Chapter 20

Fuyuki allowed himself only a single day at home before departing for Lord Amano’s estate, a concession to his own exhaustion and to Meimi’s insistence that he could not properly serve either justice or his family by arriving at so consequential a meeting half-collapsed from eleven days of relentless travel. He spent that day largely in the household’s private chambers, listening to the fuller account Meimi and Hikari had not fully trusted to a letter — the full sequence of the attack, the guard captain’s report on the wrist tattoo and the two wounded prisoners, every detail neither woman had wanted to burden a hurried correspondence with but both now offered freely, in person, to the man who needed to carry that knowledge into whatever confrontation awaited him.

“You do not need to relive it for my sake,” he told them both, more than once during that long afternoon, watching the toll each retelling visibly exacted from Hikari especially, her composure fraying at details she had, until now, managed to hold at a careful remove.

“We do need to,” Hikari said firmly, dismissing his concern with a shake of her head. “You cannot represent us properly before Lord Amano if you do not understand exactly what happened, in full, rather than the abbreviated version a letter could carry. I would rather relive it once more, thoroughly, than have you walk into that meeting missing some detail that later proves essential.”

Meimi watched her sister-in-law’s steady insistence with a quiet admiration she did not voice aloud, recognizing in it the same hard-won discipline Hikari had shown throughout the entire ordeal — a refusal to let her own discomfort stand in the way of whatever the moment actually required. She found herself, listening to Hikari recount the fight a second time for Fuyuki’s benefit, noticing details in her own memory she had not fully registered the first time she had lived through them, the retelling itself surfacing fragments her mind had apparently set aside in the immediate aftermath as more than she could process all at once.

He departed the following morning with a small escort, Meimi and Hikari both remaining behind at his firm insistence despite Hikari’s initial objection that she, too, deserved to face the men who had ordered the attack that nearly killed her. “You will have that chance,” he promised her, before leaving, “when the formal proceedings require it. But I do not think either of you should be made to stand in a room with those men again before the shogunate’s own process has properly begun. There will be time enough for confrontation, once matters are handled correctly.”

Lord Amano received him within the hour of his arrival, the daimyo’s usual booming warmth replaced by a gravity Fuyuki had not previously witnessed in the man, evidence enough of how seriously the attack had been taken even before a single word passed between them.

“I am glad to see you returned safely, and considerably faster than I would have thought possible given the distance,” Lord Amano said, gesturing Fuyuki to sit across from him in a private chamber rather than the more formal hall where their earlier acquaintance had been made. “I imagine you have already heard the fuller account from your own household. I will tell you what my own investigation has uncovered, and then we will discuss how best to proceed from here.”

“I would be grateful for whatever clarity you can offer, my lord. I confess I have understood little beyond the bare facts my wife’s letter was able to convey.”

Lord Amano’s expression grew grimmer still as he began his account. “The fled attacker, the one whose hand your wife took, was found within the week, exactly as I promised your household when the search began. A wound of that severity does not remain hidden long, whatever effort a desperate man makes to conceal it. Once in custody, and with considerable persuasion applied to both him and the two prisoners taken during the attack itself, the truth emerged with a consistency across all three accounts that leaves little room for doubt. The attack was ordered by Lord Kurosawa, in concert with his brother, Lord Kurosawa Jiro. Their intention, as best we have been able to reconstruct it, was to eliminate your wife and sister, weakening your household and your own standing sufficiently that a subsequent, more direct move against your title might succeed where an outright attack on your own person would have drawn too much immediate scrutiny.”