The Cause of the War

I could not be expected to marry such a man. In doing so I would unravel my own family — how could I dishonour his wife, and my own mate in the process?

Doji Setsuna rode to the Unicorn camp and came back with the answer nobody in this campaign has ever had: why Shinjo Altansarnai refused. It was not caprice. It was that the man she was offered had been made to throw away his wife to be offered at all — and she found that out from the wife.

Morning at the Lion camp first. Kakita Kazumi worked his forms at dawn and read the place while he did it: the Lion practising their own style and none of them with his instincts, Matsu Tsuko out reviewing troops, everybody conspicuously not looking at him — and masked Scorpion moving through a Lion camp, which is not where Scorpion belong.

The Lion council could not choose a negotiator without knowing whom the Unicorn would field, so Doji Setsuna guessed for them, at length and on purpose obscurely: the Unicorn do not take Imperial mediation very seriously and will send somebody competent rather than fearsome, so the Lion need not field their worst either — only somebody a little above. Shiba Midori backed it beautifully. The officers were baffled, which was the point, and Akodo Kage granted that the magistrates add an interesting complication: the process levels the ground in a way that makes overkill worthless. They had been reaching for Ikoma Ujiaki, who is exactly the strong arm she did not want across the table — and, to her private relief, not Ikoma Anakazu, whom she wants kept for other purposes.

Akodo Osakuan — Akodo Toturi's right hand, and Akodo Akihito's father — observed that there is something awkward about an Emerald Magistrate present here who is, by marriage, subordinate to the Lion Champion's authority. Akodo Toturi considered it, and did not say it out loud. Not yet.

So she asked leave — as a courtesy, not as permission — to ride and fetch the answer herself. He gave it. She took Kogarashi out at speed with Kakita Kazumi and Shiba Midori and a Lion escort, met a Unicorn escort at the midpoint, and for the length of that ride she was not being an Emerald Magistrate, which she has needed for weeks.

The Unicorn are camped at the forest's edge, about equal to the Lion in numbers and much better placed — around them on three sides, with Moto and Utaku on the flanks. Shinjo Altansarnai received them with an advisor from every family. She knew Kakita Kazumi and Shiba Midori already. Doji Setsuna introduced herself as newly and gratefully married to her kinsman Shinjo Harunobu — and told her he was free, at the Castle of the Swift Sword, and that the Lion had praised how he fought. She had not known he was ever taken.

Then Doji Setsuna raised Asako Ikari, and asked how much of it the Champion had known.

Her face changed, and the war finally made sense.

Asako Ikari came to Unicorn lands to kill herself in Shinjo Altansarnai's court. The Champion's men stopped her, and from her they got the story: the previous Lion Champion, Akodo Arasou, arranging this match, had ordered one of his own daimyō to set aside and disgrace his wife — the mother of his child — to clear the ground for it.

I could not be expected to marry such a man. In doing so I would unravel my own family. How could I dishonour his wife, and my own mate in the process?

And she said the thing that makes it worse. Had the Lion simply disclosed that the groom was not free to wed, before the offer was made and accepted, she could have declined politely and none of this would have happened. She freed Asako Ikari, told her she bore her no ill will, and knows that she and her daughter were guests at her cousin the Eda's castle for a while. Where they are now, nobody knows. The husband has never once looked for her.

Her terms are modest to the point of being disarming. The Lion leave Unicorn land without further blood. The borders go back where they were. Captives are released. I don't wish to punish them. The dead littering the field are punishment enough. And she does not ask for the concessions the marriage would have brought her clan — those she is now disinclined to give.

Then Kakita Kazumi said the quiet part in front of the whole room. She was offered a man who was already married. That makes the offer bad faith, and bad faith voids the contract entirely. How widely is it known? Nobody knows — which makes it the single thing the Lion would least like made public.

Shinjo Altansarnai's mouth curled like a cat's. She had understood exactly what she had just been handed.

Doji Setsuna then laid out the cost of it plainly, because it is her duty to. If the Champion brings a formal accusation and it is affirmed, Doji Setsuna would be obliged to demand that the responsible party open his own belly. And the responsible party is Akodo Arasou — Akodo Toturi's elder brother — who is dead, killed by Doji Hotaru's arrow at the gates of Toshi Ranbo with Akodo Toturi standing there. There is no seppuku to be had from a corpse. There is only the shame, and the shame lands on the living Akodo.

With the truth on the table they set who would sit at it, and the shape assembled itself.

The arbiter must outrank the negotiators. If Shinjo Altansarnai and Akodo Toturi negotiated in their own persons, no magistrate alive here outranks them and only the Emperor could arbitrate — which is precisely why a peace between Champions belongs at Winter Court. But if both send stand-ins of lesser rank, Doji Setsuna's standing is enough and she keeps the bench.

And then a Unicorn advisor found the elegant answer. Asako Ikari's people, the Phoenix, are a third injured party — so there is warrant to seat a Phoenix to speak for Unicorn interests. Every eye in the tent went to Shiba Midori, who accepted with as much dignity as she could manage over the top of undisguised delight. Shinjo Altansarnai looked at her for a full minute. You will speak for the Unicorn's interests. She will be briefed on their position, and the Champion will personally answer for any insult offered to either woman while their yojimbo is absent.

Two other things came out of that room. The Unicorn learned that Shinjo Miharu is alive — held by Akodo Akihito and never ransomed — which went down badly. And when somebody joked about trading for Bayushi Monban, Shinjo Altansarnai knew him at once, by reputation, to knowing laughter, and reported that only his horse had been recovered. Doji Setsuna claimed him as hers and said she would fetch him from the west when this was done. So the Unicorn now expect her yojimbo to turn up on their side of the table.

