Disciple of the Wind (22 page)

At last Kenbei marshaled the courage to speak. “You’re making a mistake. How long do you think you can escape these so-called ‘bear hunters’ if the clans of Izu turn against you?”

Daigoro took a step closer, looming over them. “There’s another side to that coin. What happens after you betray me to the bear hunters? When I butcher every man Shichio sends after me, will he see you as an ally? Or will he think you conspired with me to set a trap?”

Kenbei worked his mouth but could not speak. He reminded Daigoro of a carp sucking at the surface of a pond. “Do not follow this path, Kenbei. Hideyoshi will snap up the whole of Izu and you will be crushed under his heel. So choose your father’s path instead. Keep your faith. Stand fast with your neighbors. But make your choice somewhere else, Kenbei. You have worn out your welcome here.”

Daigoro did not bother to see them out.

18

B
y sundown the next day, the Okuma coop was populated with pigeons again. They came one by one, nearly all of them from the north, since the Okuma compound lay on the southern reaches of the Izu Peninsula. They had all been raised here, trained carefully from their youth, then delivered in delicate cages to the coops of distant lords. They returned home unerringly, always with a tiny scroll case bound to one leg. Every time they came home, they were caged again and sent back to the coops of the distant daimyo. It never seemed to trouble them much, but this time their homecoming had them spooked. The lingering scent of fox still hung on the air.

“Here comes another,” Aki said. They heard it before they saw it: a noisy fluttering on the ledge just outside the little octagonal window. Then came the bobbing gray head, daring a furtive glance inside before deciding in its tiny brain that there were no longer any foxes about. At last a full-breasted male came into view, big enough that he had to squeeze himself through the window into the coop.

Daigoro and Aki stood arm in arm watching the bird. The pigeon coop was in the dark and dingy attic of the Okuma stables. The horses and birds took shelter in the same structure, which made it a malodorous place, nowhere more so than in the attic right next to the coop. It was not a place the lord and lady of the house would ordinarily find themselves. But Daigoro was no longer a lord, and in any case he could not allow any gossip to escape this attic. Thus far the birds only
brought bad news and worse news, and though the pigeon keeper had been hired specifically for his discretion, any man’s tongue might waggle if the troubles on the horizon loomed large enough.

First came the news that Aki’s father had no intention of bailing the Okumas out of their current predicament. He said a ship that could not right itself might well deserve to sink. It did not seem to trouble him that his daughter was aboard that ship. If he thought she would come swimming back to him after House Okuma foundered, he did not know his daughter very well.

It was a good thing Aki had built her own net of spies, because it was no easy thing to communicate without pigeons. The Inoues were easy enough to reach, as they were close neighbors; a swift rider could reach them in a day. The Green Cliff was just a half-day’s ride, but no help would come from there. Lord Yasuda had been sick for months, and after his most recent turn for the worse, his healers kept him perpetually asleep. They said the aging lord needed all his strength to fight off the devil that beset his lungs; a steady diet of poppy’s tears allowed his body to marshal its forces for its final battle. Daigoro could not wake him in good conscience.

Aki was not quite so scrupulous. “How do you know this isn’t Kenbei’s work?” she’d said. “It serves his best interests to keep his father asleep.” When Daigoro had no response to that, she sent Old Yagyu and a handful of aides to the Green Cliff. Even Kenbei could not conscionably turn away the man who kept Daigoro’s brother Ichiro alive even after he’d nearly lost his head. While Old Yagyu ministered to Lord Yasuda, one of the aides slipped into the pigeon coop and used Kenbei’s own birds to deliver Daigoro’s missives.

Old Yagyu would stay at Lord Yasuda’s side, ostensibly to heal him, but his primary purpose was to defend the old daimyo from patricide. Kenbei could not be trusted. His brothers were of no greater help. Jinbei’s elder sons had replied with birds of their own, conveying their regrets. Kenbei’s behavior was disgraceful, they said, but as their father
had formally given him charge of House Yasuda’s day-to-day affairs, they had no say in how he managed the ledgers.

The next pigeon had come from Lord Mifune Izu-no-kami Hiroyuki, daimyo of House Mifune and Lord Protector of Izu. Lord Mifune’s idea of help was simply not to call in his own debts. He thought it best to stand clear of this disagreement, lest he show favoritism—or so he said. It was almost true. No carrion feeder wanted a say in how other animals fought and died. His role was to wait on the sidelines and grow fat on the scraps of whatever was left.

