The Harsh Cry of the Heron

by Lian Hearn

  It was the first time Takeo had directly threatened the boys. Heaven forfend I have to make good this threat, he thought. Yet surely Zenko would not risk his sons’ lives.

  “All my suggestions are only to make the whole country stronger, and to support Lord Otori,” Zenko said. “I am sorry I spoke. Please forget it.”

  They had been outside alone as two individuals. When they returned, they seemed to Takeo to assume their roles as if in some drama, driven by the hand of fate to play out their parts to the end; the audience room, decorated with gold embossments on the pillars and beams, filled with retainers in their resplendent robes, had become the setting. Masking their mutual anger, they made their farewells with icy politeness. Zenko’s departure from Maruyama was planned for the following day, Takeo’s for the day after.

  “AND THEN YOU will be alone in your domain,” he said to Shigeko before they retired.

  “Hiroshi will be here to advise me, at least until next year,” she replied. “But what happened to you last night, Father? Who gave you that wound?”

  “I must have no secrets from you,” he said. “But I do not want to disturb your mother at this time, so make sure she does not hear of it.” He told her briefly about Maya, about the possession and its results. She listened in silence, expressing neither shock nor horror, and he felt curiously grateful to her.

  “Maya will be in Hofu with Taku for the winter,” he said.

  “Then we will keep in touch with them. And we will watch Zenko carefully too. You must not worry too much, Shigeko. In the Way of the Houou we often encounter things like this animal possession. Gemba knows much about them, and he has taught me.”

  “Should Maya go to Terayama?”

  “She will go there when the time is right.” Shigeko was smiling gently as he continued. “All spirits seek the higher power that can control them and give them peace.”

  A shiver ran down his spine. She seemed like a stranger, enigmatic and wise. He was suddenly reminded of the blind woman who had spoken the prophecy, who had called him by his water name and known him for who he was. I must go back there, he thought. I will make a pilgrimage to the mountain, next year after my child is born, after my journey to the capital.

  He felt Shigeko had the same spiritual power. His own spirit lightened as he embraced his daughter and bade her good night.

  “I think you should tell Mother,” Shigeko said. “You should have no secrets from her. Tell her about Maya. Tell her everything.”

  28

  Kumamoto, the castle town of the Arai, lay to the far southwest of the Three Countries, surrounded by mountains rich in iron ore and coal. These resources had led to the establishment of a flourishing industry of all forms of ironware, pots and tea kettles, and above all sword-making, with many renowned swordsmiths and forges, as well as, in recent years, the even more profitable business of making firearms.

  “At least,” grumbled the old man, Koji, “It would be profitable if the Otori permitted us to produce enough to meet the demand. Blow up the heat, boy.”

  Hisao pumped at the handle of the huge bellows and the furnace glowed even more fiercely, with a white heat that scorched his face and hands. He did not mind, for winter had come since they had arrived at Kumamoto two weeks before; a biting wind blew off the iron-gray sea, and every night was frosty.

  “What right do they have to dictate to the Arai what we can and can’t make, what we’re allowed to sell and what’s forbidden!” Koji went on.

  Hisao heard the same discontent everywhere. His father told him, with some glee, that Arai’s retainers fomented rumors constantly, stirring up old grievances against the Otori, questioning why Kumamoto now obeyed Hagi when Arai Daiichi had won the whole of the Three Countries in battle, unlike Otori Takeo, who had simply been lucky, taking advantage of a convenient earthquake, and bringing about the shameful death of Lord Arai by the same firearm that he now denied to the clan.

  Akio and Hisao learned on their arrival in Kumamoto that Zenko was not there—he had been summoned to Maruyama by Lord Otori.

  “Treats him like a servant,” the innkeeper said on their first night, at the evening meal. “Expects him to drop everything and come running. Isn’t it enough that Otori holds his sons as hostages?”

  “He likes to humiliate both his allies and his enemies,” Akio said. “It gratifies his own vanity. But he has no real strength. He will fall, and the Otori with him.”

