Ren, Temari, and their entourage of ninjas were led to their room by the disgruntled guards. At first, they wanted to give Ren a separate room, but the attempt was feeble, and it was quickly shut down by Temari, once again mentioning their married status.
When they entered their new abode, Temari wryly shook her head the second the door closed after them. "Well, I guess we have the initial attitude probes almost behind us now." She sighed and slowly started pulling Ren through the room.
Temari was a highly important guest, and their accommodations showed her importance. The guest room was spacious enough to fit his entire apartment back in Konoha twice over. These were the same chambers where foreign high nobles, Daimyos, or other village leaders or elders stayed whenever they had business at the Wind Daimyo's court.
Even rudeness had its limits, and this whole high society thing had its rules of conduct.
"So, they were just probing us?" Ren curiously asked, wondering if he was too rude.
"Yeah. But it was more than that. Their attitude showed that the Daimyo was displeased with us. It also hinted at his unwillingness to make peace with us unless we make it worth his while." Temari explained as they reached the bed, and Temari snuck into Ren's loose embrace, giving him a small kiss on the lips, "Don't worry. Your reaction was fine. Being rude back showed we are not willing to be pushed around."
"This whole crap is quite complicated, isn't it?" Ren murmured as he placed his forehead against Temari's. "I don't think it will ever be something I want to participate in."
"Mhm. You don't have to. Just stay silent during the important meeting, alright?" She giggled, her teal eyes sparkling in mischief.
Ren was about to answer, but as he opened his mouth, he let out a startled yell instead because Temari suddenly pushed him onto the bed.
Shaking off the momentary disorientation, Ren pulled himself up on his elbows and became bewildered as he found Temari kneeling between his legs, her hands reaching toward his pants.
Their eyes met, and Temari smirked before she seductively licked her lips.
Ren's breath hitched. He didn't need further invitation than that and directly helped her pull his pants off. Soon enough, Temari's head was bobbing up and down in his lap, and Ren's narrowed eyes looked up at the exquisite chandelier, groaning in pleasure.
When a maid suddenly opened the door and walked in. The bed was right across the entrance door, so she instantly saw them and went beet red, stammering apologies as she hurried out of the room, closing the door behind herself.
'What is with people barging in lately!?' Ren inwardly screamed, staring at the door with wide eyes. Only Temari's giggle woke him up from his momentary stupor. He gave the woman an accusing look. His guts told him she planned to be caught in this compromising position from the very start!
Temari smirked at him, but instead of explaining herself, her head lowered as she brazenly returned to her previous ministrations, and suddenly, Ren had much more important things on his mind than questioning her about it.
In the next few hours, they thoroughly enjoyed breaking in the bed in their new room.
...
Two days quickly passed, and they still hadn't seen even the shadow of the Daimyo. It was a blatant power play, but according to Temari, who was more versed in all this political crap, it was a pretty standard one, if only slightly rude.
Temari could have demanded an audience, and she would have gotten it, but nothing pressing was going on, and there was nothing bad about letting the Daimyo have his fun before meeting with them.
It wasn't all about their feud, either.
The Daimyo had nobles to appease, and giving this small cold shoulder to the Sunagakure folk showcased that he had the situation well in hand. Or something. Ren was not sure if he understood it right after Temari tried to explain it to him. Admittedly, he didn't really try all that hard.
He thought the village-scale politics in hidden villages were already a convoluted mess. But the country-wide politics at the Daimyo's court made them almost look cute in comparison.
Ren decided to leave that in Temari's capable hands and didn't think about it. She had some smaller meetings with this or that minister, discussing things that, in the end, didn't matter because the Daimyo had the last say when it came to dealing with the hidden village anyway.
Unfortunately, this wasn't Konoha and the Land of Fire, where Danzo could just make under-the-table deals with the local ministers, and because of the good relationship between the Daimyo and the village, things could proceed smoothly.
Here, if a minister made such a deal with Sunagakure, he could face treason accusations. Most of these meetings were just courtesy calls. A necessary hassle that neither side took seriously.
Other than that, they had quite some free time during these two days, and they spent it by roaming the city, shopping, playing on the nearby beach, and subtly checking on Sunagakaure's spies and ninjas stationed in the Capital, both inside and outside of the Daimyo's court.
The village had quite a few of those. Easily over a hundred. Ren also had no illusions that they revealed all their spies to him. Sunagakure likely had more people keeping their eyes on things in the city.
It was impressive how much intel they had available simply by asking for it. Ren initially intended to send a few clones to gather information, but it turned out to be unnecessary. With at least one spy in nearly every single servant staff in every single mansion of a rich or influential person in the city, he doubted his clones could do much better than Sunagakure's spy network.
For example, the Daimyo favored his second, twentieth, and thirty-sixth concubine the most. The second because she was very useful and was with him for a long time. The twentieth because she was a great cook. The thirty-sixth because... ugh. The girl was thirteen. Let's just not think about it.
Koichi Shido's favorite dessert was an apple pie because he loved apples the most. His second favorite food was dango. And his third was some sort of local sweet buns. If they ever wanted to poison the guy, they knew exactly where to put it.
The Minister of War had a secret affair with the Minister of Finance's main wife. And his third concubine. And his fourth concubine. And his seventh concubine. And all of his four daughters.
... And his second son.
The Minister of Finance had a nasty hobby of skinning girls alive.
The Minister of Art was a young man who had a pretty nasty collection of poisons behind the bookshelf in his office at his home. Why? Because the man came from humble origins and his childhood sweetheart was one of the street girls who went to the Minister of Finance's mansion to earn some money by spreading her legs, only to never return.
The young man worked hard to get to a high enough position to find out what happened with her. The Suna ninjas even found out that his earlier hopes were that she simply became a concubine of the Minister of Finance.
But the world came crashing down on him when he discovered the Minister of Finance's nasty hobby and put two and two together. After that, the man worked even harder until he became a Minister himself, praised far and wide for his diligence and whatnot.
All to get a shot at killing the Minister of Finance. He was now nearly ready, too.
Well, it was no business of theirs, so neither Ren nor the Suna ninjas intended to intervene. Ren even rooted for the guy. And if he failed, Ren decided he would have a clone pay one final visit to the Minister of Finance anyway.
At least, the Minister of Finance was an outlier, rather than the standard for the Land of Wind's nobility. They were not yet as depraved as the nobles from the Akame Ga Kill Empire.
Most of the intel on them revealed affairs, scheming against each other, underhanded deals... the usual stuff. There were a few slavers who were going to have an accident by the end of the month, but overall, it was all right.
So far, Ren's time in the Capital City of Wind was quite nice. The food was good, the atmosphere was fitting, the women were exotic, the gossip was nasty or amusing, and the feeble attempts of the Daimyo's ninjas to secretly observe them were quite pathetic.
There was nothing to complain about.
Even if looking at the skimpily dressed dancers in the streets made Temari pout and drag Ren away a bit more forcefully than necessary.