"It wasn't a prediction." Helian pulled a Wooden Nails peg representing Konoha out of the sand table and twirled it between his fingers. "It was a gamble. A gamble on whether he would go himself. On whether he was still the same as before-whether he would always go straight to the front whenever a blade was pointed at Konoha."
"And your gamble paid off."
"Yes."
Yet the middle-aged man did not look any more at ease.
"But even if it paid off, Cloud Falcon and the others are all dead. What does that get us? We know Chisen is on Konoha's side, but couldn't we have guessed that anyway?"
Helian finally looked up at him.
That single glance stopped the rest of the middle-aged man's words.
"Guessing and locking onto him are two different things," Helian said.
The middle-aged man's brow twitched.
Helian stopped beating around the bush.
"Bring me the Flowing Water clan's records."
The middle-aged man froze.
"General, you mean-"
"Go get them," Helian said.
The middle-aged man asked no more questions. He turned and left the tent.
The messenger was still kneeling on the ground, his legs beginning to go numb. Helian seemed to have forgotten him entirely. He kept studying the sand table, occasionally moving a flag half an inch to one side or swapping the positions of two little pegs representing patrol routes.
Before long, the middle-aged man returned with a long, narrow wooden case.
The case was black, its corners badly worn, as though no one had touched it lightly in many years. There was no national emblem or military seal on its surface, only a faint, ancient pattern-something like two intertwined streams, or a crack that had been pulled apart and stitched back together.
At the sight of that pattern, the corner of