The Iris Fan

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Papa!” Akiko cried. “Masahiro!”

  Reiko’s expression wavered between relief and uncertainty. Sano saw that she didn’t trust him to do right by her and Akiko. She looked to Masahiro, as if he were her best hope of rescue. It was like a knife puncturing Sano’s happiness.

  Lady Nobuko’s face fell. Lord Ienobu rolled his eyes toward the door, saw Yanagisawa, and screamed to the guards, “They’re here to murder the shogun! Stop them!”

  The guards jumped to their feet, drawing their swords. They wore armor but had removed their helmets because the room was so warm. Masahiro drew his bow, stepped forward, and let fly. The arrow pierced one guard through the eye. He fell dead. The other guard swung at Sano. Despite his heavy armor, Sano moved with a swiftness born of his need to protect his wife and daughter and his wish to prove to Reiko that he could. He furiously hacked at the guard. The guard went down, bleeding from so many wounds that Sano couldn’t say which had killed him. Yoshisato’s gangsters deployed their spears against the other guards, who looked like they were trying to fend off bolts of lightning. In an instant they, too, were dead.

  Sano, breathing hard from exertion, didn’t have time to ask why Lady Nobuko was holding a knife to Lord Ienobu. Akiko ran to him. He didn’t have time to ask what she and Reiko were doing in the shogun’s bedchamber. Akiko said, “Papa, we found out she stabbed the shogun!” and pointed at Lady Nobuko. “She wore the other lady’s peppermint hair oil!”

  Yanagisawa pointed at Lord Ienobu and shouted to Lady Nobuko, “Kill him!”

  Lady Nobuko stared at the man who was ordering her to do his dirty work. Anger flashed in her good eye. “You.” She said the word like a curse.

  “If you kill me, Yoshisato will become shogun,” Lord Ienobu hurried to say. “He and Yanagisawa will rule over everybody including you. So you’d better let me live.”

  Lady Nobuko slackened her grip on the knife. Yanagisawa said quickly, “He killed your stepdaughter. He deserves to die.”

  Lord Ienobu pointed at Yanagisawa and said, “He had you kidnapped and raped!”

  “You got over it,” Yanagisawa told Lady Nobuko. “Tsuruhime won’t get over dying of smallpox. His sin against you is worse than mine.”

  Lady Nobuko’s distorted face took on a hunted expression as she looked from Yanagisawa to Ienobu, torn between two equally strong hatreds. Lord Ienobu pleaded, “Let me go, and I’ll make it up to you.”

  “How’s he going to do that—bring Tsuruhime back from the dead?” Yanagisawa scoffed.

  Reiko, Akiko, and Masahiro looked to Sano: They expected him to resolve the standoff, but he didn’t know what to say. To side with Yanagisawa or Lord Ienobu—a choice from hell.

  “Be quiet!” Lady Nobuko cried. “You’re confusing me!”

  Sano deduced that she’d stabbed the shogun in an effort to block Yanagisawa’s path to power. To block it again she must spare Lord Ienobu. Her dilemma was the same as Sano’s—she didn’t want either Ienobu or Yanagisawa to win. She must have known that by taking action against one she benefited the other; she wasn’t stupid. But her thirst for vengeance, and perhaps her old age, had demented her. She was making decisions as she went along, and she hadn’t come up hard against her dilemma until now.

  “I’ll set you straight,” Yanagisawa said. “This is your last chance to get revenge on Lord Ienobu. If you don’t kill him, we will.”

  He and Yoshisato raised their swords. They and the gangsters surrounded Lady Nobuko. The gangsters pointed their spears down at Lord Ienobu. Sano and Masahiro joined the circle. Masahiro drew his bow, aiming at Lord Ienobu’s face. Sano motioned Reiko to take Akiko outside—the killing that his daughter had already seen was bad enough—but they stayed. Beautiful and fierce, they’d never looked so much alike.

  Lord Ienobu’s eyes glittered with fear and the reflections of steel blades. Lady Nobuko said, “Not yet! Let me think!”

  Again that sense of wrongness troubled Sano. Wars were supposed to be won on the battlefield, with each leader having a chance of taking the head of his rival while he risked losing his own. Slaughtering one helpless cripple seemed a travesty of Bushido. But Sano had pledged himself to this assassination, and he would shed his share of his enemy’s blood.

  “Get out of the way,” Yanagisawa ordered Lady Nobuko.

