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The Tale of the Demon Lord	By : Arianawray Category: InuYasha > Yaoi - Male/Male > InuYasha/Sessh?maru > InuYasha/Sessh?maru Views: 56279 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of its characters, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
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XXXIII: A Certain Someone
"This is as far as I got yesterday!" Inuyasha said excitedly, pointing to a toy shop with a display of tiny wood-and-metal carts with wheels that could be set on a sloping ramp with raised sides and made to whirl around in a circuit. "I'd never seen anything like this before, so I spent a lot more time here than I should have looking at the way the carts go round the track."
"You should have bought it so that you could look at it all you liked," Sesshomaru said.
"Nah – what would I do with that? I'm not a small child any more. I wouldn't buy it for the village children either, because knowing how overexcited they get about toys, they'd only break it within minutes! I did buy a few items for the children of the two guards who came with me – I don't think it was their idea of a fun day out, but they were very patient."
"As well they should be – it is their duty to make sure that you do not get into trouble, no matter where you go or what you choose to amuse yourself with," Sesshomaru replied.
"I don't like dragging other people around with me on outings that they have no personal interest in."
"You will get used to it. You are a prince. It is natural to have people attending on you at almost all times."
"I like to be alone sometimes," Inuyasha said quietly.
"I understand that," Sesshomaru assured him. "And I respect that need – but when you are in a public place, you must be chaperoned and preferably with guards close at hand. Even when you come of age and no longer require a chaperone, I will insist that you take at least one reliable guard with you whenever you leave the castle without me – you must not be entirely unaccompanied."
They were at the next shop by now, one which sold a variety of edible goods. Many of the items were suitable only for demons – herbs, mushrooms and dried raw meat from poisonous animals that would have sickened humans who tried to eat them. As Inuyasha had grown up among humans, he was fascinated by the displays, and asked the shopkeeper about several of the items.
"Would this kill a half-demon like me?" he asked innocently, picking up a mushroom with a speckled gray surface.
"Your Highness," the shopkeeper replied honestly. "I truly would not know, as I have very few half-demon customers, and most of them do not buy the more unusual mushrooms. However, I believe that all the items we have are quite safe for strong half-demons to consume. I only warn the few human traders passing through this town not to purchase them for themselves – we have other mushrooms that are safe for them to eat."
"Maybe I should get some of these for Kazuki – he was just talking about experimenting with various mushrooms for a new kind of stew, and I'm sure I've never seen these served to us, so he probably doesn't have them in the kitchen."
"Kazuki? That kitchen servant who jumped out of your window after Natsumi?" Sesshomaru asked, bemused.
"Yeah – he's a nice fellow, and he's an assistant cook. Don't give me that look – just because you don't talk to the servants doesn't mean I can't."
Inuyasha asked the shopkeeper to wrap up a quantity of the mushrooms for him, and paid for them himself out of his coin purse.
A few guards followed them at a discreet distance. Sesshomaru was powerful enough to require no protection, but it looked more proper to have a security presence around the king and the prince on an outing, and they would be useful for keeping the people at a distance if the brothers needed some privacy.
"The junior officers can hold your purchases for you," Sesshomaru told Inuyasha.
But Inuyasha did not see the point of handing stuff he could easily hold to someone else. "As if I can't carry a small package like this by myself," he replied.
Sesshomaru said nothing, but as they moved from shop to shop, and different things caught the prince's eye, the junior officer had to be given parcel-carrying duties after all, as Inuyasha had only two hands.
It interested Sesshomaru to see that all the items Inuyasha purchased were for other people – the mushrooms for Kazuki, a hairpin for Natsumi, storybooks from a shop near one of the schools for the castle children, knotted fabric amulets that he intended to give to the village children on his next visit, and a fine writing brush for Jaken.
"The brushes he uses in our lessons are getting a bit ratty, but he refuses to draw new ones from the stationery store – maybe this nice brush will shame him into using better ones when he teaches me!" Inuyasha grinned.
Sesshomaru was pleased to see that the boy was careful with his money, not overspending on anything, and always checking that he was paying a reasonable price for the items he wanted.
