KATANAGATARI 1

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From time immemorial, the gods have gathered there─so legend has it. This is the reason, so well-known it hardly deserves mention, why Kannazuki,1 the tenth month of the lunar calendar, is known strictly within Izumo as Kamiarizuki.2 If you were to peruse the Record of Ancient Matters or The Chronicles of Japan, you would find a slew of myths taking place in Izumo. For in this era─nay, in any era of any history, it has deserved its reputation as a sacred place. And smack dab in the middle of Izumo─stood Triad3 Shrine, in all its grandeur.

Triad Shrine.

Overseen by one Meisai Tsuruga,4 owner of Sento the Legion,5 the next sword Togame the Schemer and Shichika Yasuri, Seventh Master of the Kyotoryu, were hoping to collect.

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“Yes,” Togame answered Shichika’s meandering query with a forthright confirmation. “A thousand swords in one bunch. Hence the name.”

“Okay, I know I might sound like a dumbass taking issue with the Shikizaki legend so far into this, but wouldn’t that mean there are more of the Possessed than the nine hundred and eighty-eight swords he supposedly made for practice?”

If the Legion was a thousand swords, weren’t there one thousand and eleven of the Possessed, instead of twelve? Shichika wanted to know─but Togame had another point to make.

“You do sound like a dumbass. A dumbstruck wiseass6 to use the full7 term.”

“Um, I don’t think it’s short for anything.”

Shichika had thought it a worthy observation, but her reaction was icy.

“A thousand swords in one─if that is its selling point, so it must be. The two swords we already collected had their own special characteristics, did they not? Shichika. Tell me you haven’t forgotten.”

“Well, the first one, Zetto the Leveler, was so tough it could never bend or break…hardness. Then there’s Zanto the Razor, whose edge can cut through anything in the world in a single swing…sharpness.”

“Correct,” Togame nodded. “And the third, Sento the Legion, was forged to be overwhelmingly many…numerousness. Hence a thousand─but a thousand in one.”

“That’s some crazy bargain sale…”

And Shichika was the dumbass here?

But Togame went on unperturbed. “There’s a saying─no two swords in this world are alike. There’s some truth in that. Two swords can never be made in the same environment, under the same conditions, with the same factors at play─and even if the same swordsmith hammers them in the exact same way, the product will inevitably be different. Mere lookalikes. Siblings, in their own way, but by no means twins.”

“Huh… Wait, then─”

“Yes. Kiki Shikizaki liked to experiment. You could say he was competitive, or that he loved to push the limits of the possible. Point being, all thousand swords making up the Legion─are perfectly identical.”

In material. In weight.

And in their edge─in every way.

“So physically, the exact same sword.”

“You may recall me telling you that Kiki Shikizaki did not design his swords to be expendable. The Legion would perhaps be the exception. If one bends or breaks, you still have nine hundred and ninety-nine left on hand. Expendable to the extreme.”

“Hmm…they say a good katana takes some time to get used to. When it degrades, a swordsman is weaker until he grows familiar with a new blade,” Shichika recited a bit of secondhand knowledge. “But I guess if the next sword is perfectly identical, you’re already familiar with it…and don’t have to spend time figuring it out.”

“Precisely…that’s one way to put it. You could also say that of the thousand Mutant Blades, only the Legion is─an ordinary katana.”

“Ordinary… Yikes. That’s what ordinary means for Kiki Shikizaki?”

“His sheer inability to do ordinary things in ordinary ways was what made him so extraordinary. When a normal attempt, too, engenders the abnormal─you would be Kiki Shikizaki, the legendary swordsmith.”

“So this sword is normal to the extreme… Expendability is what makes it special, and that’s why its name is…Legion.”

Killer metal.8 Made to be broken.

“But expendable as they may be, follow procedure when capturing the thousand swords. Not one among the bunch shall be bent or broken. Do you hear me, Shichika?”

