Year of the Demon fb-2

by Steve Bein

  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.”

  Daigoro rolled his eyes. “I wonder if Akiko hears me talking too.”

  “Ask her when we get back. Do tell me you’ve put this seppuku nonsense out of your mind. In your heart you know it’s not the right way.”

  Or else I wouldn’t be fretting about it in my sleep, Daigoro thought. But there would be no returning home. Even if Daigoro survived Kyoto, the Okuma compound could never be home to him again. He would have abandoned his name and his birthright—and not in the way Katsushima thought, either. Obviously he’d gathered all the clues he needed, but he’d r
eached the wrong conclusion.

  “You’re very clever,” Daigoro said, “but not as clever as you think. I’ve no intention of becoming a monk.”

  “Oh no?”

  “Have you forgotten? The Buddha may say you erase your past karma when you take on the cloth, but Shichio doesn’t forgive so easily. If he did, he’d have no cause to kill the abbot, and you and I would still be in Izu.”

  Katsushima nodded sagely, conceding the point. “Are you going to eat that?”

  Daigoro looked down at his dinner, which he’d scarcely touched. “I suppose not.”

  Katsushima’s chopsticks snatched a nicely grilled tentacle and a slice of pickled daikon. “There is another way, you know. We’re only a few days’ ride from the Kansai. That’s shinobi country.”

  “Are you serious? Magic men?”

  “It’s not magic. They don’t pass through walls; they climb over them, or slip through windows. But they do it so invisibly that people start spinning tall tales. They tell stories of masked men dressed head to toe in black, but only because they do not want to believe that death may hide in plain sight.”

  “What are you getting at, Goemon?”

  “Shichio cannot stay on his guard against every cook and steward and scribe that crosses his path. A good shinobi can become any one of them. Put a few coins in the right hand and we can ride home tomorrow.”

  He was right. Daigoro knew it. Given the choice of committing seppuku, facing execution for Shichio’s murder, or placing a hired knife in Shichio’s bedchamber, the easiest road was clear. All Daigoro had to do was compromise his honor and he could ride back home to his wife.

  But the easy path was not the path of bushido. “No,” he said. “I cannot pay some unknown mercenary to fight my battles for me. My father would never have done such a thing.”

  “Your father died at the hands of ‘some unknown mercenary.’”

  Katsushima waited to see whether that hit a sore spot. A pang of grief stabbed Daigoro in the heart, but he did not allow it to show in his face. “The Iga are renowned for their spies and assassins,” Katsushima said. “The greatest houses of Kyoto employ them all the time.”

  “All the more reason not to hire them. If a man is willing to sell his sword, what keeps him from selling his secrets?”

  “The Wind, then. Have you heard of them?”

  “No.”

  “Then they’ve done their job well. They make clans like the Iga and the Rokkaku look like amateurs. I used to know people who can find them; we can find them again.”

  Daigoro looked down at his rice. The cooks he’d grown up with cooked it better. All he had to do was ride north instead of south and he could have that rice again, in a familiar bowl, under a friendly roof. It was true that to hire an assassin was to abandon his father’s path. But if he strayed from the path just this once, just for a little while, he could keep his father’s name. Protect his father’s house. Raise his father’s grandchild and heir.

  And be unworthy of that heritage himself.

  “I cannot do it,” he said. “What if my shinobi should fail? Then I’ll have sullied my honor for nothing.”

  “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?” Katsushima stole another piece of octopus from his bowl. “You know I’m proud of you, neh?”

  That made Daigoro look up. It was the sort of thing a father would say, and as such, it was the sort of thing Daigoro hadn’t heard in a long time. “Why?” he said. “You thought this was a bad idea from the outset.”

  “All the more reason to admire you. You stood up to me—and not just to me. To Hideyoshi, to that idiot Shichio, to the whipping boy he sent to your house, even to that abbot of yours. You haven’t taken so much as a single step from your original position. If I could make your kenjutsu stance as firm as you keep your moral stance, you’d be a fearsome swordsman.”

  Daigoro thanked him, but only halfheartedly. He knew he would never be father’s equal in swordsmanship. That much had been fated in the womb, where some curse had emaciated his right leg before he was even born. If he could not match his father’s stature as a warrior, at least he could have done it as a statesman, but he’d botched that too. The only way left to him was to hold fast to his father’s moral principles, but he could not deny that Katsushima had it right from the first: killing the abbot would have spared Daigoro and his family no end of trouble.

  Now Daigoro knew of just one solution left to him, and the mere fact that it had entered his mind inspired guilt so strong that he felt it viscerally, like a little sharp-clawed demon crawling around in his gut. His solution would solve all his family’s problems, but he was certain that neither his mother nor his wife would ever forgive him for it.

