by Lian Hearn
He did not correct her but smiled to himself as he returned, carrying the small ceramic flask and cups.
“I’m afraid Chiyo thinks you have come for some amatory purpose,” he said, setting the tray on the floor.
Shizuka filled his cup and then he filled hers. “In another life, maybe. There are many kinds of love,” she said almost flirtatiously. “Let us drink to the love of friendship.”
He could not help but reflect on the strangeness of his life, that he should be sitting with this woman from the Tribe and pledging friendship with her. The wine was warm and fragrant, sending its cheerful message coursing through his body.
He poured the water into the fish-shaped dropper and prepared the ink. Then he took up the brush. “Tell me about the Tribe.”
She took a deep breath. “You must never utter a word of this to anyone. If the Tribe ever find out, they will kill me. I know my uncle has become a friend of yours. He, above all, must never know what I am doing.”
“You must realize that I can keep secrets,” Shigeru replied.
“I believe you to be the most devious person I know, outside the Tribe,” Shizuka said, laughing and adding quickly, “It is a compliment!”
He poured more wine. It had cooled rapidly.
“We work in groups and networks,” she said as he wrote down the details. “Each member only communicates with his or her senior in the hierarchy—they are not allowed to speak of anything important among themselves. Our children are trained in this. It is second nature to us. Information flows only one way—upward to the Master of the family.”
“Kikuta and Muto?”
“They are the leading families, supposedly equal, but the Kikuta are currently more powerful. I am from both families. My father was Muto—he passed away when I was a child—and my mother Kikuta.”
“Your mother was Kikuta? In what year was she born?”
“She turns forty this year.”
Forty years ago—could she have been his father’s child? Only if either Shigemori or Shizuka had got the years wrong. It was entirely possible. Most people had no very clear idea when they were born—names were frequently changed, dates altered.
“I can bring you copies of the genealogies,” Shizuka said. “Blood ties are very important to the Tribe. We like to keep careful records of who marries whom and what skills each union produces in its offspring. Why are you particularly interested in the Kikuta?”
“I believe I may have a half brother among them,” he said, and for the first time shared his father’s secret with another person.
“It’s extraordinary,” she said when he had finished. “I have never heard even a rumor of this.”
“So you do not think there was a child born?”
“If there was, its mother must have successfully hidden the fact that the father was not from the Tribe.”
“Is it something you can find out? Without revealing it to anyone else?”
“I will try.” She smiled. “It’s uncanny almost, that you should have a relative among the Kikuta!”
“And Bunta—is he a relation of yours?”
“No. He is from the Imai family. Most of the Imai men work as grooms and servants, as do the Kudo. The fifth family, the Kuroda, are somewhere in the middle. They have many of the special skills of the Tribe—I’m sure Kenji has demonstrated these to you—and a characteristic practicality that makes them superb assassins. The most sought-after at the moment is Kuroda Shintaro, who currently is employed by the Tohan.”
“Someone tried to assassinate me three years ago,” Shigeru said. “Were they from the Tribe?”
“One was. The others were Tohan, disguised as masterless warriors. In fact, Iida paid the Kikuta family highly for this attempt and was furious when it failed. Since then, Kenji has ordered the Muto to leave you alone: he has some influence with the other families but not with the Kikuta.”
“Why has Kenji taken me under his wing? Sometimes I feel as if I am his tamed animal.”
Shizuka smiled. “There is an element of that. Kenji is an unusual person—supremely talented but a loner. He will become the Muto Master very soon. He is virtually head of the family already, for no one dares cross him. Your friendship intrigues and flatters him. He considers that you belong to him; he says he saved your life, though he has never told me the full story. He admires you as much as he admires anyone. I believe he is genuinely fond of you. But I must warn you, his first loyalty will always be to the Muto family and to the Tribe.”
“Can you deliver messages to Maruyama?”
“I could take one for you now, but as I said before, you and Lady Maruyama should not attempt to write to each other again.”
“This assassination attempt is a disaster for us,” he said, allowing himself now to express his feelings. “We had hoped to seek permission to marry next year.”
“Do not even consider it,” Shizuka said. “It will enrage Iida and arouse his suspicions further.”
He seemed to have gained one advantage only to lose what he most desired, taken one step forward only to be thrown back two. “What can I write?” he said. “All I can say is farewell forever.”
“Don’t despair,” she said. “Continue to be patient. I know it is your greatest strength. Iida will be overthrown; we will continue our struggle against him.”
“It’s getting late. Where will you sleep tonight?”
“I will go to the Muto house, where the brewery is.”
“Come here tomorrow. I will have a letter ready for you.”
“Lord Otori.”
