by Lian Hearn
He stared at me, studying my face. I kept my expression impassive, my eyes turned away.
“I have two questions for you, Takeo. How were you able to identify the Tribe in Maruyama? And was your retreat to the coast deliberate? We thought we had you trapped, but you moved too quickly for us, as if it were premeditated.”
I raised my head and met his eyes briefly. “I accept your offer of an alliance,” I said. “I will serve you loyally. In return I understand that you recognize me as the lawful heir of the Otori clan and will support me in reclaiming my inheritance in Hagi.”
He clapped his hands and, when a servant appeared at the door, ordered wine to be brought. I did not tell him that I would never give up Kaede, and he no doubt was less than frank with me, but we drank ceremonially to our alliance. I would have preferred something to eat, even tea. The wine hit my empty stomach like fire.
“Now you may answer my questions,” Arai said.
I told him about Shigeru’s records of the Tribe and how I had been given them at Terayama.
“Where are they now? At Maruyama?”
“No.”
“So where? You won’t tell me?”
“They are not in my possession, but I know where they are. And I carry most of the information in my head.”
“So that’s how you were so successful,” he said.
“The Tribe seem eager to assassinate me,” I said. “There were not many in Maruyama, but each one represented a threat, so I had to eradicate them. I would have preferred to make use of them; I know what they can do and how useful they can be.”
“You will share those records with me?”
“If it helps us both attain our goals.”
He sat for a while, brooding on my words. “I was enraged by the part the Tribe played last year,” he said. “I did not know they were so powerful. They took you away and managed to keep you hidden while my men scoured Yamagata for you. I suddenly realized they were like damp beneath a house or wood-boring insects that chew away at the foundation of a huge building. I also wanted to wipe them out—but it would make more sense to control them. That brings me to something else I want to talk to you about. You remember Muto Shizuka?”
“Of course.”
“You probably know that I had two sons with her.”
I nodded. I knew their names, Zenko and Taku, and their ages.
“Do you know where they are?” Arai asked. There was a curious note in his voice: not quite pleading, but close to it.
I did know, but I was not going to tell him. “Not exactly,” I said. “I suppose I could guess where to start looking.”
“My son from my marriage died recently,” he said abruptly.
“I had not heard of it. I am very sorry.”
“It was smallpox, poor creature. His mother’s health is not good and she took the loss very badly.”
“My deepest sympathy.”
“I’ve sent messages to Shizuka to tell her I want my sons with me. I’ll recognize them and adopt them legally. But I’ve heard nothing from her.”
“It’s your right as their father,” I said. “But the Tribe have a way of claiming children of mixed blood who’ve inherited their talents.”
“What are these talents?” he said curiously. “I know Shizuka was an unparalleled spy, and I’ve heard all sorts of rumors about you.”
“Nothing very special,” I said. “Everyone exaggerates them. It’s mainly a question of training.”
“I wonder,” he said, staring at me. I resisted the temptation to meet his gaze. I realized suddenly that the wine and my reprieve from death had made me light-headed. I sat still and said nothing, drawing up my self-control again.
“Well, we’ll talk about this again. My other question concerns your retreat to the coast. We expected you to fall back to Maruyama.”
I told him about my pact with the Terada and my plan to enter Hagi by ship and infiltrate the castle from the sea while sending an army to decoy the Otori forces and tie them up on land. He was immediately taken with the plan, as I knew he would be, and it increased his enthusiasm to tackle the Otori before Hagi was closed by winter.
“Can you bring the Terada into alliance with me?” he demanded, his eyes fiery and impatient.
“I expect they will want something in exchange.”
“Find out what it is. How soon can you reach them?”
“If the weather holds, I can get word to them in less than a day.”
“I’m trusting you with a lot, Otori. Don’t let me down.” He spoke to me with the arrogance of an overlord, but I think we both knew how much power I also held in our transaction.
I bowed again and, as I sat up, said, “May I ask you something?”
