Lee would never sleep now—not with the uneven sound of his father’s heartbeat so close. Something was knocking on the door of his father’s rib cage, but no one would answer. Lee found himself suspended halfway between sleep and waking, analyzing the sound of his father’s breathing, its stutters and stops, whether it sounded too wheezy, too thin, too labored.
Lee’s father was not meant to be alone. Not like Lee. Even when it was just the two of them, in the brief months between girlfriends, his father always ended up sitting at the kitchen table and drinking his coffee and reading his newspaper at the exact same time that Lee was eating his breakfast cereal, no matter if it was a Saturday at eleven or a school day at half past seven. Lee learned that even when he didn’t speak, his father wanted to be next to someone, exist alongside them, a moon a careful distance from its planet, always there but never touching.
A shadow shifted beyond the paper doors in the corridor. Lee’s gaze flickered up to the small woman’s silhouette—long nightgown, hair down.
“Hina’s looking for you,” Lee said.
“Hina isn’t here,” his father said, half asleep. “She’s staying with her mom, coming back in the morning with some furniture her parents don’t want anymore.”
Lee frowned, looking back up at the hall, but the shadow was gone. Maybe the branches shifting in the window had casta strange shadow on the wall and Lee had assumed it was Hina, so his mind filled in the blanks?
But no, that didn’t make sense. That was another puzzle piece jammed into the wrong slot.
He glanced at his father, who looked well and truly asleep, then rose silently to his feet and approached the window that was only sometimes a window. Lee walked toward it with an almost gravitational pull, stepping over his futon and looking out across the garden, where it had started to lightly rain.
There, under the bright moonlight, a woman was standing in the yard.
Chapter Three
Sen
1877
Kagoshima Domain
Sen pressed her blade to her brother’s throat, drawing a thin line of blood just below his jugular.
Next came the part where she was supposed to raise her sword over her head and kill him with a single strike. He was unarmed, so a quick cut would slice through his spine instantly. For an armored warrior, if there were no weak points, the best way was straight through the eye, don’t stop until your sword comes out the back of their skull. Neither move was physically that hard to pull off, especially on a child’s body, like Seijiro’s. It was only the mental barrier that made most people stop too soon.
“Okay, okay, you win!” Seijiro said, holding up his hands, his sword falling to the dirt. “Let me up.”
But Sen only leaned closer, her shadow falling over him like an impending storm. Her blade pricked his skin and a bright bead of blood trickled down his throat. “If you want to get up, force me to retreat,” she said.
Their baby brother, Kotaro, was watching from the porch,sucking his thumb. Sen couldn’t see their father, but he was always around, watching. Waiting for her to make a mistake.
“I said I want to stop,” Seijiro said, his face red, his eyes glinting like he wasn’t actually sure Sen wouldn’t murder him in the yard in front of the baby.Good, Sen thought.You should be afraid.
“You won’t learn if you always quit,” Sen said. Her father had told her that hundreds of times. He hadn’t letherraise her hands up in defeat and quit while sparring. He’d swung his blade at her as she screamed and climbed trees to escape, and then he cut those down as well. He didn’t stop until she threw a rock at his head and blood vessels burst in his eye. He’d stared down at her with one white eye and one red eye, and only then had he sheathed his blade.
That was why Sen was a warrior and her little brothers were not. Mother had gotten too soft after Sen. She hadn’t liked what she saw.
Sen pressed her blade under her brother’s chin, forcing him to look her in the eye. “Well?” she said.
He scoffed and smacked the blunt end of the blade away. “This is stupid,” he said. “Let me up.”
Sen could have refused. She should have. Her father would have stomped on her fingers for speaking so insolently.
But it wasn’t Sen’s job to make her brother a great warrior. If he wanted to be soft-bellied and weak, no more useful than the baby, then she would let him. Sen was worth three sons. She would be the only weapon her father needed, the only child he treasured.
She sheathed her blade, and Seijiro hurried to his feet before she could change her mind.
“I hope you’ve picked out flowers for your funeral,” Sen said.
Seijiro rolled his eyes, wiping his hands on his yukata. “As if we’re ever actually going to fight.”
“We will,” Sen said, her voice light and even, a song thewind carried away. “And when we do, you will die because of the choice you’re making now.”
“I’d die even if I trained like you,” Seijiro said. “All the samurai were better warriors than you, and now they’re all dead.”
