Chapter 12: Bitter Greens

The envoy reached the dojo gate at noon the next day.

She came on snowshoes, leaning on a staff, with a thick cloak over her court robes.

Her grey hair was pulled into a topknot so tight it looked painful.

Two guards in blue coats stood behind her at a respectful distance, panting.

She stopped at the broken gate and looked up at the hall.

Then she put her hand to her breast and bowed, low and slow, toward Shiori on the porch.

"Saint Kagami," she said.

"I am not the Saint."

"You are to me." The woman straightened. Her voice was quiet and dry as paper. "Sumire Aizawa, envoy of the Council. We have met."

"I remember."

"I came as soon as the pass was open."

Tomoe stood in the kitchen door with a dish towel in her hands.

She had been about to carry out a tray of tea, and now she just held it.

"You'd better come in," she said. "It's cold."

They sat in the hall, on the floor, around a brazier Tomoe had dragged in from the kitchen.

Aizawa accepted a cup of tea with both hands and drank half of it before she spoke.

"The north pass has fallen," she said.

Shiori did not move.

"Two weeks ago."

"The Greywater raiders came down out of the snow in the night, three hundred of them, and they took the fort at Wolf Pass."

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