Year of the Demon

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 tighter 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.

Now, dwarfed by the gleaming golden palace before him, he wondered if he’d taken leave of his senses entirely. Was he really so gullible as to think that gaining an audience with the imperial regent was no harder than paying a visit to a family friend? He blushed at his own naivete. He’d ridden half the length of the empire and now he hadn’t the slightest inkling of what to do next.

And then, impossibly, Mio Yasumasa came out to greet him.

There was no mistaking him. If his snow-white topknot were not enough to identify him, his glittering black breastplate was so big it could almost serve to bard a horse. Mio’s shadow stretched out broad and long behind him as he lumbered through the visitor’s gate. “Young master Okuma! What a strange day this is. That viper Shichio told me I would find you here, and here you are!”

Daigoro looked to the tower standing high atop the keep. It was a viewing deck, not a defensive structure —the walls were no more than lattice—and so Daigoro should have been able to see any observers. The tower was empty.

“How did he know I was here?”

“Eh? You’ll have to speak up, son. Some northern upstart had the gall to cut my ear off.”

Mio made a flourish of cupping a hand to the scar on the left side of his head, and just as Daigoro was about to apologize, the giant let loose a thunderous laugh. Daigoro smiled with him, but he was not in a joking mood. “Please, General, tell me: does Shichio have spies watching for me? How does he know I’m here?”

“It’s that mask of his. Pure devilry, if you ask me.” Mio sneered and spat. “He says it ‘felt you coming’—no, felt your sword coming, he said, and if you can make any sense of that, I’ll conscript you on the spot and make you my personal soothsayer. By the Buddha, I could use a clearer view of the future.”

“What do you mean?”

“Shichio. He’s changed. Leave him to his maps and numbers and he can do your army some good, but I campaigned with him for years and never saw him draw a blade. He’s got no stomach for it. But all of a sudden he’s taken to wearing swords. Why? Why now?”

Mio led them into the palace as he spoke, and Daigoro made a careful note of every guardpost, every building, every intersection of lanes. When he and Katsushima tethered their horses, Daigoro memorized every door and window facing the hitching posts. If they needed to make a hasty retreat, he’d need an accurate mental map.

Katsushima was equally on edge. “Is that why you go armored?” he said. “Because you can’t foretell what Shichio might do with his swords?”

Mio looked down at Katsushima—he was that tall—and snorted a laugh through his nose. “Say what’s on your mind, ronin.”

“Very well.” Katsushima’s left hand fell to his hip, and with a flick of the thumb he loosened his katana in its sheath. “I think a man dressed for battle usually intends to go to battle. So unless fashions have changed since I was last in Kyoto, you’re prepared for a fight.”

Mio noted Katsushima’s hand but made no move for his own weapon. “Maybe I am,” he said, his tone darker than before. “Maybe I always am.” Then he slapped a big hand on his armored belly. “Or maybe I need it to keep my innards from spilling out. Ever since your little friend put his sword in my gut, it hurts every time I bump it into something—and at my size, that happens quite a lot!”

He slapped his breastplate again, laughing mightily at his own joke, then bade Daigoro and Katsushima to follow him past a teahouse and into the garden on the opposite side.

Hideyoshi sat on a stone bench at the edge of a tranquil little pond. The grass surrounding him was lush and green, punctuated by flat white stepping-stones tracing a winding path to the water. High walls surrounded the garden, largely invisible behind the sprays of bamboo that whispered to each other in the light breeze. Carp swam in the pond, their colors ranging from white to orange to black. Now and then came a sucking sound as one of their gaping round mouths breached the surface.

General Shichio sat by the pond as well, petting the demon mask that rested in his lap as if it were a cat. He wore a katana at his hip, just as Mio had said, but it did not suit him. It was too short for him, and too clean; no sweating hand had ever touched it. He wore it at an awkward angle, like a sandal stuck between the wrong toes. And yet he had an eye for Glorious Victory that bordered on the lascivious. Daigoro had seen murder in the eyes of a rival swordsman before, and this wasn’t it; this was closer to rape.

“Well, now,” said Hideyoshi, “here’s a guest we didn’t expect.”

Somehow Daigoro’s memory hadn’t fully retained how ugly Hideyoshi was. It was a shame; Daigoro found him quite likable, and he thought fate unusually cruel to make such a personable man so simian in appearance. Then again, maybe the regent’s charisma was born from his unfortunate looks; perhaps it was a defense mechanism, born of necessity in a needlessly superficial society. Daigoro wondered why he himself had never thought to practice being charming; perhaps he could have deflected some of the bashing he’d endured all his life thanks to his lame leg.

“Sit, sit,” Hideyoshi said, gesturing to another stone bench on the opposite side of the pond. At the raising of an eyebrow, servants sprang noiselessly into motion. Daigoro had a little cup of sake in his hand from the very moment he sat down, and Katsushima had a little cup of southern barbarian whiskey. To Mio they gave the entire flask of whiskey, along with a cup that all but vanished in his enormous hand. Then, just like that, the servants vanished back into the woodwork. Hideyoshi clapped his hands on his knees. “So, what occasions this visit?”

“Assassins,” said Daigoro. “I just turned fifty of them out of my house.”

Hideyoshi laughed, baring sharp teeth that pointed every which way. “Well done! Fifty, you say. That must have been quite a fight.”

“I tried to avoid fighting, my lord regent. I nearly succeeded too, but my efforts were sabotaged.”

“Were they, now? By whom?”

“By the one who sent the assassins, my lord regent.”

The regent smoothed his wispy mustache. “Ah. Some local trouble, is it? Well, you came to the right place. I like you, Okuma-san. You’ve impressed me. Tell me who the rabble-rouser is and I’ll set him straight.”

The clacking of armor plates reminded Daigoro that Mio sat just to his left, opposite the pond from Hideyoshi and Shichio. Why was Mio sitting with him and not with his own people? Perhaps Katsushima’s earlier suspicions were right on the mark. Had Mio armored himself for a fight? Had he positioned himself to be ready to strike, or was he implicitly siding against Shichio by sitting with Daigoro? It was impossible to tell, and impossible for Daigoro to know how to answer the regent’s question. If Mio had not allied himself with Daigoro but was