Disciple of the Wind (11 page)

“It troubles me more that my former father-in-law advised him to double his bodyguard.” Daigoro ran his palm over his scalp. He had a field of short bristles where he once shaved his head in the manner of a samurai. He did not have the heart to snip off his topknot entirely, but he could not bring himself to shave his pate every morning. That was an Okuma’s birthright, not Daigoro the
ronin’s
. “But the peacock did bristle at that, didn’t he?”

The anger seeped out of Akiko’s face. She enjoyed seeing her husband being clever. “What are you thinking?”

“He has men enough,” Daigoro said. “He told your father he’s got eyes watching every port, every crossroads. That’s a lot of eyes,
neh
? So he
could
double his bodyguard, or even triple it. Instead he protects himself from me by hiding in a sedan chair, and he sends his men out far and wide. Why?”

“Not to find you?”

“I don’t think so, Aki. That sedan chair . . . it must be stifling in there,
neh
? He’s a princess; he’d ride in comfort if he could.”

“He’d lie on silken pillows sucking Hideyoshi’s cock if he could.”

Daigoro gaped, shocked at his wife’s tongue. Katsushima barked a laugh. “Now I see why you like this woman.”

“Well?” Aki’s smile was at once gleeful and guilty, devilish and demure. “What’s a girl to do if her father commands more spies than any clan in Izu? Is it so bad if I harvested a few for myself? Sometimes I hear things.”

Daigoro still gaped. “Things about the regent’s cock?”

“You take what fish swim into your net.” It was almost an apology, almost a boast. She gave him that smile again.

“I suppose you do. . . .” Daigoro wiped a trickle of sweat from his stubbly scalp. It was hot in the sun, far too hot for a preening sophisticate to box himself in a sedan chair. Shichio would not travel that way unless he saw no other choice. So he feared Daigoro enough to shield himself from arrows, but something else scared him more—something greater than a physical attack. Whatever it was, it required dozens of men scattered all over Izu, men who could have served as bodyguards instead. “The wedding stories!” Daigoro said. “He’s more worried about containing them than he is of a chance encounter with me.”

Katsushima gave Aki an appraising look. “I take it back,” he told Daigoro. “
Now
I see why you like this one. You were right to deploy those rumors, girl. That was well played.”

Akiko answered with a self-satisfied squint and chose not to correct him for calling her
girl
. Turning to Daigoro, she said, “You see? Statesmanship, not swordsmanship. That’s the only way to win this battle.”

Statesmanship
wasn’t the word Daigoro would have chosen to describe Aki’s tactics.
Ignoble
was the first that came to mind. The only path he understood was his father’s path, the path of
bushido
. Aki’s father followed the path of skullduggery, and that way ran through unfamiliar territory. Daigoro would never have thought to order the men of his house to spread gossip in taverns and gambling halls. That was exactly what Aki had asked of her many brothers. Katsushima had been only too eager to help. He plotted a circuit from one pleasure house to the next, and in each one he dropped a few silver coins in the hands of the right whore. Through them, the tales of Shichio’s wedding would swell from whispered rumor to common knowledge—and if Katsushima happened to engage in a little pillowing after his scandal-mongering, such were the rewards of a job well done.

Now Aki’s strategy had paid off. It was already known that Shichio had deployed his
shinobi
far and wide. That much was clear even before Shichio set foot on Izu’s shores. Their original purpose was simple: kill the Bear Cub. But of late they had changed tactics from hunting to trapping: where once they rode abroad, now they lay in wait. Bear traps on every road, in every port, at every checkpoint, if Shichio’s
boasts were true. Daigoro was not so foolish as to take him at his word, but this much was clear: the peacock used to ride in force, but now he took shelter in a wooden box and halved his personal guard. Once he dispatched hunting parties of his own, but now he sought to recruit Inoue Shigekazu to do his hunting for him. He was stretched thin.

There was one explanation: his
shinobi
had reported back to him with whispers of Akiko’s wedding stories. The fact that he’d reacted so swiftly could mean only one thing: he saw them as a threat—a dire threat, one worth the loss of twenty personal guards, if that meant twenty more men stationed in Izu’s taverns and common rooms. Anywhere men talked, Shichio needed ears.

“But why?” Daigoro said, thinking aloud. “What is he afraid of?”