  The door to the outer corridor flew open with such a force that the paper panes and wooden lattice crumpled. A violent wind swept in from the garden, knocking Sano and the other men away from Lady Nobuko and Lord Ienobu. Sano heard Akiko scream, saw her and Reiko flung backward. A dark blur, like a mass of soot carried in by the wind, zoomed over the unconscious shogun. It engulfed Lady Nobuko and Lord Ienobu. Her hand popped open and the knife fell out. Terror wrenched her mouth and both her eyes wide open. She rose up from the floor, her feet kicking and arms flailing, and flew across the room. Her back struck the solid wooden partition. She slid down it and landed sitting on the floor, stunned. The blur lifted Lord Ienobu, who moaned in terror. Set on his feet, he wobbled. The wind abruptly died. The blur turned solid, gained human shape.

  A shocked exclamation burst from Sano, Reiko, and their children: “Hirata!”

  Hirata stood with one arm supporting Lord Ienobu. He looked leaner, stronger, but aged far beyond the years since Sano had last seen him. Rigid with an unnatural tension that clenched his jaw and tightened the muscles around his dark-shadowed eyes, he said, “Don’t come near him.” His speech sounded strained, forced.

  Yoshisato said to Sano, “It’s your chief retainer?”

  Yanagisawa said, “The traitor and fugitive?”

  They were so astounded that they forgot to be angry that Hirata had disrupted their mission to kill Lord Ienobu. The gangsters made confused motions with their spears. Lord Ienobu shrank in fear from his savior. The shogun remained unconscious. Lady Nobuko sat like a broken doll; she’d fainted. His own knowledge about Hirata hadn’t prepared Sano for what he’d seen; Hirata’s powers were magnitudes greater than he’d thought. The confrontation that had been in the making for so long was now upon Sano, although this wasn’t a time, place, or audience he could have imagined. He and Hirata gazed at each other across the space of more than four years, a valley of bitter estrangement.

  “That’s enough meddling.” Sano wouldn’t bother to rehash the past or hear excuses. He was so angry at Hirata for his latest crime—killing the shogun’s boy—that he just wanted Hirata gone and all ties between them severed. “Get out.”

  Hirata’s expression filled with misery—he knew, and cared, how Sano felt—but he said, “I can’t. We have to protect Lord Ienobu. We have to make him the next shogun.”

  “Who is ‘we’?” Yanagisawa demanded.

  Lord Ienobu’s little jaw sagged with dismay. “It’s you that’s been helping me? Not the gods?”

  “Yes,” Hirata said. “Me, and the ghost.”

  “What ghost?” Yoshisato asked.

  Fear of the supernatural trickled through Sano as he looked around for the spirit that had been manipulating Hirata from beyond the grave.

  “Have you been leaving money on my doorstep?” Lord Ienobu asked, incredulous. “Did you kill my enemies?”

  “The ghost of General Otani. He died during the Battle of Sekigahara. He made me kill them. He made me steal money and give it to you.” Hirata spoke fast, then was silenced as if by a hand squeezing his throat.

  “Why?” Lord Ienobu seemed abashed because he’d thought the gods were on his side but it was really a fugitive who claimed to be in league with a ghost.

  “Shut up and get out, Hirata,” Sano said. “That’s an order.”

  “Because General Otani wants to avenge his death by destroying the Tokugawa regime.” Hirata forced the words out, choked on them. The authority he answered to apparently didn’t want the story told, either. He flung Sano an anguished, apologetic glance.

  Puzzlement joined the chagrin on Ienobu’s face. “How is making me shogun supposed to accomplish th
at?”

  “You’re planning to conquer the world,” Hirata said, his strangled voice barely intelligible. “You’re doomed to fail. The foreign barbarians are too powerful. You’ll take the regime down with you.”

  Dismayed to have his secret out in the open, furious because Hirata had punctured his conceit, Lord Ienobu insisted, “I will win! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “You’ve said your piece,” Sano told Hirata. “Go. Don’t add to the trouble you’ve caused.”

  Hirata shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Just blow out of this room the same way you blew in,” Yanagisawa said.

  “If you have any sense of honor left, you will go,” Sano said. “You’ll let us take care of Lord Ienobu, and he won’t destroy the regime.”

  “My honor is gone. And I can’t stop what’s going to happen. All I can do is apologize. I’m sorry I was disloyal.” Hirata’s desolate gaze encompassed Masahiro, Reiko, and Akiko. “I never meant to hurt you. I was stupid and greedy and I didn’t know what I was getting into, and if I could go back in time and kill myself before General Otani got hold of me, I would. Please forgive me.”