  “There will be celebrations in Kumamoto on that day,” the other man replied, taking up the dishes and returning to the kitchen.

  “We will wait until Arai Zenko returns,” Akio said to Kazuo.

  “Then we will need some funds,” Kazuo said. “Especially with winter at hand. Jizaemon’s money is almost gone.”

  Hisao already knew that there were few Kikuta families this far West, and those had lost much of their power and influence during the years of the Otori rule. However, a few days later a sharp-featured young man came to call on Akio, greeting him with both deference and delight, addressing him as Master and using the secret language and signs of the Kuroda family. His name was Yasu; he was from Hofu and had fled to Kumamoto after some unpleasantness there involving the smuggling of firearms.

  “I became a dead man!” he joked. “Lord Arai was to have me executed on Otori’s orders; but luckily he valued me too much, and made a substitution.”

  “Are there many like you who serve Arai?”

  “Yes, many. The Kuroda have always gone with the Muto, as you know, but we’ve many links with the Kikuta too. Look at the great Shintaro! Half Kuroda, half Kikuta.”

  “Murdered by the Otori, like Kotaro,” Akio observed quietly.

  “There are many deaths still unavenged,” Yasu agreed. “It was different while Kenji was alive, but since his death, when Shizuka became the head of the family—everything’s changed. No one’s happy. First, because it’s not right to be led by a woman, and second, because Otori arranged it. Zenko should be the head—he’s the oldest male heir—and if he doesn’t want to take it on, being a great lord, then it should be Taku.”

  “Taku is hand in glove with Otori, and was involved in Kotaro’s death,” Kazuo said.

  “Well, he was only a child, and can be forgiven—but it’s wrong for the Muto and Kikuta to be so estranged. That’s Otori’s doing too.”

  “We are here to mend bridges and heal wounds,” Akio told him.

  “That’s exactly what I hoped. Lord Zenko will be delighted, I can tell you.”

  Yasu paid off the innkeeper and took them to his own lodgings, at the back of the shop where he sold knives and other kitchen utensils, cooking pots, kettles, hooks, and chains for hearths. He loved knives, from the great cleavers cooks used in the castle to tiny blades of exquisite sharpness for taking the living flesh from fish. When he discovered Hisao’s interest in all kinds of tools, he took him to the forges he bought from. One of the smiths, Koji, needed an assistant, and Hisao found himself apprenticed to him. He liked it, not only for the work itself—he was skillful at it, and it fascinated him—but also because it gave him more freedom, and took him away from Akio’s oppressive company. Since leaving home, he saw his father with new eyes. He was growing up. He was no longer a child to be dominated and bullied. In the new year he would turn seventeen.

  In some complex scheme of debts and obligations, his work for Koji paid for their food and lodging, though Yasu often professed he would take nothing from the Kikuta Master, that the honor of being allowed to be of assistance was sufficient. Yet Hisao thought he was a calculating man who gave away nothing—if Yasu helped them now, it was because he saw some profit in it in the future. And Hisao also saw how old Akio had become, and how antiquated his thinking was, as if it had been frozen in time in the years of isolation in Kitamura.

  He realized how Akio was flattered by Yasu’s attention, that his father craved respect and status in a way that seemed almost old-fashioned in the bustling, modern city, which had flourished in the
long years of peace. The Arai clan were full of confidence and pride. Their lands now stretched right across the West. They controlled the coast and the shipping lanes. Kumamoto was full of traders—and even a handful of foreigners, not only from Shin and Silla but also, it was said, from the Isles of the West, the barbarians with their acorn eyes and thick beards, and their utterly desirable goods.

  Their presence in Kumamoto was hinted at, whispered of, for the whole city knew of Otori’s unreasonable prohibition on anyone dealing with the barbarians directly—all trade had to go through the Otori clan’s central government, administered from Hofu, the only port where foreign ships officially were allowed to land. This was widely believed to be because the Middle Country wished to keep the profits to itself, as well as the inventions, so practical and useful, and in the question of armaments so effective, so deadly. The Arai smoldered beneath the unfairness.