“Yep, loud and clear. Thanks for the warning. They’ll be fine. But Togame─if that’s the only special thing about the Legion, I can’t see how it should be a problem. It’s like the Razor─there might be tons of them, but it’s just a normal sword for me. Because of the rule about not harming any, the swordsman won’t be replacing them. A thousand or no, you can only use two max at a time─which gives me a chance to show you how the Kyotoryu tackles the dual wield.”9

“I’m afraid it won’t be easy,” Togame said, “tackling one thousand opponents.”

“Huh?!”

Shichika was so startled that he almost dropped Togame─but at the last second, he took a knee and caught her midair. Her face was so petrified she couldn’t even scream.

“Y-You idiot!” she finally shouted. “If I fell from all the way up here, I would die! What are you trying to do, kill me? I would be banged up beyond all recognition by the time I arrived at the bottom of the mountain!”

“Yeah, Komori of the Maniwacs is about the only one who could survive such a fall…”

Shying from Togame’s piercing voice, Shichika turned his head slightly to look behind him─at the stone steps of the staircase he was climbing. On their way up they had passed through several torii,10 but the gate down at the trailhead was hidden in the mist.

Not like anyone was counting─but at this point in their nearly linear, precipitous ascent, Shichika had climbed around six hundred stairs. Over halfway there. The final stretch.

Their destination was Triad Shrine.

It was a thousand steps up to the building complex.

Officially, Mt. Taizan,11 upon which the Triad Shrine was erected, fell within its limits─but its premises were generally understood to be the building complex atop the thousand steps, beyond the final torii.

At first, Togame had been so intrepid.

Adamant about climbing on her own.

Her resolve had crumbled somewhere around the hundredth step. Dear readers, determine, wise as you are, whether such a number represents a failure or a victory, but after starting off with no shortage of confidence, she was considerably disappointed. Undexterous as she may be, this was the woman who had walked across Inaba Desert to Gekoku Castle. Purely in terms of stamina, she was not about to lose to anyone─but walking on flat ground and walking on a staircase work completely different muscles. And there was something ineffable about the steepness of these steps. When she gave up at the hundredth stair, she was facing the facts.

“Shichika,” she had gasped. “Sorry, this is too much. Carry me.”

“…”

What a weakling!

Whether or not Shichika thought so, he asked, “Um…you want a piggyback ride?”

“Ugh, how can you be so shameless?”

“Shameless?”

“You’re asking me to hug a man from behind.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“Our bodies would be touching. That’s what.”

“So what?” Shichika looked genuinely confused. “If you don’t want to piggyback, you can sit on my shoulders.”

“Cheerio!”

Togame punched him in the face. Soft as her fist was, any punch to the face is going to sting, at least a little─but the fact that Shichika chose not to dodge it (as unbelievably slow as it was, by his standards) perhaps proved his dedication. Or maybe he was a masochist.12

“Sit on your shoulders? Creep! Piggyback is one thing, but ride on your shoulders? That’s no way for a grown man and woman to behave!”

“Huh? Back on the island, me and my sister always─”

“Always?”

“…Forget it.”

Catching the fury in Togame’s eyes, Shichika decided to stop talking. It was probably the ethical choice.

“What do you want me to do, then? If it’s shameless for our bodies to be touching, how am I supposed to carry you? You’ll have to climb up by yourself…”

“Fool. I am the Schemer,” Togame asserted, soaked in sweat. “I have the perfect solution.”

─And.

This perfect solution entailed Shichika holding out his arms and supporting Togame as she lay sideways─a bridal carry13 as it is known today, neither of them thought of it as such. Even taking Togame’s noble heritage into consideration, this was a little much. No one who saw them would have guessed they were employer and employee.

Of all the ways to carry a person, this was the hardest, but Shichika walked the next five hundred steps of the staircase with astonishing14 ease, chatting all the way. All the same, it was far from unreasonable for Togame to shout the way she had, upon nearly falling (with six hundred steps stretching below them) from such a precarious posture.

