Chapter 5 — The Man Who Delivered It

The courier who had left the letter was long gone by the time Tadanori thought to ask his name, but the innkeeper at the base of the mountain remembered him well enough: an old man, one eye clouded, who paid in coin no longer minted.

Tadanori had commanded armies. He knew what it meant when a message travelled through hands willing to carry coin that could get them killed for carrying it.

He began, that afternoon, to clean the blade he had found beneath the steps.