Year of the Demon

might have been a silent offer to service him herself. Her eyes flashed at him, and he realized what he saw in them was not desire at all. It was fear.

“All right,” he said, and the madam’s eyes flashed again. What was she afraid of? It certainly wasn’t Daigoro. She stood head and shoulders taller than him, but apart from that, she had the air of one who had survived everything a man could imagine. She needed only a glance to know Daigoro had no intention to kill her, and none of his other intentions could threaten her in the least.

He followed her upstairs, where the lanterns burned low and the scent of incense was stronger than ever. Katsushima followed, along with the two butterflies that had whispered in Daigoro’s ear when he’d first come in. “Your man should wait in there,” the madam said, and her graceful hand gestured snakelike at a door. Instantly one of the butterflies knelt beside it and opened it. The other flitted to Katsushima, tucked a finger under his belt, and beckoned him inside.

Katsushima’s hungry eyes appraised her; then he looked back to Daigoro. “I, uh—”

“You won’t be needing him where you’re going,” the madam told Daigoro. The second of the butterflies took Katsushima by the arm, and the two of them tugged him into the room and closed the shoji.

Daigoro studied the madam. She looked back at him coolly, as if she’d contained her earlier fear. Daigoro didn’t know what to expect when she led him to the next door. His best guess was an assassin. Why else would she have been afraid? And why else should she feel relief to have separated Daigoro from his bodyguard?

Whatever her reasons, Daigoro was glad to be wearing his armor. “I’m warning you,” he said, but before he could finish his sentence she slid the door open.

Inside lay General Mio—or what was left of him, at any rate. Huge sores had opened all over his body, every last one festering with maggots. His mouth was swollen and purple, livid with infection. Loops of purple and black bruises coursed around every part of his body, almost as if he’d been tattooed to look like he was wrapped in cords. Despite the efforts of the three girls tending to him, he stank like a corpse. But they were whores, not healers, and the putrid stench of him was enough to make their eyes water. One of them laid a folded wet cloth across his sweating forehead, holding another over her own nose and mouth.

“Get inside,” the madam whispered. “I beg you, quickly.”

Daigoro stepped into the room and the madam hurriedly shut the door behind them. Mio’s head lolled in the direction of the noise, and the folded cloth slipped off. “He was feverish when he barged in this morning,” the madam said, keeping her voice low. “Several times he started shaking, and I was sure he would die. But he just kept moaning your name.”

“I never told you my name.”

“There are only so many boys here, and of them, only one I thought to be a lord.” She unrolled a small scroll and showed it to Daigoro; on it someone had used brown ink and a clumsy hand to scrawl the characters for boy and lord.

Her relief was as obvious as a mask on her face. Now Daigoro understood: Mio terrified her. And why wouldn’t he? The man was a giant, and his wounds should have killed a horse. Judging by the stench, they’d been rotting for days, and yet Mio still mustered the strength to force his way in.

“How did he find me here?”

“How did he even take the first step on that path?” said the madam. “Some demon drives him—or else some higher purpose. Either way, ‘relentless’ does not begin to describe him. He should have been dead days ago.”

“He wanted to see me alone, did he?”

“That’s what he said. Or wrote, rather.”

That explained the rest. Mio doubted Katsushima’s loyalty—a reasonable reaction from one who had just been betrayed by one of his own allies. These wounds could only be Shichio’s work.

Daigoro knelt next to Mio, who groaned something unintelligible. His jaws were locked tight and he sounded drunk—sounded like his tongue was missing, in fact, or like his fever had caused him to forget how to speak.

Mio gestured feebly at the madam and Daigoro saw someone had mutilated the general’s hand. Two oblong wounds gaped like mouths, extending from the knuckles all the way down to the wrist. Similar wounds stood out on his legs, his belly, his chest, as if a wild animal had taken bites out of him.

Daigoro noticed the madam drew a tiny breath through her mouth, as if she needed to brace herself against the stench of decay before approaching. She unrolled the scroll along the tatami next to Mio’s hand, then quickly retreated. For his part, Mio pushed his fingertip into his swollen mouth, and it came away bloody to serve as his writing brush.

The least talented schoolchild had better penmanship. Then again, the least of Mio’s wounds would have killed the child outright. Mio’s finger was slow and sloppy, and it was a triumph of will every time he mustered the strength to raise his finger back to his mouth. As he traced one bright red character after another, Daigoro inspected the rest of the scroll. The first characters he’d traced were boy Daigoro, followed by doctor, lord Daigoro, here, water, fetch boy, and boy danger. Things became less clear after that. A waggling smudge here and there hinted at the moments Mio lost consciousness. The characters followed no uniform lines and no cohesive train of thought. It was clear Mio’s fever was baking his brain.

Wed, Mio wrote. Mother.

“He’s fading away again,” said one of the nursing girls, peering over Daigoro’s shoulder. “His spells last longer and longer each time.”

Mio slapped the paper—a childish and feeble gesture for one so strong. His bloody fingertip stabbed at the scroll, poking tiny crescent-shaped holes and leaving red prints.

“General, I don’t understand,” Daigoro said. “Please, help me.”

Again Mio wetted his finger and traced it on the paper. The first character was nana, seven. The second was illegible.

Wed. Mother. Seven. It made no sense. Daigoro tried again to read the character after seven, but it was just a mess of red. “Seven what?” he said. It could have been anything.

Mio desperately slapped the paper again, his face a red, bunched, pain-stricken grimace. Daigoro looked hopelessly at the scroll once more. There were no more clues now than there had been a moment before, and Mio was fading quickly.

And then it clicked. Nana, the character for seven, could also be read shichi. “Shichio?” he said. “You mean Shichio?”

Mio grunted. It sounded affirmative, but Daigoro could only guess.

Wed. Mother. Shichio. He tried to think of other readings for the characters wed and mother. No insights there. Mio tried to lift his finger to his mouth and failed. Daigoro took his arm gingerly by the wrist and helped him. Together they succeeded in bloodying the finger, but Mio could manage to write no more. Somehow he still clung to consciousness, but his body had failed him. Daigoro knew he would not regain control of himself again; the giant man was dying, and dying quickly.

Desperately, Daigoro scanned the other characters on the page. Water and medicine were of no help. Where was probably an inquiry about Daigoro. Boy and lord were obvious. Dai became shorthand for those two somewhere along the way.

On one line he found mother again, this time paired with dai. Daigoro’s mother. He paired that in his mind with wed and Shichio and came up with the unthinkable.

“Shichio intends to marry my mother?”

Mio moaned through lips so swollen he could no longer part them.

“General Mio, please. One more word. Please. Does he plan to marry my mother?”

A last groan from General Mio. Then the breath leaked out of him.

A burst of noise and splinters exploded behind Daigoro. He turned to see Katsushima, naked, kicking his way through the shoji with sword in hand. The steel held an orange glow in the dim light