They walked out together into the silent garden. Starlight glimmered faintly on the rocks around the pools, where ice was already forming. He was going to call for the guards to open the gates, but she forestalled him. She motioned him to be silent and leaped into the air, vanishing on the tiled roof of the wall.
He spent most of the night writing to Naomi, telling her what had transpired with Muto Shizuka, expressing his sorrow at her daughter’s fate and his deep love for her, warning her that it might be years before he was able to write again, telling her on no account to write to him. He ended echoing Shizuka’s words: Do not despair. We must be patient.
A week later snow began to fall heavily, to Shigeru’s relief, for he had feared that after the assassination attempt Iida would renew his demands for Takeshi to be sent to Inuyama. Now this would be put off until spring at least. It did not matter that the snow also closed the roads to messengers, for he knew he would not hear from Naomi again.
IN THE FOURTH MONTH of the following year, news came of Mori Yusuke’s death on the mainland. It was brought by a ship’s captain, who also delivered Yusuke’s last gift to Shigeru: a stallion from the steppes of the East. The horse arrived thin and dispirited, exhausted from the journey; however, Shigeru and Takeshi both saw something in it, and Takeshi made arrangements for it to be well fed. When it had recovered some of its energy, he put it out in the water meadows with the mares. Despite its thinness, it was well put together, taller and longer of leg than the Otori horses, with flowing tail and long mane, once the tangles had been unknotted. The old stallion had died the previous winter, and the new one quickly took the mares as his herd, nipping at them, bossing them, getting all of them with foal. Shigeru entrusted the handling of the horses to Takeshi. The only surviving son of the horsebreaker’s family, Hiroki, was occupied with his shrine duties, but he often discussed horses with Takeshi, for he had still retained the family interest in them and he and Takeshi were the same age. It was ten years since the stone fight in which Hiroki’s older brother, Yuta, had died, ten years since Hiroki had been dedicated to the shrine of the river god.
When the foals were born the following spring, one of them promised to be the pale gray black-maned sort so prized by the Otori. Takeshi named it Raku. Another was a black very like Shigeru’s stallions Karasu and Kyu. The third was a less handsome dull-colored bay, who turned out to be the most intelligent and tractable horse Takeshi ha
d ever known.
43
Isamu’s widow was six months pregnant when her husband’s body was found. She had hoped all winter that he would reappear in the spring as suddenly as he had done before; her disappointment and grief were only made bearable by the fact that he had obviously been murdered, unarmed. His repentence for his past life had been sincere; his conversion had not been a sham. He had not sinned; they would meet again in Heaven, as the old teachings said, in the presence of the Secret One.
She married her brother’s oldest friend, Shimon, a boy she had grown up with, whose hopes had been destroyed by the stranger’s arrival, and he became a father to the boy born in the seventh month, to whom they gave a name common among the Hidden: Tomasu.
The child had been unusually active in the womb and continued to be so after his birth. He rarely slept, walked at nine months, and from then on seemed intent on escaping into the forest. At first he seemed destined to die from some accident, drown in the flooded spring river, fall from the crest of a pine tree, or simply get lost on the mountain. His stepfather predicted all these ends for him, in between trying to control him with scoldings, punishments, and rare beatings. His mother, Sara, swung between terror that they would lose him and pride at his quickness, agility, and affectionate nature.
Tomasu was in his fifth year when word came to the remote village of Mino of the persecution of the Hidden throughout the East, and his childhood was darkened by the shadow of Iida Sadamu, who, it was said, hunted down children like himself and killed them with his own hands. But two years later the Battle of Yaegahara seemed to divert Lord Iida’s attention away from undesirable elements within his own domain. It was known that the losses on both sides had been huge; the villagers gave thanks, not for the deaths but because they thought Iida’s warriors would have more urgent concerns in the years to come than combing this distant forest for members of the Hidden.
Iida became something of an ogre, used by mothers to scare children into obedience. They both believed in his dark power and giggled at it.
THE YEARS PASSED. The Hidden continued their peaceful life, revering all living things, sharing their weekly ritual meal, rarely speaking of their beliefs, merely living them. Tomasu survived his childhood despite his stepfather’s gloomy predictions; though he did not often show it, Shimon loved the boy almost as much as Sara did and certainly equally with his own children, the two girls, Maruta and Madaren.
Shimon and Sara did not speak of Tomasu’s real father, the stranger who was murdered, and Tomasu did not grow up to look the way they remembered him. He did not really resemble anyone they knew but had a look all his own, thin and fine-featured. The only similarity his mother noticed was in the curious lines across his palms: she knew his father had had the same hands.
Tomasu was not exactly unpopular with the other boys of the village; they sought him out for his skill in games and for his knowledge of the forest, but he seemed always to be fighting with them.
