwise you’ll fall.”
There was an almost inaudible grunt from the pale-faced Sanada, as he kept climbing, with eyes wide open. Tezuka reached the top quickly, and gave Sanada a hand up. As soon as Sanada set foot on the roof, his face only grew paler, as he concertedly avoided looking down. Tezuka pursed his lips. “You’re afraid of heights.” he said, quite clearly.
It was rather amusing that the nicknamed Emperor of Death on the battlefields, who’d once let himself in the path of a fleet of stampeding horses, was afraid of heights.
“I’ve never needed to use heights before. You took the crumbly bridge route when we were in Samezuka, because you were lighter.” protested Sanada, as he looked away from the edge. “Forget it, I’ll cope.”
Tezuka pursed his lips, but reached forward to squeeze Sanada’s hand softly, in reassurance. “Perhaps you should watch from the ground, they may appear from th-”
His speech was interrupted, by the sound of soft coughing coming from the chimney. Both of them drew their swords as the brunet, Fuji, popped out of the chimney, covered in dust and blinked at them. “Hi.” he said, before popping straight back down the chimney. Tezuka immediately bolted up to the chimney to try and catch him, but he was sprayed with hot water.
Instantly, he cringed back, using his left arm as protection, which managed to protect the majority of his face, but incapacitated his sword hand, as he cringed and fell down at the sharp stings of pain burning through his clothes. It had been a bad idea to neglect his armour in favour of being lightweight.
Fuji pushed up and out of the chimney, leaping over Tezuka, and Sanada immediately gave chase to the brunet. Tezuka staggered back up, transferring his sword to his right hand, as he waited for the other two. He wasn’t the best in his right hand, but he was decent enough to defend against them.
Yukimura popped out of the chimney with three throwing knives in Tezuka’s direction. Tezuka dodged all three and lunged forward to try and catch the other, but Yukimura flipped out of the way, evidently pushed by Shiraishi who came straight after Yukimura and deflected Tezuka’s sword, with his shortsword.
Yukimura immediately threw a few more knives at Tezuka and in order to dodge them, he was forced to unlock his grip with Shiraishi’s sword. Ignoring the pain, he switched the sword to his left hand, to fight off Shiraishi with more ease.
Shiraishi’s movements were textbook perfection, with next to no creativity in them, which made it easy enough to block the other’s movements. Still, it was supremely impressive for a former slave who’d probably taught himself how to sword-fight. Tezuka would have been happy to engage Shiraishi in a straight-forward battle and he probably would have won, had it not been for the fact that Yukimura’s knife-supply seemed to be endless and that Yukimura was everywhere at once, which made it difficult for Tezuka to do anything but defend from every angle.
A knife grazed his left arm, cutting it shallowly, at the same time he caught Shiraishi's face with his sword, but at the slight lowering of his defence block, Yukimura grabbed Shiraishi and they started hurtling across the roof at a speed that Tezuka hadn’t been expecting. Tezuka followed them instantly, using his own considerable speed to follow them both. The two thieves jumped between buildings with grace and Tezuka had to use all of the strength in his lower thighs to propel himself across the rather significant gaps between the houses in the area.
He could see Sanada and Fuji in the distance, Sanada with his sword trying to dodge something that Tezuka couldn’t actually see from this distance. He knew that once the two thieves caught up with Fuji, they would probably disappear, which meant he had to run faster. He ignored the pain in his left arm and the burning in his legs as he pushed himself to the limit to attempt to grip the edge of Yukimura’s cape.
Yukimura, noticing Tezuka’s efforts, somehow managed to shed the cape without slowing his pace, which forced Tezuka to dodge out of the way of the flying fabric that would block his way. his glasses were starting to fog from his internal heat and the cold outer world, but Tezuka refused to let it stop him, as they sped closer to Sanada. Sanada seemed to be dodging puffs of coloured dust, which didn’t make any sense, what was in the dust to make Sanada so scared of them?
“Fuji, scindons-nous!” yelled Yukimura, as they drew closer and Tezuka frowned deeply, as Fuji smiled beatifically and a large plume of yellow smoke covered Tezuka’s eyesight. His eyes were watering and he felt like his hand and legs were no longer part of him, all filled with numbness and sleepiness. He fell to his knees and he attempted to shield himself from the yellow dust, as best as possible, trying to breathe as little as he could get away with.
It felt like an eternity before he could open his eyes and see anything except yellow and feel anything except dust against his lungs. As he looked around, he saw Sanada collapsed on the roof and the thieves to be nowhere in sight. He hurried over to Sanada. When Tezuka placed a hand on Sanada’s shoulder, the other man rolled over, looking utterly drained.
“They beat us.” said Sanada, looking furious. “In a fair fight.”
Tezuka frowned, as something occurred to him as he reviewed that beatific smile. “Fuji was the person I bumped into in that tavern on the first day of investigation...before I lost the flowers. He must have pick-pocketed me.”
Sanada growled angrily and thumped his head back against the roof of the house, his face paler than ever. “They’re arrogant for a reason, Tezuka. Fuji knew I was scared of heights, he already knew and he chose to throw the dust at me when we were in the areas that I was most likely to be irrationally worried about falling.”
“Arrogance is never justified.” said Tezuka, coolly, as he picked up a bit of the yellow dust on the rooftops and collected it in his handkerchief. “We’ll catch them tomorrow because we’ll be ready for them.”
(X)
In the morning, when Tezuka’s arm was firmly bandaged by a worried Oishi and he had caught two precarious hours of rest, Tezuka sat in the laboratory next to an Inui who was already back to business, albeit with bandages everywhere. The yellow dust had been something that Inui hadn’t been able to identify on sight, which was why Inui was pottering around looking at old ancient books and staring at large bubbling pots of menacing substances. Even after Tezuka had described the effects on his vision and his movement, there was no real way to tell what it was instantly.
It meant quite bit of a wait with Inui’s babbling about all of the gossip he’d ever known, but it was a little rest for Tezuka, whose arm was starting to throb again. Just as Tezuka started to feel sleep take him, lulled by Inui’s mostly monotonous voice, his sleep was disturbed by the sound of arguing from the corridor. They sounded like Sanada and Atobe and Tezuka forced himself to look more awake than he felt.
“So your proof of my father being involved is from a source whom you can’t talk about, who has a slave brand of a lion? That’s your proof that my father’s involved?” Atobe demanded as they strolled into the lab, both looking distinctly furious, though Sanada looked more tired than anything.
“Everybody is convinced that he is involved. He just hasn’t been sighted, because your father knows how to cover his tracks.” said Sanada, looking wearily angry.
Tezuka sighed. “It’s true.” he said, simply.
Atobe looked a mixture between desperate and furious at Tezuka’s words, before he sighed and just looked resigned. “Fine. Let’s say he’s involved. What do you want me to do about it, ahn?”
“Get a warrant of arrest for him and the other nobles involved in the slavery ring.” said Tezuka, calmly. “Your requests for arrest are always completed with more haste by Kabaji. The evidence to provide a jury case are coming from our source and I’ve asked Kikumaru to go collect the eyewitnesses from the source.”
Atobe’s jaw tightened as his cold blue eyes scanned Tezuka for any signs of deceptions, before he sniffed. “Fine. But you owe me. For this and for the jewel descriptions.” he said, as he glared at Sanada. “You too, Sanada.”
Sanada nodded, though he looked quite mutinous about this favour, while Tezuka nodded easily. Atobe was fair about his requests, even if at times, they could be a little extravagant.
Atobe left the room and Sanada took a seat next to Tezuka, with a slightly amused look about how deeply Inui had been involved in his work. The alchemist/librarian hadn’t even commented about the situation once. “I have the jewel descriptions. He even got sketches of the jewels for some of them, by asking Ohtori.” he said, passing Tezuka the sheets of the neat writing and description.
“They look very similar to the jewels we saw on the three girls.” said Sanada, grimly, as Tezuka scanned over them. “It might be in our best interests to both collect the jewels from the girls and go to the Nursery to arrest the thieves now, in daylight.”
Tezuka shook his head. “We haven’t got enough proof.”
“No proof? They stole the jewels from Kiraku’s house and Saotome’s house yesterday, and we chased them across the rooftops. You have a wound from them and we have that dust from them.” Sanada pointed out, looking quite unimpressed.
“Not enough.” said Tezuka, again. “You remember when Kite almost got tried as a witch by the crowd for being able to move too fast? It was clearly explained by many of our training guards that Kite hadn’t been using witchcraft, but they still wanted to kill him. The hatred for knights is high among the common people. The only way we can win this if we catch at least one of them in the act.” There was no love lost for nobles either.
Sanada just scowled in response to that, and looked extremely weary. “There shouldn’t have been a slave ring involved with this...” he muttered, with a tired look. “I’ve been chasing up people about it all morning and everybody’s in as much denial as Atobe, or they’re lying, like Katsuo’s sister.”
Tezuka frowned. “Have you slept at all since the first day of the case?” he asked, softly, so Inui wouldn’t hear.
“No.” murmured Sanada back, with an exhausted smile, “I’ll get my chance this afternoon. Kirihara said he’d take my training duties, so I’ll crash for some time inside the training grounds.”
Tezuka’s eyebrows pulled together as he slipped his arm around Sanada. “Take care of yourself.” he whispered, squeezing Sanada’s side, softly.
