Daughter of the Sword: A Novel of the Fated Blades

by Steve Bein

  Stones cannot climb up;

  A boar will never back down.

  Some can only fall.

  “I’m afraid I’m not much of a writer,” said Daigoro.

  Yasuda bowed deeply. “On the contrary, my lord. A testament to the folly of pride befits both men—yet as you’ve put it, they also have their merits. Boars are fearsome; stones are hard. You do them both honor, Okuma-dono.”

  Daigoro and Yasuda walked slowly across the courtyard, snow crunching under their feet. They walked in silence, away from the main hall where the other guests had gathered. Under the eaves of a storehouse, the two men, both lords of their houses, watched the snow gathering on the rooftops.

  BOOK SEVEN

  HEISEI ERA, THE YEAR 22

  (2010 CE)

  51

  On her way out of the station Mariko passed an orange-haired boy in snow-bunny boots passing out packets of tissues to everyone who passed him by, an ad for Mitsui Sumitomo Bank slipped into each plastic-wrapped packet. Mariko took one of the packets herself as she passed, not because she needed it but because she was cruising on autopilot, lost in thought.

  Kenjutsu practice promised to be good for her tonight. She needed to take her mind off the rest of her life, every aspect of which was marred by failure. Picking up a sword was sure to bring her even more failures, but somehow those seemed small and transitory compared to everything else. There was still no sign of Saori, still no sign of Fuchida, still no hope of her calming her mother, still no hope that Ko would be anything other than an insufferable prick.

  Mariko slipped through the shoppers milling about in front of all the little shops lining the sidewalk: booksellers, greengrocers, smartphone dealers, a rice shop, a punk used clothing store. Smells of fish and salt water assaulted her as she passed a little fishmonger’s tank of live crabs. Red snapper were laid out like playing cards, gaping at her from their beds of crushed ice, their glossy eyes lifeless. The crabs skittered at the smooth glass panes in their black armor, trying to climb the walls and free themselves from their prison. Even in their tiny crustacean minds, surely they could see it was hopeless. Mariko sympathized. Hopelessness was all too familiar a feeling.

  She wondered where Saori was, and whether she was sober, and why she herself would harbor even one second of hope that Saori might be sober during one of her disappearances. She wondered whether Fuchida felt the need to kill like Saori felt the need to use. Perversely, Mariko understood Fuchida’s behavior better than Saori’s. Getting mad enough to kill someone, or greedy enough, or jealous enough, or vengeful enough—that wasn’t hard to imagine. Knowing a thing was poisonous, more poisonous to you than to most other people, and then needing to go find that thing and smoke it or snort it or inject it—that was beyond Mariko’s ken.

  But all such thoughts vanished once she got the huge Inazuma blade in her hands. All her hopelessness and self-doubt disappeared too. There was no room for them. Yamada faced her with a meter-long razor blade; she could not afford a moment’s inattention.

  Tonight’s exercise was especially dangerous—a hell of a lot more dangerous than the TMPD’s aikido course, and people broke wrists and elbows in there all the time. “Sensei,” she said, nervously shifting her grip on her weapon, “are you sure we should be doing this?”

  “Nothing sharpens the mind like live steel.”

  “I know, but…didn’t you tell me once that only experts train with real swords? I’d feel a lot safer using one of those wooden bokken you told me about.”

  He clucked his tongue at her. “The purpose of the bokken is to simulate live steel. Nothing can simulate Glorious Victory Unsought. Never forget: this is a sword unlike any other. The only way to learn to fight with it is to train with it.”

  Mariko could appreciate that. The same went for the aikido and judo she’d learned at academy: practice was all fine and good, but the only way to know it worked was to do it for real. But risking a broken wrist was one thing; with Yamada’s exercises she felt like she was risking death.

  They started by exchanging overhead strikes, stopping each blow a hand’s breadth from the other’s scalp. Glorious Victory Unsought was too heavy for Mariko, so she pulled her strikes early, but more than once she felt Yamada’s blade part her hair, stopping just millimeters from her skin.

