The Path of Honour

Complete
Action/Adventure, Drama
Set in Season 6

Disclaimers:

Stargate Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is written purely for my own entertainment, and that of anyone else who may happen to read it. No infringement of copyright is intended. It is not intended and should never be used for commercial purposes.

The original characters, situations and ideas contained within this work are the property of the author.

Author's Notes:

This story is the last in the four-parter Bushido, which began in Those Who Serve and continued in The Eye of the Storm and Stealth, Patience, Perseverance.

Once again I apologise for my abuse of Japanese language and cultural history. Still; as an SG-1 fanfic writer it comes with the territory, I guess.

Acknowledgements:

Give us an 'S'. Give us an 'H'. Give us an 'O'.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh! It's Sho!

Many thanks and a get well soon to my beta.

The Path of Honour

The Northern Forest

SG-1 paused at the bottom of a long path which wound its way up from the forest floor to the hilltop fortress of Origehara, stronghold of the powerful Fudai Daimyo Lord Richo-no-Hajima. Richo's domains extended all around, over many square miles of fortress and included rich hunting grounds, a great expanse of farmland and a small quarry which supplied fine stone to other Daimyo for use in prestigious buildings. Whatever this power and wealth achieved, it clearly did not make Richo feel secure, because his fortress had massive stone walls, patrolled by dozens of Bushi.

"Does anyone else feel that this is a bad idea?" Jonas asked.

"Well, yes," Jack replied. "I've been saying so for the past twenty-three hours."

"It doesn't matter," Sam said. "It's getting dark and I'm sure there's something in this forest which will be willing to eat us."

"The northern wolves are fairly skittish around people," Yukio assured her, "not to mention less than a third of the size of those in the Stonelands. Nevertheless, you are correct; we should be inside by nightfall. We will have been spotted already; if we do not approach the gates we will arouse suspicion."

"Someone's coming," Jonas said. "I can hear horses."

"Yes," Yukio agreed. "That must be someone important. Stand on the side of the road and be ready to bow if I give the signal."

"How far?" Jack asked, bridling at the idea of bowing to a Goa'uld.

"All the way," Yukio replied. "Now hush...and down."

They went – reluctantly – down on their hands and knees. Yukio pressed her face to the earth but underneath their domed hats, SG-1 were able to glance up through the weave of the wickerwork and see the group that passed by.

The procession was led by a tall, powerful Bushi, with three more warriors following. Then came the Goa'uld, a woman of astonishing beauty with an arrogant expression. She wore a long, magnificently-coloured robe and her horse was caparisoned in similarly vivid silks. She carried a short sword at her side, but no katana and she did not seem to be a warrior in Lady Tomoe's mould. Shortly behind her and to her left rode a tall, veiled handmaiden; mirroring the servant on the right hand side, a powerful, masked warrior. Three more Bushi followed them, crowned with the basket hats of the komuso, but carrying long swords at their hips.

After this lead there followed a long train of slaves and handmaidens and wagons bearing treasures and expensive cloth, no doubt intended as gifts for Lord Richo. Once the Goa'uld had passed, however, Yukio stood and her comrades did the same.

"That's an exciting robe," she whispered.

"Very fancy," Sam agreed, "even by Goa'uld standards."

"And so many gifts," Yukio added. "That was Lady Jingo-no-Shijo, the Daimyo who is seeking a marriage alliance with Lord Richo. It's an interesting and unusual situation; potentially useful as well."

"How?" Jack demanded.

"I'll explain inside," Yukio promised. "In the meantime, follow on behind the procession. With any luck we'll be taken for more of Jingo's komuso and overlooked."

*

SG-1 followed Jingo's entourage through the gates of Origehara. Jack struggled not to flinch as the doors closed behind them with a resounding boom. As the front of the procession halted, the remainder of the retinue spread out behind them. Yukio led her companions over to the far end of the line so that they could see what was happening. The hosts of this gathering had emerged from the keep and formed a second line to welcome their guests, in as much as one group of Goa'uld ever really welcomed the presence of another. The two groups stood, glowering at one another.

At the centre of the receiving line stood Lord Richo, a tall, handsome man dressed in heavy armour. His long hair was tied in a long topknot from the crown of his head, all save a single thin plait which hung down at his left temple. He wore a pair of swords in his sash, one long and one short, and carried a dragon blade in his right hand. On his right shoulder he wore the skull of a large, long-snouted beast and on his left arm, a slender and very beautiful girl in a white and purple robe. This couple were flanked by a dozen Bushi and a dozen more lined the walls around the courtyard.

"Can you feel the love?" Jack whispered.

Lady Jingo slipped gracefully down from her horse and waved a slender hand. At the gesture, her entourage sank to their knees before their host. Oddly, although they had dismounted with considerable grace and poise, Jingo's handmaiden and masked guard knelt with an unusual stiffness. The Lady herself stepped forward and bowed from the waist.

"Richo-no-Hajima, Lord of Origehara; may you live a thousand years in contentment and plenty," she said.

Richo returned the gesture with slightly less gravity. "Jingo-no-Shijo, Lady of Kahare; may you live a thousand years in luxury and bliss."

"It is good to see you, Brother Daimyo," Lady Jingo announced. "In this troubled time, I bring you gifts of great wealth and propositions of grave import."

"Then let us repair to a more private area," Richo suggested. "One more conducive to such sensitive discussion."

Jingo nodded. "Of course," she agreed. "If my entourage could be shown to my quarters."

"Of course," Richo agreed. "My seneschal shall escort them to your assigned quarters. I advise them not to wander."

"Naturally. Saori, Matabei; attend me." The handmaiden and bodyguard rose to follow their mistress.

"Noriko," Richo said.

"Yes, My Lord," the girl replied; Jack was somewhat surprised to hear that this demure young creature was also a Goa'uld.

"Go with Eizan and ensure that our guests are made comfortable. After that, return to your quarters and await me."

"As you command, My Lord."

Once the girl had left his side, Lord Richo offered his arm to Lady Jingo and led her from the courtyard. Two of his Bushi followed and two more came behind Jingo's servants.

Yukio motioned for SG-1 to drop back a little and they hovered behind Lady Jingo's retinue as they were shown to their quarters. At last, only they were left with the girl and the dour-faced Jaffa seneschal.

"The three komuso may lodge in here," Noriko declared.

"My Lady," Yukio said. "I am sworn to accompany these three and speak for them. They have taken vows of silence as part of their musha-shugyo."

"Then you shall lodge with them also," Noriko agreed. "However, first I would have you attend me, geisha."

"A-as you command, My Lady," Yukio agreed. She turned to the seneschal. "My companions will require water to wash and to drink," she said. "After that, by the conditions of their pilgrimage they must meditate for two hours, undisturbed."

"I understand," Eizan assured her. "As they are here on the musha-shugyo, will they desire to make challenge to my master's Bushi?"

"Not at this time. They are sworn to five years of self-cultivation before they may engage in any combat."

Eizan nodded. "It is well for them," he replied. "My master's Richo-ryu school is unbeatable."

"I do not doubt it," Yukio replied, tactfully.

"Enough!" Noriko insisted. "Away, Eizan and see to the needs of our guests. You, geisha, come with me."

"Yes, My Lady." Yukio shot a helpless glance at her companions and followed the Goa'uld.

"I shall bring you water," Eizan said, then stamped away.

"Well this mission is rapidly becoming a farce," Jack declared. "Does anyone have a clue what is happening?" For the last half hour, no-one had spoken save in the language of Yomi, a blend of the ancient Goa'uld mother tongue and the proto-Japanese dialect of the early Jomon period.

"The Seneschal is bringing water," Jonas replied. "After that we're to be left to meditate for two hours. Yukio explained that we're in the preparatory stages of a warriors' pilgrimage and therefore bound by all sorts of vows and rules."

Jack gave Jonas a hard look. "Jonas; I had the distinct impression that you didn't speak Japanese. I think this may have been because before we left Arcadia you said to me: 'I don't speak Japanese'."

"I didn't," Jonas agreed. "It's a Goa'uld dialect and I learned it while I was waiting on the ship."

"You learned Japanese Goa'uld in less than a day?" Sam asked, sceptically.

Jonas shrugged. "Well, I probably couldn't hold a serious conversation and despite Lady Tomoe's help with the vowel sounds I doubt I'd pass for a native speaker at all, but I could make out about half of what they were saying; enough to get the gist and fill in the blanks."

"Then where's Yukio gone?" Jack demanded.

"Noriko – the girl – wanted her for something. I couldn't quite follow what she wanted."

"My guess would be advice on keeping a man," Sam said. "Geisha are supposed to be the doyens of the womanly arts after all and just at the moment Noriko is probably feeling pretty ordinary next to Jingo."

Jack snorted. "My heart bleeds for her. You reckon she's Richo's mistress then? I wasn't sure if she was his lover or his daughter; not that with the Goa'uld that would have to be an either/or question. How does that work, anyway?" he wondered. "I thought Goa'uld weren't supposed to do...well, each other."

Sam shook her head. "The rule is against producing a harcesis child; either Goa'uld can prevent conception taking place and if an accident does happen, the female can reabsorb the foetus."

Jack thought about that for a moment. "Eew."

"So what now?" Jonas asked.

"Now? Now we wait for Yukio. And meditate. Perhaps on why I argued so hard for us to come on this mission."

*

Yukio was gone for almost the entire two-hour grace period she had purchased for SG-1 and she returned looking even more worried that Jack felt. She slumped down on a bench and stretched out, full length.

"No joy?" Jack asked.

"Hmm?"

"I take it from that look on your face that whatever plan you were hatching isn't going to work."

"No," Yukio replied, listlessly. "No, it will work, I'm sure of it."

"Right," Jack said. "So...Happy?"

"Hmm."

Jack shot a look of appeal at Sam. "Yukio?" she asked. "What is the plan? Only, you're the only one who knows, so we can't really put the plan into action unless you tell us what it is."

"Hmm."

Sam sighed in frustration. "Jonas; you want to try and have a go at all?"

Jonas walked over and lay down on the bench, his feet pointing away from Yukio and his head lying alongside hers. "Hey," he said.

"Hey."

"How'd it go?"

"Hmm."

"You want to tell us the plan?"

"'Kay." Yukio sat up and Jonas did likewise.

"You said the marriage thing gave us an opportunity," Jack prompted.

"Yes," Yukio agreed. "As you have seen, Richo already has a concubine; several in fact, although Noriko is his favourite."

"Not his daughter then?" Jack asked.

Yukio shook her head. "Noriko is the youngest daughter of one of Richo's vassals. When her father attempted to revolt, he was slain and her brother gave Noriko to Richo as a hostage. Within a matter of years, Noriko had become Richo's favoured concubine; he seems genuinely fond of her and that means that Jingo will see Noriko as a threat."

"And vice versa," Sam supposed.

Yukio gave a sad chuckle. "Oh, yes. Noriko is petrified and I doubt I was much help to her. She sees that Jingo is more beautiful than her and so she wants to correct her other flaws; become more womanly and learn how to be a sparkling conversationalist."

"You sound almost sorry for her."

"It's all rather pathetic really," Yukio sighed. "I don't know about you, but I like my Daimyo properly vile and megalomaniacal."

"Plan." Jack prompted again, reluctant to admit how much he agreed.

"Alright," Yukio agreed. "So, if a Daimyo as powerful as Jingo, a Daimyo already noted for a tendency to rebellion, is seeking an alliance of marriage with Richo then she must be planning to make her move. United, Richo and Jingo command enough of the north-eastern ji-samurai to present a serious threat to Izanami on their own, never mind what the other ninja can achieve.

"Now, Richo is probably keen enough to get Jingo into his bed, but more reluctant to oppose the Empress. What we need to do is spur him on to join the revolution."

Jack nodded. "And how do we do that?"

"We have to launch an attack against him; an attack that will look like a crude attempt by the forces of the Empress to frame Jingo and our entry into the fortress behind Jingo's entourage gives us a perfect opportunity. If we strike at Richo," she went on, "then disappear, his first impulse will be to blame Jingo. When he discovers that we are gone, and that we were never actually a part of the entourage, he will blame Izanami."

"Right," Jack said. "So we blow something up and make ourselves scarce. What's the problem?"

"It is just...I don't think that would work," Yukio admitted. "If we attack too directly, or create too much confusion, there is every chance that the two groups will simply start fighting; they could kill each other before they can discover our involvement and that will only reduce the pressure on Izanami."

"Then what can we do?" Jonas asked.

"It has to be something subtle, yet personal," Yukio agreed. "Something easy to blame on Jingo that will enrage Richo but not make him reach immediately for his shoto."

"The girl," Sam realised.

Yukio nodded, unhappily. "It is...perfect," she said, unhappily. "I just feel bad about striking at him through someone so...artless."

"Hey," Jack reminded her, "she's still a Goa'uld; not some downy-cheeked innocent."

"I know."

"So. Let's have some details."

Yukio nodded. "According to Noriko, Richo will come to her one hour before dinner to make love; he does so every night."

"Like clockwork?" Jack asked.

"Like clockwork."

Sam scoffed. "Who says romance is dead?"

"Well I guess it will be," Jonas suggested. His face fell. "I'm sorry; that was a little tasteless."

"Just a whisker," Jack admitted. "I blame Kawalsky, myself; you used to be such a nice boy. Yukio; pray continue."

Yukio nodded, still looking subdued. "We have to time this just right and make contingency plans," she explained. "We are deep in the lion's den, after all. Now, as putative members of Jingo's retinue we'll have fairly free access to the bulk of the fortress; we will be watched, but there will be opportunities."

"To do what?" Sam asked.

"How much C4 do we have?" Yukio asked.

"Five pounds each," Jack replied. "More than enough, but I thought we weren't blowing anything up?"

"No need to sound so disappointed about it," Yukio said. "Sam has to arrange a diversion, just in case we should need one; as I said..."

"Contingency plans," Jack agreed.

"Right. Likewise, I need you to poison the water supply."

Jonas raised a hand. "Excuse me. I was just wondering; if you want Lord Richo to join the revolution, do you really think poisoning him is the way to go. Won't he be a little too...I don't know, dead to do much rebelling?"

Yukio sighed. "Goa'uld are very difficult to kill, especially by poison. Of the three effective formulae known by the ninja which would kill a Goa'uld outright, two could never be manufactured in sufficient quantity to poison an entire fortress water supply and one is insoluble. No, this drug" – she took a small vial from inside her robes – "only incapacitates, and only then when coupled with the secretions of a Goa'uld symbiote. Once introduced into the water supply, the drug will be ingested by the castle's residents and persist in their bodies for about nine hours. The drug inhibits the neutralisation of lactic acid; it will have no effect on anyone who remains relatively inactive, but any exertion on the part of a Goa'uld or Jaffa will quickly lead to crippling muscular pains."

"Right," Jack agreed.

"Jonas," Yukio continued. "You will have the vital task of locating a secure escape route. No Daimyo builds a fortress without at least half-a-dozen concealed exits and if your heightened awareness and information processing ability are half what Sam makes out, you are just the man to go looking for one or more of them."

Jonas was clearly flattered. "I'll do my best," he promised.

"So much for contingencies," Jack said. "What about plan A?"

*

Jahara

"You seem troubled, Lady Inari."

"My Lord!" Inari exclaimed. She turned and knelt before the Shogun.

"Rise, Lady," Okuni-Nushi sighed, taking a seat on the battlements beside the First Prime of Izanami. "What ails you?"

"I am a servant of the Queen Empress," Inari replied, dutifully. "That is all that my life requires."

"Answer my question without fear, Inari. I have been interviewing the first of the Fudai Daimyo all day, seeking those I can entrust with My Empress' safety while I am gone; I am sick to my stomach of the inane obsequies of the court. You and Lord Gojira are among the few people in this fortress whom I truly respect; I pray you speak to me as one warrior to another."

"My Lord Okuni is too kind," Inari sighed. "He is observant, also. I am troubled, Sir. Of course, My Lord Okuni knows that Gojira and I have a child."

"It was my understanding that you had more than one?"

Inari's face paled a little. "We...Our eldest son died of the damp fever when he was but an infant. You know better than I what became of...of our daughter."

"I am sorry," Okuni said. "I did not know that your son had died. Is the second now ill?"

"No," Inari replied. "He is healthy, but..." She shook her head. "It is foolishness, My Lord."

"Perhaps," Okuni replied, "but it may be that I can do something to ease your troubles, Lady. It would make my heart feel easier to be faced by troubles which have solutions; my own are without resolution."

Startled by her own temerity, Inari laid a comforting hand on Okuni-Nushi's arm. "My husband and I share your grief, My Lord," she murmured. "The Lady Tomoe was a true warrior."

"Such praise is but empty words from any but a warrior born," Okuni said, squeezing her hand in gratitude.

"I...Forgive me, My Lord. I meant no importunity." Inari cast her eyes downwards and tried to withdraw her hand, but Okuni held her tight.

"Your words could not offend my beloved's memory," he assured her. "Tell me your troubles."

"Well...My husband believes that he has seen a...a gaki. A hungry ghost. It may be that this ghost wishes us ill; the woman whose appearance it bore was slain by my husband many years ago. She...She had a child and we fear that for taking her from the child she will take our child from us." She looked awkward. "In truth, when Ichiro was taken by the fever we believed that it might be her influence that struck him down."

"This is peasant superstition," Okuni chided.

"Well, I am a peasant," Inari reminded him.

"You?" Okuni's eyes widened in surprise. "But you have such courage, honour and nobility; I would never have known. You have such qualities as remind me of Tomoe." He shook his head, sadly. "Where did your husband see this spirit of ill-fortune?"

"On Arcadia, but he believes – as do I – that she has pursued him to Yomi."

"Indeed," Okuni mused. "I shall see to it that you and yours are protected as much as is in my power," he promised. "I will always defend those who honour the memory of my beloved. Where is your husband, Lady?"

"He prepares for your war on Arcadia, My Lord."

"I can not spare Lord Gojira from the assault, but there are other captains who can attend to the preparations," Okuni said. "Fetch your son and any members of your household whom you need with you; I shall send your husband to join you in my late brother's chambers and arrange that those chambers be well guarded."

"My Lord," Inari gasped.

"Good faith and good service deserve reward," Okuni told her. "When the fleet makes for Arcadia, you will be the only one by the Empress' side in whom I have absolute trust, Lady Inari. I may not live to reward you and you may not live to receive my rewards; accept them in advance, for what little they can avail." Okuni sighed. "Now leave me, Lady. I would be alone again."

Inari bowed low. "Yes, My Lord; and thank you."

*

Origehara

Jonas skulked around the corridors of the Goa'uld fortress, feeling vaguely nauseous. To say that he hated Yukio's plan was an understatement. While he had no objections to the killing of Goa'uld, per se, the proposed method of Yukio's plan was disturbing. Apparently, Yukio's travelling kit included not only an apothecary's ransom in the exotic potions and draughts concocted by the various ninja clans, but also a supply of drugs and toxins developed by the Goa'uld themselves. Among the latter she carried a quantity of a drug used to create a poison concubine, a particularly vile tool of assassination.

The poison concubine was a device favoured for the elimination of members of a Goa'uld's own faction. A human of particular beauty would be delivered to the target as a gift or tribute, but genetically or chemically altered in such a way that a state of sexual arousal would trigger the release of massive doses of Goa'uld-killing toxins in their sweat and saliva. Once triggered, the effects would also cause such catastrophic damage to the concubine's own system that the tampering could not with any certainty be traced.

Although the favoured means of creating such a weapon were long and complex, the drug which Yukio carried could transform even a Goa'uld host into a crude version in moments. An overdose of the drug would trigger the reaction early; the cause would be obvious. Yukio was certain that if his favourite concubine were to die by such a means, Richo would take the killing to be a threat against him; a message to tell him that he was vulnerable to attack. This would add credence to Jingo's denials of guilt and fuel his anger at the actual culprits, whomever he decided those were.

Jonas had voiced his opposition to the plan, but he had not been able to suggest an alternative. None of his comrades seemed any more enamoured of the scheme than he was, but they had no better suggestions either. Each of his comrades was a warrior, however, and while Jonas was capable of greater violence than most people suspected, cold-blooded murder was not to his taste. The knowledge that Noriko was less than twenty years old, her host no more than thirty, had not helped. Jonas did not know why Yukio had revealed this information, but he suspected that she wanted them to pass judgement on her. She did not like the plan either.

The thought of Noriko's death preyed upon Jonas' mind; he found the thought difficult to shake off and he had grown so distracted that he was afraid he would pass by any secret exit without seeing a thing, even if it were clearly signed in neon letters. He had almost conquered his distraction when a fresh wave of nausea hit him and he was forced to lean against a partition wall for support. On the far side of the thin wall he heard voices.

"I do not like this," a woman said. "The strange warriors moving so freely about the palace."

"It is necessary," a man replied and Jonas recognised the voice of the seneschal, Eizan. "Lady Jingo comes in good faith; Lord Richo must show her welcome. Do not worry, daughter; in his own fortress Lord Richo is unchallenged. He can pass through these walls as though they were smoke and come and go from his throne room at will."

"How can he do such things?" a different woman asked, breathlessly.

"He has his secrets," Eizan replied.

"And you know those secrets?"

Eizan's voice puffed up with pride. "I am trusted by My Lord," he said, then added with a slight sneer: "as a peasant like you could never dream, Mariko."

"Of course, Master Eizan," the woman replied. "I know my place. My only hope is that one day you may trust me, as Lord Richo trusts you."

"And what would a pretty little thing like you do to earn that trust, I wonder?"

Jonas shook his head. Even without seeing the speakers he knew that the Seneschal was being played by his ambitious underling. Evidently Eizan's daughter saw it too, for she coughed discretely and said: "Father; the fires in the Lady Jingo's rooms are still to be lit."

"Then go and light them, Sakiko," Eizan instructed.

"I...Yes, father."

Sakiko swept from the room and Jonas was forced to move on, so that she would not see that he had been listening. He rather doubted that there would be much of use to be heard from that room for a little while, anyway. He sloped and the tall Jaffa woman quickly outpaced him.

As he walked, Jonas' brain turned over what he had heard. He can come and go from his throne room at will. Well, that was to be expected, but Jonas got the impression that Eizan had meant something other than simply having the keys for the door. Jonas suddenly realised that he had been going about this the wrong way. He had been looking for tunnels, but a Goa'uld did not need a physical opening to leave a room.

*

As she waited in their assigned chamber, Yukio's hand kept straying to the hilt of the tanto hidden beneath her robes. It had been child's play for her to steal the weapon from one of Jingo's Bushi; if she were to find herself requiring a swift exit this blade, left in the heart of a passing Bushi, would provide the necessary evidence of a half-baked fit-up, although it would lack the personal touch. Simply to murder a servant in her flight would seem the act of an incompetent assassin, rather than a calculated insult.

There was a raging struggle in Yukio's heart. On the one hand, her old ninja training – and the concomitant way of thinking – had returned to her more swiftly than she could have hoped. She was at home in this land once more and she knew in her bones how things should be done here. On the other hand, however, she had spent twenty years learning a more gentle way from Freyja. She was still a warrior, but under the Asgard she had learned to spurn torture as a tool of vengeance, to value all life and to bring death only as a last resort. She had truly believed that she had become a better person during her training on the Sesrumnir and her service aboard the Stupid Idea, but here she was, ready to murder again. There again, who was she to return after twenty years and pass judgement on the tried and tested methods of the people she had abandoned.

Her hand left the hilt of the dagger and touched the Asgard gauntlet which lay dormant beneath her sleeve.

"Forgive me, Freyja," she whispered. "Please, Commander; forgive what I am about to do."

*

Jahara

Okuni-Nushi stood on the landing field and watched the barques lift off and the ring transporters activate, carrying supplies to the four ha'tak vessels which waited in orbit. Two more vessels were undergoing repairs on the greater moon; they had suffered damage in the war against Anubis and Okuni did not wish to take them into battle with breached armour and deficient reactor shielding. Those ships would be supplied from the depot at the shipyard. Down on the field, the ha'tak commanders – minor Daimyo of the Shinpan families, for the most part – ran to and fro, interfering with the carefully ordered resupply exercise as they fought over stores and ordnance. It was a joke to see them argue over who should be restocked first, especially when Okuni's servants had gone to such lengths to ensure that all would receive a full consignment of all supplies in good time.

Okuni understood, of course, the drive which pushed the Daimyo to squabble so. He possessed in full measure the acquisitive and competitive drives of his race, he simply chose not to give them reign. Born at the zenith of his parents' joint rule and in the time when they were most in love, he had been raised as an embodiment of the Buke Sho Hatto; he understood, as few of the Daimyo did, that the essence of the philosophy which Izanagi had created was to seek the middle way between the hunger and fury of his nature and the balancing influence of honour. The other Daimyo seemed oblivious to this simple truth, just as his own brother had been. In fact, only one other Daimyo had ever really understood.

Okuni-Nushi had known – and loved – Tomoe-no-Tagahara for almost seventeen centuries, ever since she had come to Jahara as handmaiden to her older sister, Okichi. The two women were hostages to the good behaviour of their father, Juntoku-no-Tagahara, but the family had hoped that their eldest daughter would form an alliance of marriage with Okuni and so increase their power. Instead, Okichi had become one of Susanowa's concubines, a position of undeniable privilege and influence, but one without any security. Two hundred years after the arrival of the Tagahara, Amaterasu had left her husband and in his rage, Susanowa had dismissed all of his concubines. Okichi had been lucky and had been cast back to her family; those who were less highly-born were killed out of hand.

When Okichi returned to Tagahara, Tomoe had stayed behind, to the great delight of Okuni. For a century and more he had been instructing the younger daughter of Tagahara in the bujutsu and they had grown closer than hostage and jailor should be. There followed a long struggle of wills between Okuni and his father. In the wake of Amaterasu's betrayal, Susanowa was for a long time unapproachable on the subject of marriage. Okuni had bided his time, but even a century later Susanowa always opposed the idea of him taking a hostage as his concubine, let alone as his bride; that Okuni's intended was a warrior-woman only made it more difficult for him to convince his father.

Then came the fateful duel, when Okuni had won Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi and lost that which he truly desired. That was the day on which Susanowa at last lost forever the love of his elder son. Furious, Okuni had demanded that Tomoe at least be granted an honourable marriage to Niningi. Susanowa had looked Okuni in the eyes and said:

"I honour her out of proportion as a concubine; a whore is all she is good for."

