Year of the Demon

by Steve Bein

  Only then did Daigoro notice that his sword had stopped just a hairsbreadth from Mio’s throat. By luck, by training, by reflex, or by whatever glamer Master Inazuma had hammered into the steel, his sword had stopped just shy of a killing blow.

  Daigoro looked to the dais. Hideyoshi was wide-eyed, slack-jawed, with an awed smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Shichio was so furious that Daigoro thought he might draw steel at any moment. Katsushima looked the proud father, chest swelling with pride, hands pressing his thighs as if to restrain himself from leaping to Daigoro’s side. Daigoro gave his audience a small bow. Then all eyes turned to General Mio.

  Flat on his back, Mio roared with laughter. He touched two fingers to his missing ear, laughed harder, and rolled his head back onto the sand to look at his liege lord. “Now that’s a fighter! My lord, find me a hundred men like this and I’ll bring those Hojos to heel by the end of the week.”

  Daigoro looked at Mio, at Glorious Victory, and at his own foot, which was still planted on Mio’s belly as if the general were a ship’s bow and Daigoro were a sea captain. Without meaning to, he’d effectively claimed Mio as a prize.

  Hideyoshi clapped and rose to his feet. “Most impressive! Now we see why he’s called the Bear Cub of Izu.”

  Daigoro stepped off his fallen foe, whose laughter now mixed with tiny grunts of pain as his hands prodded his belly wound. “You must understand,” Daigoro said softly, “it was not my intention to embarrass you.”

  “Embarrass me? Master Bear Cub, you’ve honored me. People will talk about this duel for a hundred years. Think of it! The little cub who knocked down the mountain! Come, help me up. Let’s find something to eat.”

  15

  Daigoro awoke with a start. The night was silent—or as silent as it ever was this close to the coast. Frogs chirped; cicadas sang; the surf breathed in and out, in and out. These were his lullabies ever since childhood, but tonight something was amiss.

  He slipped out of bed, shivering at the transition from Akiko’s warmth under the bedcovers. He found his robe and belt, and automatically tucked his swords into his belt as he looked around for something to tie back his hair. Then he stepped into his sandals and drew the shoji aside to get some fresh air.

  A lone figure stood in the middle of the courtyard.

  His shadow seemed blue against the white gravel, and his footsteps crunched audibly as he paced slowly toward Daigoro’s bedchamber. Another figure approached Daigoro as well: Tomo, running as silently as he could, his stockings making muted thumps against the wooden planks of the veranda. He all but slid to a stop at Daigoro’s feet, already kneeling. After a deep bow he looked back up with a worried smile. Out of breath, he said, “Your guest, Okuma-dono. He requests an audience.”

  Daigoro’s bodyguards had not bestirred themselves. They recognized Tomo on sight, and the sword-armed man in the courtyard was still too far away to be any threat. They were right not to have woken Daigoro, but he saw that they’d made that subtle transition from awareness to readiness.

  “Stand down,” Daigoro told them. “Tomo, tell the rest of our sentries not to interfere.”

  He limped stiffly down the stairs, sore from the gymnastics in facing Mio, and crossed the courtyard to meet Shichio—for the dark, stalking figure could only be Shichio. His silhouette was tall and thin, his shadow a long needle on the stones, but more than this, only one man in the compound was drawn inexorably to Glorious Victory Unsought.

  But as Daigoro drew near, he did not see Shichio’s face. His skin went cold at the sight of a demonic visage. Short, wicked horns curled up from Shichio’s forehead, and long iron fangs framed his mouth. A row of sharp teeth hid his upper lip, and his expression was unreadable behind a fierce iron scowl.

  Daigoro had no idea what to do with this. He’d never faced a madman. His mother teetered on the verge of madness, but even she didn’t stalk the house at night wearing swords and masks. Daigoro could measure the reach of Shichio’s sword arm with a glance, but he couldn’t begin to guess whether Shichio would draw on him. He knew what a sane man would do, but a lunatic? There was no telling what would provoke him.

  And do I care? he asked himself. Shichio had given him all the pretext he needed. No one, not even an aide to the regent, had the right to go sneaking through another man’s house.

  “What are you doing out here?” Daigoro said.

