Chapter 16: Spring Bamboo Shoots

Shiori left her sword on its rack by the dojo door.

She stood looking at it for a while with her hand at her empty left hip.

"It will be there when you get back," Tomoe said.

"It has not been more than an arm's length from me in twenty-three years."

"Then it can get used to you walking away from it."

She hooked her basket over her elbow and held out her other hand.

Shiori took it, and they went down the mountain in the thin spring sun, over snow gone soft as wet bread.

Fumoto was loud with market day.

Women from the hill farms had set out baskets of new bamboo shoots, pale and fat.

There were bundles of wild onion beside them, and the first green butterbur buds.

Tomoe let go of Shiori's hand to pick out shoots, and Shiori stood alone in the middle of the lane.

People stopped talking.

A man with a barrow of charcoal stopped walking.

Shiori's shoulders came up, the old guarded way, and her free hand went to the sword that was not there.

"Saint," said the old rice-seller.

He came out from behind his sacks, wiping his hands on his apron, and he did not bow the way he had on New Year's.

He bowed lower.

"We heard what happened at the dojo," he said. "The envoy told the innkeeper, and the innkeeper told everyone."

"I see."

"I'm sorry for what we said about you. About the forty men."

"It was seven," said Shiori.

"It was seven and a village," the old man said, with a flicker of a smile. "I know. She told us."

"Who?"

He pointed with his chin at Tomoe, who was elbow-deep in a basket of shoots and pretending not to listen.

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