The way of the samurai is found in death
Sen closed her fist around the sword guard and clutched it tight to her chest, against her heart, which beat far too fast.
The man hadn’t seen her hide the sword guard. She supposed he might have eyes on her even when the door was closed, but all her excuses felt so flimsy compared to the facts before her. This sword guard had been left underground for a very long time.
“It’s the same house,” she whispered, even though the words felt like a betrayal of her own heart.
Because if it was the same house, then this man wasn’t the ghost—Sen was.
There was no such thing as a ghost who died peacefully in their old age after a long and fulfilling life. If Sen was haunting this house, then she had died filled with rage and sorrow and shame. It wasn’t hard to guess how that might happen.
The royal army had made her cousins’ heads explode with bullets, had cut off their arms and crushed them beneath their horses and then dragged them behind their wagons. Some of them had been close to Seijiro’s age. After what her father had done, there was no way the government would let any of her family live.
Sen was going to die in this house. Even worse—she was going to fail her father.
The weathered sword guard cracked in her grip, falling to the floor in pieces and cutting her father’s motto in two.
The way of the samurai—
—is found in death
It was a good thing her father wasn’t here to witness the way her hands shook, the way she could barely breathe. He would have struck her for cowering in the face of death. This was what she had trained for her whole life—to see life and death as two sides of the same blade, to walk unflinchingly toward it as easily as she opened the porch door and strode out to the forest.
But Sen was failing him even now as she imagined her body ravaged by bullets, drowning in her own blood, her rib cage blasted to pieces, skull shattered and brains spilled all over the ground, eyes on thin tethers rolling around in the dirt, teeth scattered in the garden. Would she be able to see through eyes that had popped out of her skull and oozed white jelly into the ground? Would she be able to speak when she no longer had any lips or tongue?
“I’m sorry,” the man said behind her.
Sen blinked away the images of death, sitting up straight and smoothing out her expression. Even if she was going to die, she couldn’t cry about it in front of this man.
“I don’t want your pity,” she said, replacing the floorboard and rising to her feet.
“Good,” the man said, “because I want us to exchange information, not pity.”
Sen turned around. The man was standing a careful distance away from her, watching her like a vulture trying to ascertain if its prey was truly dead.
“What kind of information?” she said.
The man glanced at the door to Sen’s room. “I want to figureout why I can see you. I’ve tried to reach out to the dead before, but so far, you’re the only one who’s been able to cross the threshold. I intend to find out why.”
Sen didn’t miss the weight of his words, the way he seemed to carve them into the air like a promise.I intend to find out why.
“And how would I know that?” Sen said with a glare.
“You don’t need to figure out the reason,” the man said. “You only need to give me enough information about you and your world so thatIcan find the reason. If you answer my questions truthfully, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about the future.”
Sen clutched the hems of her sleeves as she considered his offer. There was really only one thing she wanted to know, only one truth that mattered.
“Could you tell me when the soldiers will come for me?” she asked. Maybe if she knew the date, she could convince her father to leave the house. Maybe this man hadn’t come to herald her death, but to save her from it.
“Yes,” the man said. “Though, to find that information, I would need your name.”
Sen swallowed. Even though she was fairly certain he wasn’t an evil spirit, something about speaking her true name in front of him felt inexplicably dangerous.
“Sen,” she whispered at last. “Sen of Shimazu.”
The man waited, his gaze prickling across her skin. “Is that your surname?” he said, as if he already knew the answer.
“It’s the only name that matters,” Sen said stiffly.
