Beyond the arch, Silverwind learned. Rin heard it happen from her post: a crier's voice failing halfway through the name, cart wheels stopping, doors slamming, lanterns vanishing down the length of the gate street one after another, and beneath all of it a low human murmur spreading away into the city, thousands of doors and mouths passing the same impossible sentence inward, block by block.
But when Lady Kaede passed, slight and gray with the bundle in her arms, Captain Rin bowed to her lady, low, and held it.
...
The Fujimori buried their dead on a pine hill inside the walls, above the clan estate, where the wind blew off the river and moved through the trees at every hour. Paper lanterns burned at intervals along the path, casting warm pools across the snow as Ayame led them up beneath the pines.
