The Shadow and the Star (59 page)

Sometimes he thought that keeping
zanshin
was like dying calmly. It was like dying to give up desire, and doubt, and self. To become a shadow, and move freely in the dark.

Tonight, it was like drowning deliberately in a frozen ocean. The slow burn of ice, from his fingertips to his limbs to his brain, until sensation was gone. Until he felt nothing.

The bedroom lamp went out, leaving only the swaying rings of lantern light.

He moved back into the suite and closed the door, not bothering to lock it. He went silently to the bedroom. She'd drawn the mosquito netting all around the bed, a pale canopy falling from the ceiling.

He used that as camouflage for his white linen. He leaned against the wall where his clothes would blend with the netting from the angle of the door and windows.

"Sir?" Her voice came softly from the bed.

"Go to sleep. I'll be here. I won't leave."

A dark shape sat up within the gauzy tent. "Are you not… you're not going to come to bed?"

"Go to sleep, Leda. Just go to sleep."

For a long time, she sat up. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, but he could never really see her face. Finally, she lay down amid the pillows. It was two hours later, and the soft laughter and talk from the lawn and the verandas had all died away, replaced by white moonlight that crept in laddered strips across the floor, before her even breathing told him that she'd fallen asleep.

Leda woke to the sound of the surf, very clear in the
early morning when no wind moved the trees. The endlessly sweet air of Hawaii kissed her skin; outside the open blinds, the blazing scarlet spikes of a poinciana tree waved gently against deep green shade. She felt happy and bewildered, a little dazed, gazing up at the gathered netting above her head.

The bedroom was empty, but she heard someone moving in the parlor, and the faint chink of china. Without stopping to put up her hair or even find her slippers, she pushed aside the netting and went to the door in her gown.

"Good morning!" she said warmly, before she saw that it was not Samuel,

"Aloha." Manalo's mellow voice greeted her. He rose, a self-composed giant next to the pigtailed Chinese who was just setting out the breakfast tray. "Aloha! You eat, bumbye, I gonna take you up house. Haku-nui, he say come."

"Oh. Oh, dear!" Leda realized she was standing in the doorway barefoot and undressed—not that the typical dress of the Hawaiian ladies was much different from her nightgown, except more colorful. She popped the door shut and padded to the bathroom. She began to wash her face, as if it were any normal day.

As if, when she looked in the mirror, she could keep herself from smiling, her cheeks pink from scrubbing and pleasure. As if it were not the day after the night when he'd said that he loved her.

He loved her. He had said so, quite audibly. She was certain that she was not mistaken.

And then, in the next breath, just as certainly, had said that he wanted her gone. Proud and bitter, wounded.

She gazed at her reflection.

Miss Lovatt had perhaps been right to warn her. Decidedly, matrimony was a risky thing. A most painful, joyful, perplexing institution.

To find his quarry, Samuel followed the trail backward, extending gentle feelers: nothing too anxious or ardent, simply expressing a mild interest in who was interested in him. It was only what he'd have done in any case. In the golden, twilight world of Chinatown, it would have been considered strange—and stupid—if he'd ignored the thing.

It had taken only a few days for the path to lead to this wide-beamed water barge anchored off a low, scrub island in the expansive harbor of Pearl River. That the trail hadn't led into the plantations, where he might have lost it so easily among the streams of new laborers, was lucky, and indicated that these men lacked ties among the Japanese who came on contract, to make ends meet, to feed and clothe families at home. Their connection was with another echelon of society entirely, one that had no need or desire to leave Japan.

Silence was a tangible element on Pearl; silence, aquamarine and silver in the angle of light on the smooth water. Samuel's companion, a half-Hawaiian, half-Portuguese fisherman who could be trusted to hire out his boat and keep his mouth shut, sat with his bare feet elevated and his hat pulled down over his eyes, emitting a gentle snore every few minutes.

Beyond that, the only noise was the occasional carillon of old tin cans strung in a manifold network across the rice paddies, jerked by some small boy stationed in a lookout shack in order to frighten plundering sparrows. Samuel kept his own face in the shadow of his hat, fishing diligently, looking less at the barge than at the situation; the angles and avenues of approach.

His adversaries hadn't worked too hard to conceal themselves—but then, they didn't need to. It was a good position, an easy lookout on all sides, hard to breach even with a nighttime attempt. There were four men on the barge; he knew of three more in the city; beyond that—it was questionable how many there were. The men onshore reported to one "Ikeno" on the boat. Pointless to speculate whether that was his true name or not. Japanese tended to change names anyway, with a frequency that baffled foreigners, bestowing on themselves a new identity for anything from the assumption of some new post to the attainment of a life goal.

No doubt Ikeno had his new name all picked out for when he reunited the Gokuakuma. And he, or whoever he worked for, had tinder for the flame in Japan: proposed treaty revisions that gave more rights to the West and enraged the nationalistic sentiment, while the government teetered back and forth debating the unprecedented concept of a constitution.

