The Demon General Is My Ex's Little Sister novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Reading

They met the Chancellor's army at dawn on the Shirakawa ford, with the river running pink under the first light.

Two thousand soldiers in Crown colors stood on the north bank, spears level.

Behind the ford stood three thousand farmers with pitchforks, hunting bows and Kaede's black banner.

Sora rode out between the lines in his white and gold coat, alone, with his sword still sheathed.

Rin walked beside his stirrup with her satchel on her shoulder and the Chancellor's case in her arms.

Kaede had wanted to stand in front of her.

Rin had told her to stand beside Sora and keep her hands empty.

Kaede had said, "Yes, ma'am," and gone pale doing it.

Across the water, a pavilion of grey silk stood on a rise.

Chancellor Haibara Tomonori sat before it on a lacquered chair, in fine robes, with a jade pin in his silver topknot.

His hands lay folded on his knee, and he did not look afraid.

"Scribe Tachibana," he called across the ford. "You have something that belongs to the Crown."

"I have something that belongs to four thousand two hundred and twelve households," Rin called back.

Her voice shook on the first word and steadied on the last.

A ripple went through the Crown soldiers.

Haibara smiled.

"Arrest her."

Nobody moved.

Rin climbed onto the tailboard of Ume's supply cart, which two farmers had rolled into the shallows.

She opened her ledger.

She did not read the Edict first.

She read the names.

"Goro, miller, Shirakawa North,"

she read, clear and loud, as she would have read proof aloud to an author.

"Hanae, weaver, two sons."

Her voice carried over the water.

"Tobei, goatherd. Ume, widow."

She read the roster her own hand had copied, line after line, and the river carried every name.

At the sixtieth name a young man in Crown colors lowered his spear.

"That's my uncle," he said, hoarse. "Tobei is my mother's brother."

"Silence that man," Haibara said.

The captain beside the young soldier did not turn his head.

He was a heavy, grey-bearded man with a scar through one eyebrow.

"Read the next one," the captain said.

Rin read it.

Then she held up the first deed from the case, so the sun caught the red seal.

"Every household on this list is called Demon," she said. "Not one of them has horns."

"The Chancellor's own deeds sell their land to the Chancellor, at one tenth the price."

"He signed them nine years ago, and left one line blank for my hand."

The young soldier stared at the deed, then at the Chancellor.

She tore the deed in half.

The sound carried across the water.

"I'm not writing it."

Haibara stood up.

The calm went out of his face all at once, and what was under it looked thin and mean.

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