Chapter 18

The physician arrived within the hour, summoned by a rider dispatched the moment the guard captain’s initial report confirmed the estate secure, and Meimi sat beside Hikari through the long, careful process of cleaning and stitching the wound at her shoulder, holding her sister-in-law’s uninjured hand through the worst of it despite Hikari’s repeated, increasingly irritable insistence that she did not require comforting for something so minor.

The household around them had settled into a strange, hushed industry in the aftermath of the fighting — servants moving quietly through corridors that had, only an hour before, echoed with violence, extinguishing lanterns in rooms no longer needing to be lit against the dark, gathering the household’s youngest members into the safety of the inner quarters where the night’s horrors could not reach them. Meimi caught fragments of it through the open screen of the room where the physician worked, the household’s careful reconstruction of ordinary life proceeding even as her own hands still bore traces of what had interrupted it.

“You very nearly had your arm opened to the bone,” Meimi said, unmoved by the protests, “and I will hold your hand through the stitching whether you require comforting or not. Consider it repayment for every morning you held mine steady while correcting my grip on a bokken.”

Hikari’s answering laugh dissolved quickly into a wince as the physician’s needle drew tight, though something in her expression softened at the comparison despite the pain. “I do not believe I ever held your hand quite so literally during those lessons.”

“You held it figuratively often enough. I am simply collecting on the debt in the currency actually available tonight.”

The physician, an older man who had served the household for years and had clearly seen enough of war’s aftermath in his long career to maintain a steady composure through even a scene as unusual as two women covered in blood that was mostly not their own, finished his work with quiet efficiency and pronounced the wound clean, unlikely to trouble Hikari beyond a scar and some weeks of careful movement while it healed. He offered no comment on the four bodies the household staff were, even now, quietly removing from the banquet hall, though Meimi caught him glancing toward the corridor more than once, some private calculation crossing his weathered features that he chose not to voice aloud.

By the time the physician departed, the estate’s guard captain had returned with a fuller accounting of the night’s events, and Meimi found herself, despite her exhaustion, straightening to receive the report with the same attentive gravity she had watched Fuyuki bring to matters of household consequence across their months together.

“The eastern breach and the main gate were both repelled within the first quarter hour,” the captain reported, his own uniform torn and bloodied from the fighting. “We lost two guards in the initial confusion before the men could properly organize a response — I am sorry to report their names to you tonight, my lady, though I know it is little comfort against everything else this evening has already cost the household. Several attackers fled into the darkness once it became clear the assault had failed to achieve whatever it was meant to achieve. Two others were wounded badly enough that they could not flee, and have been secured for questioning once they are fit to answer it.”

“What of the men who attacked from the east and the gate? Did any speak, before they were subdued?”

“Little of use, my lady. They fought with the discipline of trained soldiers rather than the desperation of common bandits, which suggests coordination well beyond what a simple robbery would require. Several of my own men noted the uniformity of their dark clothing, unmarked by any crest, though one guard swears he glimpsed a tattoo on the wrist of a man he wounded near the gate — a mark he did not recognize, but which he described in enough detail that I have already sent word to inquire whether any household in the region marks its retainers so.”

“And the fifth man from the kitchen breach? The one whose hand was taken?”