Doji Setsuna did try for a private word and was refused. It would look improper, the Champion said, to treat privately with a magistrate before an overseen negotiation. So she said the substance in public instead.

Back at the Lion camp they announced Shiba Midori. Three Akodo were genuinely surprised; Matsu Tsuko smirked; Ikoma Ujiaki gave away nothing at all. And Akodo Kage immediately turned the precedent around — if the Unicorn may seat a magistrate of appropriate standing, the Lion should reconsider whom they field rather than lean on the Crane on the bench. Which boxes the council neatly toward Akodo Akihito.

Doji Setsuna set her household to preparing the ground, and gave Kakita Kazumi the security of it — because whoever wrecked this peace and killed the envoy may not have gone anywhere.

Far to the west, Bayushi Monban went down under clubs in a windowless room and woke bound and slung over a humped beast in the sun, with the spirit inside him basking in the heat. They staked him out on a rock in an ocean of sand and an old ritualist began drawing the marks to pull the Ifrit out of him and put it in a box. Don't move when we bake you, or you die.

He prayed instead, and it came apart in his favour: a shaft of sun, black smoke out of every pore, and the Ifrit free and standing outside his body — released by him, on his own terms, exactly as he had promised it. The old man began screaming that the seals were not ready and it would kill them all. And Bayushi Monban, with his legs still pinned and nothing else left, asked the spirit to burn him.

It did it gladly. The ritualist went up; a thug went flying and burning; the rest ran into the dunes. Bayushi Monban took a club and went out again, and the last thing he saw was the Ifrit running the old man down.

He woke a third time with five burned bodies around him and his fox chewing his ropes apart. He gave the Lady of Decay the five corpses, and then found out what the fox had done while he was ill: it had taken his shinies to a river goddess's shrine and traded them for the water that saved his life — including his Emerald Magistrate's badge, which is a vessel built to hold a fire spirit, now sitting at a shrine to water.

He walked back. Three days, no waterskin, arguing with a fox. He reached Khanbulak in late autumn and went over the wall after the gates shut, to steal back his katana — and found the Bayushi agent packing to leave for Otosan Uchi, taking his sword with her, on the reasoning that he would follow it anywhere and that Shosuro Hametsu might pay well for that kind of leash on his most disloyal servant. He was caught rifling her rooms, fled empty-handed, retrieved the fox from a dog, and went out into the desert with water and nothing else.

Setsuna

The war has a cause, and it is not a grievance but a fault in the contract. She was offered a man who was not free to be offered. That makes the Lion's original proposal bad faith, which voids it — and converts Shinjo Altansarnai's refusal from caprice into principle in a single sentence. Everything the Lion have done since rests on an injury they manufactured themselves.

She handed the opposing Champion the weapon, in public, deliberately. She could have kept the legal implication in her pocket. Instead Kakita Kazumi said it out loud in a tent full of Unicorn advisors and they all watched Shinjo Altansarnai understand it. That was the correct thing to do and she should be clear-eyed about what it costs: the Unicorn can now humiliate the Akodo line whenever they choose, and the arbiter is the person who armed them.

And the guilty man is dead, which is the worst possible outcome. If a formal accusation comes, her duty is to demand a life, and the only life owed is Akodo Arasou's, and he has already given it — to a Crane arrow, at Toshi Ranbo, in front of his brother. There is no justice available here, only humiliation, and it will land on Akodo Toturi, who has dealt straight with her from the first minute and freed her husband for nothing. She needs an off-ramp built before the accusation is made — recompense to Asako Ikari, a private acknowledgement, something folded into Winter Court — because once it is formally on the record she will have no discretion left.

And she should sit with the shape of it. A Crane killed Akodo Arasou at Toshi Ranbo. A Crane now arbitrates the war he caused, having just dangled Toshi Ranbo itself in his brother's war tent. If anyone in that camp assembles those three facts in that order, her neutrality is finished — and Akodo Kage is exactly the man who would.

Shinjo Altansarnai is not somebody to be worked. She refused a private word on propriety, which is the first time in this campaign anyone has declined to be handled. Everything that landed on Shinjo Miharu and on Akodo Toturi — the warmth, the confidence, the shared register — will read as manipulation to this woman and cost her. Deal with her straight, in the open, on the merits. It is what she respects and, now, what the bench requires.

Her bench is on three sides of its own table. Shiba Midori speaks for the Unicorn. Kakita Kazumi runs the security. Bayushi Monban will arrive, whenever he arrives, on the Unicorn side, and the Unicorn have been told to expect him. She arbitrates above all three of them, married into one belligerent and subordinate by marriage to the other's Champion. Akodo Osakuan has already said the first half of that out loud. She should be scrupulous about the visible things — seating, order of speaking, procedure — because that is all anybody will be able to point at, and it is all she has.

Asako Ikari is still nobody's priority and she should be. She tried to die of this. She is the living proof of the whole case, she is Shiba Midori's clanswoman, and nobody has looked for her since she left the Eda's castle with her daughter. Find her. Everything else in this negotiation is argument; she is the fact.

And Kakita Kazumi saw masked Scorpion walking through a Lion camp at dawn. Given who a ghost said sent the men who killed the envoy, that is the most actionable thing anyone noticed this week, and it was noticed by the man nobody in that camp will speak to.