Year of the Demon (14 page)

Little had Daigoro imagined that this was a
small
ship, little more than a sloop. The next ship to appear was one of the famed turtle ships. Daigoro had never seen one before, but there was no mistaking what it was. Scores of interlocking metal shields covered the entire deck in a gleaming shell. The fact that Daigoro could not see the deck only gave his imagination room to wander. How many troops were aboard? A hundred? More?

Izu was a land of high, blocky sea cliffs, stabbing out into the waves like huge black fingers. They made it impossible to see any real distance up or down the coast, and when the surf was high, pale clouds of spray hovered perpetually along the cliffs, further obscuring visibility. As such, a fleet that sailed near the coast appeared out of nowhere. Two turtle ships, then four, then eight. And then came the actual warship.

It was a floating castle. Her hull was like any other ship’s, save for its enormous size. But her decks were no decks at all. Instead, sheer wooden walls ascended from the hull, no less than five stories tall. Another two-story donjon towered above the main structure. The ship’s oars were like a centipede’s legs: spindly, moving in unison, impossible to count. Portholes formed a grid of dark squares on the castle walls, and Daigoro feared every last one of them might harbor one of the southern barbarians’ fabled cannons behind it. If so, she bore hundreds upon hundreds of cannon. Daigoro wondered whether there was enough iron in the world to cast that many.

As the castle ship drew nearer, it loomed so large that Daigoro wondered which was bigger, the ship or the entire Okuma compound. It took four anchors to moor her, each one the size of a warhorse. The launch she lowered to take her commander ashore looked like a pea pod compared to the warship herself, yet Daigoro counted no less than thirty-three armored men boarding the launch.

He wondered which one was Hideyoshi. Only one man was clearly visible from Daigoro’s vantage high up on the compound’s wall: a giant in glittering black
yoroi
, his topknot as white as snow. Too old to be a bodyguard, Daigoro thought. And too big to be the regent; rumor held him to be quite slight. Daigoro wondered whether the giant was one of the regent’s generals. He might even be this Shichio that was calling for the abbot’s head.

Daigoro watched as his own commanders greeted the landing party. He hadn’t gone down himself, for the regent’s arrival had come as a surprise. It would have taken Daigoro the better part of the morning to limp all the way down to the beach, and he hadn’t the time to gather a palanquin and crew to carry him down there. He’d sent his best officers instead, along with a platoon of spearmen. Even they must have been sweating in their armor after running down the whole way. Daigoro sympathized. The sweat was already running down his back and he hadn’t done anything but watch.

His anger felt like a wild animal trapped inside his body. It twitched frenetically in his neck and made it hard to speak. Why had he married his house to the Inoues if not to gain the benefit of their spy network? And how had the ubiquitous eyes and ears of House Inoue failed to notice a ship the size of an island, in the midst of an entire war fleet? Daigoro was going to have a talk with his father-in-law, and soon.

Akiko primped him as he set everyone else about their tasks: the cooks to their fires; the maids to their stations; runners into town to gather food for a welcome feast; still more runners to hire musicians and geisha; manservants to clear every last room in the compound save the audience chamber, in case the regent and his troops decided to spend the night; Tomo to oversee the entire operation. Finally and most importantly, he released Akiko to go and deal with his mother.

Daigoro wished he’d had more time; with a little advance notice he might have sent her to stay with Lord Yasuda or some other neighbor. As it was, the best idea he could come up with was to order Tomo to restrain her using any means shy of lethal force. But Akiko had a better idea. The lady of House Okuma was quite taken with her new daughter-in-law, and Akiko seemed to get on with her quite well. Akiko gave Daigoro a broad smile and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ve got ribbons and balls for
temari
, hairpins and combs, everything two girls need to have fun.”

He watched her go, then looked back down to the beach. A second launch had landed with a bevy of palanquins aboard. The white-haired giant stepped into one of them. Two slender men stepped into another. Three more were occupied by quartets of men in varying uniforms, some armored, some not. Daigoro’s own commanders were offered the other four. Daigoro’s mind boggled at the thought of having four spare palanquins and four extra teams of bearers—and these on Toyotomi’s shipboard crew, to say nothing of his palace.