As they moved away from the street with the smaller shops that interested Inuyasha and entered the busier town centre with its wider roads, bigger shops selling more general goods, and grander houses, the guards had to position themselves before and behind the royal brothers to ensure that the crowd did not press in too closely.
"Now I'm not sure that you coming with me was such a good idea after all," Inuyasha remarked as people bowed to him and Sesshomaru from each side of every road they walked down, distracting him from his aim of appreciating the architecture of the stone and wood structures that surrounded them, trying to see different styles and eras reflected in them as Jaken had advised him to in a recent lesson.
"I'm sure the people also acknowledged you yesterday when you visited."
"Yes, but not to such an extreme – I think they're afraid of you."
"Nonsense. I have tortured only ninety demons from this town in my two hundred years of rule, and only ten of those died from their injuries – that's not many."
Inuyasha stared at him, horrified, until he realised that his brother was joking. "Don't joke about things like that!" he hissed. "It's not funny!"
"All right. The truth is that only one demon from this town has ever been executed by royal command for heading a band of demons guilty of raping and pillaging. And that execution had the full support of everyone here."
"Uh-huh. Everywhere I look in your past, there's blood, gore and sex somewhere. Please tell me that's not the family of the demon you executed."
A group of dog demons was bowing low to them as they drew close, inching out into the road before them and standing out from the other townspeople with their smart, neat tunics, all of the same pale-blue shade.
"No, Inuyasha, that is a group of servants from Minister Atsushi's town house."
They stopped before the group, who bowed low again. The one at the head of the group addressed them respectfully: "My lord, Your Highness, Minister Atsushi wishes us to convey the message that he received Your Majesty's instructions about not making a fuss over your visit to this town, and that he has obeyed your order by not making any announcements to the people about it. However, the minister says he would be most honoured if Your Majesty and Your Highness would stop by at his home for some light refreshment, now that the sun is high in the sky, and it is getting hot."
Sesshomaru looked at Inuyasha and saw that he did not object to the idea, so he assented, and they strolled down two roads to the minister's town residence.
Minister Atsushi himself greeted them at the gate, apologising for not having met them himself on the main road, saying sensibly: "I had to make certain that all was ready here for you – after having been shown so much hospitality and consideration by everyone at the castle, how could I do any less for my lord and prince in return? Did your godfather Totosai not come with you?"
"He waved us off in the morning, telling us that he had seen more towns in his three thousand and five hundred years of life than he ever needed to see again, and that the females in the countryside are much prettier," Inuyasha related, rolling his golden eyes and making the minister laugh as they stepped into his home.
It was an elegant house, much smaller, as Inuyasha later learnt, compared with the minister's estate out in the country, but compact and tasteful.
They were led into a welcoming, airy room with translucent paper screens and light sliding doors. Cool tea and refreshing fruit like spring melons, sliced pears drizzled with plum sauce, and strawberries were set out invitingly. The guards had another room next door to rest in, with their own spread of tea and fruit.
Inuyasha noticed some small figurines displayed on a side cabinet in the room, and saw with interest that they were similar in material and form to the much larger sculptures that Naraku had taken away.
"Were they carved by the same sculptor?" the prince asked the minister.
"Yes, Your Highness. The sculptor was named Haruka, and he was a fellow guild member of your father's old friend, the elder and late Hosenki. He passed away, of old age, about thirty years ago. I treasure his works greatly, but I treasure Natsumi more – she lived with me for five years, and I am very fond of her."
"One of the sculptures you gave to Naraku, and this small figurine here, really look a lot like my friend Kikyo from the village – at least, very much the way she looked when she was a girl."
"Old Haruka used to go around the kingdom looking for pretty models on whom to base his art," said Atsushi. "He found both human and demon females worthy of his artistic attention – you may have noticed that almost all the figurines you see on that cabinet represent human women. This particular figurine that you say resembles your friend was, if I remember correctly, modelled on a real-life priestess, as was the larger sculpture. Is your friend a priestess?"
"She is!" Inuyasha exclaimed. "So it is her! I wonder if she knows that a demon artist was studying her – she's never mentioned anything of the sort to me."
