by Steve Bein
It does matter, Mariko thought. It has to. That was the oath she swore when they gave her the badge. The law was supposed to matter, even when morals and logic and everything else said it shouldn’t.
Suppose I put you there again, he’d said, but he didn’t have to. She’d placed herself on that platform as soon as he started comparing numbers. That’s what got the tears flowing.
The vision stood out in her mind as clearly as if Akahata were in the same room. Her left hand squeezed smoothly; a black circle appeared in Akahata’s forehead. The kick of the gun seemed to come much later. Its deafening thunderclap too. Even in the moment, Akahata seemed to stand on his feet for an eternity, clutching that high school boy he’d grabbed as a human shield. When they finally fell together, Mariko was dead sure she’d shot the kid.
What would that mean, shooting the hostage instead of the bomber? Mariko didn’t believe in karma, but if there were such a thing, would it matter that Mariko was the one who killed the kid, and Akahata who blew up everyone else? Did it matter that the kid would have died anyway?
It did matter. It had to matter. Didn’t it?
Furukawa gave her no time to ponder the question. “The proposition before you is simple, Detective Oshiro. Join us, kill Koji Makoto, and make your city safe again. Or do not, and live with the guilt of doing nothing.”
Mariko looked down at the gun in her hand. A teardrop fell from her eye. She watched it fall all the way down until it splashed against the front sight of the pistol.
She rubbed her eyes with the nub of her right forefinger. It came away wet and glistening. Shaking her head, she told herself, “I can’t believe I’m going to do this.”
“You must,” Furukawa said. His voice was gentle now, almost grandfatherly.
“No.” Mariko looked him right in the eye. “I’m not a pool ball. You want to knock me around, you better be ready for me to knock back. I’m going to walk out that door, and I don’t want to see you again. Ever. Find someone else to do your dirty work.”
Furukawa had no idea what to do with that. He watched, dumbstruck, as Mariko slammed the door behind her.
BOOK SIX
AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA PERIOD, THE YEAR 21
(1588 CE)
26
“You’re a little one, aren’t you?”
The man who asked the question was anything but little. He had shoulders like an ox and a belly like a whale. He carried a long naginata with a blade as broad as a butcher’s cleaver. It was rusty, ill kept but well used. There was no mistaking the notches taken out of its edge; this one had seen plenty of fighting.
The big man—already named Whalebelly in Daigoro’s mind—had two accomplices. On his left stood a flat-faced man wielding two short kama. The sickles were intended for farming, but they were increasingly used in hand-to-hand combat now that the Sword Hunt had disarmed most of the population. On Whalebelly’s right stood a lean, haggard, foul-smelling woman who looked tougher than the other two put together. Her yellow nails were broken but her knives weren’t. She had one in each hand and half a dozen more tucked into her belt.
For his part, Daigoro was armed primarily with a huge bundle of dried wattle. It was his best disguise to date. The sheaf was large enough, and bowed his back enough, that bystanders had trouble making eye contact with him. It was light but it didn’t look that way, so no one would question a boy of his size limping under the load. Better yet, it was long enough that he could hide his father’s odachi in the center of it. So disguised, Daigoro found he could pass unnoticed within an arm’s reach of Shichio’s patrols.
On the other hand, his hunched posture restricted his peripheral vision, which made it easy for yamabushi like Whalebelly to take him unawares. His disguise also made it impossible to draw Glorious Victory, so if it came to blows, he would have no choice but to face these bandits with his wakizashi. Even that was tucked up into the bundle, frightfully slow on the draw.
“Wattle don’t sell for much,” he said, affecting a lowborn vernacular. “Not much use to folk like you, neither.”
“What do you mean, ‘folk like you’?” Whalebelly demanded. “You think you’re better than us, farmer boy?”
“No, sir. Figured you’re not fond of building fences is all.”
A sudden gale brought the surrounding bamboo forest to life. Leaves rustled. Long, green stalks clacked and clattered. The wind carried the smells of the yamabushi too: old sweat, oily hair, clothes so dirty they would never be worth washing again. And yes, alcohol. Whalebelly was drunk and spoiling for a fight.
