A sudden clash of power and will emanated from the city above while Mordecai was in the middle of going over his list of desired items with Seshadri. At this distance, it would not have been something he would have felt were one of the people not Kazue. The soul bond might not apply to his avatar, but the effects of the marriage ritual did, and it made him more sensitive to both Kazue and Moriko's presence.

Seshadri looked up at the same time as Mordecai did and frowned. "That's not good," he said, then glanced at Mordecai. "I take it you need to be there too?"

Mordecai nodded. "Yes, one of my wives is involved." He started considering his options, but he quickly found that his options were limited by circumstances. They mostly involved the sort of fast movement techniques that either left wakes or created light and sound at an exit point. Neither of those was good for keeping this area hidden. "I can get up there fast on my own, but I'd have to make it dramatic; it's too far to go by shadows alone for me right now. At least, to get there quickly."

"Very well," Seshadri said, "we'll put this on hold and I'll take you with me. I am familiar with the other person involved, and I am familiar with her shop."

Mordecai nodded at that; familiarity with a destination always made these sort of techniques more effective. Though this aspect of the situation amused Mordecai; when was the last time he had needed to be the one carried through shadows? He was a little worried about Kazue, but Moriko's power had not joined in the clash, so he felt reasonably certain that things were not too serious.

Yet, at least.

As soon as Seshadri had carried them through the shadows and into the nursery, Mordecai was faced with the age-old standoff between fox and snake, and he found the tableau a little amusing, despite the potential dangers. Seshadri's wry observation about 'taming' Satsuki added to that and almost made him laugh and he couldn't entirely keep a smile off his lips.

Which caused Moriko to frown at him; Mordecai was certain he'd be paying for his amusement later, as she clearly did not find the situation as humorous. Seshadri took the lead, and Mordecai saw no reason to gainsay him. Kazue was clearly unable to back down, so it was up to the lamia to do so and Mordecai was not someone she'd listen to. Also, physical intervention was far more likely to escalate the situation instead of calming things down.

This whole thing killed his plan to create an entrance for Seshadri that would smoothly integrate new memories without interfering with his oaths, but that was the way life happened sometimes. Sighing, Mordecai put his earring on to reconnect with his core, he'd just have to figure out how to fix it later.

Which immediately filled his 'ear' with excited chatter concerning an entirely different emergency. Fuyuko was stuck, trapped in shadows, unable to complete her jump, but also unable to start a new one until this one was complete. He could feel the ripple where she'd intended to jump out and reached into it to help her along with a small push of power. Luckily, she'd only been there a few seconds, so no harm was done beyond a scare and a bit of strain that should heal by the morning. With Seshadri taking care of the altercation between the two women, Mordecai took the opportunity to comfort his daughter and give her a more thorough of a once-over than she really needed.

He loved the girl, but if he was vulnerable to gray hairs, he'd look like a grandpa by now.

Though at least Fuyuko had a dedicated knight, the poor boy, Mordecai thought as the flagging Amrydor made it through the door into the nursery, not too far behind Fuyuko's arrival. Impressive, especially for having done so entirely on foot. Fortunately for Amrydor, she was oblivious to the amount of power she held over him and even if she'd known, wasn't the type to abuse that sort of leverage. Her concern over Amrydor's state was also adorable, and Mordecai doubted that Amrydor minded being fussed over a little. Assuming he was awake enough to notice.

Gemeti's arrival was another interesting surprise to add to today's list of surprises, though what was even more intriguing to Mordecai was the way Moriko was watching the girl. When the three teenagers had left for the bath, he asked her, "Did you notice something?"

Moriko nodded thoughtfully and said, "Yes. Gemeti's interested in both of them, though in slightly different ways." She shrugged and added, "Fuyuko's response was the same as with anyone else however."

"What's this?" Seshadri interjected as he leaned forward from his seat on the counter. "I failed to notice before; Mordi, you are not only married to a lovely little red fox, but also to a beautiful priestess of Sakiya?" There was a silky smoothness in his tone that carried the suggestion of soft caresses over bare skin. "Hmm, a disciple as well I'd guess. Lucky boy." That earned him slightly exasperated looks from Kazue and Moriko; neither was feeling impressed by his flattery. But Seshadri continued on, unmindful of the looks he had received. "I have absolutely got to visit your new home just so I can tease poor Satsuki."

"Please do so outside," Mordecai replied wryly, "that way our visitors can enjoy the show as well. I'm not sure our arena is quite up to containing the two of you." Since the moment that Mordecai had pulled Fuyuko out of the shadows, his other self had been whispering information to him through the earring as his core unpacked information about Seshadri. It wasn't as good as having the memories directly, but he knew himself well enough to be able to pass on all the information he really needed to know.

Seshadri chuckled. "I will keep that in mind. Now, it's past time that the nursery is closed for the night anyway, so why don't I show the three of you my friend's special stock?" As Seshadri strode forward leading the way, the lamia held back a bit, watching nervously and talking with Moriko. Mordecai wished her luck putting to bed whatever demons lived in her memories.

