Blood and Chrysanthemums

by Nancy Baker

Protests sprang to her lips but she bit them back. What could she say? Don’t go because I need you? But he had no answers for her, except the answer that his own long existence comprised. Don’t go because I could love you? Not the way I love Rozokov, but like a brother, like the older brother I never had?

  His voice came again: “You will not know some things are true until you live them for yourself.” She had suffered one great loss in her life in her parents’ death. Now she realized that the price of her new existence was more than the blood. It was the endless series of losses she would suffer from this day on, more than any mortal could imagine. That the first was one of her own kind was only another of the terrible ironies that seemed to be so much a part of the vampiric state.

  There were tears in her eyes and she wiped at them savagely. When they were gone, she saw that Rozokov had knelt once again at Fujiwara’s side. The Japanese vampire lifted the longer of his two swords and set it in Rozokov’s hands. Their voices were quiet, inaudible no doubt to the yakuza who knelt beside her, but Ardeth could hear them clearly. “You know how to use a sword, I trust.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “I will use my short sword to cut once to the right and then up. When I am done, please strike off my head. The blade is a Muramasa and will strike true.” Ardeth saw his lips twist. “It has a taste for blood.”

  “Brother, please . . .”

  “It is my time. I am tired. I had no choice about how I began this life but I can choose how to end it. I am grateful that my country’s traditions provide a ritual that is just as final for vampires as for mortals. It is customary for a warrior’s second to strike off his head. It would honour me if you would assist me.”

  After a long moment, Rozokov bent his head. “The honour is mine.” He stood up and shifted to stand by Fujiwara’s right shoulder. Ardeth watched him draw the blade and grip its hilt in both hands, testing the weight. Behind him, the sun burned, half-devoured by the ridge of mountains. Its light touched the uplifted blade and turned it crimson.

  Fujiwara ceremoniously unsheathed his other sword, setting the naked blade on the mat as he loosened his sash and bared his chest and abdomen. His face was composed and serene as he lifted the sword again. Was it so easy to let go, Ardeth wondered. After a thousand years of struggle to stay alive, could he surrender it so simply? Something quivered in her nerves; a shiver of fear, a dark wave of despair and regret. Whether it was his emotion or her own she couldn’t tell, but for a moment it drowned her. She waited for something to take its place but there was nothing. No fear, no pain, not even resolution. Only a great emptiness.

  He grunted as the sword went in. Ardeth felt the pain shoot through her and clutched her stomach only to discover it had gone as quickly as it had come. He drew the blade across his abdomen, exhaled an agonized breath, then turned the sword to drag it up towards his ribs.

  The sun-touched blade flashed down towards the back of Fujiwara’s neck. Ardeth closed her eyes instinctively. When she forced them open, there was a crumpled tangle of green kimono and brown limbs lying on the ground. Akiko was wrapping something in white silk. Blood began to stain the mat.

  She looked at Rozokov, who was standing over the headless body, the sword still held in his hands. He lifted his head and his eyes met hers. There was grief in them but, behind it, a strange relief as well. I might have to do that for him some day, she thought with terrible clarity. I might have to stand second to him when he decides to take his own life.

  Her feet moved as her eyes filled with tears again. They knew her path even if her mind did not. The sword fell from Rozokov’s hands and he gathered her into his arms as if she had never left them. For a while, the old hurts were forgotten in the new one.

  When they drew apart, Yamagata was there, the abandoned swords in his hands. “They are yours. He chose you for his second. They are yours,” he explained, but Rozokov shook his head.

  “He left you his empire. They belong to you. He gave me gifts enough,” Rozokov said and Yamagata stared at him for a moment then nodded.

  “We will take care of the body.” He glanced at his gang members, who had already begun to roll up the blood-stained mat.

  “Do you think there will be any trouble?” Ardeth asked, thinking of death certificates and autopsies. Yamagata glanced at her with a grim smile.

