There's a feeling every ninja knows, and many know only once in their lives. But even the ones who cheat death at the last minute know it. It's that stone plunging through the surface of an iced-over lake feeling that your cover has been blow, you have been spotted, you have sprung a hidden trap, you have been caught.
Genma felt it now. He felt it and with stunning and perfect recall he remembered every other time in his life he'd felt it, and every other time he could have felt it and didn't because he got away with whatever he was up to.
It was a lot like the feeling of getting tagged with a senbon dipped in blue-lipped narcissus poison: numb hands and ice cold feet, and a ninety-percent certainty that you are going to simultaneously shit your pants, puke your guts up, fall down in spastic seizures, and choke to death on your own saliva.
And at the very same time....
He felt perfectly fine. Calm as you please. Happy, even, to be enjoying this company with this fine, dark-skinned gentleman, with his liqueur-smooth voice and gentle touch.