My uncle stepped forward, his weathered face carved with lines that made him look like he’d been hewn from mountain stone. Kitaro had served my father, had helped me secure power when every other man in ourhanthought a woman belonged in the breeding halls rather than the war room. I trusted his counsel more than any other living soul.
Which is why his next words felt like a betrayal.
“Princess Katsumi speaks truth,Daimyo. The passes will not clear until spring, perhaps late spring given the early storms. We have supplies to maintain our position through winter, but not to advance through impassable terrain.” He traced a gnarled finger along the map, following the mountain range that separated us from our prize. “Any force we send will die before reaching Bara. We would only feed the mountain gods corpses for no gain.”
My jaw clenched so tight I could hear my teeth grinding. “So we donothing? We sit in these conquered villages like fat merchants counting coins while Takashi’s drunken whelp sits the Jade Throne?”
“We consolidate our gains.” This from Lord Matsuda, whose military strategies had won us Yubi but whose caution grated like sand against skin. “Fortify our positions, assimilate Toshi soldiers into our units, train the conscripts, prepare for a spring campaign that will—”
“Spring!” I slammed my palm on the table, sending the nearest dagger quivering. “By spring, Akira Haru will be Emperor. The coronation will have—” I caught myself, feeling the words claw at my throat, desperate for release.
The coronation would restore the tether. A new dragon would be born. Magic would return to every temple and shrine with renewed strength, and everything we had worked for would weaken before a renewed divine will.
But I couldn’t say any of that.
None of the men in that room knew the truth about the Imperial bloodline, about the cosmic joke the gods had played on humanity by tying all magic to one family’s survival, oneman’ssurvival. They knew only that killing an emperor weakened the Empire, not that it severed the very source of their enemies’ power—and that of our own monks, priests . . . and others.
Only Kitaro and Katsumi knew the full truth.
Only they understood why Takashi’s assassination had been necessary, why timing mattered more than territory.
I forced my voice to steady. “By spring, we face a unified Empire under a new emperor’s banner. We lose the advantage of chaos and surprise. We lose the chance to strike while they’re vulnerable.”
“Mother.” Katsumi moved closer, her armor plates whispering with each step. She stopped just short of the throne, close enough that only I could hear the gentleness beneath her formality. “We understand, but winter is not our enemy—it is our ally. Bara’s forces cannot reach us any more than we can reach them. The Empire is vulnerable, yes, but it is vulnerable for us, too. This pause gives us time to—”
“To what? Grow soft? Let fear calcify into caution?” I met her dark eyes, seeing my own determination reflected back at me. “You sound like your father, all prudence and planning, forgetting that wars are won by those willing to take risks others call madness.”
Her expression didn’t change, but something flickered in her gaze. Hurt, maybe. Or disappointment. “Father won you the loyalty of the Maria before he died in battle because his ‘madness’ finally met its match. I would prefer you not follow his example.”
The room had gone silent as a tomb.
No one dared speak to me like that. No one dared suggest my tactics might lead to failure, that my hunger for action might blind me to danger.
No one except Katsumi.
I wanted to rage at her, to remind her who commanded here, to show these men that even my beloved daughter bent the knee to my will.
Instead, I laughed.
Sharp and bitter, but genuine. “You think I am being reckless.”
“I think you are a leopard trapped in a cage.” She didn’t look away. “There is a difference between wisdom and haste. One wins wars. The other loses them.”
Around the table, I saw relief ripple through the generals like wind through grass. They’d been waiting for someone to voice their concerns but were too afraid to do it themselves. My daughter had done their arguing for them, and they were grateful.
I hated that she was right.
“Speak, then.” I gestured to the map. “What does caution counsel?”
Katsumi moved to the table, and the generals parted before her. She studied the positions, the markers showing our forces, the vast emptiness of the mountain range between us and Bara that winter had transformed into an impenetrable wall.
“We hold Yubi and the surrounding territories. We have secured the granaries, andwakoships continue to strangle the capital, which means we eat through winter while Bara has to feed an army and its people on reduced stores.” Her finger traced our supply lines. “I say we use this time to do as Uncle suggests. We train the conscripts and turn farmers into soldiers. Come spring, we do not march fifteen thousand troops toward Bara—we march twenty thousand well-fed, well-trained men and women on a long campaign.”
“Twenty thousand takes time to raise and coin to pay.” Lord Matsuda leaned over the map, his eyes sharp despite his earlier caution. “Where do we get the men?”
“The villages that yielded.” Katsumi’s smile was my smile, all teeth and certainty. “We offer them a choice: join our forces and share in the Empire’s future wealth or starve through winter. They surrendered to our troops. Let them now surrender to our will. Survival is persuasive, would you not say, General?”
“Conscripts fight poorly.” General Tanaka frowned, not taking my bait. “Unwilling men break when pressed.”
