Daughter of the Sword: A Novel of the Fated Blades

by Steve Bein

  “Shut your mouth,” Iwasaki told her, “or I’ll shut it for good.”

  “Kill her,” Hayano said. “Kill her, Keiji-san!”

  Matsumori and Iwasaki both looked over their shoulders. “Kiyama,” the general said, “you know this girl?”

  “No, sir. Just a coincidence, I’m sure. Perhaps if we just kept walking—”

  “The hell I will,” said Iwasaki. “This urchin keeps calling me a woman. Is this how you let civilians treat your officers, General?”

  “Of course not.” Matsumori turned on Hayano. “You shut it, little girl, or I’ll have you lashed and your parents jailed.”

  “You can’t,” Hayano said, and she started to say more before Keiji slipped behind her and picked her up. He put a hand over her mouth and she sank her teeth into his finger.

  “Keep walking, sirs. I’m sure she’s just sick in the head. I’ll deal with her and catch up. Ow! Stop biting me.”

  “Keiji-san?” Hayano was crying, and said his name as soon as he uncovered her mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, setting her down behind the half-rebuilt grocery across the road from the butcher shop. “Are you all right?”

  “No! You said I’m sick in the head and you pretended you didn’t even know me. I hate you.”

  “Well, you bit me and you yelled at a man who wouldn’t think twice about cutting you in half in broad daylight. I was trying to save your life, Hayano-chan.”

  “You’re still mean. I don’t like you.”

  Keiji groaned and sucked on the tooth marks on his throbbing finger. “Listen, you can’t be shouting for me to kill someone in the middle of the street. The one you were pointing at is dangerous.”

  “I know. That’s why you have to kill her.”

  “Hayano, the person you were pointing at wasn’t a woman. It was a man—and I think he’s killed women and children before. Not here, not recently, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was willing to do it again.”

  “It’s not him,” Hayano said. “It’s her. She makes him do it. And she’ll make him do it again unless you kill them.”

  “Who?”

  “The lady. Only the tiger or the forest spirit can stop her. And the forest spirit won’t. I know he won’t. You have to do it, Keiji-san.”

  “Hayano, I don’t have the time to make sense of any of this.”

  “You have to. You have to kill her, and the man who carries her too. You just have to.”

  Forest spirit. An invisible lady haunting Colonel Iwasaki and making him attack children. Obviously the tiger was Keiji’s own sword, but nothing else in her story made sense to him. “Hayano-chan, I’m really sorry I hurt your feelings, but I have to find those men before Iwasaki causes any more trouble. You hide back here for a while, all right? Don’t go back to the butcher shop until it’s safe.”

  “All right. But I’m still mad at you.”

  “You can be mad. Just do it back here and not out in the street.”

  Keiji left her in a rush, deep in thought as he tried to catch up with the general and the colonel. How anyone managed to raise children was totally beyond Keiji’s comprehension. It was far easier to orchestrate a war than to get one little girl to behave.

  64

  Lighten up, Lieutenant. We’re winning the war.”

  “Yes, sir,” Keiji told General Matsumori. “I’ve just never been a big drinker, that’s all.”

  He had found the two officers not at the sushi restaurant he’d suggested, but rather at a pub across the lane. A rickety jumble of tables and chairs lay heaped like a haystack beside the front door, but despite the damage to his establishment the owner had managed to hang his lantern. Matsumori and Iwasaki had run up an impressive tab even before Keiji arrived. The general was drinking whiskey; Iwasaki, warm sake; and Keiji, water.

  “Not a drinker? Pah!” Matsumori pounded the tabletop. “A boy your age ought to be swimming in it. Swimming in liquor and snatch. You married, Kiyama?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not? Nothing better for a young officer. You get laid every week and you’ve got someone to iron your uniform.”

  “My mother is ill. I can’t imagine a woman wanting to marry into a household with a sick mother-in-law.”

