Reina cuts across the audience room in tight, restless steps, white fur flashing against the dark beams. Her gaze snaps from the map to Lord Matsudaira's face, measuring him like an enemy at the edge of a blade.

Arimari remains just inside the threshold, silent, his hand near the bundle at his side. The sealed note lies beside the desk, shifted closer to him, as if the room itself has chosen a side.

The distant drumbeat thickens outside the shutters. Reina stops pacing, ears pricked toward the sound, while Matsudaira keeps his eyes on the map and the waiting note.

Arimari crosses the room in one smooth step and lifts the sealed note from the desk before anyone can stop him.

The paper is drier than the lacquer beneath it, and the seal bears a thin dusting of lamp soot along one edge.

Outside the shutters, the drumbeat deepens, steady as a hammer on a hidden nail.

Arimari holds the sealed note at last, its edge marked by a faint crease that suggests a second fold beneath the wax.

Arimari lowers his gaze to the note and lets the waxed fold rest in both hands.

He tilts it toward the lamp, reading the tight lines and the clerk’s careful spacing.

Inside the crease, a second strip appears, written in a smaller hand and sealed with a tea-leaf mark.

Arimari finishes the line, and the room tightens around the name, Kurogane retainers ordered to stand down at the cedar pass and await the signal from within.

Arimari lifts the inner strip higher, then turns it so Matsudaira can read the tea-leaf mark for himself.

The lord steps around the desk and leans in, his eyes tracking the smaller hand and its careful wording.

Arimari angles the note closer to the lamp, and the last line settles into view beside the tea-leaf seal.

Matsudaira's jaw hardens, but he does not look away. He reaches for the order, then stops short, weighing it as evidence and warning at once.

Lord Matsudaira looks from the exposed seal to Arimari, then lifts his chin toward the door. The war drums keep thudding outside, slow and heavy.

Matsudaira answers at once, voice clipped with anger. "Lady Shizue. Or someone working under her hand. The stroke is meant to pass as household order, but the brush sits too clean for a captain's clerk."

He takes the note now, careful not to smudge the tea-leaf mark, and folds it once against his palm.

Reina's tail flicks once, and she turns her head toward the corridor, where a servant's steps pause just beyond the screen. Someone is waiting for the lord's next word.

Arimari steps to the screen and lowers his head, letting the room fall away behind the thin paper.

The steps pause outside the frame, close enough to hear breathing.

A man waits in the corridor, broad-shouldered and still, with a clerk's soft sandals and a retainer's careful silence.

The seam of the screen catches a whisper of his sleeve, and Arimari hears a controlled exhale, the kind taken before news is delivered.

Reina keeps her eyes on the corridor, but does not move. Matsudaira's grip tightens around the note.

The figure outside answers with a low, measured voice. Not a servant. One of the household captains, and worried.

Arimari shifts aside from the threshold, clearing the captain's path with a single smooth step.

The screen slides open farther, and the corridor light spills in over polished floorboards and the edge of the map.

The captain steps through at last, bowing once, and the room feels narrower with him inside.

In his hand, barely visible, is a strip of cord knotted with the cedar pass tally mark.

The captain lifts his eyes, then the cord, letting the tally mark catch the light from the hall.

Matsudaira’s hand tightens on the folded note. The war drums outside thud once, dull and close.

He turns the cord over in his palm, and a smear of fresh mud shows where the rider handled it.

Arimari takes the cord strip from the captain and pinches the mud-smudged knot between two fingers.

He turns it to the light, and the seal fibers show a second impression beneath the first, pressed in haste.

A thicker smear along the edge matches the seal on Matsudaira’s desk, but the cut is newer, the cord frayed where it was retied.

Matsudaira leans over the map as Arimari sets the cord beside the west gate mark, its mud dark against the paper.

The drums beat again outside, and the captain waits for the next command while the open screen door spills pale corridor light across the table.

Arimari compares the river landing order to the gate tally, noting the identical, forced stroke patterns that confirm the forgery.

The lord’s fingers tighten on the map, then loosen. The room does not change, but the accusation lands hard between the papers.

Lord Matsudaira turns from the map to the room, as if measuring every servant beyond the paper doors.

A gust slips through the open screen, stirring the cord strip and the river landing order side by side. Reina’s gaze stays on the papers, already tracing the path ahead.