“Certainly.”
“If I had come to you in the spring and sought your permission to marry Lady Shirakawa, would you have given it?”
He smiled, his teeth white in his beard. “The betrothal had already been arranged with Lord Fujiwara. Despite my affection for Lady Shirakawa and you, your marriage had become impossible. I could not insult a man of Fujiwara’s rank and connections. Besides”—he leaned forward and dropped his voice—“Fujiwara told me a secret about Iida’s death that very few of us know.” He chuckled again. “Lady Shirakawa is far too dangerous a woman to let live freely. I much prefer to have her kept in seclusion by someone like Fujiwara. Many thought she should be put to death; in a way, he has saved her life by his magnanimity.”
I did not want to hear any more about Kaede; it made me too angry. I knew my situation was still dangerous and I must not let emotion cloud my judgment. Despite Arai’s friendliness and his offer of alliance, I did not completely trust him. I felt he had let me off too lightly and was holding something over me that he had not yet disclosed.
As we stood he said casually, “I see you have Shigeru’s sword. May I see it?”
I took the sword from my belt and held it out to him. He received it with reverence and drew it from its scabbard. The light fell on its gleaming blue-gray blade, showing its wavelike patterns.
“The Snake,” Arai said. “It has a perfect feel to it.”
I could see he coveted it. I wondered if I was supposed to present it to him. I had no intention of doing so.
“I have made a vow that I would keep it till my death and hand it on to my heir,” I murmured. “It is an Otori treasure. . . .”
“Of course,” Arai replied coolly, not relinquishing the sword. “Speaking of heirs, I will find you a more suitable bride. Lady Shirakawa has two sisters. I’m thinking of marrying the older one to Akita’s nephew, but nothing is arranged yet for the younger. She’s a beautiful girl, very like her sister.”
“Thank you, but I cannot consider marriage until my future is less uncertain.”
“Well, there’s no hurry. The girl is only ten years old.”
He made a couple of moves with the sword, and Jato sang mournfully through the air. I would have liked to have taken it and let it slice through Arai’s neck. I did not want Kaede’s sister; I wanted Kaede. I knew he was playing with me now, but I did not know where he was leading.
I thought how easy it would be, as he glanced smiling at my face, to fix him with my eyes and, as he lost consciousness, take my sword. . . . I would go invisible, evade the guards, escape into the country.
And then what? I would be a fugitive again and my men, Makoto, the Miyoshi brothers—Hiroshi, probably—would all be slaughtered.
All these thoughts flashed one after the other through my mind as Arai swung Jato over his head. It was beautiful to watch: the heavy man, his face rapt and expressionless, moving so lightly, the sword cutting through the air faster than the eye could see. I was in the presence of a master, no doubt about that, whose skills came from years of practice and discipline. I was moved to admiration and inspired to trust the man in front of me. I would act like a warrior; whatever his commands, I would obey them.
“It’s an extraordinary weapon,” he said finally,
finishing the exercise, but he still did not return it to me. He was breathing slightly more heavily, and tiny beads of sweat had appeared on his brow. “There’s one other subject we must discuss, Takeo.”
I said nothing.
“There are many rumors about you. The most damaging and one of the most persistent is that you have some connection with the Hidden. The circumstances around Shigeru’s death and Lady Maruyama’s do nothing to decrease its intensity. The Tohan have always claimed that Shigeru confessed to being a believer, that he would not take the oath against the Hidden or trample on the images when Iida ordered him to. Unfortunately, no reliable witnesses survived the fall of Inuyama, so we will never know for certain.”
“He never spoke of it to me,” I replied truthfully. My pulse had quickened. I felt I was about to be forced into some public repudiation of my childhood beliefs, and I shrank from it. I could not imagine the choice I was to be faced with.
“Lady Maruyama had a reputation for being sympathetic toward these people. It is said that many of the sect found refuge in her domain. Did you not find evidence of them?”
