by Rokuro Inui
“Hey, there’s Eve,” said Sashichi, still watching the washing area.
Eve always visited the bathhouse on gift days bearing a generous twist of cash. This had not changed in all the years Jinnai had known her.
“Beautiful as ever,” Sashichi sighed.
Jinnai craned his neck and saw Eve’s pale form through the steam below. The men in the washing room noticed her too, and their eyes followed her restlessly as she passed. Some forgot themselves and watched so intently that they earned themselves a swift thwack on the head with a wooden bucket from their wives.
“There’s something about that woman,” Sashichi said. “The contrast between those cool looks and the strange way she acts sometimes—the odd things she says and does. Makes her even more appealing.”
“I’d put her out of your mind if I were you,” said Jinnai wryly, pulling the panel over the peephole closed.
“Of course, I’d never lay a hand on Master Kyuzo’s only daughter,” said Sashichi. “But she makes my lover’s blood sing. A woman like that you can’t ignore.” He shrugged.
That wasn’t quite what Jinnai had been getting at, but like the rest of Kyuzo’s students, Sashichi had no idea what Eve truly was. The truth would probably knock him off his feet.
“Getting back to our earlier conversation,” Jinnai said, pouring Sashichi another drink.
“The Sacred Vessel? It’d be intriguing if they really had found it. It’s supposed to have been kept in the innermost sanctum of the palace for years, but rumor has it that the Vessel incorporates the finest technology there is. Mechanics, chemistry, electricity—you name it.”
This appeared to be the limits of Sashichi’s knowledge. Jinnai pondered the situation.
It had been ten years since the death of the previous empress had been announced not long after she’d gone missing.
The current empress had ascended to the throne as an infant, so her father, Prince Hiruhiko, had renamed himself “Gobo-in,” assumed the privileges of a retired empress for himself, and continued his regency without interruption.
But then, six months earlier, Gobo-in had succumbed to the palsy and died.
What is Eve doing here?
That was Kyuzo’s first thought when he saw the sleeping form. He even wondered if this was some kind of joke, but Fujibayashi and the unpleasant-looking men behind him who were there to keep an eye on Kyuzo were unsmiling.
“This is the Sacred Vessel from the Age of Myth,” said Fujibayashi. “Newly extracted from the imperial tomb.”
Kyuzo put his hand to his chin and surveyed their find, which lay naked on the workbench.
Closed, long-lashed eyes. Lips like a flower about to bloom. Eve’s twin in every particular.
“You may find this hard to believe,” Fujibayashi added, lowering his voice, “but it is actually a karakuri doll.”
Very few people knew how advanced Keian Higa’s work had been or what Kyuzo was doing to continue it. Fujibayashi was clearly among the vast majority who had no idea that an automaton could talk and move like a person.
“Does it work?” Kyuzo asked.
Fujibayashi shook his head. “At first we thought it was the remains of some ancient noble who had somehow escaped putrefaction, but—”
“Those details are irrelevant. I asked you if it works.”
“It does not,” Fujibayashi said icily. “That is why you are here.”
Kyuzo nodded, shrugging off his silk crepe jacket and pushing it into the hands of one of the men behind Fujibayashi.
“Is there a magnifying scope?” he asked.
“There should be all the tools and materials you need. If anything is lacking, let us know,” said Fujibayashi. He had one of his men bring Kyuzo a scope from a corner shelf.
Fitting the scope to his eye like a monocle, Kyuzo leaned over the Vessel’s face. He pushed its right eyelid open with his finger to reveal eyes of dark green. Agate green.
Kyuzo gestured for someone to hand him a candle, then experimentally moved it back and forth before the eye. No change.
A mechanism in Eve’s eyes used wafers of a certain precious stone to open and close radially arranged metal wings behind the pupil depending on light conditions. He saw what appeared to be a similar mechanism in the Vessel’s eyes, but it remained inert.
He pulled up the Vessel’s top lip. Its teeth were smooth and gleaming and beautifully even. They were made using pearl oyster shells, just like Eve’s.
After a moment’s thought, Kyuzo set about detaching the Vessel’s limbs.
Gripping an elbow, he brought the hand of that arm around to the armpit, then twisted the joint in the opposite direction to dislocate it. Here, too, the mechanism and even the angles were the same as Eve’s. After removing the other arm in the same way, he twisted the legs outward to dislocate them too, so that all four of the Vessel’s limbs were dangling at disturbing angles from the workbench.
He heard Fujibayashi swallow behind him.
“Are there no other benches?” demanded Kyuzo. Several more were hurriedly brought in, and he arranged the limbs on them so that the automaton appeared to be spreading her arms and legs wide.
Then he took a pair of shears from the tool shelf and began cutting into the Vessel’s skin.
The other men in the room averted their eyes. The cruelty of the sight must have been too much for them. But no blood welled from the incisions, and no meat or sinew was revealed. Only bundle after bundle of dully gleaming wires and tubes numbering in the thousands.