The burning heritage of the Goa'uld had almost claimed Okuni-Nushi that day. To be cheated of his love and to hear her so insulted, he had almost given way to rage and slaughtered father and brother alike in his fury. The only thing that had stood between him and the abyss at that moment was Tomoe; the solemn dignity with which she had accepted her fate had touched him and the look in her eyes as they met his for the last time in six centuries had told him that this was what she had learned from him. Her honour demanded that she obey, even at the cost of her heart. If she loved her teacher so much that she would do this to honour him, how could he abandon honour himself?

It was wrong that they had been separated; Okuni had never questioned that. If proof had been required then the singular synchronicity of their long-awaited union gave it. When he stripped away her battered armour, Okuni saw the tattoos upon Tomoe's skin, a near-exact mirror of the marks which he himself bore: Wolf, dragon and ki-rin. That their thoughts, as their beliefs, could have meshed so utterly was surely proof that they were meant to be together, but now she had been taken from him forever; taken by the cursed soil of Arcadia.

An insignificant ball of rock had claim the lives of two kinsmen and Okuni's own true love and Izanami ordered him to return to that ill-starred planet. Had the empress not remained the only one of his kin whom he loved, admired and trusted when all others seemed turned against him, Okuni would have suspected her of seeking to be rid of him.

"My Lord?"

"Yes, Bushi," Okuni sighed.

"There has been another...delay in loading the stores. Our departure will be held back another eight hours."

"So long?"

The Jaffa coughed, apologetically. "A consignment of glider fuel was dropped. We have had to clear half of the loading area and it will take six hours at least to clear the spill safely. We could work more quickly, but..."

"No. If half of the labourers are incinerated it will take at least six hours for replacements to arrive and the mess will still need to be cleared. Does it not seem odd to you, Bushi?"

"Indeed, My Lord," the Jaffa replied.

Okuni gave the Jaffa a sideways look. The young man had the kind of petrified expression which always overcame the Bushi when one of the Daimyo addressed a rhetorical question in their direction. The Bushi were not well-acquainted with the etiquette of such a situation. "Does it not seem odd to you," he began again, "that it will take us less than a day to travel billions of miles from Yomi to Arcadia, but that it takes us so very long to pack for the journey?"

"Yes, My Lord."

"Why is that, do you think? Answer me honestly."

"My Lord...The supplies, ordnance and fuel are ready for loading, but the Daimyo continually redirect the Bushi and the labourers; each load is redirected a dozen times before it reaches a ring transporter, if it is not dropped and ruined en route."

"A simple and elegant expression of the problem," Okuni applauded. "Now, if a simple Bushi like yourself can see this, why do you think the Daimyo entrusted with command of our fleet do not see this?"

"It is not my place to say, My Lord," the Jaffa replied, diplomatically.

Okuni laughed. "Well said." He took a heavy crest ring from his finger and held it out. "Take this," he told the Bushi. "I am placing you in charge of implementing the loading of the ha'tak vessels. Inform the commanders that I have summoned them to attend on me in the Shogunate audience chamber for the assignment of precedence."

"Yes, My Lord," the Jaffa said. "And...My Lord; if they should ask what the assignment of precedence is?"

Okuni smiled to himself. "They will not. It sounds grand and ominous enough that their only fear will be that they shall be late and somehow lose out. Do not worry," he added with a wink. "I shall make sure they remain in the audience chamber long enough for you to finish loading the ships."

"But My Lord; it will take us at least a day and a half to complete the loading once we have cleared the spill."

"Yes," Okuni mused. "What will they find to occupy their time."

*

Origehara

Origehara was designed to confuse. If any invader were to breach the outer walls, a handful of defenders could give an army a Stalingrad-sized headache. A lesser man would probably have got lost long ago, but Jonas – although he preferred not to think of himself as abnormal – was no normal man. In addition to a phenomenal attention to detail and exceptional sensory acuity, Jonas Quinn enjoyed the luxury of a more-than-eidetic memory; he could not only remember in exact detail any scene he had ever experienced, he could actually examine those memories and tease out details that he had previously forgotten. He could see, in his mind's eye, the exact route he had taken to get here, and he could connect the doors and corridors he had not explored to calculate a much faster way back to the guest rooms.

Unfortunately, for all of this, he could not make anything that he had seen add up to a secret passageway. It occurred to him that possibly the entrances to such a network of secret passages would be concealed by hatches composed of mimetic naquadah compounds, in which case there would be nothing to reveal them when closed. It was a frustrating thought.

Just as he began to think that he should turn back, Jonas heard a commotion from up ahead. There was a woman's cry and the sounds of a struggle. For a moment, Jonas was concerned that Sam or Yukio might be in danger and he quickened his pace. He quickly realised that the voice was not either of theirs, but the woman was clearly in trouble and he would not have felt right walking away, whether he was supposed to be undercover or not.

Jonas rounded a corner and saw two of Jingo's Bushi struggling to pinion a woman in servant's garb. In his disguise, Jonas carried a small knife; other than that he had nothing to hand but a bamboo flute. Fortunately, the shakuhachi was cut from the roots of the bamboo grass, rather than the slender shoots; it was more than an inch thick and very heavy, and when it struck the first Bushi on the back of the head he collapsed like a diplomatic mission in Jack O'Neill's hands. His comrade turned and swung wildly at Jonas. Jonas sprang back far enough to avoid the blow, but his hat was jarred loose from his head.

The Bushi stared in alarm at the fair hair and pale eyes of the man in front of him. "Who...?" the Jaffa began, but his protestations were cut short. His erstwhile victim snatched the unconscious Bushi's shortsword and slashed it across her second assailant's throat. The Bushi's voice died in a gurgle; Jonas forced himself not to react to the ghastly noise and instead pulled his hat back into place over his features.

"Thank you," the woman said. She was tall for a Yoman. Her dark hair was in disarray and her robes dishevelled, but she held herself straight and proud. Jonas barely restrained himself from saying her name when he recognised her, but he remembered his cover and merely waved an acknowledgement.

"Are you alright, Jaffa?" Sakiko asked.

Jonas nodded. He motioned towards his concealed face and made a shutting motion with his other hand.

"I see," the woman said. "You are one of the pilgrims? Sworn to silence."

Jonas nodded again.

"Well, I thank you, Jaffa...Whatever your name is. If I have time at the end of the day, I shall seek out your geisha friend and ask her what you are called; with luck, I shall find the time to thank you properly."

Armed with only a basic understanding of the Yoman dialect of pre-medieval Japanese, Jonas was unable to come up with a definite translation of Sakiko's offer; the context-based 'thank you properly' was merely the least alarming option. He desperately tried to indicate by the simple expedient of waving his arms that whatever she was offering was not necessary, but he was not sure how successful he was.

Sakiko crouched and laid the short sword in the hand of the unconscious Jaffa. "We should not be found here. Come; this way."

*

The water supply for Origehara came from an artesian well underneath the fortress. Water was piped up, filtered for toxins and impurities and cooled, stored in a series of massive tanks and then fed up into the various systems above. One of these tanks was dedicated to storing the drinking water supply; that was where Jack had to insert the vial of poison; inside the filters and the toxin screens.

Jack had now spent a good hour clinging to the top of that drinking water tank while a Jaffa guard searched for him. The metal skin of the tank was bitterly cold and the guard was annoyingly persistent. Jack's chest and legs were going numb and every part of his mind that was not absorbed with keeping still and quiet had moved on from devising painful deaths for the Jaffa to imagining what kind of person he might be. He had just decided that the Jaffa – to whom he now felt very close – was called Bob and played checkers with an elderly uncle of a weekend, when Bob finally turned and left the tank room. Jack waited another few minutes, then lowered himself stiffly to the ground and straightened his hat.

He listened briefly at the door, then slipped out into the corridor. He had barely gone twenty feet when he saw Bob the Jaffa ahead of him. For a moment, Jack thought he had been seen, but then Bob dropped to his knees and bowed his head. Jack took his chance and dashed back the way he had come, ducked into a side passage, cut left, took the second right, followed an anticlockwise loop and found himself back in the corridor he had been trying to avoid with footsteps fast approaching.

With a sigh, Jack knelt and bowed. Peeking through the wickerwork, he saw Jingo and Richo appear and walk past him, flanked by Jingo's two servants on the left, a pair of Richo's Bushi on the right and a handmaiden following with a jug of water and two goblets on a tray. One of the Bushi cast a look of suspicion on Jack as they passed and Richo's handmaiden also glanced at him. Neither of the Goa'uld spared him a moment's glance and neither did Jingo's handmaiden or bodyguard. The group walked on past and Jack watched them go, a strange and unaccountable feeling growing in his stomach.

Why don't you move like Jaffa? Jack thought, staring after Jingo's servants.

Jack put the question to the back of his mind. Exposure was dangerous and the first thing for him to do was therefore to retreat to the relative safety of SG-1's lodgings. Once more he took a side passage to avoid Bob and instead ran into another komosu.

Jack bowed, warily, trying to work out if this komuso was one of his comrades; it was so hard to tell under the basket.

"Colonel?"

"Carter? Do you know how to get back to the guest rooms?"

Sam nodded her hat. "Yes, Sir. Don't you?"

"Only in a roundabout kind of way," Jack replied, evasively. "How did you know it was me?"

Sam shrugged. "How many people around here are six-foot-two?"

"Just me and Jingo's handmaiden," Jack admitted. "Come on; let's get back to base."

"Yes," Sam agreed. "It's this way." She paused. "Wait a minute. Do you mean to tell me that Jingo's handmaiden is six-two?"

Jack nodded. "Yes. I knew there was something about her that was out of place."

"Yes; I thought that as well," Sam said. "You'd think it would be more noticeable."

Jack shrugged. "Everyone looks tall on a horse," he assured her. "Don't sweat it."

"Well, I wouldn't," Sam assured him, "only I got a look under the back of her veil when they passed me in the corridor."

"They walked passed you and you didn't see how tall she was?"

"Everyone looks tall when you're grovelling," Sam replied. "The point is that I noticed she was blonde."

"Also unusual on Yomi."

"Yes," Sam agreed, but more than that..."

Jack suddenly realised what Sam was driving at. "Oh. We can't make a call here. Back to base; quickly."

*

At some point in Yomi's past, roughly a thousand years before the present, a convention had developed among the ji-samurai: a social doctrine which held that women were essential purely for the purpose of reproduction. Observing that their Goa'uld masters spent as little time as possible with their queens – as a result of the contentious and often homicidal nature of Goa'uld marriages – the Bushi resolved to do the same. Relations between spouses became deliberately distanced; having denied themselves closeness to their wives and mistresses, a widespread, if far from universal, culture of institutional homosexuality arose. One of the knock-on effects of this culture – as Jonas had just discovered – was that many women of the ji-samurai were neglected and frustrated. The doctrine must have a secure hold indeed among Richo's servants, at least to judge by Sakiko's actions.

Avoiding Sakiko had driven Jonas much further towards the Goa'uld residential areas of the palace than he had intended. In fact, he was certain that he had gone much further into Richo's personal territory than any komuso could do and hope to be forgiven for it. Thus, when he heard the sound of approaching feet in what he knew to be a long, straight corridor with no side doors, he was rather concerned.

It was at that moment, when he needed it the most, that his memory finally came up with the goods. As he stared along the uniform patterning of the walls he saw that they were not uniform. There was an anomaly in the decoration: an anomaly that he had seen before, in another passage, without paying it any particular mind. The two imperfections – a slight curving in the leaves of the painted trees which gave the Daimyo's living quarters a cool and welcoming air – were too similar to be coincidence; they had to mean something. It was difficult to see, but Jonas realised that the curve of the leaves was not random; it left the tip of every third leaf pointing directly towards a single point.

Jonas found that point and pushed, and the wall swung open on a hinge so finely balanced that no pressure, however great, would have caused the hidden door to open if it were applied to anywhere but that one spot. As the footsteps drew closer, Jonas ducked through the opening and swung the door shut behind him. He found himself in a narrow corridor with a low ceiling, hung heavy with cobwebs. The webs were a relief, for they told him that this was a secret long forgotten. Once the footsteps had passed him by, Jonas began to make his way along the secret passage. It was too much to hope that it would lead directly to the outside world, but there was just a chance that it would connect with a larger network of passages which would include Richo's escape routes.

The passage was almost completely dark and Jonas proceeded with great caution. He was certain that he was going up, which would not lead him out, but the tunnel only ran one way from the hatch. After about a hundred yards he saw light ahead of him; he slowed as the sound of voices drifted towards him.

The first voice he heard was Lord Richo's. "Please come to the point, My Lady. I understand that you seek a marriage alliance, but I myself have sued for such a match and been refused on three occasions. Why then should I accept when you are the supplicant? What is it that has led you to change your mind?"

"Opportunity, My Lord," Jingo replied. "We find ourselves at a critical juncture in the history of our world. You have heard, no doubt, that Susanowa and Niningi are dead? That the Queen-Empress plans to launch an all-out assault on their killers?"

Jonas crept forwards and found himself in a hidden gallery, overlooking Richo's private audience chamber. Torches flickered dangerously in their brackets on the paper-screen panels of the lower walls, while sculpted wooden moulding covered the upper level of the two-storey room. Small slits in the panels allowed a hidden observer to look out and see all that passed in the chamber below. Jonas moved close; Richo sat on his throne, flanked by two Bushi; Jingo knelt demurely in front of him, her servants bowed at her sides.

"Of course," Richo replied. "I have been expecting word from you since the news reached me," he admitted. "Your ambition is as constant as it is insatiable, my lovely Jingo."

"You misunderstand me," Jingo replied. "I do not seek mastery of Yomi anymore."

Richo looked wrong footed but he struggled to hide his confusion. "Then what is it that you desire?"

"I have come to make a proposition," the lady explained. "Between us, we control enough warriors to overthrow Jahara once the garrison is weakened, but my ambition does not end there. We can seize this world, but we shall not hold it; instead we shall surrender Yomi to its true master and in return we shall be granted a place in the service of the one, true lord of the Goa'uld."

"What is this talk?" Richo demanded, uncomfortably. "What true master?"

Jingo lowered her head. "They came upon my fortress in the night, entering without my knowledge or leave. My defences were as nothing to them and all of my secrets were known to them. I knew then that they were truly gods among gods."

"But who are they?"

Jingo turned and bowed to her bodyguard. "My Lord," she murmured, reverently.

With a smooth motion, the bodyguard stood and pulled off his mask. Richo's eyes lit up with recognition and he rose to his feet in alarm. Perceiving a threat to their master, the two Bushi stepped forward and drew their swords, but the bodyguard was too swift for them. His sword flashed in the torchlight as he drew it, but the blade moved so fast that only a person with Jonas' incredible awareness could have tracked the entirety of its passage. Jonas saw the sword leave its scabbard and sweep upwards to slice through the throat of the right hand warrior, then reverse its moment to slash across the body of the Bushi on the left, cleaving straight through his armour and into the flesh beneath. With a flick of his wrist the warrior dashed the blood from the blade, then returned it to the scabbard.

"I know you?" Richo gasped.

"Your grandfather knew me," the warrior replied in the voice of a Goa'uld. "I am Hachiman-no-Mikoto. I am the master of Kahare, true heir to the Dragon Throne of Jahara, Supreme Overseer of Yama and the rightful Emperor of Yomi."

The handmaiden rose graciously to her full height. "And, as all Goa'uld must be if they would live, the servant of the Great God, Anubis." With that she swept off her veil and Jonas stifled a gasp of surprise.

*

"Osiris? Here?" Jack demanded. "Why?"

Sam shrugged. "She must be trying to topple Izanami, and if she wants Jingo and Richo to unite, I'm guessing that we don't."

"Right," Jack agreed. "So let's call the whole thing off." He took out his radio and opened the channel. "Ran," he whispered, using Yukio's callsign. "Come in, Ran."

Yukio's radio was almost inaudible, but she felt the vibration of the speaker and reached into her robes. At that exact moment, however, the door to Noriko's chambers opened. Yukio switched off the radio and bowed low.

"My dear geisha," Noriko said. "Enter; enter."

"Yes, My Lady," Yukio agreed, brushing her fingers against the injector as she withdrew her hands from her secret pockets. Forgive me.

"Ran!" Jack hissed, urgently. He closed the channel. "We're screwed," he announced.

*

"Anubis has plans for Yomi," Osiris explained. "You do not present a threat to him, but he recognises the value of your mines and wishes to command the loyalty of your ji-samurai. For this reason, instead of an assault in force which would cost him dearly, he has decided to return Lord Hachiman, who knows his place in Lord Anubis' order, to his rightful rank as Emperor of Yomi. In order to do this, he needs only to bring one of his ha'tak vessels into orbit around your world, but there is a complication."

"Yomi is no easy prey," Hachiman growled, proudly. "Between the Firestorm and the lunar defences, not even Anubis can bring a vessel to Yomi with impunity."

"Quite," Osiris agreed, tightly. "Thus we needs someone on the ground to deactivate the defences. Whosoever provided this service would find a place high in the favour of Lord Anubis."

"Lord Hachiman brought Lady Osiris to my...to his fortress at Kahare," Jingo corrected herself, "which I have kept for him all these years. I at once swore my loyalty to Anubis and My Lady explained her needs. At once I thought of my beloved and devoted suitor, Lord Richo, the erstwhile boon companion of Lord Niningi."

Richo did not look pleased to be reminded of his past relations with the Imperial family; Jonas guessed that they did not part amicably.

"Is it not true that you are acquainted with the layout of the palace security complex?" Jingo asked. "That you could order the defence stations to stand down?"

"It is true," Richo assured her, proudly. "Although we would have to gain entry to the heart of the fortress and extract the command codes from Izanami's own computers."

"Child's play for our warriors," Jingo scoffed, "particularly if we appear divided until we strike. Izanami will send all of her forces out to seek vengeance and she shall be left open to our assault."

Hachiman's eyes lit up in excitement. "We shall crush all resistance!" He declared. "Seize the defences and so the entire world. Then I shall be Emperor and Izanami shall learn to serve me."

"And you shall all be favoured servants of Anubis," Osiris added.

"Yes," Hachiman agreed in an offhand fashion. "Of course, that."

"So, my beloved," Jingo purred. "What do you say?"

"Will you swear to serve Anubis?" Osiris asked, "or must Lord Hachiman draw his blade again."

*

"Come in Yojimbo; this is Rashomon."

Jack shared a look of concern with Sam before he answered Jonas' urgent whisper. "Go ahead, Rashomon," he said.

"We can call off the hunting expedition," Jonas said, using the code they had chosen for the assassination. "Richo is already on the point of agreeing to join a rebellion, but they're going to play it cool then snatch the planet for Anubis. Osiris is here."

"Yeah; we worked that out," Jack assured him. "We've tried to contact Ran but there's no response. I'm thinking its time we went to plan B and got the hell out of dodge. I'm sending Sanjuro to retrieve Ran; you get back to the room as soon as you can."

"That could be tricky," Jonas admitted. "I'm in a secret passage over the audience chamber; if I move too much they'll hear me."

"Alright," Jack sighed. "We'll try and set up a secondary diversion and I'll come get you. Where's the door?"

"The entrance is in one of the main trunk corridors, opposite the big silk-screen print of the eagle."

"Okay. You'll know the diversion when you hear it. Be ready," Jack said. "Yojimbo out."

Ominously, there was no response.

"Damn," Jack muttered. "We've been in some serious SNAFUs before but this is by far the Snaffiest in at least a year. If everything goes even further down the crapper we'll meet up by the pump room," he told Sam. "If we're made they'll look for us here."

"Good luck, Sir," Sam replied.

Jack nodded. "Keep your head down," he warned, "and be ready to blow stuff up."

Sam patted the hidden pocket which housed the detonator for her C4 charges. "I'm ready," she assured him.

"Then let's go rescue the civvies. Again."

*

Jonas slowly lowered the radio. He moved as carefully as he possibly could, feeling Hachiman's eyes bore into him as they ran along the length of the high panels. As Jingo and Richo discussed the details of their plan to seize control of the lunar defences, Hachiman leaned close to Osiris and whispered in her ear. She nodded once and he left the chamber.

Very carefully, Jonas began to move backwards down the gallery, but Jingo's head snapped up. "Intruder!" she hissed.

Osiris rolled her eyes in frustration. Jonas froze.

*

The greatest challenge for any assassin lay in physically reaching your target. Getting close enough to Noriko was easy however; the young Goa'uld was a gabbler and besides, she wanted Yukio to come close. That left only the problem that the Goa'uld had sat herself before a mirror and might see the injector in Yukio's hand.

"Perhaps you could do something with my hair," she suggested. "My Lord has often complimented me on the whiteness of my neck; do you think my hair hides too much of it?"

"No, My Lady," Yukio demurred. "The black against the white gives a fine and striking contrast; where the hair touches your skin it seems to glow."

"Well...try something," Noriko demanded. "Make me beautiful, then teach me how to move like she does; how to talk like she does. I will be her equal in all things, geisha."

"Yes, My Lady," Yukio agreed, obediently. She gathered up Noriko's thick, black hair and drew it back. "Maybe a braid," she suggested, "dressed to the right; then your neck would be all exposed here" – she brushed a hand against the left hand side of Noriko's throat; the muscles were drawn so tight that Yukio felt she could have played them like harp strings – "but contrasted against the black here. I'll just comb your hair out a little first."

Yukio started to drawn back her hand to reach for the injector, but Noriko caught hold of it. The Goa'uld drew Yukio's hand down and clasped it in her lap, so that the ninja was pulled forward to rest her chin on Noriko's shoulder.

"Could I ever compete with her?" Noriko asked, desperately.

"Of course, My Lady," Yukio replied, soothingly.

"Truly you think so?"

Yukio struggled with her impatience and anxiety, not to mention the discomfort of her position. "Your loveliness is every inch her equal," she promised. "You lack only a certain poise of age."

Noriko leaned her cheek against Yukio's and squeezed her hand, gratefully. "I am most uneasy of spirit," she sighed. "You shall massage me before making me more beautiful. You know that art, do you not?"

"Indeed," Yukio replied, truthfully; her role as a handmaiden had been a disguise, but her training for the role had been comprehensive.

"Good." Noriko rose from her seat. She turned and embraced Yukio, impulsively, kissing her lightly on the cheek. "Your service shall not go unrewarded," she promised. "I shall make you my handmaiden and you shall wander with those boorish komuso no more."

"Thank you, My Lady," Yukio said, not wanting to quibble over the fact that Noriko had not even asked if she wanted to leave her companions.

Noriko smiled and brushed her lips against Yukio's; then she kissed her again, harder this time.

"No!" Yukio pulled away from the Goa'uld, unable to continue the charade. She could not have hoped for a better opportunity to strike, but this was a lie she could not go through with. Once she could have allowed the Goa'uld to continue her seduction and killed her while she was most distracted, but no longer. Such an abuse of Noriko's unearned trust would have been unthinkable to Freyja and Yukio could not shame her mentor, commander and friend so utterly.

Noriko's eyes flashed with the peerless fury of a Goa'uld scorned. "You dare refuse me!" she demanded, raising her hand to smite Yukio with her ribbon device.

In her panic, Yukio's instinct took over. She snatched the tanto from her sleeve and thrust it hard into Noriko's throat, piercing the flesh of host and symbiote alike. The girl collapsed, the anger fading from her eyes along with their Goa'uld light. She stared in shock and sorrow at her killer; a woman she had – in her twisted, egocentric fashion – considered a friend.

Yukio felt like dirt. With fumbling hands she took the needle from her pocket and dropped it on the floor beside Noriko's body. She turned away from the accusing stare of the girl's dead eyes and fled from the room.

*

Big silk-screen print of an eagle? Jack wondered. Which big silk-screen print of an eagle? Almost simultaneously, two noises impinged on Jack's hearing: first, the sound of a girl sobbing; second, the tramp of armoured feet approaching. Quickly, he ducked through a door into a kitchen, towards the first sound and away from the second.

A young servant girl sat, huddled in the corner of the room. There was blood on her hands, clearly the blood of the man who lay dead on the floor, chest to the ground and head turned sideways, his robes disarrayed and a bright red gash gaping in the back of his neck. Jack had noted that dead men often bore only a passing resemblance to their living aspect, but he could just about discern that this dead man had recently been the seneschal, Eizan.

The girl pulled back into the corner, trying to squash herself into a ball. She gave a little squeal. Jack knelt in front of her, laid a hand on her arm and shushed her, gently. He cast a wary glance towards the door, knowing that whomever he had heard in the corridor could come to investigate any noise she might make.

"Shh," Jack hissed. "Someone's coming."

The girl looked up at him, tears glistening in her eyes; she could not have been much older than eighteen and she was very, very scared. "They killed him," she whimpered.

"Who did?" Jack asked.

"Jingo's komuso. He killed Eizan; I hid and he..."

Jack laid a finger on her lips and drew the zat from beneath his robes. The door of the kitchen slid open and a Jaffa came in, a sword in his hand. Jack raised his weapon and fired; the Jaffa collapsed. He wore no komuso's hat and the mark on his brow was a stylised jackal's head.

"Damn," Jack muttered. "Alright; come on, kid." He seized the girl's hand; she pulled back, warily. "It's okay. I'm Jack," he explained.

"Mariko," she replied.

Jack nodded. "Come on, Mariko; I'll take care of you until we're out of this fortress."

She looked up at him, eyes shining. "You will."

"Sure," Jack shrugged. "I don't suppose you know any way out of here aside from the front gate?"

"There's a passage," Mariko offered. "Eizan told me."

Jack turned his eyes to the ceiling. "I will never say that no good deed goes unpunished again," he promised, solemnly. Then he took the girl by the hand again and led her out of the room.

*

Jahara

The twelve Daimyo who commanded the ha'tak vessels of the Imperial Fleet began squabbling not long after they were conducted into the Shogunate audience chamber; by the time Lord Okuni-Nushi finally entered the chamber, they were practically spitting blood. So distracted were they that only a handful of them even noticed that the Shogun-elect had entered the room, with two Dragon Guards at his shoulders. Okuni stood in silence at the head of the table for some minutes and slowly the Daimyo became aware that their lord was among them. The last to notice was an arrogant young man named Naoki, who was berating his neighbour at the table for some imagined slight.

"Lord Naoki!" Okuni snapped.

"My Lord!" Naoki dropped to his knees and pressed his face to the floor in supplication.

"Get out," Okuni said, without sparing the man another glance. "You may return to your home; your second will take command of your ha'tak vessel."

"But...Yes, My Lord," Naoki replied.

"Your command crystal," Okuni ordered.

One of the Bushi held out his hand; with ill grace, the young lord took a crystal on a chain from around his neck and handed it to the Dragon Guard. Then he slunk away, studiously ignored by his comrades.

