Year of the Demon (35 page)

“Your words, not mine.” Unlike Daigoro, he kept his voice low and calm.

“Now you’re provoking me on purpose.”

“Am I?” Katsushima gave Daigoro a stern stare. “Or are you finally giving voice to the thoughts you’ve kept to yourself in the darkest of nights? You are not blind, Daigoro: you must see your family would be better off without her.”

“So what do you suggest? That I murder my own mother?”

“I do not
suggest
anything. I
say
your family would be better off without her.”

“And what would you have me do? Expel her from her own home? Banish her from the compound? Would that satisfy you?”

“I would be satisfied if you put an end to your temper tantrum and examined your decisions honestly. You are unwilling to sacrifice your sword, unwilling to sacrifice your mother, unwilling to sacrifice your monk, and now you and your family have become quarry. And, as you may have noticed, so have I. I’ve stood by you every step of the way. Have I not earned the right to speak my mind?”

“She is my mother.”

“This has nothing to do with your mother. It’s to do with your refusal to make hard decisions.”

“I drew my blade against the most powerful man in the empire today, and I did it just to save a peasant boy that any other daimyo would sacrifice as easily as he’d part with a piss pot. You tell me that wasn’t a hard decision.”

“You did it because you were afraid of losing your friend. That’s not hard; it’s not even noble. Any common thief would have done the same.”

Daigoro wanted to punch him. He wanted to jump out of the water, grab Glorious Victory, and call him out then and there. And it wasn’t because Katsushima had compared him to a thief; it was because he wasn’t sure Katsushima was wrong.

Until now Daigoro thought of himself as noble for risking his life to save a lowborn servant like Tomo. Now he had his doubts. Katsushima had spoken the truth: even bandits would murder to save their friends. Was defending Tomo a selfless act or a selfish one? Hindsight was never perfect; how could he know for certain?

The fact that he couldn’t be sure of his own motivations made Daigoro even angrier. He slammed his fist down like a hammer on the rim of the pool. The black lava rock was sharp enough to cut the fleshy part of his hand, but Daigoro didn’t care. “Damn it, Katsushima, what need was there for him to die? And why does she have to be pregnant? And why can none of this be easy? Just for one day, why can it not be easy?”

Katsushima rose from the bath. “You’ve never understood me. My choices. How I could stomach the thought of going
ronin
. I think you’ve just gotten your first glimpse.”

Daigoro dropped his bleeding hand back into the water. As it plopped through the surface it made a little wave—a fleeting phenomenon, a manifestation so ephemeral that it could hardly be said to have happened. It made Daigoro think of the word
ronin
, “wave man.” A samurai without his liege lord was said to be as free as a wave on the ocean, owing nothing to anyone, dependent on no one. But Daigoro’s classical education had something very different to say about waves.

He remembered discussing the
Tao Te Ching
with his father when he was very young. He’d been confused by the idea that the wave and the ocean were just two faces of one thing, so his father had taken him down to the beach. “Tell me where the ocean ends and the wave begins,” his father had said. “Which drops belong to the wave but not to the ocean?”

It was impossible to answer, of course. There were no oceanless waves, nor were there waveless oceans. And if no boundary could be found between those two, how could there be a boundary between the wave named Daigoro and the ocean called House Okuma? How could Daigoro be himself without being an Okuma? Son of Tetsuro and Yumiko. Brother to Ichiro, husband to Akiko, father to the next little wave on the Okuma sea. There was no Daigoro except Okuma Daigoro.

Was a
ronin
any less dependent? If so, then why had Katsushima stood back-to-back with him, with fifty swords pointed at their throats? Wouldn’t he have expressed true independence by simply standing back and observing?

Katsushima began the long, moonlit walk back to the compound, and Daigoro punched the surface of the water again. He almost wished he’d gone through with his attempted seppuku. There was no point in doing it now—as an act of protest, it had to be done in full view of the regent—but if his courage hadn’t failed him then, he could have solved his two greatest problems: how to protect his family and how to fulfill his father’s dying wish. By committing the ultimate sacrifice, he would have convinced the regent of the abbot’s innocence. In addition, once Daigoro was dead there would be no disgrace in parting with Glorious Victory Unsought. His father had bequeathed her to Daigoro, and Daigoro would have kept her until the end. If Shichio wanted her after his death, so be it. If he still wanted to kill the abbot, so be it. No one could say Daigoro hadn’t done his utmost to fulfill his duty.