  “Nothing that I cannot handle.” The desperation of the night before was gone, replaced by the confidence that must have allowed his rise through the yakuza ranks. He is oyabun now, she thought, and he likes it. For now, that is enough for him.

  She turned away from the cluster of black-suited figures crouched by the body. It seemed an indignity that he should leave one. It would be better if we just turned into dust, she thought, like in the movies. She looked across the lake. The sun had vanished behind the teeth of the mountains, leaving only a bloody line of light outlining them.

  “Do you want to go home?” Rozokov asked quietly and she nodded.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter 39

  Mark Frye locked the door of Domano Sports and tucked the key back into his pocket. Banff Avenue was quiet, just a few tourists heading back to their hotels after dinner, a few locals on their way to the video store or favourite bar. He caught his glance at the sky with a rueful grin. Now that he had no reason to care whether it was clear or not, most nights seemed to be cloudy.

  He was in no particular hurry to get home. Peter, his roommate, was entertaining his girlfriend and would no doubt be just as happy if Mark didn’t show his face until the next morning. He checked his watch. It was nearly ten-thirty. Too late for a movie or to pick up a magazine at the bookstore, but he had yesterday’s Globe and Mail in his pack and he might be able to make that last a while in a coffee shop. . . .

  His mind registered the footsteps behind him just before he heard his name. He knew who it was before he turned around but disbelieved it anyway, until he saw her. She was standing a few feet behind him, smiling awkwardly. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” he managed.

  “I saw you were working late, so I waited for you to come out,” she said, answering a question he hadn’t thought to ask.

  “Oh. When did you get back?”

  “Last night. Thanks for returning my stuff.”

  “No problem.” The silence hung between them, as palpable as fog. When Mark decided he couldn’t stand it anymore, he said: “I guess you know that I met your . . .”

  “My old man?” Ardeth quoted with a smile that was part amusement, part embarrassment. “Yes. Dimitri told me.” She looked down for a moment. “I did tell you that my life was rather complicated.”

  “You did,” he acknowledged. “It wasn’t my plan to make it worse. If I did.”

  “I know. It wasn’t your fault. Look,” she seemed to take a deep breath, “can we go somewhere and talk?”

  Mark found himself looking awkwardly around the half-empty street as if there was an answer to her question there. He was still attracted to her, no denying that. That part of him wanted to say yes. But the part of him that remembered the disappointment and confusion of seeing the grey-haired man standing in her doorway urged him to turn back and walk away as fast as he could. He had enough problems in his life: was he really in the market for more?

  “I’m not planning to drag you into the middle of a lovers’ quarrel or anything like that,” she promised. He looked back at her. There were shadows under her eyes. Her hair looked like it needed to be cut . . . or at least brushed back from the black tangle the breeze had made of it. Not so hard to walk away from, he thought rationally.

  “My roommate’s got claim to my place.”

  “So has mine.”

  “Coffee shop?”

  “Is there any place more private?”

  They ended up sitting on a bench by the river. Mark was grateful he had decided to wear his polar fleece jacket under his windbreaker and had tucked hi
s gloves into his pockets. Ardeth, as usual, seemed to be oblivious to the cold.

  “I want to tell you what happened to me, why I had to go away. You’ll have to forgive me if not all of it makes sense; there are things I can’t tell you. But I think we could be friends.” He saw her glance flicker away from her contemplation of the water to touch his face. “I’d like us to be friends. And if . . . if we ever get to be more than that, you deserve to know at least some of the truth about me.”

  He nodded and kept his mouth closed over his questions about how exactly she thought they could be more than friends without causing even more complications than she had already said existed.

  “Also,” she shrugged awkwardly, “I need to tell somebody. I guess I need to think out loud about it.”

  “Think away.” She gave him a brief smile and returned her attention to the river. After a moment of silence, he asked: “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. But suddenly I don’t have any idea how to start,” she answered with an apologetic laugh.

