Chapter 17

The weeks following Fuyuki’s departure settled into a rhythm neither Meimi nor Hikari fully admitted to finding strange, the household’s ordinary business continuing around an absence that nonetheless colored every hour of it. Both women had taken to carrying their full complement of weapons at all times now, exactly as Hikari had suggested that first uneasy morning — Meimi with the kaiken tucked into her obi and the wakizashi belted at her hip, Hikari with her katana never more than an arm’s reach away regardless of the hour or the task at hand. What had begun as a deliberate precaution settled, across the intervening weeks, into something closer to simple habit, the weight of steel against her body no longer a reminder of danger so much as another article of Meimi’s daily dress, as unremarkable now as the comb she wore in her hair.

Their training continued through those weeks with an intensity that surprised even Otsuru, who remarked more than once that the two women seemed to be preparing for something rather than simply maintaining what they had already built, though neither Meimi nor Hikari fully articulated, even to themselves, exactly what unnamed threat they were preparing against. Meimi found herself, in quieter moments, wondering whether the vigilance was excessive, born of nothing more than an absent husband’s ordinary worry transmitted unconsciously into his wife and sister — and then would catch Hikari checking the estate’s outer wall with the same unexplained attentiveness, and find her own doubt momentarily silenced by the shared recognition passing between them.

Otsuru, for her part, adjusted the lessons without comment to the shift she observed in her students, spending less time now on the refinements of form and more on drills that asked both women to respond to sudden, unannounced attacks from angles they had not anticipated. “A blade held ready is only useful if the hand holding it has practiced surprise,” she told them, midway through one particularly demanding session, “and I do not think either of you has been practicing merely for the pleasure of the discipline these past weeks.” Neither woman offered a response, though the observation settled over the yard with a weight that made the following drills feel considerably less like exercise and considerably more like preparation for something both of them sensed without being able to name.

Word arrived twice from Fuyuki during those weeks, brief letters carried by exhausted riders describing negotiations that moved, as he had warned her they might, with excruciating slowness, Lord Sanada apparently unwilling to commit to anything without exhaustive deliberation over terms that seemed, from Meimi’s distant vantage, to have changed little between one letter and the next. She read each letter twice through before passing it to Hikari, treasuring the small, private observations he tucked between the formal diplomatic summaries — a complaint about the western province’s food, a question about how her training progressed, a line or two that made clear, however dry the surrounding correspondence, how much he missed the house he had left behind.

It was on an ordinary evening, nearly three weeks into his absence, that the household’s careful rhythm finally broke. Meimi and Hikari had gathered in the banquet hall for their evening meal, as had become their habit these past weeks — the hall’s open space and clear sightlines to every entrance offering a comfort neither woman had explicitly discussed but both had quietly gravitated toward since Fuyuki’s departure, a room that let them see trouble coming from any direction rather than risk the blind corners of their more private quarters.

The first sign came not as sound but as its absence — a sudden quiet from the direction of the kitchen, the ordinary clatter of the evening’s cleanup cut off mid-motion in a way that raised the hair on Meimi’s arms before her conscious mind had fully registered why. Hikari’s head came up at the same instant, her own instincts apparently reaching the same conclusion in the same breath, and both women were on their feet before either had spoken a word.