Jiro Minamoto's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Dracula wanted ten thousand soldiers. Jiro had eighty. He stood in the arena the next night and did the math again. Eighty men could not drill ten thousand into a real army before the king marched them off. A rushed army would break the first time a spear touched it. Jiro needed a way to make each of his eighty worth a hundred. He did not yet have one. Then a woman walked into his arena. She wore a black lace gown stitched with silver. Her nails were long and sharp. She moved between the training racks like she owned them. The eighty recruits went quiet all at once. Even the oldest fighter lowered his blade to watch her cross the floor. "Countess Carmilla de Styria," she said. "Your work is impressive, General." She stopped close to him. Too close. She tilted her head and let the light find her face. "A man who felled ten thousand guards alone. I have wanted to meet you." Jiro was stunned by her beauty. He did not pretend otherwise. But he had read men and women for two hundred years. He watched her breath slow to match his. He watched her eyes drop, then lift. Every gesture was a tool. He knew each one by name. She was not admiring him. She was measuring where he would bend. "You did not come for the training," Jiro said. "You came to buy the Minamoto clan." Carmilla did not flinch. "I came to offer partnership." "You want a clan of your own in Styria. You need soldiers no one else has. So you flatter the man who makes them." He kept his voice even. "I train bodies to strike before the mind decides. Yours works the same way, on other people. I recognize the method." For the first time her smile stopped. She had walked in expecting a soldier. She had found someone who saw the whole game. "You are cleverer than they said," she admitted. "Dracula owns this army now," Jiro said. "Not me. There is nothing here for you to take." Carmilla studied him a long moment. Then she looked past him, toward the far door, where Hanako had entered in her white gown. Carmilla's face changed. The persuasion drained out of it and something colder settled in. "Then I have the wrong Minamoto," she said. She turned and walked out without another word. Jiro let out a slow breath. He had beaten her. But he understood what she had learned. She could not turn him. So she would go to his niece, the one who shared his blood and Dracula's crown. He had guarded his army from a spy tonight and pointed her straight at Hanako instead. His real problem had not shrunk. It had grown a face, a name, and a new target. He needed to reach Hanako first.