Said special stock included several varieties of minor magical plants, a few of which were toxic in interesting ways, but one of them in particular grabbed Kazue's attention. It was called Fox Nurse and was a motile plant that would attach itself to wounded small animals and help them heal. During that time, it would slowly drop seeds as the animal traveled, or spit seeds at other animals that might try to attack the one in their care. The seeds were fiercely bitter and rock hard, rendering them inedible and painful to be hit with, though Seshadri mentioned that there were a few cultures that ground the seeds as spices. The plant didn't exactly have much of a mind, but it had some basic senses of the world around it and would react toward anything approaching its ward too fast. The plant had no significant mobility when not hitching a ride on a patient, and it rarely dropped seeds unless it was in the process of healing an animal. This made collecting seeds tricky for those who wished to harvest them.

Its name came from the fact that foxes were the small animals most likely to seek out one of these plants when wounded. Or at least, that were seen to do so.

Watching Kazue simply adore the plant for what it was made Mordecai smile. He had started considering its potential for developing more mobile plant creatures immediately, but he needed to remember to appreciate things for what they were, not just what they could do. It was a lesson he had learned before, but sometimes it was easy to forget.

When they were done shopping for plants and had negotiated a fair price for both the seeds to be claimed now and those plants and seeds to be picked up or delivered in the near future, Seshadri insisted they share in his hospitality, saying, "I'll arrange for some lodgings with me for the rest of your stay, as my guests. Though," he grinned at Mordecai, "I suspect it's best if I make sure your accommodations are well proofed against sound."

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Mordecai shook his head at the teasing while Kazue blushed and Moriko smirked and said, "Well, our husband can be a bit noisy at times." He raised an eyebrow at her and Moriko just winked. Oh, she wanted to play that way tonight, did she? He was going to make her take back those words, and it was going to be fun.

"You two are incorrigible," Kazue muttered.

"Don't worry, Love," Mordecai replied, "we haven't forgotten our favorite toy." He held back from laughing when she flushed an even deeper red as she grabbed one of her tails. Kazue barely kept herself from chewing on the tip of it. She was still easily flustered by flirting in front of others, especially those she didn't know well.

"But yes," Mordecai continued as he turned back to an amused looking Seshadri, "we'd like to take you up on that offer."

The rest of their layover went pretty smoothly from there, though there was plenty of shopping to do.

Mordecai felt bad that he couldn't fully support Gemeti's plan that she and Fuyuko initially brought forth; while her family's enchanted jewelry held some value for the nexus, it didn't have much that was new. It would mostly be useful for trade during lulls in activity, so that Azeria had more options for giving out rewards when things were busy. But it turned out that was not quite Gemeti's primary interest, and Mordecai grinned when Fuyuko passed along a tentative proposal that Gemeti would become Azeria's agent in Artgoi in exchange for Azeria sponsoring her position in any caravan she formed for them, plus a small stipend and covering any necessary expenses.

In return, she would take their list of all the things that they had purchased, or made agreements to pay for upon arrival at Azeria, which needed to be shipped, and she would do all the work of double checking with all the shops and arranging the caravan and ensuring that every plant and animal made it to the caravan in sufficient health and were of sufficient quality, complete with detailed documentation.

It was a useful service she was offering; to a certain extent, they had been planning on relying on the power of contracts and Ricardo's reputation as a merchant to ensure that the things that could not be transported via Ricardo's wagon would arrive with a caravan. After he, Kazue, and Moriko had talked it over, they let Fuyuko know that they accepted Gemeti's proposal, and Fuyuko then told them that she had added a personal bonus to the deal; she only needed one money necklace, and the middle weight purse also had a necklace, so she'd given that one to Gemeti.

Mordecai made sure to let Seshadri know about the arrangement as well, when they met up to finally conclude their own trade. Seshadri would have found one of his people to do a similar job for them, but that would have made Azeria one client amongst many. This deal made Gemeti a more dedicated agent for now, though she could probably leverage it into more jobs with other people later.

This was also when Mordecai brought up a question he'd been intending to find an answer for before they even got here. "So, the big nexus to the south, do you know their proper name? Everyone just keeps referring to them as the southern nexus."

Seshadri stared a moment, then laughed softly and said, "Oh, he stopped using his name with most people a long time ago. Even if the two of you never got along terribly well, your avatars worked together enough times that there's an association that he wanted to distance himself from. What, you didn't think you were the only one to ever figure out how to expand your repertoire? He's also done you one better, he moved his tower."

That took Mordecai a moment to process, but he did have a name even without talking to his other self: Dersuta. It hadn't seemed a good match when he'd been comparing the southern nexus against those he'd known, but he had pulled up those memories during that search.