Once the four limbs were completely separated from the torso, Kyuzo returned to the Vessel’s head. He seized it by the hair and shook it briskly as his other hand disengaged the connection with a practiced motion under the jaw.
The assembled watchers exhaled a collective sigh at the deftness of his work.
Detailed inspection of the Vessel’s internal structure would be needed, but at this point Kyuzo had encountered nothing that differed from Eve in any way. Although his face remained impassive, he found it difficult to understand.
Kyuzo placed the head on the bench that had been prepared for it and turned to Fujibayashi.
“My task is to make it work?”
“If you can.”
“My inspection may uncover components requiring maintenance. The materials needed may be rare or expensive. I assume you have no objection?”
But this project was being funded by the shogunate. Presumably money was no object.
So thinking, Kyuzo turned back to the disassembled Vessel.
III
“Agitate the competitors,” the referee said.
The two crickets were in a fighting basin of unglazed pottery. It was oval in shape, five inches long and seven across, and partitioned by a sheet of paper across the middle that kept the two crickets from making contact too early.
At the referee’s signal, the cricket trainers in both corners began stroking their own insect’s antennae with a senso—a narrow brush made of mouse whiskers and rice stem fibers. The crickets, which had been sitting calmly in their corners, became increasingly irritated. Skillful use of the senso was interpreted by the strongly territorial male crickets as a challenge, firing up their fighting spirit.
By now both crickets were roaming their half of the basin, searching for the intruder that had touched their antennae.
Jinnai watched from the sidelines thoughtfully. People said that senso technique decided one-tenth of the outcome. And it was harder than it looked to enrage an insect and get it into the mood to fight instead of just scaring it. Even the best cricket could lose to an inferior-ranked opponent if its prefight senso didn’t do the job.
“Begin!” said the referee.
An official in formal kimono and hakama removed the paper partition.
The cricket in the east corner, slightly blue in color, immed
iately sprang onto the pale cricket in the west corner. A roar went up from the spectators crowded around the table to watch.
It was rare for a cricket to close in so quickly. Normally the two insects would size each other up for a short period before the fight began in earnest.
But this was the grand tournament held by the shogun himself. Only the strongest fighters from each domain were entered. They really were of a different breed entirely than the crickets used by the townspeople, Jinnai mused.
The blue cricket was like a mad dog. The white cricket retained its composure, feinting once before biting into the other’s abdomen.
This was not normal cricket behavior either. Most of them aimed for their opponents’ mandibles or the weak spot at their neck. Jinnai had never seen one go for the abdomen before.
It must have realized that letting the blue cricket come straight for it would put it at a disadvantage and had gone on the offensive instead to knock its opponent off guard. If so, it had worked: the blue cricket backed off and watched to see what the white cricket would do next. This might be the first time it had been bitten on the abdomen.
Jinnai did not really believe that the insects themselves thought in these terms, but watching from the sidelines, it was the natural interpretation of their actions.
Now that both crickets had shown that they were ready to fight, they stared each other down, neither showing the other its rear in retreat.
“Agitate the competitors.”
The senso came out again as the crickets slowly circled each other inside the basin. The referee could call for the senso to be used again after the bout had begun, but it was not permitted otherwise.
As soon as the blue cricket’s trainer touched its antennae, the cricket kicked off with its rear legs and leapt toward the white cricket again.
The white cricket reacted swiftly, jumping back an inch. The blue cricket landed off-balance, and the white cricket saw its opportunity and sank its mandibles into its opponent’s neck.
The crowd around the fighting basin roared again.
Keeping its jaws firmly in the blue cricket’s neck, the white cricket twisted its entire body to the side. The two insects tumbled together into the middle of the basin.
The blue cricket opened its wings in a desperate attempt to regain its feet, but its opponent tossed it from side to side with unbelievable strength given its size. Before long, the blue cricket slowly drew in its wings in apparent submission.
“Enough!”
The referee raised his baton toward the west corner, and the two insects were separated. The blue cricket fled to the edge of the basin, keeping its back to its opponent. The white cricket stayed where it was, scraping its wings together in triumphant stridulation.
The gathered spectators began to talk animatedly among themselves. The referee wrote something on a strip of paper and handed it to the trainer in the west corner. The one in the east corner used a small net to capture the blue cricket and return it to its habitat, then trudged out of the room.
The last bout of the morning was over.
The room had four other tables, each with its own official. Jinnai stepped out into the corridor and the constant stream of people coming and going. He passed another room so full that people were spilling out into the hallway. Realizing that Sashichi was among them, he clapped the younger man on the shoulder.
Sashichi’s eyes widened. “Jinnai! Where have you been?” He was carrying several cricket habitats in a box.
“Thought I’d take in a bout while I was here. Very different from the cricket fights I’ve seen in gambling houses.”
“I should hope so!” Sashichi said with a frown. “That’s just bug sumo. This is the real thing.”
Utsuki domain had sent many crickets to the shogunal tournament over the years, and Sashichi had been called on to serve his domain as a senso technician. In his younger days, his interest in crickets had exceeded even his interest in women, and he had sunk a fortune into the pastime. He considered himself a more serious person today but still admitted to a twinge of excitement when autumn was in the air.