A chill ran over his body, in spite of the heat of the bath. It came not on the midnight breeze, but with the realization that seppuku was still an option. He had only to ride to Kyoto. Hideyoshi had a palace there. Daigoro could request an audience, carry out his ritual disembowelment, and see his family protected once and for all. Better yet, perhaps he could find a way to make a bid for Shichio’s neck. Suicide was far more honorable than execution, but Daigoro would gladly suffer the shame of a death sentence if he earned it by driving Glorious Victory through Shichio’s heart.

Either way, he had no choice but to ride to Kyoto. The road would be long and hot, and he knew death awaited him at the end. It was inevitable. So long as Okuma Daigoro lived, all of the Okumas would be under threat.

So unless he could conjure some third option before he reached Hideyoshi’s palace, his fate would be to commit seppuku or to be executed for the murder of one of the regent’s top aides. He hoped Katsushima would still be willing to ride with him. If it came to seppuku, Daigoro would need a second, and if it were execution, he would need someone to deliver his head to his family.

Whatever the outcome, he hoped Katsushima would acknowledge his willingness to make the difficult choice.

35

D
aigoro had been as far as Hakone before, the last time to disastrous results: Ichiro was killed—brutally, predictably, needlessly—right before his eyes. That had been in the winter, when Hakone was cloaked in heavy snow and there was little of the town to see. The north road had been nothing more than a thin track of mud and slush, but now, in the height of summer, Daigoro found it had become an entirely different entity.

It seemed Hideyoshi’s military exploits had been good for business; the dusty streets around the Mishima checkpoint were bustling with activity. Horse trains and baggage carriers marched in their lines; hawkers proclaimed the virtues of their products while farmers and peddlers sold their wares more quietly; palanquin bearers jogged here and there, slithering between packhorses and jugglers and white-faced geisha.

“There’s a good brothel just up here,” Katsushima said as they reached the heart of town. “It’ll be a good place to bed down for the night.”

“No,” said Daigoro.

“Why not?”

“I have no interest in those women.”

“So ask them to bring you a boy.”

“No!”

Katsushima gave him a quizzical frown. “I did not think you to be a prude in such matters. Perhaps it’s your . . . well, your upbringing in the hinterlands, if you’ll pardon my saying so. Among city folk there is no shame in saying boys and girls both have their uses in a pleasure house.”

“You misunderstand me.” Daigoro reined his mare in closer so he didn’t have to speak up. “Have you no eyes? I’m a cripple.”

“What of it? You got Akiko pregnant, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So your cock works.”

“Yes.”

“All right, then. Which will it be: a boy or a girl?”

Daigoro kept himself from blushing, from rolling his eyes, from giving Katsushima a good backhand. “Do you still not see? My leg is
unsightly
. I don’t care to disrobe in the company of others.”

“If it’s a woman with discretion you’re concerned about, believe me, there’s no need to worry—”

“No,”
Daigoro said with finality. “I have no taste for consorts. My Akiko is more than enough for me.”

“Spoken like a true newlywed.” Katsushima sighed, sincerely heartbroken. “Very well, then. As you like. I must tell you, though,
my
chances of finding a sporting woman fall dramatically once we pass beyond city limits. And one of these nights we’ll have to stay at a brothel, even if you only want to pay to sleep there.”

“Why?”

“Are you joking? They’re the traveling man’s greatest asset! Where else can you gather reliable information about the road? Pubs? Inns? No one there is
paid
to give you small talk.”

Daigoro hadn’t thought of it that way. And Katsushima wasn’t through. “Never forget the value of a whore’s discretion, Daigoro. It’s their livelihood. A good madam will never reveal who stays under her roof. If you’re a hunted man, there’s no better refuge than a high-class whorehouse.”

“Spoken like a hunted man,” said Daigoro.

Katsushima shrugged. “It’s a
ronin’s
lot. But even those who never run afoul of the law can still acquire enemies—a fact you of all people ought not to forget.”