"Haruka did tell me that the priestess he found so very pretty was attacked by another demon in the woods not long after he began observing her. He said a creature clad from head to foot in the pelt of a white baboon assaulted the girl and attempted to rape her, but before he could go to her aid, her assailant was apparently wounded by some other source he could not see, and fled the scene in what looked liked great pain and distress. He helped the girl back to her village, and she and her younger sister – who was only a very small child – thanked him calmly. I remember now that he said she showed no fear of him although he was a demon, and she had just been attacked by one – a rare thing for such a young human girl."
"Did he say when that incident took place?" Inuyasha asked, his voice tightening.
Minister Atsushi thought about it for some time and counted back the years, then replied: "I cannot be certain, but I believe that fifty years ago would be a fair estimate of when the event occurred. He has been dead these thirty years, and when he spoke to me of the incident some seven or eight years before his death, he mentioned it as something that had taken place thirteen or fourteen years earlier, so fifty is my best figure for you."
"Then it must have been just a year or two before I first met Kikyo and Kaede," Inuyasha murmured. "She's never told me anything about it – who was the bastard in the baboon fur? Why didn't Kikyo tell me?"
"Inuyasha," Sesshomaru spoke, hearing the anger and grief in his brother's voice. "I am sure that the priestess Kikyo did not wish to distress you with upsetting stories about demons from before she knew you, knowing how angry and sad you would be for her, and how self-conscious you would feel since you were half-demon. I imagine that she saw how much of a child you were when she first became your friend, and sensibly chose not to tell you of a time when she had nearly been raped. As time passed, it must have seemed to her less and less necessary to inform you about the incident. Don't let it upset you now."
"If I ever catch the baboon freak I'm going to tear him apart."
"I know you will. Now sit down and don't waste Minister's Atsushi's efforts to have these refreshments prepared for us."
"I'm sorry. Yes, I suppose you are right – it was in the past, and it looks like Kikyo was ultimately unharmed."
"I am sure that she suffered no lasting harm, from what Haruka told me," Atsushi assured him.
When Inuyasha settled down at last and began to eat and drink what was set before him, the minister said to Sesshomaru: "My lord, besides repaying your hospitality, I also hoped that you would come because I have a private message for you from that certain someone whose safety we were concerned about."
"Is she well?" Sesshomaru asked.
Inuyasha, who knew by now that they were discussing Kagura, listened keenly.
"She is very well, and wishes me to let you know that. She also says that you and the prince are more than welcome to visit her while you are in town."
"Perhaps we shall," Sesshomaru said, glancing at Inuyasha, who looked back at him in the most distracting way possible, lips rosy with strawberry juice while one of his fingers absently stroked the side of his fine porcelain teacup.
"Is she nice?" was the prince's only question.
~ - ~
Kagura was very nice, in a sardonic way. She was also very cheeky, in an ironically serious way. And she looked and smelt disturbingly like Naraku – dark hair, red irises and all – which periodically put Inuyasha off, until she would turn to look at him full in the face out of her sparkling garnet eyes. Each time she did that, he would see how different her soul was from Naraku's.
"I may resemble my disowned father, and I smell like the rest of my family, but I know that alone won't be enough to scare off someone like you, Your Highness," Kagura said in a manner that was somehow both playful and dignified.
She tapped her fan lightly against the palm of her left hand as she looked at him appraisingly.
They sat in one of her rooms, which was filled with dark wood and stone sculptures and enclosed on all sides for her privacy and safety. Yet, the room somehow felt breezy and spacious because of cleverly positioned slats and openings installed in the outer blinds of the double-layered walls all around her town house. They let in the breeze and allowed glowing rays of sunlight to slip indoors.
"Someone like me?" Inuyasha asked, finding himself unable to dislike her despite her looks and scent.
"Courage is written all over your face, and your aura is as strong as any demon's I have ever encountered, except Lord Sesshomaru's."
Sesshomaru said nothing, and only sipped the tea they had been served, but Inuyasha could tell that his brother was calm and completely relaxed. It could only mean that he trusted Kagura greatly, and that he liked her.
It gave Inuyasha a tiny pang of jealousy.
