Finn had assumed, based on the old driver's recommendation, that Kaseigai would be smaller and more discreet than Shirouzuchi — a hidden gem, the kind of place that only locals knew about. What he found when they arrived was the second-largest establishment on the entire street.
He looked at his guide with an expression that conveyed this observation clearly.
The man was already being greeted at the door.
"Boss, welcome back." The woman at the front bowed with the ease of long familiarity.
Finn turned to look at his guide again. The guide — the owner, apparently — patted Finn on the shoulder.
"My little brother from the Land of Fire," he said to the woman. "Treat him well. He's generous and I've told him the same about you." He turned to Finn. "First time here? No charge tonight. Consider it hospitality."
"You own this place," Finn said.
"Second largest on the street!" the man said, with the particular satisfaction of a man proud of something he built. "Twenty percent off, whatever you want. You asked the right person, brother."
Finn accepted this, because there was no good alternative to accepting it, and because twenty percent off was twenty percent off.
Before he'd fully oriented himself to the interior, a girl appeared at his elbow and took his arm with the practiced naturalness of someone who had done this ten thousand times. He let himself be steered inside.
The main hall was larger than it looked from the street. Dozens of tables, most of them occupied, the noise level sitting somewhere between lively and overwhelming. Girls moved between tables and guests with drinks and conversation. Music came from two directions simultaneously, different instruments in different corners creating a layered sound that was somehow not quite cacophony. Laughter arrived in irregular bursts from different parts of the room.
"Quieter upstairs," the girl at his arm offered. "Private rooms, better for conversation."
"In a moment," Finn said.
He had caught something in the corner of his vision. A figure he needed to look at twice to be certain about, because the context was completely wrong.
In a booth near the far wall, a white-haired man was working through a substantial quantity of wine with the commitment of someone who had been at it for a while and had plans to continue. Two girls sat with him, one on each side. He was laughing at something, a big, open laugh, his face animated in the particular way of someone who had fully committed to the evening's agenda and was having no reservations about it whatsoever.
Finn looked at him for a moment. Then again, more carefully.
Jiraiya. Toad Sage, Konoha Sannin, one of the three students Sarutobi Hiruzen had trained personally and then spent decades trying to locate. Here, in the Daimyo City of the Land of Earth, in a flower establishment on Flower Street, apparently very comfortable with his surroundings.
The Land of Fire and the Land of Earth were at war.
Finn extracted his arm from the girl's grip, crossed the room, and sat down in the empty booth next to Jiraiya's.
"Enjoying yourself?" he said.
Jiraiya turned without concern — in a place like this, strangers opening conversations was entirely normal — and gave Finn the quick assessment of a man experienced in reading rooms. He seemed to find the results satisfactory.
"First time here?" he asked. "You've got the look of someone figuring out how the place works."
"Just arrived," Finn said. "From the Land of Fire, actually. The owner's a friend. He told me to come to Kaseigai."
"Ha." Jiraiya raised his cup. "Land of Fire. Me too. Where specifically?"
"Tansho Street area," Finn said. He had a general knowledge of the Land of Fire's geography; the specifics were shakier, but Tansho Street at least he'd heard referenced.
"Tansho Street." Jiraiya's expression went briefly nostalgic. "I was there once, years ago. Good gambling. Nice atmosphere." He didn't pursue it further. In Finn's experience, men in establishments like this one were rarely interested in interrogating the particulars of each other's backgrounds. The present company was sufficient.
Within twenty minutes they had combined their tables.
Jiraiya, it turned out, had the specific social energy of someone who was very good at being exactly where they were. He told stories that were occasionally true and always entertaining. He spent money with the ease of someone who had more than he needed and had decided not to think about it. He made the girls around him laugh genuinely rather than professionally, which was a distinction that was apparent if you were paying attention.
Finn matched him roughly measure for measure and found himself, somewhat to his own surprise, having a good time.
At some point Jiraiya squinted at him and said, "You said you're in your forties. That's not possible."
"Forty-one," Finn confirmed.
"You're trying to establish seniority so I have to call you brother. I'm in my thirties. If anyone's the senior man here—"
Finn picked up the small fruit knife from the table and made a shallow cut across the back of his hand. Not deep. Just enough to produce the result he intended. Blood welled up, visible for a moment, and then the skin closed over it as if the cut had never existed. Seven seconds, perhaps. Completely healed.
