Year of the Demon fb-2

by Steve Bein

  Shichio made a pouting face. “I don’t want a head, I want his head.”

  “Well, you can’t have it.”

  Shichio slipped the mask off his head. “You’re certain of that?”

  “What is it with that mask of yours?” Hashiba pushed Shichio’s hand away, got to his feet, and strode forward to look down at his capital city. His shadow bisected a broad rectangle of moonlight on the floor. “You’re too fond of that thing,” he said. “You pet it like a house cat.”

  Shichio was surprised to discover it was true. His thumb was running over the tips of the mask’s teeth, over and over, wholly independently of his will. It was an unconscious habit, but now that Hashiba had drawn his attention to it, Shichio recognized that caressing the mask and speaking of violence were two faces of one coin. Visions of swords, of stabbing and being stabbed, of penetrating and being penetrated. The mask inspired these things in him. That was why he wore it during their liaisons, and why all this talk of beheading had aroused similar feelings. Shichio felt himself begin to stiffen.

  “It’s the craftsmanship,” he said, still stroking the mask. “Come back here. Look at how expressive it is. In gold, this kind of detail is pedestrian, but in iron? Never. It’s as rare as anything. It’s the most rugged sort of beauty, don’t you think?”

  Just like you, Shichio thought to himself, but Hashiba’s musings went in a different direction. “I think I should have buried it right beside the assassin you took it from.”

  Shichio remembered that night all too well. It was the first time he’d killed a man. It was the night he made himself valuable to Hashiba, the night his fortunes started changing for the better. Rightly or wrongly, Shichio attributed his success to the mask. He often wondered what would be different if he’d purchased it instead of killed for it. Might its touch bring thoughts of money to his mind instead? Perhaps the obsession with swords was innate to its iron, or perhaps the mask just gave focus to Shichio’s hatred of the samurai caste. It was impossible to know for certain.

  “You should throw away that demon of yours,” Hashiba said. “And throw away thoughts of this northern monk as well. He’s no threat to anyone.”

  “So you have heard from the Okuma boy. And not just a wedding announcement.”

  Hashiba sighed, dropped back among the silken pillows, and surrendered. “Yes.”

  Shichio only had to think about it for a second. “You received a letter, didn’t you? You brought it here? Tonight?”

  Hashiba’s only answer was to glance in the direction of the door. Shichio walked saucily to the entryway and found a large, carefully folded page among Hashiba’s other things. Smiling, Shichio sauntered back, sitting next to Hashiba again and opening the letter.

  As he began to read, Hashiba took hold of Shichio’s hand and guided it back down to his crotch. Shichio skipped over the standard salutations and looked for mention of the monk. “I respectfully recommend against beheading our abbot of Katto-ji,” he read. “He is an old man who does harm to no one, but more than this, he has taken the tonsure. I fear I may bring bad karma upon you by fulfilling your order to execute one such as him, and it is every samurai’s sworn duty not to harm his lord.”

  Shichio felt his heart race, but he kept reading. “Given the choice between obeying and harming the emperor’s chosen regent on the one hand and disobeying to protect his interests on the other, I must choose disobedience. Can you believe the impudence of this boy?”

  Hashiba laughed. “I thought him rather clever.”

  “He disobeys a direct order from his regent!”

  “He’s the only samurai in the land who vows to protect me even in my future lives. Think of it! A bodyguard for my next reincarnation. Shichio, can you not just laugh this off and let it pass?”

  “I tell you, that monk is a threat to you and your house. Kill him.”

  “The boy has done as much already. Read the next paragraph.”

  Shichio glanced down at the Okuma brat’s scribblings. What he read there made him angry enough to stand up and start pacing. “A garrison? That’s all? Just a garrison outside the monastery?”

  “It is more than enough. That old man won’t leave until he floats out on the smoke rising from his pyre.”

  Shichio crumpled the letter and flung it at the floor. “He can still talk. He can still teach. He wouldn’t be the first monk to turn his order against you.”

  “That again?” Hashiba dropped his head heavily back on his pillow. “How many times have I told you? The Ikko sect is no more. Oda and I wiped them out years ago. The only ones to escape the sword did it by swearing their eternal loyalty to me.”

  “This one is in the north. You never got any loyalty oaths from the north.”

