WAP 51

Chapter 51

Once Aiko had managed to wrestle down her offended feelings, she had to acknowledge that it was for the best that they didn’t think of her as one of them. Despite her cultural background, she wasn’t. The crucial thing was that she did not want to stay and make a life with them. Therefore, it would only hurt to integrate too deeply into their circle when her entire plan was to use them for their resources and get home. She laid in her futon alone and stared blankly at the ceiling. The wood above her head had no answers for her.

When the day finally reached them she threw aside her sheets and dissatisfaction. Aiko stripped her bed and folded everything away with surgical neatness. They ascended the stairs as a party. Aiko was eager to see reactions to the fact they had all survived the night, but unfortunately, she was not at the front of the group and her view was blocked by stupid hair. Madara would have been able to see any odd reactions. It was only mildly disappointing because she was certain she would get a full analysis later.

‘Madara will tell me later. He never leaves me out.’

She attended breakfast with the whole court and watched with lidded eyes as Senhime’s boldest lady in waiting extended an invitation to Mito to a tea party. No one came to talk to Aiko. 

Kaede and Kiroyama kept up a cheery conversation about the beauty of the bowls and cups to prevent their neighbors from noticing the aura of malcontent. Madara and Izuna took turns shooting unreadable expressions at her from the other end of the table, probably wondering if she was going to start a fight or a fire. 

They didn’t need to worry, because she was totally unbothered. The snub didn’t annoy her. It was unremarkable and beneath her to care what these people did. Aiko was practicing serenity lately.

When Minister Tani got up and left the table with his attendants and the Konoha men, Aiko had the distinct thought that she could trip him without anyone knowing it was her. Her hand twitched. She took a deep breath for self control and looked away as he passed in a cloud of perfume.

Hmmm. More serenity practice was probably needed.

She made a fist beneath the table and made a list of people who had wronged her, taking the time to order it by severity and then again by how painfully she wanted to punish them. Aiko was a little less irritated by the time that Mito and her ladies left with Senhime’s court, chittering and chattering like bright tropical birds with their trailing sleeves and tinkling hair decorations. 

The less important men began to leave for various meetings and discussions. No one offered any invitation to Aiko. Instead, she leaned over to the Uchiha lady delegation, Chiaki and Kaede and Kiroyama-san, and publicly suggested that they walk the gardens. As expected, they were immediately inflicted with a lady-in-waiting to escort them and tell them about the property. 

It was, Aiko thought, almost as if no one wanted them wandering around unobserved. How curious. She ducked out of sight just long enough to create two shadow clones to switch with her and Kiroyama-san. They made the switch seamlessly in the milliseconds that their escort was focused on opening a door. 

Neither of the Uchiha women reacted, despite the fact that Aiko had not communicated her plan to anyone. Aiko couldn’t help a faint smile as she and Kiroyama-san backtracked through the estate towards the central staircase that would lead to the most protected inner sanctum. 

They went up the walls and to the ceiling, out of easy line of sight for all the maids and servants bustling around. Aiko was going to consider that good enough, moving with slow surety towards the best path to the lady’s chambers.

Aiko felt the skin-tingling of a genjutsu land. She laid a hand down on the wood of the ceiling they were on and watched the wood grain below show on her skin. Hm. Some sort of chameleon technique. 

Kiroyama-san was an infiltrator by speciality, Aiko would bet on it. She fell back and let the other woman lead. 

They paused to wait for a few servants to descend the stairs. An older man with deep under eye bags gave quiet instructions to the boy at his heels without ever noticing them. Aiko watched them with half her attention, her line of sight limited to the bald spot on the old man’s head and a faded wrap protecting the boy’s head from dust and other enemies. When they had passed she and Kiroyama crept up in a rapid push and opened the first Shoji screen on the penultimate floor in silence to begin exploring. 