Sanada just nodded, softly as they turned back to Inui, who was making slightly disturbing noises of excitement. “It’s a rare cactus from the otherlands.” explained the alchemist. “Ground up and mixed with zinc and sodium, which makes anyone who inhales it very lethargic” he jabbered, as he started to mix some foul substance together with the purple bubbling mess. Sanada tossed Tezuka an apprehensive look.
“It’s easily countered so it can’t affect you, beyond the effect of dust in your eyes.” said Inui, as the purple bubbling mess started to froth and turn slowly a neon blue. “You just have to drink this now and it’s effects will last for a week.” He handed Sanada and Tezuka a cup of the substance each, with a very wide smile.
Sanada pursed his lips together as he stared at the liquid doubtfully. “On three?” asked Tezuka, determined to not look at it for too long, in fear of losing his nerve.
“Three, two one.” they said together, as they swallowed the substance. It took all of Tezuka’s efforts to not gag on the liquid or even outwardly react, beyond his eyes watering and bile rising up his throat a little. Sanada was sputtering a little and clawing at his neck, but his eyes were impressively dry.
Inui just looked disappointed as Tezuka returned the cup to Inui and stood up with only a slight wobble for his troubles. “And we won’t be affected now?” asked Sanada, in a choked voice, as he too rose.
“No.” said Inui, with a nod. “You’re safe now.”
(X)
The only house left this time was the Kadowaki residence, since the thieves had taken both jewels at the same time. Seeing as they had broken their pattern, Tezuka saw it as a sign that they were finally getting pressurized by he and Sanada’s actions, in a way that they felt that they needed to change their routine. It was only a small crack in their mask and may have initially looked like a bad thing, but it was good news.
Still, it did mean that he and Sanada only had one night to catch the thieves and be able to fairly convict them.
Honestly, as they had gotten more and more details from Kikumaru about the slave trade, Tezuka hadn’t wanted to arrest the thieves. The slave trade nobles were alleged to have done some truly awful things and Inui was approximating that at least a third of the city’s servants and prostitutes were taken from the slave trade run by the nobles. It had almost made Tezuka sick, more ill than the awful broth that Inui had made he and Sanada drink.
But they had both committed offences, and while the offences of the nobles were great, the act of stealing was a still a crime and needed to be treated that way.
Kadowaki was not someone who Sanada had angered, but Sanada had himself said that it was probably better for the two of them to catch them from outside, since their fighting techniques would require more room. Besides, the outside air was cooling on Tezuka’s skin as he waited. The thieves would not attempt the chimney this time around, but they had definitely seemed confident in the air, which meant that they would most likely swing up from the windows.
Tezuka took one side of the roof, and a paling Sanada took the other side, ignoring Tezuka’s requests to just watch from the ground and climb up when he was needed. Tezuka was fairly certain that Sanada was fighting off quite a bit of anxiety as he looked down at the large fall he had to make, but he was hiding it admirably.
Tezuka smiled a little as he glanced back at Sanada’s back, before a sudden sound from his side disturbed him. He made sure he hid his head from line of sight if they looked directly up, but kept it also so he could see a little. There was just the slightest flash of blue hair, but that was enough for him.
Sanada had also turned around upon hearing the sound and carefully shuffled over from his side, without removing himself from the crouch he was in. Their swords were already drawn, but Tezuka swung the helmet down over his face this time, to shield his eyes from the dust.
As expected Yukimura was first to swing up onto the roof and looked only slightly surprised to see the knights, as he threw a knife at Tezuka’s face. Tezuka quickly deflected with his sword’s hilt, unwillingly to get injured so quickly. Sanada made to attack Yukimura, in one swift blow and Yukimura dodged away, elegantly. Yukimura was more the opponent that Sanada would be able to fight, so Tezuka let Sanada take the knife-thrower on.
Besides, he had enough to do with Shiraishi leaping up onto the roof as well, with the blond man’s shortsword ready. Tezuka instantly attacked him, refusing to defend like his usual style called for. He needed to disable Shiraishi fast so he could deal with Fuji. Speaking of Fuji, he couldn’t see the other man anywhere, and that put him on edge.
Stull, he couldn’t afford to take too much attention away from Shiraishi; the man was as fast as he was strong and combating him was not so easy, even with his textbook definition moves. “You move well.” said Shiraishi, admiringly, as Tezuka lunged and nicked Shiraishi’s arm, though not enough to cause him more than a little inconvenience. The scar on Shiraishi's face was well-bandaged and that made Tezuka think.
With a slight spin and a feint attack, he darted forward to slash at the bandages, merely cutting them away, instead of attempting to injure Shiraishi grievously. The bandages fell away to show a slave brand, as Tezuka had thought. He nodded, as he moved back to avoid Shiraishi's slightly more vicious sweeps. The other man’s face was torn with a mixture of fury and resignment.
“Where were you caught?” Tezuka asked, as he ducked and rolled across the roof, to get behind Shiraishi.
Shiraishi said nothing, as he used both hands to sweep at Tezuka’s feet. Tezuka stepped back quickly, and pinwheeled to avoid falling off the roof. Shiraishi looked quite triumphant as he stabbed forward, but Tezuka quickly jumped forward, and viciously snapped the flat of his sword against Shiraishi’s skull, as he kicked Shiraishi’s stomach.
Shiraishi crumpled with the force from both blows, and Tezuka immediately pulled the cuffs from his belt and cuffed Shiraishi’s wrists and legs. “Sorry.” he said, as he sprung up and elbowed Fuji who was approaching from behind him while also kicking the shortsword off the roof.
Fuji grinned as he danced out of the way with a spin and threw a large pinch of the dust at Tezuka. Tezuka trusted Inui and lunged forward, ignoring the dust. Fuji looked a little surprised as Tezuka ignored the dust in the air, and he backflipped away from Tezuka’s sword with a little unease.
“Argh!” he heard Sanada yell from the other side, and Tezuka’s eyes momentarily flicked over. Sanada’s knee had a knife in it, but he was still fighting with Yukimura, head-to-head. Tezuka frowned, and started to edge Fuji closer to the other battle, with slashes. Fuji tossed him an amused look, that spoke volumes about how he understood Tezuka’s plan, but was just playing along because he felt like it.
“Yukimura! Prenez Garde!” yelled Fuji, as he tossed some dust towards Sanada, who likewise, barely flinched. Yukimura, alerted by Fuji’s shout, scowled, as he pulled away from Tezuka’s sword who came flashing towards him.
“Kura! Allons-y!” he shouted, before noticing Shiraishi's state and looking horrified.
“Laissez-moi! Allez, pour nos soeurs!” called Shiraishi, and Yukimura grimly nodded, as he grabbed Fuji. Fuji threw the entire contents of his bag into the air, and even though Tezuka wasn’t affected by any other symptoms, the dust scratched at his lungs and he couldn’t see anything. He still fought against the silhouettes in the dust, but when he hit nothing, he waited for the dust to clear.
The thieves were gone. Sanada’s knee was severely bleeding and Shiraishi was still cuffed to the chimney. They’d caught one of them in the act, at least. He walked over to Sanada, and placed Sanada’s arm over his shoulder, pulling him up with a little difficulty. Sanada winced and shook his head. “No, leave me here for now, Tezuka. Get Shiraishi and take him back to the castle. Send someone else after me.”
Tezuka reluctantly nodded. It was a good plan, but he was reluctant to leave Sanada here to bleed out. He unclipped his cloak and handed it to Sanada. “I’ll pull out the knife and you’ve got to tie this around your knee immediately and apply pressure.” said Tezuka, as if Sanada didn’t already know battlefield medics.
Sanada just nodded, watching Tezuka’s hands close around the knife. With a nod, he pulled the knife out, frowning at the squelching sound of flesh and tendons crinkling. It was a serious wound that would take at least two months to heal, if there was no infection inside the wound. He squeezed Sanada’s hand, before getting up to get Shiraishi. The front of his tabard was covered in blood, but he still partially uncuffed Shiraishi.
Shiraishi didn’t protest at all as Tezuka grabbed him. “I can walk myself.” said Shiraishi, with a small smile. “You don’t have to leave Sir Sanada here. I’ll help you get him down.”
Tezuka just gave him a look. “You’re a prisoner of the King, I don’t think so.”
Shiraishi just smiled as he stood up with some difficulty, considering his feet were cuffed together. “I told you to wait three days and then I’d tell you everything. My compatriots are off to do their jobs, and afterward they’re done, I’ll tell you everything and admit to it in a court of justice. I have no reason to want to see Sir Sanada bleed to death.”
Sanada gritted his teeth and shook his head. But Tezuka glanced at Shiraishi’s honest eyes and nodded. He leant down to uncuff Shiraishi's feet, but left Shiraishi's hands bound. “Take his left side.” he said, as he supported Sanada’s right side. “Getting him down is going to be difficult.”
Shiraishi hummed, as he cautiously took Sanada’s arm and placed it over his shoulder. “Well, not really. Just leave him to me and be ready to steady us both on the ground.”
Sanada scowled at Tezuka with a clear look of distrust at Shiraishi, but Tezuka just nodded, and swung down the house’s walls, his fingers scrambling a little against the plaster, in his haste to settle himself on the ground. He watched with an eagle eye as Shiraishi said something to Sanada that made Sanada’s eyes widen in terror. To Tezuka’s horror, Shiraishi just jumped off the building without any sort of plan. However, Tezuka blinked a little as a large bit of cloth projected upwards from Shiraishi’s back and the duo wobbled their way to the ground, at a fairly high speed.