  “I wanted to see your sword,” Shichio said, his voice distant, even ghostly.

  “You might get a closer look than you’d like.” Daigoro kept his tone deliberately brusque. If he could tempt the peacock to draw on him, he could cut the man down with impunity. “Take one step closer and I’ll take your head.”

  Shichio seemed not to have heard him. “All this time, I thought I’d understood this mask of mine,” he said. “I’d always thought it awakened visions of swords. But they’re not, are they? They’re visions of your sword.”

  “No. You’re wrong.”

  “I’m not. I felt the change as soon as we set foot on shore. The need . . . it grew stronger, almost like a living creature. I could feel it under my skin. I did not understand it then, but I do now. Your sword and my mask, they are kin somehow. The closer they come together, the greater my need becomes. That sword—what did they say it was called? Glorious Victory Unsought? Yes. It’s as if my mask can see it. It needs it. I must have it.”

  “Your mask has nothing to do with it. This is Inazuma steel. Men have gone mad in pursuit of it. Some have killed for it.”

  That seemed to snap Shichio out of his reverie. He almost seemed hurt. “Is that how you think of me? A madman come to murder you for your weapon?”

  “You’re welcome to try. Draw your blade, or else go back to bed. One way or the other, I will not abide a man going masked and armed in my home.”

  Shichio scoffed. “What do you take me for? A common burglar?”

  “An assassin,” Daigoro said. “You and your master have accepted my hospitality. A hundred of your clansmen sleep under my roofs. And here you are, skulking around wearing the face of a demon. Do you fancy yourself a shinobi? Did you think to pass through walls to kill me in my sleep?”

  The eyes behind that mask shifted from Glorious Victory to meet Daigoro’s stare. “You are a rude, impudent boy,” Shichio said. “You do not deserve to carry such artistry at your hip. I should take it from you and put it in a place of honor, far away from this hovel and its salty air.”

  “Say it louder,” Daigoro said. “Let everyone hear you insult your host and his home. Or else go back to bed. I have no interest in treating with a lunatic.”

  “Nor I with an insolent cub.”

  Daigoro felt his temper surging in his veins. Katsushima would have advised patience. Daigoro’s father would have reminded him of Glorious Victory’s curse. But this arrogant peacock had brought the regent’s own fury to rain down on House Okuma, and he would do so again if given half a chance. Daigoro was sure of it. He’d given serious thought to murdering an innocent monk just to make this peacock go away. Why not take the peacock’s head instead?

  Somehow Glorious Victory Unsought had cleared her scabbard. Daigoro could not remember unsheathing her. There was no pain in his right hand. The stiffness in his muscles was gone, though he’d felt it only moments ago. Shichio looked at the blade and even raised a hand as if to touch it. “So beautiful,” he said.

  • • •

  It was so beautiful. The sight of the boy drawing a weapon on him should have terrified Shichio—indeed, it did terrify him, but his fright was no match for his desire for the sword. He had never felt such overwhelming need to have something for his own. Even his beloved mask paled in comparison. In fact, the mask itself wanted him to take the sword. His right hand reached out without his even willing it, desperate to touch the gleaming steel. So beautiful, he thought. He might even have said it aloud. It was hard to be sure; the sword held all of his attention.

  “If you want it, you can have it,”
the Bear Cub said. “All you have to do is take it from me.”

  He lowered his weapon. Shichio’s gaze followed it. The sword could be his. He needed it. He’d seen it in thousands of visions. His mask wanted him to take it. The vile boy had left himself exposed. Vulnerable. Shichio reached for his katana.

  A voice in his mind cried out in protest. This whelp had bested Mio, and Mio was more than a match for Shichio even if the giant were only armed with a chopstick. Shichio knew it—hated it, but knew it. He stood no chance against the Bear Cub, and yet the mask bent all his will toward that massive, magnificent sword. He was not one to believe in sorcery, but there was no doubting it now: the mask held some power over him. It was bewitched, and though Shichio did not understand the nature of its enchantment, he knew his need for the Bear Cub’s Inazuma blade was irresistible. It might well kill him, and yet he could only obey.