  Hisao had never seen a barbarian, though the artifacts he had been shown by Jizaemon had sparked his interest in them. Yasu often called by the forge at the end of the day to give new orders, collect a fresh supply of knives, deliver wood for the furnaces. One day he was accompanied by a tall man in a long cloak with a deep hood that hid his face. They came at the end of the day; dusk was falling and the leaden sky threatened snow. It was around the middle of the eleventh month. The blaze of the fire was the only color in a world turned black and gray by winter. Once off the street, the stranger let his hood fall back and Hisao realized with surprise and curiosity that he was a barbarian.

  The barbarian could hardly talk to them—he knew only a few words, but both he and Koji were the sort of men who spoke with their hands, who understood machinery better than language, and as Hisao followed them round the forge he realized he was like that too. He grasped the barbarian’s meaning as quickly as Koji did. The stranger was absorbed by all their methods, studied everything with his quick light eyes, sketched their fireplaces, bellows, cauldrons, molds, and pipes; later, when they drank hot wine, he brought out a book, folded in a strange way, printed, not written, and showed pictures, which were clearly of forging. Koji pored over them, his brow furrowed, his fingers scratching behind his ears. Hisao, kneeling to one side, peering in the dim light, could feel his own excitement increasing as the pages turned. His head was spinning with all the possibilities revealed before his eyes. The details of forging techniques gave way to careful illustration of the products. On the final pages were several firearms—most were the long cumbersome muskets he was already familiar with, but one, at the bottom of the page, slipped in among them like a foal between its mother’s legs, was small, barely a quarter of their length. He could not prevent his forefinger from reaching out and touching it.

  The barbarian chuckled. “Pistola!” He mimed, hiding it inside his clothes, then brought it out and aimed it at Hisao.

  “Pa! Pa!” He laughed. “Morto!”

  Hisao had never seen a more beautiful thing, and instantly desired it.

  The man rubbed his fingers together, and they all understood him. Such weapons were expensive. But they could be made, Hisao thought, and he determined to learn how to make one.

  Yasu sent Hisao away while he discussed financial matters. The boy tidied up the forge, damped down the fire, and prepared all the materials for the following day. He made tea for the men and filled their wine bowls, and then went home, his mind full of ideas. But either the ideas themselves, the unaccustomed wine, or the bitter wind after the heat of the forge had set his head aching, and by the time he got to Yasu’s house he could see only half the building, only half the display of knives and axes.

  He stumbled over the step, and as he recovered his balance, he saw the woman, his mother, in the misty void where half the world should have been.

  Her face was pleading, full of tenderness and horror. He felt sick as the strength of her appeal hit him. The pain became unbearable. He could not help groaning, and then he realized he was going to vomit, fell to his hands and knees, crawled to the threshold, and heaved into the gutter.

  The wine was sour in his mouth; his eyes watered painfully, the sleety wind freezing the tears on his cheeks.

  The woman had followed him outside and hung above the ground, her outline blurred by the haze and the sleet.

  Akio, his father, called from inside. “Who’s there? Hisao? Close the door, it’s freezing.”

  His mother spoke, her voice inside his mind as piercing as ice. “You must not kill your father.”

  He had not known that he wanted to. He was frightened, then, that she knew all his thoughts, his hatred as well as his love.

  The woman said, “I will not let you.”

  Her voice was intolerable, jangling all the nerves in his body, setting them on fire. He tried to scream at her. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

  Through his own moaning, he was aware of footsteps approaching, and heard Yasu’s voice.

  “What on earth!” the man exclaimed, and then called to Akio, “Master! Come quickly! Your son…”

  They carried him inside and washed the vomit from his face and hair.

  “The fool drank too much wine,” Akio said. “He should not drink. He has no head for it. Let him sleep it off.”

  “He hardly had any wine,” Yasu said. “He can’t be drunk. Maybe he is sick?”

  “He gets headaches now and then. He’s had them since he was a child. It’s nothing. They go away in a day or two.”

  “Poor lad, growing up without a mother!” Yasu said, half to himself, as he helped Hisao lie down and covered him with the quilt. “He’s shivering; he’s freezing. I’ll brew something for him to help him sleep.”