Okuni regarded the remaining commanders with cold, hard eyes. "Your behaviour sickens me," he told them. "You are no common Goa'uld, to be scrabbling after every ounce of power you can grasp. You are Daimyo; your lives are ruled by honour, not desire. This bickering disgraces your names and the names of your houses; it shames our beloved Queen-Empress; and it is this bickering that killed the first army to be sent against Arcadia. The petty squabbling of his commanders killed my father and my brother; it will not kill me. You carry the primary command crystals for your ha'tak vessels?" he asked. He glowered at the nearest of the commanders, his expression bidding her answer for all.

"Yes, Lord Okuni," she replied.

"Hold them up."

The Daimyo obeyed.

Okuni nodded. "Now, pass your command crystal to the commander standing at your left. Now!" he barked, when they hesitated. "Each of you will take your place aboard the vessel of another commander. If any one of you brings your petty feuds to this endeavour, or fails in any way to follow my instructions without seeking to elevate your own role, I shall order the Bushi on board the ship to execute you and pass command to a member of the Dragon Guard who shall serve as your aide. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Lord," the Daimyo chorused.

"Good. Now; you have been observed all the while you were in this chamber. Those who have shown themselves to possess the calmest heads shall be accorded the greatest honour in this expedition."

*

Origehara

Sam found Yukio quickly enough, stumbling away from the concubine's chambers. Her haunted eyes told Sam all that she needed to know.

"We may be in trouble," Sam noted.

"Ya think?" Yukio replied.

"We need to meet up with the others and get out; we have to get to the pump rooms."

The ninja nodded, leadenly. "Yes," she agreed.

Sam frowned in concern, but lacking in options she simply led Yukio away towards the rendezvous.

"Something went wrong?" Jack asked, rhetorically.

"The girl is dead," Yukio assured him.

Jack and Sam exchanged a look; neither of them felt it remotely necessary to mention now that the assassination was probably unnecessary. "Who's this?" Sam asked.

"Her name's Mariko," Jack replied.

"Mariko?" Yukio asked, distractedly.

"Greetings," Mariko said with a short bow.

"She's scared to death of Anubis' Ninjaffa and says she knows where there's a passage leading out of here. Unfortunately, there's no sign of Jonas and he seems to have his radio off; I'd guess he's in a tight spot, I just don't know where. This whole place is screen prints of eagles."

At that moment the radio crackled. "Yojimbo, this is Rashomon."

"Speak of the devil," Jack quipped, with a failed attempt to hide his concern. "Go ahead, Rashomon."

"I, ah...I'm pretty much trapped, Colonel, but if the rest of you can get to the throne room, you should be able to find a way out."

"That is where the passage is," Mariko agreed, "although I do not know where the entrance is to be found."

"Forget about secret doors; look for a transport ring control circuit," Jonas advised.

"That's affirmative, Rashomon," Jack agreed, "but we're not going without you."

"I'm pinned," Jonas reiterated. "I'll try to make a break for it when you set off the diversion."

The corridor echoed with the sudden blare of alarm horns.

"They've found the body," Yukio realised.

"The one that you killed, Jack?" Mariko asked.

Yukio hung her head. "Noriko; the concubine. The one I killed."

"Move as soon as you can," Jack told Jonas.

"You're preaching to the choir, Colonel," Jonas assured him. "Rashomon out."

*

The door to the audience chamber was flung open and a servant rushed in. He stopped in alarm at the site of the dead Bushi and the tall, golden-haired Goa'uld.

"Speak," Richo ordered, impatiently.

"My Lord," the servant replied, prostrating himself. "Your concubine, Noriko, has been murdered by Lady Jingo's geisha."

"What!" Richo sprang to his feet, eyes flaming with rage.

"I have no geisha," Jingo replied, scornfully. "It is a trick."

"Izanami," Richo realised. "She will pay for this outrage...For this insult to me. Yes, Lady Osiris; I will give her world into the hands of her enemies."

Osiris smiled. "Excellent," she purred.

In the gallery, Jonas could not stifle an alarmed hiss. Instantly, Jingo's eyes snapped towards him.

"Another spy!" the Goa'uld cried. She stooped and seized a staff weapon.

Jonas scrambled away as fast as possible, abandoning stealth as plasma bolts began to tear through the wall and shatter the sides of the secret passage. Unable to move backwards fast, he instead went forwards, deeper into the passages. Waves of heat pursued him along the narrow space; his legs felt as though they were on fire.

"Kree Bushi!" Richo ordered. "To the east corridors and cut of his retreat."

"Jingo!" Osiris snapped. "Return to our quarters and summon my remaining warriors from the ship."

"I will handle this!" Richo insisted. "My guards are the finest on Yomi."

"Tell that to Noriko," Jingo teased, cruelly.

"No," Osiris replied, her cool, dark tones cutting through the tension between the two Daimyo. "This is not the work of Yoman saboteurs. I detect the stench of the Tau'ri in this."

"The Tau'ri are a myth," Richo scoffed.

Osiris laughed. "You truly are out of touch with the galaxy." She glowered towards the gallery which lay exposed by Jingo's staff fire. "The Tau'ri are dangerous to a degree which you can not comprehend. No-one understands that; not even Anubis. No-one understands...except me. If Izanami has involved them, your Bushi will not suffice." She turned to face Jingo. "Return to our quarters my trigger-happy friend; summon my warriors."

Jonas slowed and listened for any sign of pursuit. Confident that for the moment he was alone, he began to move forward, but a terrible pain in his left leg caused him to stumble hard against the passage wall. He took out his torch and looked down at the offending limb; the cloth of his robe was singed, the flesh beneath blackened where a staff blast had struck near enough to cook the skin and the upper layers of muscle. In the adrenaline rush of flight he had barely noticed, but the wound was serious and he was leaking blood where his movement had caused the burn to crack.

Jonas quickly bound the wound with a strip cut from his robe, but he knew that he needed proper medical attention. He also needed help if he was to get out of here alive, but he was aware that he had dropped his radio in his flight. His only hope was to find the way to the throne room in time to join his comrades.

He took a tentative step forwards, but his leg failed him again and he fell hard against the wall. With a soft click the wall gave way, opening out into a second secret passage. Hands reached out of the shadows, grabbed hold of Jonas and pulled him through.

The secret panel closed and there was nothing left to mark Jonas' passing but a tiny spot of blood.

*

With Lord Richo in the audience chamber, the throne room was only lightly guarded. SG-1 swiftly overcame the defenders, herded a number of servants out at zat-point and barricaded the doors behind them.

"What about Jonas?" Sam asked.

"He'll signal us if he makes it to the doors," Jack assured her. "You concentrate on finding that control circuit."

Sam nodded. "Yes, Sir," she replied.

"Can you rig it to take us straight back to the Shakka?" Jack asked, hopefully.

Sam looked doubtful. "I can," she admitted, "but the Shakka's loading rings are in the rear bay. I could align the rings, but since we disabled the inner controls on all of the bay doors..."

"I get the picture," Jack assured her. "We'll just have to make the best of it. Yukio."

Yukio looked up from her distracted consideration of her hands. "Yes, Colonel?"

"Give Carter a hand?" Jack suggested.

"Of course. Yes."

"I too shall assist," Mariko promised.

Jack turned back to the doors as the crash of a staff blast thudded into them. He heard multiple zat'nik'tel discharges, but the doors showed no sign of disintegrating. He nodded to himself. "If this is his last rat hole before the secret escape route, Richo would reinforce the doors," he reasoned. "I guess we've got at least until they can bring up some serious artillery."

Sam shook her head, sadly. "But I don't see Jonas making his way through that."

"Maybe there's another secret passage," Jack offered, half-heartedly.

"If there is, we may all be doomed," Mariko noted. "Surely Lord Richo would know of it."

Jack grinned at the girl. "You're a regular ray of sunshine, aren't you?"

Mariko returned a shy smile. "I have found the controls," she told him.

Sam was impressed. "You have?" she asked. She looked up from her inspection of a promising relief on the arm of the throne.

Mariko nodded. "He would not be in his throne if enemies had advanced so far into the fortress," she explained. "You will find controls for emergency defences – a shield; a plasma grid lining the floor perhaps – but those would be in case of a sneak attack. If enemies came in force and breached the doors they would immediately fire on the throne. Richo would be elsewhere by then; out of the line of fire."

"Behind the throne," Yukio realised. She walked around to the back of the throne and saw that Mariko had located and opened a hidden panel, revealing the standard three-switch controls of a Goa'uld ring transport mechanism. "Well done," she told the girl, who blushed at the praise.

"Okay; get it ready to go," Jack ordered.

"What about Jonas?" Yukio asked. She sounded distraught and was unable to conceal the guilt which gnawed at her.

"It's not your fault," Jack assured her. "This isn't what any of us expected; we were all taken by surprise."

"I bungled the kill," Yukio replied. "If I'd done this right, the alarms would not have sounded for an hour or more and..."

"Stop!" Jack told her. "Just stop. It isn't your fault and we are not leaving yet. I just want everything ready when we..."

"Major Carter."

Jack and Sam looked at each other in horror as the smooth tones of Osiris' voice emerged from their radios. Jack nodded, but motioned for everyone to move towards the rings.

"Hello, Osiris," Sam replied, warily.

"I knew it would be you," Osiris said. "The thorn in my side; the bane of my existence, Major Samantha Carter and her friends. Is Colonel O'Neill with you? I am looking forward to meeting him; I was so sorry to have missed the chance in Adara but you know how it is. Things to do, people to kill."

Keep her talking, Jack mouthed.

Sam nodded. "Busy, busy," she agreed. "Still; there's the job satisfaction, I suppose."

"Indeed; and the paperwork is refreshingly light. It is far easier for me to order a city destroyed than it was for me to buy an aeroplane ticket on your miserable world."

The door shook under the impact of a cannon blast.

"I know you are in the throne room," Osiris said. "You can not escape. Lord Richo has allied himself to me and he knows all the secrets of the fortress."

"Damn," Jack swore. "We have to go," he whispered to Yukio. The ninja nodded, unhappily, but ran to the controls nonetheless.

"And who is this other one?" Osiris wondered aloud. "The geisha is local, that is clear, but what about the third komuso? Not Teal'c, I think, but..."

The signal exploded into static as the transport beam activated. Yukio sprang back into the circumference of the rings just in time and the four of them were whisked away from the throne room.

The rings deposited them in the dark, but after a moment lights began to flicker on.

"Clear!" Sam reported.

"Clear," Yukio confirmed.

"Same here," Jack agreed. He lowered his weapon and took a good look at their surroundings.

They were in a wide cave with a high ceiling; machinery and computer consoles lined the walls; in the centre of the roof was a shaft which seemed to go straight up for at least a hundred yards. In the middle of the cave, directly below the shaft, was a small vessel, shaped like a spearhead.

"A skimmer," Yukio said. "We must be in Richo's private hangar."

"Can you fly that thing?" Jack asked.

"Easily. Sam; help me check the skimmer's status; that console on the left should give you power and inhibitor fluid levels."

Sam nodded and walked to the console. "There must be a hatch at the top of that shaft; we'll need to find the controls."

Yukio crossed to a different console. "Well, with any luck...Yes." Her hands flew across the controls. "Landing locks disengaged, hatch controls redirected to peltac; access port open." As she spoke, the side of the skimmer melted away to reveal an airlock door.

"Power levels full," Sam reported. "Weapons armed and fully charged; sensors reveal no lifeforms on board."

"Let's not take any chances though," Jack suggested. "He must know we're down here or at least that we're likely to be. I'll take point; Carter and Yukio follow twenty feet behind; Mariko, stay back until I call you. Okay?"

Mariko nodded, obviously terrified.

Jack, Sam and Yukio quickly secured the skimmer and Jack called Mariko aboard.

"Osiris didn't know who our fourth was," Sam pointed out as they took their seats in the cabin. "That means she doesn't have Jonas; just his radio."

Jack nodded. "We will come back for him," he swore.

"Cloak activated; ready for lift-off." Yukio fired the engines and the skimmer rose up through the shaft. "This is strange," she said. "The sensors show nothing outside; no gliders waiting for us, not even any Jaffa in ambush."

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," Jack advised. "But watch your back anyway."

"Always," Yukio agreed, as the skimmer lifted from the tunnel and streaked away towards the concealed Shakka.

*

Jahara

Okuni's mood had lifted slightly after his chastisement of the Daimyo, but now it had sunk into black depression once more. He stood on the battlements of Jahara, gazed down into the lengthening afternoon shadows and turned his eyes towards the Chappa'ai. It struck him that he stood now in the same spot from which he had watched his father's army ride out to battle mere days before.

"Does her death trouble you so greatly?"

Okuni did not start at his grandmother's voice; he had been aware of her approach almost since she entered the effective range of a staff weapon. No-one else could have come even that close; not now that Tomoe was dead.

"Her death is a pain that shall never be healed, grandmother," he replied, "yet it is only a part of my troubles. You know my concerns; I do not need to repeat them."

Izanami stood at her grandson's side. "You held her in high esteem," she noted. "So too did the Bushi; my Kitsune think that I do not know it, but they always believed that you and the Lady Tomoe should have been wed."

Okuni closed his eyes against his tears.

"I know that you found her to be honourable and admirable, as well as beautiful," Izanami went on. "Is that any cause to distain all others of our kind?"

"I do not distain all others," Okuni assured her. "Lady Mitsue and Lord Koji hold fast to their honour."

Izanami gave a sad chuckle. "Only the two? In all of Yomi?"

"Little more," Okuni replied.

"You should be less free with that opinion, my Shogun. You have begun to make enemies even faster than your father did and that is no mean feat." She laid a hand on his arm. "Be careful, Okuni. You warn me to be cautious, yet you alienate your commanders and insult the Daimyo."

"I have given some thought to making friends," Okuni assured her. "Even with your promotions to the Shinpan there are many estates currently lying vacant; these may be advantageous if offered to the right people."

"There are some of the Fudai that you respect?"

"Very few."

"The Tozama then?"

"No."

Izanami looked at him in concern. "You are not thinking of bringing outsiders to Yomi?"

"Only those not of my choosing," he assured her. "My bride to be and her entourage. No; I was thinking of someone quite different. The former domains of Lady Sakamae for example; I believe that it might profit us to invest them on the family of Lord Amakuni Hidoshi."

Izanami's eyes widened. "That name has not been spoken on this world in many years."

"Perhaps," Okuni admitted, "but he was my father's enemy, not mine. If my Lord Susanowa had not executed his father..." His hand strayed to the hilt of Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi. "Hidoshi and I were companions for many years and his honour was more precious to him than life."

"He has been on Yama, along with most of his family, for seven hundred years," Izanami warned, "ever since the Amakuni clan sought to steal Kusanagi."

"It was forged by his father, before Lord Susanowa killed him, and never paid for."

"Nevertheless, spending so long in the mines could change a man."

Okuni shook his head. "I have spoken to him; he is angry with my father of course, but if we bring his family back with him, he will be our ally and his skill as a weaponsmith is not limited to swords."

"You have..." Izanami laughed. "Oh, my precious; you surprise even your old grandmother."

Okuni gave a small bow. "I endeavour to exceed expectations."

Izanami smiled. "And I have such expectations."

"Indeed? I had always believed that you saved your hopes for my brother."

"And I had so hoped that you at least would have seen through me."

"Grandmother?"

Izanami turned towards Okuni and drew his head down to touch hers. "Our enemies attack that which we love and so I have always endeavoured to seem to love best, that which I could most stand to lose." She released him and stood away, raising her defences once more. "Make me proud, beloved."

"Yes, Grandmother," Okuni replied.

"You leave at dawn?"

Okuni nodded.

"My blessings go with you."

*

Origehara

Yukio brought the skimmer down carefully on top of the Shakka. Magnetic grapples locked on, securing the smaller vessel to the hull of the larger.

"If I leave the skimmer's cloaking device running it should synchronise with that on the Shakka," Yukio said. "We'll still be undetectable and we'll have a spare vessel if we need it."

Jack opened the side hatch and looked out. "Anyone got a rope?" he asked.

Yukio joined him. "Meh. Can't be more than a twenty-foot drop."

"Oh. Is that all?"

The ninja smiled encouragingly and worked the controls on her gauntlet. "I'll go down and open the cargo hatch. There's a set of rings in the back of the skimmer; you can use them to get to the Shakka."

Jack nodded. "Knock yourself out," he said. "Only not."

Yukio winked and took a step backwards out of the hatch.

"No!" Mariko cried. She dashed to the breach in time to see a flash of light cushion Yukio's floor. The ninja waved up at them, then opened the hatch and disappeared into the invisible flank of the Shakka. "I am confused," the girl admitted.

Jack grinned. "Welcome to my world," he said. "Come on; transport rings."

As the Shakka's transport rings dropped, Mariko cried out in horror. "Lady Tomoe!"

"You know her?" Jack asked, surprised. Tomoe had barely looked up at their entrance, let alone registered any reciprocal recognition.

"I had seen her before now," Mariko replied. "She visited Lord Richo in the retinue of her Lord Niningi. Why is she here? She is deadly."

"Not anymore," Yukio said, sadly. "You mustn't tell anyone," she added. "If the clans knew that we held Tomoe..."

"If you ask it, I shall not say a word," Mariko replied. "I owe you my life." She bowed, first to Yukio and then to Jack.

"Plan?" Yukio asked.

"Get back to Nodori," Jack replied. "They haven't got Jonas yet, so there's no need to let Lord Richo know we left anyone behind."

"But...Doesn't he know already?" Yukio asked.

"Only if Osiris told him," Sam explained.

"Which I doubt," Jack added. "If we'd waited too long in the throne room we would have found a dozen Bushi waiting in the hangar; by goading us, Osiris tipped us off that the escape route was being blocked. Goa'uld or not, she's too smart to do that unless she meant to. She wanted us to get away so she could convince Richo we were working with Izanami."

"So we regroup," Sam guessed.

Jack nodded. "Gather our strength, if we can, then hit Origehara hard. If we're lucky we can catch Osiris, but the main point will be to get Jonas out of there." He walked forward and ducked through the hatch; Sam followed.

Mariko remained behind, staring at Tomoe; Yukio stared at Mariko.

"What is it?" Mariko demanded. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I..." Yukio shook her head. "I had a daughter," she admitted. "Her name was Mariko. You remind me of someone; my sister. It's silly, really; you can't be my daughter and my sister isn't really my sister so my daughter wouldn't look like her anyway."

Mariko looked taken aback. "Did...Did she have any birthmarks? Your daughter I mean; not your sister."

"A dark blemish on her shoulder," Yukio replied. "In the shape of...Well, if you kind of squint and use your imagination a bit, in the shape of a knife."

Mariko went past taken aback and moved into shell-shocked. "But you are so young."

"I'm older than I look," Yukio demurred. She paused. "Do you mean that you have..."

Mariko tugged at the top of her dress, exposing the skin of her right shoulder and a narrow slash of dark red pigmentation.

"Oh my gods," Yukio murmured.

Mariko's eyes shone with tears. "Mama?" she asked.

*

Jonas drifted slowly back to consciousness. The last thing he remembered was being dragged out of the passageway with a burning pain in his leg; now the leg was comfortably numb and the haze in his mind left Jonas feeling as though he were wrapped in cool, silk sheets. He opened his eyes and sat up, and realised that he was wrapped in cool, silk sheets. He was lying in a low bed in a sparsely furnished room; the last light of evening filtered through the window and a phosphorescent lantern glowed on a table beside the bed.

Jonas lifted the sheets and looked at his leg; it had been carefully bandaged, but apart from the linen bindings, he was naked.

"Do you feel better now, Komuso?"

Jonas yelped and pulled the sheet around his torso as Sakiko approached the bed. Since he had prised himself away from her in the corridors, the seneschal's daughter had changed into a grey, silk kimono and let her long, black hair down. Her costume was seductive, but her eyes were red with tears and she wore a shoto in her belt.

"I trust your leg is not in too much pain."

Jonas attempted to show with a gesture that he was quite comfortable.

Sakiko gave a sad smile. "Your friends have fled and my father is murdered," she said. "I have not turned you over to Lord Richo because you showed kindness in rescuing me, but I do not believe that you are what you seem." She sat on the bed beside him, drew her shoto and laid the razor sharp blade against Jonas' throat. "Were you responsible for my father's death?" she asked.

"No," Jonas replied.

"You sound no more Yoman than you look," Sakiko told him. She ran her fingers slowly up his chest towards the top of the sheet; the sword did not move from Jonas' neck. "Who are you, Komuso?"

Jonas swallowed hard; it was difficult to say which made him more uncomfortable, the blade at his throat or the hand on his chest. He was at least fairly well-accustomed to death threats. "My name is Jonas Quinn," he managed at last. It should be a safe enough confession, he felt; his name was not yet as famous as that of his comrades.

"And why are you here, Jonas Quinn?"

Jonas thought fast; an outright lie would probably be noticed, while the truth would just be asking for trouble. In the end he settled on a half-truth. "We came here to try and destabilise your internal politics," he confessed.

"Our internal politics were stable?" Sakiko asked.

"Our plan was to push your master into an alliance with Lady Jingo in order to force Izanami to turn against them," Jonas went on. "To the best of my knowledge, my comrades are not responsible for your father's death."

"And the Lady Nor..." Sakiko looked up at the sound of heavy footfalls. "Kuso!" she snapped. The blade kissed the skin of Jonas' throat as Sakiko withdrew the sword and slid it beneath the pillow. With a smooth motion she shrugged her kimono off her shoulders and threw herself on top of Jonas so that her hair covered his face.

"Awk!" Jonas exclaimed as the wound on his leg flared with pain. His right arm flailed for any heavy object in reach, but Sakiko encircled his wrist with a powerful hand and pushed it underneath her robe.

The door of the bedchamber crashed open. "Bushi..." The newcomer broke off, clearly as taken aback as Jonas. Sakiko turned and spat a stream of invective, all the time keeping Jonas concealed beneath her.

"And who is this?" a Goa'uld voice interjected in an amused tone.

"Sakiko, daughter of Eizan," a Jaffa replied.

The Goa'uld chuckled. "She seems to be taking her bereavement well. Come, warriors. We shall search elsewhere."

The footsteps retreated and Sakiko slumped across Jonas' body in relief. She said something that he could not translate, then added: "That was too close." She sat up and pulled her kimono back over her shoulders.

Jonas did his best not to look, pulled up the sheet and made a strategic rearrangement of his limbs for maximum concealment. "We're just lucky he didn't want us to get up and bow," he quipped, lamely.

"I did not know that the Daimyo would be searching himself," Sakiko admitted. "Still; they can be forgiving when they are...amused." She stood and straightened her robe, then returned the sword to its scabbard.

"I'm sure I read somewhere that a shoto was not supposed to return to its scabbard without tasting blood," Jonas noted; it was only after the words had slipped out that he realised what a stupid thing it was to say.

Sakiko reached out and ran a finger across Jonas' throat; it came away bloody. She raised the finger to her lips and licked it clean.

Jonas reached up and felt the sting of a tiny cut. "Right. That was Jingo's boss, wasn't it?" he asked. "Hachiman?"

Sakiko's eyes widened in terror. "That was Lord Hachiman-no-Mikoto?"

"We weren't formally introduced," Jonas admitted, "but so I gathered."

"Gods preserve us," Sakiko murmured. "Lord Hachiman was the brother of Lord Susanowa, thought to have been slain in battle when he betrayed the Great Emperor Izanagi; so Lord Susanowa reported, at least. His name has been reviled for generations as the Master of a Thousand Bakemono."

"A god who became a demon," Jonas mused. "I guess it's one way to stop his former worshippers asking too many questions."

"I...I can not believe that I lied to a Daimyo of such power," Sakiko whispered. "I can not believe that I lied to a Daimyo."

"And he believed you," Jonas pointed out.

"Yes," she agreed.

Jonas sat up. "Are my clothes around somewhere?" he asked, hopefully.

Sakiko blushed. "Of course," she replied. "I'm sorry about...If he had seen your face..."

Jonas coughed, awkwardly. "I understand." He paused a second. "I'm sorry about your father," he added.

The Bushi shrugged. "Such is the life of service," she assured him. "I shall bring your clothes. Now that you can walk, I can take you to a more secure hiding place; if fortune smiles upon us I shall be able to remove you from the fortress after nightfall."

"And if fortune is not with us?"

Sakiko shrugged. "I will gut you like a fish and claim that you tried to coerce me by force."

"Your candour does you credit," Jonas assured her.

*

Nodori

Jack gently touched the Shakka down outside Nodori. He had focused his attention on flying to avoid conversation and he wore the shroud of impotent rage that always hung about his shoulders when he was forced to leave anyone behind.

"Never thought I'd see you so worried about Jonas," Sam noted.

"It's just the principle of the thing," Jack assured her.

"Come on; admit it," Sam challenged. "He's grown on you."

"So did athlete's foot, but there was a spray for that."

"Can we not waste time on semantics," Yukio suggested. "We've an invasion to stop, a coup to thwart and a rescue mission to organise, and not very much time in which to do it."

"Sure," Jack agreed.

Yukio nodded. "Alright; Mariko, I will find someone to look after you for a time while I confer with my clan elders."

"Must you, Mama?" Mariko asked in a frightened tone.

"I am sorry," Yukio assured her, "but I must. I have duties."

Mariko bowed her head. "I understand," she assured Yukio.

Jack opened the side hatch and looked out. "I guess someone heard us land," he noted. Four ninjas emerged from the trees as he stepped down from the ship, led by the familiar figure of Ashikaga Kanjiro, Yukio's nephew by adoption.

As he approached the ship, Kanjiro waved the other guards back. "Welcome back, Old Woman Nekai," he said, with a bow.

Yukio returned the gesture. "Ashikaga Kanjiro, this is Nekai Mariko," she said. "Will you see her safely to the guest quarters, please?"

Kanjiro looked momentarily startled, but he nodded and turned to face Mariko. He caught his breath in a gasp of wonder.

"Master Ashikaga," Mariko greeted him with a demure bow.

Kanjiro swallowed hard. "Mistress Nekai," he croaked. He coughed and continued in a clearer voice. "Please, come this way."

"I thank you for your hospitality," the girl replied.

Jack and Sam watched the two of them go with wry amusement. "Looks like you're down one stalker, anyway," Jack commented.

"Hmm," Yukio replied, distractedly.

Sam crossed to stand at Yukio's shoulder. "Is everything alright?" she asked.

Yukio gave a wan smile. "Jonas is trapped in a Daimyo fortress, Anubis plans to conquer my homeworld, I just knifed a girl for trying to kiss me and now my long-lost daughter has appeared from out of the blue. I should say not."