In no time at all the guests had arrived. Every last Okuma samurai had been marshaled into the honor guard. They lined the main courtyard, as still as the walls themselves. Daigoro recognized Shiramatsu Shozaemon when he emerged from his sedan chair along with three samurai in Toyotomi gold. He wore a silver kimono to match his silver hair, with a thin beard and a thinner mustache. His topknot was immaculate and his movements precise. He approached the center palanquin with short, measured steps, slid its door aside, and said, “You shall bow before the Imperial Regent, His Highness, the Chief Minister and great Lord General Toyotomi no Hideyoshi.”

All the Okuma samurai went to their knees, as did the regent’s own. Daigoro’s leg never allowed him to kneel easily, so instead he bowed deeply at the waist. “You will kneel
now
,” he heard Shiramatsu say, and looking up he saw the man’s withering glare. This was a very different Shiramatsu from the one who had come a year before. That man was unflappable. This one actually bared his teeth when he repeated his command.

“At ease,” said the little goggle-eyed man who hopped out of the palanquin. His armor was black, orange, and gold, and he was so skinny that it hung on him as if on a wooden armor stand. His cheekbones were too high, his chin too long. Against his willing it, Daigoro thought of the macaques one sometimes found in the mountains. It shamed him to liken this man to a monkey, but at least now the nickname Monkey King made sense. This could only be Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

“It’s his house,” said Hideyoshi. “Let him bow if he likes.” He shot Daigoro a conspiratorial smile. His teeth were sharp, misaligned, haphazardly spaced, like a seer’s chicken bones tossed on the ground and pointing in all different directions.

“Yes, my lord regent,” said Shiramatsu. “Most gracious of you. You may stand, Okuma-san.”

Hideyoshi paid Shiramatsu no mind at all. Instead he looked at the assembled Okuma samurai and then around the compound. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

Daigoro’s thoughts stumbled over each other like drunks. All his associations and inferences had missed the mark. When Shiramatsu had first come almost a year ago, Daigoro thought him to be a high-ranking emissary, one so important that he warranted a legion of bodyguards. Now he could see the truth, reflected in Hideyoshi’s relaxed stance and in his emissary’s obsequious gaze toward him. Shiramatsu was nothing more than a lickspittle. Hideyoshi had sent him with a battalion for the same reason he himself had come on the wings of an invasion fleet: to cow the Okumas into submission. And yet Hideyoshi was anything but intimidating. Now Daigoro thought not of mountain monkeys but of his father: approachable, even gentle, but a master at deploying his forces for just the right effect. Psychologically speaking, Hideyoshi had put Daigoro on his heels before he’d even set foot on shore.

Even so, Daigoro immediately understood why the abbot had referred to him as Hideyoshi, not as General Toyotomi. There was nothing lordly about this man. His shoulders were relaxed, his gait bouncy. He’d done a sloppy job of tying his topknot. He couldn’t have been much taller than Daigoro, who by anyone’s account was a pipsqueak. He was the imperial regent, the highest-ranking military officer in the land, and yet the cording on his
katana
looked as if it had never been touched, to say nothing of having been drawn in battle. His hands were smooth and uncallused. His armor was surely crafted to evoke images of a tiger—orange and black for its stripes, gold for its gleaming, ferocious eyes—but it only called attention to the fact that Hideyoshi was the living antithesis of a tiger. His colors were garish, not subtle, his armor hard, not supple, his movements common, not majestic.

The man behind him was the regal one. He was thin like Hideyoshi, but tall, stately, with handsome features and a graceful air. Even as he stepped out of the palanquin, he preened his hair. He took in his surroundings with the practiced affectation of the highborn, cocking a disdainful eyebrow when his gaze finally fell on Daigoro. In truth he noted Glorious Victory first, studying her as an object of art rather than a weapon. He made a tiny adjustment to his golden kimono before dipping his chin toward Daigoro in an almost imperceptible bow.

He was a peacock, in short, and Daigoro wondered who he was.

The last to emerge from the palanquins was the giant Daigoro had seen in the launch. He was head and shoulders taller than the peacock, and the
katana
sheathed at his hip was almost as long as Glorious Victory. It seemed like a sword of no great length in comparison to his enormous belly. Despite his age he was not balding; it was clear that he still had to shave his pate. His white topknot and little white point of a beard were both well groomed. His black armor was polished to a gleaming sheen, with horse motifs embossed into the leather. He was the very embodiment of nobility and lordliness.