Daigoro looked past them, down the natural tunnel formed by the overarching bamboo. It ran straight downhill to the road. Once he reached the road, he knew he’d see the moss green banners of House Yasuda. No more than a hundred paces, he guessed. A hundred paces and he would have peace. Damn you, he thought, damn all you gods and devils. Why could you not give me just a hundred paces more?
A lone boy versus three armed bandits. A one-sided fight to say the least. “I’ll give you one chance to retreat,” Daigoro said.
“Hah!” Whalebelly whacked his naginata against the ground, just like a bull pawing the earth before a charge.
“So that’s the way of it,” Daigoro said.
A one-sided fight, if the lone boy was samurai. Daigoro predicted the woman for a thrower—no reason to carry eight knives if she wasn’t—and he made sure her first shot went into the wattle. Flipping his sheaf the other way, he intercepted Whalebelly’s charge. The oversized naginata entangled itself irretrievably in the tangle of bundled sticks.
Daigoro ducked the next knife. Then he pulled the first one from the wattle and rammed it into Whalebelly’s diaphragm. It sank all the way to the hilt. That was enough to send the other man running.
The woman stood her ground, but only for the moment. Whalebelly clutched his weapon, trying desperately to keep his feet, so between the dying giant and the huge sheaf of sticks, Daigoro had adequate cover against her knives. Every missed throw would arm her quarry with another blade. “I’ll go,” she said, “but only if you let me take his wineskin.”
“It’s all yours.”
She crept up cautiously, expecting a double cross. Then, quick as a cat, she sliced it free of her dying leader’s body and fled along the nearest game trail. In moments she vanished into the bamboo. Just like that, Daigoro was alone again.
Not for the first time, he wondered what the gods of good fortune meant for him. He was unlucky to encounter these yamabushi, but lucky that Whalebelly hadn’t bled much. Daigoro’s disguise would be useless if it were doused in human blood. He was lucky to have survived the battle, short though it was. On the other hand, was it lucky to send two survivors into the back hills? Sooner or later, tales would spread of the skinny little boy who killed Whalebelly in a single blow. Once Shichio’s hunters heard the stories, they would know Daigoro had been here.
Luck and unluck. He was lucky that Whalebelly’s lot didn’t answer to Shichio, lucky that there were three of them and not six, but supremely unlucky to have to run into them at all. He was sure to run across more yamabushi so long as he traveled the back country, but he could not ride the roads so long as Shichio’s patrols were abroad. Life would have been so much easier if that damned peacock could just choke to death on a piece of sushi. “Give me that,” Daigoro said, looking up to the gods. “Give me bad fortune too if you must, but give me this one good thing.”
He looked himself over once more. Then, satisfied that he wasn’t a bloody mess, he shouldered his burden once again and headed downhill.
When he reached the road, he found himself on the outskirts of the growing city of Yoshiwara. Rice paddies sprawled to his left and right, and before him the little lane sloped down to the checkpoint he and Katsushima had been trying to avoid. They’d met with success, because Daigoro was now west of the checkpoint; to get back to Izu, he’d have to go back through and follow the Tokaido east. That was good. The Yoshiwara checkpoint was the safest one for
him to cross, for it lay firmly within Yasuda territory, but that did not mean it was unwatched. Shichio was sure to have spies there. If they were smart, they would be looking east, not west.
Daigoro took shelter under his bulky load and limped for the little castle bearing the white-on-green centipede banners of House Yasuda.
Fuji-no-tenka was no Green Cliff. It did not have to be. The Green Cliff was the last bastion of House Yasuda, while Fuji-no-tenka was its forwardmost observation tower. The Yasuda forefathers knew their Sun Tzu as well as Daigoro did: the linchpin of a strong defense was knowledge of the enemy’s disposition. House Yasuda’s stables were renowned for their fast, hardy, intelligent horses. That reputation was founded in Fuji-no-tenka, where swift-footed messenger mounts were bred for rapid relays. The castle was built as much for horses as for men; its donjon was modest, its keep vast.
