by Ree Soesbee
Keenly honed, the poisoned tanto flashed beneath filth-encrusted robes, darting toward Hoturi's leg.
Toshimoko's sword leapt from its sheath before the assassin's blade could move three inches. The Kakita duelist dropped from his horse and struck. The katana sang through the air with the grace of a darting swallow.
A beat, and Toshimoko stood a half-pace down the road, shaking the blood from his blade while the two halves of the ronin's body struck the ground.
Hoturi's own sword, partially drawn, dropped back into the sheath of its saya with a quiet click. His face, as white as chalk, lost its charming smile and became the icy mask of the Crane Champion.
"An assassin." Toshimoko turned as he sheathed his katana. "And plague-ridden." The master of the Kakita spat down at the shivering corpse. Pus, as well as blood, stained the road beneath the fouled robes, and the ronin's chest bore sores covered in lice.
"He said that a plague infects our lands." Hoturi said coldly. "We must ask the Asahina shugenja to discover the truth of his words. We cannot afford to have samurai or heimin die from sickness, with the Lion prepared to march across our border. Perhaps this is Satsume's revenge for his ill-timed death...."
"Nonsense. And better a plague than the alternative," Toshimoko said grimly, throwing aside the twig that had still been in his mouth. Hoturi raised an eyebrow in question.
Toshimoko stared at the body of the dead assassin until the limbs ceased their spasmodic twitching. "Yes, better to have plague," he continued, stroking his chin in thought, "than the Taint of the Shadowlands. One can be healed, with time and prayers. The other rots at the land from the inside, cursing all who come near it with the infection of the Dark God of the South." Standing, Toshimoko moved toward his frightened pony.
"You suspect that the Shadowlands Taint spreads north through the Crab Wall?"
The old man's eyes were grim and unsmiling. "Suspect everything, Hoturi-sama. That is how to be sure you live another day." Toshimoko nodded once more, restoring his cheerful smile. "And you lived through today, eh, student?"
Hoturi nodded, looking back at the body by the side of the road. The knife had been meant to cause his death, destined to foul his body with the same plague that infested the ronin.
"Ride on, Hoturi," came the gruff voice of the sensei. "Pay no attention to the past. It is the future that should concern you, Crane Champion."
Hoturi paused, looking once more at what was left of the ronin, and then turned his horse to follow. Behind him, a brown and wilted leaf fell upon the ground, ignoring the single twitch of a ruined hand.
kyuden kakita
The higher peaks of the Doji Mountains carried snow all year round. Their white-crested tops shone in the sunlight on even balmy summer days, and their foreboding cliffs rose from the ocean shore like the cradling hands of Suit-engu, Fortune of the Sea. From the highest cliff, the plains spread for miles, filled with the wealth of rice and grain, the heart of the Crane. Also from those cliffs, one could see the city that surrounded Kyuden Kakita.
The keep itself was far from the mountains, but it stood like a white pebble amid yellow and green sand. Land on all sides of the Kyuden was rich, producing enough rice each year to feed the empire. From the banks of the southern mountains to the sparkling blue ocean to the east, the wealth of the Crane could be measured each year in thousands of bushels of rice—thousands of golden koku from the emperor's own hand.
Doji Hoturi had no interest in the fields, or in the peasants that fell to their knees in the thick water as he rode past. He approached the golden gates of the castle, his face seeming chiseled from the purest white marble. Before the gates bowed a retinue of Crane retainers and courtiers, sent to greet their champion with polite words and appropriate offerings. Hoturi had seen it all a hundred times, yet he sat aback his panting steed as if the Kakita men had his full attention.
Behind him, Toshimoko drew the hood of his cloak from his graying head and idly fingered his obi. This was not his place.
Before them stood Kyuden Kakita's golden gates, which never closed. Though this was the southernmost palace of the Kakita family, located far beneath the mountains that split the Emerald Empire, it was nonetheless one of the most beautiful palaces in Rokugan. The ancient oak gates were covered in thin golden filigree, silver kanji, jade threads, and delicately twisted vines of jewels. The legend of the keep was depicted there, of the Elemental Master who had arrived only to find the gates closed and barred against a storm. As the wind raged, the ancient sage had demanded entry. The marks he had struck on the door, marring the carvings and blunting the oak, still remained. His cries had gone unheard in the howling of the cold winter storm.
