Year of the Demon (41 page)

The least talented schoolchild had better penmanship. Then again, the least of Mio’s wounds would have killed the child outright. Mio’s finger was slow and sloppy, and it was a triumph of will every time he mustered the strength to raise his finger back to his mouth. As he traced one bright red character after another, Daigoro inspected the rest of the scroll. The first characters he’d traced were
boy Daigoro
, followed by
doctor
,
lord Daigoro
,
here
,
water
,
fetch boy
, and
boy danger
. Things became less clear after that. A waggling smudge here and there hinted at the moments Mio lost consciousness. The characters followed no uniform lines and no cohesive train of thought. It was clear Mio’s fever was baking his brain.

Wed
,
Mio wrote.
Mother
.

“He’s fading away again,” said one of the nursing girls, peering over Daigoro’s shoulder. “His spells last longer and longer each time.”

Mio slapped the paper—a childish and feeble gesture for one so strong. His bloody fingertip stabbed at the scroll, poking tiny crescent-shaped holes and leaving red prints.

“General, I don’t understand,” Daigoro said. “Please, help me.”

Again Mio wetted his finger and traced it on the paper. The first character was
nana
, seven. The second was illegible.

Wed.
Mother
.
Seven
. It made no sense. Daigoro tried again to read the character after
seven
, but it was just a mess of red. “Seven what?” he said. It could have been anything.

Mio desperately slapped the paper again, his face a red, bunched, pain-stricken grimace. Daigoro looked hopelessly at the scroll once more. There were no more clues now than there had been a moment before, and Mio was fading quickly.

And then it clicked.
Nana
, the character for seven, could also be read
shichi
. “Shichio?” he said. “You mean Shichio?”

Mio grunted. It sounded affirmative, but Daigoro could only guess.

Wed. Mother. Shichio. He tried to think of other readings for the characters wed and mother. No insights there. Mio tried to lift his finger to his mouth and failed. Daigoro took his arm gingerly by the wrist and helped him. Together they succeeded in bloodying the finger, but Mio could manage to write no more. Somehow he still clung to consciousness, but his body had failed him. Daigoro knew he would not regain control of himself again; the giant man was dying, and dying quickly.

Desperately, Daigoro scanned the other characters on the page.
Water
and
medicine
were of no help.
Where
was probably an inquiry about Daigoro.
Boy
and
lord
were obvious.
Dai
became shorthand for those two somewhere along the way.

On one line he found
mother
again, this time paired with
dai
.
Daigoro’s mother.
He paired that in his mind with
wed
and
Shichio
and came up with the unthinkable.

“Shichio intends to marry my mother?”

Mio moaned through lips so swollen he could no longer part them.

“General Mio, please. One more word. Please. Does he plan to marry my mother?”

A last groan from General Mio. Then the breath leaked out of him.

A burst of noise and splinters exploded behind Daigoro. He turned to see Katsushima, naked, kicking his way through the
shoji
with sword in hand. The steel held an orange glow in the dim light of the lanterns. “Daigoro!” he said. “Are you—?”

He choked on his words when he saw Mio’s body. “What is this?”

The madam rounded on him, and if she had them she would have bared claws. The smell of incense flooded the room—which, Daigoro thought, could only mean that the reek of the enormous corpse was flooding out of the room. The madam looked angry enough to burst into flame.

Before she could say anything, Daigoro spoke. “Make yourself decent, Katsushima. We need to lay plans.”

40

B
y the time Daigoro had a minute’s respite to think, he was utterly exhausted. Their only reason for staying at the brothel was that it was supposed to be the sort of place a man could go discreetly. They needed to lie low; smashing through walls and stinking up the place was hardly the way to do that. Every man in the house must have heard the racket; rumors would spread, and Daigoro’s height and limp were distinctive. Word would reach Shichio in no time. Yet he and Katsushima could hardly flee; they needed to help the madam set her rooms back in order, or else it was all but guaranteed that she would betray them to Shichio herself.

