Brilliance of the Moon (14 page)

If the Muto and the Kikuta families were to fall out, could the
Tribe survive? It seemed an even greater danger to her than anything Arai or
Takeo might do.

“Where is your daughter now?” she asked.

“As far as I know, she is in one of the secret Kikuta villages
north of Matsue.” Kenji paused and then said quietly, almost painfully, “Yuki
was married to Akio at the beginning of the year.”

“
To Akio
?” Shizuka could not
help exclaiming. “Yes, poor girl. The Kikuta insisted and there was no way I
could refuse them. There had been talk of a match between them ever since they
were both children. I had no rational grounds for withholding my consent
anyway, just the irrational sentiments of the father of an only child. My wife
did not share these. She was strongly in favor, especially as Yuki was already
pregnant.”

Shizuka was astonished. “With Akio’s child?” He shook his head.
She had never before seen her uncle unable to speak like this. “Not Takeo’s?”

He nodded. The lamps flickered; the house lay silent. Shizuka
could think of nothing to say in response. All she could think of was the child
Kaede had lost. She seemed to hear the question again that Kaede had asked her
in the garden at Shirakawa:
Would they
have
taken the child as they took Takeo
? That the Tribe
should have a child
of Takeo’s seemed like something
supernatural to her, the cruel workings of fate that humans cannot hope to
escape, turn and twist as they might.

Kenji took a deep breath and went on: “She became infatuated with
Takeo after the incident at Yamagata, and took his side strongly against the Kikuta
master and me. As you might imagine, I myself was in considerable anguish over
the decision to take Takeo in Inu-yama before the assassination attempt on
Iida. I betrayed Shigeru. I don’t think I will ever forgive myself for the part
I played in his death. For years I considered him my closest friend. However,
for the sake of unity within the Tribe, I did as the Kikuta desired and
delivered Takeo to them. But between you and me, I would have been happy to
have died at Inuyama if that could have erased the shame I felt. I have not
spoken of this to anyone except you.

“Of course, the Kikuta are delighted to have the child. It will
be born in the seventh month. They hope it will inherit the skills of both its
parents. They blame Takeo’s upbringing for all his defects; they intend to
raise this child themselves from birth—”

He broke off. The silence in the room deepened. “Say something,
Niece, even if it’s only that it serves me right!”

“It is not for me to judge you for anything you have done,” she
replied in a low voice. “I am sorry for all you must have suffered. I am amazed
at the way fate plays with us like pieces on a board.”

“Do you ever see ghosts?”

“I dream of Lord Shirakawa,” she admitted. After a long pause she
added, “You know that Kondo and I brought about his death to preserve Kaede and
her child.”

She heard the hiss of his breath, but he did not speak, and after
a few moments she continued. “Her father was out of his mind, on the point of
violating and then killing her. I wanted to save her life and the child’s. But
she lost it anyway and nearly died. I don’t know if she remembers what we did,
and I would not hesitate to do the same thing again; but for some reason,
perhaps because I have never spoken of it to anyone, not even Kondo, it haunts me.”

“If it was to save her life, I’m sure your action was justified,”
he replied.

“It was one of those moments when there was no time to think.
Kondo and I acted instinctively. I had never killed a man of such high rank
before. It seems like a crime to me.”

“Well, my betrayal of Shigeru also seems like a crime. He visits
me in dreams. I see him as he looked when we brought him up out of the river. I
drew the hood from his face and asked him to forgive me, but he only had
strength to speak to Takeo. Night after night he comes to me.” There was
another long silence.

“What are you thinking of?” she whispered. “You would not split
the Tribe?”

“I must do what seems best for the Muto family,” he replied. “And
the Kikuta have my daughter and will soon have my grandchild. Obviously these
are my first obligations. But I swore to Takeo when I first met him that while
I was alive he would be safe. I will not seek his death. We’ll wait and see
which way he jumps. The Kikuta want the Otori to provoke him and lure him into
battle. They’ve been concentrating all their attention on Hagi and Terayama.”
He hissed through his teeth. “I suppose poor old Ichiro will be their first
target. But what do you think Takeo and Kaede will do once they’re married?”

