Year of the Demon

this Shichio deserved no better. If he were truly samurai, he would have opened his own belly years ago, in the very hour that he failed.

“Be careful what you take joy in, young Bear Cub.” Daigoro looked up and saw the abbot studying his face. “The Red Bear of Izu earned an enemy in Hideyoshi’s court. Now you have inherited that enemy. One of your father’s men has been telling tales of the old days.”

“No. Our men are loyal.”

“What else explains my death warrant? Shichio has learned that I am still alive. I attended to your father’s funeral and your brother’s; any one of your men could have seen me there.”

“I won’t believe it.”

“Then you are in need of another explanation. Your father’s scouts were young men when they deceived Shichio. Unless some accident has befallen them, there is no reason to doubt they still live.”

“No.” Daigoro searched his memory, trying to envision an Okuma samurai with a scar across his forehead. No faces came to mind—but then, Daigoro did not know his every vassal. He knew every man at his own compound, but the Okumas had lesser houses too, scattered across southern Izu.

“Perhaps one of them was drunk,” the abbot said. “Perhaps he felt you slighted him somehow. Perhaps he felt House Okuma has somehow become unworthy of his loyalty.”

Oh no, Daigoro thought. Mother.

The debacle with the Soras had cost Daigoro the most, but it was hardly the first of its kind. Her outbursts were becoming more frequent, more acute, and all too often they happened in public. Could that have been enough to turn a loyal samurai astray? Daigoro hated to think so. But after losing his father and his brother, House Okuma was undoubtedly weaker. Now its matriarch was a madwoman, its lord her crippled teenage son.

No. Loyalty was loyalty. It if failed even once, it did not exist at all. Father had trained his men better than that. Hadn’t he?

“Somehow Shichio knows I am alive,” the abbot said, as if he read Daigoro’s thoughts. “How else might he have discovered this?”

“Augury,” said Daigoro. “Divination. A kami speaking to him in his dreams.”

“Perhaps. But the more likely explanation is one of this world. A loyal man uttering one word too many after drink loosened his tongue. One of Shichio’s own men, crossing paths with yours by happenstance, recognizing a scar.”

“What does it have to do with you? You took on the cloth. A man’s old crimes are cut away when he shaves his head.”

“Among the honorable, yes.”

“Well, then, this is easy,” said Daigoro. “Hideyoshi was named regent. Perhaps he wasn’t born samurai, but he is certainly samurai now. He has no choice but to live up to it. I’ll tell Hideyoshi the truth, he’ll take Shichio’s head, and this ridiculous drama will come to an end.”

“You are more than welcome to try. But do remember, Shichio manipulates men as deftly as a potter shapes clay. If you tell Hideyoshi the truth, you will also have to tell him it was your father who bested him in his most public defeat. And more than bested: duped. What will Shichio be able to shape out of your story?”

“Nothing. The emperor bestowed Hideyoshi with name and title. Let Shichio weave his webs; Hideyoshi will cut through them with a sword. He is samurai now.”

“And yet you’ve taken to calling him Hideyoshi rather than General Toyotomi.”

Daigoro grunted and stared at the pebbles in the rock garden. The abbot had a point. Even the emperor could not change what a man was in his heart. The world might regard Hideyoshi as a trueborn samurai, but Daigoro doubted whether one who was born a peasant could ever walk the bushido path.

“So what am I to do?”

“Behead me. Save your family and yourself. Buy peace.”

“No. You’ve committed no sin.”

“Oh, but I have.”

“I won’t accept that. Yes, all of us have done wrong in our lives, but you’ve done no wrong by Shichio—and even if you had, all your crimes were absolved when you took on the tonsure.”

The abbot shrugged. “That’s as may be. But if the price of peace is the head of one innocent man, I think any daimyo in the land would consider it a bargain.”

“No. It’s wrong.” But even as he heard himself say it, Daigoro knew it was the easiest path. The abbot had no family, nor even any fear of death. He had embraced his own impermanence. Outside the walls of Katto-ji, the world would scarcely notice his passing. And in taking his head, Daigoro could appease this Shichio, a man with the might of a warlord but the conscience of a petty thief. Who knew what he might do if he felt slighted? Daigoro couldn’t even guess. All his life Daigoro had striven to live up to his name, his birth, his father’s image. He had no idea what went on in the minds of dishonorable men.

Daigoro took his leave, and allowed his mare to set her own slow pace on the ride back down to the Okuma compound. He was thankful to be alone in making this decision. Tomo was a good servant and a better friend, but he was lowborn. And Katsushima had strayed from the path as soon as he dedicated himself to his sword over his master. Neither of them could fully understand what bushido demanded.

If it were as simple as delivering his own head to Hideyoshi, Daigoro would have known what to do. Self- sacrifice in the name of family came as naturally to him as breathing. But killing an innocent man in the name of family smacked of cowardice, not selflessness. And yet the abbot was right. Usually peace was bought with the blood of thousands. Heroes died for it. Why could a monk not be as heroic as any samurai? The abbot had offered his own neck and offered it freely. He’d neither insisted nor shied away. Daigoro could ask no more of any soldier in his command.

But the abbot was no soldier. He’d renounced the sword, and in so doing he’d put himself on the opposite side of a line Daigoro was loath to cross. Peace, at the cost of moral compromise. Principle, at the cost of endangering his family.

Daigoro knew what he had to do. He just didn’t know what to do with the fear. Too often doing the right thing had made him suffer. This time it made him tremble.

11

Shichio’s favorite room in the Jurakudai was the highest deck of the moon tower. Hashiba liked it too, but for very different reasons. Hashiba enjoyed the view of the city; the lofty perspective made him feel more powerful, and the quiet made him feel more at peace. Shichio liked the moon tower for its austerity. It was one of the only places in the entire palace that hadn’t yet been gilded and painted and overdone. Hashiba was oddly embarrassed by that fact; he seemed to equate ostentation with wealth, and, by extension, tastefulness with poverty. That meant the upper deck of the moon tower was an intimate place for him, a good place for dalliances and for private meetings with his closest advisers.

Shichio was content to serve in both capacities. At the moment that meant wiping Hashiba clean after they’d finished. The demon mask seemed suddenly heavier—or rather, Shichio suddenly felt its weight on his neck muscles, now that he wasn’t otherwise distracted—and so he shifted it to sit atop his head. Moonlight streamed in through the open walls, and a cool breeze raised goose bumps all up and down Shichio’s naked, sweat-slicked body. Hashiba never seemed to feel the cold. He was tougher than Shichio, in that way and many others.

“Look at you,” Hashiba said, chuckling. He bunched Shichio’s silken kimono in his fist and threw it at him. “Why do you carry on this way? I’ve concubines enough. Why not invite a few of them up here to warm you?”

Shichio understood the subtext well enough. Hashiba didn’t understand that sex might be like the moon tower for them: enjoyable for two very different reasons. For him, real men did the penetrating, not the receiving, and so he found their liaisons shameful—not for himself, but for Shichio. That was why he wanted a consort to join them: so that Shichio could be the conqueror for once. But there were two ways of conquering too. That was something else Hashiba didn’t understand.