The Midnight Treaty

Gaheris had been waiting all night for one sentence, and it was not going to come from a magistrate or a Lion general. Finally, the envoy speaks. I am an obedient servant of the Emperor.

The game was still going when it started, and Moto Gaheris was ahead on the board. Five hundred Unicorn cavalry outside; a hundred and fifty Lion ashigaru inside, fifty of them wounded. Everyone at the table knew the arithmetic and nobody said it out loud.

Moto Gaheris opened with his terms, in the flattest voice he had. The Lion would surrender their arms and armour, samurai keeping swords alone. They would march home. At every village on the way they would stop and beg forgiveness for having been rude house guests. They would swear on their ancestors never to draw on the Unicorn again. And if they would not, their heads would go up on the castle wall.

Matsu Maro countered with what she called civilised terms. March out armed. Yield the castle in the state it was yielded to them. Continue on their mission unhindered. Concede that the Unicorn had beaten them here — and promise to beat them next time.

Ikoma Tadayoshi went first at the frame rather than the terms. The Otaku, he observed, had already disgraced themselves by withdrawing from the last battle, which does the Moto nothing but good. Breaking the Lion here would only be tidying up after them. Then he offered Moto Gaheris something better than a massacre: let his daughter Kojin ride up afterwards and take formal possession of the castle. A rested garrison could yield to her with very little fighting, she would have a moment of her own, and the Moto would still hold the ground.

Moto Gaheris found it interesting and did not move. Five hundred horse against a hundred foot; he saw little reason not to make a sport of it. Later, when the room got hot between him and Matsu Maro, Ikoma Tadayoshi played instead of arguing — the high plains and the empty steppe of the Moto country — and the Unicorn side of the table cooled.

Doji Setsuna spent her turn reading the man rather than answering him, and found the thing worth having. His war is not with the Lion. It is with the Shinjo, for primacy inside his own clan — and it is on hold, because the whole Unicorn is mustering against some enemy from outside and internal rivalry has been put away for the duration. A peace here does not cost him a war. It gives him back the one he actually wants.

She put it to him plainly. I do not believe that you will get the satisfaction that you need from a conflict here. I do think that there is an opportunity for greatness in collaboration with us.

He did not deny it. The Imperial Envoy, after all, has to choose their protectors. She has chosen you for their advisor, so that she sees some value in you. I await a reason not to declaw this cat before me. He was still weighing which course served him better. But his eye lit when the Shinjo were named, and that told her she had her hand on the right lever.

Shiba Midori recited poetry — enlightened verse, ostensibly for the room, actually built to hand Matsu Maro the weaknesses in Moto Gaheris's position on the board. It went in cleanly, and it told on the next move.

The game ran alongside all of it. Moto Gaheris took the opening in earth and Matsu Maro began badly. Then she shifted to water, found a seam, and took several of his pieces — a lion is most dangerous when it is cornered. In the third round he made a reckless-looking, aggressive move that gave away how much better he knew the game than he had been letting on, and she did not take the bait; she set one of her own instead and went ahead. Shōgi is a game for the patient. Eleven to seven.

Halfway through, they brought Bayushi Monban in. He was dragged through the crowd with the bag pulled off his head and the gag still in, and put on his knees. He chose to bow gracefully and wink at the Khan. Moto Gaheris enjoyed it: see — even the Scorpion understand their place in the world, sometimes better than the Lion. Gagged and kneeling, he watched the whole negotiation and missed nothing; he knows Cadence himself, and he would have seen exactly what Shiba Midori was doing with it.

Miya Misato spoke for the first time not long after. My Lord Gaheris, I believe you asked much of the Lion. They are willing to concede already their defeat. Is that not shameful enough? He gave up the demand about the villages on the spot — I suppose asking them to apologise to the peasants was a bit much. They weren't that rude. The ask had never been serious. She had given him a door out of it.

And then the moment the whole night had been built for. Shiba Midori used Cadence on the envoy — arranged between her and Doji Setsuna before the session began — and goaded her into speaking. Miya Misato stepped forward and stated that the Lion would accompany her. Not asked. Not proposed. Ordered. (The recording of this exchange was lost; what it contained is reconstructed from the people who were in the room.)

Moto Gaheris: Finally, the envoy speaks. I am an obedient servant of the Emperor.

He had been waiting for that all night. He could not take terms from Emerald Magistrates, and he could not take them from a Lion general. The Emperor's voice, used properly, let him stand down without conceding anything to anyone in that room.

Later Miya Misato turned to Matsu Maro herself: My lady, perhaps the mission you should proceed with is escorting us alongside the Moto as Lady Setsuna suggests. Matsu Maro allowed that she could hardly escort an Imperial Envoy unarmed. Moto Gaheris smiled and said she could always come along as a prisoner. Nobody took it seriously by then.