In that moment, she only refrained from socking him and yelling “Cheerio!” because it would have been dreadful, after his save, to be the cause of her own demise. In due course, every instance of the exclamation would come back to haunt her, so its omission here may be a tiny victory in its own right.

But there are still two books to go before Togame learns that she meant “Chesuto.”

“Off…we go.”

Shichika stood from his knee, adjusting Togame’s position. Once he found one that felt comfortable for her and was easy for him to maintain, they began to climb the stairs again.

He wanted to return to their conversation but had lost its thread. While he was trying to remember, Togame helped him out.

“I’d expected you to retort, ‘Tackling one thousand swords, you mean.’ What shall we do with you?”

Ah yes. The opponents.

“I could have sworn I already told you there would be a thousand miko.”

“Huh? You did?”

“Yes. I did.”

She had. It’s right there, at the end of Book Two.

“…In that case, I didn’t forget, I must not have caught it when you said it.”

“How many times have I told you to listen to me? Not that I could have divulged more, had you asked me at that point.”

“Classified?”

“Classified.”

“At that point, yeah, but what about now, Togame? Come on, seriously─a thousand opponents? When you first told me about the Twelve Possessed, I thought you said they had twelve owners.”

“I did. But fear not. The setup hasn’t changed midway or anything, not regarding this matter. I knew about it from the beginning.”

“Not regarding this matter…”

Had anything else?

Changed midway.

“The Legion has only one owner─Meisai Tsuruga, mistress of the shrine.”

“Meisai Tsuruga. Never heard of her.”

“It would be weird if you had, island monkey─anyway, among the owners who are known, she is an outlier, basically a nobody. Not being a swordsman.”

“Not a swordsman, huh.”

Shichika did not look pleased.

The Kyotoryu may be swordplay minus the sword, but in general, the opponent was presumed to be a swordsman. While it would be pointless to attempt a fair comparison, if Shichika were forced to say who had been a greater challenge between Komori Maniwa and Ginkaku Uneri, his answer would be Komori. Not because he was stronger than Ginkaku─but because he was a ninja rather than a swordsman.

“Since the stage was going to be a shrine, I suspected as much─but if there’s only one owner, how can there be a thousand opponents?”

“Because Meisai is the Mistress of Triad Shrine, obviously. The size of this place puts it in another league from all the other shrines in Izumo─she can easily employ a thousand miko. And every one of them protects a piece of the Legion.”

“Ah, okay. We saw a bunch of the ladies, on the way here.”

“Yep,” Togame admitted. “I didn’t want you to get worked up, so I kept quiet─but that was them. The Kuromiko,15 protectors of the Legion.”

“…”

So it was them.

Those girls.

After entering Izumo─which was nothing without miko, just as the miko would be nothing without Izumo!─Shichika and Togame had happened upon maybe a dozen of them along the road to Mt. Taizan─and in a way befitting of their name, each Kuromiko cut a striking figure.

Caparisoned in vestments of black.

Faces veiled by white talismans, as if they were Chinese revenants.16

But foremost─they carried swords.

Those were it, then.

“We’ve seen all kinds of characters since leaving Kyoto, but they gotta be the weirdest ones…so they’re who I’ll be fighting this time around. But Togame, I know you didn’t want me getting worked up or whatever, but shouldn’t you have said something? We passed at least like ten of them─if you had spoken up, we could have snagged at least that many by now.”

“This is precisely what makes you an idiot.”

“Okay.”

“And why you have no personality.”

“O-Okay.”

“And why you are so far from florid.”

“O…O-O…Okay.”

She was really digging in.

But ironically, in a bridal carry, her every utterance only came across as a flirtation.

“Use your head. What good is ten swords out of a thousand? Need I repeat, the Legion represents all thousand swords collectively. Why provoke them and make things harder on yourself?”