So they had a corpulent, putrefying corpse to get rid of, and since it was Mio’s, Daigoro felt obligated to see him laid to rest properly. They could not give the general the stately funeral he deserved, but neither could they simply roll him off a bridge into the Kamo. Then there were repairs to see to, and silence to be paid for, and all the rest. It was sunrise before Daigoro had a moment’s peace.

“We must be away,” Katsushima said, though he too looked as exhausted as Daigoro felt. His unkempt hair seemed grayer than ever. Neither of them was in any condition to ride. Even so, Daigoro managed to sling himself into his saddle, Glorious Victory clattering on his back. Her weight threatened to pull him to the ground. Even at this hour the Kyoto streets were growing crowded, and Daigoro worried about how many eyes lingered on his chestnut mare and Katsushima’s blood bay gelding.

They rode back to the Sanjo Ohashi under Daigoro’s lead. More than once he drifted off in the saddle, and every time the feeling of falling jarred him awake. He never fell off his horse, but each time he gripped his saddle horn tighter and did not easily let go.

It was late into the hour of the dragon by the time the road had cleared enough that they could speak without being overheard. It was hot and Daigoro was sweating in his armor. Exhausted as he was, he knew he had to explain everything Mio had told him.

“It’s damned clever,” Katsushima said when Daigoro had finished. “Assuming it’s true.”

“I cannot make sense of it,” said Daigoro. His eyes felt sandy and he found it difficult to link two thoughts together. “Why should he suddenly want to marry my mother?”

“To weaken you. Think about it. Any Okuma samurai who remained loyal to you would be guilty of treason. Shichio would be the rightful head of the clan.”

“No. Shichio? The next Lord Okuma? He’d be taking on his wife’s name, Goemon. No man could bear the shame.”

“No
samurai
could bear the shame. But what of a farmer’s son?”

Daigoro hadn’t thought of it that way. Shichio had no name of his own. He had no estate, no station, and no respect at court. Hideyoshi had once been in the same stead, until the emperor himself raised him up. Shichio would never receive such favors. There could only be one regent.

Of course Hideyoshi had the power to give Shichio nearly anything he wanted, but he also owed a great many favors. He was renowned for his battlefield cunning, but known better for his skill at parley. He’d conquered whole territories with nothing more than promises, granting this or that to every daimyo that would oppose him. Rumor had it that he paid his newly conquered enemies better than he paid those who were already close to him—as well he should, if his purpose was to buy allegiance. Hideyoshi had secured everything west of the Nobi plain, but even
he
could not grant land endlessly.

And there were those things even Hideyoshi could not grant. Glorious Victory Unsought. The esteem of others. A samurai’s birthright. An estate acquired through conquest, not granted as a gift. A surname and a house of his own. Shichio thought himself superior to the likes of Mio Yasumasa, the consummate samurai. It only spoke to his delusion—a peacock was a peacock—but at least he could play make-believe by taking on the name of Okuma and having warriors of his own to order about.

“You may be right,” Daigoro said at last. “He probably thinks even Glorious Victory would be his, as the rightful property of the Okuma clan.”

“He might,” said Katsushima. “But the more pressing question is what you will do to stop him. You’re no longer the head of the Okumas. You have no say in whether your mother marries.”

“And she hardly has a say herself. . . .”

Daigoro could already see it in his mind’s eye. Shichio the honey-tongued. Shichio the pretty, preening songbird. In all likelihood he was already composing a serenade to the fair Lady Yumiko. In her current state she had no defense against him. He would insinuate himself in her mind until she could not help but say yes to him.

And worse yet, Hideyoshi no longer had a sober voice to counsel him. If anyone could have talked Hideyoshi into forbidding the marriage, it was General Mio. He had promised to keep an eye on Shichio—and, now that Daigoro thought of it, he’d also promised that Shichio would find a way to worm his way out of the truce. This was it. Marrying Daigoro’s mother was the most complete victory imaginable. Far worse than simply razing House Okuma to the ground, this would see House Okuma rise to prominence with its worst enemy seated at its head. The Okumas would become Shichio’s slaves. He could even order them to hunt down Daigoro and Katsushima. Daigoro’s family would become a monster, a hideous ghoul of its former self.

