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.
Something shifted in the woods. Clumsier than a raccoon or fox, heavier than a bird or mouse. Sen turned toward the sound, just barely glimpsing the swaying leaves deep within the forest.
Seijiro hooked his ankle around hers and knocked her off her feet.
She fell onto her back, all the air rushing out of her lungs, her sword falling from her hands.
“Ha!” Seijiro said. “Am I done now?”
Sen rolled onto her hands and knees, peering into the woods, but whatever she had sensed there was gone.
“Fine,” she said, brushing off her clothes. Seijiro picked up the baby and hurried into the house before Sen could change her mind. She sheathed her sword and turned around.
My lady.
The words crept across the back of Sen’s neck. She whirled around, blade drawn, but she stood alone in the forest. Her hands trembled, but she sheathed her blade again, taking a steadying breath. No one had called hermy ladyin ages—not since her father fired her maid.
She planted one foot on the porch to step up, and that was when the world split in two.
A bright pain seized her, like a sudden flash of sunlight in her eyes, but it seared not through her vision but her entire body. Sen had been stabbed before, so she was no stranger to pain, but this was far worse.
She fell to her knees, one hand on the lip of the porch, the other in the dirt. Her bones throbbed in a steady beat, as if the garden was alive, its panicked pulse echoing through her. She grabbed a tangled fistful of weeds, but they shivered beneath her hands, shifting colors, disappearing and reappearing, first dandelions, then grass, then dirt, then ash.
Then, all at once, it stopped.
The sudden relief left a numbness ringing through her. She rose to her feet, stumbling against the porch as she drew her sword. She had been vulnerable for too long, her back turned to the forest.
“Sen.”
She whirled around, her blade ready, but her father hadn’t even drawn his sword. His eyes looked strangely gray, staring not at Sen but at the house behind the sword ferns.
“I need you to go collect firewood,” he said.
It was an odd request—Sen knew they had plenty of firewood, for it was still scorching hot outside and they only used it for cooking, not to heat the house. But her father had asked it of her, so she would do it.
“Yes, Chichiue,” she said, sheathing her blade and heading to the shed for an axe.
For the next hour, Sen cut down as much as she could carry. When she’d packed all the wood in the shed and her hands were blistered and sore, she washed up at the river and headed back to the house.
She stopped at the edge of the clearing.
It was too silent. Normally, one of her brothers was always shouting and running around, heavy footsteps thumping from one end of the house to the other, followed by her mother’s voice calling after them.
Have the imperial soldiers come?Sen thought, terror clamping cold around her heart. She rushed to the front porch and threw the door open.
She tripped in the darkness of the front hallway, her hands splashing down into something hot. It was so dark that at first she thought an inkwell had overturned, but there was far toomuch of it, and it was far too warm. She scrambled to her feet and pressed back against the wall, where she saw the body of a servant face down on the floor, blood slowly pouring from a wound at her throat.
Sen clapped a hand over her mouth, trying to stop the scream clawing its way up her throat.
