Year of the Demon

derisive laughter. Shichio had seen that smile many times as a child, stabbing at him like a dagger from the faces of countless village boys, and in fact he’d made a point of riding in the vanguard when, during the bitterest of the war years, he and Hashiba demolished the tiny hamlet where Shichio had grown up. Seeing that wicked, happy smile on the face of the Bear Cub was more than he could stomach.

“That’s quite enough,” he said, striding angrily across the road until he stood chest to chest with the boy. Daigoro stood just inside the threshold of the Okuma compound, Shichio just outside of it, each one matching the other’s stare. “I’ll string you up on the gates of your own house,” he said, his voice so low that only the Bear Cub could hear him. “Your wife, your child, your servants, they’ll walk past you for days. I’ll nail your bones to the wood. I’ll have you fed and watered, keep you alive for as long as I can. And then, right before you die, I’ll kill your mother—my wife—right in front of you. I’ll flay her with your own sword. Your wife too, and then your little boy. And then I’ll drive that big sword of yours right through your —”

“My little boy?”

Shichio’s heart pounded in his ears. A sweat broke out on his upper lip. “Yes, your boy, you little runt, that newborn son of yours. He’s going to—”

“That’s not my son.”

“What?”

There was that smile again, that smallest, sharpest, wickedest of grins.

•   •   •

“That’s not my son,” Daigoro said again, desperately restraining a triumphant laugh. He’d never seen anyone look so baffled while trying to look malicious before. He wished he had a mirror, so Shichio could see what it looked like.

“My lords,” he said, taking a step back into his family’s courtyard—a step away from Shichio and toward Hideyoshi. “Your presence on this wedding day honors us all. Please accept my heartfelt thanks, and allow me to thank you on behalf of House Okuma as well.”

“Thanks? Honor?” Shichio spat the words. “Of course I’m here. It’s my wedding. You’re the one who shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, because of your garrison? You may want to have words with them. It seems they don’t know about all the little lanes we’ve got crisscrossing the estate.”

“What?”

“Of course,” Daigoro said, enjoying himself every bit as much as Shichio had been a few moments before. “Connecting the orchard, the bathhouse, that sort of thing. You’ll understand when you have property of your own.”

“This is my property—or it will be, as soon as you step aside and let me get on with my wedding.”

“I’m afraid there’s been some misunderstanding. Unless . . . did you bring a bride of your own? I’m afraid all the ladies present are already married.”

“I’m here to marry your mother, you impudent little cur, and you know that damn well.”

“But my mother’s already got a husband,” Daigoro said. “Allow me to present to you the newly married Lord and Lady Yasuda.”

He stretched out his arm as grandly as Hideyoshi might have done it, and from the heart of the assembly his mother walked forward, positively glowing. Her steps were tiny—a bridal kimono did not allow the legs much movement—and so it took a delightfully long time for her to approach. Shichio fumed all the while. “This,” Daigoro said, touching his mother’s silken shoulder, “is Lady Yasuda Yumiko, and this”—he gingerly took the baby in his green swaddling clothes from his mother’s arms—“is Lord Yasuda Gorobei, her new husband.”

Shichio opened his mouth to speak; only a strangulated gurgle came out. Daigoro’s mother blushed and looked with adoration and pride at her son, then at her rosy-cheeked husband in the crook of Daigoro’s arm. Hideyoshi let out a howl, laughing so hard he had to cling to a bodyguard’s shoulder to stay standing.

“We have got to come here more often,” Hideyoshi said. “You bastards are a riot.”

The little Lord Yasuda replied with a yawn, scrunched his eyes tight against the morning sun, and nestled himself deeper into Daigoro’s kimono. He had no more hair than his great-grandfather, Yasuda Jinbei, whose compound Daigoro had just departed some scant hours before. Whatever Hideyoshi had to say next was choked off by another fit of cackling, which he tried to restrain out of respect for the baby’s sleep. Shichio nearly choked too; apoplexy still had the better of him.

Daigoro decided to make the most of the opportunity. “Mother,” he said softly, “how are you feeling?”

“Better, now that we have you home.” She smiled at him, though he winced at the word home. Her face glowed with a radiance he hadn’t seen in her in more than a year. She stroked baby Gorobei’s fat cheek with the back of a finger. “What a beautiful little husband you found for me.”

“I had hoped to speak of it with you first,” Daigoro said. “It was not my intent to marry you off without your consent. This was the only way I could think of to—”

“It’s fine, Daigoro. It was very clever of you, in fact—a much better solution than that horrid letter we got from you. I’m your mother and Akiko is your wife, regardless of what you write in any official decrees.”

Daigoro felt his face flush. “I promise we’ll have a talk about that—but later, if you don’t mind. Do you know where Aki is?”

“I’m here,” Akiko said, wending her way through the armored ranks of Okuma warriors. She wore ruby red silk, her face pale and inscrutable. It was the first time he’d laid eyes on his wife since departing for Kyoto, for though he’d reached the Okuma estate in the earliest hours of the morning, there had been distractions of every kind: introductions to be made, wounds to clean and bind, to say nothing of the hastiest wedding preparations in history. On top of all that, morning sickness had invaded Akiko’s stomach like the Mongol hordes, waking her each day with a new incursion and showing no signs of decamping.

As such, Daigoro’s first thought was to attribute her pallor to nausea. But then she narrowed her eyes at him, her shoulders stiffened, and Daigoro feared he’d angered her. But of course, his conscience said. Running off without so much as a farewell, disappearing for nearly a month—one-third of their entire marriage—sending a decree almost as soon as he was out the door, declaring that he’d disowned her; what was she supposed to do? Welcome him with open arms? Had she even read the accompanying letter, the one that explained his decision and explained how much it pained him? Or had she pitched it into the fire pit? Torn it up? Tossed the scraps into the wind?

All these thoughts passed through his mind in the space of a heartbeat. Daigoro braced himself, fearing the worst. She would hate him. She would slap him in front of the entire gathering—and he would deserve it. Aki took another silent step toward him, finally emerging from the forest of motionless soldiers. Despite his dread and self- loathing, Daigoro could not help finding her beautiful. The thought that he’d hurt her wounded him to the quick. He loved her and he’d abandoned her. Whatever retribution she visited upon him could not compete with how harshly he would punish himself.

She stepped closer. Her shoulders tensed. Her chin drew back ever so slightly, as if she were a cobra preparing to strike. Then she grabbed both of his wrists, stretched up on her tiptoes, and pecked a kiss on his cheek. “Get inside,” she whispered, her lips tickling his ear, “as quick as you can. I want you to strip me naked.”

She settled herself back on the ground, and though she tried to hide it behind a coy smile, Daigoro could see she was near to bursting. She’d missed him after all, and she was angry, and love overwhelmed the anger, and worry threatened to overwhelm the love. It was all she could do to give his wrists a little squeeze instead of wrapping her arms around him, clutching him close so he could not wander again.

Behind him Daigoro heard the faint click of a sword slipping a thumb’s length out of its sheath.

“And who might this pretty girl be?” he heard Shichio say.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Daigoro thought. He had a venomous snake in his courtyard and he’d brought his pregnant wife within striking range. He looked over his shoulder at Shichio, whose left hand gripped the mouth of his scabbard, the fingertips of his right hand stroking his katana’s cord-bound grip. The preening peacock’s hair had become disheveled, as if his shock and disgrace had struck him like a physical blow. Daigoro only wished they’d struck hard enough to knock him dead.