If Satsume had been champion then, the gates would have been manned with ten guards, no matter how cold the night. Hoturi's horse shifted under him as the Kakita by the gate began the elaborate bows that marked their lord's arrival. Satsume had never allowed anyone to remain idle—not even in the face of a winter typhoon.
It was said that the master's curse still remained on the keep. The curse dictated that if any child born within the encircling wall of Kyuden Kakita were to lift a sword, the Crane would fall. Thus, the gates stayed open, that no child could be born 'encircled' by the walls. It was a popular story among the bards and tale weavers of the empire and would certainly be told at this year's festival.
In all the land, only one child had ever been born encircled by the gates of Kyuden Kakita. Once, when the Lion troops had assaulted the keep and the Daidoji could not drive them back, a single woman had given birth to her second son. That child's name was Yoshi, daimyo of the Kakita.
"Your Honored Excellency." That very man stepped to the fore, bowing low. Yoshi was a delicate man with thin fingers and a sonorous voice. The Kakita's white hair flowed past his shoulders, held back in a thin cord positioned to accentuate his perfect features rather than to clear his face of hair. "Your lands and your people are given much prestige by your presence among us. We Kakita remember our blood ties to our brothers, the Doji, and we gladly open our lands, our mon, and our arms to you."
"Yoshi," the champion began once his retainer's voice had ceased. "Are the lands of the Kakita prepared for the festival?"
"Of course, my lord," Kakita Yoshi bowed again, his blue vest rippling perfectly with the motion.
"Have our guests begun to arrive?"
"Hai, my lord. They have."
Then it was time for the final question. "Have the gates of Kyuden Kakita been closed?' He had heard his father ask the question a thousand times, and only once had the answer not been the same.
"Never, my lord."
Within the keep, servants waited to lead the ponies away, and Hoturi dismounted with a casual air.
Behind him, Yoshi stepped to Toshimoko, their eyes meeting for a fraction of a second.
Before the courtier could speak, Toshimoko bov.-ed formally. "My daimyo," the Kakita swordsman said, "it is good to see that you are well."
"And you . . . Master Toshimoko," Yoshi said, returning the formality. "The students of the dueling school have missed your lessons."
Toshimoko barked a sudden laugh. "My students fear my return, more likely, Daimyo. They know that their shoulders will ache tomorrow as if the sky itself rested upon them."
Laughter from the courtiers surrounded them, and Doji Hoturi stepped within the golden gates. He ascended the small steps that led into the first courtyard, irritated by his own dirtiness and the long hours of travel. This was not the way he should greet his guests. A bath, first, he thought. Then he would oversee the final preparations for the festival.
And then ... he would deliver his greetings to her.
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The bath was steaming hot as if to scorch the impurity from his skin. There had been no good place to bathe along the road from Kyuden Doji, no deep waters other than the shore of the sea, and the bitter autumn winds kept such indulgences from being pleasurable. Hoturi removed his kimono and laid it aside, al
lowing a young heimin servant to wash his skin with the scraping sponge and ladle warm water over his shoulders to remove the soap. The washing came before slipping into the heat and comfort of the tub. Baths were for relaxing. Hoturi slid in. The servant bowed and exited the chamber, head lowered, kneeling outside in the hallway before sliding the thin rice screens of the bathing room closed.
Hoturi hardly noticed him. Such servants were commonplace in the palace. When he was young, he had tried to speak with them, encouraging them to tell him of their lives in the villages below the palace. Satsume had beaten him for it. That was how the eldest son of the Doji learned the complex social structure of the empire—through beatings and curses, through error and pain.
Father. Even the scalding water of the bath could not match the anger Hoturi felt when he remembered Satsume. His father had been killed during the treacherous coup of the Scorpion Clan, murdered by Bayushi Shoju as the Crane charged in the name of Emperor Hantei. Before that, Satsume had been the iron fist of the Crane, ruling the lands of the Doji, the Kakita, the Daidoji, and the Asahina from the palace of the Emerald Champion. He had two sons, Hoturi and his brother Kuwanan, and had adopted his only daughter after the death of Satsume's brother and wife, her true parents.