“I was more concerned with tracking down the Tribe,” I replied. “The Hidden have always seemed harmless to me.”
“Harmless?” Arai exploded into rage again. “Theirs is the most dangerous and pernicious of beliefs. It insults all the gods; it threatens the fabric of our society. It claims that the lowest of the low—peasants, outcasts—are the equals of nobles and warriors. It dares to say that great lords will be punished after death like commoners and it denies the teachings and existence of the Enlightened One.”
He glared at me, his veins blue, his eyes three-cornered.
“I am not a believer,” I said. I spoke the truth, but I still felt a pang of regret for the teachings of my childhood and a certain remorse for my faithlessness.
Arai grunted, “Come with me.” He swept out of the room onto the veranda. His guards immediately leaped to their feet, one of them bringing his sandals for him to step into. I followed his entourage as he walked swiftly around the side of the blue pool and past the horse lines. Shun caught sight of me and neighed. Hiroshi was standing next to him, holding a bucket. When he saw me, surrounded by guards, his face blanched. Dropping the bucket, he followed us. At that moment I was aware of a movement away to my left. I heard Makoto’s voice and, turning my head, saw him ride through the lower gates of the temple area. My men were gathering outside.
A kind of hush fell. I imagine everyone thought I was going to be executed as Arai strode toward the mountain, Jato still in his hand.
Where the rocks rose, a group of prisoners were tied up; they looked like a mixture of bandits, spies, masterless warriors, and the usual unfortunates who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most of them crouched silently, resigned to their fate; one or two whimpered in terror; one was keening.
Beneath their moans I could clearly hear Jo-An praying under his breath.
Arai called an order and the outcast was pulled forward. I gazed down on him. I had gone cold. I would feel neither pity nor horror. I would simply do what Lord Arai ordered.
Arai said, “I would ask you to trample publicly on the vile images of the Hidden, Otori, but we have none here. This thing, this outcast, was picked up on the road last night, riding a warrior’s horse. Some of my men knew him from Yamagata. There was some suspicion then that he was connected with you. He was believed to have died. Now he reappears, having absconded unlawfully from his place of dwelling and, we realize, having accompanied you in many of your battles. He makes no secret of being a believer.”
He looked down at Jo-An with an expression of distaste on his face. Then he turned to me and held out the sword. “Let me see how Jato cuts,” he said.
I could not see Jo-An’s eyes. I wanted to look deep into them, but he was trussed with his head forced down and he could not move it. He continued to whisper prayers that only I could hear, the ones the Hidden use at the moment of death. There was no time to do anything except take the sword and wield it. I knew that if I hesitated for a moment I would never be able to do it and I would throw away everything I’d struggled for.
I felt the familiar, comforting weight of Jato in my hand, prayed that it would not fail me, and fixed my eyes on the exposed bones of Jo-An’s neck.
The blade cut as true as ever.
You released my brother from his suffering in Yamagata. If it comes to it, will you do the same for me?
It had come to it, and I was doing what he had requested. I spared him the anguish of torture and gave him the same swift and honorable death as Shigeru. But I still regard his death as one of the worst acts of my life, and the memory of it loosens my teeth and makes me sick to my stomach.
I could show nothing of that then. Any ensuing sign of weakness or regret would have been the end of me. An outcast’s death was of less significance than a dog’s. I did not look down at the severed head, the gushing blood. I checked the cutting edge of the sword; there was not a trace of blood on it. I looked at Arai.
He met my gaze for a moment before I dropped my eyes.
“There,” he said in satisfaction, looking around at his retainers, “I knew we had nothing to worry about with Otori.” He clapped me on the shoulder, his good humor completely restored. “We’ll eat together and talk about our plans. Your men can rest here; I’ll see they’re fed.”
I had completely lost track of time. It must have been around midday. While we ate, the temperature began to drop and a chill wind sprang up from the northwest. The sudden onset of cold spurred Arai into action. He decided to leave at first light the next day, meet up with the rest of his army, and march at once toward Hagi. I was to take my men back to the coast, contact Terada, and make arrangements for the attack by sea.