  “That’s because they’re all dead. Tokugawa saw to that. He was as scared of them as you are.”

  Shichio sat heavily and laid his head on Hashiba’s belly. His hand wandered back down to Hashiba’s cock. “I want his head.”

  “You can’t have it and you’d best get used to it. That old man is worth a lot more to me alive. Killing him would only cost me a future allegiance with this Okuma, and the rest of the Izu daimyo will be harder to get without him.”

  Shichio’s hand quickened its pace. Hashiba’s pulse did too. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh no, you don’t.”

  “Absolutely certain? No doubt in your mind?”

  “Shichio, I’m not killing that old monk for you and that’s that.”

  His heart beating in Shichio’s ear told a different story. Shichio resituated himself between Hashiba’s knees. The demon mask had two long, sharp fangs that framed either side of his mouth. If he angled his head just so, he could trace the pointed tip of a fang along Hashiba’s skin. Done roughly, it could puncture. Done in just the right spot with just the right pressure, it was heavenly.

  “Maybe we don’t have to kill him,” said Shichio, swaying the mask back and forth. “Maybe we can just go and pay him a visit.”

  Hashiba took in a long quivering breath.

  “It’s a long way. Lots of time at sea. Hours a day with nothing to do.”

  Hashiba clenched two silk pillows in his fists.

  “Do any of your wives care for sailing? No, they don’t, do they?”

  Hashiba’s fists tightened.

  “Maybe I’ll just go by myself. You don’t want to come, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do? You want to come?”

  “Yes, yes, yesss.”

  “All right, then. You can come.”

  12

  The Okuma compound had received a messenger from Toyotomi Hideyoshi once before. Almost a year had passed since then, and the experience still left an indelible impression on Daigoro’s young mind. Shiramatsu Shozaemon, Hideyoshi’s emissary, had come with a battalion at his back to chastise Daigoro’s brother, Ichiro, for showing hubris in his duels. It was not far wrong to say Ichiro died because he had failed to heed that advice.

  Daigoro had always assumed that Shiramatsu arrived with a show of force in order to cow House Okuma into submission. The daimyo of Izu sometimes rode with an honor guard, but only on special occasions; usually a few bodyguards were protection enough. Shiramatsu Shozaemon had arrived with an entire battalion as his escort. At the time Daigoro had been duly impressed, but he’d never guessed at what the imperial regent himself might consider to be an appropriate bodyguard.

  When Daigoro saw the first junk, he feared the worst. She was twice the size of any Izu fishing vessel. The kiri flowers on her enormous sails were as unmistakable as the samurai standing in formation on the deck or their spearheads glinting in the sun. There were dozens of them, and Daigoro had no illusions about whether they came in peace. Surely they’ve come for the abbot, he thought, and maybe for my head as well.

  Little had Daigoro imagined that this was a small ship, little more than a sloop. The next ship to appear was one of the famed turtle ships. Daigoro had never seen one before, but there w
as no mistaking what it was. Scores of interlocking metal shields covered the entire deck in a gleaming shell. The fact that Daigoro could not see the deck only gave his imagination room to wander. How many troops were aboard? A hundred? More?

  Izu was a land of high, blocky sea cliffs, stabbing out into the waves like huge black fingers. They made it impossible to see any real distance up or down the coast, and when the surf was high, pale clouds of spray hovered perpetually along the cliffs, further obscuring visibility. As such, a fleet that sailed near the coast appeared out of nowhere. Two turtle ships, then four, then eight. And then came the actual warship.

  It was a floating castle. Her hull was like any other ship’s, save for its enormous size. But her decks were no decks at all. Instead, sheer wooden walls ascended from the hull, no less than five stories tall. Another two-story donjon towered above the main structure. The ship’s oars were like a centipede’s legs: spindly, moving in unison, impossible to count. Portholes formed a grid of dark squares on the castle walls, and Daigoro feared every last one of them might harbor one of the southern barbarians’ fabled cannons behind it. If so, she bore hundreds upon hundreds of cannon. Daigoro wondered whether there was enough iron in the world to cast that many.