“Losing face,” said Aki. “No man wants his cock compared to an infant’s.”

“This one isn’t a man,” Katsushima said. “He tried to marry Daigoro’s mother so he could take
her
name. And now you tell us he services Hideyoshi with his mouth? That’s boy’s work. Women’s work. A man gives, he doesn’t receive.”

Akiko harrumphed. “And to think you haven’t found a nice woman to settle down with.”

“I’ve women enough. Even a nice one now and again. It’s the settling down that bothers me.”

Daigoro barely registered the exchange. His thoughts were still wrapped up in Shichio. Katsushima was right: if quashing these rumors were merely a matter of saving face, Shichio wouldn’t bother. Shame might trouble him, but not dishonor. He had no honor to speak of. This was something else.

“He’s competing with someone.” Again he spoke aloud without meaning to. “He must be. He’s lost his monopoly on Hideyoshi’s attention. Now he worries who else Hideyoshi might listen to.”

Aki and Katsushima stopped their squabbling. Daigoro let them watch him in silence while he took a moment to think things through. “Aki, you never saw him with General Mio—”

“Oh, he was that giant fellow, wasn’t he?” She made a nauseated face. “Didn’t you cut his ear off?”

“I did.” In a fair fight, Daigoro thought. We shared a meal together afterward, and toasted each other with
sake
and whisky. Then Shichio tied him down and cut him to pieces. “You should have seen how the two of them spoke to Hideyoshi. They were yin and yang. Mio sat before him and spoke his mind. Shichio sat to one side and whispered in his ear. Mio spoke from the heart and never shied from the truth. But Shichio . . . I hardly know how to describe it. He doesn’t say what Hideyoshi wants to hear; he makes Hideyoshi want to hear what he’s saying.”

“I remember,” Katsushima said. “It verged on witchcraft.”

“That’s why he thinks nothing of besmirching his name,” Daigoro said. “Whatever ill you say of him, he can twist it, so long as he can whisper into Hideyoshi’s ear. But now there must be someone else whispering, someone whose witchery is strong enough to dispel Shichio’s. He protects his name now because he must. This new advisor . . . I don’t know who he is, but I think there must be
someone
, and I think he scares Shichio more than I do.”

“Then let us make an ally,” Akiko said. “We have held back our deadliest arrow. I say we let it fly.”

A thrill rippled up Daigoro’s spine. He could see Katsushima felt it too; the
ronin’s
fist closed tighter around his bow and arrow, as if seizing victory itself. Both of them were eager to loose this shot.

Daigoro knew the true story behind Hideyoshi’s most ignominious defeat. The Battle of Komaki was four years gone, and Hideyoshi had won grand victories since then, but this one rout still loomed large in his memory. He had dared to test his might against Tokugawa Ieyasu, the only other warlord of his stature. Tokugawa had left Mikawa, his beloved homeland, undefended. At Shichio’s urging, Hideyoshi made a bid for it. But a little-known samurai named Okuma Tetsuro anticipated the sally. Hideyoshi’s vanguard thought to pounce on sleeping deer but found a pack of wolves instead. Routed, they sought another way around; it was Shichio’s duty to find a
vulnerability. He failed, not because Mikawa was impregnable but because Okuma predicted his movements, captured his scouts, replaced them with men of his own, and sent back false intelligence to Shichio. Shichio fell for the ruse and Hideyoshi ran home with his tail between his legs.

The tale had become one of Daigoro’s favorite stories about his father. That battle was the last time Hideyoshi had taken the field against Tokugawa. Had he carried the day, there was no doubt that Hideyoshi would be not just the empire’s mightiest warlord, but rather its uncontested ruler. If the general who cost him that victory had been samurai, he would have confessed his failure to his lord, then committed seppuku to erase his shame. But Shichio was a craven with no sense of honor. He lied to Hideyoshi from the beginning, and now, four years later, the regent still had not heard the truth. But Daigoro knew the true story, and he wanted nothing more than to write it in a message, tie it to an arrow, and sink that arrow right through Shichio’s heart.

And for that reason, he was suddenly unsure. “Wait,” he said. “Goemon, until now you’ve counseled patience. What changed?”

The bushy-haired
ronin
nodded with approval. “A good question. You tell me: why did the old abbot on the mountain warn you against telling Hideyoshi the truth straightaway?”

