away. Broken dishes and furniture, planks and roof tiles covered the sand. Corpses with bones showing through rotted flesh hung in tree branches. A wave tossed up a child’s sandal. The cold sea breeze carried the reek of death. Hirata wondered if the government in Edo knew about this. It seemed as if no one here had lived to tell. Hirata felt as if he were the only man on earth. Grieving for the lives lost, he despaired of finding Fuwa, the monk whose name he’d obtained from his acquaintance at the tent camp. If Fuwa hadn’t left the coast before the tsunami, surely he’d drowned. But Hirata kept going, past the wreckage of more villages, until he reached the site where Chiba had been. There he perceived a lone human aura, a quiet but strong pulse emanating from above the beach.
On a high, wooded bluff stood a tent made of fabric patterned in green and brown shades. Beside it a man crouched perfectly still. He rose and lifted his hand in greeting. Lean and tall, he had a shaved head and wore the hemp robes of a monk.
“Who goes there?” he called, neither friendly nor hostile.
“My name is Hirata. Are you Fuwa?”
Caution edged Fuwa’s aura. “I am. How did you guess?”
“A friend told me you might be here. I came from Edo to talk to you.”
“I’ll come down.”
Hirata dismounted. By the time his feet touched the sand, Fuwa had descended the bluff, stepping on exposed roots and rocks, as easily as if they were stairs, to stand before Hirata. “I’ve heard of you.” His face reminded Hirata of an axe blade. Cheekbones and nose curved outward; forehead and chin receded. It was wider and sharper in profile than from the front. “The best fighter in Edo.”
Hirata shrugged off the admiration in Fuwa’s glance. “Were you here when the tsunami came?”
Fuwa nodded somberly.
“How did you survive?”
“I hung onto a tree.”
“Are you the only person in Chiba who wasn’t swept away?”
“There were a few others. They left. Everything they had is gone.”
“Why did you stay here?”
“Why not?” Amusement twitched the corners of Fuwa’s firm mouth. “I’m doing what I would be doing anywhere else.”
Itinerant mystic martial artists camped in the wilderness and liked solitude. “Well, I’m glad I found you.” Hirata offered up a silent prayer of thanks to the gods.
“Is Edo very badly damaged?” Fuwa asked.
“Very.” Hirata described the conditions in the city.
Fuwa looked grave, but all he said was, “What did you come all this way to talk to me about?”
“Some mutual friends. Tahara, Kitano, and Deguchi.”
Fuwa turned abruptly away. His axe-blade profile, backlit by the sun on the sea, was sharp and dark. “I don’t talk about them.”
Enlightenment startled Hirata. “You were in their secret society. They swore you to secrecy.”
Fuwa’s head snapped around. “You, too?”
“Yes.” Hirata had never imagined that the secret society had had another member. “So you can talk to me. We’re comrades.”
“I’m not in the society anymore.” Fuwa strode down the beach, as if he wanted to escape not only Hirata but his past.
Hirata followed. “Did they throw you out?”
“No. I quit.”
“I didn’t think they let anybody quit.” Maybe there was a chance for Hirata to get out alive, too. “How did you?”
“I walked away,” Fuwa said. “They weren’t in a position to stop me.”
“Why not?” Hirata couldn’t imagine Tahara, Kitano, and Deguchi being that powerless.
Fuwa halted and faced him. “Why don’t you ask them?”
“Because I don’t trust them to tell me the truth.”
“You don’t trust them, but you joined their society anyway?” Fuwa laughed good-naturedly. “Well, I guess we are comrades. We both made the same mistake.”
Hirata laughed, too, in relief. “How did you meet them?”
“Why do you want to know?” Fuwa asked, still not ready to share his secrets.
“Because I’m in trouble.” Hirata poured out the whole story of his dealings with the men. He described the ritual, showed Fuwa the ghost’s orders branded on his arm, and said that Tahara, Deguchi, and Kitano had threatened to kill his master unless he obeyed the ghost.
“Why do you think that anything I say could help?”
“I don’t know,” Hirata admitted. “I’m just desperate.”
Fuwa gave him a long, thoughtful look. “They’ve left me alone all these years. I doubt if they’ll bother me even if I do tell tales on them. They’d probably rather never see me again. But they won’t like your knowing things they’ve hidden from you. It’s you they’ll punish.”
“I’ll take that chance,” Hirata said, even though the thought of their wrath made the wind off the bay feel colder.
“It’s your funeral.”
They strolled along the beach together, avoiding wreckage from the drowned village. Fuwa spoke over the slapping of the waves and the cries of the gulls. “I met Tahara, Kitano, and Deguchi ten years ago. I was living in Kamakura.” That city was located southwest of Edo. “I’d recently finished my martial arts training, and I was working as a bodyguard for a merchant. I was bored with my job. I had dreams of adventure. One night I was sitting in a teahouse, when Tahara, Deguchi, and Kitano came in. We got to talking. I was impressed to learn that they were disciples of the great Ozuno. My teacher is respected but not as famous. We told stories about our training. They seemed impressed with me. I was flattered. They said they were hunting for a great treasure, and they’d learned it was in Kamakura.”
Hirata felt a stir of uneasy premonition. “What was this treasure?”
“An ancient book. More than a thousand years old. From China. They said it contained magic spells for communicating with the spirit world. Whoever did the spells would learn incredible secrets and gain superhuman powers. They said the book belonged to a scholar who’d bought it from a Chinese sorcerer. They were planning to steal it. They asked me to help.”
Here was a different version of the story they’d told Hirata. “And you went along?”
“Yes. It sounded like what I’d been waiting for. They said it would be dangerous, we would have to fight for the book. Then we formed a secret society. We swore that we would be loyal to one another and never tell anyone outside about our business. We would share the book and work the magic spells together, and we would become the greatest fighters in the world.” Fuwa contemplated the clouds thinning over the sea. “If only I’d known.”
Here was the disgraceful origin of the secret society. “What happened?” Dread almost quenched Hirata’s desire for the truth.
“That night, we went to the scholar’s house, a shack on the edge of town. We sneaked in and found an old man lying asleep in the room, and a knapsack on the floor beside him. Kitano crouched down to open the knapsack, when the old man suddenly sat up. He wasn’t some scholar. He was Ozuno. I’d seen him before, and I recognized him. Tahara and Deguchi drew their swords. I drew mine. Ozuno said, ‘What are you doing here?’ Then he saw Kitano with his hand in the knapsack and he said, “‘Oh, it’s the spell book you want. Didn’t I forbid you to read it? Didn’t I tell you it was too dangerous?’
“Tahara said, ‘Yes, that’s why we’re stealing it.’ He raised his sword and started toward Ozuno. Ozuno leaped out of the bed. He had a sword in his hand. Tahara, Kitano, and Deguchi lunged at him. After that, it was all flying blades and shouting and bodies flying, I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t join the fight, I couldn’t even see who was where. All I could do was lie flat with my arms over my head and pray I didn’t get killed.
“It was over in an instant. When I looked up, Tahara and Kitano and Deguchi were lying on the floor. Tahara was unconscious, and blood was pouring out of cuts on his chest and stomach. Deguchi’s neck was twisted, and he was clutching his throat and wheezing. Kitano’s face was covered with blood, cut up like raw meat.”
