Daughter of the Sword (53 page)

At last they reached the incinerator. Mariko had envisioned a great potbellied thing, cast iron, with a gaping maw opening onto glowing red-orange hellfire. What she saw was a door in the wall, not so different from the door she’d find on the front of a microwave. It was unguarded—but then, what was the use in guarding it? It had no value; its only function was to destroy things of value. And after all, the building itself was secure.

“Straight ahead, six paces,” Mariko said, and soon rolled to a stop in front of the little door. She tested Beautiful Singer’s weight in her hands. The edge of the blade was so fine that were she to drop a single hair on it, she was certain the hair would be cut in two.

“This is the third Inazuma blade I’ve held in my own two hands,” she said. “How many people in history do you suppose could say that?”

“Master Inazuma himself,” said Shoji. “Not many others.”

A little voice in Mariko’s mind cried out in protest. She couldn’t destroy the sword. It was evidence. Destroying it would ruin her career. And besides, the sword was worth more than all the pay she’d
draw from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department in her entire lifetime. It wouldn’t be hard to keep it for herself. She could say Ko stole it. Or incinerated it. He was lying helpless. It wouldn’t be a hard thing to kill him.

For the first time Mariko could understand Beautiful Singer’s power. It
was
worth killing for. But no more so than a Mercedes-Benz. People committed homicide over expensive property in every corner of the world. They killed for jealousy too, but Mariko wasn’t feeling any of that. As elegant as it was, Beautiful Singer inspired no thoughts of possessiveness in her. For the first time Mariko understood the full weight of what Yamada had told her so many weeks before:
I don’t believe there’s ever been a man alive who could overcome the sword.
No
man
alive. And from the beginning Yamada said he’d been waiting for a student like Mariko.

The dots connected so fast that Mariko could hardly follow them. Beautiful Singer was possessed by a geisha, a samurai’s jealous lover. It wasn’t so long ago that Mariko would have scoffed at herself for thinking such a thing. But now she was sure of it: the
kami
that lived in this sword was female, and it had a unique power to infect men’s minds. But not Mariko’s. Yamada had told her once that the old guard would have stripped him of his rank for teaching swordsmanship to a woman, but now Mariko saw it couldn’t have gone any other way. Only a woman could accomplish what she was contemplating now: extinguishing the spirit within Beautiful Singer.

And incinerating Beautiful Singer with it. The rarest, most conspicuous, most expensive piece of evidence in the whole facility.

“I wish I could be sure I’m doing the right thing,” Mariko said. Then she opened the incinerator door, thrust Beautiful Singer into the chamber within, and closed it quickly.

“Now we just have to figure out how this thing works,” she said.

80

Come on,” said Saori. “You just know you’re going to get a hero’s welcome.”

Mariko shook her head. “I’ve just spent a week in the hospital. I look like hell.”

“You look like a war hero. Besides, some of those guys you work with are cute. You gotta love that uniform.”

“Not when I have to wear it, I don’t.” Mariko sighed. She’d lost the battle already and she knew it. As a last ploy she said, “Besides, I thought you were hitting on Dr. Hayakawa.”

“Nothing says a girl can’t work on two guys at once.” Saori winked and smiled. “Come on, Miko, put your face on. Let’s go.”

Six nights and seven days: that’s how long Mariko had been cooped up in her bed until Hayakawa pronounced her free from the risk of sepsis. And now she didn’t want to leave the apartment. She knew it didn’t make sense, and she knew she’d have to go to her precinct sooner or later if she was going to get HQ to sign off on her six weeks of recuperation. Mariko still couldn’t sit up without pain, two hot stripes of it, one in her belly and the other in her back. Fuchida’s sword had done far worse to her on its way through her body, but it was the muscle punctures that kept her immobile. If she was going to be paid while she sweated through rehab, she’d have to go through the paperwork.

So as much as she hated Saori for pushing her into it, Mariko got ready to go back to post. “I have no idea what to wear,” she told Saori. “What the hell goes with a wheelchair?”