"It does seem a little neat," Jack admitted.

"I warned Kanjiro by a hand sign to be wary of her," Yukio agreed. "I only hope that he is wary enough. I didn't anticipate that he would be so smitten with another woman quite so soon." She sighed. "Perhaps my vanity will yet be my undoing."

"Hang on," Jack began, warily. "It was bad enough when he was chasing his aunt, but aren't those two...?"

"No," Yukio replied, quickly. "Not that Kirano knows otherwise, but no."

"Jack elbowed Yukio in the ribs. "You sly old dog," he said.

Yukio flashed him a grateful smile for his attempt at levity, but her heart remained heavy.

Yukio led her comrades through Nodori to the council hall. As they approached, Maru emerged from the main door and came towards them.

"You're safe," she said with a smile, then brushed past Yukio to embrace Jack. "We feared the worst," she added, this time including Sam and Yukio in the statement.

Jack briefly squeezed back before he and Maru stepped apart. "I take it that the other missions did not go well?"

Maru shook her head. "The council have conferred and there is only one possible conclusion: Someone else is targeting the same Daimyo that we are targeting."

"The ambitious ones?"

"That is correct, Colonel," Maru agreed. "A number of agents have been making a concerted effort to recruit those Daimyo for a coup, but one far more subtle than that we hoped to provoke."

"Anubis," Jack said.

Sam nodded. "So the Daimyo hang back until the fleet leaves, then move on Izanami. They tie up the planetary defences, allowing Anubis to move into orbit with his fleet..."

"Most of them die in the fighting, leaving Anubis and friends to take over," Yukio concluded. "We have to do something."

"Why?" Maru asked.

"Excuse me?"

"We have been fighting Izanami for generations," Maru pointed out. "Why should we work so hard to preserve her rule against another Daimyo? One is much like another and any strife between them is only to our..."

"No," Jack said.

"No what?" Maru asked.

"Anubis isn't the same," Jack assured her. "The Asgard aren't scared of most Goa'uld for starters. Anubis is different, he is worse than the others."

"I do not think you'll convince the other Elders of that," Maru told him.

Jack looked at her. "What about you?"

Maru looked back at him. "I trust you," she said, indicating with a small gesture that she included only Jack in that statement. "I'll do what I can to help convince the Council, but we know nothing of these Asgard. Is there anything more that you can tell us? What is it that makes him different?"

"The others are afraid of him," Sam offered. "Lord Yu...I don't know why, but Lord Yu truly detests him; that's why he was willing to go up against the other System Lords."

"And it was for fear of Anubis that Izanami has made alliance with Lord Yu," Yukio reminded her sister.

"He's evil," Jack added. "With a capital...EVIL. He looks and sounds like a bad cliché, but I got within spitting distance of him once and it was like all my blood turned to ice."

"It did?" Sam asked.

"I don't like to talk about it," Jack demurred. "It damages my masculine mystique."

"Masculinity does not have a mystique," Maru assured him. "It is by its nature overt."

"Is this relevant?" Yukio demanded. "Anubis is about to gain control of the Bushi of Yomi and the mines of Yama!"

"A scary thought," Jack admitted. "Add all that to the Ancient tech and the ninjas..."

"The what?" Maru demanded.

"Oh...yeah," Jack finished, thoughtfully. "Didn't you know?" he added, innocently. "Anubis has Ninjaffa."

Maru's eyes grew cold. "What?" she asked again.

"Well," Jack admitted. "They dress in black pyjamas, carry swords and sneak around killing people but..."

"Ninjaffa? This is...an outrage!" Maru declared. "It is an insult to our ways! To our very existence!"

Jack shrugged helplessly. "They're pretty good though. Poor old Eizan never saw them coming. One cut to the back of the neck; real professional."

"The back of the neck?" Yukio asked, her voice suddenly filled with fear. "You didn't say...This was where you found the girl, yes?"

"Yes," Jack agreed. "Why...?" he began, but Yukio had already turned and fled back the way they had come. He turned to Maru.

"The cut to the back of the neck is the signature of Tanuki," Maru explained in a whisper.

"Who?"

"Tanuki is Izanami's finest assassin; a human trained to bring death to Daimyo and Bushi alike. What she looks like is a secret known only to a handful of the Empress' most trusted counsellors, but she always kills with a single cut to the back of the neck, at the top of the spine where the symbiote is closest to the surface in a host. If this girl is..." She stopped as Jack looked at her in alarm.

"Oh God," Sam whispered.

"What?" Maru asked.

"Kanjiro," Jack whispered. "She's with Kanjiro."

*

Jahara

Okuni's sat in his chambers with Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi lying unsheathed across his upturned palms, attempting to reach the transcendence of kelno'reem. The Bushi practice had been something of a fad among the younger Daimyo some centuries ago, but Okuni found a genuine peace in the meditative exercise and he alone had continued the practice after fashion had passed it by. On this night, that peace eluded him, but that was neither unexpected, nor a disappointment; his soul was in turmoil and any release, however slight, was welcome.

A memory of Tomoe flitted across Okuni's mind. His hands twitched at the pain of that memory and the edge of Kusanagi's blade bit into his left palm. His eyes snapped open; he carefully took the sword by the hilt and sheathed it before examining his wound, a deep but clean cut over two inches long. He put it to his mouth and tasted the blood, even as he forced clotting factors and healing agents towards the wound. It was perhaps the first wound he had received in over a decade and it made him realise that for once he was not relishing the prospect of battle.

The day-to-day life of the court had never held much savour for Okuni. There were none among the Daimyo to challenge him as a swordsman and few who could match his wits; for a warrior-born who thrived on the heat of battle and the thrill of uncertainty, such a circumstance was intolerable. He lived for the chance to escape from the monotony of Jahara and enter the melee, where he could not be certain of victory, but this time there was no anticipation. Okuni ran his fingers over the moulding of his sword-guard and felt the cold hand of desolation grip his spirit. The death of Tomoe had robbed his life of meaning and the thought of setting foot upon the world where she had fallen brought him only pain.

A tentative knock at the door to his chambers lifted Okuni from the brink of despair. He raised his head and slowly stood. "Enter," he called, the sound of his voice disengaging the lock on the main door. He would not normally have done so without first checking the identity of his visitor, but he was in a rash and self-destructive temper.

A servant entered the outer chambers and bowed low. He was a young man in dark grey robes; one of Izanami's runners. "My Lord."

"Deliver your message," Okuni ordered.

"My Lord Shogun; the Most Radiant Queen-Empress, Lady Izanami, asks that you make ready to receive a long-range communication from the White Lady Su-o Nu, in order that you might formally request her hand in marriage."

Okuni sighed. "Tell the Empress that I shall do as she asks," he replied. "Go now."

"My Lord."

The messenger backed away and the wind chimes rang softly around his head. He had always believed that it would be impossible for anyone to pass through to his inner sanctum without the sound of those chimes alerting him, even if he were in the grip of sleep, but he knew now that he was wrong. Tomoe had done so when she left his bed on the day of her death and at the sound of the chimes, he was gripped by a sudden and irrational hatred.

With a cry of fury, Okuni ripped Kusanagi from her scabbard and lashed out; the Grass-Cutting Sword wailed as she carved a brutal path through the air. The messenger cried out, once; the chamber rang with the dull sound of wind chimes falling to lie still on the wooden floor.

At last, his rage spent, Okuni stopped. His heart was pounding and his breath was short, his chest working like a bellows.

Slowly, startled to be alive, the servant raised his head. All about him lay the treacherous alarms that had allowed Tomoe to go to her death. Not a single chime still hung from the ceiling, but the messenger was untouched.

"Go," Okuni repeated, then: "No; stay. You are a brave man." He bent and picked up a wind chime, a set of small and delicate tubes forged from silver and trinium, carved with images of the Ho-u – the Yoman phoenix. "Take this," he said.

The servant obeyed without question.

"It is yours, as is my favour. Go now, with my blessing."

"My Lord." The servant bowed again and backed away. Okuni was pleased to note that he moved no faster now than when he had first begun his retreat from the Daimyo's presence.

Okuni laid Kusanagi across his wounded palm and made a second small cut to blood the sword, then returned her to her scabbard. He set the weapon back on its stand, then made his way to his bathing chamber to prepare himself for the coming conference.

*

Nodori

Kanjiro was feeling out of his depth. By the time Nekai Mariko told him that she was the daughter of Yukio – and therefore the same Mariko who was his own father's child – he had already fallen head over heels in love with her. While the Daimyo enjoyed a number of theatrical and operatic traditions, the peasantry were entertained primarily by wandering storytellers and tragic tales of doomed love between long-lost siblings were a favourite. Kanjiro felt that he was trapped in one of these stories now and for the first time he was beginning to understand why the protagonists in the stories continued so heedlessly along the path to their destruction.

"Tell me about Mama," Mariko begged. He had brought the girl to a quiet grove behind the village, where the willows trailed their branches in the fast-flowing river. It was one of the most beautiful places that he knew of. He sat at the base of one of the oldest trees, while Mariko lay with her head resting comfortably in his lap.

"I do not know much," he replied, distractedly. "She...She has been thought dead since you disappeared. We believe that she was taken by the kami to the spirit world; she is blessed indeed. She..."

"Kanjiro! Mariko!"

Kanjiro looked up at the sound of his aunt's voice. "Something is wrong," he said.

The two of them scrambled to their feet as Yukio approached.

"Mistress Nekai!" Kanjiro called. "What is..." He saw the fear in her face as she approached and knew that there must be some threat behind him. Before he had time to turn, he found himself held in an iron grip, while his knife was snatched from his belt and held to his throat. "Mariko! Run!" he screamed.

"No," Mariko whispered into his ear, in a voice that was cold and utterly deadly. "I think that we shall walk together and..."

"No!" Yukio raised her hand. A nimbus of white light flashed around her like a ghostly flame and a beam of light stabbed out from her fist. Kanjiro felt some great power pulse past his face and then his knife was falling to the ground and the pressure of Mariko's body was no longer at his back. He heard a splash and turned; Mariko was gone.

Jack and Maru arrived to find Kanjiro standing on the river bank, staring into the water in shock.

"Kanji!" Maru cried. She caught hold of him and dragged him into a desperate embrace. "Oh, my son, are you alright?"

"I...I am fine. But Mariko and Yukio..." The young man looked down into the water again.

"In there?" Jack asked, aghast. The wide, flat river across which he and Maru had skipped stones narrowed here to less than one fifth its width and the current was fast.

"Where are they?" Maru demanded. "Yukio swims like an otter; even in this current..."

"Downstream!" Sam called, already heading that way. "They'll be carried downstream."

Jack shared a brief nod with Maru, then followed Sam.

"Kanjiro..." Maru began.

The boy nodded. "I'm alright, mother. Go!"

Maru laid a kiss on her son's forehead, then turned and ran. She caught up with Jack and Sam after half a mile; the Colonel had stopped and was gazing with sad eyes at a sheltered beach where the river bent around, widened and slowed once more. On the dark sand, Yukio knelt over the still form of her daughter; Sam stood close by, but Yukio gave no sign that she had noticed her.

After a long moment, Yukio gathered Mariko in her arms, rose to her feet and began to walk away towards the town. Sam began to follow, but Maru moved down the beach to intercept her.

"Let her go," she said, softly.

"But..."

Maru laid a hand on Sam's arm. "What could you say?" she asked. "What is there that anyone could possibly say?"

*

Origehara

In the relative safety of one of the fortress' hidden chambers, Jonas straightened his unfamiliar robes and checked over his gear. "No radio?" he asked.

"That is all that you had with you when I found you," Sakiko replied. "The clothes I took from one of Lady Jingo's komuso; I hope that they fit you alright."

Jonas raised an eyebrow. "How did you get a komuso's clothes?"

"One of your friends killed him in my father's room," Sakiko explained. "I hid the corpse. I did not want it to be said that my father had slain a Bushi in the service of a guest; that would be no memorial for a seneschal."

"How do I look," Jonas asked.

"Very handsome," Sakiko noted. "And when you wear the hat, you should be convincing as one of Lady Jingo's warriors; from a distance at least. We shall try to keep you from being seen at all, however. Your friends have fled the fortress and the Bushi have swept the entire area. Are you certain that you would not rather stay here? With me," she added.

"Tempting," he lied, with a slightly nervous smile. "But we arranged several fallbacks; I have to try and meet up with them."

"But they are still watching for you," Sakiko warned. "Even in disguise, you do not move like a warrior; you will be seen and killed...or captured."

"I won't betray you," Jonas promised her. "They know I was in the secret passage, they won't even ask if anyone helped me; they'll just want to know about my team."

Sakiko sighed. She laid her hand gently on his cheek and looked him in the eyes. "It is not for myself that I am afraid," she assured him. "You are young and gentle and kind; you are of tender years you are no Jaffa, but merely a frail human." She rested her forehead against his. "I would not see you fall into their hands, Jonas Quinn. They are ruthless and will not spare you for your youth or beauty."

Jonas closed his eyes and cradled her head in his right hand. He was acutely aware of the Jaffa woman's closeness and the earthy scent of her skin, and moreover he was not convinced how much good he could do SG-1 if he returned to them. The offer was tempting, as well as frightening, but Jonas knew what he had to do. He steeled his resolve and said: "Sakiko. I have to go. I have a duty to my friends."

He felt her nod her head in understanding. "But will you not stay even one night?" she asked, hopefully. "At least wait until the Bushi of Lord Hachiman are convinced that no threat remains in this fortress," she suggested.

"I can't wait," Jonas replied, and because the unspoken part of the question also required a response he added: "and I don't do 'one night', Sakiko. I am sorry."

There was a catch in Sakiko's voice as she told Jonas: "You are a good and honourable man. I shall remember you in my prayers so long as I live, Jonas Quinn."

Jonas gave Sakiko a tentative hug and she responded with an embrace which almost cracked his ribs. He carefully extricated himself from the bearhug as soon as seemed polite.

"How long before we can leave?" he asked.

"A few hours, yet," Sakiko replied. "There is a passage which will lead us to the base of the crag; then I shall bring a cart out. Either you can take one of the horses or...perhaps I can travel with you?"

"Perhaps," Jonas agreed, his nerves returning with a vengeance.

"I don't know where you are going," she added, "but I'm sure the journey will be more than just one night."

Jonas could not see his own face, of course, but he was sure that he must look rather like a startled rabbit.

*

Jahara

Okuni sat cross-legged on a stool in front of the long-range communications sphere which hovered at the heart of his personal shrine, between the images of his mother and father. He was dressed in his courtly robes and wore both swords of the daito in his sash. His hair was carefully combed and drawn up into a topknot. He was acutely aware that he was sitting with his back to an empty room, an inviting target for any assassin, but in his current mood he cared little for that.

Before his eyes the opaque surface of the ball became clear and there appeared in it a face of surpassing loveliness. All but a handful of Goa'uld were beautiful of course – and those who were otherwise were so by choice – but even for a Queen of the Goa'uld, Su-o Nu's host was radiant. Okuni gave little thought to this, however; as a fine gown showed a woman's beauty, or lack of it, so the physical charms of a host could only serve to accentuate the essential traits of the Goa'uld beneath, never conceal or surpass them. There were many ladies of the Daimyo with hosts more beautiful than Tomoe's, but they had never interested Okuni.

"My Lord," Su-o Nu greeted Okuni, with a solemn bow.

"My Lady," he responded, with equal gravity.

"Please forgive me for not coming to you in person, My Lord," the Queen continued. "You understand that my father has few warriors or ships to spare for an appropriate escort and I would not dishonour you by arriving at your court like a barefoot peddler."

"You could dishonour no court, My Lady," Okuni replied. "I only wish it were possible for me to provide an escort worthy of you, but our fleet is committed to urgent matters of internal security." His sense of honour balked at the lie, but however distasteful he found the game of politics, he had not lived so many millennia by being a poor player.

Su-o Nu favoured Okuni with a secretive smile. "I understand," she assured him, in such a tone that he was certain that she knew precisely what those matters of internal security were. "If you value this alliance, however, I urge you to resolve this matter swiftly. My father can be...unreasonable where Anubis is concerned."

"I have no intention of prolonging this matter," he replied, with perfect candour.

The White Lady nodded once. "I am asked to extend to you the condolences of my father's house," she went on. "The Jade Emperor recognises the demands of honour when faced with the deaths of family; he offers his sympathy and his understanding."

"My Lord Yu is too kind."

"With your permission, I should like to offer you my personal condolences also," Su-o Nu added.

Okuni stifled a bitter laugh. "I shall endure," he assured her, wondering if anyone on Yomi would miss his slain kinsman less than he did.

"It can not be easy. I have received many reports of the lady's valour and loyalty."

Okuni gave the Queen a long, hard look. "You know?" he asked, at last.

"You will find that yours was a secret ill-preserved," she told him. "I learned of it from your brother when he pressed his suit on me."

"His suit?" Okuni was taken aback. "Niningi...?"

Su-o Nu nodded. "I have received many offers in my life, although I am but a child by your terms, my Lord. I refused your brother five times," she added. "He held no interest for me. I hope that does not offend you?"

"Not spoken in private," Okuni replied, with a note of warning in his voice.

The lady nodded; she knew as well as any on Yomi that words that could be spoken behind closed doors could never be uttered in public without demanding swift retribution. Okuni was comforted to find that she understood such things; it eased some of his concerns over taking his bride from another Goa'uld faction.

"I believe that you have some similar business to put to me?" Su-o Nu prompted, gently.

Okuni bowed his head in a show of contrition. "Forgive me, My Lady; I have indeed. At the bidding of our imperial progenitors, I must declare to you my wish that you enter with me into an alliance of blood and oath for the furtherance of both our lines. Moreover, you would honour me if you would allow me to call you My Queen."

"You flatter me, My Lord, but you do so most prettily. You also interest me, as your brother did not. While I must leave the final decision, along with the details of both oath and alliance, to my father, I feel free to declare to you my intention to accept your suit."

"I thank you, Lady," Okuni told her, concealing his great trepidation. He was somewhat troubled; his last hope of avoiding dishonour had been that the White Lady would reject him as a prospective suitor on personal grounds. That would have freed him of obligation while retaining the bond of the proposed match between the imperial forces of Lady Izanami and Lord Yu.

The lady favoured Okuni with another dazzling smile. "We are but hostages to the fate of empires, My Lord," she assured him. "You need not feign any feeling for me when out of the gaze of others. I trust that you shall not disgrace me in public and I know that, together, we shall become a power in this galaxy. I also dare to hope that you might find me...interesting."

Okuni smiled, sadly. "For your understanding, Lady, I am truly in your debt."

"We shall discuss what reparation can be made when we meet in person, my dear lord," Su-o Nu assured him, "a day I most eagerly await."

"As do I," he replied, unsure whether he would find himself able to match his bride in cunning. In all likelihood she would remain loyal to her father above her husband – although Lord Yu would always be second to herself, of course – and a married Goa'uld always had to be twice as wary as a single one. In his current state of despond, Okuni questioned his capacity to handle some of the more devious Daimyo, let alone a beautiful Queen of the Imperial House of Celestial Jade.

"I understand that you have to attend to your family business," the White Lady went on. "I shall not delay you any further."

"No, please, My Lady," Okuni replied. "There is no delay. I have the time and I can think of no more pleasant way to spend the time."

Su-o Nu inclined her head in gracious acknowledgement of the compliment. "You flatter so very prettily, My Lord."

*

Nodori

Jack sat by the river, skipping stones. Since the death of Mariko, everyone had been very subdued and Jack was kind of hoping that no-one would remember that it had been his idea to bring the girl along in the first place. If he had left her behind in Origehara, Yukio would never have been forced to kill her own daughter and – to add insult to injury – all their goals would have been fulfilled. Mariko...No, Tanuki would no doubt have slipped away; vanished from the castle and returned home to tell her mistress of the plot being hatched against her. Izanami would have known of Osiris' machinations and been forced to act against them.

Jack could have kicked himself. As it was, there was someone to do it for him.

Whatever his failings as a husband, Ashikaga Kirano was clearly a perfectly good ninja, because Jack never saw him coming. The first thing he knew, he was lying with his face in the mud, a sword touching the back of his neck and a definite awareness that someone had hit him very hard across the yoke of his shoulders.

"Ow," he said. It seemed the thing.

"Seducer!" Kirano hissed. "I should kill you."

Jack bit back an angry retort – the guy did have a sword against his spinal column, after all – and instead answered calmly. "But you're not going to, or you would have done it already. So, since we both know you're not going to kill me, why don't you put the sword away and we can talk about it."

Kirano gave a bitter laugh. "What is there to talk about? You seduced my wife."

"You dumped your wife," Jack corrected. "I just helped her pick herself up after she hit the floor."

After a moment's pause, the sword lifted. Jack scrambled to his feet while Kirano sheathed his blade. From the glimpse he caught as the weapon vanished into its scabbard, Jack wondered how much danger he had really been in; it did not look as though it were designed to stab, or even cut, so much as to break bones with a good, solid swing.

"You know," Jack had to say, " if I thought you were really mad about Maru and me, I'd have to beat the hypocrisy out of you."

"You could try," Kirano scoffed.

"I'm not such a soft touch if I can see you coming," Jack assured him. He sat back down on the stone and picked up the bottle of rice wine he had secreted beside it. "I had a feeling you might want to talk some time." He offered the bottle and Kirano accepted.

"She never cared for me," he said, softly.

"Yukio?"

Kirano nodded. "I thought that perhaps she no longer wanted me because I was old, but when I asked to sit with her in the shrine where she has laid Mariko's body, she would not let me. I grew angry and told her that it was my right as the girl's father. She..."

"She told you that you weren't the father," Jack realised. "I was thinking about what I'd heard from Yukio and Maru..."

"Maru is a bitter old woman," Kirano snapped.

Jack shrugged. "I wouldn't say old. She's bitter, maybe, but I think she has reason enough. Anyway, as I understand, Yukio was carrying your child soon after she seduced you away from Maru."

"She did not...!" Kirano stopped in mid-protest. "Yes," he admitted. "She gave birth two-hundred-and-fifteen days after we first made love."

Jack did a quick mental calculation, working on the knowledge that a day here was a little over twenty-four hours. "Did you never think it funny that a baby born almost two months premature was so healthy?" he asked.

"I was just grateful that it...that she was healthy," he admitted. "I knew it was strange and I lied to others about when we had first lain together, but I honestly believed that Mariko was mine. Of course, she was always reluctant to let me take any part in her upbringing, but she was contrary as a young woman and I was barely a man; I was happy to bear no burden."

Jack took the bottle, drank, then returned it. "Kirano," he said. "You suck."

"You suck," Kirano replied, morosely. Apparently taking it for a toast he took another long draught of the wine. "Two sisters; both ensnared me with a fat belly."

Don't try to pretend you came off worst out of that, Jack thought, angrily, but he kept his own counsel. "So whose was it?" he asked, in a bland tone.

Kirano's face contorted in disgust. "A Daimyo's," he whispered. "Ordinarily, ninjas on assignment avoid lying with the enemy so as not to fall pregnant by them," he explained. Somehow, Jack doubted whether male ninjas were expected to be so restrained as their female counterparts. "If they have no choice but to submit or to reveal their true colours, they use a contraceptive draught to prevent such...mistakes."

Jack had almost begun to feel sorry for this poor, pathetic man, but hearing him talk about ninja/Daimyo miscegenation with such disgust was fast eroding his sympathies. He himself found the idea of sleeping with a Goa'uld disturbing, but he had done it himself once and in most cases he did not feel that the other party would have done anything to arouse such distaste. "Why did she...You know."

"To put him off guard," Kirano replied. "Her mission was to assassinate the Daimyo, Lord Susumu, but the only way she could get close enough was to allow him to seduce her. I understand that, but even if she could not have taken her draught, as soon as she knew that she carried the child of a Daimyo, she should have purged the thing from her system."

Jack's face set hard. "So instead of aborting her child, she settled on you as a patsy." Slowly, Yukio's actions were actually beginning to seem less vile.

Kirano nodded. "I called that abomination my own daughter; that monster that tried to kill my son and that even now holds his heart in thrall."

"She was just a child."

"And she grew into Izanami's killer."

Deciding that he did not want to continue the conversation, Jack stood up. "Well; I'm glad we had this little chat," he said. "If you'll excuse me, I think I have a council meeting to attend."

"It is not for some time," Kirano assured him.

"I think I need a bath, first," Jack insisted, then he turned on his heel. He turned back only once, to call out: "And I didn't sleep with your wife. Just so you know."

*

"Is she coming?" Maru asked, nervously.

Sam shook her head. "She won't leave Mariko's side. I don't think she can believe that she is dead."

"She was the one who shot her." Maru winced. "I'm sorry," she said at once. "That was a hard and foolish thing to say."

"I think that's the problem," Sam sighed. "She shot her with a stunning blast. Mariko wouldn't have died from the shot, but she fell into the river and drowned. The gauntlet responds to Yukio's will: Without willing Mariko dead, it is hard for her to accept that she killed her."

"No mother should tend to the funeral of her child," Maru said, softly. "Nor father," she added, catching sight of a flash of pain on Jack's face as he approached. She seemed taken aback when he responded by folding her in a sudden, grateful embrace. She responded and held him tight, feeling a tremor of tension deep within his body.

"I hate your husband," he murmured.

"He was not always so," she replied.

Jack ended the hug and stood up straight, his face a mask over his turbulent emotions. Sam watched as Maru laid an eloquent hand on Jack's arm and knew that she would have to suffer a great deal more hurt in her life before she could begin to understand the signals passing between the two people in front of her.

"I should send a messenger to Danjuro," Maru said. "The Nekai should be represented if the council is to make such a crucial decision."

Sam shook her head. "Yukio asked that you speak for her," she said. "She was most insistent."

Maru looked stunned. "I...? At the Council? But I am not even a Nekai by blood."

"Yukio considers you your mother's heir," Sam assured Maru.

"Her mother," Maru whispered.

"If she thought that once, she doesn't anymore. She wants you to speak for her and for the clan."

Maru's eyes shone with tears; joy and confusion warred on her weary face. "What does she wish me to say?"

"She believes that a message should be sent to warn Izanami of the danger of Anubis," Sam explained.

"Impossible. Even if the other elders accepted this proposal – and they will not from me, even if they would have done from Yukio – no ninja could openly approach the throne of Izanami, let alone would be believed if they brought this warning."

"She suggests that the courier should be..." Sam paused a moment. "Lady Tomoe."

"What!"

