There was nothing more he could do now, so Lee sat heavily on his futon. The drop in adrenaline felt like plunging into a cold sea. It was still dark, not even a whisper of sun through his window. Lee drifted off to sleep sometime before sunrise broke, thinking of the woman’s eyes, which could devour the whole universe, eat this house whole, teeth full of wood splinters and dirt and blood.
He woke to the sunlight on his face from the window that was only sometimes a window, and when he rubbed his eyes and sat up, the answer to his question was written on the door.
Chapter Seven
Sen
Samurai onlystrikeonce.
Sen’s father would kill her if he knew she’d missed.
She had known at once that she hadn’t met her target, for there was almost no resistance against her blade. Sen knew how it felt to drive her katana through a body, and she knew she hadn’t done it. Blood had coated her blade, but not nearly enough of it. She’d examined the way it dripped down the keen edge of her katana, wondered how the blood of evil spirits could look and smell so much like the blood of humans. Maybe a sword wouldn’t have killed a ghost anyway, but it might have scared him away from bothering her family.
It would be harder to attack him now, for he would be wary of her. She had failed, but there was no one to punish her for it, for she couldn’t tell her father.
Someone knocked on her door.
Sen whirled around to face the hallway, where candlelight illuminated a woman’s figure.
“My lady?” Youna called. “May I come in?”
“Just a minute!” Sen said. She turned back to the closet door, where light still burned. What if the spirit hurt Youna?Sen could defend herself, but the servants didn’t even have weapons.
Sen jumped to her feet and leaned against the side of her dresser, shoving it in front of the closet door. It hooked into the wooden frame at the edge of the door, stopping it from opening. The door was small, and the dresser was large, so it blocked out the light from the other room, like it wasn’t there at all. Sen listened for a moment to make sure the spirit on the other side would stay quiet, then rose to her feet.
“Come in,” Sen called.
Youna opened the door with one hand, carrying Kotaro on her hip. Youna often cared for him at night so Sen’s mother could sleep.
“Is he all right?” Sen said, hurrying across the room.
“He’s fine, but he was asking for you,” Youna said.
Sure enough, Kotaro reached out his chubby arms for Sen. She took him from Youna and he lay limp across her chest. Sen never got to hold him during the day; every chance there was, her mother seemed to snatch him from her arms. Sen stroked his hair, which was starting to curl at the base of his neck. His face was damp, as if he’d been crying, yet Sen hadn’t heard a sound. The idea of him crying silently—as if too weak to conjure his voice—was so much worse.
“Youna, can you grab some honey from the kitchen?” Sen said, sitting down with Kotaro on her futon.
Youna nodded and hurried to the kitchen, then reappeared a few moments later with the honey jar and passed it to Sen with both hands.
Sometimes, when Kotaro was too hungry to sleep, Sen found that giving him some honey would sate him enough that he could drift off. She spooned some honey onto her fingertips and held it to Kotaro’s lips. He suckled at them eagerly, gripping her wrist to hold it in place.
Youna watched them with a soft smile. “He calls you Hachi, you know,” she said. “For hachimitsu.”
Honey, Sen thought, going still. She fed Kotaro honey so often that he thought it was her name. She looked down at Kotaro and remembered when Kura had fit in her arms this way.
Kotaro had eaten all the honey from her fingers and was dozing off on her shoulder. Sen wanted to keep him in her bed, but she didn’t know if the spirit would come back, and she didn’t want her mother to wake and find Kotaro was gone—that would make her angry. Sen stood and carefully passed him back to Youna.
Then, over Youna’s shoulder, a light flashed in the forest. Sen moved around Youna and stood at the window, her eyes narrowed as she surveyed the tree line.
It was as if a star had twinkled between the branches. Or perhaps a candle had flickered and gone out... or a spyglass had caught the edge of the moon.
“What is it?” Youna whispered, standing a careful distance back.
“I thought I saw something,” Sen said, gripping the windowsill. “My father said he thought there was a spy. Maybe—”
“It’s more likely the bullfrogs by the stream. Their eyes reflect light,” Youna said. “Let it from your mind, my lady.”
Sen shook her head. “I’m going to the forest,” she said. “Put Kotaro back to bed, please.”
