The Shadow and the Star (25 page)

Hawaii, 1879

"
The warrior who walks in disguise will avoid salty
things, seasoned things, food pungent with oils, garlics, and other such stuff," Dojun said. "He does not reveal himself to the enemy by what he has touched, or where he has been—his passions do not betray him.
Shinobi
is to be one hidden. Another way to express this is
nin
, which is patience, endurance, perseverance."

Samuel listened to the words, to ten thousand repetitions. His intrigues had been as easy as sweetening an Arcturus deal by making a large donation toward the purchase of the first steam fire engine in Honolulu, and as hazardous as tangling with a secret Chinese Hoong Moon society over protection payments, then bending to light the gas cookstove in the harbor office one morning… and smelling gunpowder an instant before he struck the match.

"Consider," Dojun said, "the character for
nin
is created by writing the character for 'blade' above the character for 'heart.'
Shinobideru
is to go out in secret;
shinobikomu
is to steal inside;
shinobiwarai
is silent laughter; the
jihi no kokoru
is the merciful heart. All of these things are yours. Do not strive. Do not want. Be as the bamboo leaf bent by the dew—the leaf does not shake off the drop, and yet the moment comes when the dew falls and the leaf rebounds, releasing strength."

Samuel considered the leaf. He did not think of it in a conscious manner, but without boundaries between himself and the bamboo and the dewdrop. Something shifted at the edge of sight. The drop fell. Samuel's body drifted backward with Dojun's strike, riding the force and slipping outside it.

He resumed his kneeling position. There was not a man in Chinatown now. Oriental
pake
or native
kanaka
, who would move on him,

Samuel knew it. He could stand in a Chinatown street and sense it, as he could sense the spicy, sickly odor of opium that floated on the back of mango and fish and mud-smell. No one would give him any particular notice; no one would skirt him as if he were worthy of exaggerated respect; but some burly Hawaiian who guarded the door of the nearest gambling den would watch him with a lazy smile of brotherhood.

With his blond hair and height, Samuel was not the only
fan kwai
who dealt in Chinatown, but he was foremost of the foreign devils, as Arcturus was the preeminent non-Chinese business in the quarter now, because Samuel contracted with anyone fair and to his word, and fought fire with fire if the need arose.

Dojun still demanded the limit of Samuel's reserves. It had long ago become a strange contest between them, nothing so profitless as sauntering into a saloon and picking a fight with drunken sailors for practice. Samuel had encountered aggressive drunks once or twice, and it was too pathetically easy to turn and give way and let them defeat themselves by crashing face-down on the floor. No, it was Dojun who challenged him, who pulled invisible strings and found the subtle discords and weaknesses in Arcturus affairs where there should not have been snags. It was Dojun who matched Samuel and Arcturus against every faction and clan in Chinatown, one after the other, and then let him find his way out of it, by strength or by guile.

He knew what it felt like to fight for real now. They break you head
kotsun
, you no get out the way.

So he got out of the way, and then came back—to pivot, strike hard, and slide into silence.

Wind. Fire. Water.

And always there was Dojun, speaking of peace and instructing in violence, telling him that he must take the ruthless center he'd discovered within himself and make stillness and serenity of it.

Dojun could have hit him a thousand times. And a thousand times, Dojun froze the attack one breath from completion, never touching Samuel; never breaking his vow.

"The
shinobi
warrior must carry the truth within him." Dojun's voice was calm, inexorable. "He does not fight for money or a love of destruction. Strength and power are nothing. He maintains intention. He is an illusion within a real world; he has given himself a disguise, as the mantis imitates the twig. It does not become the twig. It does not forget that it is a mantis. You must be careful of this."

Samuel bowed low over his lap in acknowledgment, his hands resting palm-downward on his thighs.

"What do you do about women, Samua-san?"

The question came gently, a bombshell, as unexpected as one of Dojun's ambush strikes. Samuel felt his face go hot; his body flooded with shame.

"Ah." Dojun's voice was interested. "They give you disharmony."

Samuel didn't know what to say. Awkwardness had taken over his arms and legs; he just sat there like a dumb beast, waiting for Dojun to reach inside and shred that part of him into scraps.

"You do not go with women?" It was phrased as a question, but Dojun spoke as if he knew with certainty.

"No," Samuel whispered, staring straight ahead.

For a few moments, Dojun didn't speak. Then he said in a thoughtful voice, "Women congest the senses. In general, it is best to avoid them. It is best to live in the mountains and eat mild foods—then the senses are sharpened; a warrior can perceive a woman at a distance, knowing even what work she is about without ever seeing or hearing her. But women are desirable, are they not? A warrior must know his own weakness. The bodies of women are beautiful, they move gracefully, their breasts are round, the skin is sweet and soft to touch. Do you think of that?"