Daigoro shifted the shoulder straps of his Sora
yoroi
, which he’d worn ever since leaving the Okuma compound. His father had died at the hands of a paid assassin, and a breastplate like this one might have saved his life. Now that he thought about it, Ichiro had died on the road too. Was that to be Daigoro’s fate as well? Did Okuma men live under a curse?

“All right,” he said with a resigned sigh. “We visit your brothels. But not every night. And not tonight.”

•   •   •

The next nine days held sights Daigoro had never seen before. Mount Fuji peeking out from its ever-present cloak of clouds. Huge square fields of white along the coast, dotted with salt farmers collecting their crop. A thousand fishing boats on a single beach, arrayed before the sunset like troops standing for inspection. Mountains so sheer and so variegated that they looked like they could exist only in woodblock prints. Rivers wider than any in Izu. Lanterns bobbing on the water like foxfires, suspended from the bowsprits of cormorant boats. Bridges as steeply arched as rainbows; bridges with tollhouses and armed guards; missing bridges whose absence was only told by the line of spindly trestles crossing the water.

He passed rice farmers clutching their broad
sugegasa
to their heads in a driving rainstorm. He saw towering temples boxed in by tall bamboo frames, with workers clambering about the frames like monkeys as they replaced roof tiles and patched crumbling walls. He watched the wind batter gnarled pine trees, the trees themselves already permanently bowed over like old crones. He rode under tall orange
torii
, under pines and maples and bamboo and ginkgo, under fog so dense that he could not even see Katsushima beside him. He crossed paths with armed companies from a dozen major houses and was thankful that none of them stopped him, lest one of them have an alliance with Shichio.

At the Arai checkpoint they tethered their horses on a ferry and sailed across the placid waters of Lake Hamana. Once again Daigoro gave thought to the Sora breastplate he’d worn ever since leaving the Okuma compound. It was heavy, and with his mare’s every step its weight had plowed furrows into his flesh, each sore the exact width of a shoulder strap. He did his best not to scratch at them by night in the hopes that the skin would callus, but now the breastplate posed an entirely different threat. What if the ferry should capsize? Daigoro knew how to swim—he’d grown up in Izu, after all—but in the water his breastplate was not armor but an anchor.

But the ferry did not keel over, and once he was on dry land again he found nagging fears still plagued him. When they rode before dawn or after dusk, he imagined how he might fall if his beautiful chestnut mare should falter and break a leg. By night he had horrible dreams of waking to find someone had stolen their horses, or even just their tack and harness. Daigoro’s saddle was one of a kind. Old Yagyu, the Okumas’ healer, had designed it to brace Daigoro’s right leg so he could ride. This was the largest of the saddles, but Daigoro still owned the smallest and all those in between, racked on a shelf in the stable. They charted Daigoro’s growth over the years, as well as Old Yagyu’s growing understanding of Daigoro’s affliction. Apart from his sword, Daigoro’s saddle was the most precious thing in the world. He could not ride without it, and he did not know what he would do if it were stolen.

At length he could contain himself no more, and at the inn in Okazaki he finally asked Katsushima about his fears. “It’s natural,” Katsushima said through a mouthful of grilled squid. “It’s nothing to do with horses and armor. You fear what happens once we get to Kyoto.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know so. You talk about it in your sleep.”

Daigoro frowned. “I don’t talk in my sleep.”

“Oh no? Then how do I know about your plans to become a monk?”

Daigoro’s frown deepened. “What?”

“It took me a few nights to put it together. The greatest threat to House Okuma isn’t Shichio. It’s you,
neh
? If there were no Okuma Daigoro, there would be no vendetta. If you take on the tonsure, you give up your name and all your worldly possessions. Glorious Victory could go to Shichio. Any duty you ever felt to protect that abbot would be lifted. You could even stay in Katto-ji and watch your child grow up, if only from afar. I congratulate you. It’s an elegant solution.”

Daigoro looked at him in shock. “I said that in my sleep?”

“Not
just
like that, no. I told you, it took me a few nights to sort it all out.” He chuckled when he saw Daigoro’s jaw drop. “You don’t like it? Just think: if we’d slept in brothels every night, we’d never have shared a room, and then I’d never hear you talk in your sleep.”