"Tomoe is a prisoner aboard our ship and has been since before our arrival," Sam went on. "Yukio believes that if Tomoe were dropped near to Jahara, she could be persuaded to carry this warning as a means to restore her honour before her death."

"They will want her dead," Maru protested. "If you tell the Council that you have the Butcher-Whore in your keeping..."

"Don't call her that," Jack said, in a quiet, firm voice. "Yukio respects her; if her opinion's worth anything, I think we should as well."

"She is a murderer," Maru protested, fiercely. "Niningi's bloody bitch!"

Jack put his hand on Maru's arm and once more, Sam had a sense that she was missing something that passed between them. "Come and see," Jack said.

"What?"

"It's safe," Jack promised. "Come and see her; make your own mind up."

Maru looked up at him. "Alright," she said, after a long pause.

"We'll be back for the meeting," Jack told Sam. "You stick with Yukio and see if you can't get her to make an appearance."

"Yes, Sir," Sam agreed.

Jack waited until he and Maru were aboard the Shakka before he asked the question. "So...what happened to Mariko? How did she end up being trained as Tanuki?"

Maru shrugged. "There were only a few survivors of the raid which claimed Yukio's...Which we thought had..." She paused, uncomfortably.

"She died," Jack assured her. "Trust me; I only met her after I was dead."

Maru looked shocked. "Then you..."

"Am alive and whole and as human as you are." He took her hand and placed it over her heart so that she could hear the beat. "See?"

"I knew that already," she reminded him with a smile.

"Like the Goa'uld, the woman...being that Yukio now serves has the technology to revive the recently dead. She was touched by the Asgard, not the kami. But tell me about the raid."

Maru shrugged again. "Little is known. Yukio was travelling with Mariko; she did not wish to leave her baby at any of the clan's safe houses when their locations might be compromised. She was also accompanied by Kataoka Ashime, her oath-sister. Yukio and Ashime had sworn a blood oath that they would be as sisters and keep faithful to each other until the end of their days. I will always remember the day they swore that oath; Yukio made me witness it and when it was done she hugged Ashime and said: 'Now I have a sister of my own choosing'."

"What a bitch!" Jack snapped.

"I think she has changed a great deal since then," Maru allowed, gently. "When the attack came, Yukio entrusted Mariko to Ashime; it was only later that we discovered that it was the Kataoka clan had betrayed us. Ashime had given Mariko's location to the Bushi. All the clans brought retribution on the Kataoka. Their ruling family was wiped out, but no-one ever found a trace of Ashime; or of Mariko. I suppose at least we know now where the baby went."

"God," Jack breathed. "And here I thought my life sucked."

"Is there nothing good about your life?" Maru teased, gently.

Jack gave a crooked grin. "Every now and then, something turns up," he assured her, brushing his fingers against her cheek. "Usually when I'm in a terrible hurry to do something vital to the safety of the galaxy," he added, regretfully.

Maru smiled. "Is it not always the way?"

"She's through here," Jack said, indicating the hold.

Sam met Jack and Maru as they returned to the Council Hall. "She still won't come out, Sir," she reported.

"It is alright," Maru said. She looked slightly shell-shocked. "I will speak on her behalf and advise that the Lady Tomoe be sent as a messenger to Jahara."

*

It was a long, hard debate, and it was probably only the fact that the Shakka was cloaked and hidden that prevented the Elders marching straight out to form a lynch mob. Despite her own reservations, Maru argued eloquently and persuasively in favour of Yukio's plan. She displayed a political and strategic savvy that obviously impressed the other Elders as much as it did Jack and he was pretty sure that they were starting to wonder if they had not given the silver bauble to the wrong sister.

When she emerged from the fray, Maru look exhausted but jubilant, almost radiant in her joy. Jack loathed politics, but he could see at a glance that this was what Maru was made for. She had the same glow that Sam got when she was working in her lab; the same sense of completeness and absolute belonging. He could not help but feel a surge of affection for Maru, and an accompanying anger at the woman who had let the loss of her favourite daughter come between an adopted child and her manifest role in life. Jack knew that the influence of the Nekai had waned under Danjuro; he could not help thinking that it would have risen if Maru had been Old Woman.

In fact, he was pretty sure it would have waxed, but he was not going to admit to knowing that much technical vocabulary in front of strangers.

It was a bravura performance; worthy of at least an Oscar if not the Nobel Peace Prize. Sadly, it was all for naught. The other Elders demanded that Lady Tomoe be turned over to them and summoned a dozen of their ninjas to enforce this edict. Jack and Sam had no option but to lead these enforcers back to the ship, lower the cloak and open the hold door.

The first thing that tipped Jack off that something was amiss was that the skimmer was gone from the top of the Shakka. The second was that the hatch to the hold lay open.

"Ah, hell," Jack muttered. He led the way into the hold and sure enough, Tomoe was gone. On the bench where she had sat there was only an Asgard combat gauntlet and a plain envelope marked with a few kanji. "Is this for you?" he asked Maru, picking up the envelope. There was paper inside, but also something heavier, set with spines which tore the paper as he handled it.

Maru nodded and carefully took the envelope. "Thank you," she said. She carefully removed the spurred bauble which represented the authority of Old Woman Nekai, placed it in a pouch on her belt, then turned her attention to the letter.

*

Jahara

Okuni-Nushi entered the bridge of his command ship and for once he did not feel good. He gazed at the images of Yomi on his screens, shrouded in her eternal veil of protective cloud, and he wondered if he would ever see that sights again. When he first learned that his beloved Tomoe had died, he had wished only to meet his own end, but he was seized by a sudden realisation of how much he treasured life. He did not wish to join Tomoe in death; he wanted her to return to him in life, for in life they could find joy together. Even his marriage to Su-o Nu, which filled him with fear and trepidation was a source of pleasure, for it was a fear which reminded him that he was alive. The fear he felt now only reminded him that he might die, and that if he did so he would be unable to defend his grandmother; he would fail his Empress and he would fail all of those whom he had sworn to lead as Shogun.

"Pilot..." he began.

"My Lord!"

Okuni turned to the communication officer, willing to accept almost any delay at this stage. "Report," he ordered.

"My Lord, I have received a message from the surface. A woman wishes to meet with you at the Chappa'ai to discuss a matter of great importance. She says that it concerns the fate of the Lady Tomoe."

"What?" Okuni turned to face the Bushi. "Who is this woman?"

"I do not know, My Lord," the warrior admitted. "However, she is transmitting this message using Lady Tomoe's personal codes."

"By the Firestorm," Okuni whispered. "Scan the area of the Chappa'ai."

"One lifesign only, My Lord," the pilot reported.

"Alert the Empress that there has been a delay; have Lord Gojira take the message in person, I must be sure that it comes from one in whom the Empress has absolute faith. Order three of the Dragon Guard to join me in the ring chamber."

"Yes, My Lord."

*

Okuni transported down to the ring circuit at the Chappa'ai. He kept the link to his ha'tak active; no other could use the rings until that connection was broken. He could not ignore the thought that the last time he had come here it had been to hear the news of Tomoe's death, but if there was the slightest chance that anyone had better news then he had to take it. Two Dragons flanked him to the fore and the third stood back-to-back with Okuni, the massive carapace on his chest shielding his lord's back. The single lifeform detected stood in front of the great ring, dressed in black robes; she wore a sword at her hip and her hair was bound into the Nekai braid, but with a fluffy woollen band rather than the traditional jet bauble worn by Nekai who had been captured over the years. A still figure lay at her feet, covered by a cloak.

Despite her blade, the ninja looked unthreatening, but the Bushi did not trust the ninja and so they levelled the firing emitters of their dragon blades at once.

"Lord Okuni." The ninja inclined her head, respectfully.

Okuni hid his surprise; he had not expected courtesy from a peasant murderess. "Mistress," he replied, with a very slight nod. "You have the advantage of me."

"I am a person of no importance," Yukio assured him. "Only what I have to say matters."

"Then speak."

The ninja nodded. "Anubis plans to conquer this world once your fleet departs. His lieutenant, Osiris, has plotted with the once-Lord Hachiman-no-Mikoto and has already suborned at least two, perhaps as many as twenty-one of the Fudai Daimyo. When you are gone, they will seize the palace, overthrow your dynasty and make this planet tributary to Anubis."

Okuni scoffed, although the woman's words echoed his own fears. "What proof have you of this plot?"

"I have a witness whom you might trust, but she is dead. I must ask you to raise her from the dead."

Okuni indicated the covered form and the ninja swept away the cloak. He gazed at the still features of the beautiful girl and his heart flared with rage. "You would dare to murder the child of a Bushi!" he hissed.

The ninja looked startled. "Her...Her death was an accident," she said, although Okuni felt that she spoke more to convince herself than to convince him. "She is my daughter."

"I know this girl," Okuni insisted. He took a step forward, but stayed within the circumference of the ring circuit. "She is the daughter of Lord Gojira."

"Gojira? Then Tokuwara...You know her only as the child of your servant?" she asked. "You do not know her as Tanuki?"

This time, Okuni could not hide his surprise, or his fear. He had never understood why Gojira's child had not undergone the prim'ta, but he had thought nothing of it. The girl had seemed bright and efficient; she served well and she had a smile which lit up the room. As Gojira's daughter, she had been one of the few servants he trusted to enter his own chambers, and now he learned that he had given access to his grandmother's assassin and relaxed his guard in her presence. "What makes you say this?" he demanded.

"I know it to be true, and she has seen Anubis' warriors on this world. Besides, you can not refuse my request, My Lord. Not when I have it in my power to return that which you have lost."

Okuni fixed her with his eyes and she trembled. "Speak," he whispered.

"Swear on your honour to raise the girl, whomever she might be, and I shall restore to you the Lady Tomoe."

"Do this and I would raise the girl if she were Anubis himself," he said. "Is that all you ask? What of yourself?"

The woman gave a bittersweet smile. "I know that you are sworn to the extermination of my kind. I will reveal nothing under torture and you can not, with honour, let me go. I ask nothing for myself; I have lived too long already."

To the astonishment of his guards, Okuni bowed gravely before the ninja. "I swear on my honour to do that which you have asked," he said. "Now, where is My Lady?"

"Step out of the rings," Yukio said.

Okuni did so, his guards following, and he broke the connection to the ha'tak's ring chamber. The ninja seemed surprised that he asked for no assurance that this was not a trap. "My ship has been scanning for lifesigns," he told her. "More than that, I believe you an honest and honourable woman."

"Thank you, My Lord. I should say that she is bound only against taking her own life." The woman touched a control and the rings activated. When they lifted, a familiar figure sat in the middle of the circuit, proud as a queen, even in chains. Her swords lay on the ground before her.

"My Lady," Okuni whispered.

"My Lord," Tomoe replied, her voice desolate. "Oh, my sweet lord; please do not look on me. I can not bear for you to see my this way."

Okuni ran to Tomoe's side and knelt, drawing his knife to slash through the ropes. "To see you is only joy," he assured her.

"I am without honour."

He turned her eyes to meet his. "That could never be," he assured her.

"Please," she whispered. "There is a pin in my neck that keeps me from ending my life. Remove it, I beg you."

Okuni nodded. "I shall do so," he promised, "but I command you to live, for a while at least; until you can tell me all that has occurred to bring you here. Between us, we shall find your honour again, so that if nothing else you may die with it."

"As you command, Lord Shogun," she replied, stoically.

Without taking his eyes from her face, Okuni called to his Bushi: "Bring the ninja; and the girl. Quickly."

The ninja stifled a cry of pain and Okuni turned at the sound. "Gently!" he ordered. "She has kept her word and deserves respectful treatment. Your sword, mistress," he added, holding out his hand.

The ninja took the blade from her side and passed it to him. "Thank you, My Lord."

Once more, Okuni was not quite able to hide his surprise; he had not expected deference from a ninja either. "What is your name?"

"Nekai Yukio," she replied.

Okuni's heart quickened. "And you are the granddaughter of Nekai Fujiko?"

"Daughter," Yukio answered, without thinking. "I...am older than I appear. My Lord?" she asked, disturbed by the way in which Okuni was staring at him.

The Shogun turned away from Yukio. One of the Bushi had slung Mariko's corpse across his shoulder, but Okuni approached, lifted the girl off and held her body gently in his arms. "To the ship first," he instructed. "We must learn if Mistress Nekai's words are true before we can proceed."

*

Nodori

"Colonel O'Neill!" Maru ran after Jack and caught his arm. "Jack! You can't just storm off like this!"

"I can," Jack assured her. "I'm good at it." He pulled his arm free and continued storming.

"You can't walk out, just because Yukio made a decision from the heart."

Jack turned around. "I'm not," he said. "I'm leaving because there's nothing left for me to do here. Yukio has taken the warning to Izanami. She'll have to stay and fight now and that's what I came here to do. Job done; I'm going home."

"But Jack..."

"We gave you our advice and the Elders threw it in our faces! We were forced at arrow point to lead a lynch mob into our spaceship; call me nuts, but I don't feel the warming glow of welcome any more. I have no trouble leaving them to stew. I'm going to get our stuff while Carter warms up the ship, then we're going to Origehara to find Jonas and then we're going to Disneyland."

"Then you would leave me to stew as well?" Maru demanded, her voice cracking.

Jack sighed. "You do alright on your own. It's just that your people work in different ways than mine; there's no way we can work together. I'm sorry." He turned around again.

Maru stood and called after him. "I don't mean that. You promised me nothing, Jack, but were you really just going to leave without...I barely even know what I expected of you, but it wasn't that you would turn your back on me."

"You could come with me," Jack suggested.

"No, I couldn't," Maru replied. "I have a son, Jack. More importantly perhaps...I have a sister. A sister who will die if I do not do something to save her. I know that she has taken a lot on herself. I know that you feel betrayed to find that she did this without consulting you, but Yukio was your comrade. Can you truly leave her?"

Jack looked Maru in the eyes and his gaze was like a hard, glass shell over the pain underneath. "I have to," he said. "She made her choice; Jonas didn't. I have to look to him first. I'm sorry, Maru; really I am." With that he turned and stamped off towards the town.

"So am I, Jack," Maru sighed. "So am I."

Nodori was abuzz with activity. Yukio had made no secret of her intention to seek Mariko's revival and that meant that Izanami would have an assassin who held the location of the Council Hall. The ninjas were taking steps to annihilate all traces of their presence and most of the villagers were on the move as well. No-one had any illusions that the response from the Daimyo would be anything but merciless.

There were three packs in the guest quarters in Nodori, Yukio having taken all but her Asgard gear with her. Jonas' was half-empty – he had packed everything he expected to need into a komuso's rucksack for the mission – but there was still more than Jack could easily carry. There was a little C4 left and he carefully stacked that as a parting gift for the ninjas; he was certain they would find a use for it. He left their blankets and MREs as well; there were plenty of spares on the ship. Jack stowed what was left in a single pack and shouldered it.

"You are leaving?"

Jack sighed. "Yes, Kanjiro. We're leaving."

"My father is glad," Kanjiro noted. "He believes that you have brought great harm on my people."

"Probably true," Jack allowed. "We do that a lot."

"I wish you were staying?"

"Really? Why?"

"Because you make my mother smile," Kanjiro replied. "She does not do so often."

"It isn't my business to make her smile!" Jack snapped, angrily. "Your father should be doing that, if he wasn't so wrapped up in Yukio. Oh, except of course he's now disgusted by her."

Kanjiro hid his face. "He is disgusted by me as well. He says that it is wrong of me to love Mariko, because she is the enemy and because she is the daughter of a Daimyo. But I...I loved her when I thought that we were blood kin; I can not help myself."

"You still are blood kin," Jack told him. "Come on, Kanjiro; don't tell me anyone around here still buys the 'adopted sister' line."

"I do not know what you mean," Kanjiro insisted, honestly.

"Never mind," Jack sighed, wearily. "It doesn't matter."

Kanjiro absorbed this dismissal with a shrug. "Come," he said. "We leave by boat for the new headquarters within the hour. They will not let you aboard the Council Boat if I do not escort you and the others will be crowded."

"I'm not going on the boat," Jack reminded him. "Carter and I are taking the Shakka."

"You can not," Kanjiro replied.

"Your family seem keen on telling me what I can and can't do," Jack commented. "Why can't we take the Shakka?"

"Because Major Carter and my mother left in your ship five minutes ago," Kanjiro explained, ingenuously. "They asked if I would delay you in conversation for a little while."

Jack let the pack fall. "Son of a bitch," he muttered.

"Yes; that is what my father sometimes calls me," Kanjiro agreed, with equanimity.

"Thank you for this," Maru said.

Sam shrugged and kept her eyes on the viewscreen in front of her. "You're welcome," she replied, "but I'm really not doing it for you."

"What about your other friend?"

"The Colonel will take care of Jonas," Sam asserted, with more confidence than she felt. "I don't feel right about choosing between them, but Yukio will die if we don't do anything to help her."

Maru nodded in agreement, and turned her attention back to the letter in her hands, reading it through one more time.

Dear Maru,

I shall not say what I have been doing for the past twenty years; I have little time and Sam can tell you almost as well as I can. I shall say, however, that I have dreamed each night of returning to my home, of being reunited with my family. My fondest hope was to find our mother alive, my oath-sister at her side and my daughter a ninja. I thought often of you as well; I did not wish anyone to know, but Ashime had instructions that if I were to die, she should raise Mariko, but you were to train her. If I never loved you as I should have done, still I recognised that you were the greatest ninja I ever knew.

This has not been the homecoming I had hoped for. Your hatred of me has only grown, it seems, and I can not fault you. Our parents are gone and I have learned that Ashime, whom I trusted above all, betrayed me and stole my child. Even Mariko is dead now and my actions here have done nothing but throw others into danger. Loss can show us what truly matters, however. If I do nothing else with my remaining life, I shall free this world from the threat of Anubis.

By the time you read this, I shall be well on my way to meet with Lord Okuni. I shall give him the warning and exchange the life of Lady Tomoe for that of my daughter. As Tanuki must have some notion of the location of Nodori, it would be best if you were to remove the Council to a safer place. Do not fear that I shall reveal anything under torture; the gifts of the Asgard will allow me to resist unto death and prevent my revival.

Please thank Colonel O'Neill and especially Sam for their kindness. I wish them all success in locating and retrieving Jonas Quinn. If the Council do not deem my will compromised, then it is my right as a woman of little or no direct family to name my own successor as Old Woman. I name you, for I can think of none more qualified.

I am truly sorry for the hard words I have spoken in the past. Should you wish it, I forgive you all you may have said or done against me, for I know that I earned your enmity. I hope that you can in time forgive me. I could ask for no greater memorial than for you to speak from time to time of your sister, who fell to protect her world.

Your loving sister,

Yukio

"She is a fool," Maru whispered.

"She is grieving."

"Why did you come with me?"

"I saw her die," Sam replied, quietly. "I saw Yukio killed in the most horrific...She was...shattered, by a creature who revelled in destruction and cruelty and who laughed when he threw her corpse down in front of me. I can't let her die again. I'd always picture her like she was then; I don't think I would be able to live with myself."

Maru nodded. "I've never seen Yukio die, but I grieved for her before and I have lost enough friends to the cruelty of the Daimyo that I can not let my sister become another. She says 'our'," she added, apropos of nothing.

"Hmm?"

"Our mother. Our parents. She always used to say 'my' mother." A tear ran from the corner of Maru's eye, then her eye set in fierce determination. "I will be forever damned to the life of a hungry ghost before I let her go now; not when I could finally hear her call me her sister."

*

Jahara

Izanami was not in the best of moods when Okuni came before her that morning. She had been attempting to contact her flagship since Lord Gojira – who now knelt before her throne – had brought word of the delay, but without success. She rose from her throne to receive Okuni, but her planned rebuke died on her lips at the sight of the group who accompanied the Shogun.

"Lady Tomoe," she hissed.

"Great Queen, Empress of Yomi," Tomoe said, bowing low. She was dressed in the robes of court and – for the first time in Izanami's long memory – she did not wear her swords in her obi.

The two humans also bowed, ten yards back, even though one was dressed as one of the hated ninja and had her arms bound behind her back. With instincts and perception honed by many years of peril, she did not fail to notice that Gojira stiffened in fear at the sight of this woman. The other human was Tanuki, who should have been in Origehara, doing whatever she deemed necessary to spur Lord Richo to execute the treacherous Lady Jingo...or vice versa.

"What is the meaning of this?" Izanami demanded.

"Treason, My Empress," Okuni replied. "Black treason."

He went on to relate, almost word for word, Yukio's warning. He explained that the Daimyo were forming secret alliances with Anubis and that these Daimyo were planning to take advantage of his absence to bring down the Imperial line. Then Mariko reported how she had witnessed the original negotiation between Osiris and Lady Jingo, then preceded Jingo's retinue to Origehara and seen the same business discussed with Lord Richo. Izanami seemed willing to dismiss this as the usual intriguing; until her agent mentioned the name of her renegade son, Hachiman.

"That black-hearted, treacherous wretch!" she exclaimed. "Cursed be the day when I spawned such a villain; and doubly-cursed the day he came back to trouble me once more. I had hoped the vile creature slain."

"It seems that we were mistaken," Okuni said, "but it is a mistake that can be corrected, at least."

"Precisely," Izanami agreed. "What of you, Lady Tomoe; what brings you back to my court?"

"I...I was captured," Tomoe replied, shamefacedly. "By some strange art, this woman prevented me taking my own life. She returned me to this world in the hope of making use of my knowledge; her own seems to be out of date."

"She is older than she looks," Okuni added.

Izanami smiled. "And what did you tell her?" she asked Tomoe.

"That Lord Richo and Lady Jingo were your enemies," Tomoe replied. "I believed that if they could be persuaded to rebel, you would have cause to stamp them out in one fell swoop and the assault on Arcadia would be prevented."

"And why would you want that?" Izanami asked, dangerously.

"Because I knew that the assault would destroy you, My Empress. That land is cursed, I swear it; all I have done to keep you from this course has been motivated by my wish to protect you."

"And what will you do now?" the Empress challenged.

"My honour is gone," Tomoe replied. "I shall do whatever My Empress commands."

Izanami nodded in satisfaction. She rose to her feet and walked to stand in front of Okuni and Tomoe. "Rise, My Lady," she said, kindly, laying a gentle hand on Tomoe's head. "Go to my shrine in the north tower. Meditate awhile, until you know what path lies before you."

"Yes, My Empress. Thank you." Tomoe rose and bowed deeply. She backed away from Izanami and left the throne room to seek wisdom in the shrine.

"It seems a great many are set against any return to Arcadia," Izanami noted. "Perhaps I am grown old and weary."

"Never, My Empress," Okuni assured her, in all sincerity. "You remain the most radiant star in Yomi's firmament."

Izanami laughed. "Your wife shall never pine to hear a good opinion of her," she said. "Your flagship is in orbit still?"

"Yes, My Lady."

"Good. Take Lord Gojira and his Dragons. Strike hard at Origehara; drive this upstart Osiris from my world or bring her to me in chains, and make certain that Hachiman is dead, even if you must pursue him across the galaxy."

"Yes, My Lady," Okuni agreed, eagerly. He took her hand and kissed it.

"I shall deploy the remaining ha'tak vessels to defend this world and array them so as to send a warning to any Daimyo who would oppose our rule. Once you are returned I shall dispatch half the fleet to join Lord Yu in battle. Take these two away," she added, waving a hand at the human women. "My dear Mariko may return to her family's quarters; the ninja is to be held, but not mistreated. She is an enemy, but has done me a service. I must think carefully before I decide what to do with her." She sat down, her whole demeanour indicating that the audience was concluded.

Outside the door to the throne room, Okuni turned to Gojira. "Take the girl to the secure room," he ordered, "then join me on the flagship."

"Yes, My Lord," Gojira replied. He took Yukio by the right arm, almost tentatively.

"A moment," Okuni said. "Mistress Nekai."

"My Lord?"

"Have you, by chance, a tattoo of a dragon on the small of your back?"

Yukio glanced uncertainly at Gojira, but he seemed as startled by this question as she was herself. "I...A dragon? No, My Lord."

It was impossible to tell if Okuni were pleased or displeased by this answer; his face was impassive, although he said: "Pity. Carry on, Lord Gojira. Treat her with courtesy, but be wary of her."

"I shall, My Lord," Gojira assured him.

Okuni gave a short laugh. "Is this your ghost then, Lord Gojira?"

The Bushi looked embarrassed. "My Lord."

"Rest assured, she is flesh and blood; yet she is dangerous still. Be sure she is secure. I shall await your arrival to launch the attack."

"My Lord."

Yukio craned her head around to watch Lord Okuni as he departed, but Gojira took her left arm in a firm grip and, although he did not try to force her, she allowed herself be drawn after him. After a short distance he released her, seemingly glad to allow her to proceed unguided.

Mariko fell into step with Gojira, walking on Yukio's left. "My Lord," she began in a low whisper, "this woman...She had told me such strange things."

Gojira nodded. "I know what she has said to you," he assured her. "Your mother will explain. I must go to war. You must got to your mother and help Lady Inari to protect Jiro until I return."

Mariko bowed. "Yes, father," she said.

Both the Bushi and his prisoner watched the girl go.

"You bastard," Yukio whispered.

"She has led a good life and found great favour," Gojira replied. "Even if you had...had lived, could you have offered her as much?"

"I could have given her freedom."

"The same freedom that you enjoy now?" he asked her. "Take the stairs on your left."

Yukio inclined her head, helplessly. "Yes, My Lord."

*

Nodori

At the beach where Mariko's body had been washed up, the villagers boats were drawn in close to shore. Most of the vessels were small, with lightweight hulls of wood or reeds, but there was one larger boat which Jack took to be the Council's ride. It sat low in the water and was clearly built for speed and stealth. A gleam of metal showed between the wooden boards and as he approached, Jack saw two of the ninjas checking a glider cannon on a swivel mount that was concealed in one of the gunwales. Or at least Jack presumed it was a gunwale because it had a gun in it; he was not really boatman enough to be sure.

Most of the Council were already aboard, but Old Woman Ashikaga – the Councillor who best earned her courtesy title – seemed determined to be the last to abandon Nodori. Jack hurried up to the ancient crone, who turned to regard him with her gimlet eyes.

"You seem in a hurry to be somewhere," she noted.

"Isn't everyone?" Jack replied.

"Not at all. Most of us are rather keen to not be somewhere."

"Is this conversation going to revolve around candles and meals?" Jack asked, warily, feeling his head begin to spin already.

"Do you want it to?"

"No."

"You want some way of getting to where your friends are; and quickly, yes?"

"Yes," Jack agreed. "Do you know of one?"

