Daughter of the Sword (31 page)

Those were the days before Mariko knew that Saori had a problem, days when a little sister drinking with her friends in the park was no cause for alarm. Mariko had done her share of partying too—or if not her share, a little bit, anyway. Everyone had. After her twentieth birthday, Mariko bought for her sister just as a friend’s elder brother had bought for Mariko. How could she call herself a good elder sister and do otherwise?

“Hello?” her mother’s voice said through the cell. “Mariko? What are you giggling about?”

“Nothing, Mom. Sorry. Just wanted to tell you my phone’s working again.”

“Oh.”

“You okay?”

“I just thought…” Her tone was as lifeless as the dull gray Plexiglas mannequin breasts overhead. “Since you were laughing, I was hoping maybe you’d heard from your sister.”

“Nope. Sorry, Mom. I was only thinking of something funny she said.”

“Oh. What was it?”

“Something naughty.” Mariko sighed. “Why is it that when she’s gone, it’s easier to remember her being bad than being good?”

It was strange to be having this conversation
here
, where memories of handling Saori with handcuffs flared so vividly. Mariko thought about fate, about that night, about how, of all the junkies in the city,
it had been Saori to walk into her bust. If only she could get so lucky with Fuchida.

“Miko,” her mother said, “do you remember the time your sister walked right through the rock garden at Ginkakuji?”

“Sort of,” Mariko said, which was a lie. The sight of Saori’s pretty pink hat catching the wind just so, and of Saori’s little footprints leaving all those craters across the concentric rings so carefully raked into the pebbles—they were among the clearest memories of Mariko’s childhood. The story was old and worn, but she knew how much her mom enjoyed telling it. Mariko laughed at all the right parts, and in the meantime she wondered whether Saori had any choice but to be an abuser. What had pushed her over the edge? Was it Mariko, implicitly condoning her habits by buying her booze while Saori was still wearing her uniform skirt as short as their high school teachers would allow? Was Mariko’s culpability deeper because she’d been a police academy recruit at the time? Or was the cause something so deep-seated that even Saori couldn’t say what it was? Some genetic factor? Or could the whole problem be chalked up as Saori’s response to their father’s death?

Mariko blinked hard. These were the questions that would run like a bullet train, taking untold kilometers to stop if she let them build any momentum. She tuned in to her mother again, laughing sincerely at the part in the story where the big
gaijin
tourist got so mad that a little girl had ruined his photo opportunity of the rock garden. “I was
so
embarrassed, Miko-chan. There aren’t even words to describe it.” But her mother was laughing all the same.

“She’s always been a troublemaker,” Mariko said. “Mom, listen, I should get back to work, okay?”

“I thought today was your day off.”

“It is, but I’m running this stakeout, remember? I’m not really going to have a day off until it’s done.”

“All right. You’ll be home for dinner?”

“You bet.”

Mariko folded her phone shut and used it as a paperweight,
preventing the crosswind blowing through the mall from claiming the folder she set down on the bench beside her. She slid the top page of the report from the folder and skimmed it. It was the latest status report from her stakeout. It had half a ruddy brown thumbprint on one corner—barbecue sauce, Mariko guessed—and nothing else unusual. The comings and goings of the neighbors. An argument between a boyfriend and girlfriend, loud enough to get the surveillance officers’ attention, neither protracted enough nor violent enough to believe it was meant as a distraction. Fuchida remained a ghost.

Mariko jumped in her skin when a pigeon burst forth from under her seat, startled by something only another pigeon could guess. Her pulse pounded hard and fast in her temples, but Mariko realized it wasn’t because of the pigeon. She would find no peace and quiet here, nor would she find it at work, nor at her mother’s apartment. There was only one place she could go to find a little serenity.

“Why, Inspector,” Yamada said when he opened his door. “Have you come to update me on my many observers?”

“I was hoping we might do some sword training, actually.”

