Part 12 (1/2)

”It's astonis.h.i.+ng news,” Hajime said. ”No wonder you've been preoccupied.”

”Most of the time I'm thinking about how I'll kill him,” Akio confessed, drinking deeply again.

”You've been ordered to?” Hajime said bleakly.

”It all depends on what happens at Hagi. You might say he's on his last chance.”

”Does he know that? That he's being tested?”

”If he doesn't, he'll soon find out,” Akio said. After another long pause he said, ”If the Kikuta had known of his existence, they would have claimed him as a child and brought him up. But he was ruined first by his upbringing and then by his a.s.sociation with the Otori.”

”His father died before he was born. Do you know who killed him?”

”They drew lots,” Akio whispered. ”No one knows who actually did it, but it was decided by the whole family. The master told me this in Inuyama.”

”Sad,” Hajime murmured. ”So much talent wasted.”

”It comes from mixing the blood,” Akio said. ”It's true that it sometimes throws up rare talents, but they seem to come with stupidity. And the only cure for stupidity is death.”

Shortly afterward they came to bed. I lay still, feigning sleep, until daybreak, my mind gnawing uselessly at the news. I was sure that no matter what I did or failed to do in Hagi, Akio would seize on any excuse to kill me there.

As we bade farewell to Hajime the next morning, he would not look me in the eye. His voice held a false cheerfulness, and he stared after us, his expression glum. I imagine he thought he would never see me again.

We traveled for three days, barely speaking to each other, until we came to the barrier that marked the beginning of the Otori lands. It presented no problem to us, Akio having been supplied with the necessary tablets of identification. He made all the decisions on our journey: where we should eat, where we should stop for the night, which road we should take. I followed pa.s.sively. I knew he would not kill me before we got to Hagi; he needed me to get into s.h.i.+geru's house, across the nightingale floor. After a while I began to feel a sort of regret that we weren't good friends, traveling together. It seemed a waste of a journey. I longed for a companion, someone like Makoto or my old friend from Hagi, Fumio, with whom I could talk on the road and share the confusion of my thoughts.

Once we were in Otori land I expected the countryside to look as prosperous as it had when I had first traveled through it with s.h.i.+geru, but everywhere bore signs of the ravages of the storms and the famine that followed them. Many villages seemed to be deserted, damaged houses stood unrepaired, starving people begged at the side of the road. I overheard s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation: how the Otori lords were now demanding sixty percent of the rice harvest, instead of the forty percent they had taken previously, to pay for the army they were raising to fight Arai, and how men might as well kill themselves and their children rather than starve slowly to death when winter came.

Earlier in the year we might have made the journey more swiftly by boat, but the winter gales were already las.h.i.+ng the coast, driving foaming gray waves onto the black sh.o.r.e. The fishermen's boats were moored in such shelter as they could find, or pulled high onto the s.h.i.+ngle, lived in by families until spring. Throughout winter the fis.h.i.+ng families burned fires to get salt from the seawater. Once or twice we stopped to warm ourselves and eat with them, Akio paying them a few small coins. The food was meager: salt fish, soup made from kelp, sea urchins, and small sh.e.l.lfish.

One man begged us to buy his daughter, take her with us to Hagi, and use her ourselves or sell her to a brothel. She could not have been more than thirteen years old, barely into womanhood. She was not pretty, but I can still recall her face, her eyes both frightened and pleading, her tears, the look of relief when Akio politely declined, the despair in her father's att.i.tude as he turned away.

That night Akio grumbled about the cold, regretting his decision. ”She'd have kept me warm,” he said more than once.

I thought of her sleeping next to her mother, faced with the choice between starvation and what would have been no more than slavery. I thought about Furoda's family, turned out of their shabby, comfortable house, and I thought of the man I'd killed in his secret field, and the village that would die because of me.

These things did not bother anyone else-it was the way the world but they haunted me. And of course, as I did every night, I took wa; out the thoughts that had lain within me all day and examined them.

Yuki was carrying my child. It was to be raised by the Tribe. I would probably never even set eyes on it.

The Kikuta had killed my father because he had broken the rules of the Tribe, and they would not hesitate to kill me.

I made no decisions and came to no conclusions. I simply lay awake for long hours of the night, holding the thoughts as I would hold black pebbles in my hand, and looking at them.

The mountains fell directly to the sea around Hagi, and we had to turn inland and climb steeply before we crossed the last pa.s.s and began the descent toward the town.

My heart was full of emotion, though I said nothing and gave nothing away. The town lay as it always had, in the cradle of the bay, encircled by its twin rivers and the sea. It was late afternoon on the day of the winter solstice, and a pale sun was struggling through gray clouds. The trees were bare, fallen leaves thick underfoot. Smoke from the burning of the last rice stalks spread a blue haze that hung above the rivers, level with the stone bridge.

Preparations were already being made for the New Year Festival: Sacred ropes of straw hung everywhere and dark-leaved pine trees had been placed by doorways; the shrines were filling with visitors. The river was swollen with the tide that was just past the turn and ebbing. It sang its wild song to me, and beneath its churning waters I seemed to hear the voice of the stonemason, walled up inside his creation, carrying on his endless conversation with the river. A heron rose from the shallows at our approach.

When we crossed the bridge I read again the inscription that s.h.i.+geru had read to me: The Otori clan welcomes the just and the loyal. Let the unjust and the disloyal beware. The Otori clan welcomes the just and the loyal. Let the unjust and the disloyal beware.