He immediately steadied Sanada, whose eyes were watering in a mixture of terror and pain, but whose expression was still stubbornly stoic. Shiraishi scowled. “I’m sorry, I forgot, the weight difference would give us a harsher landing. I hope that the pain was not too great, Sir Sanada?”
Sanada just shook his head as Shiraishi steadied his other side and they slowly limped back towards the castle, in silence.
They arrived at the gates as the sun started to rise and Sanada pulled Shiraishi away from his side, and pushed him into the middle of their trio. He was heavily leaning on Shiraishi's shoulder, but still bringing him in like a prisoner. The guards wordlessly let them in, staring in horror at Sanada’s bleeding leg and Shiraishi’s various cuts.
“The infirmary, now.” said Tezuka, pulling them away from the dungeons, where Saada was leading them. “I’ll be cuffing you again once we get there Shiraishi, but Oishi should treat your cuts after he’d dealt with Sanada.”
Shiraishi nodded, looking grateful as they slowly limped up the stairs. Luckily, the infirmary was only on the second floor, and not on the top of the castle, like most of the living quarters. Tezuka pushed open the door with his injured arm and winced a little, but gave a slightly relieved nod at seeing Oishi on duty.
“Tezuka? Sanada? What happened to all of you?” asked Oishi, looking horrified, as he went to drag Sanada to one of the closest beds and forced him there, to treat him. Tezuka pulled up a closeby chair, and cuffed Shiraishi's leg around the chair, so that the only way Shiraishi could break free, would be by breaking a bone or by breaking the chair.
“Speak. It’s the third day.” said Tezuka, coolly, as he took another chair and drew it up next to Shiraishi.
Shiraishi was quiet as he adjusted himself in the chair. “It’s past dawn. Just give me a few minutes. I need to make sure...” His face looked extremely worried and concerned, as he glanced out of the window, at the orange sky.
Tezuka tossed him a look, but up until then, Shiraishi had behaved, so he turned towards Sanada instead, as Oishi attacked the wound with leeches and green leaves that prevented infection. Sanada tossed Tezuka a weak smile and Tezuka smiled faintly, in return. It would be difficult to be on duty for two months without Sanada.
Then again, as his shoulder twinged, he was reminded that he was equally liable to be kept out of action. His shoulder was less serious than Sanada’s leg, but he would be out of action for at least a month. The prospect was quite depressing and made Tezuka grimace in apprehension.
“Are you ready?” he asked Shiraishi, whose eyes were slightly shut, with a wide smile on his face.
“Ah.” said Shiraishi, his face disturbed slightly. “It started when I was around ten, when and my parents fell into great poverty as their farm ceased to produce grain. They had no choice but to sell everything, including me and my younger sister. We assumed we would be working as servants for the Lord at the mansion. We never imagined that we’d be sold to slavers by our Lord. They branded us and beat us, until we became obedient and pliant. Then they sold us both as prostitutes.” he said, evenly, as if the memories of the actions couldn’t even touch him anymore.
“At the brothel, there were several people with the same stories. Seiichi and Syuusuke were two of those people and they wanted nothing more than to be free and get revenge on those who had trapped us there. I agreed with them, and we had the means to do it.” Shiraishi continued to explain, and this time Sanada and Oishi had fallen silent to listen, with slightly disgusted looks on their faces at his story. “It’s possible to stop being a prostitute if you pay your debt and interest, and pretty boys are very popular.” he said, with a dry look.
“We paid the debt off a year ago, because of our popularity and gifts from generous patrons. but all of our sisters were nowhere near their goal. The longer you stay in the brothel, the higher your debt gets. We knew that we had to get them out quickly, so we used our flower growing talents to set up a nursery close to the city. but it didn’t bring as much money as we had hoped.” Shiraishi continued to narrate, looking miserable.
Tezuka didn’t say anything, just continued to listen. Shiraishi sighed, as he tilted his head back against the head of the chair. “When you work as a flower seller, you hear things, you know? Things about Lords and slave trades and who’s involved. It only took a few loose lips for us to gain a standing in the underworld and discover exactly who’d created the slave industry in this country. And guess what, all of them were fucking our sisters.”
Shiraishi snorted, wryly, as his eyes fell to his laps. “Seiichi wanted to kill them and take their jewels to pay our sister’s debt. I told him that we couldn’t. Syuusuke and I wanted to, really. I would do it if I could get away with it. but I knew that the King would notice murders more easily than robberies. We would never have been able to raise enough money to get our sisters free. So we just robbed them dry.”
“Why give us any clues at all?” asked Sanada, from the bed. “The flowers, you talking to Tezuka?”
“Because we could.” said Shiraishi, coolly, before he laughed lightly. “No, that’s more Syuusuke’s answer. I did it because I wanted to be caught after we’d done it and lilies seemed elegant enough as a calling card. In the end, a crime’s a crime and we need to pay for what we did. Seiichi will not agree, but this is the truth. I also wanted the nobles to pay for their sins, which is why I tipped off Tezuka.”
Tezuka nodded, as he folded his arms into his chest. “Thank you for your time, Shiraishi. Will you be willing to repeat this at the trial?”
Shiraishi nodded. “I’ll do it.” he said, with a nod. “Our sisters will be free, by now. Promise me that they’ll be able to live without repercussions? They can just live as Yumiko, Minoru and Yukari now? They didn’t know anything about the crimes, except what they guessed.”
Sanada nodded, from his place in the bed, where Tezuka hesitated. “I can promise that they will not be arrested for this, Shiraishi.” he said, placing his hand to his heart, in an oath.
“And where are Fuji and Yukimura, now?” asked Tezuka, moving his shoulder with a little discomfort. Shiraishi would know where they were.
“They’ll be at the nursery. Packing their things. They plan to flee before you get there, so I’d hurry and send someone to catch them.” said Shiraishi, as he leant back against the chair, with a goofy smile on his smile. “Ahh, Yukari gets to live. I could not be happier.”
Tezuka could not truly call them criminals, in the end. He would have done the same had it been his loved ones. “Ah.” he said, with a tired sigh. Perhaps Sanada was right, perhaps they were getting too old for this.
OWARI
Author: arysthaeniru
Recipient: sagely_sea
Pairing/Characters: Sanada/Tezuka, Tezuka/Shiraishi, Atobe, Yukimura, Fuji, Echizen
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, mentions of prostitution, more plot than romance
Disclaimer: I don't own Prince of Tennis. If I did, Echizen would have more family problems >>;
Summary: Tezuka and Sanada are knights of the country and King. While robbery isn't their usual sort of job, this is no ordinary robbery.
Notes: Thank so much to my beta who told me when I was a fool and to all the people who helped me with characterization of people I’ve never attempted before.
Tezuka adjusted the scarf around his neck to hide the slight bruises on this neck and was silently grateful of how cold it was in early morning. He supposed it did count as morning at 2am, even if he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sleep a little.
It was harder, however, to hide the slight bruises along his wrist from where they’d accidentally collided with the headboard of the bed. He hoped that Sanada wouldn’t notice, but his fellow knight wasn’t stupid.
As he rounded on the training yard, on his way up to their shared room, he saw Sanada quickly slicing up a doll of straw, with more pent-up fury than he usually had for simple training. Tezuka waited until Sanada lowered his broadsword to enter the training ring, with his own sword. “Spar?” he asked, to the panting Sanada, who seemed thoroughly warmed-up.
Sanada glanced up at Tezuka’s layers of clothing and just raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t warmed up, I’ll smash you.”
Tezuka just picked up a practise sword, in response. He wanted to spar, and Sanada wasn’t the sort to turn down a victory, especially not when he was so angry at something. Sanada just shook his head as he picked up his wooden sword and settled into stance, as they circled each other.
“What did you find?” asked Tezuka, as he moved his sword cautiously in circles, to make it a little more difficult for Sanada to predict his next move.
“I almost caught them.” said Sanada, with gritted teeth as he lunged forward towards Tezuka’s chest. “I was outside the Taki mansion since it’s got the best vantage point of the area and I saw two suspicious people entering the Atobe mansion and I ran over there. But I missed them and by the time I got there, they were already escaping over the roofs. By the time I would have gotten there, they would have escaped.”
Tezuka frowned as he easily deflected the shot and moved forward to try and get to Sanada’s head. “Did you catch a glimpse of them?”
“Nothing concrete.” Sanada backed away quickly, making Tezuka’s shot miss and tapped Tezuka’s arm with a speed that Tezuka couldn’t achieve without warming up. “Only enough to know that one of them had blue-black hair.”
“Yukimura.” Tezuka remembered, as they reset their positions. “From the nursery also. Did he not have that shade of hair?”
“Indeed. Nevertheless, this means that the Atobes got robbed, though I have yet to confirm with Atobe himself, since I am sure he is asleep now.” Sanada said, as he attacked from the get-go and Tezuka easily parried his lunges.
Sanada had come straight to the training grounds after his failed attempt, then. Tezuka doubted that the other planned on sleeping at all and he frowned as he twisted his wrist to throw Sanada off-balance and tap Sanada lightly on the chest. “Will you be functional today, Sanada?”
“Well enough.” sad Sanada, as he righted his stance and looked down the shaft of his sword. “What did you find?”
“I tried to talk to the girls. I was denied, since I said that I didn’t wish to sleep with them. I was told to come back this morning, after the majority of their paying customers are gone.” said Tezuka, as he lunged forward, into a lilting attack. He rarely attacked in his fights, but Sanada wasn’t going to move, he knew.
