Kobe Hikaru lowered his head and looked at the map in his arms.
The positions marked in ink were all clustered in the mountainous belt where western Suruga Province met eastern Totomi Province.
The farthest of them lay a good two or three hundred li from the Imagawa main castle.
The nearest was only sixty or seventy.
All of them were unremarkable little volcanoes — not the sort like Mount Fuji, which rose thousands of jo and counted as a genuine colossus even by the standards of the Eastern Isles, but small geothermal vents scattered through the hills, smoking year-round.
Ordinary people would never go near such places.
For a yokai who made his living at the forge, though — there was natural furnace-fire there, ore veins, and a silence cut off from the world.
Which also made it the best possible place to hide.
Three locations. Three possible trails.
At an ordinary man's pace, the nearest could be reached in a day, with time to spare for a round trip inside two.
With the Thunder-Sinew Razor-Body —
Less than a quarter of an hour.
But he had already run from Kaede Village to Sagami and then to Suruga today, used the Asura Mutation once and called down Raikiri once. His yokai aura was still full, propped up by dread, and he had stamina in reserve, yet there was no need to push himself any further.
Besides, finding Totosai was not a fight and not a rescue. There was no reason to go tearing across the country with the Thunder-Sinew Razor-Body wide open.
Still, when a thing had to be decided, it should be decided.
"I'll go now."
Kobe Hikaru put the map away and rose.
Across from him, Imagawa Yoshimoto stood up as well.
The hem of her junihitoe dragged across the tatami, the layered deep purple and gold fabrics rustling faintly with each movement.
"Then let's set out," she said.
Kobe Hikaru stopped moving.
He looked back at her. "…You're coming?"
What are you staring at.
Imagawa Yoshimoto tucked her folding fan into her sash and smoothed the loose strands of hair at her ear. "I'm going with you. It's been ages since I went anywhere far without an army at my back—"
She stopped halfway through the sentence.
Cleared her throat.
"No. That is — for your sake, I'll condescend to guide you. The terrain in the western Suruga mountains is complicated. An outsider like you — an outside yokai — would never find the roads."
Kobe Hikaru stared at her for three full seconds.
She didn't look away.
Amber eyes met his crimson demon eyes, chin tilted slightly up, her whole posture daring him to say no.
But the line of that raised chin was far too fine and delicate, and set against the pale throat in the lamplight and the collar that hung a little open at the collarbone, its intimidating power was limited indeed.
Kobe Hikaru saw right through it.
She wasn't offering to guide him.
She wanted to travel light and go wandering, free, out of doors.
She wanted it badly enough to go mad from holding it in.
This past month the Kanto had lurched from crisis to crisis: first the Uesugi invasion from the north, then the Imagawa expedition to Echigo, then the Takeda Red Guard's raid, then the Tono yokai incursion —
Every single time, Imagawa Yoshimoto was either sitting in the protected center of a full army, or sitting in the castle keep waiting for reports.
It wasn't that she didn't want to travel light.
It was that she didn't dare.
The reason was the one already mentioned.
Uesugi Kenshin had the power of Bishamonten shielding her. Takeda Shingen had the Four Heavenly Kings ringed around her.
Imagawa Yoshimoto had nothing at all.
No reincarnated divine artifact, no power of the gods and buddhas, no personal guard capable of standing against superhuman force on a battlefield.
The moment she left her home castle with even slightly too few troops, she became a living target.
The Uesugi's divine artifact maiden warriors really could carve the head off a commanding general in the middle of an army.
And the Takeda's Red Guard captains, maiden warriors who were incarnations of divine artifacts themselves, could snatch an enemy commander straight out of a clash between two armies — Yamagata Masakage had already demonstrated it once. The victim had been Hojo Ujiyasu.
So Imagawa Yoshimoto had been forced to imprison herself inside her own army, or inside her own castle.
Lord of a province, and not a scrap of freedom to speak of.
Anyone would crack under that.
And now —
Standing beside her was an oni warrior like a Demon God, one who could cut down high-ranking yokai on the field, crush divine artifact maiden warriors, and force Uesugi Kenshin, the incarnation of Bishamonten herself, to her knees.
A few dozen or few hundred li of mountain road, still inside her own domain — what danger could there possibly be?
Kobe Hikaru thought it over.
There really was no reason to refuse, and no need to.
He didn't like her the way he liked Kikyo, but where the lord of Suruga Province — a beautiful girl with long straight black hair — was concerned, for Kobe Hikaru to claim he had no thoughts at all would be lying to himself.
Living in an age of chaos, and a yokai besides: he might carry a human's understanding of the world from having crossed over, but under the nature of a demonic fiend, greed was inevitable.
It was only his human consciousness that let him keep that greed in check, so that he wouldn't force anything —
Still, letting things take their course was hardly a bad thing.
After all, he had always believed that honesty was an essential quality of a life — human life or yokai life. If you wanted something you wanted it; if you didn't, you didn't. This was the Sengoku era. Where would anyone find the patience for all that circling around?
And letting things take their course didn't mean anything had to happen. Simply enjoying the view was enough.
As for any other problems — those only required him to be strong enough.
On top of that, this trip wasn't a fight. It was just finding someone. The distance was short, two or three days would cover the round trip, and the whole route lay within Suruga, Totomi and Mikawa — all of it the Imagawa clan's own ground.
Even if something went wrong, at his speed, carrying one person home would take less than a couple of hours.
"Fine," he said.
Imagawa Yoshimoto's eyes lit up.
Only for an instant.