  As the castle ship drew nearer, it loomed so large that Daigoro wondered which was bigger, the ship or the entire Okuma compound. It took four anchors to moor her, each one the size of a warhorse. The launch she lowered to take her commander ashore looked like a pea pod compared to the warship herself, yet Daigoro counted no less than thirty-three armored men boarding the launch.

  He wondered which one was Hideyoshi. Only one man was clearly visible from Daigoro’s vantage high up on the compound’s wall: a giant in glittering black yoroi, his topknot as white as snow. Too old to be a bodyguard, Daigoro thought. And too big to be the regent; rumor held him to be quite slight. Daigoro wondered whether the giant was one of the regent’s generals. He might even be this Shichio that was calling for the abbot’s head.

  Daigoro watched as his own commanders greeted the landing party. He hadn’t gone down himself, for the regent’s arrival had come as a surprise. It would have taken Daigoro the better part of the morning to limp all the way down to the beach, and he hadn’t the time to gather a palanquin and crew to carry him down there. He’d sent his best officers instead, along with a platoon of spearmen. Even they must have been sweating in their armor after running down the whole way. Daigoro sympathized. The sweat was already running down his back and he hadn’t done anything but watch.

  His anger felt like a wild animal trapped inside his body. It twitched frenetically in his neck and made it hard to speak. Why had he married his house to the Inoues if not to gain the benefit of their spy network? And how had the ubiquitous eyes and ears of House Inoue failed to notice a ship the size of an island, in the midst of an entire war fleet? Daigoro was going to have a talk with his father-in-law, and soon.

  Akiko primped him as he set everyone else about their tasks: the cooks to their fires; the maids to their stations; runners into town to gather food for a welcome feast; still more runners to hire musicians and geisha; manservants to clear every last room in the compound save the audience chamber, in case the regent and his troops decided to spend the night; Tomo to oversee the entire operation. Finally and most importantly, he released Akiko to go and deal with his mother.

  Daigoro wished he’d had more time; with a little advance notice he might have sent her to stay with Lord Yasuda or some other neighbor. As it was, the best idea he could come up with was to order Tomo to restrain her using any means shy of lethal force. But Akiko had a better idea. The lady of House Okuma was quite taken with her new daughter-in-law, and Akiko seemed to get on with her quite well. Akiko gave Daigoro a broad smile and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ve got ribbons and balls for temari, hairpins and combs, everything two girls need to have fun.”

  He watched her go, then looked back down to the beach. A second launch had landed with a bevy of palanquins aboard. The white-haired giant stepped into one of them. Two slender men stepped into another. Three more were occupied by quartets of men in varying uniforms, some armored, some not. Daigoro’s own commanders were offered the other four. Daigoro’s mind boggled at the thought of having four spare palanquins and four extra teams of bearers—and these on Toyotomi’s shipboard crew, to say nothing of his palace.

  In no time at all the guests had arrived. Every last Okuma samurai had been marshaled into the honor guard. They lined the main courtyard, as still as the walls themselves. Daigoro recognized Shiramatsu Shozaemon when he emerged from his sedan chair along with three samurai in Toyotomi gold. He wore a silver kimono to match his silver hair, with a thin beard and a thinner mustache. His topknot was immaculate and his movements precise. He approached the center palanquin with short, measured steps, slid its door aside, and said, “You shall bow before the Imperial Regent, His Highness, the Chief Minister and great Lord General Toyotomi no Hideyoshi.”

  All the Okuma samurai went to their knees, as did the regent’s own. Daigoro’s leg never allowed him to kneel easily, so instead he bowed deeply at the waist. “You will kneel now,” he heard Shiramatsu say, and looking up he saw the man’s withering glare. This was a very different Shiramatsu from the one who had come a year before. That man was unflappable. This one actually bared his teeth when he repeated his command.

  “At ease,” said the little goggle-eyed man who hopped out of the palanquin. His armor was black, orange, and gold, and he was so skinny that it hung on him as if on a wooden armor stand. His cheekbones were too high, his chin too long. Against his willing it, Daigoro thought of the macaques one sometimes found in the mountains. It shamed him to liken this man to a monkey, but at least now the nickname Monkey King made sense. This could only be Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

  “It’s his house,” said Hideyoshi. “Let him bow if he likes.” He shot Daigoro a conspiratorial smile. His teeth were sharp, misaligned, haphazardly spaced, like a seer’s chicken bones tossed on the ground and pointing in all different directions.

