A Duel Writ Large

This conflict is a duel writ large between clans rather than between champions, and it presently hangs undecided. This is the moment either side may step back, before one of them suffers a terrible blow.

Doji Setsuna went to sit with the man she had humiliated the day before, and Ikoma Ujiaki was charming for half an hour and took more out of it than she did. Then Akodo Akihito came back into the tent speaking in a completely different voice.

Word had finally reached Bayushi Monban, out west, of what had happened while he was gone — that a Lion had refused to take an Emerald Magistrate's word for the writ, that the challenge had been answered by pointing at Akodo Akihito, and that Akodo Akihito had said he wished he did not have to do this because he believed Kakita Kazumi, and his clan made him fight anyway. He took that badly. Not the eye — the fact that a magistrate's word had been settled with a blade instead of being accepted.

Up the mountain, the Earthen Queen permitted him two fire spirits and not six. He took two and the fox and left the rest below, and climbed — and found, in the last week of summer, that it was snowing.

The cave was as he had left it, which is to say the ribcage was still hanging at the mouth with fresh meat on it and the torches inside were lit. He had the spirits set the meat alight to bring the trolls home, and slipped in past them.

Inside was a whole cow roasted on a spit and left to cool, two sleeping places, soup gone cold, a missing pot he knows exactly what became of — and a drawing on the wall of a samurai in a helmet, which is meant to be him, spattered with offal by people who wanted him to know how they felt.

He had them burn everything except the picture. He wants whoever ends up living here to look at it and remember who got them the place.

The weapons were gone — clubs, probably spears, and the travois they haul with — which is how he knew the trolls were out, and how they came back: two of them, dragging poached cattle, bellowing, running for a cave that was on fire.

He met them at the mouth, unmasked, and told them they were the lowest bottom-feeding filth he had ever stood near and ought to be fried alive for making a person of rank clean their midden. Then he mooned them. It cost him something in standing to begin a fight with his clothing in that condition, which he judged worth it.

It went badly. Troll skin shifts to meet what is hurting it; the second burst of flame did much less than the first, and they simply walked through the fire and set about the spirits with clubs. One elemental was beaten into the snow until it went out. The other is being pounded down now.

So Bayushi Monban went up — rode the air to the smoke-vent in the roof — and on the way he took off his mask and called Onahime up.

Blackness came out of the left side of him and a woman's laughter filled the cave, and what hung in the vent was half a demon and half a rather handsome man with a very wicked smile. Which is the first time the how of it has been said plainly: when they died, they had to wear masks to go into Jigoku, and he made a bargain with Onahime that they would stay joined. She is not an evil thing. She kept him alive down there and brought him out, and what she asked in return was to take a piece of him with her when she left. She has kept her side of it since.

He kicked one troll off its feet with a fist of air and hauled himself out onto the roof of the mountain, between two rock teeth, with one spirit dead, one dying, two trolls entirely unhurt, and a question he cannot answer: whether the Earthen Queen is watching, and whether a favour owed by him is worth more to her than a pair of trolls.

At the shrine, Doji Setsuna went to Ikoma Ujiaki over the recess — the man she had pinned in front of the whole tent the day before, who had every reason to be bristling. He turned on the charm instead.

She has been walking a rope between two buildings for weeks and can do it blindfolded, and what she felt sitting opposite him was something close to enjoyment — the particular lift of being pushed hard by somebody of her own size. It was not a flawless victory. She knew that at the time.

What she got out of it: she pressed him, without ever saying it, toward being the man who takes the initiative on a settlement with his Champion's backing. And she declined every premise he offered without once appearing to. When he assured her the Lion had of course been concerned for the well-being of the daimyō's former wife and would never have left her destitute, she said only that she looked forward to the record showing it, at the appropriate time. When he called the whole business a misunderstanding escalated by other people's choices, she was polite and did not agree.

She got something out of him too, and it is the most useful thing anyone has learned about a Lion in this negotiation. She found out what he actually wants. Not power — he does not want to be a champion of anything. He wants to go down in history as one of the Lion's most competent negotiators, and he believes he is well on his way.

And the tell had already been in front of her. It was Akodo Akihito's place to raise the objection about Shiba Midori representing two clans. Ikoma Ujiaki did not wait for him. He keeps stepping in front of the man his own clan seated in that chair, and now she knows why.

But he got more. He read her — her composure, the old Kakita grudge she carries, and a social objective, which was the decoy she had laid and not the real one. Then he did something to her that will keep: he turned her legal scholarship into a liability. From now on, when he opposes her, her own learning works against her — precedents she does not know, weaknesses found in her own arguments, the strength reversed.

And in the pleasant part of the conversation, the small talk, he found out the one thing she wants for herself, which is the harder loss of the two. There is a small private gathering the Asahina hold on the Crane coast in spring — poetry, a few days, by invitation — utterly unlike everything she has spent her life on, and she would say yes to it in a heartbeat and believes she would never be asked. She dismissed it prettily as impossible for someone like her. Don't undersell yourself, he said. You are an extraordinary young magistrate, making a name for yourself.

Afterwards she went to the Unicorn's own Iuchi advisor — a middle-aged woman in a shugenja's robes hung about with talismans, who had performed the morning's blessing herself rather than let Shiba Midori do it, Shiba Midori being a party. She is Akodo Kage's opposite number and knows it.

She admired the trap. And she warned her about it. A lion in a trap is more dangerous than a lion loose, because it believes it has nothing left to lose. The trick is to let them lose without letting them feel that they have lost.

