Chapter Three Sen
Kagoshima Domain
Sen pressed her blade to her brother’s throat, drawing a thin line of blood just below his jugular.
Next came the part where she was supposed to raise her sword over her head and kill him with a single strike. He was unarmed,
so a quick cut would slice through his spine instantly. For an armored warrior, if there were no weak points, the best way
was straight through the eye, don’t stop until your sword comes out the back of their skull. Neither move was physically that
hard to pull off, especially on a child’s body, like Seijiro’s. It was only the mental barrier that made most people stop
too soon.
“Okay, okay, you win!” Seijiro said, holding up his hands, his sword falling to the dirt. “Let me up.”
But Sen only leaned closer, her shadow falling over him like an impending storm. Her blade pricked his skin and a bright bead
of blood trickled down his throat. “If you want to get up, force me to retreat,” she said.
Their baby brother, Kotaro, was watching from the porch, sucking his thumb. Sen couldn’t see their father, but he was always around, watching. Waiting for her to make a mistake.
“I said I want to stop,” Seijiro said, his face red, his eyes glinting like he wasn’t actually sure Sen wouldn’t murder him
in the yard in front of the baby. Good , Sen thought. You should be afraid.
“You won’t learn if you always quit,” Sen said. Her father had told her that hundreds of times. He hadn’t let her raise her hands up in defeat and quit while sparring. He’d swung his blade at her as she screamed and climbed trees to escape,
and then he cut those down as well. He didn’t stop until she threw a rock at his head and blood vessels burst in his eye.
He’d stared down at her with one white eye and one red eye, and only then had he sheathed his blade.
That was why Sen was a warrior and her little brothers were not. Mother had gotten too soft after Sen. She hadn’t liked what
she saw.
Sen pressed her blade under her brother’s chin, forcing him to look her in the eye. “Well?” she said.
He scoffed and smacked the blunt end of the blade away. “This is stupid,” he said. “Let me up.”
Sen could have refused. She should have. Her father would have stomped on her fingers for speaking so insolently.
But it wasn’t Sen’s job to make her brother a great warrior. If he wanted to be soft-bellied and weak, no more useful than
the baby, then she would let him. Sen was worth three sons. She would be the only weapon her father needed, the only child
he treasured.
She sheathed her blade, and Seijiro hurried to his feet before she could change her mind.
“I hope you’ve picked out flowers for your funeral,” Sen said.
Seijiro rolled his eyes, wiping his hands on his yukata. “As if we’re ever actually going to fight.”
“We will,” Sen said, her voice light and even, a song the wind carried away. “And when we do, you will die because of the choice you’re making now.”
“I’d die even if I trained like you,” Seijiro said. “All the samurai were better warriors than you, and now they’re all dead.”
“They’re not all dead,” Sen said, hoping her father hadn’t heard that, or else Seijiro wouldn’t be allowed to eat dinner.
She ignored the insult, because warriors couldn’t be provoked by children. “We’re still here.”
Here , whatever that meant. Here was not living, not really. Here, in this tiny house shrouded in sword ferns, so far from the land their lord had given them.
Sen felt less like a warrior than a rabbit hiding underground, cowering at footsteps overhead.
Their father was the only survivor of the samurai revolt—the last stand against the emperor who had abolished their class.
Or, at least, had tried to.
As if it were that simple. As if you could just sign a piece of paper and erase the warriors who had carved Japan from the
parched dirt, whose blood had soaked the soil that fed the grass. Their bones were tangled with the roots of the oldest trees,
their bloody handprints on the stairs of every palace, and they did not answer to the whims of a child emperor. If the samurai
could be toppled so easily, they would never have existed at all.
Sen’s family was living proof of that. All the other samurai had either died in the revolt, or quietly let the government
strip them of their titles and hand them office jobs. Only Sen’s family remained, clinging to their titles with bloody fingers.
Seijiro scoffed, scooping up Kotaro. “Yeah, what a victory,” he said. “We’re out here eating bugs and kicking rocks around
like warriors.” Then he shoved open the porch door with his shoulder. “Come on, Kotaro,” he said. “Onēsan wants to swing her
sword at bamboo shoots again.”
He slammed the door. Sen stood alone in the yard, a sword clutched in her hand, fighting no one at all.
