Child of Vengeance (8 page)

A man sat cross-legged before the ancestral shrine. He turned, one arm bound tight to his chest.

“Oh,” said Tasumi, “it’s been some time.”

Bennosuke peered into the hall beyond the bulk of his uncle. There he saw the face that belonged beneath the brow of the helmet the boy had cleaned fastidiously since his childhood, the face that he had dreaded and longed to see more than anything else. Of course it had to be him; the specter was finally summoned. There for the first time in eight years, Bennosuke saw the face of his father.

CHAPTER THREE

Night had fallen. Munisai stood in the gloom of his house in front of his suit of armor, looking at it in silence. It had been kept immaculately, as had all the treasures of his youth, and all he wanted to do was laugh in disgust.

The shade of blue was gaudy and effeminate, the perfect lacquer chest plate spoke of time diverted from training to polishing, and the helmet … Where to begin? The needless embossing weakened the structure, there was no protection of the face at all, and the crest above the brow was practically begging enemies to grab and twist the thing from his head.

But above all there was the name threaded in brilliant white with such galling arrogance upon the armor.

Munisai Hirata
.

The name that he had tried so hard to forget woke things that ached in his heart. He began to feel his chest well as though it might burst with sickness.

Hirata
.

The name that he was born to, the name that he had damned, and the name that he had cast aside in favor of his lord’s.

“Hello, Munisai,” said Dorinbo.

Startled, Munisai turned to see his brother standing in the light of the doorway. A paper lantern glowed behind the monk. He had appeared as if from nothing.

“Dorinbo?” Munisai blurted in surprise, and then bowed apologetically. “Forgive me, I hadn’t expected to see you tonight.”

“I thought you might have had the courtesy to seek me out, after so long,” said the monk, slowly returning the bow.

“I would have …” Munisai began, but then he faltered under Dorinbo’s gaze. He knew his brother was not talking solely about some mere slight of a greeting. There was much to explain, much of it shameful, and Munisai could find no words.

The monk looked exactly like Munisai remembered him; slender frame, bald head, and most of all a disapproving expression on his face. The silence stretched on and the samurai felt himself start to blush, a mix of guilt and disgrace that he had not felt—or at least not confronted—in some time. Of all men his brother alone had the ability to draw it out of him. He squirmed, until Dorinbo took pity on him and spoke again with warmth in his voice:

“I came because Tasumi told me about your arm. How does it feel?”

“It aches,” said Munisai, grateful for the clemency. “Sometimes I lose feeling in my hand. Other times it itches and tingles.”

“Would you like me to look at it?”

“If you would—I trust your skill, brother.”

Dorinbo gestured to the well-lit drawing room, and wordlessly Munisai followed. There was a creeping silence in the house, and although they walked shoeless upon soft bamboo mats, their footfalls seemed heavy as stone.

The samurai stripped himself to the waist and sat with his back to the lantern. Dorinbo undid the grubby sling—Munisai wincing as the arm dropped dead—and there was a sticky ripping as he peeled the bandage away from the flesh. The monk examined the wound for a moment, and then drew air through his teeth slowly.

“Who tended to this?” he asked.

“One of my men.”

“Was he a healer?”

“No. Is it poorly done?”

“I can’t even tell …” said the monk, and he ran a finger along the edges of the wound, causing his brother to wince ever so slightly. “Did he cut this farther?”

“Yes, upon my orders.”

“Oh,” Dorinbo said, and it was a somber sound. “Oh, you fool. Cutting of the flesh just mangles it. You can only make timber with an ax, you can’t build a house with one.”

“I thought that—”

“You thought wrong, brother. Why didn’t you go to a proper healer?”

“They were busy,” said Munisai. He could feel Dorinbo behind him. Before his brother could draw another blush from him, he continued. “Also, it would not be good for men to see their commander wounded.”

“Spare me, Munisai,” sighed Dorinbo. “You mean it’s not good for
you
for them to see you wounded. Eight years and you haven’t changed in the slightest.”

Munisai said nothing. Dorinbo began a thorough examination of his brother’s body, his fingers probing and prodding, eyes gauging the color of the samurai’s flesh and tongue. Then the monk took the arm gently in his and began checking for the many telltale pulses across the length of it, darting across to the healthy arm now and then for comparison.

“Mmm,” the monk muttered, his fingers barely felt by Munisai as they pressed between the knuckles of his lamed hand. “Your heart and your organs are strong, your spirit quick. But the wound has stanched the flow of the healing ether to this side of your body. This, we can try to remedy.”

The monk busied himself with his art. Sweet herbs were ignited in a brazier to mask the smell of decay. A kettle was boiled and a tonic mixed from powders and pastes, which Munisai was told to drink. The taste was bitter, and it tingled on his gums as his brother began to clean the inside of the wound with a damp cloth. The stench of pus and the aroma of the herbs fought an even battle in the air around them.

Dorinbo settled himself, facing his brother’s back once more. Carefully he drew a map in his mind. Around the ugly ridges of the gash, the monk began to see the patterns of the stars in the sky, which the ancient healers of the Chinese had realized coincided with the median points of the body’s natural flow of energy. From a bundle of needles of many different sizes, he chose a specific one to act as the anchor, and then he began to impale Munisai’s flesh again and again, damming and diverting the vitality of his body toward the wound.