Jiraiya stared at the back of Finn's hand.
"Forty-one," Finn said.
"Brother," Jiraiya said, after a moment, with the tone of a man updating his position.
They were mid-conversation about something that had drifted considerably from its starting point when the noise in the room changed character. Not quieter exactly, but differently oriented — the distributed murmur of fifty separate conversations shifting into something collective, attention moving in the same direction.
"The Oiran is here!"
The announcement came from somewhere near the stairs, and the room responded to it the way rooms respond to the appearance of something everyone has been quietly waiting for. The music shifted. The laughter subsided. People turned.
At the top of the stairs, a figure descended.
The kimono she wore was extraordinary — deep indigo, embroidered in a pattern that moved when she moved, the embroidery catching the lantern light differently from different angles. She held a fan in one hand, raised to cover the lower half of her face, which left visible only the upper portion: eyes and brow and forehead and the elaborate architecture of silver-white hair arranged with pins and ornaments that must have taken an hour to construct correctly.
Her hair was genuinely that color. Not white with age — silver-white, the color of frost in direct light, even and uniform from root to the ends of the portions not pinned up. Her brows were the same. Her skin was pale to the edge of translucence, the exposed wrists and the hand holding the fan very white against the deep fabric of the kimono.
And her eyes, visible above the fan, were unusual. The pupils were silver-white — not the white of a Byakugan, which was a different quality entirely, but something silvery and cool that had a faint dark center when she turned toward the light. The effect was striking in a way that sat somewhere between beautiful and unsettling, the line between those two states thin enough that it shifted depending on which angle you were looking from.
Her nails, where they curled around the fan's frame, were lacquered deep red. The contrast with the pale skin was deliberate and precise and effective.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and moved into the room without appearing to notice the attention, which was itself a performance of a kind.
Finn looked at her for a moment and confirmed that he had no memory of her from anything he knew. The ninja world had an enormous number of people in it who never intersected with the specific events that got remembered and recorded. A courtesan of this quality, operating in the capital of the Land of Earth during a war that was disrupting normal traffic — her presence here made complete sense and her absence from any story he knew of made equal sense.
He turned to look at Jiraiya and found Jiraiya looking at the Oiran with the expression of a man who has arrived at a very important conclusion.
"Hey," Finn said.
Jiraiya surfaced slowly. "She lives up to everything they said. The most beautiful woman in the Land of Water, in the flesh."
"That's a specific title," Finn said. "Who is she?"
"Shiraki Yuri. She's been famous in the Land of Water for years — apparently she travels, performs, and accepts conversation from people worth talking to. I've been in this establishment for three days specifically waiting for her to come downstairs." He straightened up slightly, which was the posture adjustment of a man preparing to be impressive. "I happen to be a bestselling author. That's precisely the kind of credential she's said to respond to."
Finn looked at him.
"I'm not bragging," Jiraiya clarified.
It was true, as far as Finn knew it. Jiraiya's first literary attempt had collapsed spectacularly and immediately, in the way that a first attempt at almost anything does when the creator has more ambition than craft. What followed, after a period of reflection and some lessons learned about the relationship between art and audience, was the Icha Icha series — a line of novels that had, on publication, been adopted so completely and enthusiastically by the reading public that Jiraiya had achieved the specific kind of financial independence that allowed a ninja to stop doing ninja work and pursue their preferred lifestyle more or less indefinitely.
The books were not exactly the credential Finn would have chosen to present to a woman known for seeking out intellectually interesting men. But Jiraiya's confidence was genuine rather than delusional, and confidence had its own persuasive quality independent of the supporting evidence.
"You could lead with the genre," Finn offered.
"What's wrong with the genre?"
"Nothing's wrong with it. I'm just saying, if she's known for appreciating cultured conversation, perhaps open with something other than your most famous title's central subject matter."
Jiraiya considered this. "The books are very nuanced," he said.
"I'm sure they are," Finn said.
Across the room, Shiraki Yuri moved between tables, speaking briefly with the establishment's senior staff, the fan still held at the customary height, her expression unreadable above it. Several guests had already oriented themselves toward her in the hopeful way of people who have decided to try their luck.
Jiraiya refilled his cup, set his shoulders, and began composing what he was going to say.