Satsume was not a pleasant man, but he was honorable, and he fought like the bravest Lion. Satsume allowed no man to stand between him and his duty as a samurai. He did not know compromise, and he did not remember how to love. To him, Hoturi was weak, a child in a man's body.
Hoturi's mother had been different. Of the three children of the Doji Champion, only Hoturi could truly remember her, and even those memories were few and scattered. Her name had been Teinko, Toshimoko's twin sister. She had been an artist of great renown, all but assumed by the Imperial Court to marry the lord of the Doji and bear his sons. Hoturi smiled as he fought to remember her face. Laughter on the beach as a child brought back flashes of it. Hoturi had loved her. After she had died, he had told Satsume he was going to be an artisan in her memory, to keep her alive in his heart.
Hoturi still carried the scar of his father's anger, white and faint, above his lip. "My son will be a samurai," the Crane Champion had snarled. "A warrior. I will have no son that turns his back on that duty."
Satsume would have killed him that day if he had not agreed to join the Kakita Dueling Academy. It had been a simple choice for the father: a dead son who had failed him, or a living son who obeyed his responsibility to the clan. The decision had been harder on the son. Although Hoturi was now one of the foremost students of the Crane style of iai-jutsu, he had never been able to satisfy his father's demand for perfection.
At times, it seemed Satsume wished to burn all traces of Hoturi's mother from his soul, to crush all that was left of her gentleness. Satsume never remarried, never took a lover or a concubine, and never allowed Teinko's name to be spoken in the lands of the Doji. The only person exempt from that ban was Toshimoko, whose love for her had equaled Satsume's.
Teinko's suicide had left Satsume a shattered man, with only duty to guide him. That sense of duty had been passed on to both of his sons.
The bathwater rippled as Hoturi moved, trying to change the direction of his thoughts.
This was the dawn of peace between the Crane and the Lion. Peace had been Hoturi's goal since the day his father burned on a pyre in the emperor's city. It would be Hoturi's legacy to the Crane. Toshimoko occasionally chided his student for it, and Satsume would never have settled for peace, but this was not his father's time. Satsume's ashes lay scattered over the battlefields of the empire. He was no longer Crane Champion.
"I am," Hoturi said sharply, listening to the echoes on the water.
Satsume's voice echoed in his mind: You will never prove yourself worthy. Not to me.
Hoturi rose from the water, long white locks clinging to his shoulders. His gray eyes burned with resolve. Slipping on his kimono and reaching for his swords, he moved the shoji screens apart. As he touched the hilt of the ancestral sword of the Crane, it gave a faint, ethereal chime to welcome him.
For more than nine hundred years, it had made the same noise whenever its true owner placed his hand on its hilt, recognizing the authority and honor of the Crane heir. The sound gave Hoturi pause. He looked with pride at its enameled saya. The sword had been his companion since his gem-puku, the day he became a man. It still served him well, as it had served his ancestors since the birth of the empire. One day, he would give it to his own son, and it would ring for a new Doji boy and never again for Hoturi. He looked forward to that day. Placing the ancient katana gently in his obi beside his grandfather's wakizashi, Hoturi stepped into the corridor.
The servant, still kneeling patiently outside in the hallway, bowed his head to the floor and pressed his palms to the mahogany wood beneath him.
"Tell my wife that I will meet her in the gardens after I have dressed," Hoturi commanded as he passed.
The servant nodded a brief, "Hai," and leaped to the task.
The Crane Champion had returned home, and all would be well again.
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In the garden, flowers blossomed despite the oncoming frost. Crane gardeners, skilled beyond normal measures, used humble magics to encourage the last few buds to spring into beautiful blossoms. Though the plum leaves changed through the year, the flowering vines retained their color and rich scent until the first snow. Outside the palace, forests warred with paddies of rice, struggling to reclaim lands the Crane had tamed. Inside, the courtyard gardens blended wilderness and domestic peace. Every detail, from the small blight on a leaf to the great stone lanterns in the willow-shrouded pond, was shaped to embody peaceful meditation.