It was the thought of being seen in the chair that daunted her. She’d worked long and hard to be seen as an equal—or, if not an equal, then at least as a strong, independent woman who didn’t need to be mollycoddled or rescued. Letting the department see her in a wheelchair would destroy that image, and Mariko feared it would take another four years to rebuild it.

It was seeing Glorious Victory that cinched it. It hadn’t been in the evidence locker because it wasn’t evidence; no one would be pressing assault charges against a dead man, and without a case against Fuchida it was just Dr. Yamada’s private property. Yamada had bequeathed everything to Shoji-san, and Shoji didn’t have much need for ancient cavalry swords. When Mariko returned to her apartment, she found Saori had bought her a sword stand as a welcome-home present, and for lack of a better place to put it in her minuscule apartment, Glorious Victory Unsought was sitting on Mariko’s kitchen table.

It was far and away the most expensive, most beautiful, most daunting gift she’d ever received. The sword overhung both ends of the little table, larger than life. Mariko thought of the Bushido tradition it symbolized; she thought of her fallen sensei; she thought of what both of them would have to say about trying to avoid her fears.

So she rummaged around for some blush and lip gloss. Makeup was hardly her usual style, but she couldn’t show up at the precinct looking like the pallid zombie she’d become after lying flat on her back for a week and surviving on an intravenous diet. In the end she settled on wearing her police uniform. Again, hardly her usual style, but at least she’d be seen as a sergeant in a wheelchair instead of a poor
girl
in a wheelchair.

As they approached the station, Saori said, “Don’t look so nervous. It’ll be fine.”

“They’re
guys
, Saori. They’re going to pity me.”

Saori spun her about, pushed the glass door open with her butt, and pulled Mariko inside. The second set of double doors was also made of glass, crosshatched by steel wires within, and Mariko looked over her shoulder to see Ino rushing up to open them for her. It begins before I even get inside, she thought, and Ino’s long arms pulled back the door.

“Well, aren’t you a tall drink of water?” Saori said. Without even looking, Mariko knew what smile she was giving him.

But Ino ignored her entirely. “Hey, guys!” he said. “Oshiro’s back!”

The last thing in the world Mariko expected was applause. Everyone in the precinct was on his feet, cheering and shouting. Ino was the first to clap his hand on her shoulder, just as he might have done for a teammate who drove in the winning run at the interprecinct baseball tournament. As Saori ushered her into the station, one cop after another congratulated her, their smiles genuinely collegial. One gave her a punch to the upper arm and did not pull it. There would be a bruise later. She would treasure it. Sergeant Takeda, not much taller than Mariko even in her wheelchair, took one look at her missing finger and joked that she’d have to learn how to shoot left-handed. It was the kind of joke he should have made only with another man. She adored him for it.

“You got rid of the old man!” said a cop she didn’t even recognize.

“Yeah, pled guilty this morning,” said someone else behind her, someone she couldn’t see through the crowd.

Whoever he was, his comment generated almost as much stir as Mariko’s appearance had. “A guy I know at the courthouse just sent me the e-mail,” the rumormonger said. Mariko still couldn’t tell who it was; all she could see were backs and belts. “They nailed him on obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence. My guy says the prosecutor decided not to push for destruction of evidence. Better to take the easy conviction, I guess.”

“How long will he get?”

“Who cares? Just so they put him away long enough for me to retire.”

“Oshiro, is it true you nailed him in the ’nads with a Taser?”

“Yeah, Oshiro, is it true when they found him, he pissed himself?”

Mariko couldn’t keep track of all the chatter. It was enough for her that Ko hadn’t been convicted of turning Beautiful Singer into ferrous ash. Mariko was guilty on that count, and it wasn’t right to let another cop stand punishment for her crime, not even a cop so noxious as Lieutenant Ko. Ex-lieutenant Ko, she thought, who had left his fingerprints all over Beautiful Singer’s sheath, which had probably been sitting right on his jacket when the police arrived to examine the scene. It was his only gentlemanly act: to remove himself from her life permanently.