Ashikaga Kimiko pondered for a long moment, then waved to a passing ninja; by his topknot, Jack could tell the man was a member of Kimiko's own clan. The Old Woman spoke to her subordinate in her own language for a moment, then turned back to Jack. "I will lend you a skiff," she offered. "With that you will be able to reach Jahara by nightfall."

"A whole day?" Jack asked. "Is there nothing faster?"

"I am afraid that we have no aircraft here at Nodori," Kimiko apologied. "If you want something that flies, you will have to travel nine days into the mountains, to the Hideki aviary."

"There are ships there?"

"Eagles," she corrected. "The river is probably safer, anyway. I can not arrange swift passage across the plain to Origehara and so you will have to go first to the great stronghold of the Mikoto at Jahara; unless I miss my guess then your other friends will be there anyway. Just be sure to go slow and quiet past the bridgeholds. Once there, you have a tracker for your ship, do you not?"

"I do," Jack replied.

"Then that will carry you on to the north; you will have to leave the boat."

"Thanks," Jack said; as an afterthought he gave an awkward bow.

Kimiko shrugged. "You have done much for us, I think, and I would not wish any harm to come to my daughter-in-law." Jack followed the old woman's disapproving gaze and saw Kirano helping Murata Gemmei into the boat with an over-familiar hand.

"He's a one, isn't he," Jack said, tightly.

"I try not to dissuade him," Kimiko replied. "If I am lucky he will produce one child fit to replace me before I die, because the kami should forbid that I pass my title to him or Maru's boy."

"I quite like Kanjiro," Jack admitted.

"I adore him," Kimiko assured Jack, "but would you want to follow him in battle?"

"I take your point." Jack eyed the old woman, shrewdly. "You don't miss much, do you?"

"I like to think not," she demurred, "but how would I know?"

Jack smiled. "Yukio and Maru," he said. "They're more than just adopted sisters, aren't they? Even a poor gaje like me can see the resemblance."

"People here are used to not seeing what should not be seen," Kimiko explained. "When she was a young woman, Nekai Fujiko saved the life of a young man who would one day become Old Man Kobayashi. Some years later, she returned from a mission and – for reasons that she would not explain – chose to seclude herself on Kobayashi lands. Shortly before she returned – seven months after her going – the wife of her old friend gave birth to a baby girl. Or so it was said."

Jack nodded his understanding. "So...Maru is Yukio's half-sister."

"So Old Man Kobayashi told me, when the girl was still an infant and he was still alive. He was like a son to me and he could not long keep that secret from me. But Fujiko could never acknowledge the child; she would have shamed herself, not to mention her husband and their legitimate child. I do not think that she hated the girl, but she hated the fact of her existence. When the Kobayashi were destroyed, I do not think that she was happy to have her secret bastard returned to her. She could never look at the girl without remembering what she had done; that was why she seemed to hate her."

"Is Maru like Mariko?" Jack asked. "A Daimyo's child?"

Kimiko shrugged. "That I do not know, for she never told a soul. I can find out most things if I put my mind to it, but I never learned that secret. Most likely, Fujiko carried it to her grave. Old Man Kobayashi once told me that the father would know his child; that is as much as I – or anybody else – now know." There was a loud splash from the rear of the boat. "Now; if my clan have not managed to sink the skiff, you should be ready to go." She turned to lead him towards the splash.

 "This is a skiff?" Jack asked. "It looks like...Like a really big frying pan. Floats a little low in the water, doesn't it?"

With unexpected agility, Kimiko vaulted aboard the skiff, which was indeed a large, low-sided disc, very much like a frying pan or wok. She sat at a control console and touched a switch; with a whisper of sound, the skiff lifted out of the water; it was little comfort to see that it had a flatter disc for a base and so looked more like a teacup than a pan. Droplets of fluid scattered from the 'saucer', repelled from the surface rather than simply falling. The water underneath the skiff rippled as though a soft breeze were blowing straight down upon it.

"A hovercraft?" Jack contemplated the skiff for a long moment. "Cool," he concluded.

"It will function with equal effectiveness over land or water, although it is not good at obstacles," Kimiko admitted. "Do you think you will be able to pilot the craft?"

Jack shrugged. "How hard can it be?" he asked.

*

Origehara

Jonas waited with growing impatience at the base of the rear wall of the fortress. Sakiko had been as good as her word in leading him through the secret passages – and across a few less secret areas, under cover of darkness – to bring him out of the fortress; they had reached the outside air before moonrise, but Jonas had been hidden for some hours now and the Jaffa had still not returned with the promised cart. He feared that she might have had second thoughts, or worse still have been caught taking a wagon without permission.

Jonas was just beginning to curse himself for a fool for not making his escape on foot as soon as he was free of the walls, when he saw figures flitting between the trees; heavily armoured figures, but moving with surprising grace and stealth. He fumbled inside his robe for his night vision scope and took a second look. With the light intensification there could be no mistaking the shapes of Dragon Guards.

Slowly, Jonas made his way back towards the entrance to the hidden passage. He was almost there when a hand clapped across his mouth and an arm wrapped around his chest.

"Shh," Sakiko hissed into his ear. "Quick and quiet."

Jonas nodded his head, but Sakiko kept a tight hold on him as she pulled him through the secret door and closed it with her foot. Even then, she kept her grip on Jonas slightly longer than might be deemed necessary, pressing herself against his back.

"Ur-han eh-oh nah," Jonas said.

"I beg your pardon?" Sakiko asked, shifting her hand from his mouth to encircle his shoulders.

"I said, you can let go now." Jonas tried to escape Sakiko's grip, but the seneschal's daughter was as strong as any Jaffa and Jonas found her hold to be unbreakable, and not entirely unpleasant.

"I am sorry," Sakiko said, but she did not sound particularly apologetic, nor did she let him go; indeed, she now wound her free arm around him as well, this one somewhat lower than the other. "There was a particularly offensive man on duty in the stables last night," she went on, still in an intimate whisper. "One of Hachiman's servants. By the time I was able to lull him into taking a drink from me and hidden his unconscious body, the first moon was already setting. I had just hitched up the wagon when the alarm was sounded and the Gate sealed."

"Alarm? Then the fortress is under...I'd really be more comfortable if you let go now."

"As you wish," she acceded, finally releasing him. There was a trace of angry hurt in her voice and Jonas was not sure how much longer she would continue helping him if he made no sign of returning her interest.

"Do you think they know about this passage?" Jonas asked. "The Dragon Guard must be coming up on this wall for a reason."

"Where can we go?" Sakiko wondered aloud. "I heard the warriors saying that Lord Okuni-Nushi's ha'tak vessel was descending on us and a battalion of Dragons approaching along the trail." As though on cue, the fortress rocked to the impact of a plasma blast. "That must be the gates," Sakiko mused. Two more blasts followed. "And the mounted weapons in the Gatehouse; they must plan on making a full ground assault."

"Well," Jonas said, "let's not be here when it happens. The escape rings are in the throne room; can we get there, Sakiko?"

"I believe so," she replied, but Lord Richo will be heading that way himself."

Jonas shook his head. "I think he's just arrogant enough to try and make a fight of it; especially with Hachiman on his side. I bet that's why Okuni is attacking on the ground; they'd flee a bombardment, but he knows their pride will stop them running from a stand-up fight."

"I am afraid," Sakiko admitted.

"Don't be. We'll look after each other," Jonas promised. "Are you with me?"

Sakiko leaned close and kissed Jonas on the mouth. Hating himself just a little for the pretence, and a whole lot more for enjoying it, he let himself kiss her back. He had not been kissed very often in recent years, and not at all since his arrival on Earth, but if memory served him right – and his always had – Sakiko measured up well as a kisser. Still, he could not help shrinking away a little as the woman pressed harder into his arms and he was relieved when a sharp rap on the outer walls drew their attention.

"Looks like they know there's a door, just not where," Jonas said, breathlessly. "Time to leave. Are you with me?" he asked again.

"Definitely," Sakiko assured him in a husky whisper.

Jonas swallowed hard. "Right," he said.

"It's this way," she said. She indicated the direction with a nod of her head before taking the lead. "Am I making you uncomfortable again?"

"A little. Where I come from, people don't kiss like that until they're married. In fact, most people wouldn't feel comfortable kissing like that until they'd been married long enough to have children."

Sakiko gave a soft laugh, which betrayed only a trace of her tension. "However do your people manage to have children in the first place, then?"

Jonas grinned. "I was given to understand that it has something to do with stickwings and arlbury bushes."

"Sweet man," she mocked. "There is so much I could teach you."

Jonas wondered if he would not be safer surrendering to the Dragon Guard.

*

"Well," Osiris said, as she surveyed the situation from Origehara's highest tower. "This is a twist."

"This is excellent," Hachiman crowed. "I despise all this skulking about! I shall have an opportunity now to show Lord Okuni who his true master is. Let them come!"

Osiris rolled her eyes, impatiently. "Perhaps in this instance, discretion might be the better part of valour?" she suggested.

"Your words are strange to us," Lord Richo told her. "This is a battle that must be joined."

"In what way must it be joined?" Osiris demanded, subtly distancing herself from the two men. "Are we not lords? Do we not decide when we must fight?"

Lady Jingo looked grim, but she positioned herself with her compatriots. "Where battle is, we fight," she pronounced.

"And when your armies are crushed?" Osiris demanded.

"We shall not be defeated," Hachiman laughed. "I can not be defeated!" With that bold declaration he turned and sprang down the stairs, three steps at a time. Lord Richo followed more slowly.

"Lady Jingo," Osiris began.

Jingo shook her head. "Do you not see, My Lady Osiris? She knows. We gambled and we lost; now there will be nowhere on Yomi for us to run to."

Osiris tilted her head on one side and looked at Jingo, curiously. "You could flee off this world."

Jingo held her head high. "I am a Daimyo; my place is here. I shall fight and die here, or – if fortune is kind – I shall fight with honour, be defeated and curry favour with my conquerors."

Osiris sneered. "You are fools. Wise men fear death; the Daimyo spend their whole lives courting it, like a lover."

Jingo turned and descended the first few steps, then looked back over her shoulder and said: "Death is not as a lover," she said, "for death will never betray us. In the long life of a Goa'uld, that surety makes it precious to us."

Osiris shook her head as the woman continued down the stairs. "Mad," she muttered. "All of them, utterly mad." She reached into her robes and took out her communication sphere. "Is the ship in position," she asked.

"Yes, My Lady," her pilot replied.

"Signal the recall. We are leaving this inbred backwater. When the warriors return, have them assemble in the descent room for a covert insertion; with all of Izanami's warriors in the air or in Origehara, it may just be that we can salvage this debacle." Osiris did not wait for an acknowledgement; she merely turned her attention to consideration of the landscape of Yomi; the green trees, the majestic mountains; the breathtaking beauty of the Skyfire. "I hate this planet," she declared, then turned to the stairs; two Ninjaffa materialised from the shadows to accompany her as she descended.

*

Jahara

"So I have a question," Sam said as she gently touched the Shakka down on the Plain of Jahara, only a few miles south of the Imperial fortress.

"Yes?"

"How do we get into the fortress? I mean, it is a fortress, right? Impenetrable walls, armed guards. We're not just going to be able to knock on the doors and ask to see our friend the captive ninja."

"The clans have their ways," Maru assured her. "At any given time there are about five viable means of gaining access to the fortress of Jahara; we have agents on the inside who work to discover or create new routes as quickly as the Bushi can locate and seal them."

"Can these agents help us?" Sam wondered.

Maru shook her head. "I do not even know who the agents within the fortress are; we never send anyone in who could identify them. Their role is strictly to keep the doors open and to communicate occasionally the paths which have been opened or closed. We do not involve them in operations for fear of revealing their identities. If just one of them were questioned we would risk losing the entire network. We will be on our own."

Sam shrugged. "Okay," she said. "Just us against an army of Jaffa. Just the way I like it."

Maru squeezed her shoulder, encouragingly. "It will not be just us against an army," she promised. "We are not going to battle our enemies, but evade them. We are ninja, Major Carter; our power is stealth and silence our greatest weapon. That is why the Daimyo fear us; apart from the destruction we bring, we take no part in their world." She pulled a hood over her head, leaving only her eyes exposed; she had already smeared black pigment around the sockets so that none of her skin showed. "We simply do not exist."

*

Origehara

Sakiko led Jonas out of a panel only a few hundred yards from the throne room doors. The doors hung loosely on their hinges where they had been blasted open in pursuit of the rest of SG-1 and Jonas felt a certain satisfaction to look on that destruction. It also seemed apposite that this view was set against the cries of battle which reverberated along the corridor from the front of the fortress.

"Quickly," Sakiko urged. "Lord Richo's warriors will not stand long against the Dragon Guards."

Jonas nodded and followed as she led. He had no intention of being caught by the Dragon Guard, especially not while wearing the uniform of their current enemy. For the purpose of camouflage he had donned the komuso's full apparel, from boots that were half a size too large for him to the wristband which bore a distinctive pattern of coloured threads; if he were caught by the wrong side now, that would be enough to hang him.

"The transporter is behind the throne," Sakiko explained. They ran around and the woman quickly opened the disguised panel to reveal the ring controls.

"So you know all the secrets of this place?"

Sakiko sighed. "I would have been seneschal one day," she mused. She activated the rings and they were swept away in a burst of light. "Even if the skimmer is gone, there is a passage..." she began to say, then stopped in alarm.

Jonas turned and followed her gaze. In the centre of the room a vessel far larger than the skimmer hung motionless, its black surface almost seeming to swallow light. The exact shape of the yacht was hard for Jonas to make out, but he could not believe that it had made its way down the shaft to the surface without considerable effort. Such considerations were quickly swept away however, because between them and the ship stood five Ninjaffa – in komuso garb, but carrying staff weapons – and one very tall Goa'uld.

"You are here," the nearest Ninjaffa observed. "Good. My Lady, there remains no trace of our forces in the fortress above." Osiris nodded in satisfaction. The speaker, apparently the leader of her bodyguard, gave a short signal and at once one of his cohort aimed his staff weapon at Sakiko.

Without thinking, Jonas stepped in front of Sakiko.

"Jaffa, kree!" the leader snapped.

"Kree ta," Osiris countermanded. She paced over, a mocking smile on her face. "We have a little spare room now that Lord Hachiman will not be joining us; let the Jaffa keep this fancy."

Jonas was doubly glad of the komuso basket hat, that concealed both his features and his blush.

Osiris circled Jonas and Sakiko, pausing to lift the latter's chin and examine her. "Yes," she said, approvingly. "I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I remain man enough to commend your choice."

"Thank you, My Lady," Jonas said, grateful that he could speak the basics of the Jaffa dialect – yes, no, kree; I'm not worthy – with a better accent than the language of Yomi. He looked at Osiris' grin and realised that Sakiko was right: The Goa'uld could be forgiving, if they found you amusing.

"Kree," Osiris ordered, suddenly all business again. "Let us not linger. You will change into your battle gear and assemble in the drop room in a quarter-turn." She stopped and looked at Sakiko again. "Primus; when will we reach Jahara at atmospheric velocity?"

"Just under a turn, My Lady."

"Very good. Make that a half-turn then," she corrected, with another mocking smile. "Jaffa, kree!"

The Ninjaffa turned as one and trooped onto the ship, with Jonas following close behind and Sakiko clinging to him like a shadow. Osiris lingered long enough to scramble the receiving circuit of the rings as a nasty surprise for any who might try to follow, then turned and strode to her ship.

Engines straining, the yacht tipped up on its end and slid into the shaft, almost touching the walls on either side. The yacht's artificial gravity field kept anyone within from feeling this sudden shift in orientation, but Jonas might legitimately have been too occupied to notice anyway. His mind was abuzz with escape plans, none of which had the slightest chance of working unless all of Osiris' Jaffa were to suddenly drop dead of an unexpectedly virulent disease. Instead, he obediently followed the other komuso until they began to peel off into individual cubicles, then drew Sakiko into one of these tiny private rooms. He turned to close the door behind him and the lead Ninjaffa removed his komusu hat and winked.

"Do not be late, Seven," he cautioned Jonas, then turned away to his own chamber.

"At least I'm dressed as someone who gets their own space," he noted. It was not much of a space, but there was a single bed, locker and desk, which was more than most Jaffa got. Like the rest of the ship it was decorated in black, dark green and gold, rather than the traditional all-gold look favoured by most Goa'uld.

"How did you know this was the right room?" Sakiko asked, nervously.

Jonas held up his wrist to display the panel of coloured threads. "Colour-coded," he explained. There was an hourglass on the wall – or more correctly a quarter-turn glass. Jonas set a dial on top of the glass for two rotations, then turned it over; once the bottom glass filled it would turn itself, sounding an alarm after a half-turn or approximately one hour.

Sakiko quickly discovered a set of ninja robes and a sword in the locker. "This must be your battle gear," she noted.

"I guess I should change," Jonas said, warily. There was nowhere he could go in this tiny space to change in private.

"There is no hurry," Sakiko told him. "You were granted additional time, were you not."

"Well, yes, but..."

"And you were granted that time for a reason?"

"Sakiko..." Jonas began, but she cut him off with another kiss. "Please!" he gasped, trying to pull away from her. "This isn't the time."

"But this is what the Daimyo expects," Sakiko reminded him. "She may become suspicious if certain things are not heard."

"You can not be serious."

Sakiko grinned. "I have never been more so," she assured him.

"Oh, good grief."

*

When the Dragon Guards charged through the ruin of the gatehouse, Lord Richo was there to meet the invaders – safely screened by a double line of his own Bushi, of course. Lord Hachiman, meanwhile, had taken to the secret passages and made for the rear sally port of the fortress. En route he had met with a squad of Dragons, but his Bushi had proven a match for them and his own blade – O-tachi Kawaita; the Thirsty Sword – clove through their heavy armour as though it were paper. Two of the eight died by his hand, for the loss of only three of his own guards.

From the sally port, Hachiman led his squad to the front gate and struck into the flank of the attacking force. The Dragons fell before their swords like wheat before a scythe. The familiar scent of battle filled the air and Hachiman felt a surge of furious joy to be in the thick of battle once more. He felt his own blood sing in his ears and gave voice to a furious battle cry.

The weird, ethereal song grew in pitch and Hachiman slowly realised that it was not in his ears, but somewhere beyond himself. He turned to one of his warriors, only to see the Bushi cut down by a streak of white light. The armoured figure fell and revealed the form of Hachiman's enemy, the numinous blade of Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi held in his hand.

"The pup!" Hachiman growled.

"My Lord Hachiman," Okuni replied, levelly.

Lady Jingo watched from the wall of the fortress, her knuckles white where she clutched at the battlements. She was no warrior, but she was Daimyo and unlike the offworlder, Osiris, she was not going to run. From her vantage point she saw the two Lords meet; saw them raise their swords. Hachiman held Kawaita over his head in the Jodan high stance; Okuni let Kusanagi drop into a low, Gedan posture, angled downwards from the waist.

Jingo held her breath. Her instincts had always drawn her towards the powerful; towards strong lords that she could manipulate with her beauty. She had seen three husbands to their graves in her search for the Daimyo Lord who would carry her to greatness and she had developed a fine eye for bearing; she considered herself a connoisseur of authority and could size up two lords in seconds. It had taken less than a heartbeat to recognise that the strength in Hachiman was far greater than that in Richo; her decision to throw her lot in with Hachiman – including her promise to wed and murder her intended – had taken only seconds longer. Now, however, she was torn. She was used to being able to pick and back a winner, it was what had kept her alive so long, but between these two she could not make the call.

With a mighty cry, the two lords moved together. Hachiman swung his sword down, Okuni's swept his upwards, and Kawaita bit deep into the metal of Lord Okuni's helmet.

In the courtyard of Origehara, Richo heard the gasp that went up from the Bushi. In the silence that followed, he struggled to see what had occasioned such awe. A flash of colour caught his eye and he saw Lady Jingo fleeing like a startled deer along the wall. The panic in her gaze infected him and he turned, cutting through the enemy and his own men in a desperate bid to reach his throne room.

Hachiman staggered away from Okuni. He tried to transfer Kawaita to his left hand, aware that his right arm had become useless but not yet able to comprehend the fact that it had been severed from the shoulder and now lay, sword still clutched in its dead grip, at Lord Okuni's feet. With slow, deliberate motions, Okuni released the catches of his helmet and lifted the heavy kabuto from his head. The helmet was sliced right through at the brow, but there was no sign of even a scratch on Okuni's skin. As a light breeze passed across the field of battle, a few strands of his black hair drifted away.

"Not possible," Hachiman whispered. "Lord Hachiman-no-Mikoto is never defeated."

"Everyone is defeated," Okuni replied. "No one can conquer forever."

"But you? How could a pup like you...?"

Okuni smiled, beatifically, as he swept the head from Hachiman's shoulders, helmet and all. "Because you thought I could never win," he replied.

*

Jahara Plain

Jack pushed the skiff as fast as it would go. The sheer speed did not bother him, but the way the vessel skipped up and down on the river's surface was beginning to make him feel ill. He could have slowed down, but the thought of arriving too late to help his colleagues kept his hand hard on the throttle. Only when a squat black fort appeared on the horizon ahead did he bring the engines down to minimum, pull out of the current and drift slowly downstream in the shadow of the bank. As he slid beneath the bridge which was guarded by the fort, he could hear the voices of the Bushi as they questioned the occupants of a wagon, but they were watching the road and not the river.

Jack allowed himself an inward chuckle at the folly of the Jaffa; when the skiff, floating low on the water, caught on a half-submerged log, it seemed like karma.

"Oh, fine," Jack muttered under his breath. He kept a sharp ear out while he leaned over the side of the skiff and shoved at the log. Above him, he could hear the voices of the Jaffa; there seemed to be two Bushi, speaking to two civilians. In fact there were two separate conversations; an older Bushi, questioning the merchant about his business, and a younger warrior questioning the merchant's daughter about...other things. "Just keep talking," Jack murmured as he took out his multitool and unfolded the miniature saw.

"Are you planning to lodge at the fort?" the older warrior asked.

"We are," the merchant replied. "We can not reach the marketplace at Aizan before nightfall now. I do not wish to be on the road in the darkness; not with so many ronin about."

On the other side of the bridge, the girl gave a high giggle. "I am sure that you should not speak to me in this way with my father so close," she said.

"No, no," Jack muttered. "Keep talking." So long as they were occupied with the merchant and his daughter, they would not notice the sound of sawing and splashing underneath their bridge.

With a tearing crack, the troublesome branch broke free and the skiff drifted three.

"What was that noise?" the girl asked.

Damn, damn, damn.

"The sound of destiny," the Bushy replied, ardently.

As he floated away down the river, Jack turned his eyes towards the sky. "Thank you, Lord, for corny adolescents," he said.

*

Jahara

"Sewers," Sam muttered to herself, almost gagging on the ammonia-stench. "That's what my life was missing. Not enough sewers."

"Hush," Maru warned. "We are directly underneath the fortress now."

Sam shook her head. "Just promise me that you will never tell me which bit of the fortress we are under."

"Agreed."

The two women eventually emerged from Jahara's sanitation system into the muggy heat of some kind of shower room. There were no conventional shower heads, but the extravagantly-tiled walls of the room were set with vents.

"Decon centre," Maru explained as she checked the door. "Very useful if we don't want people to smell us coming." She closed the door again, then touched a control. The room was filled with a cloud of steam, which persisted a few seconds.

Sam felt her skin tingle. "What was that?"

"Decontamination purge," Maru replied. "All of the filth from the sewers will be gone. Izanami's servants must attend to the system sometime, but the Empress has no wish for olfactory reminders of that particular ugly truth."

"Understandably enough." Sam took a closer look at the opulent tiling on the walls. Each wall bore a different scene: a pastoral with a castle at its centre, a battle, a training camp and a shrine; the essential elements of a Bushi's duty, Sam supposed. Incredibly, each scene was composed of tiny, glazed terracotta tiles, each of which bore a miniature version of the main scene and each of which was minutely different from any of its neighbours, arranged so that the light and shade of each individual image blurred at a distance to create the overall effect. "I know the Goa'uld like to spend, but this is the flashest sewerman's washroom I ever saw.

Maru opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of scent; she squirted first herself and then Sam with a pungent, floral odour.

"Goa'uld sewermen smell like this?" Sam asked, incredulous. "I thought we didn't want to smell?"

Maru smiled. "We don't want to smell different." She checked the door again. "All clear. No one ever comes down here unless they have to; it's one of the things that makes it a useful entrance. Alright, Major Carter..."

"Sam," Sam insisted. "Seems a little silly for you to call me major while I'm committing a court-martial offence." She scratched uncomfortably. "My clothes feel itchy."

"It's the decontaminants," Maru explained. "They consume grease and so your skin will be very dry."

Sam unpacked her P90 from its waterproof bag and checked it over; the bag had held and the weapon was in full, working order. The sidearm securely tucked inside her jacket was a different matter. Sam would never know if the sewage had caused it any harm, but the decon spray had eaten away every trace of lubricant. The weapon's construction was accurate enough that the action still seemed smooth, but Sam unloaded it anyway; it would only need a little heat to cause a jam.

"Sam," Maru agreed. "Stay close to me, do not make a sound and take cover when I say. We should be able to reach the cells undetected, if we are careful."

Sam nodded. "It's very quiet," she noted in a whisper.

"The Bushi are all aboard their ships, waiting for battle; or on the walls, watching for assault. Many of the civilians will have been confined to their quarters or sent home. Aside from a few patrols, we should have the inner fortress to ourselves."

The walls of the passageway were plain white, broken periodically by the black, lacquered frames of sliding screen doors. This decoration dominated as they moved through the lower levels of the fortress, but as they mounted the stairs to ground level and above the walls began to be patterned with printed silks and painted murals. Stylised beasts, both mythic and real, sprang from floor to ceiling; cranes swooped, chased across the sky by magnificent dragons – winged, Sam noted; presumably the dragons of Yomi, rather than of Japanese legend – while deer grazed and wolves and foxes stalked them.

From time-to-time, they would be forced to hide themselves in one of the adjoining rooms when servants or guards approached. Maru had a knack for choosing unoccupied rooms, although it was not infallible and on one occasion she had been obliged to pinion a servant and smother her into unconsciousness to avoid discovery. Watching Maru tie the girl's wrists and bundle her under her own bed, Sam had a crawling suspicion that it was only for the sake of her sensibilities that the hapless servant had not been silenced forever with a swift cut to the throat.

"Did you hear what the guards were saying?" Maru asked.