Doji Setsuna turned to the ransom. She checked first whether he was dealing straight, with Ikoma Tadayoshi helping, and he was: a hundred koku, which is what a samurai of Bayushi Monban's standing is worth and not a koku of extortion in it. Then she divided the bill where she thought it belonged — five koku from her own purse on the spot as good faith, twenty from her father's house, twenty-five from the Emperor because ransoming an Emerald Magistrate is Imperial business, and fifty from Bayushi Monban's own lord, who assigned him this duty in the first place.

Moto Gaheris accepted, had him cut loose, gave him back his swords, and handed him to her. On the ropes he offered: I know it isn't proper Shibari, and I'm sorry about the implication. Bayushi Monban, free, asked the Great Khan for a private word during the march. Moto Gaheris agreed, visibly curious. On his way back to his own people Bayushi Monban moved one of the shōgi pieces and winked at him.

Matsu Maro won the game. She played well and fairly, Moto Gaheris said, and told her to rest — they were marching in the morning.

Then Doji Setsuna wrote the treaty, with Otoya at her elbow, and read it to the room. It was clean enough that everyone in it was satisfied there were no mistakes in it and no loopholes worth objecting to, and by putting his name to it Moto Gaheris ended up somewhere he could not refuse the final terms without losing face. Every party staked ten honour on keeping it. Whoever breaks it forfeits that, unless somebody broke it first.

The Midnight Treaty was signed by Moto Gaheris and Matsu Maro, sealed by Miya Misato for the Emperor, and written by Doji Setsuna. The Lion march out armed; they yield the castle as it was yielded to them; they go on unhindered; they concede the Unicorn beat them there; there is no further violence against Unicorn citizens; and the Lion and the Moto escort the Imperial Envoy's party onward together.

Afterwards, Doji Setsuna wrote to Bayushi Monban's lord. The letter is courteous to the last syllable. It regrets that a hundred koku might read as a modest valuation of so fine a vassal, explains that the circumstances required expediency, reports that half the sum has been arranged, and directs the remaining fifty to his household on the grounds that the debt arose from the duty his lordship assigned. It encloses the particulars for his records. Bayushi Monban has not seen it.

Setsuna

Two hours of work bought one sentence, and the sentence was not hers. Everything she and the others did — the reading, the music, the poetry, the shōgi coaching, the atmosphere — was scaffolding for Miya Misato to give one order at the moment Moto Gaheris was ready to obey it. He could not take terms from an Emerald Magistrate and he could not take them from a Lion general. He could take them from the Emperor. Her office does not win rooms; it builds the moment when someone whose office does can speak. Deployed last, it lands. Deployed first, it gets tested.

The lever is the Shinjo, and it is still there. Moto Gaheris's war is inside his own clan and it is currently frozen by a general muster against something from outside. He wants this settled so he can get back to it. That is the single most useful thing anyone learned tonight, and it does not expire when the column moves.

And nobody has said what the Unicorn are mustering against. An entire Great Clan has suspended its internal politics for an external enemy and the Empire's own envoy is riding into their country without knowing what it is. That is worth asking Moto Gaheris directly, on the march, while he is pleased with himself.

Miya Misato has given a command now and been obeyed. She talked a Khan out of a demand and then ordered a clan's general to accompany her, in front of five hundred horse. She needed Shiba Midori to goad her into it and she may need that again — but an envoy who has done it once is a different instrument from an envoy who never has, and the whole embassy is built on her.

The treaty has teeth, which is new. Ten honour staked by every party, forfeit to whoever breaks it second. Nothing else in this campaign has bound anybody. This does, it is in her handwriting, and it will be read.

Bayushi Monban wants a private word with the man who held him. He was gagged through the entire negotiation with nothing to do but watch, he reads Cadence, and he therefore saw exactly how Miya Misato was steered. Then he moved a piece on the board and winked at the Khan. She should find out what that conversation is for before it happens, and she probably cannot.

She has also just billed a Scorpion lord fifty koku and framed it as his own obligation, in a letter of impeccable courtesy that her yojimbo has not read. It is correct — the duty was his lordship's assignment — and it puts a Scorpion daimyō in debt to her arithmetic. Worth being clear-eyed about which of those she was doing.

And the road runs to Battlemaiden Castle, where Shinjo Altansarnai is said to be investing against Akodo Toturi. She is travelling there under the escort of a Moto Khan whose ambition is to displace the Shinjo. Whatever happens at that siege, Moto Gaheris will not be a neutral party to it, and she should decide now whether that is a problem or the whole opportunity.