The Betrayal of the Living

by Nick Lake

  He, of course, made use of them all the time.

  ‘We think the illegal gold mine is—’ Jun broke off, staring up at him. His finger wavered above the map.

  ‘What is it?’ said Emperor Tokugawa. His voice sounded croaky to his ears.

  ‘It’s... your face,’ said Jun. He touched his cheeks, as if trying to show Lord Tokugawa where he had some dirt that he should rub off.

  Emperor Tokugawa raised his hands to his face and gasped. It was wet! Then he understood. The difficulty seeing; the blurred quality to the room.

  He was crying.

  CHAPTER 56

  Two hundred years later

  SHUSAKU TURNED HIS back on the new Enma. He had known, somehow, when he judged this one, that the man was good, that he was the right candidate to replace him – and the voice in his head, which he increasingly recognized as that of dharma itself, the harmony of all things, had agreed. That same voice had answered when he asked where he should go now, what he should do; saying that he should walk on into the greyness, and he would know soon where he was going.

  He walked over deserts; he walked over seas.

  Before long, though – or perhaps after long, it was difficult to tell – Shusaku found himself on a mountainside he recognized. There was a castle, farther up. There were cedar trees, wreathed in mist. Far below, thin rivers stretched like jewels, like silver chains, through valleys of startling green.

  He was in Monto territory, once again. It was exactly as he remembered, only there were no people, no Tokugawa samurai milling around, no cook fires pluming into the sky from the Monto stronghold above. There was only the singing of nightingales in the trees, the heart-soothing and continual creaking of the crickets in the grass.

  He wasn’t sure where he was going. He walked to Lord Tokugawa’s tent, found nothing but the daimyo’s belongings laid out – weapons, writing brushes; both of which, in Lord Tokugawa’s case, amounted to the same thing, for he had used both to kill and subdue, to effect his conquest of the country. Shusaku had experienced the pleasure, some decades or hundreds of years before, of personally leading Emperor Tokugawa to hell.

  Emperor Tokugawa plans in years, was a thing people had said about him. Well, now he would have an eternity to enjoy the fruits of his plans. To discuss them with the demons who tormented him. Shusaku smiled at the thought, though there was a little sadness there too. He was not so naive as not to recognize that a part of him still loved Lord Tokugawa, despite what he had done to betray him, to betray Taro.

  He turned his back on the daimyo’s tent, on the scene of all that plotting and scheming, and went out again into the late summer day. Maybe that was the worst punishment for Lord Tokugawa – here was Shusaku, a vampire, walking in sunlight touched with the smells of the forest, enjoying the sounds of birds and insects, while his old protector and employer roasted in meifumado.

  Shusaku bent down to touch a blade of dew-kissed grass. He had been so long in the all-pervading grey of death that he had forgot what grass looked like, what it felt like. He plucked a flower, raised it to his lips, let a drop of dew fall into his mouth. The joy of the world exploded there, on his tongue.

  This is heaven, he allowed himself to think. He had known it, from the moment he came onto the mountaintop. Admitting it was a different thing, though. Only... if it was heaven...

  If it was heaven, then where were the people?

  He let the flower fall to the ground, imagined that he heard it booming in its impact. No – he couldn’t have come this far, only to find that he had gone no distance at all. Could he?

  Then, from the east, came the soft sound of singing – a sad ballad, of the kind the ninja clans sing, for they know that life for them is cruel, and must take place in darkness.

  He knew at that moment where he had to go. He walked past the tents of the army, all empty, and the unoccupied stables where the horses had been rested before battle. Flowers were growing everywhere – poppies, daisies.

  Eventually he reached his own tent. He recognized it by the Endo mon flying on a flag over the top – he recognized it because it had been the scene of his dreams, all his life. His heart fluttered in his chest – free and tied, at the same time, just like the flag.

  He drew closer.

  He saw the outline of a woman, waiting by the tent.

  He walked towards her, and the sun caught the trees at that moment, came slanting down, that buttery afternoon light in late summer that would sometimes make his breath stop in his chest, filling him with a sensation that was neither happiness nor sadness but just the deep and all-encompassing recognition of the holiness of the world, the oneness of all things. Some of that buttery light fell on her face, too, half-obscured by her long black hair, and she was lost to him in a blaze of gold that came down from the perfectly clear sky, blinding him, making a flared corona around her, bathing her in glory.

  She was in sunshine, and it was not hurting her.

  And then she stepped forward and resolved out of the glare, fully illuminated now, so beautiful that for a moment he forgot how to speak. She had been in his mind for so long, and now she was in front of him, and he was tongue-tied, useless.

  He remembered how she would come to him at night, through his shoji door, how she would lie in the dark beside him, and he would feel that nothing could harm him. He saw her – this beautiful woman – and at the same time he knew her bravery, knew that she had saved his life in a forest clearing, turning him into a vampire, and that she’d saved Lord Tokugawa, too, and had been killed for it by Kenji Kira.

  She was a marvel.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ he asked eventually.

  Mara smiled. She wore a chain of flowers around her neck, he noticed – she had pinned up her hair with pine needles.

  ‘Forever,’ she said. She took him by the hand, led him through the shoji door into his old tent; it was exactly as he remembered it.

  ‘And how long can we stay?’ he asked her.

  She smiled again. He thought he would never get used to the sight of that smile, the small miracle of it.

  ‘Forever,’ she said.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As always, I’d like to thank the people who helped this book through its various drafts. Caradoc King, Elinor Cooper, Louise Lamont, Alexandra Cooper and Amy Rosenbaum all made excellent suggestions, and are in no way responsible for any mistakes that I made. A special shout-out too, to Liam Curren, who helped me research the rice-harvesting songs of feudal Japanese peasants.