"Something about the audience chamber," Sam replied. "The Empress has taken a personal interest in...something."

"Yukio," Maru surmised. "There is a passage to a secret viewing gallery. Those are a favourite among the Goa'uld; they love to watch each other."

"Can we get there without being seen?"

"Easily; there is an entrance on the next floor, in the office of the Shogun."

Sam looked doubtful. "And what about the Shogun?"

Maru smiled, reassuringly. "I'm sure he has more to worry about just now that the state of his filing."

*

Origehara

Lady Jingo was beginning to wish that she was less accustomed to picking the winning side in a fight. Although her absolute control over her host's metabolism meant that she was in superb physical condition, she did not have the ingrained physical memories for sustained flight. Running away was perhaps the sole survival instinct which she had allowed to atrophy in herself and it was costing her now. Lord Richo had beaten her to the main trunk corridor and was almost two hundred yards ahead of her at the throne room doors.

"Wait for me, you coward!" Jingo bellowed. Richo was already working the controls.

"Follow me if you can, my sweet," Richo called, mockingly. He had the effrontery to wave at her as the rings rose up around him.

"Mik'ta-ha!" Jingo spat.

The light swallowed Richo's form. The rings began to drop, then jumped back up with a thunderous crack and fell heavily to the throne room floor. A smell of burning meat left Jingo with little doubt that her intended had fallen into a trap that would have claimed her if she had been swifter.

Suddenly, her weakness as a runner did not seem so bad.

Behind her, Jingo heard dragon blades snap open.

"Stand where you are, My Lady!"

Jingo held her hands away from her sides, the fingers open. She made no attempt to turn around, but she called in a clear voice to her captors. "I am the Lady of Kahare, Jingo-no-Shigo. I demand that you take me to Lord Okuni. It is my right as a Lady of the Daimyo to meet with my conqueror and captor before any action is taken against me."

"You are a traitor," the Bushi told her. "You have no rights, but I shall convey your request to Shogun Okuni-Nushi-no-Mikoto. Where is Lord Richo?"

Jingo smiled. "He is...everywhere," she replied.

*

Jahara

Jonas was not happy. "If I get sent off as part of Osiris' strike force, what will happen to you?" he argued.

"Trust me, Jonas," Sakiko replied. "Much as I would like to come with you, there is no way that I could pass for one of Osiris' warriors, even if we had a spare set of their battle dress and even if they could not count. I am a survivor and I always shall be. I will find a niche and fit myself to it; the only danger to me is if I am caught with an enemy of Anubis, such as yourself. Once you are gone, I will be safe."

"If they discover that you helped me..."

"Only you and I know. You will disappear during this raid and be presumed dead, and I will certainly never do anything so foolish as to incriminate myself." Sakiko gave Jonas a gentle kiss. "Go," she told him. "Go now; do not forget me, but do not look back."

"Take care of yourself," Jonas said.

"It is my greatest gift," she assured him.

With a heavy tread, Jonas followed one of the Ninjaffa to the 'drop room'. There were eleven of the Jaffa, all dressed, as Jonas was, in black shozoku; or, as he liked to think of them, pyjamas. Each man wore a sword across his back – not the short stabbing weapons that Jonas had seen among the ninja clans in Nodori, but a deep-curved, full-length taichi – and a hood on his head. Goggles completed the concealment and also duplicated the sensory functions of a Jaffa helmet, granting the wearer limited night vision enhancement and magnification. Jonas felt like a large and ungainly, wingless human fly.

As he entered the drop room, a circular space near to the centre of the ship, Jonas was handed a staff weapon by a perky-looking handmaiden. He imitated the Ninjaffa in front of him and bowed to the young woman as he took the weapon. She returned the bow with a slight stiffness that revealed to Jonas – although many would have missed it – that she wore some form of body armour beneath her loose robes. Now that he was looking for it, he also spotted the telltale shape of a concealed scabbard. He began to realise just how dangerous an opponent Osiris might be; even her handmaidens, for most Goa'uld a decorative luxury, were deadly.

The nearest Ninjaffa turned to Jonas. "It is good to hold a real staff weapon again, is it not? Better than those antiquated Dragon Blades."

"Quite," Jonas agreed.

"Stand ready," the squad prime ordered. "Be certain that all of your parts are within the ring, including the ends of your staffs."

Warily, Jonas shuffled closer to the next man. There was a raised circle on the floor, but he could not tell if it were the inner track of the ring housing or the outer.

"On arrival, Two, Three and Four will accompany me to the throne room," the leader went on. "Five and Six will strike for the east wing; Nine and Ten for the west tower. These teams shall utilise all stealth; the remaining Jaffa shall conduct diversionary tactics in the usual pairs." Jonas looked across, nervously. one of the Ninjaffa caught his goggled gaze and nodded.

Well, that answers one question at least, he thought to himself. But which two are we?

The handmaiden strode to a control panel at the head of the room. "Activate your recall pulsars," she instructed.

Each of Ninjaffa reached up and touched the side of their goggles. Jonas mimicked then and a small light glowed briefly at  the edge of his vision. The handmaiden referred to her console and nodded. "Retrieval is in one turn and by the numbers," she said. "Cessation of life signs will trigger an immediate recall; emergency recall pulse code is three-one-one. Brace yourselves, Jaffa," she instructed.

Jonas felt a tension in the Ninjaffa; the kind of blind fear that was usually bred out of them. It was understandable, of course; this entire set-up would be more alien to the Jaffa than it was to Jonas himself.

"On your count, One," the handmaiden continued. "The blessings of Osiris and Anubis go with you."

One nodded his head. "And on you, Asa," he said. "One, two, three; contact."

Jonas braced himself for the rush of a ring transport; instead it felt as though his body were being suddenly shredded into pieces by a million tiny piranhas, swimming in a pool of lemon juice.

*

Origehara

Jingo was not kept waiting for long; despite the rudeness of his Jaffa, Lord Okuni-Nushi was clearly a man of courtesy. She bowed low before the Shogun, angling her body so that it was displayed to optimum effect. To her dismay, this did not seem to have the slightest effect on the Lord.

"Lady Jingo," Okuni said, softly. "You have betrayed every oath you have ever sworn and willingly abandoned the paths of honour; you are anathema to all the ways of the Daimyo. Your crimes can admit to no mitigation. With this in mind, what was it that you wished to speak with me about?"

"My Lord, I am but a weak woman. Lord Hachi..." Jingo flashed her most winning smile. "The most foul and infernal traitor, I mean, appeared in my fortress without warning; I had no choice but to acquiesce to his demands."

"You could have died," Okuni noted.

"My Lord..."

"You have nothing to say," Okuni told her, dismissively. "Had you refused him, Hachiman would most likely have granted you a swift death. By your treason you have won yourself a slow death by torture. Contemplate that before you weary me with your empty excuses."

"No!" Jingo begged. "My Lord, please! I have information. If you would grant me my life..."

Okuni-Nushi fixed her with cold, hard eyes. "Give me your information, Jingo-no-Shigo and I will decide if it deserves any mercy."

Jingo lowered her eyes, artfully dipping her shoulders in an attitude of humble submission. "Osiris fled before the battle was joined. She plans to attack Jahara while your Jaffa are in their ships; she will despatch a handful of elite killers to take the life of the Empress."

Okuni's eyes flashed with rage and he raised his hand to strike Jingo. She flinched in terror, but his hand did not fall. "Gojira," he said in a tight voice.

"My Lord?"

"Order the ha'tak vessel into orbit," Okuni told the Bushi. "Begin relaying the Dragon Guards back to the fortress by redirected ring tranportation; secure the Empress and protect our servants. Do not use the regular Bushi on the other vessels. Even if the attack is thwarted, no word of this must ever reach the Daimyo."

"Yes, My Lord," Gojira replied. He rose and left, almost at a run.

Okuni glowered at Jingo. "If your delay has brought harm to my kin, Lady Jingo, your suffering will be the stuff of legends."

Jingo looked up into his eyes and shivered. "Please," she whimpered. "I will do anything."

Okuni snorted in disgust. "Try to accept your fate with dignity," he suggested. He turned to one of the other Dragon Guards. "Scour this fortress from tower to cellar. Find me a way into Richo's escape tunnel; I must be certain that he is dead before I can return to Jahara." He glowered at Jingo. "And secure this snivelling wretch aboard the flagship. If she resists...Beat her into unconsciousness."

Jingo wailed in despair as the Bushi dragged her away.

*

Jahara

Jack left the skiff on the river, allowing it to float slowly away downstream so that its discovery could not give away his arrival. From the riverbank he made his way up towards the Stargate and the fortress. He checked the tracking device often and still lost his way three times, but as the sun dipped in the sky he found the Shakka and gratefully boarded the vessel.

He sat down at the helm and activated the ship's communications systems. "Sanjuro, this is Yojimbo," he said. "Come in, Sanjuro." Jack closed the channel for a moment and sighed. He reopened the channel. "Sanjuro, I'm not mad," he promised.

There was a momentary pause. "Yojimbo, this is Sanjuro."

Jack started up. "Sanjuro!" he snapped. "What the hell do you think you're doing!"

"Sneaking around a Goa'uld fortress," Sam replied, "assuming the whole castle didn't hear you. Where are you, Yojimbo?"

"In the Shakka. How can I get into the fortress?"

"It wouldn't be easy without a guide," Sam replied.

Jack shook his head. "Alright then," he said, crossly. "When you're done, get to the top of the fortress and I'll pick you up."

"Thank you, Sir."

Jack shook his head. "And next time, Sanjuro, talk to me."

"Yes, Sir," Sam replied, sounding suitably abashed. "Over and out."

*

Lady Tomoe spent only a few minutes in the north tower shrine. She was confused, it was true; not only her beloved Lord Okuni but also the Empress herself now seemed to wish her to live. Confusion was not a new sensation for Tomoe – she had spent her life in the service and in the bed of a man whom she despised, while her heart yearned for another – but always, one thing had been constant: her honour. Now, that was gone; how could anyone, least of all Okuni, who knew her so well, believe that she could live without honour.

Her steps were sure as she made her way to Okuni's chambers, whence her swords had been brought when she refused to wear them, and when she took her shoto from the stand in her lover's shrine, her hand did not tremble. She withdrew the shining blade from its scabbard, set it firmly against her throat and braced herself for the thrust of ojigi; the ritual suicide of the Daimyo.

Her mind was made up, her purpose clear before her, yet still she knelt amid the fallen windchimes, in front of the shrine, sword at her throat, almost a turn later. Why do I wish to live? She wondered. I have no honour; no purpose. If Lord Okuni has redeemed my capture, still I can only retain the last of my honour in death. Why then do I hesitate? Tears welled in her eyes. Can it be simply because I wish to live? Because I do not wish to cause him pain?

These introspections consumed her thoughts. It was fortunate for Tomoe then, that her skill in battle had been honed to the level not of conscious thought but of pure, unreasoning instinct. Without hesitation she could tell friend from foe in the thick of a melee, pass by one man and slay another and never consider for a moment which was her enemy. Likewise, when a tentative footfall raised a dull clatter from one of Okuni's chimes, she rose and turned without the slightest effort of will, the shoto cutting across the Ninjaffa's throat before her conscious mind had even registered that he was there.

Slowly, Tomoe's mind caught up with her body, but already she was tumbling backwards to avoid the flash of a staff blast. She caught up her daito and leaped aside again, falling into a roll to close the distance to her foe. The long sword swept from its scabbard and flashed red in the dying light of the day; the blade arced up and cut through the shaft of the staff weapon.

The Ninjaffa sprang backward and drew his own sword. At once, the black mood which had gripped Tomoe lifted. When the fight was done, she might question again her purpose, but so long as an enemy of the Empress stood in Jahara with a drawn sword in his hand, Tomoe's life had purpose. The ninjas called her the Bloody Bitch, or the Butcher-Whore; they thought that she was just another murderous Goa'uld, but they would never understand the purity she found in battle. Only when she was in mortal danger did all the torments of her life fade away from her, leaving nothing but the simple, unsullied joy of the duel.

"Dance with me," she invited.

Tomoe spoke in the high tongue of the Daimyo; her words meant nothing to the Ninjaffa, but her tone was eloquent. If there was fear in his eyes as she charged, she could not see it behind the goggles.

*

Jonas allowed his partner – Number Eight, or just Eight, it seemed – to take the lead, not only because he did not know which way he was going, but also because it kept him out of the other's sight. He might be dressed like one of the Ninjaffa, but a few months of reconnaissance training with SG-1 was not enough to allow him to move like one. By the time they reached the lower levels of the palace, Jonas was beginning to find it increasingly suspicious that number Eight had not noticed the switch.

They paused at the corner of a corridor. "Detention level," Eight whispered, his voice carrying via radio to speakers in Jonas' helmet. "I will take care of the guards. You find the door controls and release the prisoners; that will give the Bushi something else to worry about."

"Right," Jonas replied. He had been kept his responses as monosyllabic as possible; his Goa'uld was better than his Yoman, but his accent would give him away in a heartbeat.

Anubis' élite warrior-assassin slipped around the corridor and vanished. At once, Jonas turned to flee, but the sight of a control console on the wall brought him up short. Of course he was not there to aid Osiris' plans, but if he could access the system he could alert the Bushi to the attack...and if prisoners were released into the bargain, well that was all to the good.

Jonas stepped up to the console and accessed the system – the Goa'uld concept of computer security was a locked room and a big guard, and it was child's play for Jonas to access the dungeon's central systems. Navigating the interface was a little harder to puzzle out, but it was still the work of moments for Jonas to bring up a prison manifest, complete with cell numbers, occupant names and security settings. His feeling of triumph was dulled at once, when he spotted the name listed for the maximum security containment area.

"Yukio?" Jonas scanned the lists, but his other companions were not recorded under their own names or any aliases he had ever known them to employ. With a few simple commands he changed the global security settings for the dungeon to blackout level, ordering the shut-down of every forcefield and magnetic lock in order to save power in the event of one of the main generators being destroyed. The console flashed warnings to remind its user that there were prisoners in the cells and that entering blackout level would result in their release. Jonas overrode its complaints and it prompted him to secure the primary blast doors for the level before proceeding. Jonas politely declined to follow this advice.

The lights dimmed. The console turned red and informed Jonas that seventy-eight of the seventy-nine hostages were now free of their security systems. The seventy-ninth was still secured, as the maximum containment area had its own reactors.

 "Of course," Jonas sighed. "How would it be otherwise?"

When he turned to face the corridor, Jonas became aware that the light enhancement devices in the goggles of his shozuko were worse than useless in the dim twilight of the dungeon's blackout lighting. He removed the head covering and dropped it on the floor, deciding that it would probably also be better if Osiris could not track him and if Yukio could recognise him when he found her. He dropped the staff weapon as well and drew his zat'nik'tel; he had never been very good with a staff weapon – had never had to be good with a staff weapon – but had trained hard with a zat and an intar to meet Colonel O'Neill's standards.

From his brief view of the plan on the console, Jonas had a perfect map of the detention level stored in his mind. Ninjaffa Eight seemed to have accounted for all of the guards and so Jonas was able to move swiftly through the cell blocks and reach the maximum containment area before any of the inmates had realised that they were no longer prisoners.

"Yukio?" Jonas whispered, pressing his face close to the cell intercom.

After a moment's pause, the familiar voice replied: "Jonas?"

Jonas felt a pang of relief. The ninja did not sound badly hurt and, after several hours among the Jaffa on Osiris' yacht, it was simply a delight to hear a voice that he knew. He holstered his zat, then accessed the console on the cell door to deactivate the locks and forcefields. Once more it was a matter of moments for him to do so; Yoman electronic security was even less effective than that employed by Anubis' followers.

"Who are you?"

Jonas turned at the challenge and found himself staring down the firing arrays of a staff weapon into the goggled eyes of Ninjaffa Eight. Jonas' hand strayed down towards his zat, but the slightest advance of the staff warned him that he would not complete such a movement.

"Lift your hands," Eight commanded, sounding baffled and angry. "Who are you? Where is Seven?"

"Door," Jonas replied.

"What?"

With a loud, yet muffled clang, the door of the maximum containment area swung open, struck Eight in the face and battered him to the floor. The Ninjaffa crashed to the ground, dropping his staff weapon. Jonas drew his zat, but before he could fire, the Jaffa's head had cracked against the corridor wall and he lay very still.

"Is he dead?" Jonas asked, as Yukio emerged from the cell.

Yukio was rubbing at her wrists, but otherwise seemed unharmed. "He looks it," she replied. She moved towards him, but before she could reach the body, it was consumed by a burst of incandescent crimson flames. "What was that?" she demanded. "I'm sorry to sound naive, Jonas, but what in the Yama realm was that?"

"I think it was an experimental transporter based on Asgard technology," Jonas replied. "All I know is that it hurts."

Yukio threw her arms around Jonas and hugged him, tightly. "You are a sight for sore eyes, Jonas. How did you get here?" she asked.

"You wouldn't believe it," Jonas assured her. "In fact, I'm not sure that I believe it. It all seems a little too good to be true; I would have said something at the time but they say that you should never look a gift horse in the mouth."

"Really?" Yukio said, sceptically. "And who might 'they' be?"

Jonas shrugged. "Earth clichés aren't my speciality," he admitted. "All I could really gather from Colonel O'Neill was that whoever is giving them horses, isn't Greek."

Yukio smiled. "Shall we leave this place?" she suggested.

"Sounds good to me."

*

Maru motioned for Sam to be silent as they moved into the observation gallery. The two women crept silently along the passage to the viewing window, a seemingly impenetrable, naquadah panel that melted silently into nothing at the touch of a switch. The screen behind was transparent in one direction only and revealed a scene that was utterly unexpected.

The Queen-Empress of Yomi, the Most Radiant Izanami, sat quite still on her throne. Her lovely head lolled backwards, almost severed from the neck and held on by only a flap of skin; the pattern burns of two staff blasts marred her sumptuous robe. A warrior-woman in the armour of the Kitsune Guard and an unarmed handmaiden lay dead at the foot of the dais; two more Kitsune had been killed outside and their corpses dragged into the chamber. The Ninjaffa whom Jonas would have recognised as One stood over the handmaiden, turning warily back and forth, while Two worked at a computer console and Four guarded the door.

"So much for the invasion, I guess," Sam murmured. "Alright; let's go find Yukio and..."

Maru slowly slid her sword from its scabbard and palmed a small capsule from her belt.

"Ah...Maru?"

"Go," Maru whispered, coldly. "Find the dungeons. Find Yukio. I will meet you outside."

"Maru?" Sam asked, baffled. "What are you doing?"

Maru's eyes never left the scene in the throne room. "I'm going to save the Empress," she murmured.

Sam grimaced. "I think she's a little way past saving," she noted. "Besides, she's the one who wants to invade Arcadia."

"Damn Arcadia," Maru replied. "This is for Yomi. That's my oppressor out there and no-one kills her but me."

Sam did not feel that this was a debate she was likely to win. "You're weird," she told Maru, "but good luck anyway."

The Jaffa who now had no name, but went instead by the number One, held his staff weapon at the ready, alert to any sign of further guards. His force was in a weaker position than he had hoped. The Kitsune Guard had proven more alert than anticipated and had been able to return fire, killing number Three before they themselves had fallen; then the Queen-Empress herself had been able to wound both Two and One himself before the three Ninjaffa had managed to overwhelm her. One was angry with himself for underestimating both the Bushi and the Daimyo and he was determined to make no more mistakes. As soon as Two had the access and security codes for the lunar defences, they would return to the yacht and Lord Osiris would have the power to destroy the entire Yoman fleet with their own weapons.

A sharp crack caught One's attention. He turned to see a cloud of thick, dark, oily smoke billowing out of the shadows behind one of the ornate columns which flanked the throne room.

"Jaffa, kree," he ordered.

Four moved away from the door, holding his staff weapon level at the column. Four pressed the firing stud and sent a pair of quick plasma blasts through the cloud. Nothing happened; no body fell.

"Kree," One commanded again, indicating with a swift slash of his hand for Four to plunge forward into the smoke.

The other Ninjaffa obeyed. He drew his sword and pressed in, slashing at anything that might be concealed within the cloud. A moment after the cloud swallowed him up, a bright flash illuminated the smoke from within and Four was thrown back by the concussive blast of a small, but powerful explosion. The shockwave of the booby-trap dispersed the smoke and half-deafened One with its report, the filters in his helmet momentarily closing down to blank out the noise.

Four crashed to the ground, quite dead. If there were any doubt, the fiery glare of the recall teleport dismissed it.

"Jaffa Two, report your status," One ordered. "Are the codes in our hands?"

Two gave no reply.

One turned and saw that Two now lay slumped over the console, his throat ripped open as cleanly and savagely as that of the Empress or of her slaughtered handmaiden. After a moment, he too was spirited away by the recall. Even if he had managed to pierce the defences of Izanami's computer, there would be no way of retrieving the information, for the teleport had taken half of the console with it.

"Who is there?" One demanded. "Show yourself?" he challenged, hoping to appeal to the ridiculous Yoman sense of honour.

A soft laugh echoed around the throne room.

"Who is there?" One repeated, a note of desperation in his voice. He turned, here and there, unable to locate the ultimate source of the voice.

"No one," the voice replied. "Just a ninja."

"I am a ninja!" One insisted, proudly.

The laugh came again.

"Show yourself!" One commanded, but the laugh just went on. "Are you a coward?"

"I am a ninja," the voice repeated. "I am what you play at being. Tell me: are you afraid yet?"

*

"You do know where you're going, don't you?" Jonas asked. He was following Yukio at a near run through the corridors of Jahara and, although she ran with a sure tread he could not help but have his doubts.

"Of course," Yukio replied, when she had halted for a moment at the corner. "We are heading for Lord Niningi's rooms. There is an escape passage there – as there is in every Goa'uld's chambers – and we can at least be confident that Lord Niningi will not be there; well, not much of him anyway," she added with a macabre grin.

"Are you sure that you're alright?" Jonas asked, concerned for his own safety as much as for her health. She had been acting strangely since he had released her and Jonas was worried that some torment inflicted on her might have warped her mind.

"I'm fine," she assured him, but there was a gleam in her eye that belied the claim.

Jonas forced himself to swallow his doubts and he followed where Yukio led. She took him through the halls to a massive, wooden door, which swung easily open with a light push at their exact centre and so admitted them to a grand foyer. Unfortunately, the room was not quite empty.

Yukio froze, just for a moment, but it was all the time that Mariko needed to leap to her feet.

"Mother!" the girl cried, and Yukio knew before the door to the inner chambers flew open that Mariko was not calling to her.

"You!" Inari gasped, her voice muffled by her Kitsune mask. Her hand went to her sword hilt at the same time as Yukio's.

"Inari." Yukio's voice dripped venom.

"Yukio," Jonas cautioned, but the ninja was not listening. She was aware of nothing but the fact that her daughter called another woman – and the wife of her killer, no less – mother. Maternal rage filled her heart and Eight's sword was in her hand before she had even thought about it.

Inari raised her own blade. "No!" she cried, in a defiant voice.

The two women came together like a thunderclap, their blades clashing; sparks flew as the quenched and hardened cutting edges smashed heedlessly against one another. Yukio felt the force of Inari's cut rattle her arms. The Bushi was stronger than her and she backed off, instinct more than reason telling her that closing face to face would be playing Inari's game. She blocked a second attack with a true parry and riposted, slashing at Inari's face. The Kitsune Prime was forced back into a defensive stance, but with reckless haste she came on again.

Jonas drew his zat, but Mariko was upon him in a heartbeat, driving him to the ground and relieving him of his weapon in one, easy move. To his surprise, she made no attempt to fire on Yukio; she just watched, with one eye on the savage duel, the other on Jonas.

Yukio and Inari hacked at one another, their skill buried by rage, and Jonas would not have wanted to pick the stronger.

His attention riveted on the combat, Jonas barely noticed a communication sphere rise from a cabinet beside him, but his senses did not fail him altogether. Mariko seemed completely oblivious.

"I think that's for you," Jonas hazarded, sure that leaving the call unanswered would be as disastrous as anything the girl could say.

Mariko gave Jonas a wary look and fired a single, disabling blast into his chest before touching a panel on the cabinet. The cloudy surface of the sphere cleared to reveal the face of a proud Bushi warrior.

"Mariko," the man said, "I must speak with Lady Inari; the Empress is in danger."

"As is the Lady, my Lord," Mariko replied. "She battles even now with the ninja, Nekai Yukio."

Gojira spat an obscene oath. "I will be there soon, Mariko," he said. "I must send my men to the throne room to see to the Empress, however; do not strike at the ninja," he added.

"But my lord father..."

"Do not strike her, Mariko. Obey me in this."

Mariko closed her eyes and nodded her head. Jonas rose half-an-inch, but he was slow and the movement was painful, and the zat was levelled at once; he knew full well that the second blast would have killed him.

"Yes, father," Mariko agreed, reluctantly.

The sphere clouded over at once and Mariko turned to Jonas. "But you I can strike," she reminded him. She cast a frustrated glance at the duel. "Please, try me," she challenged, eager for something to hit.

"That's okay," Jonas assured her. "I'll pass."

*

Tomoe flung the portals of the throne room wide and strode in, her own sword, naked and bloody, in one hand; that of her defeated foe, its blade unstained, in the other. She entered at the run, her heart pounding to see that no guards stood in place before the doors. What she saw within brought her up short.

The bodies of the Kitsune still lay strewn about the room, joined now by the body of one of the Ninjaffa, his helmet cracked open by a powerful sword blow. At the dais, a woman in ninja garb dragged the body of the Empress towards her sarcophagus chamber. The ninja looked up at Tomoe's entrance.

"Well," Tomoe said. She stepped forward and prodded the black-clad body with the toe of her boot. "You have been busy, little ninja."

*

Jonas watched the zat'nik'tel, warily. Mariko was more skilled than he was, but she was distracted; if she just turned the weapon away from him, he was sure that he could surprise her and bring her down. Despite his mortal peril, however, he found it hard to keep his own eyes away from the fight.

The swords clashed. The two women fought desperately, each impelled beyond human endurance by symbiote, nanite and a mother's love turned to vengeful fury. Inari cut at Yukio's unprotected face. Yukio bent her knees to avoid the strike and stabbed up into the space behind Inari's katana. The tip of her sword tore into the fox-mask of Inari's helm and one of the silver-white eyes lost its light; Inari was blinded on her right side.

"Mother!" Mariko screamed.

The zat moved; so did Jonas. He piled into Mariko and knocked her down; she brought her knee into his side and he felt his limbs turn to water.

Inari fell back, sword low, but still ready.