“Kaede is determined to inherit Maruyama,” Shizuka replied. “I
imagine they will move south as soon as possible.”

“Maruyama has only a few Tribe families,” Kenji said. “Takeo will
be safer there than anywhere.” He was silent, wrapped in his thoughts. Then he
smiled slightly. “Of course, we can only blame ourselves for the marriage. We
brought them together; we encouraged them, even. Whatever can have possessed
us?”

Shizuka recalled suddenly the training hall in Tsuwano, heard the
clash of the wooden poles, the rain pouring down outside, saw their faces young
and vivid, on the threshold of passion. “Perhaps we felt sorry for them. They
were both pawns being used in a conspiracy wider than either of them suspected,
both likely to die before they had begun to live.”

“Or perhaps you are right and we were the pawns, moved by the
hand of fate,” her uncle replied. “Kondo can leave tomorrow. Stay here for the
summer. It will be good to talk about these things with you. I have deep
decisions to make that will affect many generations to come.”

The first weeks in Maruyama were spent as Kaede had predicted, in
restoring the land. Our welcome was warm and seemingly wholehearted, but
Maruyama was an extensive domain with many hereditary retainers and a large
body of elders who were as opinionated and conservative as most old men. My
reputation as Shigeru’s avenger stood me in good stead, but the usual rumors
surfaced about how I had achieved it: my doubtful origins, the hint of sorcery.
My own Otori warriors were completely loyal and I trusted Sugita, his family,
and the men who had fought alongside him, but I had my suspicions of many of
the others, and they were equally suspicious of me. Sugita was delighted by our
marriage and confided in me what he had once said to Kaede that he believed I
might unite the Three Countries and bring peace. But the elders generally were
surprised by it. No one dared say anything to my face, but from hints and
whispered conversations I soon gathered that a marriage to Fujiwara had been
expected. It did not bother me particularly—I had no idea then of the extent of
the nobleman’s power and influence—but like everything else that summer it
added to my sense of urgency. I had to move against Hagi; I had to take over
the leadership of the Otori clan. Once I had gained what was legally mine and
had my base in Hagi, no one would dare question or challenge me.

In the meantime my wife and I became farmers, riding out every
day with Sugita, inspecting fields, woods, villages, and rivers, ordering
repairs, clearing away dead trees, pruning, and planting. The land was well
surveyed and the taxation system sound and not unjust. The domain was rich,
although neglected, and its people hardworking and enterprising. They needed
very little encouragement to return to the level of activity and prosperity
they had enjoyed under Lady Naomi. The castle and residence were also somewhat
neglected, but as Kaede set about restoring them they quickly regained the
beauty created by Naomi. The matting was replaced, screens repainted, wooden floors
polished. In the garden stood the tea room built by Naomi’s grandmother that
she had told me about the first time I had met her in Chigawa. She had promised
me that one day we would drink tea there together, and when the redecoration of
the simple rustic building was completed and Kaede prepared tea there, I felt
that the promise had been fulfilled, even though Naomi herself was no longer
alive.

I was conscious of Naomi’s spirit, and Shigeru’s, with us at all
times. As the abbot had said in Terayama, in Kaede and me they seemed to have
the chance to live again. We would achieve everything they had dreamed of but
had been thwarted in. We placed tablets and offerings in a small shrine deep
within the residence, and prayed before it every day for guidance and help. I
had a profound sense of relief that I was finally carrying out Shigeru’s last
requests to me, and Kaede seemed happier than she had ever been before.

It would have been a time of great joy, celebrating victory and
seeing the land and the people begin to flourish again, had it not been for the
darker work I felt compelled to undertake, a work that gave me no pleasure at
all. Sugita tried to tell me there were no Tribe members in the castle town, so
well hidden were they and so secret their operations. But I knew better, for
Shigeru had chronicled them all, and I had not forgotten the men Hiroshi had
described, who had appeared out of the air, clad in dark clothes, and killed
his father. We had found no such bodies among the dead at Asagawa. They had
survived the battle and would now be stalking me.