  This was only the warm-up, an attack drill to prepare her for learning a defense against it. Yamada had yet to teach her to block or sidestep; for him, defense meant chopping the opponent’s hands off before he could land a blow. They practiced just that. One of them would strike to the head; the other would anticipate the blow and counter to the wrists. As before, she tried to stop her counterstrikes a good ten or fifteen centimeters away from her target, but still, Mariko found the exercise terrifying—terrifying, yet thrilling too. Mariko knew she was too easily bored—it was a major reason driving her to join the TMPD—but this time she wondered whether there was such a thing as too much excitement.

  They started slow, but soon Yamada pushed her to attack and defend at close to full speed. She wondered how his eyes could find her. It was dark, and not much moonlight reached his backyard. If his accuracy was even slightly off, he would chop off both her hands, or else cleave her skull right down the middle. What must it be like, she thought, to have practiced something ten thousand times? That was the number Yamada used whenever Mariko complained of something being too hard: “Do it ten thousand times and it will not seem difficult.” The Americans had a saying for someone like Yamada, someone whose skill had attained such a peak: He could do it blindfolded. In Yamada’s case that might literally have been true. But the Japanese had a saying too: Even monkeys fall from trees.

  Mariko found the exercises taxed her concentration every bit as much as they taxed her muscles. After two hours of drilling, her body and her mind were equally exhausted. She had enough energy to sheathe her weapon and lay it down respectfully; then she collapsed on the lawn. “That was a good one, Sensei.”

  “Yes. Your shomen strikes are coming along nicely.”

  He sat on his bench and Mariko pushed herself up to her knees. She found kneeling easiest on her ribs, whose pain had subsided to a persistent dull ache. She’d finally gotten around to getting X-rays the day before, and they showed two hairline fractures. The hospital had given her a rib brace to wear, but she found it interfered with her sword work, so it was sitting in the house rolled up next to her purse. So, ignoring that nagging ache in her side, Mariko cleaned flecks of grass from her weapon just as Yamada had showed her, then used the wrist stretches he’d taught her. A satisfying sort of pain ran in lines from palm to elbow.

  “Will you tell me about Glorious Victory Unsought?”

  “Hm. I was wondering when you would ask about that again.”

  “Well?”

  Yamada set aside his own sword, then picked up Mariko’s. “This is Master Inazuma’s last weapon. His greatest, we are told. It is said that by the end he wished he had become a potter of teacups, not a sword smith. He could not bear the thought that his handiwork had ended so many lives. And yet he lived in an age when the world was carved into being by the sword. Battle was necessary, do you see? It was not like today, when average men and women can expect to go their whole lives without seeing warfare. You have seen violence, Oshiro-san, but you have not seen war. Believe me when I tell you your generation is the better for it.”

  His voice carried a somber note she had not heard from him before. His eyes seemed to look through her and into the past itself, and they were saddened by what they saw there.

  Obviously he was old enough to have served in the Second World War. What had he done there? Mariko couldn’t believe she’d never asked him. She thought of him as a friend now, a mentor, even a grandfather. She valued their training time so much that they never got around to talking about personal things, and of course personal talk was something Mariko was all too ready to avoid anyway, but with Yamada she felt safe to lower her guard. She resolved to take him t
o dinner one of these nights, maybe as soon as his case was over, so they could share the things that granddaughters and grandfathers shared.

  Yamada was silent for a long moment before he continued. “Master Inazuma understood the inevitability of warfare, but he had no love of it. This blade was forged out of that contradiction. It brings glory and victory, yes, but only to the warrior who does not seek them. How many braggarts and warmongers have tried to carve out a place for themselves in history with this sword? We can never know. Every last one of them was laid low, betrayed by his own weapon.”

  “Just like Fuchida’s Beautiful Singer,” Mariko mused.

  “Not just like it. Beautiful Singer is a jealous sword. She allows her wielder no love apart from her, and she will ruin any man who pretends to own her. Glorious Victory only threatens those who love combat more than peace.”