“I suppose,” said the monk as he worked, “I should ask where you have been all this time?”

“In the service of Lord Shinmen,” said Munisai.

“We are not entirely isolated, here—news carries, you know,” said Dorinbo. “You entered his service five years ago, after that tournament you won. I was wondering about the three before that.”

“That time is unimportant,” said Munisai curtly, for again the monk was prying at something he could not yet face. “Concentrate upon the wound.”

“As you wish,” said the monk.

The sensation of the needles being worked into him made his skin crawl. Perhaps it was only the tingle of the healing energy, he hoped. His mind wandered, seeking a distraction, and though he tried not to it settled on the boy.

“Bennosuke stays with you now?” Munisai forced himself to ask.

“No, he stays here—is he not here now?” said Dorinbo.

“No,” said Munisai, and then took a breath. “But, wherever he is, it seems Yoshiko was not lying about him.”

Dorinbo’s hands froze, a needle as thin as a spider’s thread twisted halfway into muscle. After a moment, the monk spoke.

“Time dispels all delusions. Are you surprised?”

“No. But I was hoping …” said Munisai, and the words hung in the air as heavy as the scent of herbs and rot.

“Bennosuke is a fine young man, Munisai,” said Dorinbo, resuming his work and pushing the needle down. “He is clever, and keen to learn. Tasumi tells me he is talented and growing strong with weaponry.”

“What do you mean?”

“That he would be a fine son to any man, regardless.”

“Regardless,” said Munisai.

The brothers sat in silence once more, the needles remaining in Munisai’s back for the long minutes they needed to have their effect. They waited until the herbs had burned themselves out, and then the monk removed the pins one by one, applied a poultice to the wound, and bound it once more in fresh bandages.

“We shall have to do this many times. Healing will be slow—if it heals at all,” he said as he began to replace his instruments in the bundle he had brought.

“Is there anything I can do to help it along?” asked Munisai.

“Pray, perhaps.”

“Maybe I’ll do that.”

“We both know you won’t,” said Dorinbo. Munisai nodded and smiled wryly. Slowly the smile withered, and then he turned his head to look his brother in the eye.

“Did they rebuild the far side of the village?” he asked.

“No. It’s still in ruins. Nobody dares interfere with them. Some of the peasants say they are haunted,” said the monk.

“Then tomorrow I will go there.”

“That might be good,” said Dorinbo. He finished packing, rose, and walked to the door. There he paused with his back to his brother, and then spoke again.

“It’s not the boy’s fault, Munisai. Remember that before anything,” he said, and gently slid the paper door closed.

Munisai listened to his quiet footsteps retreat into the night. When he was sure he was alone, he blew the candle within the lantern out, and then went to stand before the armor again.

In the dark, only the brilliant white characters of his old name could be seen in pale blue.

T
he night was darkest deep in the valley of Miyamoto, where the dojo lay. The hardwood floor made a poor bed. Bennosuke lay uneasily upon it, though the texture of the wood was the least of the reasons sleep would not come to him.

His father had returned.

That afternoon Munisai had exchanged courteous words with Tasumi, and the boy had stood there in his loincloth with river water dripping off his back like a tongueless half-wit. He had almost quailed in shame when his father had eventually turned his eyes upon him; all but naked before him, skinny and gangly and marked with welts. Munisai—the samurai, handsome, strong—had measured him up and down, and although the man had nodded eventually it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

He had clapped his son on the shoulder with his one good arm,
and had said, quite simply: “We will talk further later. For now, I shall retire to my house.”

Bennosuke had nodded like an idiot, not having the courage to tell him that he still lived there too. He had watched dumbly his father go, and then had lingered, cursing himself for his timidity. Not knowing where else to go, too ashamed to go to Dorinbo or Tasumi and admit his cowardice, when night fell he had eventually resorted to sneaking into the dojo.

Now he lay, their meeting playing over in his head. He had imagined it before, many times. There had been childish fantasies of Munisai presenting him with the longsword of adulthood and the two of them growing strong together, all his problems magically righted, and there had also been bleaker ones of disgrace and exile. Neither had been true. There had been no drama or resolution. It had just happened, and now he was alone and in the dark, both in body and in spirit. He felt the entire night was the cuirass of his father’s armor, reflecting his failure back at him.

“We will talk further.”

He heard those words again, short and blunt. The same cruel voices he heard when he cleaned the armor whispered to him, telling him that this was all Munisai could bear to say to him, all he could stomach of looking at what had become of his heir.

The boy tried not to listen. He chided himself for expecting anything more than curtness. He knew that his father was samurai and samurai did not give themselves over to blind emotion. He remembered his father smiling only at the very edges of his memory, when he had been small enough for Munisai to hold him in his arms.

Since his departure there had been only brief missives delivered sporadically from Lord Shinmen’s stronghold; instructions for the managing of his estate, the change in their family name, nothing more. Never once had he asked about Bennosuke, because he knew the boy was being raised by others, and he had other things to attend to.

Seeing to your own duty, and having faith in others to do theirs. This was being samurai, and samurai like his father kept their word—in time they
would
talk, and the boy would learn to become samurai too.