With a low whistle, I ordered my men to advance on the inn. Twenty men fell on the Shogunate security force standing watch. Twelve crept down from the mountain on the opposite bank of the river. I slipped by alone, in Earth Kumo form, to the bathing pools behind the inn. Lazy, perhaps, my target had already fallen, but he would take the further care only I could give.

I reached the pools first, assumed human form, and flung the limp sovereign to one side of the pool. Then I brought Furi out of the water and threw a thick cotton robe around her heat-flushed body. I carried her inside the inn, nodding to the rebel-sympathizing keeper, who stood to assist me through the shoji doors to a quiet guest room. There, I laid her down on the futon.

Slowly, the impact of what she had begun traveled through my mind, flashing and colliding with thoughts and memories until I tingled with equal parts euphoria and regret. It was a wrenching thing to expose Furi to this man—a tyrant who thought it possible to cage an immortal. And yet it had taken so little from her…just a drop of her poison.

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Furi wouldn’t listen to the explanation of our revolutionary plans with disinterest. And I shuddered to think about what she’d already guessed. Uncle Jiro had been right about the risk of telling her the truth, but I was determined to put it to her—to let her choose. She would need to know every wrinkle. I couldn’t let her be surprised. It was hers to accept or reject now, but the weakness of my position wrung my insides.

It wouldn’t be long now. Intervals of collapse between poisonings were increasingly brief. Soon she would be able to manage a poisoning with barely a blink of her eyes and a nod of her head. And then her danger would magnify tenfold.

My men dragged Yasuhito’s body out of pool and arranged him on a futon at the opposite side of the inn. He wasn’t dead yet and we depended upon his limited survival. He needed to survive long enough to legitimize our child. I was certain he would.

Furi was a different matter.