  “Yes, my lord regent,” said Shiramatsu. “Most gracious of you. You may stand, Okuma-san.”

  Hideyoshi paid Shiramatsu no mind at all. Instead he looked at the assembled Okuma samurai and then around the compound. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  Daigoro’s thoughts stumbled over each other like drunks. All his associations and inferences had missed the mark. When Shiramatsu had first come almost a year ago, Daigoro thought him to be a high-ranking emissary, one so important that he warranted a legion of bodyguards. Now he could see the truth, reflected in Hideyoshi’s relaxed stance and in his emissary’s obsequious gaze toward him. Shiramatsu was nothing more than a lickspittle. Hideyoshi had sent him with a battalion for the same reason he himself had come on the wings of an invasion fleet: to cow the Okumas into submission. And yet Hideyoshi was anything but intimidating. Now Daigoro thought not of mountain monkeys but of his father: approachable, even gentle, but a master at deploying his forces for just the right effect. Psychologically speaking, Hideyoshi had put Daigoro on his heels before he’d even set foot on shore.

  Even so, Daigoro immediately understood why the abbot had referred to him as Hideyoshi, not as General Toyotomi. There was nothing lordly about this man. His shoulders were relaxed, his gait bouncy. He’d done a sloppy job of tying his topknot. He couldn’t have been much taller than Daigoro, who by anyone’s account was a pipsqueak. He was the imperial regent, the highest-ranking military officer in the land, and yet the cording on his katana looked as if it had never been touched, to say nothing of having been drawn in battle. His hands were smooth and uncallused. His armor was surely crafted to evoke images of a tiger—orange and black for its stripes, gold for its gleaming, ferocious eyes—but it only called attention to the fact that Hideyoshi was the living antithesis of a tiger. His colors were garish, not subtle, his armor hard, not supple, his movements common, not majestic.r />
  The man behind him was the regal one. He was thin like Hideyoshi, but tall, stately, with handsome features and a graceful air. Even as he stepped out of the palanquin, he preened his hair. He took in his surroundings with the practiced affectation of the highborn, cocking a disdainful eyebrow when his gaze finally fell on Daigoro. In truth he noted Glorious Victory first, studying her as an object of art rather than a weapon. He made a tiny adjustment to his golden kimono before dipping his chin toward Daigoro in an almost imperceptible bow.

  He was a peacock, in short, and Daigoro wondered who he was.

  The last to emerge from the palanquins was the giant Daigoro had seen in the launch. He was head and shoulders taller than the peacock, and the katana sheathed at his hip was almost as long as Glorious Victory. It seemed like a sword of no great length in comparison to his enormous belly. Despite his age he was not balding; it was clear that he still had to shave his pate. His white topknot and little white point of a beard were both well groomed. His black armor was polished to a gleaming sheen, with horse motifs embossed into the leather. He was the very embodiment of nobility and lordliness.

  And yet in the company of the giant and the peacock, it was Hideyoshi that the emperor had named regent, Hideyoshi who had brought a thousand daimyo to heel, Hideyoshi who commanded the attention of everyone in the courtyard. Daigoro could not help it: his eyes followed the man wherever he went. He wondered what Hideyoshi’s secret was. He and Daigoro were both puny. Both fell short of what it meant to be a man. From birth neither of them was cut out to be samurai—Daigoro because of his disfigurement, Hideyoshi because of his parentage—and yet both had to play the role. And while Daigoro had trouble commanding even the loyalty of his own father-in-law, Hideyoshi had the emperor himself at his back.

  The imperial regent walked up to Daigoro and bowed. “Good morning. I’m Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Let’s have a seat and chat.”

  Soldiers and servants scurried like leaves before a typhoon. Soon enough all the required parties were seated in the Okuma audience chamber: Hideyoshi on the dais, the giant on his left, and the peacock on his right, a dozen Toyotomi samurai on either side of them, still as statues. Daigoro was seated before the regent, Katsushima on his right, his lieutenants in a row behind them, the rest of his officers ranked and filed in the back. Shiramatsu, Tomo, and a few other attendants were kneeling at the door, all of them duly submissive and subdued. Sixty men in the room all told, and of all of them only Hideyoshi was relaxed.