“That’s how many were missing after we reached safety and took count, but like I said, we haven’t been back to our houses, and the soldiers won’t tell us anything.” He shook his head. “I just wonder what they stand to gain from covering all of this up.” A sense of security, Misaki thought. If news of the attacks spread, people might panic and becom

“Know your place, you stupid woman. What would you understand of a warrior’s jiya?”

It wasn’t just Izumo’s body temperature that was pleasant. Misaki had come to love the feel of his nyama—not hard but fluid, never grating against her coldness, but swirling about it until slowly, they melted together and both became liquid. He brought back a long gone feeling of being adaptable, fluid, and free.

He looked up at her, haggard, his eyes narrowed, and for a moment she was sure he was about to snap at her not to question him. “I don’t want to do it without a plan in place,” he said evenly. “You can understand that, can’t you?”

“The people who did this—who fought without honor and destroyed without conscience—they are the ones who will burn in Hell’s fire for this. Not your husband. Not you.”

“The Yammankalu are involved?” Misaki asked. It wasn’t unusual for Kaigen’s more powerful ally to give them military support, especially where Ranga was concerned, but it added a new level of complexity to the situation. Yamma was its own player, with its own motives.

“Kwang-san was saying bad things—treasonous things—against the Empire. He said the history Hibiki Sensei teaches us isn’t true. He said that during the Keleba, a lot of men died here on the Kusanagi Peninsula and other places in Kaigen, and the Ranganese had to be driven back by the Yammanka reinforcements. He says the Empire covered up the deaths

“Before I married into the Matsuda family, I was Tsusano Misaki. I know blood.” She noticed the man shift a fraction of a step back. Superstitious. “Could you please give me a moment with my son?”

“But I have no doubt that it is precisely that kind of ingenuity that gave rise to the Whispering Blade in the first place. A student like you, who can absorb what he is told but also think beyond it, is capable of anything.”