  He hurled himself at the sword. The boy anticipated the move and stepped back. Shichio clawed out with both hands, reaching for the sword’s hilt but finding only air. The Bear Cub’s weapon soared upward, fast as an arrow. Shichio knew his head was soon to leave his shoulders.

  But the boy missed. His cut fell short.

  It did not strike flesh, but it did find iron. The Inazuma blade sheared off one of the mask’s fangs—just the tip of it, but it felt like it cut Shichio’s own tooth, right down to the root.

  The world began to spin. The Bear Cub lost his balance and stumbled out of reach. Shichio clutched at his face. The mask bit into his palm, just where the Bear Cub’s sword had cut. The fang ended in sharp right angles now, its beautiful curves spoiled forever. And through the broken fang, Shichio could feel new power leaking into the mask.

  The barest caress of the mask had always made him think of swords. Today was the first time it had ever made him crave a sword so strongly. It hungered for Inazuma steel—and now, because the boy had damaged it, he felt that hunger changing. He could not say how. He knew no more than a wave knows the shape it is destined to take when it hits the shore, but he felt the surging power of transformation.

  Still huddled and clutching his face, somehow he could sense the huge Inazuma blade coming toward him. His own sword was still in its scabbard. Even if the mask hadn’t distracted him, sheer fright made him forget to draw his weapon. The Bear Cub lunged with a broad, two-handed swipe strong enough to cut a man in half. All Shichio could do was duck and hope.

  • • •

  Daigoro’s cut should have chopped Shichio in half. He had the reach. Shichio’s blade was still in its sheath. He was defenseless. And once again, Daigoro missed.

  His blade sailed over Shichio’s head and sent Daigoro spinning. The blade had taken him off balance. Again. And he knew why. He wanted Shichio dead. He wanted to claim victory over this cocky son of a bitch and make House Okuma safe once and for all. Hideyoshi could not be angry: Shichio had broken every law of hospitality. If General Mio had anything to say about it, killing Shichio might earn Daigoro a general’s rank. Daigoro could outshine even his father, his greatest role model, his hero.

  And for that reason, Glorious Victory Unsought would see him dead.

  That was his sword’s curse: it ensured victory, but only to those who did not seek it. Daigoro had never lost a duel with live steel because he never wanted to fight. The day he wanted to win would be the day his father’s sword would make him lose. Daigoro had seen it before. Ichiro died because of it, slain in the snow on a moonlit night just like this one. Now Daigoro, standing under the moon on snow-white gravel, finally understood.

  He sheathed Glorious Victory—no small feat, given her length—and it rendered him vulnerable. If Shichio were to draw on him now, Daigoro had no chance to counterstrike. But Shichio did not draw his weapon. He stumbled backward, clutching that sinister mask as if it pained him. Blood dripped from his hands, giving Daigoro the eerie impression that the mask itself was bleeding.

  “It was a mistake for you to threaten me in my own home,” Daigoro said, wishing to hell that he could just cut this peacock down and be done with it. “I am well within my rights to kill you. But I won’t.”

  Just saying it aloud made his heart sink. This man was a lunatic. Letting him live was dangerous. But he was also cowering and unarmed, and Daigoro had already stretched the bounds of honor by attacking him. Failing to kill him was the worst kind of embarrassment: every sentry in earshot would have moved to see what transpired in the courtyard, and none of them understood the curse and blessing of Glorious Victory Unsought. They would only see a crippled boy try to kill an unarmed man and fail.

  “Go back to the safety of your regent,” he said. The words were so heavy that he thought they might crush him. “Hide under his wing, and remember the Bear Cub of Izu showed you mercy tonight.”

  And with that he watched Shichio walk away, knowing full well that this was his family’s worst enemy, and that he might never have another chance to kill him.

  BOOK THREE

  HEISEI ERA, THE YEAR 22

  (2010 CE)

  16

  Mariko jumped just before the oncoming car hit her in the knees.

  The screech of tires on blacktop filled the air, overpowered by the stink of burning rubber. Mariko tucked and rolled just like the department’s aikido instructor taught her, somersaulting across the hood and coming down in a dead sprint.