The folding fan came up and hid it.
"Naturally. This is my territory to begin with — I go where I please. It simply happens that our roads run together."
"Wait while I change clothes."
Her words were all iron.
But when she turned toward the rear hall to change, her steps were more than a beat quicker than usual.
She had hitched the skirts of the junihitoe scandalously high, showing her geta and white tabi, and the floorboards thudded under her feet.
…
Kobe Hikaru had assumed that "guiding him" meant the two of them slipping quietly out of the castle.
Light packs, low profile, quick travel.
It was the middle of the night and they were going to look for a reclusive yokai blacksmith, not to inspect the provinces.
He had clearly underestimated Imagawa Yoshimoto's understanding of the phrase "going out."
Half a quarter-hour later.
The main gate of the castle keep swung wide open.
Torches lined the way from inside the gate tunnel all the way down to the main street of the castle town, turning the road bright as noon under the night sky.
The first out were two columns of ashigaru.
Twenty men to a column, all in matching light-grey ashigaru armor, the Imagawa family crest branded on their breastplates in gold on red.
Short swords at their hips, long spears in their hands, the iron blades of the spearheads catching the firelight in an even row of glints.
Their steps fell in unison, armor plates knocking together with a fine metallic clatter.
Forty men.
Two columns.
Behind them came mounted samurai.
Six riders.
The horses varied in color but were evenly matched in build, and the samurai on their backs wore full suits of tosei gusoku, sashimono banners bearing the Imagawa family crest fixed to their shoulder guards and swaying gently in the night wind.
The samurai at their head was about thirty, hard-featured, an uchigatana slung at his waist. His eyes swept the darkness beyond the castle gate, then he signaled to the rear.
And behind that —
A palanquin.
Not the absurdly ornate ox-carriage a kugyo would use, but the standard conveyance for a Sengoku daimyo on the move: a black-lacquered wooden frame, the roof draped in deep purple silk, tassels embroidered with a pine-and-crane pattern hanging from the four corners.
Eight bearers, every one of them solid muscle, in straw sandals and leg wrappings, without armor or weapons — but one look at the lines of those arms told you each of them could hoist a stone mortar.
The curtain was half raised.
Imagawa Yoshimoto sat inside.
She had changed clothes.
A dark blue kimono had replaced the elaborate junihitoe — which counted as traveling light, at least by her standards.
The sleeves were narrowed, the sash pulled tight, and it was genuinely easier to move in than the junihitoe.
The hem fell to her knees, leaving her white-tabi feet bare to view, resting on the cushion in the floor of the palanquin.
The pine-and-crane fan was still tucked at her waist.
Her hair had been retied into a simple ponytail, a few loose strands hanging by her ears.
Stripped of layer upon layer of court finery, the frame of a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old showed through — narrow shoulders, thin waist, not tall, and from the side almost slight.
But the crossed collar of the dark blue cloth hung slightly open, baring a stretch of pale throat and collarbone, and below the collarbone the curve pressed full against the upper edge of the sash. In the dim yellow lantern light inside the palanquin, shadow pooled in the fold where the panels of the collar crossed.
She sat straight-backed, fan laid across her knees, composed.
The very picture of a provincial lord setting out on a progress.
Kobe Hikaru stood at the castle gate, looking at the vast procession in front of him, and said nothing.
Forty ashigaru, six mounted samurai, eight bearers, one palanquin.
Add the guards craning their necks along the walls to watch, and the entire street had been roused.
Townsfolk woken in the castle town peeked out through the cracks of their shutters, whispering to one another — where is our lord going?
In the dead of night, no less.
Kobe Hikaru's face gave nothing away.
With no oni mask covering them, the crimson demon eyes shone all the brighter in the torchlight.
He very much wanted to ask — are you going to find Totosai, or to fight a war?
In the end he said nothing.
Because he knew that, for all the reasons already laid out, whenever Imagawa Yoshimoto left the castle she truly did have to bring enough guards.
It wasn't display. It was safety.
Forty ashigaru weren't there to show off.
They were there because she was genuinely afraid of dying.
This sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl who ruled a province had hidden every one of her fears behind the pageantry.
The more people she brought, the grander the scene, the steadier she felt.
This wasn't extravagance.
This was a sense of security.
A sense of security she was desperately short of.
And what stood before him was, in all likelihood, already the bare minimum escort.
Once he had worked that much out, most of Kobe Hikaru's exasperation drained away.
He walked over to the palanquin. He was, after all, the one taking payment for this.
Through the gap in the raised curtain, Imagawa Yoshimoto sat holding her fan and watching him.
There was a trace of guilt in her eyes — she probably did know the procession was a bit much — but there was even more guilt than that.
An inexplicable failure of nerve.
Exasperated as he was, Kobe Hikaru said nothing further. He wasn't in any real hurry anyway.
"Let's go."
Two words, no more. Then he turned and walked to the very front of the column.
Ahead, even, of the two columns of ashigaru.
His grey robe stirred in the firelight, pale long hair hanging down his back, the scabbard of Muramasa at his waist swaying gently as he walked.
One man, alone at the head of a party of over fifty.
Like a vanguard.
Like a guide.
Call it protecting the employer, then.
Inside the palanquin, Imagawa Yoshimoto watched that solitary grey back through the gap in the curtain, and froze for a moment.
Then she lowered her fan.
The curve at the corner of her mouth refused to be pressed down.
"Move out," she ordered.
Never in her life had she felt so at ease.
And not because of the men and horses around her — because of the Demon God walking at the very front.
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