Sen knew Seijiro was mad at their father and not her, that he was only taking it out on Sen because she didn’t scare him as much.
The wind picked up, carrying the scent of scorched summer grass and wisteria. Sen could feel her father’s gaze in the searing
edge of sunlight over the trees, sharp as a blade scoring her eye.
Her father wasn’t supposed to return from the revolt.
When word of his failure reached home, Sen and her mother had gone to the safe house and held a funeral. It was impossible
to separate her father from the dream of the samurai’s return, so when one had died, they’d thought the other had as well.
The father Sen knew would sooner turn his blade on himself than return home carrying that kind of shame.
But then, as the snow melted, her father had returned.
At least, part of him.
When he wasn’t training Sen, he vanished into the forest. The leaves parted for him, the shadows pulled him in, the river
roared over the sound of his footsteps. It was as if he became the forest, his eyes the glare of sunlight over the horizon,
his voice the scream of wind at night, his hands the wispy branches that scratched against the side of the house.
Sen looked across the yard, into the forest and the heavy curtains of shadows between the trees, and wondered how far the
man who called himself her father had wandered into the woods, if he would return this time.
“Sen!” her mother called from inside the house. “Come in and help me with the mosquito nets!”
With one last glance across the yard, Sen sheathed her sword and turned around.
She jumped back at the sight of Youna, the maid.
Sen could normally hear a seed dropped by a sparrow in the forest, but Youna always seemed to roll in like a hot summer breeze.
Youna was younger than Sen’s mother and had hair that fell in waves like the sea, gentle hands that she used to brush and tie back Sen’s hair.
“My lady,” Youna said with a bow, “I can assist your mother. You should continue your training.”
“Thank you, Youna,” Sen said, “but I’m done training for today anyway.” And her mom would scold her if she didn’t come in
to help, but she didn’t want to say that to Youna.
Sen tried to slip on her house shoes in the dark, but her left shoe was missing. She kicked her brother’s shoes aside, revealing
a stain on the mat. It was dark, like something had splattered in the seam between the floor and paper door, which was speckled
with dark spots. Sen squatted down to get a better look. Something about the constellation of marks unnerved her. She felt
dizzy looking at it, and she pressed her finger to one of the spots to make sure it was really a stain and not an infestation
of bugs. The mark flaked away under her thumb, disappearing into the shadows of the floor. Her mother called for her again
and she looked away.
“Seijiro!” Sen said. “Where are my shoes?”
“I didn’t do anything with your shoes!” he shouted from another room. Words carried easily through this house—it was a skeleton,
and when you slid open enough doors, the whole world passed through it. There was no such thing as a secret in this house.
“I know you did!” Sen shouted back.
“Sen, just take mine,” her mother said, appearing in the doorway with a handful of mosquito netting. “Stop shouting.”
Sen grumbled but put on her mother’s extra house shoes, thinking about how her father would never tell her to stop shouting.
He would have told her to shout louder, that no one thought women could be strong, so she had to be louder and stronger and
faster and better until there was no one left alive who doubted her.
She stood on her toes and helped her mother hang the mosquito netting over her brothers’ beds.
Her mother let the servants hang the netting in the other rooms, but she insisted on doing it herself for the boys, with Sen’s help to reach the ceiling.
A mother must care for her babies , she’d said.
Apparently, Sen wasn’t her mother’s baby anymore.
The air smelled of steam, but Sen couldn’t discern what the servants were cooking from the scent alone—she could only sense
the wet heat that filled the house, like they were inside the mouth of a beast, hot air sighed up from its throat.
She finished hanging up the netting and stepped back while her mother inspected it. Even though autumn was approaching, it
was still too hot to sleep with the doors closed. Sen hated leaving the door open, so close to her feet. She was certain she
would wake from sleep with a blade at her throat. She slept with her katana close beside her, just in case.
She hated this house. It was too small for her family, but only because her father insisted on cramming it full of servants
he couldn’t afford. There were no rooms for the servants, so they slept in the hallways where Sen could hear them breathe
all night, could see their shadows shifting through the paper doors like a dark, restless sea. The servants had so little
to clean and cook these days, but her father insisted on keeping them. Samurai were meant to have servants, and to admit they
were too poor for them would be immensely shameful. So the servants dug up the barren garden for roots to eat, played with