Sanada blocked the shots. “We’ll go together then. And Shiraishi?”
“Told me I should investigate the nobles and not the brothel. He also said something about giving him time before he can give us anything substantial. He practically admitted to being a thief, but said that we wouldn’t have evidence to convict him in a jury-court.” Knights didn’t have a good reputation among the people, there was no way for the knights to win without clear eyewitness proof. “He says there’s something in the dirty history of the nobles.” Tezuka dodged Sanada’s quick-fire attack, and swept for Sanada’s feet.
Sanada stepped back instantly, which Tezuka hadn’t been expecting and he quickly hit the side of Tezuka’s neck. The scarf fell away from it’s careful arrangement and Tezuka staggered back a few feet, quickly tucking the scarf back into place. But it was just a little too late, Sanada’s face had frozen in slight shock.
Tezuka met Sanada’s gaze coolly as he settled back into stance. “Still, we shouldn’t give up investigation on the brothel, since I don’t fully trust his words. Especially since he seems to have some sort of trauma surrounding slavers-”
“So you don’t trust his words, but you trust him in other ways?” interrupted Sanada, looking a mixture between affronted and angry. He wasn’t in ready stance at all, his sword dropped at his side.
“He fulfilled his end of the bargain. I had to fulfill mine.” said Tezuka, pursing his lips, as he lowered his sword.
Sanada’s jaw tightened and he looked somewhat furious and simultaneously sad. His sword trembled in his grip and he took almost shaky breaths, as the cold night breezes whipped past them both. Tezuka just watched, with a slight frown. He both admired Sanada’s ability to let those emotions free and wondered at the folly of letting everybody know the deepest parts of Sanada’s passion.
“You obviously have something you want to say, Sanada, so say it.” Tezuka said, simply, as he placed the practise sword aside.
Sanada just shook his head, his teeth gritted. “You’re more than that, Tezuka. You didn’t need to...you know...you could have exchanged something else.”
Tezuka didn’t reply; he knew it was more than that, and he just wanted to hear Sanada say what he’d been wanting to hear for a long time.
“Just...why would you even make an exchange like that?” asked Sanada, his anger spilling out. “Doesn’t it hurt your pride?”
That hadn’t been what Tezuka had been wanting to hear. Tezuka couldn’t stop the slight twitch of his eyebrows at the absence of words. “Because duty overrides pride.” Sanada knew that well, even if he wasn’t always good at upholding it. “We should go investigate the girls and then we should do some serious research into the background of the nobles, as well. Shiraishi spoke like there was only a limited amount of vict-”
“Did you like it? Or did you like him?” asked Sanada, as he met Tezuka’s gaze, still looking supremely confused.
Tezuka’s eyes shut for a slight moment. Sanada knew him so well, but still managed to summarily miss the point. He wondered how that happened. “You’re letting your guard down, Sanada, we have work to do.” he said, avoiding the question.
“I don’t care.” Sanada uttered. “I’ve been training and fighting for this kingdom since I was fifteen and I have been training single-mindedly since I was six. You were training since you were five. We’ve given our lives and souls to the kingdom, we’re allowed an hour to ourselves, Tezuka.”
Tezuka’s jaw tightened. He knew that Sanada was right. It was two in the morning, the King was hardly going to begrudge them this, but he didn’t want to talk about it. Not when Sanada was still clueless. “Does it matter so much to you?”
Sanada tilted his head back, until it was cloaked in shadow and sighed. “Yes. Yes, it matters to me, Tezuka.”
“...I could have liked him. But I did not. And I could have liked it, had it not been something I was only doing for duty.” said Tezuka, simply, as he circled his fingers around his bruised wrist. “Is that enough for you?”
He couldn’t see Sanada’s face, but his fists had stilled and he looked the picture of serenity. It probably wasn’t an accurate representation of Sanada’s internal feelings. Tezuka just sighed and started to walk away from the training grounds. Maybe a few hours of sleep before he had to go back and talk to the girls would do him some good. Perhaps his dreams would tell him something about the culprit. The subconscious was supposedly better at this sort of thing than real people.
“Wait, Tezuka.” came Sanada’s voice from behind him and Tezuka turned around. Sanada’s brow was soaked with sweat and he looked torn. “You...” He trailed off and screwed up his eyes, with a growl of frustration. “Just forget it. Sorry. Sleep well.”
Tezuka pursed his lips and didn’t turn to leave. Instead, he stepped forward and gripped Sanada’s shoulders. They had been so close to something. “Just say what you want to say. It isn’t like you to dart around what you want to say.”
Sanada just shook his head, and his cheeks were flushed. “It’s nothing important. Forget it, Tezuka.”
“Then I’ll speak.” Tezuka said, his eyebrows pulling down into a deep frown. “I have waited four years. I have danced around the issue for four years, and I have patience, but not for this extent. You were going to ask me a question and the answer would have been yes.”
Sanada’s eyebrows pulled down, as he looked down at Tezuka. “Would have been? Is the answer still yes?”
Tezuka just nodded and tilted his head up a little, as Sanada hesitantly leant forward to kiss him. It was softer than Tezuka had been expecting, but not unwelcome. Sanada’s eyes were shut as they both pulled away to catch their breath and Tezuka thought that this was probably the closest he could get to happiness in a society like theirs and with a thief running through the city of the King. Considering how Sanada’s arms tightened around his waist and he pulled Tezuka into another, more passionate kiss, Sanada felt the same.
Tezuka’s hands slipped under Sanada’s loose training-shirt, to run his hands along Sanada’s sides and up Sanada’s back, while still kissing, which led to the unfortunate consequence of Sanada’s teeth almost skewering Tezuka’s tongue. Tezuka just glared. “Don’t get careless.”
(X)
It wasn’t often that Tezuka went entirely without sleep, which was why he felt like like he was going to fall asleep right there in front of the girls. The three of them looked just as tired as Tezuka felt, however, which is why the five of them were perched in the comfortable chaises in the waiting room of the brothel.
Still, even if Tezuka was fairly tired, he was still able to think. The girl in the middle, Jasmine, looked like a female version of the nursery worker, Yukimura, with wavy black hair and a pretty smile on her tired face. The other two, with long brown hair, looked less familiar, but the fact that Jasmine looked so similar to Yukimura put him on edge.
They were dressed like the typical brothel workers, as he had seen the swathes of silk and transparent cloth, but Sanada had kindly asked them to cover up since it was cold, and they had happily covered themselves in blankets. But not before Tezuka had noticed the fact that all of them wore beautiful jewels, that looked just a little too elaborate.
“So what did you knights want to talk about, anyway? Manager seemed pretty convinced that you two weren’t here for sex.” said Sakura, who looked the eldest of the group.
“Are you related to a nursery worker at 201 nursery, Yukimura?” asked Tezuka first, to Jasmine. She didn’t react, just tilted her head to the side as she thought and shook her head. “Nope, sorry. Why?”
“Idle wonderings.” said Tezuka, firmly. Perhaps lying ran in the family. “Have any of you heard of the Lily Thieves?”
“Kotoha was talking about it, I guess?” asked Sakura, with a slight shrug, as she scratched her neck.
“Some of my customers have been complaining about it, but I don’t really pay attention.” said the youngest, Rose, with a slight flush to her face, as she tucked her hair behind her ear. “I have other things to worry about.”
“You have to remember that we live in the brothel all the time. When we’re not working, we’re sleeping. It’s difficult to keep up on gossip or news around the city unless the boss says something.” said Jasmine, completely evenly, without any of the guilty tells of her comrades. If anything, that made her more suspicious to Tezuka.
“Would you be able to tell us who your main recurring customers are among the nobles of our City?” asked Sanada, his voice a little harsh.
“Hmmmm...I guess, but I mean, why would you care?” asked Sakura, her eyes flickering up to meet Sanada’s with a slightly amused look.
“We’re conducting an investigation, all alleys of questioning must be undertaken. Now are you going to obstruct justice or follow my orders?” asked Sanada, hotly. Tezuka just leant back and watched the girls write down names, with slight looks of thought. They seemed to have difficulty remembering the names, or perhaps, with just writing. He wondered whether they’d ever had an education as extensive as he and Sanada had had.
“We go to Atobe after this, then after the nobles?” Tezuka whispered to Sanada’s ear.
Sanada nodded, as Jasmine finished her list first and the other two quickly wrapped up, handing the lists to the knights. Tezuka noted as he picked up Rose and Sakura’s lists, that the people who had been targeted so far, were on both of their lists. A quick peek over Sanada’s shoulder at Jasmine’s list showed the same result.
“There’s a common denominator.” muttered Sanada, and Tezuka just nodded grimly. “Thank you for your time, ladies.” said Tezuka, as he got up and bowed. “If you would wait for a little while, we need to discuss some things and see if we have any follow-up questions.”
“Fine.” said Sakura. “But make it snappy, we’re all dead and we need our beauty sleep.”
Tezuka pulled Sanada outside quickly, with a nod to them. “The common denominators we’ve already seen are all here. Atobe, Oshitari, Katsuo, Sengoku, Suwabe, Sasabe.” he said, tapping to the names on the sheet. “But there are six other names on this list that are the same. There are only three more thefts set to happen.” said Tezuka, with a deep frown. “Which means there’s something more to it.”