  “Just you wait until we take Guadalcanal.” Matsumori punched Colonel Iwasaki on the arm. “Bright boy, this Kiyama. Big plans for giving it to the gaijin. There’ll be medals in this for all of us by the time it’s done. Put a couple of medals on that chest, you wait and see how the girls come running.” Matsumori took a swallow of whiskey. “Sorry to hear about your mother, Kiyama.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lunch went on like that—short speeches from Matsumori, very little from Keiji, not a word from Iwasaki—until they’d downed half a dozen drinks apiece and eaten every last scrap of the proprietor’s grilled chicken. General Matsumori fished in his pocket until he found his watch. “Damn. Nearly one o’clock. I’ve arranged a motorcar to take you to the air base, Iwasaki. Come on, one more drink and we’ll go.”

  As they returned to the Intelligence building, Colonel Iwasaki wobbled a bit along the boulevard, but Matsumori’s limping gait was as sure as ever. Keiji, having drunk nothing but water, trailed two paces behind the others, still wary of Iwasaki and his passionless eyes.

  As they approached the butcher shop, Keiji froze. Hayano was there, and appeared for all the world to be looking right at Iwasaki. “There she is,” he heard her cry. “Keiji, kill her!”

  Iwasaki lunged forward. Keiji’s body moved as if through water—too slow, too late. General Matsumori tried to grab the colonel’s sleeve; he missed. Iwasaki’s sword shot free of its scabbard. He slashed at Hayano’s throat.

  Keiji gaped as the little blind girl ducked under the stroke. Wisps of black hair hung in the air for a moment, whirling in the wake of the sword. Iwasaki stood frozen, his sword arm at full extension.

  Only then did Keiji reclaim mastery of his body. He and Matsumori dove on Iwasaki’s arms, grappling them to prevent a second attack. Women screamed in every storefront. Hayano took a step back, her bandaged eyes on the sword in Iwasaki’s hand.

  “Can you hear her?” asked Iwasaki. His black eyes were wide, locked on Keiji’s, his right arm like an iron rod in Keiji’s grasp. “Can you hear her singing?”

  “Give me the sword, Colonel.”

  For the first time, a gleam of emotion touched Iwasaki’s eyes. Rage. Pure, seething rage. And just like that, it was gone. “No one touches her but me,” he said.

  “Sir, put the sword back in your scabbard,” said Keiji, and together he and Matsumori guided the weapon home, Matsumori still gripping Iwasaki’s neck and left arm.

  “Your Black Medal is here,” General Matsumori said. “I think it’s time for you to go.”

  A dusty T95 was indeed rolling toward them, its shocks squeaking as it bounced over a pothole. Keiji had always wondered how anyone got the nickname “Black Medal” out of “T95 Scout Car,” and now he found himself oddly numb, wondering why he had attention to spare for such ruminations when he should have been wholly focused on restraining the sword-swinging madman.

  “Can you hear her song?” Iwasaki said. Keiji could smell the sake on his breath. The T95 squeaked to a halt just in front of Matsumori’s boots, but it seemed Iwasaki’s glazed eyes couldn’t even see it. The driver stepped out, walked around to open the passenger door, bowed, and said, “Sir.”

  Under a hundred guarded stares, Matsumori and Keiji pried Iwasaki’s fingers off the hilt of his sword, then guided the colonel around the vehicle and into the passenger seat. Still numb, Keiji did not release him until he could put a hand on the door, which he slammed shut. Those hundred stares watched as the T95 belched a cloud of dark smoke and pulled away.

  General Matsumori laughed a low belly laugh as his eyes followed the Black Medal. “Hot damn, you wouldn’t want to face a man like that on the battlefield, would you? Those Philippine gaijin are going to have a hell of a time
with that one.”

  Keiji shivered. “W-would you excuse me, sir? I’d like to make sure that little blind girl is all right before I, uh, report back to my post.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  Keiji ran back to the butcher shop to find Hayano standing as if she, like the general, was watching Iwasaki’s car depart. “The tiger should have killed her, Keiji-san.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “The lady. The one who sings. People die when she sings, Keiji-san. Now I can’t see how the tiger is going to get her.”

  It was all Keiji could do not to collapse beside her in the street. The adrenaline evaporated away seemingly all at once, leaving exhaustion in its place. Keiji wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep. Propriety be damned, he thought; he sat right on the curb. “Hayano, what in the world are you—?”