  Hisao drank the tea and felt warmth gradually return; the shivering abated, but the pain did not, nor did the woman’s voice. Now she hovered in the dark room—he did not need lamplight to see her. He understood dimly that if he listened to her the pain would lessen, but he did not want to hear what she had to say. He drew the pain around him as his defense against her, and thought about the marvelous little firearm and how he longed to make it.

  The pain made him savage, like a tortured animal. He wanted to inflict it on someone else.

  The tea dulled the edge of his feelings, and he must have dozed for a short time. When he woke, he heard Akio and Yasu talking, heard the chink of the wine bowls and the small noises their throats made as they drank.

  “Zenko has returned,” Yasu was saying. “I can’t help feeling a meeting between you would bring benefits to everyone.”

  “That is the main reason we came here,” Akio replied. “Can you arrange it?”

  “I am sure I can. Zenko himself must long to heal the divisions between Muto and Kikuta. And, after all, you are related by marriage, are you not? Your son and Zenko must be cousins.”

  “Has Zenko any Tribe skills?”

  “None that anyone knows of. He takes after his father—he’s a warrior. Not like his brother.”

  “My son has few skills,” Akio admitted. “He has learned some things, but he has no innate talents. It’s been a great disappointment to the Kikuta. His mother was highly talented, but she passed nothing on to her son.”

  “He is good with his hands. Koji speaks quite highly of him—and Koji never praises anyone.”

  “But that is not going to make him a match for Otori.”

  “Is that what you hoped? That Hisao would be the assassin to finally get the better of Takeo?”

  “I will have no peace until Otori is dead.”

  “I understand your feelings, but Takeo is both skillful and lucky. That’s why you must talk to Zenko. An army of warriors might succeed where the Tribe’s assassins have failed.”

  Yasu drank again and chuckled. “On the other hand, Hisao likes guns. A gun is stronger than any Tribe magic, I’m telling you. He may yet surprise you!”

  29

  You say he threatened the boys directly?” Lady Arai drew her fur outer garment around her. The sleet that had blown off the sea all week since their
return from Maruyama had finally turned to snow. The wind had dropped and the flakes were falling gently and steadily.

  “Don’t worry,” her husband, Zenko, replied. “He is just trying to bully us. Takeo will never harm them. He is too weak to bring himself to do it.”

  “It must be snowing in Hagi,” Hana said, staring out at the distant sea and thinking of her sons. She had not seen them since they left in the spring.

  Zenko said, ill-will coloring his voice, “And in the mountains. With any luck Takeo will be stuck in Yamagata and will not be able to return to Hagi before spring. The snow is early this year.”

  “At least we know Lord Kono is safely on his way to Miyako,” Hana remarked, for they had received messages from the nobleman before he left Hofu.

  “Let’s hope he is preparing a warm reception for Lord Otori next year,” Zenko said, and gave his short, explosive laugh.

  “It was amusing to see Takeo lulled by his flattery,” Hana murmured. “Kono is certainly a very accomplished and plausible liar!”

  “As he said before he left,” Zenko remarked, “Heaven’s net is wide, but its mesh is fine. Now the net is to be drawn tighter. Takeo will be caught in it eventually.”

  “I was surprised by my sister’s news,” Hana said. “I thought she would be past childbearing.” She stroked the surface of the fur, and wanted to feel it against her skin. “What if she does have a son?”

  “It is not going to make a great deal of difference, if all goes according to plan,” Zenko replied. “Neither will this betrothal between Sunaomi and their daughter.”

  “Sunaomi must never marry a twin!” Hana agreed. “But we will maintain the pretense for the time being.”

  They smiled at each other with complicity.

  “The only good thing Takeo ever did was giving me you in marriage,” Zenko said.

  It was a grave mistake on his part, Hana was thinking. If he had yielded to me and taken me as a second wife, how different everything would be. I would have given him sons; without me Zenko would be just another of his barons, no threat to him. He will pay for it. And Kaede too.