“I see─your point.”

But there were still a thousand enemies to reckon with.

It was mind-boggling, but wouldn’t they need to collect one sword at a time anyway, just as a thousand-mile journey started with a single step?

“Well, there may be a thousand enemies, but the Legion has but one owner─Meisai Tsuruga. If I engage in some diplomacy, doors will open.”

“Ah…more diplomacy.”

“What? Feeling confident enough to best a thousand alone?”

“Not exactly.”

Legend had it that Kinkaku Uneri, ancestor of Ginkaku and owner of the Razor, cut down ten thousand men during the Great Sword Hunt enacted by the Old Shogun─but this was not the Age of Warring States, and from Shichika’s standpoint in the pacific17 climes of the Owari Bakufu, facing a thousand foes was simply inconceivable. To tell Togame whether he was confident or not, first he would need to grasp the concept.

And yet.

All this aside, Shichika had his doubts about Togame’s capacity for diplomacy. When she offered Shichika a job, as when they met Ginkaku Uneri, her negotiations ended in failure. To make matters worse, the two people she had hired before Shichika─Komori Maniwa, one of the Twelve Bosses of the Maniwa Clan, and Hakuhei Sabi, the Strongest Swordsman in Japan─had both stabbed her in the back.

She was certainly clever─and since crossing over from the island, he had learned enough about the world to see how improbable it was for someone as young as her, and for a woman at all, to hold a rank like Grand Commander of Arms─yet her cleverness failed to gain them much traction18 in practice.

As a military strategist, her job was to command the big picture. Perhaps she was simply unaccustomed to getting involved on a more personal level. That was Shichika’s impression.

She read him like a book.

“I can tell when you are questioning my authority,” she said, “but fear not. Unlike with Uneri, the odds are in our favor.”

“You sure?”

“Third time’s a charm─and now we have the Leveler and the Razor. That’s why.”

“That’s why…”

“That’s why─diplomacy might work.”

Togame laughed conclusively, making it difficult for Shichika to persist. He had long decided to leave negotiations to her and was aware he lacked even enough cleverness for it to fail him. They say that big men are all brawn and no brains─and young Shichika Yasuri was the spitting image of this maxim. They also say the brains of small men are nothing special─but Togame being female, the maxim is irrelevant.

“As it is, Triad Shrine is an organization. Negotiating will be easy.”

“Organization, huh. Do they have any connection to the bakufu?”

“What makes you think they would?”

“Well, I heard somewhere that someone in the bakufu was in charge of managing the shrines and temples… Was it the magistrate19 or something?”

“Hmph. I’m impressed that you would know a thing like that.”

Togame reached up and petted Shichika on the head.

She had meant the gesture to be condescending, but riding in his arms, the princess bride looked downright affectionate. Not a mood you would expect from two pilgrims heading up a sacred staircase toward a shrine.

And by the way, Shichika looked genuinely happy being petted.

He was a simple man.

“You must have mentioned it when you were talking about the Katana Buddha.”

“Ah yes, that’s possible.”

The Katana Buddha─that holy statue found at Seiryoin Gokenji Temple, on Mt. Sayabashiri in Tosa.

The work of the Old Shogun─old, from our perspective─who just before the advent of the current bakufu had prevailed over the warring states and unified the nation. The hundred thousand swords that were seized, by his decree, over the course of the Great Sword Hunt were melted down and cast into a giant buddha. Constructing the statue was of course only a cover for the Great Sword Hunt, the real motive of which was to gather all thousand of Kiki Shikizaki’s Mutant Blades, said to have reigned over the warring states from behind the scenes─

It had been well over a hundred years. Togame was attempting to round up the twelve swords even the Old Shogun could not collect.

Shichika, who had been raised in isolation, without knowledge of the world, and no faith of his own, was sufficiently fascinated by Seiryoin Gokenji Temple, and its reputation among swordsman as a holy site, to remember these details, and little else, from what he had been told along the journey.