  A sudden flash of insight struck him, the sort that happens most often on the verge of total fatigue. “Are you talking about his sword?”

  “Yes,” Hayano said. “You let her go, Keiji.”

  “I let her go.” As if disarming a superior officer in the street was ever an option. As if that wouldn’t have led to an old-fashioned duel with swords in the middle of the crossroads. As if that maniac Iwasaki would have had any compunction at all about chopping Keiji limb from limb. “I let her go,” he said, “and now she’s going to kill people?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’ve seen this, have you?”

  “Yes. Haven’t you been listening?”

  Keiji laid his tired head in his hands. “Hayano, she almost killed you. Are you sure that’s not what you saw?”

  “She’s going to kill lots of people, Keiji-san. More than I can see. So, so many.”

  Oh no, Keiji thought. He looked at her. “Where, Hayano? Here?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Bataan? The Philippines?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere far from here. On islands.”

  “Oh, no. Oh no no no. Stay here. I’ve got to go.”

  65

  Two days later, a beaming General Matsumori entered the workroom of his intelligence analysts. Keiji and the others stood at attention until a nod from the general allowed them to stand at ease. “Gentlemen, it is a good morning. His Majesty’s military has crushed all resistance in the Philippines.”

  “Banzai!” everyone shouted. “Banzai!”

  Keiji chanted as loudly as anyone, but his stomach clenched like a fist as he did it. It was not the victory that sickened him—on the contrary, the news made him proud to wear his uniform, proud of himself and his country—but rather the swiftness of the victory. He’d been counting on at least another week to put his plan into effect.

  “Gentlemen,” the general said, “I must call particular attention to the efforts of our newest comrade, Lieutenant Kiyama. Young Kiyama foresaw the need for additional personnel in the event of an early surrender, and thanks to him I was able to deploy the best officers for the job. They started arriving yesterday and today—none too soon, neh?”

  The rest of the intelligence men cheered Keiji, and he offered an abashed bow in return. “Two days ago,” the general continued, “we had a visit from Colonel Iwasaki, a veteran from the Chinese front. He was slated to oversee POWs in Mindanao, in the southern Philippines. Two days ago our lieutenant Kiyama asked me to reroute Iwasaki to Luzon in the north. And this morning, just as Colonel Iwasaki’s flight was touching down, the last resistance in the north collapsed. You’ve shown remarkable foresight, Lieutenant. I’ll be recommending you for a medal.”

  Again cheers from the others; again a red-faced bow from Keiji. “Seventy-five thousand men,” General Matsumori said, a bright smile on his face, “and not a true warrior among them! Do you know what they surrendered to? Dysentery!” He laughed. “This is how these barbarians fight, gentlemen. They don’t keep themselves clean, and they don’t adequately feed their men. The empire’s victory in this war is assured!”

  “Banzai!”

  Keiji cheered with them again, his face still flushed. He’d hoped the Americans would hold out for at least another week. He only needed a few days to see to it that Iwasaki was removed. Assaulting a crippled girl in broad daylight was enough to get even a colonel thrown in the brig, if only Keiji had time to push the paperwork through. General Matsumori could have signed off on it at once, of course, but Keiji knew Matsumori would never process it. Keiji had gone about it himself, stealing precious minutes from his work to send the proper requests and notifications to another general in Tokyo, and now it was all for naught. No one would remove Iwasaki now. He had been sent to manage twenty-five thousand POWs and now had three times that number. Handling Bataan would require every last man and then some. Keiji could only hope little Hayano was wrong.

  She wasn’t. He was sure of it already. She’d protected him from the earthquake. She’d seen his mother’s cancer. She’d even dodged that murderous slash from Iwasaki, and Keiji couldn’t begin to explain how an ordinary blind girl could have managed that.

  No, he was more than sure of it: there was going to be a massacre on the Bataan peninsula, and the blood was on his hands.

  66

  It’s not your fault,” Hayano said on their walk home. “It’s the lady’s fault. She’s the one who sings and kills them.”

  “You told me to stop her. I didn’t.”

  A light drizzle left cold pinpricks on the back of Keiji’s neck. He took no notice. His boots were getting muddy, and cleaning them was annoying and time-consuming. The damage was done. He stepped in another puddle. “I didn’t stop her,” he said.

