"You're a delight to the eyes," Natsumi assured him. Hidden by the mask, she could gratify the instinctive urge to grin. Asuma's rich purple kimono looked somewhat the worse for wear from his recent scramble through the woodlands; his silly square hat was cocked at a rakish angle, and the gold embroidery on his kimono glittered in the late afternoon sun. Several days' growth of rugged dark stubble looked almost absurdly incongruous against the court foppery. He must have a fantastic eye for detail.

"Have you been to court recently?" She circled him, trying to find some flaw in the henge, and couldn't. "You must have used your spare time studying the latest fashions. That's a very fine hat." And something of a departure from the pointier shape that had been all the rage the last time Natsumi had visited her mother's family, two or three years ago. Natsumi remembered a few pertinent details in the brief, but nothing about haberdashery.

Apparently there was more to her new partner than cigarettes and bad pick-up lines.