Unjust and disloyal I was both: disloyal to s.h.i.+geru, who had entrusted his lands to me, and unjust as the Tribe are, unjust and pitiless. I was both: disloyal to s.h.i.+geru, who had entrusted his lands to me, and unjust as the Tribe are, unjust and pitiless.

I walked through the streets, head down and eyes lowered, changing the set of my features in the way Kenji had taught me. I did not think anyone would recognize me. I had grown a little and had become both leaner and more muscular during the past months. My hair was cut short; my clothes were those of an artisan. My body language, my speech, my gait-everything about me was changed since the days when I'd walked through these streets as a young lord of the Otori clan.

We went to a brewery on the edge of town. I'd walked by it dozens of times in the past, knowing nothing of its real trade. But, But, I thought, I thought, s.h.i.+geru would have known. s.h.i.+geru would have known. The idea pleased me: that he had kept track of the Tribe's activities, had known things that they were ignorant of, had known of my existence. The idea pleased me: that he had kept track of the Tribe's activities, had known things that they were ignorant of, had known of my existence.

The place was busy with preparations for the winters work. Huge amounts of wood were being gathered to heat the vats, and the air was thick with the smell of fermenting rice. We were met by a small, distracted man who resembled Kenji. He was from the Muto family; Yuzuru was his given name. He had not been expecting visitors so late in the year, and my presence and what we told him of our mission unnerved him. He took us hastily inside to another concealed room.

”These are terrible times,” he said. ”The Otori are certain to start preparing for war with Arai in the spring. It's only winter that protects us now.”

”You've heard of Arai's campaign against the Tribe?”

”Everyone's talking about it,” Yuzuru replied. ”We've been told we should support the Otori against him as much as we can for that reason.” He shot a look at me and said resentfully, ”Things were much better under Iida. And surely it's a grave mistake to bring him here. If anyone should recognize him...”

”We'll be gone tomorrow,” Akio replied. ”He just has to retrieve something from his former home.”

”From Lord s.h.i.+geru's? It's madness. h.e.l.l be caught.”

”I don't think so. He's quite talented.” I thought I heard mockery beneath the compliment and took it as one more indication that he meant to kill me.

Yuzuru stuck out his bottom lip. ”Even monkeys fall from trees. What can be so important?”

”We think Otori might have kept extensive records on the Tribe's affairs.”

”s.h.i.+geru? The Farmer? Impossible!”

Akio's eyes hardened. ”Why do you think that?”

”Everyone knows... well, s.h.i.+geru was a good man. Everyone loved him. His death was a terrible tragedy. But he died because he was...” Yuzuru blinked furiously and looked apologetically at me. ”He was too trusting. Innocent almost. He was never a conspirator. He knew nothing about the Tribe.”

”We have reasons to think otherwise,” Akio said. ”We'll know who's right before tomorrow's dawn.”

”You're going there tonight?”

”We must be back in Matsue before the snows come.”

”Well, they'll be early this year, possibly before the year's end.” Yuzuru sounded relieved to be talking about something as mundane as the weather. ”All the signs are for a long, hard winter. And if springs going to bring war, I wish it may never come.”

It was already freezing within the small, dark room, the third such that I had been concealed in. Yuzuru himself brought us food, tea- already cooling by the time we tasted it-and wine. Akio drank the wine but I did not, feeling I needed my senses to remain acute. We sat without speaking as night fell.

The brewery quieted around us, though its smell did not diminish. I listened to the sounds of the town, each one so familiar to me, I felt I could pinpoint the exact street, the exact house, it came from.

The familiarity relaxed me, and my depression began to lift a little. The bell sounded from Daishoin, the nearest temple, for the evening prayers. I could picture the weathered building, the deep green darkness of its prove, the stone lanterns that marked the graves of the Otori lords and their retainers. I fell into a sort of waking dream in which I was walking among them.

Then s.h.i.+geru came to me again as if from out of a white mist, dripping with water and blood, his eyes burning black, holding an unmistakable message for me. I snapped awake, s.h.i.+vering with cold. Akio said, ”Drink some wine, it'll steady your nerves.” I shook my head, stood, and went through the limbering exercises the Tribe use until I was warm. Then I sat in meditation, trying to retain the heat, focusing my mind on the night's work, drawing together all my powers, knowing now how to do at will what I had once done by instinct.

From Daishoin the bell sounded. Midnight. I heard Yuzuru approaching, and the door slid open. He beckoned to us and led us through the house to the outer gates. Here he alerted the guards and we went over the wall. One dog barked briefly but was silenced with a cuff.

It was pitch dark, the air icy, a raw wind blowing off the sea. On such a foul night no one was on the streets. We went silently to the riverbank and walked southeast toward the place where the rivers joined. The fish weir where I had often crossed to the other side lay exposed by the low tide. Just beyond it was s.h.i.+geru's house. On the near bank, boats were moored. We used to cross the river in them to his lands on the opposite side, the rice fields and farms, where he tried to teach me about agriculture and irrigation, crops, and coppices. And boats had brought the wood for the tearoom and the nightingale floor, listing low in the water with the sweet-smelling planks, freshly cut from the forests beyond the farms. Tonight it was too dark even to make out the mountain slopes where the trees had grown.