Chapter 22: The Council Table

Tomoe slipped through the door with an empty tray and stood against the back wall.

Nobody looked at her.

Every eye in the great hall was on the tall woman at the foot of the dais.

"Eleven months ago," Shiori said, "the Council received a petition from the dojo on Mount Hakuun."

"I wrote it. Some of you voted for it, and some of you did not."

Her voice did not rise.

It filled the whole room anyway.

"For a year the capital has said I was exiled. I allowed it. I was ashamed to say why I had asked."

"I asked to be released because I was lonely."

A rustle ran down the benches.

"The oath of the Sword Saint forbade a lover. I believed it bound me for life."

"I knew no way to ask except to give you back the sword."

"Then a cook climbed my mountain with a bad map and a heavy pack, and I learned how wrong I had been to hide."

"I ask your pardon for the lie of silence, and for the soldiers who died at Wolf Pass while I sat on a mountain."

She bowed.

It was the deep bow, the one to the floor, held until the silence became uncomfortable.

An old councillor in the front row cleared his throat.

"A very moving speech," he said. "May I ask what you expect us to do with it?"

"Nothing."

"Then why say it?"

"Because the cook on the mountain taught me to say hard things to a face, not on paper."

Tomoe's eyes burned.

She looked at the floor, and then back up, because she did not want to miss a second.

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