The newest bird had come from Sora Izu-no-kami Nobushige. The scroll case lashed to its leg was lacquered blood red, which reminded Daigoro of Lord Sora’s bright red cheeks. Sora’s hands were perpetually red as well, some kind of skin condition in all likelihood, but he looked as if he’d just come from the smithy where he’d established his name. He talked that way too; all those years of hammering had left him half deaf, so he did not speak so much as shout. Between that, his arrogance, and his tendency to bluster on, Daigoro much preferred to converse with him via pigeon.

In a refreshing change from Lord Mifune and the Yasuda sons, Lord Sora was honest. Brutally so. In this case his message was simple: Kenbei had offered him the Green Cliff. In exchange, Sora would call in all his favors from House Okuma. Once Daigoro’s wife and mother were penniless, Kenbei would cast them out, seize the Okuma compound for himself, and turn over ownership of the most formidable holdfast in Izu.

It was a tempting offer, and not because a clan’s wealth was measured by its holdings. Sora Nobushige was obsessed with defense. Like Lord Inoue, he was cautious to a fault, but where Inoue relied on spies to keep him safe, Sora placed his faith in steel. His forge produced some of the finest armor in the empire. He tested his breastplates with a matchlock pistol at point-blank range. Daigoro could vouch for that; he’d put his own Sora
yoroi
to the test more times than he cared to
count. Nothing could please Sora more than sleeping the rest of his nights behind the mighty moss-covered wall of the Green Cliff.

And yet there was that last line, the one that called the rest of the message into question.
Make me a better offer. I want Streaming Dawn.

“Streaming Dawn?” Aki said. “I thought that was a myth.”

“It’s not. At least, I don’t think so. But wherever it is, it’s lost now.”

Some said Streaming Dawn was an Inazuma blade. Others said Master Inazuma was never so wicked as to forge a weapon like that. Whatever the legends said—and there were many of them—all of them centered around a knife and a beautiful woman. In some of the stories she was Inazuma’s daughter, or the daughter of whoever the true sword smith was. In others, she was wife, daughter, or sister to a great daimyo. In one version, she was a sword smith herself, the only woman ever to be ordained by the Shinto priest-smiths of Seki. Whoever she was, her fate was dark and cruel.

The details of her attack varied with the telling, but all agreed it was a samurai who killed her, and all agreed she suffered terribly before the end. Her killer was ordered to commit seppuku, and as the first rays of dawn streamed in, he plunged Streaming Dawn into his belly. He wailed long and loud, for there was no fate more gruesome than self-disembowelment. That was why a samurai nominated a second, a
kaishakunin
, to behead him if he should disgrace himself by crying out. But this man’s
kaishakunin
refused to carry out his duty, and somehow the doomed man did not die. For three days he suffered, and for three days he did not bleed.

Still the
kaishakunin
would not end it. Because his appointment had been affirmed by the daimyo’s court, he insisted that no one else had the right to take the killer’s life. That duty was his and his alone.

Three days became thirty. Thirty became three hundred. With every breath the knife shifted in the killer’s gut, so his every moment was sheer agony. He gnashed his teeth down to nubs. His fingernails gouged ruts in his palms, ghastly and bloodless. When he tried to remove Streaming Dawn, he found his own body defied him. His
abdominal muscles clenched down tight on the blade. Even his viscera seemed to hold it fast.

The identity of the
kaishakunin
varied from story to story. Sometimes he was the murdered girl’s husband, sometimes her father. In Daigoro’s favorite version, the
kaishakunin
was her ghost, its dead ghastly white face hidden by helmet and
mempo
. That was the version that terrified Daigoro most as a child. In every telling, Streaming Dawn was said to be the cruelest blade of all, for it cut without killing. Daigoro’s mother told the story as a cautionary tale, warning her sons that someday, when they had wives and daughters of their own, they should never be cruel. His father saw a different moral in the story: death is nothing to be feared, for to cling to life is to cling to suffering.