  36

  They met the crowds of the big city when they were still thirty ri from the city itself. One afternoon, still three days’ ride from Kyoto, the population of the Tokaido suddenly quintupled. By sunset the following day, the foot traffic was so steady that the road itself resembled a tiger, striped with the long shadows of scores upon scores of peasants. By the time they reached Kusatsu the Tokaido was hardly a road anymore, but rather a long and crowded open-air market. Potters and knife sharpeners, greengrocers and fishmongers, singing clowns surrounded by mobs of giggling children; the travelers lacked for nothing—except, Daigoro thought, the scent of the sea, replaced by dust and wood smoke and the musk of oxen. Patrols of Toyotomi samurai were as ubiquitous as the mangy dogs hovering on the edges of every crowd, though of course the samurai were not so thin that Daigoro could count their ribs, and the dogs carried no spears to announce their presence from a hundred paces away.

  Not only were the Toyotomi men not looking for Daigoro; they recognized neither his colors nor even the Okuma bear paw, though both were prominently displayed on his breastplate, his haori, and his horse’s tack and harness. That was good, Daigoro supposed; it proved his earlier fear of Shichio’s roving assassins was unfounded. Now he wondered whether that too was merely symptomatic of a greater fear, just like his worries about drowning in his yoroi.

  Never in his life had Daigoro been made to feel so provincial. To be born samurai was to be born into high station—not quite noble born, far short of being born into the Imperial Court, but nevertheless even a newborn samurai inherited a certain aristocracy unknown to the farmers, artisans, and merchants. As such, despite his relief at being unrecognized, Daigoro also felt somewhat insulted. He had always thought of himself as a man of world—or a boy of the world, at the very least. Now, after ten days on the road, he felt like a rube.

  And that was before he crossed the bridge into Kyoto itself. He’d always heard Kyoto was cold, and to his embarrassment he’d even packed a quilted jacket among his things. Now he wondered how it could ever get cold here, given the sheer press of human bodies. The Sanjo Ohashi was hardly the longest bridge he and Katsushima had crossed during their ride, but traffic in and out of the city was so dense that Daigoro thought he might just as well make his mare ford the river as wait to cross the bridge like a civilized person. Katsushima only clucked his tongue and said, “Patience.”

  Never before had Daigoro seen so many buildings. They were built so close to each other that the monkeys simply hopped from roof to roof. “Can you believe how many temples they have?” said Daigoro. “You could hardly throw a rock without hitting one.”

  “Brothels too,” Katsushima said wistfully.

  Not ten paces later Daigoro spotted his first southern barbarians. A group of twelve men walked in a block, hands folded and strange round eyes downcast, wearing simple orange robes. Daigoro could not help staring at their sickly pale skin. Their eyes were bizarre, too big, showing too much white. They did not shave their heads properly, but only the pate, like a samurai without his topknot. One of them had hair the same color as Katsushima’s blood bay gelding. Another had curly hair like a sheep.

  Fully half the city seemed to be newly built. Homes were packed in cheek by jowl, the shops packed in tight
er still. In the space of a single block Daigoro saw three tailors, a cooper, a farrier, a furrier, a cobbler, a carpenter, a papermaker, a signmaker, a cloth dyer, two taverns, two sushi restaurants, four noodle shops, and three inns whose common rooms served food as well. Daigoro wondered what these people did all day to require so much to eat.

  There was a whole district for buying produce, still another for buying crabs, lobsters, and other fruit of the sea. Now and then a wheelbarrow would pass, stacked so high with caged poultry or bags of rice that it was impossible to see the man doing the pushing. There were geisha and there were low-class whores. There were leatherworkers, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, silversmiths. There seemed to be no imaginable service Daigoro might ever need that could not be provided for within ten minutes’ walk of where he stood.

  At the heart of the commotion was Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s home, the newly built Jurakudai. It wasn’t hard to find; one had only to look for the golden roofs. Daigoro could not begin to guess how many buildings lay within the whitewashed wall that ran the perimeter of the complex. Every one of them was crowned in gold. Even the wall had a little roof of its own, its thousands of curved roof tiles gilded at unthinkable expense. Their circular endcaps shimmered like little suns on the green surface of the moat.

  Daigoro had to circumnavigate the complex to find the front door—no short distance, to be sure; the palace was a city quarter unto itself. From every angle he could see the towering three-story keep, whose gabled roofs also shone like solid gold. Daigoro found it garish, but he also found himself second-guessing his every instinct. If riding a hundred-and-some-odd ri on the Tokaido hadn’t done the job thoroughly enough, the clamor and alarum of Kyoto had fully impressed on him the fact that he knew nothing of the world beyond his own front door.