They tossed room after room, looking for anything suspicious. Letters, plants, weapons— anything. Room after room turned up only pillows and love token jewelry and courtly letters. Aiko memorized them all with her secondhand eyes when Kiroyama-san wasn’t looking even though she would honestly rather not think about anyone’s quivering thighs or sweet flowers. Ugh. 

When that gave no clues they breached the top floor where only the most senior members of the family ought to be. There was something a little curious there. 

The lord’s chambers were bare of any signs of birthright or management. He had finery, but academic scrolls and art pieces with the family name on them were all in the lady’s chambers. 

Well. That fit with her leading theory.

‘He’s probably an idiot,’ Aiko diagnosed. ‘Which fits with his banishment from the royal court. Senhime is the actual administrator of the estate.’ 

That’s what highborn ladies were meant to do, anyways. You’d expect a competent lord to be involved and possibly making final decisions, but Senhime’s mathematical education has probably been better than his. 

‘It must be very irritating for her to let him playact at diplomacy. She’s playing demure and proper while her loser husband is in meetings with clan heads and the next Daimyo.’

That realization made Aiko feel quite a bit better about being excluded from the meetings with the men. For like, a solid minute.

‘…And now Senhime is meeting with Mito, who will consult with her husband. I’m excluded from the rooms of power regardless of who is in charge.’ 

Aiko scowled to herself as she finished flipping through Senhime’s records of staff and pay and food management. There wasn’t anything obviously strange there to her eye, but Aiko was hardly a highborn warring states era lady. Mito honestly might have been the better pick for this task. Ugh.

She memorized a few key numbers to double check with the locals later and finished rummaging the rooms. 

Kiroyama-san slipped out of the room next door and gave her a nod, implying that Aiko should take the lead. This time they left via the window and relied on Kiroyama-san’s camouflage genjutsu to let them out into the garden. From high up, it was relatively easy to find Kaede, Chiaki, and their guide. Kaede and Chiaki were both dressed in Uchiha blue and red and glinting with steel like jewels. Their guide had purple-tinted hair and a stark white kimono that made her stand out in the green garden. 

Kiroyama-san led them from the side of the group and manipulated her chakra in an exquisitely subtle signal that Kaede-san clearly caught. She effortlessly distracted the guide and turned her to the side so that Aiko could dismiss the clones and slide into their place. 

It took a few moments to sort through the information they had for her– discussions on the history of the castle walls and the artisans who made them, the well where an unfortunate maid had been thrown to her death after spying for an enemy lord, the lush hydrangea bushes in full bloom, and the chemical composition of the soil that made them that brilliant blue. The guide was Narahime, and she was a niece of Senhime. She was fifteen years old and she was not as subtle as she thought she was about her interest in a handsome Uchiha husband. She had seen what was on offer and she liked it a lot more than she liked a civilian courtier.

‘Honestly, I love that for her. But good luck. I don’t know how you catch an Uchiha’s eye without being capable of great violence. Should I try to hook her up? She is a noble girl, maybe she has a naginata. She isn’t too old to teach a bit.’ 

Aiko hid a smile as Narahime turned her attention back to the group, her sweet face shining in the mid morning sunlight. “Shall we go inside?” she chirped. “It is becoming hot.”

‘Senhime is maneuvering on multiple fronts. There is a reason this girl is our guide.’

“The air is wonderful,” Kaede demurred. “However it would be a pleasure to go inside with you. Shall we play cards?”

Narahime beamed. “I have recently received a set of hanafuda as a gift. Please join me.” She seemed guileless. Aiko followed her quietly and wondered if she had ever been that young. She didn’t remember feeling that happy as a child.

They wound up inside her personal room, arrayed around a low table. Narahime retrieved her cards and said a quiet word to a maid. She spread the deck out and invited them all to take a card to determine who would be the dealer. 

Aiko drew and received a weak July card. Kaede held up a yellow December paulownia. It was Chiaki who drew January and became the dealer. She collected all the cards again and shuffled out to lay 8 cards face up and give each player 4 cards to keep private. The door slid open and the maid from before entered silently. Aiko glanced up to see her, dismissed her as unimportant, and then her attention went back to the table. Porcelain made a quiet clink as it was set down on a small table.

