The Tengu's Game of Go by Lian Hearn

smoldered in a stone oven and he could smell soy and sesame oil. A small girl crouched on the highest step, her head on her knees. Mu feared she had been poisoned, too, but she stirred as they went past, muttering something in a dream, not waking.
    Silently they entered the main rooms of the house. The smell changed to sandalwood, mixed with the odor of people. Mu could hear the soft rise and fall of their breath. From beyond the gate a dog barked. They froze for a few moments, but no one in the house wakened. If there were any more guards they were at the outer gate.
    Here and there lamps flickered, giving Mu glimpses of the rooms as they went through them, each opening into the next. The wooden floors gleamed, wall hangings shone with patches of red. Along the southern side ran a wide veranda, but most of the shutters were closed.
    From the middle of the house came the sound of snoring. Chika’s teeth showed white as he grinned and mouthed Unagi to Mu. He slid open the final door and let Kiku go in first.
    Kiku took on invisibility immediately and Mu copied him, as he had been told. He could just perceive his brother’s faint outline approaching the sleeping man.
    Unagi lay on his back, his head on a wooden headrest. Kiku’s movements were so swift, Mu hardly followed them. For a moment he wondered why the merchant began to twist and kick, why he was making that strange muffled grunting. Then he saw the garrotte in his brother’s hands. Unagi was a big man and it seemed impossible that Kiku should be able to hold him down, but Kiku’s invisible hands were like iron and relentless.
    There was a trickle of water, a foul smell, and Unagi’s struggles ceased.
    In the silence that followed came a rustling and an intake of breath as the old man, Unagi’s father, stirred. Mu saw the gleam of Chika’s knife, heard the soft sigh as it entered flesh and the gurgle of blood.
    Kiku slowly became visible again. Mu could see his expression as the lamps flared. It was both stern and gentle, as if he had undergone a spiritual transformation. He smiled at Chika with that unfathomable emotion.
    â€œThat was for you.”
    Chika smiled back, pulled one of the hangings from the wall, and placed a corner of it against the flame. As it began to smoulder he lifted the shutter open; the breeze fanned the sparks into fire.
    Jumping from the veranda, they ran across the garden to the main gate. A woman screamed from the house behind them. Shouts followed, pounding feet, the crashing of doors and shutters as they were flung open, the ever fiercer crackling of flames.
    Kiku leaped for the top of the wall, scaling it easily, and Mu, still invisible, was right behind him, but Chika had turned back and drawn his sword. Running figures came from the guardhouse at the gate, their own swords glinting through the mist.
    Two young men, barely into their twenties, came at Chika, attacking without hesitation. In the dark it was impossible to see their faces clearly, but their build and movements were so similar they had to be brothers. They possessed both courage and skill and Chika was forced back to the foot of the wall.
    â€œGo and help him,” Kiku ordered.
    There was no time to argue, to plead that he had nothing against these young men and no reason to take their lives. Mu dropped down beside Chika, letting visibility return, surprising the man on his left. The tengu’s sword swung once and cut clean through his opponent’s forearm. The other sword fell in a shower of blood, startlingly warm in the dawn chill.
    With a cry of rage and pain, the man drew a knife with his left hand and stabbed at where Mu would have been, if he had not used the second self to avoid the blade, letting it pierce only his shadow. The man stumbled, and with a returning stroke, the tengu’s sword cut him across the side of the neck, severing the artery.
    Jumping over the dying man as he crumpled to the ground, Mu turned his