"Sesshomaru knows I don't say that to flatter him," Kagura continued, eyeing the demon lord with amusement. "A fact is a fact."
"Have you had any trouble since Naraku came and went?" Sesshomaru asked the wind demoness.
"Not at all. In many ways, I am glad that I was not travelling when Naraku called on you – although it meant that I had to be physically closer to him than I might have liked, it also meant that I could keep a sharp eye and all my senses on any unusual changes in these fixed, familiar surroundings." To Inuyasha, she added: "It is hard to know what is different or unusual when one is constantly on the move, as I am. Perhaps I need to learn the art of stillness – but it is not easy to be still when one has so much affinity with the wind. I am always on the move."
"How is it that you are a wind demoness when Naraku – and his other children – are supposed to all be spider demons?" Inuyasha asked with unmasked curiosity.
It was not a question that a rigidly brought-up prince would have asked so bluntly, but Inuyasha had not been strictly bent to the requirements of royal etiquette while growing up, and was more open than another prince would have been. Happily for him, Kagura, although raised a lady by her lord father, had no time for stiff etiquette either. The fact that she sat before them with bare feet, wiggling her lacquered toenails, said it all.
She readily gave him an honest answer: "My former father is himself a strange creature, as you must have discovered by now. He has a fair amount of spider-demon blood in him, but the rest of him is something else. He made me – and the others – out of pieces of his compound body and masses of magic. While I am supposed to be a spider demon, he crafted me to be more of a wind demon, with magic in my fan. As for Kanna, I can't exactly call her a mirror demon because she isn't quite one herself, but she has a great affinity with her magic mirror, so I don't see many spider traits in her either. As for the boys, oh dear, I barely know what they are. The two you met weren't the only males, you know – Naraku gave us two more boys, one of them a parasite of the other, and they were so uncontrollable that they had to be chained up in the basement until he unleashed them on a wolf tribe that miraculously managed to destroy them. Hakudoshi also had a twin, an infant who never grew bigger but still plotted and schemed against our artificial father until Naraku decided enough was enough and reabsorbed him completely! Then there were the monstrous ones, Goshinki and Goryomaru. Goshinki was killed in battle, while Goryomaru teamed up with the infant and was also reabsorbed… you know what? Just take my word for it that the two boys you met really were the most normal of the lot."
Her flippant take on her very strange and messed-up family made Inuyasha smile, despite his jealousy of her, and despite his wonder that she had addressed his brother by his name, without his title. He had only heard himself and his godfathers call Sesshomaru by name, while Naraku had done so once or twice – but then as the ruler of a princedom, Naraku might fancy himself on a level with the demon lord.
Kagura, however, was no ruler, and no family member. To be on such intimate terms with Sesshomaru, they must have had quite a past.
It did not help Inuyasha feel any less jealous when Kagura invited them to have dinner with her, and then to stay the night, and Sesshomaru readily accepted on both counts.
~ - ~
They had gone over to Kagura's house a few hours after leaving Minister Atsushi's, so that Inuyasha would have time to look about the town and see all he wanted.
By the time he was contented with his exploration of the town and agreed to go to the wind demoness' place, it was well past teatime. Dinner followed fast on the heels of their light tea with her.
"I have a little present for you, Your Highness," Kagura said with a mischievous smile as they dined together on a simple but beautifully prepared meal of rice, pheasant, eel and winter-melon soup. "I must warn you that you probably will not like the present at all, as I have heard how kind-hearted you are – but it is one that I must insist on giving you."
She rapped her fan on the edge of the table, and one of her servants opened a sliding screen door on the side of the dining hall closest to Kagura's seat.
A very scantily-dressed male figure knelt there, and it crawled on all fours over to Kagura, where it bowed its head to the ground at once and kissed her bare toes.
The brothers realised at once from his scent that it was Mamoru.
"I understand that this creature dared to insult Your Highness and Lord Sesshomaru," Kagura remarked. "So I decided to teach him some manners after he was released from the town prison three days ago."
Inuyasha reddened and said quickly to Kagura: "It's really not necessary – I think he's been punished enough already."
Mamoru kept his head bowed, so Sesshomaru and Inuyasha could only see his brown hair and his neck, but not his face.