“The nobles’ dirty history that Shiraishi was talking about?” asked Sanada, as he glanced through the list and nodded. “Once we confirm with Atobe about his house missing their prize jewel, we can head to Inui and ask him about the nobles on the list. But did you notice something about the jewels they were wearing? They’re far too expensive and elaborate for something that a lower class brothel could afford to provide its workers.”
Tezuka nodded at the confirmation of his previous thoughts. “I agree, those gems do not seem normal. but I have heard of nobles giving their favoured girls jewels.”
“When jewels are being stolen across the city, we can’t rule this out. I haven’t actually seen any of the jewels before they were stolen.” said Sanada, with a nod. “But. The headpiece that Rose was wearing looked a lot like other pieces inside Suwabe’s collection.”
Tezuka nodded, with a slight frown. “Then we take the jewels and ask the nobles about whether they’re the right ones?”
Sanada shook his head. “You said it yourself, we need more proof. Let’s arrest the thieves first. Then we’ll come back here with evidence about their motives and take the jewels.”
Tezuka nodded. “You’re free to go.” he said, looking back at the girls. “We may return for further questions.”
The girls just nodded and dispersed into the clouds of curtains that concealed the other exits out of the large room. Tezuka sighed. He was spending far too much in these places.
(X)
Conveniently, Atobe had gone to visit Inui in the infirmary. Tezuka wasn’t quite sure why; as far as he knew, Atobe and Inui didn’t really interact beyond anything arbitrary. Still, Atobe was at Inui’s bedsides, seemingly in deep conversation until Sanada and Tezuka arrived,
“Tezuka, you look dreadful.” said Atobe, with a frown as he walked forward to peer at Tezuka’s face. “Have you been sleeping at all?”
Sanada rolled his eyes, as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Obviously not, since these robberies occur at night.”
Atobe just sneered. “About that, what happened to preventing my father from getting robbed? He’s most displeased about the missing diamonds.” He sniffed and looked expectantly at Sanada.
“We missed them. Our hunch wasn’t enough.” said Tezuka, quietly, to avoid the angry yell that was sure to come from Sanada. Sanada and Atobe always managed to anger each other in some way, especially when it involved their families. Still, it was confirmed that the robbers had managed to get the diamonds from Atobe’s home.
“That’s rare.” said Inui, from his bed. “Generally Tezuka’s instinct is 95% accurate.”
“My instinct has told me many things but we have no real proof as of yet.” Tezuka said, ignoring Atobe and Sanada’s glaring contest. He pulled out one of the sheets with the circled names. “What news do you know about the people who’ve already been robbed, that link with the names on this list?” It might have been the only time that Tezuka was willingly going to ask for Inui’s gossip column and he wasn’t missing the look of sheer wonder on Inui’s face.
He almost grimaced as Inui started babbling. He nodded helplessly, trying to catch keywords about the sheer amount of gossip that Inui knew, but stopped him as he heard the word slavery. “Wait, go back. Slavery, tell me about slavery.”
Sanada frowned and Atobe paled. “Those rumours are unsubstantiated, Inui!” he snapped.
“What rumours?” asked Sanada, looking quite concerned. Tezuka pursed his lips and turned to Inui. Inui looked a little concerned of Atobe’s glare, but continued. “There’s rumours about a large group of nobles funding a group of slavers in order for cheaper entertainment around the City. Pretty boys and pretty girls are taken from their parents who are too deep into debt and sold to the slavers. They’re groomed into being anything. Servants, prostitutes, adopted children...”
“My father did not fund something like that.” hissed Atobe. “My father is a good man. He’s one of the more generous landlords in this country about rents and letting people use his land.”
That was fairly true, but Atobe’s father was also the richest man in the country and it wasn’t inheritance money. Atobe’s parents were old money, but they had become very, very rich during Atobe’s father’s time as a Lord. Money like that wasn’t made from altruism.Luckily, Tezuka didn’t have to voice those thoughts, since Sanada did it for him.
“How well do you know him, really, Atobe? He’s always working and I’ve rarely heard of you two interacting beyond the large dinner parties he throws.” said Sanada, seriously. “He’s also been cheating with your mother with several prostitutes.”
The other knight snorted bitterly. “And of course, because he can cheat on an arranged marriage made for the sole purpose of preventing civil war, you think he can put innocent children into a slave ring? Because those are two things you can equate together.”
Tezuka’s jaw tightened. “It’s one of the only leads I have, Atobe. I hope I’m wrong.” he said, tightly. “Who were the other alleged people involved in the ring, Inui?”
“Kadowaki, Saotome and Kiraku.” said Inui, as he glanced at the list. Three people exactly, didn’t that match up?
“You’re seriously believing this?” asked Atobe, with a dry look. “Slavery is banned in this country. Our lords may do some questionable things, but they’ll not break the King’s law like this.”
Sanada threw Tezuka a sharp look and Tezuka sighed. “That’s not true, Atobe. There are slavers from other countries using our country as feed-base. Technically, since they’re not of our country’s, they can operate here.” Tezuka said, sharply. He hadn’t wanted to mention this, they’d kept it covered from even the King himself, in order to keep the two Echizens safe. “They shouldn’t have been able to get into the country at all, however, especially not with people. But I understand how they would be able to do it now.”
Inui bolted up, with horror. “There are slavers operating this country?”
Sanada nodded, looking vaguely guilty. “They can operate. They shouldn’t be, though. Tezuka and I put enough slavers into the ground a year ago, that they shouldn’t have been to recover and even if they do, they’ll think twice before entering.” he said, seriously. “Actually, one of those people I killed was Saotome’s son, but I always thought that he was a rogue outlet, not part of the family business.”
“Why are you all accepting this so easily?” demanded Atobe. “Get some proof before you accuse my father of anything!”
Sanada looked like he was about to say something and Tezuka stepped on his foot discreetly. He didn’t want to expose Echizen to Inui or Atobe. “We will. But in return, I need something from you.” Tezuka said, quietly. “A description of all of the jewels stolen. We have a time-limit, or I’d do it myself.”
Atobe nodded. “Fine, I can do that. Go investigate the slavery. But you’ll see my father’s innocent.”
Tezuka just nodded and grabbed Sanada’s hand to pull him out of there, with a short nod to Inui. The moment that they were out of earshot, Sanada turned to him. ‘You don’t think that Atobe’s father is innocent, do you?”
“Shiraishi told me there was something in the background of the nobles. But we have to question it, he could be trying to deflect attention or even frame them for the slavery ring problems.” reasoned Tezuka, squeezing Sanada’s hand and letting it go. “Which is why we’re going to see Echizen. He keeps an eye of the slave rings, he’ll know about which nobles are involved with helping them in and out.”
“Why hasn’t he done anything about it, then?” asked Sanada, looking incredulous.
Tezuka just tossed Sanada a grim look. “He’s a child, Sanada. He’s still scared of the slavers.”
(X)
“I’m not scared of them.” snapped Echizen, as he adjusted the hood over his face. “I just don’t want to draw attention to myself. Stick one of those bastards in front of me with no repercussions and I’d stab him so hard that I’ll cause an earthquake.” he said, cockily.
Sanada snorted softly. “But do you know the details of the slavery ring?”
“I might.” Echizen said, his golden eyes settling on Sanada, looking expectant. Tezuka had to stop himself from smiling a little as Sanada scowled and forked out some money.
“Alright, so, there are a bunch of grunt work around it, but it’s a money-making business. The slaves are taken from this country, all groomed up and prettied up in other places and then returned back here. Thing is, you’ll always be able to know that they’re a slave, because they have markings.” Echizen looked around the shady tavern for a bit, before he pulled up his sleeve to show the brand, forever burned into his skin. He tucked his hand away quickly.
“The brands are different for the different slaves to throw off anyone investigating, but in reality, they’re all the same slave ring that work inside our country.” Echizen, with a frown. “The people in charge are slippery though, they know how to cover their tracks. Nobody’s really sure. Only rumours around here.”
Tezuka’s jaw tightened. “But you know more.” he said, reading the glint in Echizen’s eyes.
“There’s a group of nobles in charge.” said Echizen. “They’re the ones making sure that the border smuggling is easily done. The people in top switch out a lot, though.”
Tezuka slid forward their list. “So these names mean...”
“Oshitari senior and Suwabe senior are definitely involved.” said Echizen, as he glanced down at the circled names. “Atobe senior hasn’t been sighted, but he’s there. Sasabe’s been sighted at the border when he’s supposed to be elsewhere and Katsuo senior’s almost certainly involved since his men are inside the area. Sengoku junior’s not been seen, that’s just a rumour. Mmm, Kadowaki senior and Saotome for sure, Nanako has Saotome’s family animal on her wrist. Kiraku senior...he’s from a foreign country and his family’s circumstances of getting into the country were shady. The others are pretty clear, though.”
Sanada’s eyes widened marginally and Tezuka remembered that most of the times he’d used Echizen’s help, he hadn’t brought Sanada along. Still, Sanada recovered quickly enough. “How are you sure of Atobe senior’s involvement?”
Echizen just rolled his eyes. “I thought you were a rich guy, Sanada. You’re supposed to know family crests.” He held out his wrist again, nevertheless and there, on his arm, was a lion. The lion that was prominently featured in the Atobe family seal.
Sanada just shut his eyes. “This was supposed to be a clear-cut robbery case. And now slavery is involved.” Echizen’s eyes narrowed in accusation at Tezuka, upon Sanada’s words. Tezuka ignored Echizen’s look, in favour of explaining everything.