Samuel was silent. He didn't have the words for what he tried not to think of. He had only the images that beleaguered him to fierce desperation, and suddenly�appallingly—no way to hide what they did to him from Dojun. Samuel was horrified. Scalding humiliation covered him while he betrayed himself as he had not done since he'd been a schoolboy.

"Your body answers to this appetite even while I speak of it, Samua-san."

Samuel felt the blood heavy in his veins. He kept his eyes open, gazing into space. Breathe in. Breathe out. He felt as if he were drowning.

Dojun's voice wove softly in the silence. "This is
shikijo
, to lust, to flush color for a woman. Women distract you, But by a man's passion for a woman the universal force of life, the
ki
, becomes concrete, and new life is created. It is a delicate question. It is not wrong for a warrior to lie down with a woman, but it is better in many ways if you do not. You must not yield to personal weakness. You must have the essential principles within you: rectitude, courage, compassion, courtesy, utter truthfulness, honor, loyalty. By these things you will know."

Like everything Dojun taught him, it was simple, and yet agonizingly complex. But in this one thing Samuel hid himself, kept the terrifying strength of his hunger concealed even from his teacher. He had no rectitude that would control it, no courtesy, no honor, no compassion. Only the bone-deep fear of losing himself, of falling, falling, falling, down a well to nowhere.

"Instead, take this energy of
shikijo
and use it in the art I teach you," Dojun advised. "It is a young man's vigor. Focus your
ki. "

Samuel bowed to show his gratitude for the lesson, as if it were like the others.

"Do not scatter your life force on women."

"No, Dojun-san," Samuel said.

"Remember this as a particular weakness within you. Exercise discipline in all things."

"Yes, Dojun-san."

"You are a warrior. Your heart is a blade."

Samuel bowed again, and closed his eyes.

Miss Myrtle had never had any quarrel with the spirit
of benign curiosity; indeed, she had often said that it added a much-needed dollop of piquancy to the conversation of ladies who knew one another well, and had no evil habits such as a tendency to gossip or meddle marring their characters, which the South Street ladies agreed that they did not.

Miss Lovatt seemed taken aback for a moment after Leda had announced her new position. "Amanuensis!" she exclaimed.

"What a very long word," Lady Cove murmured. "I shouldn't like to be asked to spell it, though I daresay that our dear papa would have spelt it in a moment, and just exactly, too."

"It will be Latin, won't it?" Mrs. Wrotham looked apprehensive. "I never was comfortable with Latin. It seems a very manly language, and dead at that. Why ever should one wish to put words that are no longer living into one's mouth?"

Lady Cove shuddered. "Like swallowing fish."

"Fish!" Miss Lovatt gave her sister an exasperated frown. "The word has nothing to do with fish. It is a person who takes dictation."

"Yes," Leda said quickly, "and I have my own bedroom in the house, and whatever provisions that I require for correspondence, fresh paper and pens and so forth, and in place of a common desk, Mr. Gerard has provided me with a very fine secretary commissioned by Lady Ashland's father, the late Earl of Morrow, designed by His
Lordship himself and built to specifications out of precious wood brought from the South Seas. Lord Morrow was a great traveler and explorer, Mr. Gerard said, and his house is full of exotic things."

"Did His Lordship speak Latin?" Mrs. Wrotham asked, still anxious.

Miss Lovatt took issue with the question as being nothing to the point. After fiercely snubbing Mrs. Wrotham with a sharp suggestion that Mr. Wrotham himself, not to mention Lord Cove, had certainly spoken Latin, or read it at least, as any gentleman must who had attended Eton, she swept an arch glance around the little gathering and said, "You realize, of course, what this family must be?"

Leda and the other ladies humbly confessed ignorance.

"You will be too young to remember," Miss Lovatt assured Leda. "But Lady Cove and Mrs. Wrotham must recall it. The Ashland tragedy—oh, it will be all of forty years ago now. All the family, the little children too, perished in a fire aboard ship on their return from India. A terrible, terrible thing—the poor old marquess was left here at home with nothing—I believe his heir was unmarried, and the younger son's family was all on board, too. They were burnt up, every one of them."

"Yes, I do remember!" Lady Cove said, with a sad shake of her head. "It was such a ghastly misfortune. I remember it perfectly; that was the year Lord Cove took his business trip to Paris, and even the St. James'
Chronicle
wrote of the disaster, because the family were of such very high lineage, about the poor little children and how the pirates had killed them. And then not long after there was the India mutiny, and oh—the dreadful, shocking stories! I could not bear it; I couldn't read of it, but people would go on speaking of it until it made one's heart break."

"Yes, indeed—dreadful," Miss Lovatt said, quickly disposing of the mutiny. "But you recall what came of the Ashland matter in the end—the grandson didn't perish after all, and sailed all about the world until he was a man, in the same ship that was supposed to have burned, and then he came back and avenged himself upon his cousin—"

She stopped suddenly and frowned, looking rather vexed. "I believe it was the cousin; the name escapes me at the moment—Ellison—Elmore—"