“Did you finish your weigh-in?” asked Jinnai.
“Bit of a delay,” Sashichi said, pointing into the room to the head of the line.
There were four tables with balance scales for weighing competitors, but only one was currently manned. Not enough staff on hand, perhaps.
“The shogun’s cricket jumped out of the weighing basket and escaped.”
“It did, did it? Hawk and Plum, right?”
“Yes. No one dared move in case they stepped on it.”
The shogun himself entered a competitor in the grand tournament. The entire shogunate began its cricket-hunting operation in spring and carried on through summer. They also bought the best insects from private dealers and received many as donations as well, since the donor of a cricket that made it into the tournament received a significant cash reward. These were cared for by the officials who ran the whole tournament, so the quality of their upbringing was unimpeachable.
The sheer amount of time, money, and effort invested by the shogunate meant that its crickets were always strong competitors, but Hawk and Plum was said to be on an entirely different level.
“They did catch it, though?”
“That’s what they’re weighing right now,” Sashichi said, pointing at the official adjusting the weights on his balance scale.
“At this rate they won’t get everyone weighed and start the bouts until evening.”
Sashichi nodded. “I’d say so.”
For Jinnai, the longer all this was drawn out, the better.
The grand cricket-fighting tournament was the one chance a year the domains had to pit their finest crickets against each other in the presence of the shogun himself.
The shogun, naturally, was granted prime position before the fighting basin. This meant that the trainers whose crickets were competing stood at the same table as the shogun himself—a great honor for a warrior.
But only ten trainers each year enjoyed this honor, because only the final five bouts were viewed by the shogun. Those bouts would be held a few days from now. Sashichi was there for the preliminary rounds that whittled the many hopefuls down to that final ten. And Jinnai was there as his assistant.
His true interest, of course, had nothing to do with crickets.
Infiltrating Tempu Castle by stealth was no easy task, and not even official domain emissaries could come and go as they pleased. The tournament was just the excuse Jinnai needed, and Sashichi’s connection to Utsuki and his complete trust of Jinnai were also helpful.
Jinnai left Sashichi waiting in line and headed outside.
The castle was filled with unfamiliar visitors in the days before the tournament, which allowed Jinnai to roam the grounds with relative freedom. Certain key areas were off-limits, of course, like the central courtyard where the castle keep stood, but when he emerged into the yard, he found it full of rural samurai strolling around taking in the scenery, just as he was.
Jinnai had not been back to the castle since Kihachi had cast him out onto the streets a decade ago, but he remembered it well. Feigning the same idleness as the other sightseers, he walked through the grounds trying to get a sense of where Kyuzo might be—just in case. He had already checked the refinery but had found no sign of anything unusual afoot there.
Soon Jinnai’s attention was caught by a small grove of pine trees in the lower western courtyard. Beyond them stood a small cluster of storehouses—the armory, the arsenal, and so on. But the path that way was blocked by a bamboo barrier.
Jinnai did not imagine that anyone would show much interest in the plum trees since it was not the season for them to blossom, but there was the barrier, more than thirty yards wide. Not unclimbable, but certainly intended to keep people away. And so recently made that the bamboo wa
s still green.
Feigning indifference, Jinnai turned and walked in another direction. He soon found that all the other paths leading to the lower western courtyard were blocked in the same way.
It was the only area blocked off like that, at least in the parts of the castle grounds accessible to visitors. If Kyuzo was here, he had to be in one of those storehouses.
“Jinnai! Is that you? What are you doing here?”
Jinnai had completed his circuit and was just making his way back to the building when the voice came from overhead. Looking up, he saw Kihachi Umekawa on a ladder leaning against a black pine.
“Nothing,” Jinnai replied with the hint of a smile.
Kihachi was acting as if he had happened to catch sight of Jinnai while pruning some old leaves, but Jinnai knew there was no way that was true.
Knowing that he could not square off against Kihachi directly, Jinnai had intentionally visited during the tournament season to at least make it difficult for Kihachi to move against him.
“Hold the ladder, would you?” said Kihachi. “It wobbles.”
Jinnai hesitated but then did as he was asked. He doubted that Kihachi would try anything right there.
Kihachi descended the ladder, looking at Jinnai’s hands curiously.
“You have an octopus in your family tree? Or a lizard, maybe?”
“What does that mean?”
“Your fingers have grown back. And your legs are …”
He seemed to be genuinely curious, not laying a trap. It was a rare expression to see on his face.
Jinnai smiled wryly. “No octopus blood, but my great-grandfather was a crab.”
Kihachi frowned. “Not funny,” he said. “Well, you look like you’re in good health, anyway. What are you doing these days?”
Jinnai chose his answer with care. “As you know, I’m just a simple karakuri maker’s apprentice now.”
“And what business does a trainee puppeteer have in Tempu Castle?”
“I came to look for my master, who seems to have disappeared,” Jinnai said innocently. “I hope nothing terrible has happened to him.”
