The doors came open.
Not slowly — completely, both of them swinging wide and hitting the walls on either side with a crack that filled the room beyond and silenced everything inside it in a single instant.
The throne room was occupied.
Not just Sadamasa in his chair — a council. Eight men seated at a long table that had been arranged in the space before the throne, documents spread across it, cups at their places, the clear arrangement of a meeting that had been in progress for some time and had been going well until approximately this moment.
Every face turned toward the door simultaneously.
The lamplight fell across Nathan standing in the entrance with Kyōmei dark and dripping in his hand and Yasumasa a barely-conscious heap in the grip of his other fist, the blood trail behind them both extending back through the open doors into the corridor where the lamplight caught its color and made it very visible.