Sora Nobushige had taken quite a different lesson. He seemed to believe the blade could do what even the best armor could not. It promised eternal life. That wasn’t a far cry from how the stories ended: when the
kaishakunin
was old and gray, still the doomed man lingered with Streaming Dawn in his belly. By then he was a quivering, withered husk. It was only after the
kaishakunin
died of old age that someone took mercy and beheaded the long-suffering murderer.

“‘Seventy-Seven Years of Seppuku,’” Aki said. “That was the name of the song a minstrel sang for us in my father’s court.”

“I think I know it. That’s the one where the killer is twenty-two when he commits seppuku,
neh
? His
kaishakunin
was the same age, and they both lived to the ripe old age of ninety-nine.”

“Yes. When I was little, it frightened me so much that I couldn’t sleep. But it’s a ghost story, Daigoro. A fable. Lord Sora will not pass up the Green Cliff in favor of a knife from a fairy tale.”

“My father always spoke of it as if it were real. He said he saw it once.”

“Saw it. Once. Unless he took it home and left it in your armory, what use is that to you?”

Daigoro threw his hands up. “Aki, what choice do I have? Sora believes it exists. If I can find it, I take away Yasuda Kenbei’s leverage. Your father isn’t backing him; he’s simply staying out of the fray. The same
goes for Lord Mifune in the north, and even for Kenbei’s own brothers. He’s alone. Alone, you and Mother can deal with him. But united with the Soras? No. We’re in no position to take on two at once.”

“I don’t like it. Your plan hinges on a mythical, magical knife, and on the goodwill of an arrogant windbag who is old enough to remember when our grandfathers were children. Suppose Sora keels over dead. Then where would you be?”

Even as she said it, an ill omen made its entrance. A jet-black bird alighted on the windowsill. It was the rarest of specimens, a black pigeon, and yet it was a near twin to the bird that arrived earlier that afternoon. Only Inoue Shigekazu was mistrustful enough to dye his carrier pigeons black. Only he would worry about enemy arrows finding them in the dark.

“Another message from my father?” Aki beguiled the new arrival with a sprig of millet, then untied the tiny leather thongs binding the slender cylinder to its foreleg. “What could he want?”

“Probably to tell you to find a better husband.”

Aki’s fingers were much more adroit than Daigoro’s when it came to uncapping a scroll case as thin as a chopstick. When she unrolled the slip of paper inside, she said, “Oh.”

“What?”

She didn’t answer; she just handed it over. She looked like she might be sick.

Daigoro unfurled the scroll and squinted to read it in the half-light of the attic.
Whispers spreading: Lady in the North seeks audience with Daigoro. Says Shichio is mutual enemy. Osezaki Shrine. Two nights hence, moonrise.

“Tell me you won’t go,” Aki said.

“What? I . . . I haven’t had time to give it any thought.”

“I’ve had all the time I need. It’s a trap, Daigoro.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You told me yourself: Lady Nene is Shichio’s enemy. Now Nene confirms it.”

“
If
Nene is the one responsible for these whispers. What if Shichio
knows you’re aware of his rivalry with Nene? What if this is one of his ploys?”

Daigoro had to grant her the possibility. “Maybe. But still—”

“Have you forgotten your Sun Tzu? ‘
To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself
.’ Don’t provide your enemy the means to defeat you, Daigoro. Don’t walk into this trap.”

“We don’t know it’s a trap. And Sun Tzu would tell me to gather intelligence before leaping to conclusions.”

Aki’s face grew dark. “Do you know Osezaki?”

“No. I’ve never been there.”

“It is a long, thin spit stretching out into Suruga Bay. In the middle it’s so narrow that I could throw a rock from the western shore to the eastern.”

“And I have seen you throw,” Daigoro said with a laugh. He tried to take her hand, but Aki snatched it away.

“The shrine is at the northern tip,” she said, “totally exposed to attack by land or sea. Mount Daruma overlooks every road leading to Osezaki, down to the last goat path. There is nowhere to hide.”

“Then an ambush will be easy enough to spot.” Finally she allowed him to catch her hand. “Akiko-chan. Did you marry a fool?”

She made him wait while she thought about it. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“My adoring wife.” He squeezed her fingers and she squeezed back. “My father raised me to be fearless, not suicidal. I love you. I love our child. I will not throw away my life for nothing. But you told me yourself: if I am to defeat Shichio, it will be through statesmanship, not swordsmanship. And in statecraft there are no better weapons than high-ranking allies.
Neh
?”