“Indeed, the Magistrate of Shrines and Temples is in charge of managing them─but it is no simple chore.20 If it was a temple, fine, but this is a shrine.”

“Huh. Aren’t they basically the same? I mean, they’re both religion.”

“You’re one to think so. What’s the best way to explain this─actually, it may not even be necessary…”

But Togame went on.

She thought it best to outline the fundamentals.

“You just lumped them together as religion, but… There’s Buddhism. Then there’s Christianity,21 the practice of which has been banned in Japan. Then there’s Islam, deemed one of the world’s three major religions along with the first two. And don’t forget Confucianism, on the continent… In most cases, when we say religion, we mean a set of teachings─yet Shinto22 is not a teaching, but a way. That’s worth keeping in mind.”

“…?”

Teaching. Way.

Shichika did not understand the difference.

Not actually expecting him to, Togame wrapped things up without fielding any questions. “Basically, it’s hard for the bakufu to order the shrines around─especially in a place like Izumo, haven of the gods. They have extraterritoriality23─or even autonomy.”

“That so.”

“That is so. If it weren’t, we would have forced them, organization or not, to hand over the Legion. The fact that this was not an option is why we have stopped here, on our journey, to collect.”

“Gotcha. But what about during the Old Shogun’s Great Sword Hunt? Was the Mistress of Triad Shrine the owner back then, too? An ancestor of Meisai Tsuruga, just like with Uneri?”

“I’m afraid not. The exact details are unclear, but apparently Meisai Tsuruga already owned the Legion when she took over Triad Shrine… Despite its size, grand even among the shrines of Izumo, it is not mainstream24─but it was not until her arrival that the place became a fortress.”25

“A fortress… You can tell from the looks of those miko that it isn’t. Those black costumes make them way more striking than your average miko.”

“Yes. Which brings us finally to what makes Triad Shrine unique…although honestly, since you’re about to see it for yourself, I won’t say much. Once we’ve arrived, leave the diplomacy to me. Even with a thousand miko─I’ll make sure you’ll wind up fighting Meisai one on one, if worse comes to worst.”

“That’s the worst case?”

“Avoiding combat altogether would be ideal─but if that were possible, we wouldn’t be going to all this trouble. Remember what happened with Uneri. The venom of the Shikizaki blades─is no joke.”

“I know. But take it easy with your negotiations. If we could avoid fighting altogether, there’d be no reason for me to be here. I have a hard time picturing fighting a thousand people at once, but if you tell me to, I’ll do it.”

“…”

Togame could have interpreted these words, which came so easily to Shichika, as an expression of selfless loyalty and felt a stirring of the heart─but what they evoked in her was nothing so emotional.

If you tell me to, I’ll do it.

It was no lie or bluff. In fact, in just such a manner, he had vanquished both Komori Maniwa and Ginkaku Uneri. He did whatever Togame told him to do.

Words like “vanquish” had a nice ring to them─but it was also plain murder, under the aegis of shogunate decree.

Bloodshed.

In fighting Komori, there had been at least some element of proper self-preservation─but what about Ginkaku Uneri? He was a bad man, with a bad cause, doing bad things─but did that allow them to take his life, just so they could take away his sword?

It was Togame who had ordered it.

She recognized their Sword Hunt was basically a sanctioned form of robbery, backed by the powers that be. Which is why she emphasized diplomacy─even when it was meaningless to try. She didn’t need anybody telling her that not all battles could be avoided─nevertheless, she tried. Not just with the Razor. The first time she rounded up the Leveler, working together with Komori, and the time she rounded up the Whisper, with Hakuhei Sabi, things had started diplomatically.

She knew she was a hypocrite.26

Hopelessly apart from justice.

Nevertheless─her mission required definition.

And diplomacy gave it definition.

