Chapter 8: Sister in the East Wing

Fumika didn't ask her anything.

She took her half-sister by the hand and walked her down the back path to the car.

Ibuki opened the rear door without a word.

Kaede looked at his horns and went rigid.

"He won't eat you," Fumika said. "He's had breakfast."

"I haven't," Ibuki said. "But I'm not fond of rice powder."

Kaede got in.

She sat pressed against the far door the whole way up the mountain, her hands knotted in her lap, and didn't say a word.

At the gate the oni servants came out to meet them.

Kaede saw a dozen horned heads at once and made a small sound.

Suzuna came down the steps eating a rice ball.

She looked at Kaede, at the bruise, and stopped eating.

"Who?" she said.

"The Marquis's heir," Fumika said.

"Ah."

Suzuna wrapped the rice ball up in its paper again and put it in her sleeve.

She did it very carefully.

"I'll make up the room next to yours."

Kaede slept until afternoon.

When she woke Fumika brought her tea and a cold cloth for her face.

Kaede sat up in the borrowed bedding and held the cup in both hands and looked around at the old lady's rooms.

"You sleep here? Alone?"

"I like it."

"In a dead woman's rooms. With oni."

"They're very good company. The cook makes the best eel in the north."

Kaede drank her tea.

Then she put the cup down.

"He hit me because I said I didn't want to marry him," she said.

"At dinner. In front of his mother. His mother told me to go and powder my face."

"And our father?"

"Father said the Marquis's family is the best match in the capital, and men get hot when they drink."

She laughed. It came out wrong.

"And Mother said to heal it myself. But I can't. It doesn't work on yourself."

Fumika didn't say anything.

There was too much to say, and none of it was new to her.

Kaede looked at her hands.

"I was eleven when Mother brought me to the shrine," she said. "You were sixteen. They put you in the storehouse that first week."

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