On Asako Ikari she was blunter than anyone has been: find her quickly — and do not put her on her feet in front of this table. Better to settle it directly with the Lion. There is always Winter Court if the talks stall.

And she gave the Unicorn's priorities in order, which is the most useful thing anyone said all day. Land. Horses. Hostages. Give her those three and she is fairly confident she can bring Shinjo Altansarnai to the rest, and let the territorial argument be had properly at Winter Court.

Then Doji Setsuna called them back, and Akodo Akihito was not the man who had spoken before lunch.

The Lion, he said, had never sought to raze anything. They had not answered insult with insult. They killed only warriors fighting in defence of their homes, as honour requires — and he praised the Unicorn for the courage with which they had fought. Then the frame: this war is a duel writ large, between clans rather than between champions. It hangs undecided. And this is precisely the moment at which either party may step back, before one of them takes a blow it cannot answer. The Lion are prepared to settle accounts, if the Unicorn are willing.

Somebody had given him new orders.

Doji Setsuna took the metaphor and turned it over. Is it a duel, if one party never accepted a duel at all? Shiba Midori put the Unicorn position: the Lion took a slight and inflated it beyond all proportion; this belonged before the Emperor, or in a tent exactly like this one, and never on a field. They never agreed that a war was the proper answer to anything.

Akodo Akihito answered that the terms of a duel are normally settled in advance — but that by meeting the call to battle with an army of their own, the Unicorn had accepted the terms in fact, and had acquitted themselves well in them.

So she asked him what complete defeat would look like, since he had named it. He said that usually one side yields, convincingly, as in a duel; that there is always the chance to surrender, whether or not it is taken; and that in these circumstances it would not be advisable to fight until one side can no longer stand. Which is why, he said, they are sitting here instead.

Setsuna

She lost that conversation and should say so to herself plainly. Ikoma Ujiaki took her composure, an old wound, and a reading of what she wants — and he turned her legal learning into a weapon he can use on her the next time they are opposed. She got him nearer to initiating a settlement, refused his premises gracefully, and came away with the thing he wants, which is real and which is less than he took. She enjoyed it, which is the part to be careful about. Going toe to toe with someone her own size felt good, and feeling good across a table from Ikoma Ujiaki is how a person gets handled.

But what she took off him is a handle, and she knew it while he was still talking. He wants to be remembered as one of the great Lion negotiators, and he is vain enough to believe he is becoming one. That is not a man who wants a war settled over his head by an arbiter, and it is certainly not a man who wants his name on the losing side of an Imperial ruling. A settlement he can be said to have authored is worth more to him than a Lion victory he merely attended — and he has been talking over Akodo Akihito all week to make sure people notice him doing it.

Which means his want and her want are the same shape. She has been trying since the first day to get the Lion to settle rather than be ruled against, and she has just found the man across the table who needs that outcome for reasons entirely his own. She does not have to persuade him of anything. She has to let him have the credit for it, and be seen not to mind.

And she knows he read her — accurately, and further than she would like. She was there for it. She felt him take her measure, felt the decoy hold and the true objective stay buried, and she knows he came away from the small talk holding the one private thing she wants. That is uncomfortable and it is survivable, because she can see the shape of it and plan around it.

What she cannot see is the one that will actually hurt her. She has no idea that her own legal learning has been turned against her — that the next time she reasons from precedent with Ikoma Ujiaki opposite, her best instrument will work backwards in her hands. She will walk into her strongest lane not knowing it has been mined, and she will find out in front of the whole tent.

And he knows what she wants. Not what the magistrate wants — what she wants, the poetry gathering on the coast that she has never once asked for and does not believe she would be given. That is the only thing anyone has learned about her in this campaign that could be offered rather than threatened, and it is now in the hands of a man who has just demonstrated he will use whatever he is given. She should decide, before it is ever offered, what her answer is.

The Iuchi advisor gave her the settlement. Land, horses, hostages, in that order, and the rest can follow. That is a floor she can actually build on: the land is the thing the Unicorn will not move on, the horses cost the Lion nothing but face, and the hostages are the piece Akodo Akihito has already shown he will bargain with. Everything else — reparations, ransoms, the territorial argument — goes to Winter Court unresolved, which is where she has been steering all of it.

And the warning under it is the most useful thing said to her since Matsu Maro told her the war was about honour. She has the Lion in a trap. A trapped lion does not become reasonable; it becomes willing to lose everything. The whole art from here is letting them lose without letting them feel it — which means whatever she rules, Akodo Kage must be able to carry it back to Akodo Toturi as a thing the Lion chose.

Akodo Akihito's new voice is the trap closing from the other side. Calling it a duel between clans is elegant and it is a defence: duels are lawful, duels are honourable, duels end with a yielding and not a reckoning — and if this was a duel then nobody committed a crime, they merely fought. He praised the Unicorn's courage in the same breath, which is what makes a defeat survivable for the other party. Somebody handed him that frame between the recess and the tent, and she should like it more than she does, because it is also the only shape in which the Lion can leave here without ruin.

Her own answer is the right one and she should press it. A duel one side never accepted is not a duel. The Unicorn never agreed that a war answered this; they say it belonged in front of the Emperor, or in a tent like this one. If she can make that stand, then the Lion did not fight a lawful duel — they made an unlawful war over a betrothal that may never have been lawfully available to break.

And Asako Ikari is still lost, and now the Unicorn's own advisor is telling her it would be better for the case if the woman were never heard from. She should notice how much easier this all becomes if the person actually wronged stays missing, and how many people at this table would find that convenient.