Daigoro closed his eyes, trying to remember it word for word. He liked the abbot of Katto-ji. His bald head and wizened face always made Daigoro think of a sea turtle—an ancient one, a great-grandfather of the ocean, possessed of a buddha’s wisdom. The old man could be as aggravating as a pebble in a boot, but his advice was always sound. He was the one who first told Daigoro of his father and the Battle of Komaki.
“ ‘Shichio manipulates men as deftly as a potter shapes clay,’”
Daigoro said. “As soon as I tell Hideyoshi the truth, I’ll also have revealed that it was my father who bested him that day.”

“Not bested,” Katsushima said. “Duped. The difference between those two is the difference between having never heard of Shichio and having Shichio as your worst enemy.”

“I am the last person you need to remind of that. So what changed? Why should I loose this arrow now, when before you advised me to stay my hand?”

“Have I changed my counsel? No. Your wife tells you to put this arrow to the string. I say that is good advice—
if
you are right about this new enemy in Hideyoshi’s court. If Shichio has a rival there, someone who can wring the truth out of his lies, then arm this person with every weapon you can give him. Let him be the one to destroy Shichio.”

Akiko gave Katsushima a startled look. “I thought you would tell my husband to claim his vengeance himself.”

“Against a man, yes. Against a viper, no. Better to stand back and let someone else stomp the life out of it. Less chance of getting bitten that way.”

Katsushima looked at the bow and arrow in his hand, then held them out to Daigoro. “She’s right about this much: you have one shot. How certain are you that this new rival has come to call on Shichio?”

Daigoro only had to think about it for a moment. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

“Then do not miss.” He bowed as Daigoro took the bow from him, followed by the arrow. Then he headed for the stables.

That left Daigoro alone with his beloved. The sun was still hot, so Aki took him by the hand and drew him into the shadow of the gatehouse. For the thousandth time he wondered why she even consented to hold his hand. His fingers were callused and scarred; hers were as soft as chrysanthemum petals. Her father had once hoped to marry her to one of the great lords of Kyoto. Instead she was the abandoned wife of a penniless cripple. Theirs was an arranged marriage, but they had quickly fallen in love. Daigoro had no idea what she saw in him.

“It does, doesn’t it?” he asked her. “Make sense, I mean.”

Akiko smiled sweetly. “It might. We could be certain if we knew the regent was expecting a new visitor. Someone of high station, of
course. Better still if we knew this person had vested interests that were at odds with Shichio’s.”

“Aki, what haven’t you told me?”

She pressed her lips together and refused to speak. Her eyes glittered giddily.

“Aki?”

“There’s been a bird. I overheard my father talking with his pigeon keeper this afternoon.”

“And?”

“Nene, Lady in the North. Hideyoshi’s wife. She arrived yesterday. Rumor has it she’s come to rid herself of Shichio once and for all.”

9

T
he sun was setting much too fast for Shichio’s liking. He had no love of traveling by night. Not in Izu, not so long as the Bear Cub was unaccounted for. His sedan chair was safe, but by the gods, it was
slow
.

He slid back one of the side panels and barked at the headman of the bearers. “Hurry, damn you! I’ll have your skins if we don’t make camp by nightfall.”

Cool air and the scent of juniper washed over him. He could still taste the salt on the air, but at this altitude the tang of the sea wasn’t so strong. The view from here was breathtaking. Far below him, where the northern slope of Mount Daruma ran down to the shore of Suruga Bay, the water had taken on a lavender hue. Beyond the bay loomed the ghost of Mount Fuji, purple like the sky beyond it, all but invisible. To the west, an orange sun fell swiftly toward the waves.

For that instant, Shichio regretted his grudge against Hashiba for setting camp in such an inconvenient spot. Shichio’s company had reached the wharf ages ago, only to find the fleet at sea. Even now he could see the turtle ships. They seemed to be ablaze, their interlocking metal shields reflecting the sunset like a hundred bonfires. Beyond them lay the flagship,
Nippon Maru
, so huge that it looked like an island castle in the middle of the bay. When Shichio demanded a launch to be sent at once, the garrison sergeant in the harbor pointed up at Mount Daruma and told him the regent would receive him at camp.
That sent Shichio into a rage, and the sergeant had a bloody mouth to show for it. But now, for a fleeting moment, he had to admit the landscape was quite beautiful.