“Shiraishi was a former slave; he too covered his left arm with anything he could and spoke with revulsion of slavery. I’m willing to assume that Yukimura and their third accomplice were also slaves.” Tezuka reasoned. “I also believe the girls we met in the brothel were former slaves, since the robberies seem based around who was sleeping with them. Which means they all hold grudges against the nobles that got them stuck in the slavery business.”
Echizen looked at Tezuka. “It’s been two days since we last saw each other. You got all of that?” he asked, looking quite incredulous and a lot less scared.
“Tezuka’s the best knight in the country.” defended Sanada, with a frown.
Tezuka frowned. “I have no evidence. I have neither seen the brand on Shiraishi’s arm, nor confirmed if the girls are really the reason around the brothels. Neither do we have eyewitness evidence of their robbery of the jewels. I also do not know for sure where the jewels are. I do not even know for sure if Shiraishi, Yukimura and their unknown accomplice are committing the robberies. All I have are assumptions. And now I have more assumptions.” He bowed his head and got up from the table. “Thank you for your time, Echizen.”
Echizen’s eyes stared back at them and reached into the complimentary fruit bowl that the tavern always place, to throw an apple at Tezuka. “Fuji apples. They’re good for looking like you’re going to fall onto the floor and sleep for a century.” he said, with a shrug, as he turned back to his business.
Again, Echizen hated fruit. Why would he be suggesting that Tezuka eat the fruit? It didn’t feel so obvious this time, but Sanada took the apple from Tezuka’s hand, to take a bite out of. “He meant something with the apple, he hates fruits.” said Tezuka, frowning at Sanada eating the evidence.
“The third person’s called Fuji.” said Sanada easily, as they left the tavern. “That was the last thing you mentioned to him.”
Tezuka just twitched at that obvious revelation, and pulled the apple out of Sanada’s hand to take a large bite. Sanada just snorted, and pulled it back for another bite. Evidently, Tezuka was more tired than he felt.
(X)
It was midnight and reaching the cold that Tezuka was sort of grateful for. It made it easier to hide the bites and bruises that still hadn’t managed to fade over the course of the day. He felt utterly exhausted but he was still crouched outside the Kiraku and Saotome estates, watching alertly as the last light of the two houses shut off.
Sanada tapped his shoulder, to get up and jump the gates to enter the sparse gardens on the small estates. “Couldn’t we just sneak inside and watch from there?”
“No, we’d disturb the servants and the nobles if we gave chase to them from inside the house. Besides, you’ve arrested Saotome’s son and almost stabbed Kiraku for their drunk-and-disorderly actions, I doubt they’d be partial to you coming into their homes.” Tezuka pointed out as he gripped the sides of the plaster and brick houses.
Sanada just looked apprehensive as he looked up at the house and Tezuka frowned, as he started to ascend up, using his upper body strength. He didn’t have nearly as much strength as Sanada; if anyone had needed to be worried it was him. “Hurry up.” he whispered. They could escape the houses any time now. Of course, there was the risk that they were aiming for Kadowaki’s house today, but Tezuka doubted it.
“I...ah...” Sanada looked really quite hesitant as he gripped the wall and pulled himself up using the same route that Tezuka was using, his fingers digging into the plaster with more strength, causing slight pieces of plaster to fall and Sanada’s face to blanch. His eyes shut as he went up and Tezuka frowned. “Eyes open, otherwise you’ll fall.”
There was an almost inaudible grunt from the pale-faced Sanada, as he kept climbing, with eyes wide open. Tezuka reached the top quickly, and gave Sanada a hand up. As soon as Sanada set foot on the roof, his face only grew paler, as he concertedly avoided looking down. Tezuka pursed his lips. “You’re afraid of heights.” he said, quite clearly.
It was rather amusing that the nicknamed Emperor of Death on the battlefields, who’d once let himself in the path of a fleet of stampeding horses, was afraid of heights.
“I’ve never needed to use heights before. You took the crumbly bridge route when we were in Samezuka, because you were lighter.” protested Sanada, as he looked away from the edge. “Forget it, I’ll cope.”
Tezuka pursed his lips, but reached forward to squeeze Sanada’s hand softly, in reassurance. “Perhaps you should watch from the ground, they may appear from th-”
His speech was interrupted, by the sound of soft coughing coming from the chimney. Both of them drew their swords as the brunet, Fuji, popped out of the chimney, covered in dust and blinked at them. “Hi.” he said, before popping straight back down the chimney. Tezuka immediately bolted up to the chimney to try and catch him, but he was sprayed with hot water.
Instantly, he cringed back, using his left arm as protection, which managed to protect the majority of his face, but incapacitated his sword hand, as he cringed and fell down at the sharp stings of pain burning through his clothes. It had been a bad idea to neglect his armour in favour of being lightweight.
Fuji pushed up and out of the chimney, leaping over Tezuka, and Sanada immediately gave chase to the brunet. Tezuka staggered back up, transferring his sword to his right hand, as he waited for the other two. He wasn’t the best in his right hand, but he was decent enough to defend against them.
Yukimura popped out of the chimney with three throwing knives in Tezuka’s direction. Tezuka dodged all three and lunged forward to try and catch the other, but Yukimura flipped out of the way, evidently pushed by Shiraishi who came straight after Yukimura and deflected Tezuka’s sword, with his shortsword.
Yukimura immediately threw a few more knives at Tezuka and in order to dodge them, he was forced to unlock his grip with Shiraishi’s sword. Ignoring the pain, he switched the sword to his left hand, to fight off Shiraishi with more ease.
Shiraishi’s movements were textbook perfection, with next to no creativity in them, which made it easy enough to block the other’s movements. Still, it was supremely impressive for a former slave who’d probably taught himself how to sword-fight. Tezuka would have been happy to engage Shiraishi in a straight-forward battle and he probably would have won, had it not been for the fact that Yukimura’s knife-supply seemed to be endless and that Yukimura was everywhere at once, which made it difficult for Tezuka to do anything but defend from every angle.
A knife grazed his left arm, cutting it shallowly, at the same time he caught Shiraishi's face with his sword, but at the slight lowering of his defence block, Yukimura grabbed Shiraishi and they started hurtling across the roof at a speed that Tezuka hadn’t been expecting. Tezuka followed them instantly, using his own considerable speed to follow them both. The two thieves jumped between buildings with grace and Tezuka had to use all of the strength in his lower thighs to propel himself across the rather significant gaps between the houses in the area.
He could see Sanada and Fuji in the distance, Sanada with his sword trying to dodge something that Tezuka couldn’t actually see from this distance. He knew that once the two thieves caught up with Fuji, they would probably disappear, which meant he had to run faster. He ignored the pain in his left arm and the burning in his legs as he pushed himself to the limit to attempt to grip the edge of Yukimura’s cape.
Yukimura, noticing Tezuka’s efforts, somehow managed to shed the cape without slowing his pace, which forced Tezuka to dodge out of the way of the flying fabric that would block his way. his glasses were starting to fog from his internal heat and the cold outer world, but Tezuka refused to let it stop him, as they sped closer to Sanada. Sanada seemed to be dodging puffs of coloured dust, which didn’t make any sense, what was in the dust to make Sanada so scared of them?
“Fuji, scindons-nous!” yelled Yukimura, as they drew closer and Tezuka frowned deeply, as Fuji smiled beatifically and a large plume of yellow smoke covered Tezuka’s eyesight. His eyes were watering and he felt like his hand and legs were no longer part of him, all filled with numbness and sleepiness. He fell to his knees and he attempted to shield himself from the yellow dust, as best as possible, trying to breathe as little as he could get away with.
It felt like an eternity before he could open his eyes and see anything except yellow and feel anything except dust against his lungs. As he looked around, he saw Sanada collapsed on the roof and the thieves to be nowhere in sight. He hurried over to Sanada. When Tezuka placed a hand on Sanada’s shoulder, the other man rolled over, looking utterly drained.
“They beat us.” said Sanada, looking furious. “In a fair fight.”
Tezuka frowned, as something occurred to him as he reviewed that beatific smile. “Fuji was the person I bumped into in that tavern on the first day of investigation...before I lost the flowers. He must have pick-pocketed me.”
Sanada growled angrily and thumped his head back against the roof of the house, his face paler than ever. “They’re arrogant for a reason, Tezuka. Fuji knew I was scared of heights, he already knew and he chose to throw the dust at me when we were in the areas that I was most likely to be irrationally worried about falling.”
“Arrogance is never justified.” said Tezuka, coolly, as he picked up a bit of the yellow dust on the rooftops and collected it in his handkerchief. “We’ll catch them tomorrow because we’ll be ready for them.”
(X)
In the morning, when Tezuka’s arm was firmly bandaged by a worried Oishi and he had caught two precarious hours of rest, Tezuka sat in the laboratory next to an Inui who was already back to business, albeit with bandages everywhere. The yellow dust had been something that Inui hadn’t been able to identify on sight, which was why Inui was pottering around looking at old ancient books and staring at large bubbling pots of menacing substances. Even after Tezuka had described the effects on his vision and his movement, there was no real way to tell what it was instantly.
It meant quite bit of a wait with Inui’s babbling about all of the gossip he’d ever known, but it was a little rest for Tezuka, whose arm was starting to throb again. Just as Tezuka started to feel sleep take him, lulled by Inui’s mostly monotonous voice, his sleep was disturbed by the sound of arguing from the corridor. They sounded like Sanada and Atobe and Tezuka forced himself to look more awake than he felt.