Daigoro had come to think of it as a relay station of his own. It was his first safe haven on the way to Kiyosu, which was where he decided to start his hunt for Streaming Dawn. The town of Kiyosu held the only advantage Daigoro had over Nene, whose resources vastly outstripped Daigoro’s in every conceivable respect. He could only assume she’d already gone to great lengths to find Streaming Dawn; beseeching Daigoro for help smacked of desperation. But Nene lacked one thing: the bedtime stories Daigoro had grown up with. How well he remembered his father’s tale of the tanto that cursed the bearer with a ghoulish, twisted form of eternal life. That tale always began in Kiyosu.
But Fuji-no-tenka came first, because with any luck, it would be in Fuji-no-tenka that Daigoro would solve the conundrum of giving Streaming Dawn to two people at once. Yasuda Jinichi, eldest son of Lord Yasuda Jinbei, was lord of Fuji-no-tenka and eldest brother of the miserly, petty-minded Yasuda Kenbei. If Jinichi commanded it, Kenbei would have to end this ridiculous war of coins. There would be no more murdered pigeons, nor any reason for Kenbei to seek Sora Nobushige’s backing. Sora would lose his bargaining position, and Daigoro could give Streaming Dawn to Lady Nene with no fear of jeopardizing his family.
Everything depended on whether Jinichi was more like his father, a noble and honorable man, or more like his brother Kenbei, a spark that had flown a long way from the fire.
Despite the fact that Daigoro had spent his whole life with the Yasudas almost on his doorstep, he’d never met Jinichi in the flesh before. Jinichi was old enough to be Daigoro’s grandfather, and he’d served as lord of Fuji-no-tenka for forty years. He reminded Daigoro of nothing so much as a well-used walking stick. He was scrawny, almost knobbly, with skin like knotted, polished wood. Careworn but strong.
Though they’d never met, he recognized Daigoro on sight—not an especially difficult feat, once Daigoro cast off the farmer’s guise. Glorious Victory Unsought was unmistakable, and as close allies to House Okuma, the high-ranking Yasudas knew all about Daigoro’s weakling leg.
“So it’s true,” Jinichi said. His voice was thin and reedy, just like his father’s. “You no longer wear the Okuma bear paw.”
Daigoro bowed and tried not to blush. “I suppose you’ve heard why.”
“Oh, what haven’t we heard of you? If I believed all of it, I wouldn’t know whether you’re alive or dead. That’s what some folk are saying of you now: you’re a vengeful ghost. Have you heard that one?”
Daigoro felt his cheeks flush despite his best efforts. When Jinichi saw it, he reached out with a gnarled brown finger and gave Daigoro a poke, as if to be sure he was there. “There, you see? Not a ghost. Not a traitor either, I think. Or a pirate. Or a ninja lord. Or a bear kami that can take human form. Now that’s something I’d like to see before I die. Tell me, can you turn into a bear?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Too bad.” He gave Daigoro a yellow-toothed smile. “Tell me, son, why are you here? And why on earth did you walk all this way? Judging by the state of your hakama, you must have been wading through mud.”
That, or I’ve been wearing the same hakama for four days, Daigoro thought. The same everything else too. By the gods, what I wouldn’t give for a bath.
But he said none of that. “I come to discuss House Okuma’s debts to House Yasuda.”
“Then send a pigeon next time. By the Buddha! You must have worn your feet down to nubs.”
Daigoro explained why he couldn’t do that, and why his family’s debts to the Yasudas had become a concern in the first place. With each new detail, Jinichi’s mood grew darker. At last he could take no more. “Stop. I hear you trying to speak gracefully of my brother, trying to avoid offense, but let me nip that in the bud. Kenbei was always the runt of the litter. That was his karma, and he should have learned to make peace with it a long time ago. How to cope with a grown man who acts like a child, I don’t know. If I were back home, I would bend him over my knee and spank him.”
Daigoro’s whole body sagged, and he realized that prior to that moment his every muscle had been tight with anticipation. He’d never been sure whether Jinichi would take his side or Kenbei’s. Now relief washed over him like cool rain on a hot summer’s day. “I’m relieved to hear you say that. I have the feeling your father might beat you to that spanking when he wakes up.”
“If he wakes up. And that’s the trouble, isn’t it? Father named Kenbei steward. It is not my place to countermand him. If it were up to me, we would handle House Okuma’s debts the way we always have: as neighbors. As friends. As men of honor. But it is not up to me, Daigoro-san. My hands are tied.”