“Who do you think burned the sword if it wasn’t him?” someone was saying.

“It
was
him. They just couldn’t pin it on him, because they couldn’t find prints on the incinerator.”

Mariko smiled. She knew why that was: she’d wiped her own prints clean. Even after destroying the sword that had ruined so many lives, she had to watch her ass. Guilt made her face flush, despite the fact that she was the only one who could turn the boys’ gossiping in the right direction.

And then, all of a sudden, she smiled. It was a broad, beaming smile, accompanied by the beautiful realization that had just leapt into her mind. She was gossiping with the boys. More to the point, the boys were gossiping with her. She was
in
. One of them. A member of the club.

And to join, all she’d had to do was die and come back.

She shuddered at the thought of what it would take to make lieutenant.

GLOSSARY

anime:
cartoon

banzai:
traditional military cheer

bokken:
solid wooden training sword, usually made of oak

bōryokudan:
literally, “violent crime organization”; the term used by police, and in the media at the behest of the police, for organized crime syndicates in Japan

bushi:
warrior; soldier

Bushido:
the way of the warrior

daimyo:
feudal lord with large land holdings

dan:
an enumerating suffix for ranks of black belt (e.g., “fourth
dan
” means “fourth-degree black belt”)

eta:
outcast; untouchable

gaijin:
literally, “outsider”; foreigner

gakubatsu:
a strong and lasting bond, originating from a shared alma mater, entailing the exchange of favors

geisha:
a skilled artist paid to wait on, entertain, and in some cases provide sexual services for clientele

goze:
blind itinerant female, usually a musician, said to have the gift of second sight

gyoza:
Japanese pot sticker, usually filled with ground pork and shredded cabbage, onion, and other vegetables

hachimaki:
the bandana traditionally worn under an armored warrior’s helmet; also used by kamikaze pilots to signify their willingness to die

hakama:
wide, pleated pants bound tightly around the waist and hanging to the ankle

iaidō:
the art of drawing and resheathing the sword, and of attacking off the draw

kappa:
a water-dwelling mythological being, humanoid with reptilian features, with a topless head and a water-filled bowl in place of a brain

karōshi:
death from overwork; also known clinically as “occupational sudden death”

katana:
a curved long sword worn with the cutting edge facing upward

kendō:
the sporting art of the sword

kenjutsu:
the lethal art of the sword

koku:
the amount of rice required to feed one person for one year; also, a unit for measuring the size of a fiefdom or estate, corresponding to the amount of rice its land can produce

kumihimo:
woven cord, sometimes used to bind swords

manga:
Japanese-style comic books

naginata:
pole arm with a very long blade

ninkyō dantai:
literally, “chivalrous group”; the term used by criminals for organized crime syndicates in Japan

NPA:
National Police Agency

ōdachi:
a curved great sword

onsen:
hot spring bath

okonomiyaki:
literally, “grilled whatever-you-like”; an omelette-like dish consisting of various meats and vegetables, shredded and bound together by batter, often cooked by the customer (
okonomiyaki
restaurants usually feature griddles on each table)

OL:
office lady; general term for any woman in pink-collar work

oyabun:
head of an organized crime syndicate

pachinko:
a machine used for gambling, akin to a vertical pinball machine

punch perm:
a hairstyle of short, tight curls, often dyed, which for many years was a trademark style among yakuzas

ri:
a unit of measurement equal to about two and a half miles

rikishi:
sumo wrestler

romaji:
the roman alphabet when used to write Japanese words

rōnin:
literally, “wave-person”; a masterless samurai

sarariman:
salaryman; a typical large-office employee

sashiko:
a traditional Japanese quilting art

sensei:
literally, “born-before”; a teacher, professor, or doctor, depending on the context

seppuku:
ritual suicide by disembowelment; also called hara-kiri

shakuhachi:
traditional Japanese flute