  “That’s OK. I’m good at asking questions, remember. Where did you go?”

  “Back to Toronto.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to go home. Of course, I got there and discovered I don’t have one anymore. My sister is living in my condominium. My old lives are gone. I tried to go back to both of them but it didn’t work. To live them, I’d have to tell myself lies I can’t make myself believe anymore.”

  “Why did you go?”

  “Dimitri and I had a fight.”

  “About me?”

  “About us. About who we are and what we expected of each other. About what we have to do to survive.” He waited for her to go on and, when she didn’t, forced himself not to ask all the dangerous questions every word she said seemed to spark. He settled for a safe one.

  “Why did you come back?”

  “There was someone here I thought could help. I thought he might know all the answers that we couldn’t see.” Her lips curved in a sad, self-mocking smile. “He had answers—but they weren’t the ones I wanted to hear. No secret formula, no ancient Oriental wisdom, no promises. Just the old hard truths: there are no easy answers; everyone has to figure out their own path; in the end, everything dies. Still, I got a few things out of my system. Not very noble things, I admit. I got my revenge on Dimitri.” Her voice dropped away on the words but the bitter self-contempt was as clear as if she had shouted it out.

  “What did he do to you?” Mark asked carefully.

  “That’s the sad thing about it. He didn’t do anything to me. I did it to him for doing in a sensible fashion what I almost did in a stupid one on the top of Tunnel Mountain that night. I blamed him because this life turned out to be nothing like the mythology said it would be.” She crossed her arms across her chest, huddling in on herself as if she suddenly felt cold. “You know how you said that night in the mountains you can see the bones of the world, the bones of life?” He nodded, even though she hadn’t really been asking. “I can see the bones of my life. They’re so simple. We need this or we die. We must do that to be safe. The price of our lives is the loss of what we love, one way or another. I have no problem with the bones. The thing I seem to have trouble with is everything that goes between the bones, with all the things that make up the moments of existence.” She fell silent again. Mark saw the gleam of something on her cheek before she touched it away. “I don’t suppose that made any sense to you.”

  “Not all of it. But some of it did.”

  “It’s hard to believe but eight months ago I was so certain of everything. I knew where everything in my life went. Anything that didn’t fit, I just pushed back down into the darkness in my mind as hard as I could. Then the world blew apart and when I put it back together it had all changed forever.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” Mark suggested tentatively. Her glace at him was quick but not angry. “Being too certain of things is usually bad for you.”

  “That’s just what my sister used to say . . . still says.” He watched as she leaned forward, seemingly entranced by something in the river. “I wonder if he was certain. Maybe that emptiness I felt was certainty. Or maybe it was something beyond that, beyond everything.”

  “He?” The slippery sense of the conversation was eluding him again.

  “The man I came back to see. He . . .” she paused for a moment, as if debating whether to finish her sentence. “He killed himself tonight.” Mark swallowed. What was there to say to that? What did she expect? Platitudes of regret? Noises of sympathy? She looked at him over her shoulder and he saw the faint flash of her smile. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to say anything. He was very old and very tired. He decided to die in a way that would bring him comfort and he did. I think I’m mourning more for what I could have learned from him than I am for him. Dimitri . . .” she stopped suddenly and turned her face away. “Dimitri is mourning him,” she said softly at last.

  “You’re right,” Mark said after a moment. “Your life is very complicated.” Ardeth kept her gaze on the river but he felt the tension that stiffened her back.

  “Do you want out of it?” she asked quietly. Mark looked at her profile. He thought about the night they had climbed Tunnel Mountain, remembering her laugh of pure pleasure as she found her rhythm, the heat of her mouth as she kissed him. He thought about the convoluted, sorrowful story she had just told. He saw Dimitri Rozokov’s tall shape outlined against the apartment doorway.