And yet in the company of the giant and the peacock, it was Hideyoshi that the emperor had named regent, Hideyoshi who had brought a thousand daimyo to heel, Hideyoshi who commanded the attention of everyone in the courtyard. Daigoro could not help it: his eyes followed the man wherever he went. He wondered what Hideyoshi’s secret was. He and Daigoro were both puny. Both fell short of what it meant to be a man. From birth neither of them was cut out to be samurai—Daigoro because of his disfigurement, Hideyoshi because of his parentage—and yet both had to play the role. And while Daigoro had trouble commanding even the loyalty of his own father-in-law, Hideyoshi had the emperor himself at his back.

The imperial regent walked up to Daigoro and bowed. “Good morning. I’m Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Let’s have a seat and chat.”

Soldiers and servants scurried like leaves before a typhoon. Soon enough all the required parties were seated in the Okuma audience chamber: Hideyoshi on the dais, the giant on his left, and the peacock on his right, a dozen Toyotomi samurai on either side of them, still as statues. Daigoro was seated before the regent, Katsushima on his right, his lieutenants in a row behind them, the rest of his officers ranked and filed in the back. Shiramatsu, Tomo, and a few other attendants were kneeling at the door, all of them duly submissive and subdued. Sixty men in the room all told, and of all of them only Hideyoshi was relaxed.

“Shichio here tells me we’ve got a problem,” he said, nodding his head toward the peacock. “Something about a monk.”

So this is Shichio, Daigoro thought. The man put him on edge. Ever since his arrival, his eyes repeatedly drifted to Glorious Victory Unsought. He seemed drawn to it somehow. Daigoro had seen that obsession before, and he knew it never ended well.

But he could not afford to ruminate on that now. The island’s most powerful warlord had asked him a question. “Yes, the abbot of Katto-ji,” Daigoro said. “He is under house arrest. His temple is on the next peak north of here.”

“Is he of the Ikko sect?”

“No, my lord regent. His is a Zen order.”

“Was he ever?”

“Of the Ikko Ikki? No, my lord regent.”

“Does he harbor any Ikko monks? Does he preach insurrection? Does he keep a hidden arsenal in the monastery?”

“No, my lord regent.”

Hideyoshi looked over his shoulder to the peacock—no, Daigoro thought, correcting himself: to General Shichio. He could almost hear Katsushima chiding him. Make the slightest misstep and this man will have your head. Best be careful.

“You see?” the regent told Shichio. “The monk is no threat.”

“We’ve come an awfully long way just to take this boy’s word for it,” Shichio said with a sneer. His voice was so soft that he could barely be heard past the dais, yet Daigoro noticed he used none of the honorifics one would expect in speaking to a man second only to the emperor in rank. Was it because Hideyoshi was so informal that he didn’t require such niceties? Or was it the pride of a preening peacock?

Hideyoshi shrugged. “Lord Okuma,” he said, “I’m sure you understand my concerns. I’ve given an execution order. You haven’t followed it. Even a common platoon sergeant cannot abide disobedience from his troops. In my office insubordination looms larger still.”

“Yes, my lord regent.”

“But I respect your title, your name, and your authority. It does me no good to strip a daimyo’s sovereignty over his fief. I have no use for your anger; what I want is your loyalty. And there’s my problem. The easy solution is to kill you, kill this monk, and sail back home. I’ve killed disobedient daimyo before. So remind me, Lord Okuma, how is it that you show me loyalty by refusing to carry out my will?”

“My lord regent has no desire for enemies in Izu,” Daigoro said, then stopped himself. The abbot’s warning about General Shichio echoed in his mind: this was a man who reshaped words like clay. Daigoro’s answer could already be reinterpreted as a veiled threat; he chose his next words more carefully.

“The abbot is a very popular man. He presides over the funerals of every family within three days’ ride of here. Parents are known to travel twenty
ri
just to have him bless their babies. Killing him is certain to raise the farmers’ ire, my lord regent; any daimyo who killed him would have a hard time collecting taxes.”

“I see,” said Hideyoshi, but Shichio leaned forward and whispered something in his ear.

“Sir, I agree with Lord Okuma,” said the giant. He shifted to face his liege lord. “It is no secret that you plan to move against the Hojos. Create a disturbance among the northern daimyo and you only create allies for the enemy.”