  What could he do? Fly to the Philippines? How? He had no orders there and no way to get there without being ordered. Could he call for Iwasaki to be jailed? On what basis? The speculation of a blind nine-year-old wouldn’t go over well in a court-martial.

  Keiji’s mind raced in circles, the same ideas blurring by with less and less clarity. He was an intelligence officer. Theoretically a bomber could hit Iwasaki’s location on bad intelligence. But plotting it amounted to treason, and even if Keiji weren’t caught, knowing Iwasaki’s exact whereabouts was impossible from Tokyo. He’d have to fly to Bataan and find the man personally.

  That was it. He’d have fly there personally. He would remove Iwasaki. And errant intelligence would see it done.

  “Hayano-chan,” he said as they neared his parents’ house, “I’m going to have to leave you here for a little while. Tomorrow at work I’m going to see to it that I get sent to Bataan. Everyone will think it’s an accident, and I’ll be back right away, but I need to go find the lady you keep seeing, the singing one, and I need to make sure she doesn’t kill all those people.”

  “No, you can’t do that, Keiji-san.”

  “I have to. Those people can’t die because of me.”

  “They’re not going to die because of you, Keiji-san. They’re going to die because of bad people doing bad things. And if you leave, the tiger won’t stay in his home, and his home will get all smashed up.”

  Keiji slid open the door and he and Hayano ducked out of the rain. “What are you talking about?”

  She sat to remove her shoes as she spoke. “That’s the tiger’s power. Wherever it is, that place can’t get smashed up. Like the butcher shop during the earthquake, remember? But if you take the tiger somewhere else, then the place it’s supposed to be will get all wrecked. It’ll be real bad if that happens, Keiji-san. Bad for everyone.”

  Keiji sighed as he struggled out of his boots. “Hayano, sometimes I really wish I knew what you were talking about.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. Tell me again, would you, please? You’re saying the reason the butcher shop didn’t fall down is because my sword was in the building at the time?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And that’s true no matter where the sword is?”

  “Of course. The tiger protects things. Nothing can make the mountain go away while the tiger is on
it.”

  “All right. Let me get this last part right, too. You think there’s a particular place I’m supposed to protect? A place the tiger is supposed to stay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Keiji took a deep breath. His socks were wet. His uniform was damp; it would smell tomorrow. “Hayano-chan, what’s the place I’m supposed to protect?”

  Hayano giggled. “Where you work, silly.”

  “What, the Intelligence building?”

  “Yes. Don’t you know anything?” She giggled again.

  “Sounds like someone’s home for dinner,” called a voice from the kitchen. Keiji’s guts went cold. It was his mother’s doctor.

  “I’ll be on my way, then,” the doctor was telling Keiji’s father. “Make sure Yasu-san gets plenty of rest, neh?” As he passed Keiji on the threshold, he said, “Your mother’s doing quite well, son. Good evening.”

  Keiji led Hayano back to the kitchen, where he was surprised to find his mother sitting next to his father on one side of the table. “Welcome home,” his mother said, her voice reedy. “How are you two today?”

  “I don’t like doctors,” said Hayano. “Doctors lie. They tell you things to make you think you’re going to get better when you’re not.”

  “I’ve heard that too,” Yasu said.

  “I think it’s dumb,” Hayano said. “I think they should just tell you the truth. That way I would have known right away that my eyes would never get better.”

  “Well,” said Yasu, “I suppose they don’t want to make people feel afraid.”

  As she said it, she gave her husband’s forearm a squeeze, and right then Keiji knew her situation had worsened. Hayano was right again. The doctor had lied. “Son of a bitch,” Keiji muttered.

  “That’s no way to talk in front of our houseguest,” Ryoichi said. “Come on, Kei-kun. Help me with dinner.”

  They ate in silence. Keiji had the feeling that his own thoughts were shared around the table—doctors lied all the time, the bastards; everyone knew it; the stories were all too common—but no one spoke them aloud. Five minutes after he’d finished, Keiji realized he hadn’t tasted a morsel of food. He couldn’t even recall what it was that he’d eaten. Rice and what? His mother was dying. What did it matter?