Chapter 6: The Offer

The Harvest Blessing was held on the Old Barley Field outside the capital wall, and ten thousand people stood in the stubble to watch.

A third of the field was gone grey.

The stalks bent and crumbled to ash when Mai touched them, and under the ash the roots were soft and black.

She stood on the edge of the dais among the Temple clerks with a glass vial in her pocket and a plan.

She wanted a sample before the Saint did anything.

Hinata came out in white and gold, with her chestnut hair braided down her back and a bundle of rice stalks in her hands.

She looked small against all those faces.

She looked, Mai thought, like someone who had not slept.

There was a dark smudge under each eye from a night spent promising Mai she would be fine.

Their eyes met across the dais.

Mai lifted her chin one inch.

Good, she mouthed.

Hinata's whole face changed.

She straightened, drew a long breath, and began to dance.

It was the autumn dance she had rehearsed at the shrine on the hill, slow and plain.

She turned at the end of every phrase, and her sleeves lifted.

Where her bare feet touched the field, the grey went pale.

A hush fell over the crowd.

White light rose from the soil in thin threads and gathered around her ankles, and the ash blew away in a warm wind.

Green came up under it.

Barley stood straight and gold and heavy-headed, field after field, rippling outward in a ring that spread to the edge of the wall.

Ten thousand voices roared.

Mai's hands were shaking so badly that she dropped the vial.

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