"Let Jonas go and let us pass," Yukio demanded.

"Never!"

Inari lunged forward. It was a wild swing and Yukio easily stepped aside and cut hard at the Bushi's arm. Inari gave a short cry of pain; blood welled through a deep cut in her armour. The sword fell from her useless hand; awkwardly she drew her shoto with her left hand.

"You will never take my child!" Inari snarled. "Not while I live!"

"She is not yours!" Yukio replied.

"Die!" Inari bellowed. She stabbed for Yukio's stomach, but her blade found air and the katana sliced into Inari's left shoulder.

"No!" Mariko struggled to free herself from Jonas' grip, but he managed to hold on.

Yukio picked up the fallen zat and held it ready. "Let him go, Mariko!" she demanded. "Let him go or I kill Inari!"

Reluctantly, Mariko ceased her struggles, allowing Jonas to roll awkwardly away from her.

"Jonas; get up and get through that door. We're leaving."

Jonas rose painfully to his feet. "You do realise that if you'd zatted us both it would have killed me?" he said.

Yukio's eyes remained fixed on Mariko. "No," she replied. "I hadn't realised. Quickly; into the inner chamber."

"I think not."

All eyes turned to the open doors to the passageway, and the powerful figure of Gojira.

*

Maru slowly lowered the body to the ground and stood straight, her hand on her belt. Tomoe took a step forward.

"No closer," Maru cautioned. "I'm very nervous."

Tomoe halted her advance. "What do you want, ninja?" she demanded. "Did you kill the Empress?"

Maru smiled. "She was dead when I arrived. I killed those who killed her, and prevented an invasion of your world."

"Why?"

"Because even if I have to save the life of my archenemy, I will not see the Daimyo hand my world to Anubis." Maru took a short rod from her belt. "I'll let you finish bringing her to her sarcophagus," she said.

Tomoe took a step forward, but Maru gave a slight shake of her wrist and the rod telescoped with a snap into a five foot pole. A kanji blossomed from the top; the symbol for the Nekai clan. Maru winked at Tomoe, then drove the foot of the pole into the wooden side of Izanami's throne.

"Just make sure that the Queen-Empress knows who it was who saved her life and her rule," Maru said. "Good day to you, Lady Tomoe."

"You will stay..." Tomoe began, but a fountain of thick smoke erupted from the top of the pole, completely concealing the ninja. Tomoe stood ready for an attack, but when the smoke cleared she was quite alone with the body of her Empress.

*

Yukio turned the zat on Gojira. "Keep back," she warned, her voice trembling with the fear she could not hide. She had come so close to escaping without having to face her killer again, but she had never dared to hope that it could be so easy. "Jonas; through the door!"

"No!" Gojira stepped forward.

"Stay back!" Yukio's hand tightened on the grip of her zat, but she could not make herself fire. The part of her spirit that believed she must fight Gojira, hand-to-hand once more rebelled against shooting him down.

With a swift, sure motion, Gojira slid his sword back into its scabbard. "Please," he said. "Please, spare the boy. Take me instead."

Inari gave a low moan and tried to stand, but with both arms crippled she could not lever herself up.

"No, father!" Mariko protested.

Gojira took another step towards Yukio, his hands raised. "Take my life and be sated, Nekai Yukio. Let my family live in peace and haunt us no more."

Yukio's hand shook. Her heart was filled with fear and confusion. "I...I do not understand," she admitted. "I don't know what you want of me."

"I want my baby son to live!" Gojira snapped, angrily. "Do not toy with me, Gaki! I took your child, now you come for mine and I beg you to spare this one. Do not let your anger kill him as it killed his brother; take my life and be at peace."

"Your child..." Yukio shook her head in fierce denial. "I do not want...I would not harm a child!" she protested, angry and hurt. "What you say is abominable. I am no Gaki, Gojira; I do not want your child. I only want to take my friend here and leave."

Gojira looked shocked. "No Gaki?"

"No."

Gojira looked down at his wounded wife and his eyes hardened. "Then you can die," he whispered and his hand gripped his sword hilt.

"Keep away!" At last, Yukio's fingers tightened on the trigger of the zat, but it sounded wrong. Along with the usual metallic ping of the blast, there was a loud chatter and, when he was struck, Gojira spasmed oddly and coughed up a gout of bright red blood. The First Prime of the Shogun fell across Inari's body and as his bulk dropped away, Yukio saw a new figure in the doorway.

"Sam!" she cried, delighted.

"Look out!"

Jonas' warning came too late. With a cold light in her eyes, Mariko raised her hand and a pencil-thin line of energy stabbed out from between her fingers and punched a hole through Sam's P90 and on into her chest. A second blast from the sholva's salute took Yukio in the right-hand side of her chest at the same moment as the ninja's zat blast staggered Mariko. It was a testament to the training which Mariko had received that she stood firm in the face of the pain which racked her and held her hand aimed steadily at Yukio.

"Mariko! Stop!" Inari called.

"No!" Mariko protested. "I won't let her kill you."

"You will not fire!" Inari insisted, and despite her words, Mariko obeyed. Yukio was glad of that; she knew that she would not have the strength to fire the killing blast at her own daughter.

Mariko's face was contorted by conflicting emotions. "She will kill you."

"Obey..." Gojira coughed, painfully. "Obey your mother, child," he said.

Jonas laid a restraining hand on Yukio's shoulder; it did not seem the time to debate Mariko's maternity.

"My love," Inari gasped. "I thought you slain!"

"That I am," Gojira replied, "although not dead yet."

Although it clearly pained her greatly, Inari struggled free of her helmet and let the great fox-head fall to the floor at her side. "Mifune," she whispered.

Gojira reached up to touch her face. "Ashime," he murmured.

"Oh God," Yukio whispered. "Kataoka Ashime." Her face hardened. "You treacherous..." She half-turned to point the zat at the couple who lay on the floor in a growing pool of their own blood, but a blast from the assassin's ring drew her attention back to Mariko.

"No!" Inari cried again. "Mariko; please do not kill her. She is your mother."

"No!" Mariko screamed. "No! That is a lie!"

A sharp click drew attention back to the door, where Sam had pushed herself up to a sitting position and held her pistol aimed at Mariko.

"No!" This time, Yukio and Inari spoke as one.

There was a long, tense pause.

"What now?" Jonas asked, finally.

"Why?" Yukio demanded.

"Because if we don't decide we'll just be standing here until the rest of the Dragon Guard arrive and everyone dies."

Yukio shook her head. "No. I mean...Ashime; why did you betray me? How much did they pay you?"

Tears fell freely from Inari's eyes. "Nothing," she said, her voice choked. "I would take no payment. You recall that I was summoned to the Old Man's presence, just before the troubles started? That was when they demanded to know your movements; where you could best be ambushed. I would not tell them. I refused to reveal your location to my family; I was ready to die to protect you."

"But you didn't," Yukio reminded her.

At the door, Sam had regained her feet; the ruined P90 hung uselessly around her neck.

"No. My family handed me over to the Daimyo for torture," she explained. "The leader of my escort was a young Bushi." She gazed down at her husband with adoration. "Tokuwara Mifune. He was impressed that I would refuse to betray my friend – he had been raised to think the ninja were without honour and the rest of my family had done nothing to disillusion him. He made no attempt to persuade me to turn against you, but it was because of him that I did so.

"I fell in love with him," she explained. "I made a bargain with him; I would reveal where you could be found, but on condition that you be given a clean death and that none who did not fight were harmed in the taking. I was immovable on that; that no child should be harmed or taken."

"You sold me cheaply," Yukio scoffed, as Sam came to her side.

"I was also to be rewarded with a prim'ta," Inari admitted. "To become a Bushi, that I might wed my beloved...and that we might, between us, raise Mariko as our own. And we have loved her as our own," she insisted.

"A husband, another woman's child and a place in the Kitsune!" Yukio spat. "You sold your honour for that?"

"No," Inari replied, proudly. "Mifune, Mariko and a prim'ta; my rank I earned for myself. I have striven since to restore my honour."

"You have done so," Gojira gasped. "Let none say otherwise."

Sam cleared her throat, softly. "Yukio," she said. "We really should be moving."

"I know," Yukio replied. "I..." She looked at Sam for a moment, returning her eyes swiftly to Mariko. "I thought you were dead."

With her free hand, Sam reached under her scorched jacket. "I got lucky," she admitted, drawing out the open band of Yukio's Asgard combat gauntlet. The weapon bore only the slightest trace of soot from where the heat of the blast had fused the ashes of her jacket to its surface.

Yukio looked at the gauntlet for a long, long moment. "Thank you," she whispered; Sam was not certain that Yukio was just talking about the gauntlet, nor was she entirely sure that the ninja was talking to her.

Yukio passed the zat to Jonas and fastened on the gauntlet; at once, a shimmering light surrounded her body, drawing gasps from Inari and Mariko. Yukio touched a panel on the gauntlet and withdrew the slender wand that was released from a compartment on its side. Moving slowly, she knelt down beside Gojira.

"You...You are a ghost," Inari whispered. "That, or one of the kami."

"I am neither," Yukio assured her. She touched the tip of the wand to the side of Gojira's throat and he gave a small gasp of pain. "Nor am I your sister; not any more. But I forgive you, Kataoka Ashime and Tokuwara Mifune. He will live," she added, laying a hand gently on Gojira's brow. "Fare you well."

"Are we going now?" Jonas asked.

"Yes," Yukio replied, rising to her feet. "There is a ring chamber in the next room."

"Stop!" Mariko commanded. "I will not let you..."

"Mariko," Gojira said, gently. He sat up, the pain of his injuries passing quickly as the Asgard nanites repaired his body. "Let them go," he told the girl. "She is..."

"She is not," Mariko insisted. She turned to face Yukio. "My mother is the Lady Inari," she said.

Yukio nodded, sadly. "I know," she said at last.

After another pregnant silence, Mariko gave Yukio a grateful look. "I thank you for my father's life," she said.

"You are welcome."

Yukio followed Sam and Jonas through to the inner chamber and closed the door. A boy of no more than two years old lay in a crib, close to the fire. He looked over at the strangers and gurgled, happily.

"Jonas; try to find the ring transporter," Sam ordered. "You'll have to be quick, though; the Dragon Guard can't be far away."

Yukio knelt beside the crib. "They won't try to rush us with this little one in here," she assured Sam.

"I hope you're right," Sam said. "We've got a combat gauntlet and a zat against an army."

"What about your pistol?" Jonas asked.

"Useless," Sam admitted, "but Mariko didn't know that." She took her tac radio from her pocket and switched it on. "Yojimbo, this is Sanjuro. Come in, Yojimbo; we are ready for retrieval."

"I've found the ring controls," Jonas reported. "It looks like it's preset to send us to the Stargate, but I can adjust the frequency to match the receivers in the Shakka."

"Yojimbo here," Jack's voice broke from the radio. "Ready when you are. How many are you?"

"Three," Sam replied. "We lost..." she groped for a quick codename, but came up blank. "There's no sign of Maru," she said.

"Don't worry about her," Jack laughed. "She got here five minutes ago."

"Thank the gods," Yukio breathed.

"We're coming up," Sam reported. "Over and out." She turned to Yukio. "Ready?"

"Almost," Yukio replied. She pushed the wand back into her gauntlet, then withdrew it once more.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked.

"Damp fever," Yukio replied. "I can hear it in his chest." She touched the wand to the child's chubby arm and he laughed at the sensation.

"You know he'll grow up to be a Bushi," Sam reminded her.

Yukio nodded. "They thought I would take their child in revenge for the loss of my own," she said. "I do not want them to go on thinking that; I do not want anyone to think it of me. Besides," she added, "he is just a child."

Sam nodded. "I know," she assured Yukio. "Fire it up, Jonas; let's get out of this place."

*

The peltac of Osiris' yacht was constructed on a split level, with a raised walkway from which Osiris could survey the control floor, where the pilot and operations crew worked.

"The unknown vessel is moving away, My Lord," the pilot informed Osiris.

"Weapons are locked," the gunnery officer added, eagerly.

Osiris paused, for a moment genuinely tempted to give the order to eliminate the troublesome SG-1. After a moment, however, she allowed good sense to guide her. "No," she decided. "We can not fire without revealing our location and a fleet of enemy ha'tak vessels is stationed directly above us, after all." Not to mention the fact that SG-1 seem the most likely candidates to relieve me of the burden of Anubis' overlordship, she thought to herself. "In this case," she mused, "I believe that discretion is the better half of valour."

"My Lord?"

Osiris stifled an impatient sigh. "Set a course for the system limits and engage hyperdrives as soon as we are clear of the Firestorm," she explained. "Zenobia," she added.

"My Lady," Osiris' handmaiden said, stepping forward from the shadows.

"Are all Ninjaffa accounted for?"

"Yes, My Lord," Zenobia replied, suppressing a catch of emotion. "We have retrieved seven bodies...and Seven's helmet. The recall signal from One was cut off before life signs were terminated," she added. "One may have been...compromised." The handmaiden was finding it harder to maintain her composure.

Osiris scoffed, dismissively. "He knows nothing of any consequence," she said, knowing full well that this was not Zenobia's concern. "Send the girl to me," she ordered. "She can attend to me for a time."

"My Lord..." Zenobia began to protest.

"I would rather you absented yourself from my presence if you are going to snivel," Osiris said, dismissively. "Go."

"Yes, My Lord."

Osiris leaned on the rail of her walkway and watched the firestorm slide by on the main screen. "Approach, Sakiko," she said, softly.

Sakiko moved as close as she dared and genuflected at Osiris' feet. "My Lady Osiris," she said.

"It appears that you did not underestimate your...what was the name?"

"Jonas Quinn, My Lady," Sakiko replied.

"Jonas Quinn," Osiris echoed, rolling the name around on her tongue as though she could learn something about the man from the taste of his name. "Jonas Quinn, the new fourth of SG-1. Perhaps Samantha Carter was speaking the truth," she mused. "Perhaps Daniel Jackson is dead." Osiris shrugged her shoulders. "No matter. This Jonas Quinn is a resourceful man; he was able to evade and then dispose of his Ninjaffa partner. Were you able to obtain the sample, Sakiko?"

"I...Yes, My Lady. I have a sample of Jonas Quinn's genetic material." She reached into her kimono and produced the bloody bandage that had once bound Jonas Quinn's wounded side.

Osiris turned and regarded the young woman. "This was not quite what I had in mind," she admitted.

"No, My Lady." Sakiko's face flamed. "I was...unable to persuade Mr Quinn to provide an...alternate sample."

"Really?" Osiris feigned incomprehension. "That must have been terribly disappointing for you. What of the other task that I set you? Were you able to implant the device?"

"Yes, My Lady," Sakiko assured her.

"Excellent," Osiris purred. "Well done, Sakiko. You have done well and earned a place in my service. Zenobia will teach you the protocols of my entourage and see to your livery." She held out her hand for Sakiko to kiss.

"Thank you, My Lady," she said.

Osiris smiled, indulgently. "And Sakiko."

"Yes, My Lady?"

"You shall call me 'My Lord'; not 'My Lady'. Failure to conform to this will be punished."

Sakiko swallowed hard. "Yes...My Lord."

*

The night sky above Jahara was cut by the flickering lines of matter streams as the Dragon Guard and the other Imperial Bushi returned to their stations in the fortress. The Ninjaffa raid had been the most terrible and effective stroke against the Imperial Throne in many a decade, but the process of cleaning up after it was already well in hand by the time Okuni-Nushi approached the throne room, a long, cloth-bound bundle in his left hand.

"Where is the Lady Inari?" he demanded of the Kitsune who stood at the door.

"The Lady is injured, My Lord," the warrior-woman replied.

Okuni paused. "How badly hurt is she? And what of the Lord Gojira?" he added.

"Lady Inari will heal, but can not wield a blade at present," the Kitsune assured him. "Lord Gojira has led a number of the Dragon Guard into the lower levels; the intruders released a number of prisoners."

"What other harm did they do?" Okuni asked, his heart in his mouth.

The Kitsune cast her eyes downwards in shame. "The throne room was breached, My Lord," she confessed. "A number of my comrades were killed and the Empress...was saved by the actions of another intruder; one of the nin...I mean, a rebellious peasant, Lord."

Okuni nodded. "Then she is safe?"

"Yes, My Lord."

At last, Okuni allowed himself to ask the question that most preyed on his mind. "And the Lady Tomoe?"

The great doors opened, and there stood Tomoe herself, robed as a warrior and bearing the twin swords in her obi. "The Lady Tomoe is well, My Lord," she assured him with a reverent bow. "The Empress Izanami bids you enter, Lord Okuni-Nushi-no-Mikoto."

"My Lady," Okuni greeted her. "It eases my heart to see you safe."

Tomoe smiled. "My heart was untroubled," she told him, "for I never doubted your return. Enter now; our Empress is waiting."

Okuni nodded and Tomoe turned to walk with him to the foot of the throne. He could not resist, however, and leaned close to whisper: "You wear your swords again."

"My Empress commands that I consider my honour restored," she explained. "I...It is not easy for me to accept this, but I must try to do as the Empress commands."

The two Daimyo fell silent as they approached the throne and they genuflected before the Empress. "My Empress," they chorused.

"My children," Izanami replied, and Okuni was startled by the frailty in her voice. "I am pleased to see you return to me, Lord Okuni. Tell me of your mission."

"My Empress," Okuni began, "at your bidding I took my warriors to Origehara and gave battle against the forces of the Daimyo Lord Richo and Lady Jingo, who had allied themselves with my treacherous uncle, Lord Hachiman-no-Mikoto. Lords Hachiman and Richo were slain and the Lady Jingo was captured. The Lady Jingo revealed that an attack was planned upon the person of the Queen-Empress and I despatched the Dragon Guard to prevent this."

"You did well," Izanami assured him. "You have served your Empress well, and it would have been better for her to attend more closely upon your advice. We make absolute that which was presumed; we declare you, Lord Okuni-Nushi-no-Mikoto Shogun, and we give to you absolute dominion over Yomi and its forces."

Okuni rose to his feet and gazed upon the Empress, as was the Shogun's right. "You honour me, My Empress."

"The honour is well-earned. Tell me, Lord Shogun; what will be the punishment of Lady Jingo? How will the traitor die?"

"The Lady Jingo shall not die," Okuni replied. "She has revealed, with some...persuasion, the details of Anubis' plan against the Imperial Throne of Yomi. Many other Daimyo will be taken on her information and I have promised to reward her for her assistance."

Izanami rose in anger. "Reward her! This traitor would be rewarded? And what reward would you have given if her plot had succeeded?"

Okuni smiled, beatifically. "Do you not wish to know what reward she has earned?"

"Speak swiftly," Izanami cautioned, "and hope that I find your decision as amusing as you plainly do."

"My Empress," he acknowledged. "Lady Jingo will be rewarded with the stewardship of our wealthiest province, which has lately fallen vacant; in place of the Lord Amakuni Hidoshi, I intend to invest Lady Jingo as Overseer of the limitless mines of Yama."

A tense moment followed this declaration, then Izanami laughed out loud. "My darling, you have a wicked mind," she applauded. "Now, to other matters. The business of Arcadia."

"Yes, My Empress?" Okuni asked, with trepidation.

"Arcadia may rot for all that I care," Izanami assured him. "Anubis is my enemy; he has struck at me in my own palace and his aim was nearly mortal. This shall not stand."

"No, My Empress."

Izanami nodded her head. "I believe that the Lady Tomoe would make a fine lieutenant," she said, as though the thought had come to her in that moment. "I see now that she has hitherto been undervalued and ill-used."

"I concur, My Empress," Okuni agreed. "I have given thought to the coming conflict," he went on. "I have plans, but they are...unprecedented."

"I shall trust in your discretion," she assured him. "Take your lieutenant now and lay your plans. The ha'tak vessels await your word. Remember, Lord Okuni," she added as an afterthought, "that you must send an escort for your future Queen."

Okuni stalked the passage to his war room in brooding silence; Tomoe walked calmly at his shoulder.

"You are vexed, my Lord," the lady observed.

"Vexed?" Okuni asked, a consuming fury boiling close to the surface even as he spoke to the one being in the universe he could not conceive of harming. "You are returned to me and my Empress orders that I must wed another; should I be calm?"

Tomoe took Okuni by the arm and urged him to walk on. "What is marriage but an alliance?" she asked him, with a slightly chiding tone that few would have dared to use with Okuni-Nushi. "Your Queen will neither ask for nor expect absolute fidelity, any more than she will offer it in return. You know that you must go through with this marriage, as do I; you should accept it, as I do. I shall be to you as I was to Niningi, but by my will and not your father's. Is that not enough?"

"This Queen is dangerous," Okuni cautioned.

"All the more reason that you will need me close," Tomoe replied. "I understand that your Queen has a reputation for wisdom and practicality," she went on. "I am certain that we shall come to respect one another. Perhaps you should send me as commander of her escort?"

"You can accept this?" Okuni asked.

"I have accepted worse," Tomoe reminded him. "We do as we must, you and I; it is the price of honour."

Okuni could think of only one response. "Do you know what the Bushi say of us when they think that we can not hear?" he asked.

"No, My Lord."

"They say that we have the hearts of Bushi ourselves."

Tomoe smiled at that. "I find that a pleasing thought," she admitted.

"As do I."

There was a pause. "You spoke of an unprecedented plan," Tomoe recalled.

"Yes," Okuni replied. "I believe that it is a plan that will surprise even Lady Su-o Nu."

Tomoe's smile deepened. "I find that thought more pleasing still."

*

Kesado

Two days later

"An amnesty?" Sam asked, surprised.

Yukio nodded, wearily. "It took a while to filter this deep into the mountains, but the announcements have been going out all across the Plain and the Greenlands. 'In celebration of his forthcoming nuptials, the Lord Shogun, Okuni-Nushi-no-Mikoto, declares an open amnesty and offers full pardon to any member of the ninja clans wishing to join him in the struggle to defend Yomi against the tyranny of Anubis'."

"It must be a trap," Jonas said.

"I doubt it," Yukio said. "Not Okuni's style. According to the declaration, he is doing this in recognition of the fact that the ninjas were successful in defending the Queen-Empress and Yomi where the Daimyo failed." She shook her head. "I believe that Okuni can be trusted and I can't deny a certain respect for Tomoe, but I can not believe that Maru would save the life of that...that..." The English language failed her and she gave vent to a few choice words in Yoman and Asgard to describe Izanami.

"You can't find it that inexplicable," Jonas pointed out. "After all, you went all out to make sure that the Council supported her continued term as Old Woman."

"It is her right," Yukio replied, defensively.

Jonas and Sam shared a conspiratorial smile.

"Is that why you went all glowy when you spoke to the Council?" Sam asked, innocently. "I thought that you didn't want anyone to think of you as supernatural?"

Yukio shrugged. "It's not as though I'm coming back again," she sighed.

"You will be leaving soon?" Maru asked.

"It feels...late," Jack admitted. "I'm afraid I can't say it's been fun."

Maru smiled, sadly; she leaned back against Jack's side and looked out across the river. "Yomi has not been kind to you, has it? I wish that it might have been otherwise."

"That makes two of us," Jack agreed, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. "What are you going to do now?"

"I am the leader of my clan," Maru reminded him. "I will look after my people as best I can."

"And Kirano?"

Maru laughed, with only a trace of bitterness. "Kirano is no longer my problem."

"I suppose Murata Gemmei has to deal with him now," Jack supposed.

Maru flashed him a wicked smile. "No. Not after Yukio and I had a few words with Gemmei."

"I never knew that you were so vindictive?"

"I owed him," Maru replied, coolly.

"And...Kanjiro?" Jack asked. "How is he taking things?"

"He was one of the first to accept the amnesty," Maru sighed. "In accordance with the Council's ruling, he will go down with the others in three days time; once we are ready to abandon all of our safehouses and move to backups that are unknown to any of those who are leaving."

"He is looking for Mariko," Jack realised. "Doesn't he realise that she is his cousin?"

Maru chuckled. "For what little it matters to our people, I didn't realise that she was his cousin," she said. "I suppose it never occurred to anyone to question my mother." Her smiled deepened and she repeated her words, savouring them: "My mother. And yes; Kanjiro seems to be as much a glutton for misery as his parents. He hopes to win the heart of Izanami's assassin. My sister assures us that Lord Okuni will keep his word, but I can not believe that this will end well for Kanjiro."

"You just have to let go, Maru," Jack told her. "That's what happens with kids." He paused, and then in a whisper added: "If you're lucky."

Maru's hand found Jack's and squeezed tightly. "What of Sam Carter?" she asked. "She came in order to help me. It would not sit well with me to think that she would be punished too harshly for coming to my aid."

Jack shrugged, helplessly. "It's my own fault," he sighed. "I keep my team on a pretty long leash. Besides, what's a little insubordination compared to letting Anubis control Yomi?"

"Then Sam will be forgiven?"

"I don't know about forgiven," Jack hedged. "Quietly forgotten, maybe?"

*

Next day

Yukio ran through the Shakka's pre-flight checks with listless, mechanical movements. Her mood seemed somehow to infect the ship itself, so that even the thrum of the reactor sounded depressed.

"You could stay," Sam offered. "I think we could manage to pilot the Shakka out through the Firestorm without killing ourselves."

"No I couldn't," Yukio replied. "I don't belong here anymore, Sam. A ninja would not balk at killing a daughter who had turned against her; she would feel no remorse at leaving a treacherous sister to die. I am not the person I was when I died; I had not realised it, but two decades in Freyja's service has changed me almost beyond recognition."

"Two decades will do that," Jack assured her, ruefully, "whether you work for Freyja or MacDonald's."

"I thought that it had made me a better person," Yukio added. "It was not I who had the strength to spare Izanami in the end, however."

"You got out alive," Jonas reminded her. "Given the risk you took, that's not bad going."

"Yes," Yukio agreed, but without much enthusiasm.

"How did you manage that?" Sam asked. "I would not have thought that Okuni would have been in a forgiving mood when he saw what had become of Lady Tomoe."

"He has the same honour as her," Yukio replied. "Why else would we trust him to keep his amnesty?" She shook her head. "There was something else," she admitted. "Clearly he remembered my mother's name, but...It was very strange. He asked if I had a tattoo in the shape of a dragon, on the small of my back."

"And do you?" Jonas asked.

"No."

"Maru has," Jack noted.

Sam turned in her seat to look at her CO. "How do you know that?" she demanded.

Jack gave no reply; he merely turned and gazed out into surrounding woodland. He could see no sign of anyone in the area around the ship, but nonetheless, Jack raised his hand and waved in farewell.

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