Her sensei smiled. “That’s the spirit. I’d just as soon not hear about your stakeout anyhow. It’s strange knowing they’re out there watching. I never know how much they can see.”

“Pretty much everything,” Mariko said, and she told him how the thermal imaging worked.

“Then I was right after all,” Yamada said, sighing. “I’ve been feeling self-conscious all day. Even when I brush my teeth, it occurs to me to wonder whether they think I’m doing it right.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. Some of those guys haven’t discovered toothpaste yet.”

Yamada laughed. “Oh, I bet the boys just love working with you.”

“I’d love working with them too if they would just treat me like one of the boys.”

They made their way through the house to the backyard, with a quick stop at the sword rack in the study on the way. Mariko loved the fact that Yamada had a sword rack in his study, and the fact that he had another one in the bedroom made his house the best place in the world. It was like standing on an island in time: everything progressed normally all around it, but here on the island time stood still. Cooking was done on a stove, not in a microwave. Writing to a friend meant pen and paper, not an e-mail, certainly not a text message.

And yet despite Yamada’s uncanny ability to stand apart from the forces of modernization, there was one respect in which he made the rest of the country seem positively medieval. “Thank you,” she said as they walked down the back stairs. “For treating me like a student and not a girl student. I wish the guys at work would learn a thing or two about that.”

“Oh, what do they know? I hear some of them haven’t even discovered toothpaste yet.”

They practiced for two hours straight. After stance and footwork came overhead strikes, then diagonal strikes, until Mariko’s shoulders were so sore she could hardly lift her arms, much less her sword.

Sweating and panting, she said, “Sensei, maybe we can take a little break.”

“Oh ho. Think you’ve learned enough, eh?”

“Not enough, but maybe enough for now. After all, you said this sword is called Glorious Victory Unsought,
neh
?”

“Ah. So you were paying attention.”

“Of course. I’m glued to your every word, Sensei.” Mariko smirked. “And since I’ve already got Glorious Victory well in hand, why push so hard on the training? With a name like that, how can I lose?”

Yamada narrowed his unseeing eyes. “This is the sword that will kill you the moment you drop your vigilance against that very thought. You weren’t paying attention at all, little girl.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“If you want to joke around with that sword in your hands, I’ll call you whatever I like. I’m the sensei here, little girl.”

“Don’t,” she said, and she stepped in to press the attack. He turned her sword aside, just as he’d done a hundred times before.

Mariko anticipated the move. She slipped to the side too, evading his
katana
. Now she had him. His whole right flank was exposed. Little girl, my ass, she thought, and she raised her sword to strike.

Yamada didn’t bother raising his weapon. He just stepped aside. Mariko didn’t even see it when he kicked her foot out from under her. She hit the grass, careful to land on her left shoulder, holding the sword high and clear of the ground in her right. But in protecting the sword, she forgot about protecting herself. The ground hit her like a truck—a truck with a big, sharp hood ornament to stab her in the ribs.

She looked at Yamada’s blade, hanging easily in his wrinkled hand, its razor-sharp tip close enough to tickle her under the chin. The tip of her own weapon brushed the close-cropped lawn. He didn’t need to speak the lesson aloud; had it been a real fight, the price for her imbalance would have been her life.

At last the weight of the sword overcame her, and she flopped to her back so that she could rest the blade on her chest. An ache throbbed deep inside her right shoulder, as if it still strained to hold the sword off the ground. On any other day, she would have found the back of the heavy blade painful across her breasts. Today she let the narrow line of pain sit there, the better to rest her shoulders.

“Do you know how I felled you?”

“Temper.” Mariko spoke with her eyes shut. “You called me a little girl and I lost it.”

“No. You wanted to show me that you were not a little girl. You wanted to show me what you had learned. Then the sword betrayed you.”

With her eyes closed, Mariko could smell her own sweat, overpowering even the fresh scent of the grass. “What do you mean
it
betrayed me?”