"Well, damn," Mordecai said. "That's going to make this a little more interesting." Dersuta had always seemed a little cold and distant for Mordecai's taste, like he didn't really want to deal with being people but found it expedient to at least be involved in the world enough to know what was going on.

"Good luck dealing with him," Seshadri said. "I believe he considered your tragedy and your war to be examples of why his outlook was the better one."

While Mordecai was groaning over that news, Fuyuko and Gemeti were having fun continuing Fuyuko's game, with Gemeti now acting as Fuyuko's agent to purchase and deliver things as gifts for her friends, while Fuyuko focused on getting close enough to overhear conversations. Shizoku and Derek were no longer considered proper targets for this, since they'd already met Gemeti and their gift had been being spoiled at the bathhouse.

As for what Amrydor was doing while the two girls entertained themselves, well, Fuyuko sounded somewhat annoyed that Amrydor refused to tell her anything beyond the fact that he had some training of his own to take care of.

But Mordecai knew where Amrydor was, or at least, who Amrydor was with. The boy had gotten one day off on his own, but Paltira had claimed the other days to train Amrydor. This was mostly about the additional duties and responsibilities of a marked who was also a guardian of a princess. There was also some training about the circumstantial boons to help aid one in protecting their charge, but as Fuyuko did not have a reciprocal mark the way Orchid did, those boons were less effective or did not seem to function at all.

He had wanted to ask Kuiccihan about that, but things had been busy. Well, he still needed to visit his daughter and son-in-law, so he could do that at the same time.

Fuyuko did not have all of Gemeti's time, however. She had been invited by Gemeti to join her and Amrydor on their dates, which she had done her best to politely decline while Gemeti grinned at her and then laughed. Fuyuko had reported this with some exasperation when she needed to vent about it, and her parents had all seen fit to not tell her that they thought Gemeti might actually be interested and not just teasing her.

As the youngest people in the training group were Derek and Shizoku, no one felt a need to keep more than a loose track of any of the teenagers' whereabouts, especially with the emergency tokens that Mordecai had handed out at the start. Most of them still chose to return to the wagon for the night rather than spend money on lodgings.

With her parents' permission, Fuyuko brought Gemeti up to the wagon on the morning they were to leave, so that she could show off the wagon and how cool the interior really was. Gemeti was suitably impressed and in a not-quite-joking tone asked what it would take for her to be able to hitch a ride and try tackling the southern nexus too.

It was easy to tell from her aura that Gemeti did not have the sort of training or experience to tackle that sort of danger, but that was not going to be a satisfying answer. So Mordecai spoke up before anyone else could directly dismiss the idea and said, "Well, let's start with an easy test. Shizoku is the least physically oriented among us, so you have to be able to beat her in a soft round of hand-to-hand. If you can manage that, we can talk further."

Kazue would be second on that least-physical list, mostly because both he and Moriko had insisted that she train and spar with them.

Seeing the hope spark in Gemeti's eyes was a little painful. There was no real contest here. Gemeti might have been trained in some basic self-defense, and honestly, she was less helpless than Kazue had been when Mordecai and Moriko had met their wife, but Gemeti had never been pushed or driven into training hard.

Shizoku gave Gemeti the chance to act first and stayed on the defensive long enough to give Gemeti the opportunity to adjust to Shizoku's speed, but every attempt by Gemeti to grab or trip the little kitsune was deftly avoided or slapped away, often by a tail. Then Shizoku finished the spar by slipping behind Gemeti and dragging down on the taller girl's shirt at the same time that she kicked Gemeti's foot out of position.

The simple maneuver laid Gemeti onto the ground rather ungracefully, which ended the test. Fuyuko helped Gemeti up and Mordecai double checked that the girl was fine before saying, "You'll need more serious training than what you've had, and it is a lot of work. In a purely physical fight, Fuyuko could handle Shizoku as easily as Shizoku handled you, and she's still a trainee compared to Moriko or myself. Now, if you want to get that training when you get a caravan to us later this year, that's an option."

Gemeti sighed and nodded. "I understand. I was just hoping for something to maybe help my own tiny bit of magic." She gestured and a small handful of dust started swirling around her fingers. "I can use this to do some polishing, but that's about it."

Mordecai smiled at the display while Kazue pushed forward for a closer view, her eyes lighting up with ideas. "Well, it is something that could be worked with, but that too is something that needs a lot of time and effort. Take care of the deal you made through Fuyuko, call on Seshadri if you get into trouble, and I will happily see that you get any training you need while you are visiting Azeria."

He doubted that Gemeti was ever going to be a powerful mage, but not for lack of innate potential. The girl's interest wasn't intense enough to drive her to her limits, partly because she was invested in growing a business of her own. Now, if she wanted to take a decade or two away from that life in order to develop her magical and combat potential first, that would be a different matter. It was effectively the path Ricardo had taken, though not as a deliberate plan.

Gemeti was satisfied with that and finished saying her goodbyes. Not long after, the wagon took off toward the southern nexus, Dersuta.

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