Artisans sat among the garden's curving paths, practicing their arts outside the palace libraries. There would be only a few more perfect days this year. Best to capture their image and remember their beauty, to live the moment rather than allow it to escape. The Kakita halls were a place of perfection, where all the arts of Rokugan were studied and appreciated. Students from across the empire came here to learn the delicate magic of the artisan—the maya of imagination and expression. They were not shugenja, like the spell-crafting priests of Rokugan's Phoenix and Dragon clans. Still, the arts of the Kakita artisans were respected in the emperor's court and through the land.
A pair of soft cushions rested beside the path, dark gray against the green grass. Two women sat there, trading stories and whispering of the visitors who had begun to arrive for the Festival of the Last Harvest. A white-haired head bowed low to a darker one, and gray eyes laughed into green ones, but the women's features were very similar. They were alike enough to pass as sisters.
". . . she is the prettiest of his legitimate daughters, so of course he hopes she will marry well."
"Well, perhaps, but a Crab? They're barely articulate." The banter was kind-hearted. Shizue, daughter of Satsume, plucked a small white blossom from a nearby bush and tested its fragrance delicately.
The dark-haired maiden sighed. "I wish she would simply fall in love." Her features were long and thin but held a certain sweetness that caught the eye. Although none could call her a creature of perfection, Doji Ameiko was a beautiful woman in her own right. Petite, she had a slightly crooked smile that hid gleaming white teeth, and her almond-shaped eyes danced behind dark lashes.
Shizue laughed. "Ameiko, women don't marry for love. You should know that. Love comes later."
A sigh. "No?"
"Did you love Hoturi when you married him?"
The answer was lost in a flutter of Unicorn maidens who pursued a puppy around the path. Their chatter echoed across the lake and resounded from willow trees. Behind the trees strode a tall figure, his eyes searching through the shading branches.
"Here he comes," whispered Doji Shizue. Her eyes sparkled, and her turned-up nose crinkled affectionately. "I'll leave you two alone. I'm sure Yoshi could use my help with the arrangements for the Phoenix Clan arrivals." As she spoke, she rose from h
er pillows with a graceful bow.
"Shizue-san ... ?" Ameiko whispered, and the storyteller half-turned. "Thank you, for keeping me company." She bowed her head slightly."
Shizue smiled. "For you, Sister, anything."
Ameiko watched her sister-in-law step toward the Crane Champion, her walk shifting but graceful. Had it not been for her clubfoot, Shizue would have been one of the most sought-after women in the land, as her title and her talent warranted. Still, she remained alone, assisting Kakita Yoshi with his courtly duties and passing her evenings in storytelling and song. How sad for her, Ameiko thought, not to know love.
As her husband drew near, Ameiko lowered her face and bowed, her hands pressed to the ground. "Husband."
"Wife." Hoturi's voice was rich and friendly, as befitted her station by his side. Ameiko waited until he had performed the half-bow expected by decorum, and then raised her eyes to his.
For a moment, there was only silence between them. Then, training and polite manners intervened, and Ameiko gestured to the cushion at her side. "Will you do me the honor of resting with me, Hoturi-sama? I would be grateful for your time."
"Of course, Ameiko-san," Hoturi said quietly, removing his sword from his obi so that he could kneel upon the hillside. "So," Hoturi began, his eyebrow raising in polite interest, "have you been comfortable here, among the Kakita, in my absence?"
"Yes, Husband," Ameiko's voice was soft and pliant. "I have spent much time preparing for the festival."
"Tell me." Hoturi smiled. Ameiko blushed, and nodded, and Hoturi continued, "Will you have a dance to perform?"
"Hai, my husband." Ameiko was an accomplished dancer, trained by the Kakita from her sixth birthday. It had been one of the reasons she had caught Satsume's attention as a bride for his errant son. Despite her lineage as a poor daughter of the Fox Clan, Ameiko had the instincts of a Crane.