  She was bad news, that was certain. He could see her strange, complicated life dragging him off the safe paths he walked, away from a life that was ordered in its own unconventional fashion. He could see the possibility of trouble and heartache, as unmistakable as clouds promising snow on the high peak.

  But what the hell, it was never healthy to be too certain of anything. Risks were good for the blood circulation. He put his hand on her back and stroked the line of her spine in a simple gesture of comfort. “No. Not as long as you agree to hear my philosophy on life.”

  Her head was bent but he heard the smile in her voice.

  “All right.”

  “Always check the ropes.”

  Under his hand, her body shuddered for a moment; then she sat up and looked at him. “OK.” The word sounded like a promise and a prophecy. When she leaned back into the curve of his arm and put her head on his shoulder, he decided to believe it was both.

  Chapter 40

  Akiko was waiting for him in the doorway of the lodge, baggage piled around her feet. Rozokov let the driver open the back door of the limousine for him then stepped out to stand on the gravel driveway. Behind him, the engine purred back to life and he glanced over his shoulder to see the car begin its journey back down the narrow road.

  “Don’t worry, Rozokov-san. He will return shortly. He is going to pick up Ardeth.”

  “She’s not at the apartment,” Rozokov felt compelled to point out. When the driver had arrived for him at dusk, waking him from his heavy sleep and politely insisting that Ms. Kodama needed to speak to him, Ardeth had already gone out.

  “It has been arranged,” Akiko assured him and Rozokov could not help but wonder how. Though in truth, there was no reason he should know about it, he acknowledged. By mutual consent, he and Ardeth had not spoken much during the hours since Fujiwara’s death. He knew she had gone out to look for Mark Frye. He assumed she had found him. But it did not matter. When the dawn came they had gone to the shelter of the darkened bedroom and, still without words, gone to sleep in each other’s arms.

  “Are you leaving?” he asked, returning his attention to the woman standing in front of him. She nodded. “What will you do now?”

  “Go home.”

  “What about Yamagata? Will you work for him?”

  “No. I worked for Fujiwara-san, not Makato-gumi. I think that I will take some time and decide what I wish to do.” She smiled slightly. “Fujiwara-sa
n was very generous.”

  “And you did not want as much as Yamagata did.” It was half-statement, half-question but she understood.

  “No. But, as I told Ardeth, I am young. I might feel differently when I’m old. If I did . . .” Her gaze lowered and then lifted. Rozokov looked into her eyes, feeling vaguely shocked. The woman he had met two nights earlier had seemed like a quiet functionary, quite incapable of flirtatious humour. He smiled, understanding for the first time why Fujiwara had loved her.

  “If you do, I would be honoured if you would consult me. I don’t promise anything, of course.”

  “Of course not,” she agreed and then, businesslike again, withdrew an envelope from her purse. “This is for you.” Rozokov turned it over in his hands for a moment, curious at its thickness, then looked at her. “Open it now if you wish. They are papers signing over one of Fujiwara-san’s Swiss bank accounts to you. I believe everything is in order but, if there are any problems, please do not hesitate to contact me. I will do my best to assist you.”

  “This isn’t necessary,” Rozokov said automatically before his mind registered the folly of protesting.

  “Please don’t be concerned. It is what he wanted.” Rozokov sighed and put the envelope into the inner pocket of his coat where it rested against the diary.

  “I think I will walk up to the lake,” he said and she looked for a moment at the trailhead, dark and shadowy, then nodded.

  “I have some business with Ardeth, then I must leave for Calgary. I will have a driver remain to take you home. If we do not meet again, I wish you well, Rozokov-san.”

  “And I, you.” He returned her bow and then walked towards the trail.

  When he emerged from the dark embrace of the trees out onto the bank, the moon had risen and was resting against the curve of the far mountains. A scatter of stars, those strong enough to pierce the thin veil of high clouds, drifted over his head.”

  Rozokov walked to the edge of the bank and sat down. He could hear the slap of water on the rock below him. Somewhere in the forest, a nightbird cried.