“So your proof of my father being involved is from a source whom you can’t talk about, who has a slave brand of a lion? That’s your proof that my father’s involved?” Atobe demanded as they strolled into the lab, both looking distinctly furious, though Sanada looked more tired than anything.
“Everybody is convinced that he is involved. He just hasn’t been sighted, because your father knows how to cover his tracks.” said Sanada, looking wearily angry.
Tezuka sighed. “It’s true.” he said, simply.
Atobe looked a mixture between desperate and furious at Tezuka’s words, before he sighed and just looked resigned. “Fine. Let’s say he’s involved. What do you want me to do about it, ahn?”
“Get a warrant of arrest for him and the other nobles involved in the slavery ring.” said Tezuka, calmly. “Your requests for arrest are always completed with more haste by Kabaji. The evidence to provide a jury case are coming from our source and I’ve asked Kikumaru to go collect the eyewitnesses from the source.”
Atobe’s jaw tightened as his cold blue eyes scanned Tezuka for any signs of deceptions, before he sniffed. “Fine. But you owe me. For this and for the jewel descriptions.” he said, as he glared at Sanada. “You too, Sanada.”
Sanada nodded, though he looked quite mutinous about this favour, while Tezuka nodded easily. Atobe was fair about his requests, even if at times, they could be a little extravagant.
Atobe left the room and Sanada took a seat next to Tezuka, with a slightly amused look about how deeply Inui had been involved in his work. The alchemist/librarian hadn’t even commented about the situation once. “I have the jewel descriptions. He even got sketches of the jewels for some of them, by asking Ohtori.” he said, passing Tezuka the sheets of the neat writing and description.
“They look very similar to the jewels we saw on the three girls.” said Sanada, grimly, as Tezuka scanned over them. “It might be in our best interests to both collect the jewels from the girls and go to the Nursery to arrest the thieves now, in daylight.”
Tezuka shook his head. “We haven’t got enough proof.”
“No proof? They stole the jewels from Kiraku’s house and Saotome’s house yesterday, and we chased them across the rooftops. You have a wound from them and we have that dust from them.” Sanada pointed out, looking quite unimpressed.
“Not enough.” said Tezuka, again. “You remember when Kite almost got tried as a witch by the crowd for being able to move too fast? It was clearly explained by many of our training guards that Kite hadn’t been using witchcraft, but they still wanted to kill him. The hatred for knights is high among the common people. The only way we can win this if we catch at least one of them in the act.” There was no love lost for nobles either.
Sanada just scowled in response to that, and looked extremely weary. “There shouldn’t have been a slave ring involved with this...” he muttered, with a tired look. “I’ve been chasing up people about it all morning and everybody’s in as much denial as Atobe, or they’re lying, like Katsuo’s sister.”
Tezuka frowned. “Have you slept at all since the first day of the case?” he asked, softly, so Inui wouldn’t hear.
“No.” murmured Sanada back, with an exhausted smile, “I’ll get my chance this afternoon. Kirihara said he’d take my training duties, so I’ll crash for some time inside the training grounds.”
Tezuka’s eyebrows pulled together as he slipped his arm around Sanada. “Take care of yourself.” he whispered, squeezing Sanada’s side, softly.
Sanada just nodded, softly as they turned back to Inui, who was making slightly disturbing noises of excitement. “It’s a rare cactus from the otherlands.” explained the alchemist. “Ground up and mixed with zinc and sodium, which makes anyone who inhales it very lethargic” he jabbered, as he started to mix some foul substance together with the purple bubbling mess. Sanada tossed Tezuka an apprehensive look.
“It’s easily countered so it can’t affect you, beyond the effect of dust in your eyes.” said Inui, as the purple bubbling mess started to froth and turn slowly a neon blue. “You just have to drink this now and it’s effects will last for a week.” He handed Sanada and Tezuka a cup of the substance each, with a very wide smile.
Sanada pursed his lips together as he stared at the liquid doubtfully. “On three?” asked Tezuka, determined to not look at it for too long, in fear of losing his nerve.
“Three, two one.” they said together, as they swallowed the substance. It took all of Tezuka’s efforts to not gag on the liquid or even outwardly react, beyond his eyes watering and bile rising up his throat a little. Sanada was sputtering a little and clawing at his neck, but his eyes were impressively dry.
Inui just looked disappointed as Tezuka returned the cup to Inui and stood up with only a slight wobble for his troubles. “And we won’t be affected now?” asked Sanada, in a choked voice, as he too rose.
“No.” said Inui, with a nod. “You’re safe now.”
(X)
The only house left this time was the Kadowaki residence, since the thieves had taken both jewels at the same time. Seeing as they had broken their pattern, Tezuka saw it as a sign that they were finally getting pressurized by he and Sanada’s actions, in a way that they felt that they needed to change their routine. It was only a small crack in their mask and may have initially looked like a bad thing, but it was good news.
Still, it did mean that he and Sanada only had one night to catch the thieves and be able to fairly convict them.
Honestly, as they had gotten more and more details from Kikumaru about the slave trade, Tezuka hadn’t wanted to arrest the thieves. The slave trade nobles were alleged to have done some truly awful things and Inui was approximating that at least a third of the city’s servants and prostitutes were taken from the slave trade run by the nobles. It had almost made Tezuka sick, more ill than the awful broth that Inui had made he and Sanada drink.
But they had both committed offences, and while the offences of the nobles were great, the act of stealing was a still a crime and needed to be treated that way.
Kadowaki was not someone who Sanada had angered, but Sanada had himself said that it was probably better for the two of them to catch them from outside, since their fighting techniques would require more room. Besides, the outside air was cooling on Tezuka’s skin as he waited. The thieves would not attempt the chimney this time around, but they had definitely seemed confident in the air, which meant that they would most likely swing up from the windows.
Tezuka took one side of the roof, and a paling Sanada took the other side, ignoring Tezuka’s requests to just watch from the ground and climb up when he was needed. Tezuka was fairly certain that Sanada was fighting off quite a bit of anxiety as he looked down at the large fall he had to make, but he was hiding it admirably.
Tezuka smiled a little as he glanced back at Sanada’s back, before a sudden sound from his side disturbed him. He made sure he hid his head from line of sight if they looked directly up, but kept it also so he could see a little. There was just the slightest flash of blue hair, but that was enough for him.
Sanada had also turned around upon hearing the sound and carefully shuffled over from his side, without removing himself from the crouch he was in. Their swords were already drawn, but Tezuka swung the helmet down over his face this time, to shield his eyes from the dust.
As expected Yukimura was first to swing up onto the roof and looked only slightly surprised to see the knights, as he threw a knife at Tezuka’s face. Tezuka quickly deflected with his sword’s hilt, unwillingly to get injured so quickly. Sanada made to attack Yukimura, in one swift blow and Yukimura dodged away, elegantly. Yukimura was more the opponent that Sanada would be able to fight, so Tezuka let Sanada take the knife-thrower on.
Besides, he had enough to do with Shiraishi leaping up onto the roof as well, with the blond man’s shortsword ready. Tezuka instantly attacked him, refusing to defend like his usual style called for. He needed to disable Shiraishi fast so he could deal with Fuji. Speaking of Fuji, he couldn’t see the other man anywhere, and that put him on edge.
Stull, he couldn’t afford to take too much attention away from Shiraishi; the man was as fast as he was strong and combating him was not so easy, even with his textbook definition moves. “You move well.” said Shiraishi, admiringly, as Tezuka lunged and nicked Shiraishi’s arm, though not enough to cause him more than a little inconvenience. The scar on Shiraishi's face was well-bandaged and that made Tezuka think.
With a slight spin and a feint attack, he darted forward to slash at the bandages, merely cutting them away, instead of attempting to injure Shiraishi grievously. The bandages fell away to show a slave brand, as Tezuka had thought. He nodded, as he moved back to avoid Shiraishi's slightly more vicious sweeps. The other man’s face was torn with a mixture of fury and resignment.
“Where were you caught?” Tezuka asked, as he ducked and rolled across the roof, to get behind Shiraishi.
Shiraishi said nothing, as he used both hands to sweep at Tezuka’s feet. Tezuka stepped back quickly, and pinwheeled to avoid falling off the roof. Shiraishi looked quite triumphant as he stabbed forward, but Tezuka quickly jumped forward, and viciously snapped the flat of his sword against Shiraishi’s skull, as he kicked Shiraishi’s stomach.
Shiraishi crumpled with the force from both blows, and Tezuka immediately pulled the cuffs from his belt and cuffed Shiraishi’s wrists and legs. “Sorry.” he said, as he sprung up and elbowed Fuji who was approaching from behind him while also kicking the shortsword off the roof.
Fuji grinned as he danced out of the way with a spin and threw a large pinch of the dust at Tezuka. Tezuka trusted Inui and lunged forward, ignoring the dust. Fuji looked a little surprised as Tezuka ignored the dust in the air, and he backflipped away from Tezuka’s sword with a little unease.
“Argh!” he heard Sanada yell from the other side, and Tezuka’s eyes momentarily flicked over. Sanada’s knee had a knife in it, but he was still fighting with Yukimura, head-to-head. Tezuka frowned, and started to edge Fuji closer to the other battle, with slashes. Fuji tossed him an amused look, that spoke volumes about how he understood Tezuka’s plan, but was just playing along because he felt like it.
