The war came back to the Snow Plain. Three centuries after her ancestor fought there, so did she — and this time she was awake for it.
The column went north-west into Unicorn country with a Lion relief force and the Imperial envoy, and somewhere on that road the war reached the Snow Plain.
There was a battle there. The Lion took it — their commander killed the Unicorn leader in single combat, which is how that ground has always been decided — and it cost them so heavily that calling it a victory takes an effort. The field was covered in Lion dead.
The magistrates worked the aftermath. They helped with the triage, and they took down the last deeds of the dying, which is a magistrate's office and not a physician's: a death recorded is a death that counts for the family.
Afterwards the column took a castle that surrendered without a fight. Its people were gone. Its stores were full, unspoiled and unpoisoned, enough to hold a siege for months, and nothing had been sabotaged on the way out. Whatever moved them out moved them fast, and it was not an army.
Somewhere in all of this the Unicorn took Bayushi Monban prisoner.
Setsuna
She has been on the Snow Plain twice now. Once as Matsu Morozane's memory, three centuries back, and once in her own body. Both times Lion against Unicorn on the same ground; both times settled by two commanders and one blade; both times a field of Lion dead afterwards. She is the only person in the column who has seen it happen before, and the only person who knows it did not settle anything the first time either.
She recorded the dying. That is the office at its plainest — no writ, no intrigue, no leverage, just a magistrate with a brush making sure a man's last act is entered somewhere it will be read by his family. Whatever else this stretch cost, that part was the job.
Nothing about the castle adds up. People who abandon a fortress burn the stores or poison the wells. These people left months of food behind, intact, and did not damage the defences. That is not a garrison withdrawing; that is a household running from something. It is worth finding out what before the column settles in behind those walls.
And her yojimbo is in a Unicorn baggage train — the man she dismissed, who would not accept the dismissal, taken by her husband's clan.