Taste

Blaze

Mitsuhide laid out his tools and pretended he didn't see the look of dawning horror. It was so much more effective that way. Absently, as if bored, he worked his fingers across the instruments, arranging them this way and that.

"I won't talk." His prisoner affirmed out loud. Mitsuhide glanced up to ensure the weights were still in place. They were–his hapless victim crouched on a series of uncomfortable wooden ridges, weights tied tight to his thighs, hands behind his back and tied again to a wooden pole. As much as the man was sealing his resolve, Mitsuhide could also see it cracking. He kept trying to shift.

"Hold still, or your legs might break faster." Mitsuhide turned his orange gaze back to the series of knives before him, barely contemplating them. "Or you could stop feeding me obvious lies and start talking about your master."

"I have no master save Buddha."

"Yes, which is clearly why you were trying to slide poison into Azuchi's water supply and your head is unshaven," the white-haired man sighed lazily. "Buddha's infinite grace clearly flows through you. Perhaps you ought to think of your divine patron and tell me about your Abbot instead?"

"Mitsuhide!"

He turned his head to see Ieyasu standing on the stairs, holding his robes slightly aloft to keep the damp from his hem. What an unexpected surprise, though he supposed Ieyasu was one of the few that wouldn't be perturbed.

"Yes?"

"Letter for you." He held it out, scowling. "It's from the Uesugi."

Kenshin? Mitsuhide frowned and accepted the missive, turning it this way and that. How unexpected. He could barely fathom a reason for the God of War himself to correspond with him and not Nobunaga. "My thanks."

"Whatever," Ieyasu glanced at the prisoner before turning his back and stalking up the stairs.

"Bend your head," Mitsuhide commanded, going to the prisoner. When the man failed to comply, he shoved it forward, unsurprised by the sickening crack from one of his legs. To the prisoner's credit, he only yelped. "I told you to bend it. See what happens when you don't listen? Be a good writing desk, will you?"

Ripping open the letter, he unfolded it and scanned the contents. What? Someone had tried to take the Chatelaine? Mitsuhide felt all his sickening fears coalesce into a very tangible truth: she was in danger, and eminent danger at that. It was barely a question of who was responsible.

He had to be with her.

Folding the letter up and tucking it in his robes, he stepped away from the man and headed to the stairs, his mind solely occupied with his new mission. Behind him, the ex-monk sputtered.

"And you just leave me here?"

Mitsuhide paused in the doorway and turned his head. "Did you know of the attempted abduction of a particular woman?"

The ex-monk said nothing, but his eyes said everything Mitsuhide needed to know. Slowly, he returned to the prisoner and lifted his short sword.

"It says here that her fingers were all that were scraped. With that in mind..."

Mitsuhide emerged from the dungeon only a minute after a sickening scream and shook his short sword clean. The prisoner didn't need all ten of his fingers, after all. Four would have to do.

Kenshin wasn't exactly surprised at Mitsuhide's response. It read simply: I'll be there in three days time. Of course he would be. In the meantime, Kenshin had all the Chatelaine's things moved into his own chambers.