“What happened to you this time,” his mother wailed when he came home late one afternoon in his eleventh year, dripping blood from a head wound. “Come here. Let me do that.”
Tomasu was trying to wash the blood from his eyes and staunch the flow. “Just a stone I got in the way of,” he replied.
“But why were you fighting?”
“I don’t know,” he said cheerfully. “It was a stone fight. No particular reason.”
Sara had moistened an old rag and pressed it firmly against his temple. He rested against her for a moment, wincing slightly. Usually he wrestled with her embraces and struggled away from her.
“My wild boy,” she murmured. “My little hawk. What will become of you?”
“Were the other boys teasing you?” Shimon asked. It was well known that Tomasu lost his temper easily and that the other boys reveled in provoking him.
“Maybe. A bit. They say I have sorcerer’s hands.”Tomasu looked at his long-fingered hands, marked by the straight line. “I was just showing them how a sorcerer throws stones!”
“You must not fight back,” Shimon said quietly.
“They always start it,” Tomasu retorted.
“What they start is not up to you to finish. Leave it to the Secret One to defend you.”
The suggestion of sorcery disturbed Shimon. He watched the boy carefully, alert to any sign of real difference in him or of demonic possession. He kept Tomasu near him as often as he could, forbade him to wander alone in the forest where strange beings might enchant him, prayed day and night that the Secret One might protect him, not only from all the perils of the world but also from his own strange inner nature.
The wound left a scar that faded to silver against the honey-colored skin like a three-day moon.
ONE DAY in early spring a few years later they were working together by the river, cutting alder saplings whose bark would be stripped to make cloth. The river was swollen from the thaw; it swirled over the coppiced base of the alders and raced across the rocks in its bed, deafening them with a noise like many men shouting. Shimon had already had to speak severely to Tomasu; first the boy had wanted to pursue a fawn and its mother that had been drinking from the pool; then he had been distracted by a pair of kingfishers. Shimon bent to gather the saplings already cut, tied them into a bundle, and carried them up the slope so they would not get washed away. He left Tomasu alone for only a moment, but when he turned to look back, he saw his stepson disappearing downstream in the direction of the village.
“You worthless boy,” he yelled futilely after him, torn between continuing the work and pursuing him to punish him. His rage got the better of him; he grabbed one of the saplings and set off downstream. “I’ll thrash him properly for once! We’re too soft with him! It’ll do him no good in the long run.”
He was still muttering to himself when he came round the bend in the river and saw his youngest daughter, Madaren, struggling in the muddy water. She must have tried to cross the river by the stepping-stones, had slipped into one of the deep pools, and was trying to save herself by grasping at the exposed roots in the bank.
Tomasu had already reached her. The little girl was shrieking, but Shimon could barely hear her above the roar of the water. He dropped the stick he was carrying and saw the river whisk it away. Tomasu was only just able to stand in the spot where Madaren had fallen in. He peeled her fingers back from the root she was clutching, and she threw herself at him, clinging like a baby monkey to its mother. He held her tightly against his shoulder and, half swimming, half scrambling, brought her to the shore where Shimon took her from him.
Sara came running, giving thanks that the child was safe, scolding Maruta for not looking after her, praising Tomasu.
Shimon looked at his stepson as Tomasu leaped onto the bank, shaking the water from his hair like a dog. “What made you take off like that? You got to her just in time!”
“I thought I heard her calling me,” Tomasu replied. He was frowning. “But I couldn’t have ...” The noise of the river rose around them, drowning all other sound.
“The Secret One must have warned you,” Shimon said in awe, and taking the boy’s hand traced the sign of the Hidden on his palm. He felt Tomasu had been chosen in some way, to become a leader of the Hidden, perhaps, to take over eventually from Isao. He began to speak more seriously to him at night about spiritual matters and to lead him more deeply into the beliefs of the Hidden. Despite Tomasu’s hot temper and restlessness, Shimon thought the boy had a natural gentleness and an aversion to cruelty, which both his parents did their best to foster.
IT WAS RARE for strangers or travelers to come to Mino. The village lay hidden in the mountains; no roads came near it, only the tracks over the mountain and along the river through the valley. Both were almost impassable, overgrown through lack of use. A landfall had all but blocked the valley path a few years previously. Occasionally one or other of the men crossed the pass to Hinode and returned with news and rumors. It was nearly sixteen years since the stranger
came and disappeared again; well over fourteen since the birth of his son. Tomasu had grown into a striking young man. No one teased him anymore, and he no longer got into fights. Both boys and girls, Shimon noticed, sought him out, and it made his stepfather start to ponder the question of marriage. He gave Tomasu more tasks to do, demanding he spend less time running wild on the mountain but work alongside the men of the village and prepare for adult life.
