"Help us free the South of the Daimyos."
Nathan let the request settle into silence. He stood there in the cool forest air, Genzo's words hanging between them like a challenge laid out plain on the table, and felt the familiar shape of expectation pressing against him from all sides.
Maybe he should have seen this coming. Maybe not. The shinobis had buried their previous chief under the weight of whatever the capital's games had done to them — a history Ayame had hinted at without spelling out — and yet here was Genzo, their current leader, reaching for the kind of involvement that should have stayed in the ground with him. Asking a stranger to help carve the rot out of the South, to break the Daimyos' hold before it metastasized into something that swallowed everything else.
"No."
The word came out flat.
Genzo didn't flinch. "Why? You accepted Ayame-sama's request without hesitation. Killed Yorimasa at her word. But mine you refuse?"
