"Not healing sickness. But the child had been cursed, and that I was good at dealing with. Which was fortunate, because his poor mother had nowhere else to turn," Seimei says. "The physician she had called said the child was cursed: the other onmyoji, under Ashiya Doman's thumb, insisted that he wasn't. It took all night and was a very close thing, but I broke the curse and put a charm on the child so he could not be harmed that way again."

Seimei wishes he could say that was the last time he'd seen something so horrible done to a child, but if he did he'd be lying.

"After that, it was war. Ashiya Doman and his cronies started sending demons to attack my house, and my wife's house - she lived with her father, which was not uncommon in those times - and though I had defenses in place, I was compelled to send her away from the Capital for her own protection."

Akiko, fortunately, had understood the gravity of the situation and agreed to Seimei's suggestion that she 'go on pilgrimage for a while' without too much fuss.

"I developed the trick of binding the shikigami to objects, like paper dolls, so I could spy on Ashiya Doman and the Fujiwaras who were commissioning evil spells from him to attack their rivals. Things went on like that for a while, with all parties involved acting perfectly normal at Court despite it all."