"You think that I'm being unnecessarily cruel," Kagura said. "But I can promise you that I am being kind beyond words. I don't suppose anyone reported to Your Highness that this insolent creature behaved himself so very, very badly while he was in prison, despite admonishments from his father, his sister and all his brothers, that the warden was obliged under the law to extend his sentence and order him to be harshly flogged?"
"What did he do?" Inuyasha asked, staring in amazement at the unrepentant, still-bowing Mamoru.
"He bit and clawed his guards and threatened them with reprisal, and tried to break out of his cell three times. And he did not stop insulting Your Highness, even though all his siblings visited him and told him how merciful you had been by asking – or was it compelling? – your royal brother to cease punishing him. Oh, the rumours I heard about how fiercely you opposed your brother!"
Inuyasha could feel Sesshomaru's growing fury, and he began to panic as he feared that his brother would cut Mamoru down with his claws on the spot. But Kagura miraculously made it all go away by bringing them up to date with the situation.
She said: "I know something of prisons and cells, having been locked in one for long stretches of time by my father years ago. And I know that no one who is bloody-minded enough ever repents while incarcerated. I also had the greatest respect for what I had heard of Your Highness' compassion, and I knew you would not want him to be flogged to within an inch of his life despite his disrespect. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I called for a meeting with the town mayor and with the prison warden, and asked them to release him into my custody."
Inuyasha glanced at Mamoru and observed that he seemed unharmed.
"Show me your face," Kagura sternly ordered the dog demon who knelt at her feet.
Mamoru raised his head and looked at his mistress, and Inuyasha was struck at once by the look of adoration mingled with fear and respect in the once-rebellious demon's eyes.
"What do you have to say to your prince and your king?" Kagura asked, the naughty sparkle in her eyes replaced now by a steely glint. Her dangling jade earrings had stopped dancing as her lively movements turned to intimidating stillness.
To Inuyasha's amazement, the former castle servant who had so mocked him now crawled over to his feet under the table and kissed the tips of his boots repeatedly, then lifted his face hesitantly and said: "Your Highness, please forgive your humble servant for his past misdeeds. I have learnt the error of my ways."
He bent and kissed Inuyasha's boots again, leaving the prince so taken aback that he did not know what to do.
"And your king?" Kagura prompted sternly, reaching under the table with her fan to smack Mamoru on the rump. It made his skimpy tunic fly up, exposing his bare bottom. But he did not dare reach back to cover himself before scurrying along the floor to crouch before Sesshomaru and knock his forehead on the floorboards. He knew better than to try and touch any part of the demon lord.
"My lord, please forgive me for my insolence and my unacceptable behaviour. I acknowledge my misdeeds and my initial failure to learn from them, but I am learning my lessons thoroughly now."
Sesshomaru looked over at Kagura and lifted one eyebrow minutely while Kagura smirked and tapped her fan against her palm.
Sesshomaru considered the grovelling creature before him for some time, noted how he trembled and still dared not cover himself, and glanced again at the formidable mistress he had acquired, before saying: "Be grateful that I have not cut you down before this. Get away from my feet."
"Yes, my lord, thank you, my lord," Mamoru gushed, banging his head on the floorboards again before crawling back to Kagura's side.
"My legs are stiff and aching after being cooped up in this house for days," Kagura complained dramatically to no one in particular, but it was all she needed to say for an eager Mamoru to beg for permission to make her feel better.
For answer, she thrust one very shapely leg out at him while she continued to eat her dinner, and he gratefully kissed it and began to massage it with great care and dedication, up and down the smooth, elegant length of that beautiful limb. It was obvious that he was completely infatuated with her.
The look Sesshomaru gave Kagura over the table very plainly said: You managed to achieve such submissiveness and obedience in such a recalcitrant idiot after only three days?
And the look Kagura returned him very plainly said: You of all people should know what I am capable of.
The intimacy of that wordless exchange left Inuyasha feeling more threatened by Kagura's charming character than he had been at the start of the visit.
Even then, he could not help liking her – a fact which irrationally made him even more jealous of her than before.
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The Tale of the Demon Lord