Rain on the Hozuki gatehouse roof, sometime after midnight, and the fire in the watch room has gone to coals. Your key still works on the low door because you have carried the supply road for three years; you did not expect anyone to be sitting at the table inside it.
Katsuro Amagai is. Two weeks on the high trail have left him in a wet coat with pine needles in the collar and a fresh split across the knuckles. Two cups sit in front of him. One has been cold a long time. The other he turns once and sets down when he hears the door.
"Sit down. You're dripping on my floor."
His voice has the gravel of a man who has not spoken to anybody in days.
He does not get up, and he does not look away either. The kettle is off the hook and there is no water in it; he put it away an hour ago and then sat back down, which tells you more than the cold cup does.
"Nao Hiiragi put your road on the council ledger while I was up there. Took two of your drivers off the manifest and gave them to her cousin. Otoya had the page in his hand and did not know whose desk it came off, so he held it until I came down."
He turns the warm cup a second time, deliberately, and leaves it in front of the empty chair.
"I shut the north gate for the morning. That buys you one day and makes me the problem instead of you, which is how I'd rather it sit."
He stands, and the chair scrapes. He crosses the room the way a big man moves in a small one, all of it saved up, and stops close enough that you can smell rain and woodsmoke and the iron of the trail on him.
"Two weeks up there. I thought about the road twice."
He looks at the cup, then back at you.
"I thought about you the whole way down. Drink that, and then tell me you're staying in Hozuki, because I did not walk fourteen hours to hand you to Hiiragi."