  Her quarry was ten meters ahead of her and gaining. His name was Nanami, a lanky twenty-two-year-old with frosty blond highlights in his hair, a long history of drug priors, and a distinct height advantage that left Mariko and her shorter legs struggling to keep up with him.

  Adrenaline and sheer dumb luck took Nanami through four lanes of traffic without so much as a bump. Mariko’s only edge was that his mad dash had panicked oncoming drivers enough to slow them a bit. She skimmed across a taxicab’s hood in a feet-first Ichiro Suzuki slide that gained her a precious fraction of a second.

  Nine meters now. Nanami cut a diagonal across the flagstone courtyard of a Shinto shrine three hundred years older than the high-rises that flanked it. Mariko cut a sharper angle and closed the gap.

  Eight meters. She dogged Nanami into the narrow alley between the shrine and one of the apartment buildings. It was a dead straightaway. In seconds he widened the gap to ten meters, then twelve.

  And then Han blindsided him. Just as Nanami cleared the corner of the apartment complex, Han hit him in the knees with a perfect double-leg takedown. The two men hit the ground in a rolling skirmish that saw Han take a flailing haymaker to the jaw before Mariko tackled Nanami and laid him out flat.

  “Good morning again,” Han said, rubbing his cheek and kneeling on the back of Nanami’s neck. “You should have listened the first time, Nanami-san. All we wanted to do was talk.”

  Mariko cuffed Nanami’s wrists behind his back. His highlighted hair sponged up a lingering pool of early morning rainwater. “Sweet double-leg,” she said.

  “Thanks,” said Han. “Sorry I was a few seconds late on the cutoff.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Your jaw okay?”

  Han stretched it out a bit. “Yeah,” he said, “but I think I chipped a tooth. See, Nanami-san? All you had to do was talk and we wouldn’t have to bring you in. But now I need to file an injury report, and that means we have to arrest you.”

  “Shit,” Nanami said, “if I’da known you had all this pincer movement shit, I wouldn’ta lit out like that.”

  Mariko felt him relax in her grip. It was only the repeat offenders that did that. First-timers always struggled a while, straining in vain against the cuffs. There was a bit of a learning curve before a perp could get comfortable in this situation, but Nanami was an old hand at this.

  Mariko wished she could be as calm. The break-in this morning still had her rattled, and the theft of her sensei’s sword—her most prized possession—left her feeling bereft. Even her endorphin high wasn’t enough to distract her from her worries. All the more reason not to file an official repo
rt on the burglary; if Lieutenant Sakakibara thought she was distracted, he could bench her. She blinked hard, wiped the sweat off the back of her neck, and got her head back in the game.

  “Speed,” she said. “You buy from the Kamaguchi-gumi, neh?”

  “You know I do.” Nanami sighed it as much as said it, his tone sullen. He wasn’t wrong. They did know it, and that’s why Han had chosen to pay him a visit in the first place. Han had scores of street contacts. Developing a network was inevitable after eight years in Narcotics, but Han was the master: he seemed to have an informant for any given occasion. When they left post that morning, Mariko had said she wanted to talk to someone with Kamaguchi-gumi connections and who also knew where to score top-shelf speed. Han’s reply was inevitable: “I know just the guy.”

  “So how’s their product?” Han asked Nanami.

  “Kamaguchi? Used to be shit. Now it’s good. You wanna get off my head now?”

  Han transferred some weight out of the knee on Nanami’s neck, but he didn’t let him go. “I heard the Kamaguchis have been last in the league,” he said. “Are you saying my intel is bullshit?”

  Nanami tried to shake his head, but he couldn’t do it with his chin pressed into the concrete. “Damn, Han, you gotta treat me right. I’m talking, neh? Why you gotta get all police brutality on me?”

  Mariko felt her heart rate surge at that—brutality was a serious charge, and it pissed her off when people threw it around like it was nothing—but Han just laughed it off. “You resisted arrest and assaulted an officer. Consider yourself lucky you don’t have a face full of pepper spray.”

  Mariko’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it. “The sooner you talk, the sooner he can let you up,” she said.

  “Used to be the Kamaguchis were way behind,” said Nanami. “In the market, neh? Now they’re killing it. They got the Daishi. New shit. Kamaguchi’s the only ones who got it.”