Daigoro deflated like a sail in a dead wind. He’d come to the conversation braced for disappointment, but Jinichi’s scorn for his brother had broken the braces down. Now that cool rain of relief became cloying and clammy. It chilled him to the bone.
“It’s not what you wanted to hear,” Jinichi said.
“No.” Daigoro could not think of a softer way to say it.
“Let me grant you a loan, at least. From my personal coffers, not from House Yasuda’s. Will that keep Kenbei’s claws away from your family’s purse strings?”
“For a while.” Daigoro should have softened that too, but he lacked the energy to come up with something more appropriate to say. They negotiated terms, but it was clear from the outset that Jinichi could not meet even a third of what Kenbei demanded. Daigoro could hardly turn down the coin, but even as he accepted it, he wondered how he would give Streaming Dawn to Lord Sora and Lady Nene at once.
As that thought struck him, he asked, “What do you know of Streaming Dawn?”
“The knife?” Jinichi’s lips pursed and his eyes widened. “Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long while.”
“Did you ever talk to my father about it?”
“How could I not? That was quite a story.”
“Would you tell me what you remember?”
“Of course, of course. Come, let’s have some tea.”
They had more than tea. Jinichi called servants to prepare a formal dinner, then sent a messenger into the foothills to fetch Katsushima. Daigoro had left his traveling companion with the horses in an abandoned logging camp. On the back roads they could ride together, but never in the public eye; Shichio’s mercenaries knew to look for a traveling pair, a crippled boy and his ronin companion. Daigoro’s mount was a giveaway too. With one leg heavier than the other, staying in an ordinary saddle was a constant struggle, so Daigoro rode with the special saddle Old Yagyu had constructed for him. It was one of a kind, all too easy to spot.
When Katsushima reached Fuji-no-tenka after dark, he came with what looked like a packhorse in tow. From a distance, Daigoro didn’t recognize his own mount; Jinichi’s messenger had brought a pack harness with him, and crammed Daigoro’s unique saddle into one of the panniers. For that Daigoro was supremely grateful; it was a clever ruse, and it had allowed Katsushima and their horses to reach Fuji-no-tenka unseen.
Jinichi and Daigoro talked over dinner while Katsushima remained characteristically quiet. Afterward, Daigoro had expected Katsushima to go out an
d find himself a sporting woman, but evidently his friend had taken an interest in the dinner conversation. “Forgive me,” he said as a maidservant poured sake, “but I’ve not heard the entire story; I’ve only heard the two of you comparing memories. Let me be sure I understand: do you honestly believe Okuma Tetsuro fought a demon?”
“I do,” said Jinichi. And I can turn into a bear, thought Daigoro.
“You don’t mean this poetically? You mean an actual creature from hell?”
Jinichi nodded. “A horned fiend with skin like polished steel. They say it could travel in human form, in the guise of an old crone. Lord Okuma told me its barest touch could kill the body while trapping the living mind inside. In those days people called it the demon assassin.”
“‘Those days’ weren’t so long ago,” Daigoro said. “I think I was nine or ten when my father came home to tell us about it.”
“You’re missing the point, my boy. This creature was hundreds of years old. The first time it visited Izu, I wasn’t even your age. Scared me half to death, it did. They say shinobi spellcraft summoned the creature. No one knows what dark bargain its masters struck with it, but somehow they commanded it to serve them. For hundreds of years it reigned as the deadliest killer in the realm.”
Daigoro held his tongue and drank his sake. The version Okuma Tetsuro told his sons was quite different. The demon was a disguise, not a creature. The wearer was indeed an assassin, and while it was true that some said the assassin was immortal, Daigoro’s father put the point rather differently: so long as the assassin goes masked, who can say whether it’s the same man? If ten men wore it over the span of a hundred years, did that make the assassin a hundred years old?
Of all his stories, this was the one Daigoro never asked him to repeat. It was the only one in which his father lost a fight. “But for an assassin’s mercy, I would be dead,” he’d said. Daigoro remembered little more than that; at the age of ten he had no interest in hearing about his valiant father’s vulnerability.