  Sano couldn’t help feeling moved by Hirata’s plight, but there could be no forgiveness while the transgressor was still transgressing.

  “Quit whining!” Yanagisawa said. “Get lost!”

  “I owe you an apology, too,” Hirata said, “for Yoritomo’s death.”

  “What?” Startled and distracted, Yanagisawa asked, “Why?”

  “It’s a long story, but I was responsible.”

  Yanagisawa opened and closed his mouth, dumbstruck, unsure whether to believe Sano wasn’t the one at fault. Hirata turned to Reiko. “Tell Midori—” He gulped; his throat jerked. “Tell her and the children I’m sorry.” His eyes glistened.

  “Tell them yourself.” Reiko’s manner was gentle, sympathetic, entreating. She extended her hand to Hirata. “Come home with me. Midori and Taeko and Tatsuo and Chiyoko miss you so much. They would be so happy to have you back.”

  “No, they wouldn’t.” Hirata sounded certain, forlorn. “Not if they knew what I’ve become.” His voice broke. “I’m sorry I killed the boy Dengoro, and the Dutch translator, and those officials. I’m sorry I framed Lord Yoshimune and his cousin. After the shogun was stabbed, I stole Tomoe’s socks, dipped them in blood in the shogun’s slop basin, and buried them outside the daimyo district. General Otani made me.”

  “Stand away from Lord Ienobu, or I’ll make you sorrier.” Yanagisawa waved his sword at Hirata, but the gesture was tentative; Hirata had put the fear of the supernatural into him.

  “General Otani’s not here,” Sano said. “What you do next is up to you.”

  “He is here.” Hirata’s face bunched up; he looked like a child about to cry. “He’s inside me. I’m possessed by his spirit. Watch!”

  He lowered the arm he held around Lord Ienobu. Stiff and trembling, it moved down slightly, then snapped back up. His hand locked like a steel clamp on Ienobu’s shoulder. His face reddened, strained, and perspired with effort while his body jerked as if punched from within. Lord Ienobu shrieked, “Help!” Hirata screamed in pain. As Sano and the others watched, amazed, Hirata stopped jerking and screaming and went limp. He and Lord Ienobu hovered above the floor, then descended to settle gently on their feet.

  “See?” Hirata’s voice was an agonized croak.

  Sano was horrified by the grotesqueness, the indignity of having an alien presence in control of one’s body. His anger at Hirata faded into sorrow. All the ardor, the talent, and good intentions in Hirata, wasted because he’d been reduced to a puppet of a demon!

  The flabbergasted silence was broken by a soft, sighing groan. All attention turned to the shogun. His chest no longer rose and fell. The physician felt his neck for a pulse, then raised his own stricken face. “His Excellency is dead.”

  39

  THE NEWS THUNDERSTRUCK Sano.

  The lord he’d served for twenty years was dead.

  He was catapulted out of the reality in which he and Yanagisawa and Lord Ienobu were fighting for control of the regime into another dimension of darkness and agonized howls. There he joined multitudes of samurai who, throughout history, had lost their lords. A grief as much theirs as his own stabbed Sano to the heart.

  The shogun was gone! Even though Sano had often hated him for his capriciousness, stupidity, cruelty, and cowardice, none of his faults mattered now. In death the shogun claimed the full magnitude and dignity of his office. The gray, wasted effigy in the bed was to Sano what every lord had been to every samurai for time immemorial—the purpose of his existence.

  Sano felt as bereft as if someone he’d dearly loved had died. His body reacted even as his mind struggled to absorb his loss. His eyes gushed tears. He sank to his knees, removed his helmet, and bowed his head. Masahiro did the same; Reiko and Akiko knelt, too; they were following Sano’s example; they didn’t know what else to do in this unprecedented situation. Hirata’s arm dropped. His expression shifted between triumph and defeat.

  Exultation dawned on Lord Ienobu. He said in a hushed voice, “I’m shogun.”

  The ramifications of the shogun’s death snapped Sano out of his grief. The shock on Yanagisawa’s and Yoshisato’s faces turned to horror. They were losing the war, Yoshisato couldn’t inherit the regime, and Hirata stood between Yanagisawa and his dream of ruling Japan.

  Lady Nobuko wailed, “No, no, no!” She crawled to the shogun and pounded on his chest. “You can’t die yet!”

  “Revive him!” Yanagisawa shouted at the physician.