“Yukimura! Prenez Garde!” yelled Fuji, as he tossed some dust towards Sanada, who likewise, barely flinched. Yukimura, alerted by Fuji’s shout, scowled, as he pulled away from Tezuka’s sword who came flashing towards him.
“Kura! Allons-y!” he shouted, before noticing Shiraishi's state and looking horrified.
“Laissez-moi! Allez, pour nos soeurs!” called Shiraishi, and Yukimura grimly nodded, as he grabbed Fuji. Fuji threw the entire contents of his bag into the air, and even though Tezuka wasn’t affected by any other symptoms, the dust scratched at his lungs and he couldn’t see anything. He still fought against the silhouettes in the dust, but when he hit nothing, he waited for the dust to clear.
The thieves were gone. Sanada’s knee was severely bleeding and Shiraishi was still cuffed to the chimney. They’d caught one of them in the act, at least. He walked over to Sanada, and placed Sanada’s arm over his shoulder, pulling him up with a little difficulty. Sanada winced and shook his head. “No, leave me here for now, Tezuka. Get Shiraishi and take him back to the castle. Send someone else after me.”
Tezuka reluctantly nodded. It was a good plan, but he was reluctant to leave Sanada here to bleed out. He unclipped his cloak and handed it to Sanada. “I’ll pull out the knife and you’ve got to tie this around your knee immediately and apply pressure.” said Tezuka, as if Sanada didn’t already know battlefield medics.
Sanada just nodded, watching Tezuka’s hands close around the knife. With a nod, he pulled the knife out, frowning at the squelching sound of flesh and tendons crinkling. It was a serious wound that would take at least two months to heal, if there was no infection inside the wound. He squeezed Sanada’s hand, before getting up to get Shiraishi. The front of his tabard was covered in blood, but he still partially uncuffed Shiraishi.
Shiraishi didn’t protest at all as Tezuka grabbed him. “I can walk myself.” said Shiraishi, with a small smile. “You don’t have to leave Sir Sanada here. I’ll help you get him down.”
Tezuka just gave him a look. “You’re a prisoner of the King, I don’t think so.”
Shiraishi just smiled as he stood up with some difficulty, considering his feet were cuffed together. “I told you to wait three days and then I’d tell you everything. My compatriots are off to do their jobs, and afterward they’re done, I’ll tell you everything and admit to it in a court of justice. I have no reason to want to see Sir Sanada bleed to death.”
Sanada gritted his teeth and shook his head. But Tezuka glanced at Shiraishi’s honest eyes and nodded. He leant down to uncuff Shiraishi's feet, but left Shiraishi's hands bound. “Take his left side.” he said, as he supported Sanada’s right side. “Getting him down is going to be difficult.”
Shiraishi hummed, as he cautiously took Sanada’s arm and placed it over his shoulder. “Well, not really. Just leave him to me and be ready to steady us both on the ground.”
Sanada scowled at Tezuka with a clear look of distrust at Shiraishi, but Tezuka just nodded, and swung down the house’s walls, his fingers scrambling a little against the plaster, in his haste to settle himself on the ground. He watched with an eagle eye as Shiraishi said something to Sanada that made Sanada’s eyes widen in terror. To Tezuka’s horror, Shiraishi just jumped off the building without any sort of plan. However, Tezuka blinked a little as a large bit of cloth projected upwards from Shiraishi’s back and the duo wobbled their way to the ground, at a fairly high speed.
He immediately steadied Sanada, whose eyes were watering in a mixture of terror and pain, but whose expression was still stubbornly stoic. Shiraishi scowled. “I’m sorry, I forgot, the weight difference would give us a harsher landing. I hope that the pain was not too great, Sir Sanada?”
Sanada just shook his head as Shiraishi steadied his other side and they slowly limped back towards the castle, in silence.
They arrived at the gates as the sun started to rise and Sanada pulled Shiraishi away from his side, and pushed him into the middle of their trio. He was heavily leaning on Shiraishi's shoulder, but still bringing him in like a prisoner. The guards wordlessly let them in, staring in horror at Sanada’s bleeding leg and Shiraishi’s various cuts.
“The infirmary, now.” said Tezuka, pulling them away from the dungeons, where Saada was leading them. “I’ll be cuffing you again once we get there Shiraishi, but Oishi should treat your cuts after he’d dealt with Sanada.”
Shiraishi nodded, looking grateful as they slowly limped up the stairs. Luckily, the infirmary was only on the second floor, and not on the top of the castle, like most of the living quarters. Tezuka pushed open the door with his injured arm and winced a little, but gave a slightly relieved nod at seeing Oishi on duty.
“Tezuka? Sanada? What happened to all of you?” asked Oishi, looking horrified, as he went to drag Sanada to one of the closest beds and forced him there, to treat him. Tezuka pulled up a closeby chair, and cuffed Shiraishi's leg around the chair, so that the only way Shiraishi could break free, would be by breaking a bone or by breaking the chair.
“Speak. It’s the third day.” said Tezuka, coolly, as he took another chair and drew it up next to Shiraishi.
Shiraishi was quiet as he adjusted himself in the chair. “It’s past dawn. Just give me a few minutes. I need to make sure...” His face looked extremely worried and concerned, as he glanced out of the window, at the orange sky.
Tezuka tossed him a look, but up until then, Shiraishi had behaved, so he turned towards Sanada instead, as Oishi attacked the wound with leeches and green leaves that prevented infection. Sanada tossed Tezuka a weak smile and Tezuka smiled faintly, in return. It would be difficult to be on duty for two months without Sanada.
Then again, as his shoulder twinged, he was reminded that he was equally liable to be kept out of action. His shoulder was less serious than Sanada’s leg, but he would be out of action for at least a month. The prospect was quite depressing and made Tezuka grimace in apprehension.
“Are you ready?” he asked Shiraishi, whose eyes were slightly shut, with a wide smile on his face.
“Ah.” said Shiraishi, his face disturbed slightly. “It started when I was around ten, when and my parents fell into great poverty as their farm ceased to produce grain. They had no choice but to sell everything, including me and my younger sister. We assumed we would be working as servants for the Lord at the mansion. We never imagined that we’d be sold to slavers by our Lord. They branded us and beat us, until we became obedient and pliant. Then they sold us both as prostitutes.” he said, evenly, as if the memories of the actions couldn’t even touch him anymore.
“At the brothel, there were several people with the same stories. Seiichi and Syuusuke were two of those people and they wanted nothing more than to be free and get revenge on those who had trapped us there. I agreed with them, and we had the means to do it.” Shiraishi continued to explain, and this time Sanada and Oishi had fallen silent to listen, with slightly disgusted looks on their faces at his story. “It’s possible to stop being a prostitute if you pay your debt and interest, and pretty boys are very popular.” he said, with a dry look.
“We paid the debt off a year ago, because of our popularity and gifts from generous patrons. but all of our sisters were nowhere near their goal. The longer you stay in the brothel, the higher your debt gets. We knew that we had to get them out quickly, so we used our flower growing talents to set up a nursery close to the city. but it didn’t bring as much money as we had hoped.” Shiraishi continued to narrate, looking miserable.
Tezuka didn’t say anything, just continued to listen. Shiraishi sighed, as he tilted his head back against the head of the chair. “When you work as a flower seller, you hear things, you know? Things about Lords and slave trades and who’s involved. It only took a few loose lips for us to gain a standing in the underworld and discover exactly who’d created the slave industry in this country. And guess what, all of them were fucking our sisters.”
Shiraishi snorted, wryly, as his eyes fell to his laps. “Seiichi wanted to kill them and take their jewels to pay our sister’s debt. I told him that we couldn’t. Syuusuke and I wanted to, really. I would do it if I could get away with it. but I knew that the King would notice murders more easily than robberies. We would never have been able to raise enough money to get our sisters free. So we just robbed them dry.”
“Why give us any clues at all?” asked Sanada, from the bed. “The flowers, you talking to Tezuka?”
“Because we could.” said Shiraishi, coolly, before he laughed lightly. “No, that’s more Syuusuke’s answer. I did it because I wanted to be caught after we’d done it and lilies seemed elegant enough as a calling card. In the end, a crime’s a crime and we need to pay for what we did. Seiichi will not agree, but this is the truth. I also wanted the nobles to pay for their sins, which is why I tipped off Tezuka.”
Tezuka nodded, as he folded his arms into his chest. “Thank you for your time, Shiraishi. Will you be willing to repeat this at the trial?”
Shiraishi nodded. “I’ll do it.” he said, with a nod. “Our sisters will be free, by now. Promise me that they’ll be able to live without repercussions? They can just live as Yumiko, Minoru and Yukari now? They didn’t know anything about the crimes, except what they guessed.”
Sanada nodded, from his place in the bed, where Tezuka hesitated. “I can promise that they will not be arrested for this, Shiraishi.” he said, placing his hand to his heart, in an oath.
“And where are Fuji and Yukimura, now?” asked Tezuka, moving his shoulder with a little discomfort. Shiraishi would know where they were.
“They’ll be at the nursery. Packing their things. They plan to flee before you get there, so I’d hurry and send someone to catch them.” said Shiraishi, as he leant back against the chair, with a goofy smile on his smile. “Ahh, Yukari gets to live. I could not be happier.”
Tezuka could not truly call them criminals, in the end. He would have done the same had it been his loved ones. “Ah.” he said, with a tired sigh. Perhaps Sanada was right, perhaps they were getting too old for this.
OWARI