What the Fire Left

He went into the fire pit himself rather than be taken, and stayed in it burning to make sure the writ went with him. One piece came out — the Imperial seal, half melted, still readable.

The tent at first light was an inventory of who could still stand. Doji Setsuna unconscious, and bleeding no worse only because there is nothing an unconscious woman can do to make it worse. Miya Misato dying on the floor. Bayushi Monban gone down in medium armour across her, which was making it worse.

Ikoma Tadayoshi was up with two bad wounds and no running left in him. Shiba Midori was up, severely hurt in fire and water, and was the only medic in the camp who mattered. Kitsuko Ayoko was there and — unlike most of the people in that tent — actually knew medicine. And Kakita Kazumi was already outside in the dark, untouched, running.

Outside, it was night with the camp's fire down to embers, and he hunted all three of them by almost no light at all.

The first went out the front. Kakita Kazumi put an arrow into him at range — it stuck audibly in a set of Unicorn furs and the man did not so much as break stride, which told him what sort of people these were. So he closed, stowed the bow, drew, and took him apart in three exchanges: something thrown at him that nearly put him on the ground, a failed break for open country, and then a rising cut a compromised man could not answer. The last stroke took the arm off. And Kakita Kazumi tied off the stump, deliberately, so there would be somebody left to question, and dragged him back toward the camp.

He bled out anyway, before anyone got back to him.

The second had a long lead and lost it. Kakita Kazumi ran him down, kicked him in the head hard enough to put him flat, and used the movement of it to gain ground on the last one. Then he came back and finished it the same way, and that arm came off too. The man bled where he fell.

The third had gone out the back of the tent with the Imperial writ and a lead that should have been the end of it, and he was the one who mattered. Kakita Kazumi burned everything he had on closing — free movement, his action, and more besides — and caught him at the edge of the Lion camp with a rising cut he could not defend against.

So the man threw himself bodily into a fire pit, to burn the writ rather than give it up. Kakita Kazumi went in after him shouting for water; Lion soldiers came running. The shinobi, alight, took further injury on himself and went on trying to burn the document. Kakita Kazumi missed the save by a hair and the parchment went. One piece came out of it, and he knew which piece to grab: the Imperial Seal, melted at the edges and still recognisable for what it was.

The soldiers threw a bucket of something foul over the burning man and beat him down. He got to his poison first. He died of that.

Inside the tent, Ikoma Tadayoshi spent everything he had left rolling Bayushi Monban off Miya Misato — he is a big man in armour and it was not easy — and that cleared the space to work in.

Shiba Midori went at the dying and missed it by one success. She is severely wounded herself, and what it looked like from inside was knowing exactly what to do and losing the next step of it. Miya Misato lost a round off a countdown she did not have rounds to spare on.

Then Kitsuko Ayoko came in, who has the training, and put her hands where they were needed, and Shiba Midori went again and got it. Two rounds before Miya Misato would have died.

Stopping the dying is not stopping the bleeding. Doji Setsuna — woken by Aika with water and up on Ikoma Tadayoshi's arm, shaking — looked at what she had. The water approach was closed to her: she is severely wounded there. So she went at it through earth instead, where she is not, and with a steady pair of hands beside her she stopped the bleeding. It was gone over a second time before anyone dressed her, in that order and on purpose, because dressing a bleeding woman ruins the clothes and settles nothing.

Miya Misato lived.

She lost both eyes. The bandages went over both of them and whether either can be saved is a question for time. The stroke that did it had been aimed at her neck and only just missed taking her head off. She has major wounds on top of that, severe damage in water and earth, and is carrying half again the fatigue she can hold. Shiba Midori has watched people less hurt than this die on a field.

Doji Setsuna and Bayushi Monban both spent the rest of it breathing themselves back down to something functional. Miya Misato could have surfaced and chose to stay under a while longer.

Then Doji Setsuna went and stood in front of both commanders and told them, in substance, to do their jobs or kill themselves.

It worked. Neither Moto Gaheris nor Matsu Maro was going to concede that the other had done this, and each of them privately believed the other had. She put it to them that neither of them would — that there was nothing in it for either army — and that what they were looking at was a third party who wanted exactly this. That was enough to stop the two of them circling each other and get them both facing the same direction.

It cost her something she will not get back. Nobody is ever going to read Doji Setsuna as harmless again. The disarm in the envoy's tent worked precisely because three armed men looked at a woman in her nightclothes and filed her as no threat. She has now stood in front of two armies and told a Moto Khan to open his own belly. That version of her is gone, and it is gone by her own doing.

Setsuna

She was right about this three weeks ago and wrong about it last night. At the City Of The Rich Frog she wrote it down plainly: the target is the seal, not the woman — they want the writ, or a true impression of the seal to forge with. Then in the tent she read a knife at a throat and a hand inside a kimono as men taking the envoy, and built her whole reading of the night on it. The hand in the kimono was going for the writ, which she has known since the island is carried against Miya Misato's skin. The third man went out the back with it while she was fighting over the first. Her earlier judgement was the correct one and she came off it under pressure, in the dark, with the girl she is sworn to in front of her. That is worth knowing about herself.

None of them would be taken. Two bled out rather than stop, and the third went into a fire and stayed in it, on fire, working, and then poisoned himself when soldiers dragged him clear. Hired men do not do that. These were people who could not afford to be questioned, which says more about who sent them than any confession would have.

And there is no one to question. Kakita Kazumi saw that coming, took an arm off and then knelt down and tied the stump so there would be a witness, and the man died before anyone got back to him. The party bought a prisoner and lost him. Everything now rests on the physical: the Imperial Seal, the furs, the armour on the man who held Ikoma Tadayoshi, and the fact that this is the second time a crew has come precisely for that seal.

The seal came out of the fire and that is the case. Half melted and still legible. It proves what was taken and what was worth burning a man alive to destroy, and it is the one thing an investigation can be built on. It survives because Kakita Kazumi knew, in the instant, which fragment of a burning document was the one to reach for.

Miya Misato is blind. Everything Doji Setsuna has taught her — how a room is worked, how to concede a point without losing it, how to read who in a chamber is about to speak — was built on being able to see the room. That instruction now has to be rebuilt from the ground up or replaced with something else, and the person who has to do it is the person who taught it the first time. She is also still the envoy, still carries the Emperor's charge, and is now unmistakably a wounded girl. How a court reads her has changed completely, and not all of that runs against her.

The leverage from last night is exactly where it was and heavier. An Imperial Envoy was maimed in the custody of two armies. Neither commander has been told yet what that means.