Chapter 22: Blood and Steel

The bandits stopped laughing when Mio drew the kaiken.

Not because they were afraid—a woman with a small blade was hardly a threat to six armed men. But because she drew it like she knew how to use it. The movement was practiced, precise, deadly serious.

The leader, a scarred man with a missing tooth, stepped forward. “Put down the knife, fancy lady. We just want your valuables. No need for anyone to get hurt.”

Mio’s strategic mind was racing, calculating angles and odds while her mouth spoke calmly: “Leave now and you’ll live. Stay and I’ll kill you.”

They laughed again. But it was forced this time. Uncertain.

Behind her, she heard servants scrambling to follow her orders. Good. They were barricading the inner compound, protecting the shrine and the household’s true valuables.

I just need to hold them here. Keep them from getting deeper into the estate.

The leader’s expression hardened. “Boys, take her. Carefully—she might fetch a good ransom.”

Three of them started forward.

Mio backed toward a narrow section of the courtyard—a bottleneck where the garden path met the inner gate. Tactical ground. They couldn’t surround her easily there.

“Last warning,” she said.

The first bandit lunged.

Mio moved.

Not like a samurai warrior—she’d never been trained for that. But like someone who’d spent eight months learning the precise technique of cutting her own jugular vein with a small blade.

She knew exactly where to strike. Exactly how deep. Exactly what angle would sever the artery cleanly.

The bandit expected her to slash wildly, to flail in panic.

Instead, she stepped inside his guard with the economy of motion Aoi had drilled into her, and drove the kaiken precisely into his throat.

Not a slash. A thrust. Surgical precision learned from contemplating her own death, now used to deliver someone else’s.

The blade found the jugular vein. Hot blood sprayed.

The bandit’s eyes went wide with shock. He clutched at his throat, making horrible gurgling sounds, and collapsed.

Mio pulled the blade free and stepped back, her heart hammering.

First kill.

She’d just taken a human life.

No time to process. The other two were on her.

She couldn’t fight both. She was fast, precise, but not strong enough or skilled enough to handle multiple attackers in open combat.

So she didn’t try.

She ran—not away from the fight, but deeper into the narrow path. The bottleneck. Where they’d have to come at her one at a time.

The second bandit followed, overconfident, expecting an easy target.

He got a blade through his eye socket.

Mio had pulled her father’s hidden knife from her obi with her left hand while running—the small, plain blade he’d made and sent to her despite all the risks.

When the bandit got close, she pivoted and drove it upward with desperate strength.

The blade wasn’t long enough to kill instantly. But it was long enough to blind him, to make him scream, to make him fall back clutching his ruined face.

Second kill. It would take him minutes to bleed out, not seconds. She tried not to hear his screaming.

The third bandit stopped advancing. Looked at his dying companions. Looked at Mio, bloodied and standing in the narrow path like a cornered animal that had turned predator.

“She’s insane,” he muttered, backing away.

The leader snarled. “She’s one woman with two little knives! Take her!”

But the men were hesitating now. Two of their number dead or dying. This wasn’t the easy raid they’d expected.

From behind Mio, she heard a shout. The elderly retainer, Suzuki, had armed himself with a spear and two servants with farming implements—a hoe and a wood axe—had gathered courage.