An egret’s call broke the morning silence as I gathered kindling from a dead pine. I answered back and its mournful return confirmed that Uncle Jiro’s army had arrived.
The scout stepped out of the forest and made deep obeisance, not as a soldier would to his military senior, but he bowed as he would to his sovereign. My chest tightened to see this humility and for a moment I couldn’t speak.
When he stood up again, I recognized one of my outer yard soldiers—the young stripling whose femoral artery I had sewn together with my own spider silk, and I swallowed a lump in my throat, remembering the narrowness of his escape.
The scout disappeared again, but not before making another deep signal of reverence, which I answered with a long, low bow.
At sundown, we made camp in a grove of chestnut trees. We ate rice and salt fish, and I was bemused to see several of my young recruits gathering grubs from under rocks and felled trees. I joined them, but they were strangely quiet in my presence.
Long past twilight, I sat up with my uncle trading information, but I held back one critical piece of intelligence.
It would arouse his anger like nothing I had ever said to him in my life, and I had provoked him much. I wasn’t eager to enrage him now when matters were so advanced. He might dismiss me as he had done before—might even turn on me, but I couldn’t avoid it any longer.
“We anticipate her full cooperation—especially when you remem—”
“Wrong.”
The old man started at my interruption.
“What did you say?”
“Furi will resist. Protest. At best she’ll cause costly delays. Don’t expect an easy time on that front, Uncle. Her noncompliance could thwart the entire plan. Be prepared for it.”
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“She has never given the least indication of—”
“She’s never known the truth.”
Uncle Jiro frowned. “Nor need she know it now.”
“I’m going to tell her everything.”
His eyes rounded in horror.
“I forbid it! You will jeopardize everything! A whole nation! Better lives of—”
“Honesty,” I argued, “should begin at this nation’s inception. She has to know the truth.”
“It’s too great a risk!”
“I will tell her.”
My uncle stood and drew his sword. Our swords met with a jarring clash of steel. The surrounding camp receded from my vision as I threw attacks at my uncle and his better trained sword. We circled the fire pit, our swords adding sparks to the crackling flames at our feet.
Uncle Jiro was no amateur swordsman. He’d fought alongside my father, and his skill was excellent. Whatever he professed about bloodless wars, he was a fierce Nagaishi clansman—a warrior, first and last.
I blocked his attack with the flat of my sword and the force of the impact sent tremors from my wrists to my shoulder joints, and drove me backwards on the flats of my feet.
Dodging his wide swing, I leapt back over the still burning flames of the fire pit, then swung for the trees, raining a bunch of chestnuts down on my uncle’s head while I let loose a wild cross body swing.
He blocked, parried and lunged through the middle of the flames, reaching down with his gloved hand, he flung a spray of live coals at my skin, singing my forearms. I winced and swung back, again and again against the walls of his guard. My death was already reserved. I couldn’t bargain with it now.
An attack for every slur my uncle had spat at me since boyhood. A block for every insult to my mother. A cut for every village boy’s cruelty, a bruise for every glare leveled by old Nagaishi women. Now my past wounds opened up, unburied by years. New and angry.
And still, my uncle chased me, calculating every physical advantage and delivering every blow with perfect accuracy. Many were his advantages. Weight. Height. Training and experience as well as every seed of psychological weakness he had planted in me over my lifetime, but not every advantage.
He must have noticed the assembly of his men—my men, forming a circle around us, closing in by inches with every strike as we circled the fire. He must have heard how they whispered. How their eyes followed the circle of his sword. He saw, yes, and he knew when three unsheathed their weapons at once, that this was not his revolution to command anymore.
It was mine.