Of the families listed in the records, most were Kuroda and Imai,
a few of the richer merchants Muto. There were very few Kikuta this far to the
west, but the one existing family maintained their customary authority over the
others. I clung to the words of the prophecy that had told me that only my own
son could kill me, but even though by day I might believe it I still was alert
to every sound, slept lightly at night, ate only food that Manami had prepared
or supervised.

I had heard nothing of Yuki and did not know if her child was
born or if it was a boy. Kaede continued to bleed regularly throughout the
summer, and though I knew she was disappointed not to conceive a child, I could
not help feeling a certain relief. I longed for children of our own, but I
feared the complications they would bring. And what would I do if Kaede bore me
a son?

How to deal with the Tribe was a problem that constantly
exercised my mind. The first week I was in the town I sent messages to the
Kikuta and Muto families informing them that I wished to consult with them and
they were to wait on me the following day. That night there was an attempt to
break into the residence and steal the records. I woke to hear someone in the room,
perceived his barely visible form, challenged him, and pursued him to the outer
gates, hoping to take him alive. He lost invisibility as he leaped over the
wall and was killed by the guards on the other side before I could prevent it.
He was dressed in black and tattooed like Shintaro, the assassin who had tried
to kill Shigeru in Hagi. I placed him as one of the Kuroda family.

I sent men the next morning to the Kikuta house and had everyone
in it arrested. Then I waited to see who would keep the appointment with me.
Two old Muto men turned up, wily and slippery. I gave them the option of
leaving the province or renouncing their Tribe loyalties. They said they would
have to speak with their children. Nothing happened for two days; then a hidden
bowman tried to shoot me as I rode with Amano and Sugita in a remote country
area. Shun and I heard the sound together and evaded the arrow; we hunted down
the bowman, hoping to get information from him, but he took poison. I thought
he might have been the second man Hiroshi had seen, but I had no way of knowing
for sure.

By this time I had run out of patience. I thought the Tribe were
playing with me, suspecting I would never have the ruthlessness to deal with
them. I had all the adults in the Kikuta family I had taken hanged and that
night sent patrols to fifty or more houses, with orders to kill everyone in
them except children. I hoped to spare the lives of the young ones, but the
Tribe poisoned their own children rather than give them to me. The old men came
back to me, but my offer had expired. The only choice they were given now was
between poison or the sword. They both took poison on the spot.

A few fled from the province. I did not have the resources to
track them down. Most sat tight, concealed in secret rooms as I had once been
or in hidden villages in the mountains. No one would have been able to ferret
them out except me, who knew everything about them and had been trained by them
in their own ways. I was privately sickened by my own ruthlessness and horrified
that I was massacring families just as my own had been massacred, but I saw no
alternative and I do not think I was cruel. I gave them swift deaths; I did not
crucify them or burn them alive or hang them upside down by the heels. My aim
was to eradicate an evil, not to terrorize the people.

It was not a popular measure with the warrior class, who had
benefited from the services of these merchants, had been supplied with soy
products and wine, had borrowed money, and occasionally taken advantage of the other,
darker trade of murder. It added to their mistrust of me. I tried to keep them
busy training men and maintaining the borders while I supervised the recovery
of the economy. I’d dealt the merchant class a terrible blow by removing its
Tribe component, but on the other hand I’d taken all their assets for the
domain itself and had set a great deal of wealth, previously tied up by them,
circulating through the system. For two weeks it seemed we would be faced with
a shortage of essential goods before winter, but then we uncovered a group of
enterprising peasants who, fed up with the extortion of the Tribe, had been
distilling and fermenting on a small scale in secret and who knew enough about
the process to take over production. We provided the money to set them up in
the Tribes former premises, and in return took sixty parts out of a hundred for
the domain treasury. This promised to be so lucrative a practice it seemed we
would need to take no more than thirty parts from the rice harvest, which in
turn made us popular with the farmers and villagers.