High stakes, and a trump card in a demon sword.

The obvious routes of departure were covered by Ikeno's men; for Dojun to move off the island with the blade as he planned would require a backcountry exit-through the mountains and off some secluded beach in a native canoe; then interception of a larger vessel. Luck and complexities.

Dojun's problem
, he thought. Samuel didn't know where the blade was hidden; when or how Dojun intended to move it. He only provided cover and protection, and a concealed exit beneath his house to the mountains.

His house, where Leda was happily pottering in and out, furnishing things, while Dojun played houseboy.

Everything was quiet. At suspension. It could last a day. Or a year. Sometime, somehow, Dojun would make his move; transfer the blade from its hiding place to Rising Sea—and escape.

Samuel stared beneath his hat at the barge. The resentment still moved in him, cracking the ice of
zanshin
. He cared nothing for the safety of the sword; he cared only that the hunters had every reason to believe that he as well as Dojun knew where the blade was located: his London theft could only have appeared to them an aggressive maneuver to possess the mounting.

He shouldn't have done it. Action and unseen consequence, like Dojun's starfish. Two threats grew from one cut in half. Their adversaries would be looking for weakness, leverage. Dojun had none. Samuel had it all. Leda's mere existence gave it to them. Everything he did to protect her would make her appear more important to him. The house was not absolutely safe; the hotel was impossibly worse. And if Dojun got away with the blade in secret—then where was the end of it? Would the hunters ever know for sure that the blade was gone? Would they ever be certain enough to leave here completely, to believe Samuel had no knowledge of it, to cease to be a threat to what he'd tangled his heart with?

American thoughts
, Dojun would say.
Western fears. Your life is no more than an illusion. When you're buried, no one will go with you, no one will love you. Death comes between one moment and the next; you must live every day as if you will die this night
.

He didn't want to die tonight. He'd had enough illusions in his life, but Leda was not one of them.

Because of her, he entertained a thought worse than all the rest. He thought that if the hunters had the blade and the mounting, his part in it—and Leda's—would be finished.

Betrayal. He turned it over in his mind. And as he thought of it, he knew that Dojun would have thought of it. And he knew why Dojun didn't trust him with the location of the Gokuakuma now.

Seventeen years.

The Japanese said,
Okage sama de
—Because of what you've done for me, I have become what I am.

I owe you.

Dojun
, he thought, closing his eyes in pain.

Leda could never have made so much progress so quickly without the help of Mr. Dojun and Manalo. The Hawaiian driver took her everywhere, carried chairs and potted plants, drove her to the teas and luncheons to which she was invited almost daily. After a week, she had even coaxed and scolded him into keeping to a reasonable pace in the buggy.

And Mr. Dojun had been very helpful in the decoration of Rising Sea. Leda would not have thought, herself, that furniture of such simple lines could be so surprisingly attractive, but when she looked over the study and bedroom, she felt that nothing could be cooler or more handsome than the simple, textural cross-weave of the
lauhala
mats in place of heavy carpets, the cane-backed rocker or the beautiful honeyed wood grain of the unadorned
tansu
, a chest with sliding doors above and smooth drawers below that made a soft musical note each time they were pulled�an innovation Mr. Dojun seemed quite proud of.

"New wife chest," he said. "Japan all new wife bring chest home husband house. You like, Mrs. Samua-san?"

"Oh, yes. It's lovely. And the bedstead is magnificent."

He leaned over and traced a callused finger over the headboard, outlining the inlaid medallion of a spread-winged, slender bird. "Good fortune wish. Japan, we say
Tsuru wa sennen
. Crane live thousand year."

"Is that what it means? It's a good-wish symbol?"

"Good wish. Long live.
Tsuru wa sennen; kame wa mannen
. Crane live thousand year, turtle live ten thousand. Wedding-time, born-day, festival—friend make thousand paper crane, all hang up, happy thousand-thousand year,
ne
?"

Leda looked at him, smiling a little. "What a pleasant custom." She touched a smooth, tapered bedpost and sighed. "I wish I'd known of that last Christmas. The only idea I could find in the book for Mr. Samua-san was a present of dried fish."

"Dry fish,
hai
. Crane. Turtle. Rice cake. Bamboo good fortune beside. Bamboo got bend, no break, say faithful devotion. Fix bamboo in
tansu
, make drawer sing."

"Do you think he understands these things? About the cranes and the bamboo and the turtles?"

"Samua-san?
Hai
, understand."

"Do you think—he might like it if I put some paper cranes about?"

"Like good. Maybe come home house more,
ne
?"

It wasn't the first time Leda had found Mr. Dojun somewhat startling in his perceptiveness. "Well, he's very busy, you know. His business requires a large amount of attention."