  Mariko frowned at that. She wasn’t sure she was innocent on that count herself. Why choose police work if she wanted a life of peace? Why choose police work in Japan, knowing full well how much easier life was for female officers back in the States? And why the TMPD, the most elite department in the country, with the stiffest competition? Mariko had always told herself she’d done it to make her father proud, but there was an easier answer to all the questions: she was spoiling for a fight, plain and simple, and she always sought out the best place to get into one.

  In that way she wasn’t so different from Saori. Self-abuse took many forms. Joining the TMPD wasn’t like smoking crystal meth, but both had their risks, and the Oshiro girls had each picked their poison.

  Thoughts of poison and of Saori made a sudden connection with Fuchida in her mind. Saori poisoned herself knowing it was bad for her. Wasn’t Fuchida doing the same thing?

  “Sensei, did you ever tell Fuchida your stories about the swords?”

  “Of course. He was my protégé.”

  “Does he believe in cursed swords?”

  Yamada snorted. “Still such disdain, Inspector? You say it as if we were talking about ghosts or kappa or some such. Believing in the curse of Beautiful Singer requires no more faith than believing in stars. I cannot see them anymore, but there is more than enough written of them to make me a believer.”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Sensei.…” Mariko said it to placate him, but as soon as she said it, she realized it was true: she was coming to believe in things she never thought she’d have a moment’s patience for. But coming to grips with that was going to have to wait; for the moment, she was on to something with the Fuchida case. “What I want to know is, if he believes in the curse, why in the world would he want two Inazumas?”

  A wry grin stretched across Yamada’s lips. “Well, now. That is a good question. For myself, I have no doubt that Fuchida-san believes he can overcome the will of the swords. Indeed, he has proved his ability to do so. Beautiful Singer has destroyed countless families, yet Fuchida-san has owned her for twenty years. She has not destroyed him yet.”

  “But isn’t he tempting fate by trying to get a second Inazuma?”

  “Understand two things, Inspector. First, Glorious Victory Unsought is not cursed as such. It only harms those who seek glory. Second, in Fuchida-san we are dealing a man of supreme self-control. What other sort of man tattoos his lips to test his pain tolerance? If he can bend even Beautiful Singer to his will, why should he not believe that Glorious Victory will bring him exactly what its name suggests?”

  Mariko wasn’t convinced. The Fuchida she knew was careful. His most recent killings were reckless, but still he eluded capture—hell, eluded so much as a sighting—and otherwise his track record described a man who accepted only calculated risks. And the risk posed by a second Inazuma was not easily calculated. How could it be? These were matters of magic, not of reason. Mariko would not let herself believe in magic per se, but she didn’t need to; all that mattered was that Fuchida believed. And given that belief, why would he want a second blade?

  The answer sprang out: he didn’t. Not to keep, anyway. He intended to sell it, or trade it, or do something with it, anyhow. At last she had something to hope for. She no longer needed Fuchida to walk into her stakeout. As careful as he was, he’d never given her much hope in that. But she didn’t need him anymore. She just needed to find his business partner.

  “Sensei, please excuse me.” She went in the house to find her purse and in it her cell phone. She had her team’s hotline on speed dial, third only to her mom and her sister. “It’s Oshiro,” she said into the sweat-slicked phone. “I need you to research medieval swords. Expensive ones—nothing less than a hundred million yen. Find out who’s got them and who’s selling them. Then contact those people. Find out who’s buying, who’s bidding, who’s inquiring but not buying. I need a list of all the players in the market.”

  The deputy on the other end was named Ibe. He was one of the precinct’s newest recruits. Lieutenant Ko had outfitted her surveillance team fully, but not with his best.

  “A hundred million?” said Ibe. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  “Auction houses. High-end antique dealers. Get on the web, figure out where the collectors are talking, get some names. See what other sites they’re visiting. Don’t limit this to Japan either; our buyer could be international.”

  Ibe protested again, but Mariko cut him off. “I’m going to put you on with a Dr. Yamada Yasuo,” she said, jogging toward the open back door and talking fast. “Yeah, he’s the house we’re staking out. He’s going to give you a list of names to start with. Don’t take no for an answer, Ibe. Here’s Dr. Yamada.”