For reasons of ambition and revenge, Togame had no choice but to see her mission through─her position was far more desperate than it seemed from the sidelines.

She had gone as high as she could go.

Her only hope of getting any higher was to hatch the ultimate scheme. She had to accomplish the impossible, and collecting Kiki Shikizaki’s errant masterpieces, a feat not even the Old Shogun had been able to accomplish, fit the bill.

And so, she was ready to risk everything.

She had abandoned everything before.

And was prepared to throw it all away again.

“…”

“Togame. What’s wrong? Tell me.”

“No─it’s nothing.”

Right. It was nothing. Throwing everything away again was nothing.

Yet─what was the deal?

Shichika Yasuri had no agenda and nothing to lose─he was unencumbered by questions of righteousness and definition or ambition and revenge.

He cut down Komori and Uneri without hesitation.

A sword in and of himself.

A katana will choose its owner.

But not who to kill.

And the Kyotoryu was a katana incarnate.

What made him reliable made him terrifying.

Togame seriously had her doubts─did this sheltered island boy have what it takes to engage in burglary and savage warfare? Wouldn’t his purity stop him from committing murder? You could say his fight with Ginkaku Uneri at Gekoku Castle had been a touchstone.27 And based on the results, he passed with flying colors.

Flying perhaps too high.

His lack of hesitation smacked of the inhuman.

He needed to be that─it had been true of Komori Maniwa and Hakuhei Sabi, who preceded him. Komori and Sabi were fine with killing; they practically whistled28 while they worked.

And yet─both men must have had their own agendas, or else abandoned something to become who they were.

Not so for Shichika.

Shichika was not broken─but he could kill.

If abnormality meant that a normal attempt, too, engendered the abnormal─then Shichika was not that. He was a normal guy. He laughed normally, yelled normally, cried normally─and killed normally. He could act broken normally─that was the kind of swordsman Togame had hired.

While he may have lacked a personality─he said bizarre things like they were hunky, and did bizarre things like they were dory.29

For instance, after his battle with Ginkaku Uneri─on the road to Izumo, during one of their lighter chats, he had said to Togame, “Good thing Uneri had no relatives,” in the sincerest of tones. “No one will be sad, now that he’s dead.”

She had considered responding to his remark, uttered in a genuinely kindhearted manner, but thought the better of it.

There was a facet of truth to what he said.

But this truth─it was not anything for him to say.

Sheltered island boy.

The purity of his upbringing─perversely insulated him from ethics and morality. He was unable to tell right from wrong. He would do whatever he was told to do.

He really meant it when he said so.

Even the miko, servants to the gods30─he would shred them, without a thought. He may or may not beat all thousand─but needed not the slightest conviction to kill any opponent, swordsman or woman or not.

Even if she told him the backstory31 of the Kuromiko.

He would kill them.

Could sheltered, in a single word, explain everything away?

He may have been fine for the Age of Warring States.

But in a world at peace, his presence was conspicuous.

It was fine this time.

In a pinch, so far as the bakufu was concerned, it was not a problem if he killed Meisai Tsuruga─and the thousand Kuromiko, while he was at it.

Their backstory─consigned them to such a fate.

And yet─it mattered none to Shichika whether or not there was a problem. They could be a person whose killing would cause problems─they could have relatives, enough to pack a funeral─but if he were told to kill somebody, he would kill.

Was this good or bad? Oh, it was good.

Was it good or evil? Evil, certainly.

But Togame had known this.

Known the Kyotoryu was such a school, from the beginning─of her life.

She knew─because this was how Shichika’s departed father, Mutsue Yasuri, late master of the Kyotoryu─had murdered her father.

For this very reason─their kind did not betray, and would never stab her in the back like Komori or Sabi.

A katana, having chosen its owner, could not.

