“You want me to give birth to Okugawa’s child?” Furi’s face was incredulous.

“Not Okugawa’s.” I paused, and closed my eyes for the audacity of my demand. “Mine.”

Furi flinched, but wouldn’t speak.

“We’ll install our child in place of the Okugawa heir. And Yasuhiro will believe the babe his own. There will be no struggle. No contest. A peaceful transition of power.

“But our child I wouldn’t be in the line of succession. Yasuhiro has a first wife.”

“His wife is barren. He will have to depend upon you for an heir and he knows it.” I closed my hands around her trembling fingers. “It’s your choice.”

“Yasuhiro said I was already his.”

“You are as free as the revolution would make you, to choose your own husband.”

“He might have reason to doubt—”

“He will have no interest in contesting his paternity of our child. Producing an heir is his most urgent business.”

“Am I to live as his wife?”

“But briefly. In his illness, I don’t believe he will long outlive the birth of the child.”

She bit her lip. “How can you possibly be sure he’ll die?”

“Before I followed you to the Ozawa mill, I was a samurai at Western Capital. I also studied with the Emperor’s private physician. I’m trained in clinical and theoretical medicine. My particular expertise is poison—yours. He will die.”

I watched this intelligence take hold of her. Emotions played across her face and body as legibly as a calligraphy scroll and more movingly. I felt everything. Her disbelief. Her horror…euphoria…amazement…and ultimately…her repulsion. She had circled around to the inescapable conclusion: I was after all, only half mortal, and an Earth Kumo at that. There could be only one end for me.

“You will let me go if I choose it?”

My mouth hardened. “On my honor, I will let you go, though it would frustrate a decade of planning and the underpinnings of the entire revolution…and,” I swallowed. “And wound me more than I can say.”

She scoffed at this. “I had better wound than kill you.”

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“I had much rather die than let you give up on me now.”

“How can you say that?”

“I couldn’t always. I never expected to. I…”

“What?”

“I don’t…” I sighed. “I can’t speak it.”

“Then don’t. I could never—”

“Furi—there’s a language only our bones know.”

She raised her palm.

I took a step nearer. “When you come close enough, my bones will speak to yours.”

Her lips parted, and I felt her breath in my face. “You won’t understand the language in your head, but you will in the soft hollows of your own bones.” My hand found her shoulders, my fingertips, trembling, traced the fine line of her collar bone. “You’ll know the sum of my life. Its beginning and its end and you’ll feel your own place there and how if you don’t hear—if you don’t answer back again in only that language—you’ll have let my life fall away wasted.”

She pulled away a fraction.

“Furi. Let me tell you a story I think you may be interested to hear. It is about your father and mother, and not long, but I must preface it with this, and I’m sorry.”

“I am listening,” she said, and she knelt at the kotatsu.

I knelt beside her and began, “You were raised by cynical, low people. They despised themselves and taught you to do the same.”

“I suppose they did. What bearing does that have?”

“I’m telling you why you won’t believe what I’m about to say.”

“What will you say? My mother is the moon?”

“That is not far from the truth. Remember the Princess’s nickname for you?”

“What? Orihime?”

“Orihime is your mother, The Weaver of the Gods.”

She closed her eyes in disappointment.

I sighed. “If you cannot accept that, you should also reject the explanation of my parentage.”

And with those words, I pinned her with her own hypocrisy. She had willingly believed me a god and yet could not accept the same explanation of her origins. Her breathing came sharp and labored, but she replied in a wordless answer into my mind. “I believe you.”

“You are unlike her other daughters, and there are many. Near the time of your conception, your father and mother had enemies—gods, jealous of their love. These combined to thwart your parents’ already rare meetings by sending floods of rain on the seventh lunar month. This went on for some time, and your mother began to despair. In her desperation, she made an ally of The Earth Kumo, who for their part, had no prior access to the Skies.

“Orihime gave you to my mother, to be your godmother, and blessed you with her defenses. She made you the only of Orihime’s daughters to carry a few of my mother’s traits. Your mother never regretted the poison for your sake. She believed you would become a magnificent weaver and change the power balance in the immortal realm.”

It was a strange tale, and yet not strange. Her acceptance washed a flood of emotions to the surface. “What it must have been to know your mother,” she whispered.

I winced at this saying. It would be the best luck possible if Furi never knew my mother. I cleared my throat. “That is how you became the Nagaishi Clan’s hope, but also crucial ally to the Earth Kumo—if you will accept. And though you don’t know your mother, you were always known and loved.” I paused without a breath. “I spent much of my childhood watching you.”

She gasped, “And that somehow negates all the harm I will do to you?”

“It gives whatever harm there is purpose. It gives me hope for meeting you again.”

Furi turned away. “I can’t listen to you sitting there, persuading me to kill you!”