We arranged that the battle would take place at the next full moon, that of the tenth month. If I was unable to achieve the sea voyage by then, Arai would abandon the campaign, consolidate the territory he’d taken so far, and retire to Inuyama, where I was to join him. Neither of us put much store by this second plan. We were determined to settle affairs before winter.
Kahei was summoned and we greeted each other with delight, both of us having feared we would never meet again. Since I could not take all my men with me by ship, I would allow them to rest for a day or two before sending them east under Kahei’s command. I had not yet spoken to Makoto and was not sure whether to take him with me or send him with Kahei. I remembered he had said he had little experience of ships and the sea.
When I met up with him we were fully occupied with organizing billeting and food in a district already stretched to its limit. I was aware of something in his gaze—sympathy? compassion?—but I did not want to talk to him or to anyone. By the time everything was settled the best it could be and I returned to the pool, it was early evening. Jo-An’s remains were gone. So were all the other prisoners, executed and buried with little ceremony. I wondered who had buried them. Jo-An had come with me to bury the dead, but who would do the same for him?
Since I was passing the lines, I checked on my horses. Sakai and Hiroshi were there, feeding them, glad for their sake as much as their own to have an extra day or so of rest.
“Maybe you should leave with Lord Arai tomorrow,” I told Sakai. “We seem to be on the same side as Maruyama again; you can take Hiroshi home.”
“Forgive me, Lord Otori,” he said, “but we’d prefer to stay with you.”
“The horses are used to us now,” Hiroshi put in, patting Shun’s short, muscular neck as the animal ate greedily. “Don’t send me back.”
I was too tired to argue about it and, indeed, preferred to keep both my horse and the boy with my own men. I left them and walked toward the shrine, feeling I needed to do something to mark Jo-An’s death and the part I had played in it. I rinsed my mouth and hands at the cistern, asked to be cleansed from the pollution of death, and asked for the goddess’s blessing, all the while wondering at myself; I seemed
to believe in everything or nothing.
I sat for a while as the sun set behind the cedars, staring at the astonishing blue water of the pool. Little silver fish swam in the shallows, and a heron arrived on its great gray wings to fish. It stood in its patient, silent way, its head turned sideways, its black eye unflickering. It struck. The fish struggled briefly and was swallowed.
Smoke from the fires floated upward, mingling with the mist that gathered over the pool. Already the first stars were appearing in a sky like pearl-gray silk. There would be no moon tonight. The wind tasted of winter. The town hummed with an evening song of many men being fed; the smell of cooking drifted toward me.
I was not hungry; in fact, most of the day I’d been battling nausea. I’d forced myself to eat and drink heartily with Arai and his men and knew I should go and join them again soon, to drink more toasts to our joint victory. But I put it off, gazing instead at the pool as the color leached from it and it became as gray as the sky.
The heron, wiser than I was, took off with a clack of wings to go to its roost.
As darkness fell, it seemed I might be able to think of Jo-An without betraying myself. Was his soul now with God, with the Secret One who sees everything and will judge us all? I did not believe such a god existed: If he did, why did he abandon his followers to the suffering the Hidden endured? If he did exist, I was surely damned to hell by now.
Your life has been brought into the open and is no longer your own. Jo-An had believed in this prophecy. Peace comes at the price of bloodshed. Despite the teaching of the Hidden not to kill, he had known and accepted that. I was more determined than ever to bring that peace so that his blood, shed by me, would not be wasted.
Telling myself I must not sit there and brood, I was getting to my feet when I heard Makoto’s voice in the distance. Someone responded and I realized it was Shiro. In one of those tricks memory plays, I had completely forgotten seeing him earlier. My meeting with Arai and what had happened afterward had laid too thick a layer over it. Now it came back to me, his voice calling my name and the hush that had fallen as I rode through the town.