  Yamada’s memory was nearly photographic, encyclopedic in detail. Mariko was not surprised. A man had to have a good head for facts to write all those books. Ibe must have been writing furiously to record all the names—not just the names of the sword collectors themselves but also which sword smiths they favored, the names of the individual weapons, and the auction houses or galleries where they were stored. Yamada didn’t know phone numbers, but his memory for addresses was uncanny. Not for the first time, Mariko’s mind conjured the image of an island in the flow of time: the river of years flowing past Yamada yet unable to move him. He was a relic, the last gentleman warrior of ancient days.

  However, he wasn’t the only one with a good head for details. Mariko noticed there was one sword Yamada did not speak to Ibe about, and when their call was over, she asked him about it. “What about the third Inazuma? You said there were three: Beautiful Singer, Glorious Victory Unsought, and the one connected to those lone standing houses in the wakes of tsunamis and earthquakes. What was it called?”

  Yamada shook his head, his face suddenly impassive. “Tiger on the Mountain.”

  “Right. If you don’t tell Ibe who has it, it’ll be harder to find out who might be trying to buy it.”

  “No one can buy that sword. Few even know it exists. Believe me, there are no leads there.”

  “I’d rather be the judge of that.”

  “I imagine so. It must remain out of reach—yours and everyone else’s, save the owner and his family.” Mariko frowned. She had heard this tone from him before. He’d probably get around to telling her the truth sooner or later, just as he’d done with everything he’d told her about Fuchida. Until then, however, he was going to clam up, and Mariko wasn’t in the mood to wait. “Sensei, this is the first genuine lead I’ve had on this case. I need to pin down everything I can on the Inazumas and I need to do it right now. You of all people know what Fuchida’s capable of if we sit back and wait.”

  “I do. But I also know there is no connection between Fuchida and the Tiger on the Mountain. You’d do better to simply put it out of your mind.”

  Mariko sighed. He was telling the truth—or most of it, anyway. She was certain he knew more, but equally certain that he wouldn’t be sharing any of it no matter how hard she pushed him. A wry laugh escaped her mouth. “All right, I surrender. But you really would make my life a hell of a lot easier if you�
��d just tell me what you know.”

  Yamada cleared his throat, and with no attempt at subtlety he changed the subject. “Inspector, perhaps you would do me the honor of joining me tomorrow evening. How do you feel about Dvořák?”

  Mariko pulled her black-and-white-striped blouse over her head. It stuck to her sweaty undershirt and made her feel wholly unsuited to talking about classical music. “Dvořák,” she said. “Good, I guess.”

  “Dvořák is not one to guess about. Now you really must come with me. My wife and I, we were members of the symphony for the longest time. They still mail me tickets for two, even after all these years.”

  Yamada seemed softer for a moment, utterly harmless despite the long katana hanging from his rag doll right arm. This was the first Mariko had heard of his wife. She wondered what her name was, how they’d met, how long ago she’d passed. Were there children? Yamada had never mentioned any. Surely he would have by now. Realization dawned on Mariko’s mind: she knew so little about this man. He knew about Saori, about Ko, and all she knew of Yamada was that he took his gardening as seriously as he took his swordsmanship.

  No, she thought. That wasn’t true. She knew a great deal about him personally. He was as prolific a writer as she was ever likely to meet. As voracious a reader as he was a writer. An anchor chain making sure the present never detached from the past. His home was an extension of himself, an island in the river of time, untouched by the last sixty years of progress. He appreciated the way a chrysanthemum blended its perfume with that of green tea. He was strong for his age, and spry, and never in his life had he tired easily. Mariko knew a good deal about him; what she didn’t know, what she’d only first glimpsed here in the garden tonight, was his past.

  “Dvořák,” she said. “Tomorrow night?”

  “Seven o’clock. Suntory Hall. Do you know where it is? Do young people still go there anymore?”

  “I can find it.”