“Maybe you were right,” Daigoro said. “Calling on the Wind seemed desperate to me before, but now—”

Katsushima shook his head. “I’ve thought on that too.
Shinobi
were never the best option. For one thing, I’m no longer sure you can afford them. For another, we cannot be certain they would take your coin. The Wind are the best in the world, but they will not have forgotten what happens when they take aim at people in high office and miss.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oda Nobunaga. Toyotomi’s predecessor. His enemies tried sending
shinobi
against him. When they failed, Oda did not stop at killing the assassins, nor even the enemies who hired them; he destroyed the conspirators’ families, and the families of the assassins too. Whole clans vanished overnight.”

“But Shichio is just a general—and a lowborn one at that. He’s no Oda Nobunaga.”

Katsushima shrugged. “He doesn’t need to be. Hideyoshi has risen higher than Oda ever did, and Shichio stands in Hideyoshi’s shadow.”

Daigoro hung his head, and with his gaze downcast he saw his hands armored in their white
kote
. Now that the plates on the backs of the hands had been lacquered white, he could hardly make out the bear paws worked into the steel. “The Wind! I can hardly believe I’ve uttered the thought aloud. Who am I, Goemon? What am I doing?”

“You know perfectly well what you do. You strive to keep to your father’s road.”

“Do I?” Suddenly Daigoro felt weighed down by his armor. Glorious Victory pulled at him more heavily still, threatening to pull him right out of the saddle. “I walked that road once. But do I still? Or have I wandered off onto some other path?”

Katsushima was silent for a while. At length he said, “There was a time when I knew, Daigoro. No longer.”

“I’ve surrendered my name. I’ve surrendered my family. I am an enemy of the throne. I’ve even surrendered the right to wear the topknot. How can I say my life has anything at all to do with
bushido
?”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t.”

Daigoro had hoped Katsushima would say something like that, but now that he heard it, it made his heart feel colder and heavier than ever. He’d hoped to feel some solace in the thought of giving up. It should have comforted him. At any rate, that’s what the abbot of Katto-ji would have said: give up everything, and when you have nothing more to lose, you will lose all fear of loss. But if I surrender
bushido
, Daigoro thought, will I even know who I am?

“The life of the
ronin
is not without riches of its own,” Katsushima said. “Sake, women, freedom; they’re much warmer companions than duty.”

“Is that why you followed me all this way? Hoping to recruit me?”

Katsushima chuckled. “If I wanted to recruit you as a
ronin
, I wouldn’t have let you get married.”

Daigoro wished he could smile too, but he couldn’t muster the energy. “Tell me the truth, Goemon: why do you still follow me?”

Katsushima swallowed. “We should discuss that another time.”

“I cannot say how much more time we have.”

“We’ll talk after we’ve rested.”

Daigoro shook his head. “I cannot say how much rest we’re likely to get, either. We are quarry. The arrows bound for us are already in flight. And apart from all that, if we do not keep our tongues waggling, I’m apt to doze off and fall out of my saddle. Tell me, Goemon, why do you still ride with me?”

Katsushima’s face grew stern. “You’re drowning, Daigoro. You need someone to help you keep your head above water.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re trying to carry your family and your father’s image and all the rest of it. It’s too much for a drowning man to bear, Daigoro. You need to let them go.”

Exhausted as he was, Daigoro had trouble following the metaphor. He actually felt as if his armor were pulling him off his horse; it was not hard to imagine it dragging him underwater. “Speak plainly,” he said. “I do not understand.”

Katsushima’s face grew sterner still. “I speak in circles because I don’t wish to give offense. We approach a crossroads, you and I. You have a problem in Shichio and a problem in your family. There is a single solution for both problems, one I’ve hinted at before. I can solve both problems for you with one stroke of my sword, but you bar me from doing so. You can solve it too, but you bar even yourself. A man can hold up his drowning friend, Daigoro, but only for so long. Sooner or later he must let him go or drown with him.”

“I’m too tired for this, Goemon. Just tell me what you mean.”