Chiaki laid down a card into the field of play without making a match and then flipped another card. Unsuccessful. The soft sound of pouring tea behind them nearly hid her disappointed sigh. It became Narahime’s turn. She leaned forward eagerly with a rustle of sleeves.

It hit a moment later that the maid had been too silent. Why would a civilian girl walk quietly enough that Aiko would need to look up to confirm they had entered the room?

‘Hyuuga? Does Narahime know? She seems unaware, but the political class usually study acting innocently.’

The urge to look rose, but Aiko resisted. She didn’t want to let on that she had noticed anything was unusual. A pale hand reached into her peripheral vision to deposit a small teacup, tinkling with ice. “Thank you,” she said absently. She kept her eyelashes low and spared a glance for the drink.

The pottery was an expensive piece, obviously imported. There was probably poison in it. She didn’t let her breathing rate change or her expression falter.  

Aiko managed to catch Kiroyama-san’s eye. She picked up her cup and lifted her eyebrow ever so slightly to indicate that something was wrong with it. The maidservant’s breath hitched behind her. Kiroyama-san clearly understood. Her eyes flicked away to catch Chiaki’s attention, passing the message along.

Aiko considered her drink.

‘I was barely affected by that sedative,’ Aiko remembered, and weighed her options. ‘I’m functionally immortal. I would like to see what happens if I drink this.’

There was a wry smile on her lips as she raised the teacup and drank. She closed her eyes momentarily to weigh the taste.

It was a very floral blend. That alone was suspicious. The taste of chamomile fought with the matcha in an attempt to disguise the third flavor.

‘I don’t know what it is.’

Aiko hadn’t seen the message pass around, but none of her companions touched their tea. Even Narahime didn’t drink her tea. She took a look at it and made a face that made Aiko think the girl didn’t like blended teas. They played a few rounds, collecting points here and there as Aiko waited to see what, if anything, might happen.

She was just starting to think she had been wrong when her stomach seized in pain.

‘I love to be right.’

Aiko ducked her gaze a little to hide the smile on her face behind the fall of her hair.

‘That Hyuuga must be so tense.’

She played it cool and unaffected, cataloguing the development of symptoms as they finished their first card game and started a second. The pain became contractions. Her extremities became mildly numb and she used chakra on her fingertips to manipulate the cards with grace. Her fingers trembled. She could tell that her heartrate was far too slow. Her head hurt and it became a little hard to focus.

The pain reached a peak and then faded. The color returned to her hands. She flexed her wrist experimentally to confirm she had her full range of motion. Her head cleared again.

‘Yew poisoning,’ Aiko decided. ‘Meant to be fatal.’

The maidservant was bone white and staring at her with pale eyes when Aiko turned to smile over her shoulder.

‘Gotcha.’

She memorized the girl’s face and watched the moment when the would-be-assassin realized that Aiko knew.

“Narahime, this girl has poisoned the tea.” She said it mildly. It took a moment for Narahime to react, but Kaede reacted in a millisecond to make a chakra pulse that would echo across the estate.

The Hyuuga attempted to bolt. Chiaki leapt across the table and bore the fake maid to the floor while Narahime was still saying, “What?”

Aiko leaned back to avoid a spray of senbon. The last-ditch attack was a waste of a second that a smarter shinobi would use for self defence. Chiaki broke the girl’s wrists with brutal efficiency that ended any hopes for her escape.

Aiko’s eyebrows shot up in surprise as Narahime screamed in time with the downed shinobi. The door flew open. A young man shouted something. Madara was there moments later in a furious rush, eyes wild to confirm his people were fine.

“She targeted me in particular,” Aiko mused, standing up casually. She picked her way across the room and bent to make the failed assassin look at her. The girl bared her teeth. She was obviously terrified. “Was it my personality?” Aiko wondered. “Or just that you thought I might be slower?”

The Hyuuga spat at her.