But in her management of Shichika, Togame the Schemer would do well never be too sure─she prided herself on being unarmed, but in hiring the Kyotoryu, she had made a big exception. For the most part, it was a good thing for Togame that Shichika was not a loose cannon, but rather the surest of swords…and yet she had to take pains not to drown in it. She would be no better then. No different from those on whom she swore to take revenge.

Which is why she could not be careless with her word.

Regardless of how it was for Shichika─regardless of how he was, for her part Togame had to go into this with the utmost conviction.

“…heh.”

A gentle laugh. Laughing at the way she was, out of self-deprecation? Not quite. Shichika had adjusted his grip for the bridal carry and grazed her side in a way that tickled.

“Stop it! Creep.”

“Huh? Whuh, what?”

“Ugh…”

She had lashed out, but it had been an accident.

She would bury the hatchet.32

Three months.

It had been that long since he and Togame had teamed up, and she had long since confirmed that when it came to things romantic, Shichika was a puritan.33 Her clarity on this matter made burying the hatchet easy.

At this point, the keen Schemer was beginning to realize that lounging like a princess bride was not the most becoming way to travel. Riding on his shoulders was out of the question, but a piggyback ride might have been preferable… With all her layers, there was no way that he could feel her body against his back. But this arrangement had been her idea, and she could hardly renege on it now.

Meanwhile, Shichika was simply thinking how this was no easy way to carry her. Yet, since his muscles more than compensated for any difficulty, the thought barely registered.

This style of portage wasn’t bringing them any closer.

“Okay, so if things work out─or as you say, if worse comes to worst, and I wind up fighting Meisai Tsuruga one on one, what then? What kind of moves does she have? She might not be a swordsman─but doesn’t she at least use a sword?”

“Truth be told, I’m not so sure,” Togame said. “She’s basically a nobody, and none of us knows much about what happens in Izumo─but like you said earlier, apart from having strength in numbers, the Legion is nothing special, no more than a first-rate katana. In a faceoff, you’ll have the advantage.”

“Damn right.”

But Shichika remained uneasy, not knowing anything about his foe─and said as much.

“What did Meisai do before taking over this shrine? That might give us a clue.”

“She was a brigand.”34

“Huh…” Shichika responded vaguely. Having grown up on an island, the word must have meant little to him.

Still, a brigand. Or a former brigand, anyway.

Which made her fine to kill─as far as the regnant bakufu was concerned.

“Since the time of the Great Sword Hunt and the Old Shogun, the Legion was held by the chieftain35 of a certain group of brigands. Over several generations. I don’t know what kind of moves the chieftains used─but whatever they were, they were enough to keep the Old Shogun from seizing the sword.”

“Huh. Where are the brigands now?”

“They disbanded when Meisai took over the shrine─evidently.”

“From that to working at a shrine? Why the change of heart─I’d like to know. Oh yeah, I meant to ask you─among the Twelve Possessed, there was one called Soto the Twin, right? To guess from the name, that one’s paired… After tackling a thousand-in-one sword, I have to deal with some dual combo?”

“Funny. Little is known of Soto, what manner of sword the Twin is… For the sake of my report to the bakufu, I can only pray36 for something more exciting than a mere set of two.” But this was only sarcasm. You could never tell with Shichika, but Togame was not being serious. “Anyway, there’s no use thinking so far ahead. It remains to be seen whether we even make it there. Even after safely capturing the Legion, we’ll have our fair share of problems to solve. Foremost being how to ship the swords back to Owari─I still haven’t figured that one out.”

“Yeah, you were saying that.”

“The Leveler and the Razor were taxing enough, but this will be another headache. What to do─hmm.”

Togame looked pensive.

Pensive, and yet reclining like a princess bride.

When something around a hundred steps remained, she would concoct a compelling reason and have him let her down, to climb the stairs on her own. She could hardly arrive at Triad Shrine in the arms of her retainer.37 When she would be engaging in diplomacy on behalf of the bakufu, it would not do to have her adversary think lightly of her─and luckily, the strength had mostly returned to her legs by now.