“Had your posture been balanced, I could not have swept your foot. You know full well I cannot see even as far as my own toes.
I stepped where I guessed you might step; it was your imbalance that took you over my foot. I did not sweep you so much as you did—or, properly speaking, as your weapon did.”

It was impossible. Steel couldn’t betray anyone. And yet his explanation matched the facts exactly.

Mariko surprised herself with how quickly she came to accept the impossible. But in the end she was a detective; she believed what the evidence told her, and that was that.

She got to her feet, her ribs and aching shoulders protesting the whole time. “Sensei, will you show me what you did to me before? That foot thing?”

“‘That foot thing’ is called a sweep,” Yamada said, settling easily into a ready stance of his own. He seemed bigger, instantly threatening; images sprang to mind of a panther perched on a branch above unsuspecting quarry. “Come,” he said.

She lunged to the attack. He sidestepped. Her foot struck his; she felt her weight lurch forward; she only barely saved herself from falling.

“Well done!” said Yamada, practically in her ear. His naked blade was mere centimeters away from her. The big Inazuma was too long for such close quarters; if he wanted to counterattack, she would be dead.

Mariko gave a noncommittal grunt. “You would have killed me.”

Yamada laughed. “But not the way I would have last time. You did not fall prey to the same sweep twice. You’re improving.”

“Ehh. Not quickly enough.”

“You demand too much of yourself, Inspector. Not even Musashi learned all his swordsmanship in an afternoon.”

Mariko knew all about demanding too much of herself. It was why she needed to win triathlons, not just finish. It was why she’d made sergeant, why she’d made detective, why she wanted to command a manhunt instead of a stakeout. It was why she hadn’t given up on her sister yet. Leaving Saori to reap the consequences she’d sown for
herself wasn’t just the easier choice; it was the
reasonable
choice, much more sensible than trying to save an addict from herself. But Mariko couldn’t do that any more than she could let Beautiful Singer run its course with Fuchida.

And yet that too seemed so easy, so tempting. The sword might well kill him. Mariko didn’t understand how inert steel could betray a freely choosing human being, but now that she’d experienced that phenomenon herself, she could not deny the possibility that Fuchida’s sword had the same power. If Yamada was right, Fuchida’s body would turn up soon enough, and it seemed the only collateral damage would be a few dead pushers.

Mariko wished she could be content with that. Stakeout work was easy. Mariko didn’t have the disposition to just sit and watch the monitors like some of the guys did, but she was lead on the case. She could commandeer the Aihara house, and during the hours she had the place to herself, she could do sword drills all day. The thought of Ko
paying
her to practice her
kenjutsu
brought a smile to her face. The smug bastard deserved it. She’d taken enough shit from him. She deserved her day of rest.

On top of that, half the cops on the force would have said whoever was next on Fuchida’s hit list probably deserved to die. Wages of sin and all that. But they were wrong. Mariko knew it. Even drug dealers had rights, and Mariko had taken an oath to uphold those rights. Even if the sentence for trafficking were death, it should have been a judge that pronounced it, not a crazed yakuza butcher.

And that butcher was out there somewhere. Mariko sheathed Glorious Victory and handed the sword respectfully to Yamada. Bowing, she said, “I’m sorry, Sensei, I’ve got to go home and look over my case notes again. There’s got to be some hint in there of how to nail Fuchida. I just have to see it.”

“Good luck, Inspector.”

Mariko replied with a wry laugh. “This isn’t another one of those things where you know all the answers in advance, is it? Because that was annoying as hell the last few times around.”

Yamada chuckled. “I’m afraid not.”

“It’s just…I’ve got this feeling, you know, like I’m right on the cusp of figuring something out, but by the time I figure it out, it’ll be too late. You ever get that feeling?”

“Once.”

“What happened?”

Yamada frowned. A dark shadow fell over his face, and he cast his unseeing gaze to the ground. At length he said, “People died.”

Mariko frowned too. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

BOOK SIX