  Yanagisawa had been so fixated on gaining power by making his son shogun that he couldn’t adapt fast enough to the new circumstances, Sano realized. He couldn’t think past the fact that now Yoshisato could never inherit the regime. No matter that his army was in the castle and he might still have a chance of victory over Lord Ienobu—all he could see at the moment was the shogun dead and his dream lost.

  The physician dipped a cotton puff in a bowl of water and wet the shogun’s lips, administering the matsugo-no-mizu—water of the last moment, the final attempt to revive a dead person. The shogun remained inert. Droplets scattered as Lady Nobuko pounded on him and shouted, “Come back!” The physician shook his head.

  Yanagisawa turned on Hirata. “This is your fault!” He told his bodyguards, “Kill him!” Now realizing how to remedy the situation, he shouted, “Kill Lord Ienobu!”

  The bodyguards hesitated, afraid of Hirata. Lord Ienobu, chortling with glee, said to Hirata, “Here’s my first order as shogun: Kill them all!”

  Distraught but resigned, Hirata drew his sword with a motion so fast that the outline of his arm blurred and the weapon seemed to leap into his hand. Sano hauled himself to his feet, drawing his own sword. It was his duty to rid the world of the evil thing Hirata had become.

  “Don’t just stand there, kill him!” Yanagisawa shoved his bodyguards forward. “Do it or I’ll have your heads!”

  * * *

  AS THE GUARDS came at him, Hirata felt General Otani’s will take control of his body, a sensation like liquid steel solidifying in his nerves, muscles, and joints. He slid into a state of amplified perception. The auras of the people in the room crackled and sparked hot, colored light. Energy flooded through Hirata, launching him into a dimension between the present and the near future. Time stretched. The bodyguards lunged in slow motion. He saw a spectral image of each man, like a faint, greenish, twin shadow, blazing a trail in front of its owner. The images revealed where the men would be and what they would do in the next instant. Hirata slashed.

  The speed of his blade caused a bang like a gunshot. An instant later the men filled the space where their images had been. He cut through armor, flesh, and bone. The friction made sparks and smoke. The men’s severed upper and lower halves landed on the floor in a welter of blood. Horror gradually appeared on the faces of Yanagisawa, Yoshisato, Sano, and Masahiro. Akiko screa
med. She and Reiko covered their mouths with their hands. Lady Nobuko shrieked as gore splashed her. The physician vomited. Lord Ienobu tittered with delight. The sounds distorted into groans that rose in pitch as time contracted, Hirata’s perception slowed, and the world sped up to its normal pace. The smells of blood, viscera, and burnt flesh, leather, and metal suffused the air.

  Sano stepped in front of Masahiro, Reiko, and Akiko. Raising his sword in his right hand, he flung out his left arm to shield his family. Yanagisawa did the same for Yoshisato. Hirata moved toward Yanagisawa. If he killed Yanagisawa, it would be something good to come of the mess he’d made of his life, a gift of atonement to Sano.

  Terror froze Yanagisawa’s expression. Then Hirata heard General Otani’s voice: Kill Sano first. Hirata faltered; his body pivoted. He knew why General Otani wanted him to kill Sano: It would break his spirit; he would be softer clay in the ghost’s hands. Hirata resisted. It was like pulling against chains wrapped around him. His steps changed course, toward Sano.

  “So it’s come to this.” Sano hadn’t put his helmet back on, and Hirata saw reproach in his eyes. “You’ve broken every other rule of Bushido, why not murder me.”

  “No, Hirata-san,” Reiko and Masahiro pleaded. Akiko was crying.

  Kill them all, General Otani said. Then they won’t look at you like that.

  “Run,” Sano told his family, as if he could hear the voice in Hirata’s head.

  They didn’t move. Hirata strained as General Otani moved one of his feet in front of the other. The tug-of-war pulled a muscle in his groin. Hirata gasped at the pain, step by arduous step. Lord Ienobu trailed close behind him as if he were a shield. Hirata’s heart pumped madly. The war of wills between him and the ghost caused a racketing ache in his skull. General Otani roared with anger, pain, and bloodlust. Hirata tried to tell Sano he was buying him time to escape and couldn’t hold off much longer, but his voice shriveled in his throat. Sano held Hirata’s gaze, daring him to attack, entreating him to desist. General Otani raised Hirata’s arm. It trembled, the sword waving in the air, as Hirata fought to hold it back and the ghost tried to swing at Sano. A tendon snapped. Hirata and General Otani cried out. As they struggled for dominance over the body they shared, Sano swung at Hirata.