The Harsh Cry of the Heron Read online

  “She has not been tortured?”

  “You must know torture is banned in the Three Countries. Your children will face the tribunal for attempted assassination, for which the punishment is death, but they have not been tortured. You must have heard that Lord Otori has a compassionate nature.”

  “This is another of the Dog’s lies,” Akio scoffed. “Leave us, uncle. Your grief weakens you. I will speak with Muto alone.”

  “The young people will remain alive if you agree to a truce,” Kenji replied swiftly, before Gosaburo could get to his feet.

  “Akio!” Gosaburo begged his nephew, tears beginning to burst from his eyes.

  “Leave us!” Akio also stood, enraged, pushing the old man toward the door, bundling him out of the room.

  “Truly,” he said as he sat down again. “This old fool is useless to us! Now he has lost his shop and his business, he does nothing but mope all day. Let Otori kill the children, and I’ll kill the father—we will be rid of a nuisance and a weakling.”

  “Akio,” Kenji said. “I speak to you as one Master to another, in the way that affairs of the Tribe have always been settled. Let us talk clearly with each other. Listen to what I have to say. Then make your decision on what is best for the Kikuta family and the Tribe, not on your own hatred and rage, for these will destroy them and you. Let us remember the history of the Tribe, how we have survived since ancient times. We have always worked with great warlords—let us not work against Otori. Because what he is doing in the Three Countries is good—it is approved by the people, farmers and warriors. His society is working—it is stable; it flourishes; people are content; no one starves to death and no one is tortured. Give up your blood feud against him. In return the Kikuta will be pardoned and the Tribe will be united again. We will all benefit.”

  His voice had taken on a mesmeric lilting quality that stilled the room and silenced those outside. Kenji was aware that Hisao had returned and was kneeling just beyond the door. When he stopped speaking, he summoned up his will and let the waves from it flow out into the room. He felt calm descend over them all. He sat with his eyes half-closed.

  “You old sorcerer.” Akio broke the silence with a shout of rage. “You old fox. You can’t trap me with your stories and your lies. You say the Dog’s work is good! People are content! When have these things ever concerned the Tribe? You have gone as soft as Gosaburo. What’s happening to all you old men? Is the Tribe decaying from the inside? If only Kotaro had lived! But the Dog killed him—he killed the head of his family, to whom his life was already forfeit. You were witness to it—you heard the vow he made in Inuyama. He broke that oath. He deserved to die for it. But he murdered Kotaro, the Master of his family, instead—with your help. He is beyond any pardon or any truce. He must die!”

  “I will not argue with you about the rights or wrongs of his action,” Kenji replied. “He did what seemed best at the time, and surely his life has been better lived as one of the Otori rather than as Kikuta. But all that is past. I could appeal to you to give up your campaign against him so the Kikuta can return to the Three Countries—Gosaburo can have his business back!—and enjoy life as we all do now, but these simple pleasures apparently mean nothing to you. I will only say to you, give up—you will never succeed in killing him.”

  “All men can die,” Akio replied.

  “But he will not die at your hands,” Kenji said. “However much you desire it, I can assure you of that.”

  Akio was gazing at him with narrowed eyes. “Your life is also forfeit to the Kikuta. Your betrayal of the Tribe must also be punished.”

  “I am preserving my family and the Tribe. It is you who will destroy it. I came here without weapons as an envoy; I will return in the same way and take your regrettable message back to Lord Otori.”

  Such was the power he commanded that Akio allowed him to stand and walk from the room. As he passed Hisao still kneeling outside, Kenji said, turning back, “This is the son? He has no Tribe skills, I believe. Let him accompany me to the gate. Come, Hisao.” He spoke back into the shadows. “You know where to find us if you change your mind.”

  Well, he thought as he stepped from the veranda and the crowd parted to allow him through, it seems I am to live a little longer after all! For once he was in the open and beyond Akio’s gaze he knew he could go invisible and disappear into the countryside. But was there any chance of taking the boy with him?

  Akio’s rejection of the offer of a truce did not surprise him. But he was glad Gosaburo and the others had heard it. Apart from the main house, the village looked impoverished. Life would be hard here, especially during the bitter winter. Many of the inhabitants must hanker, like Gosaburo, after the comforts of life in Matsue and Inuyama. Akio’s leadership, he felt, was based less on respect than on fear; it was quite possible that the other members of the Kikuta family would oppose his decision, especially if it meant the lives of the hostages would be spared.

  As Hisao came up from behind and walked beside him, Kenji was aware of some other presence that occupied half of the boy’s sight and mind. He was frowning, and from time to time he raised his hand to his left temple and pressed it with his fingertips.

  “Is your head hurting?”

  “Mmm.” He nodded without speaking.

  They were halfway down the street. If they could make it to the edge of the fields, and run along the dike to the bamboo groves…

  “Hisao,” Kenji whispered. “I want you to come back to Inuyama with me. Meet me where we met before. Will you do that?”

  “I cannot leave here! I cannot leave my father!” Then he gave a sharp exclamation of pain, and stumbled.

  Just another fifty paces. Kenji did not dare turn round, but he could hear no one following him. He continued to walk calmly, unhurriedly, but Hisao was lagging behind.

  When Kenji turned to encourage him, he saw the crowd still staring after him, and then suddenly pushing between them, Akio, followed by Kazuo—both had drawn knives.

  “Hisao, meet me,” he said, and slid into invisibility, but even as his shape disappeared Hisao caught at his arm and cried, “Take me with you! They’ll never let me! But she wants me to go with you!”

  Maybe it was because he was invisible and between the worlds, maybe it was the intensity of the boy’s emotion, but in that moment he saw what Hisao saw…

  His daughter, Yuki. Sixteen years dead…

  And realized with astonishment what the boy was.

  A ghostmaster.

  He had never encountered one; he knew of them only from the chronicles of the Tribe. Hisao himself did not know, nor did Akio. Akio must never know.

  No wonder the lad had headaches. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry.

  Kenji could still feel Hisao’s grip on his arm as he looked into his daughter’s spirit face, seeing her as he did in his memories, as child, adolescent, young woman, all her energy and life present but attenuated and faint. He saw her lips move and heard her say, “Father,” though she had not called him that since she was ten years old.

  She bewitched him now as she had then.

  “Yuki,” he said helplessly, and let visibility return.

  IT PROVED EASY for Akio and Kazuo to seize him. None of his talents in invisibility or using the second self could save him from them.

  “He knows how to get at Otori,” Akio declared. “We will extract it from him, and then Hisao must kill him.”

  But the old man had already bitten into the poison and ingested it; the same ingredients that his daughter had been forced to swallow. He died in the same way, in agony, full of regrets that his mission had failed and that he was leaving his grandson behind. In his last moments he prayed that he might be allowed to stay with his daughter’s spirit, that Hisao would use his powers to keep him. What a powerful ghost I might be, he thought, and the idea made him laugh, as did the realization that life with all its pain and joy was over. But he had walked his path to its end, his work in this world was completed, and he d
ied by his own choice. His spirit was freed to move into the eternal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

  5

  Winter in Inuyama was long and severe, though it brought many pleasures of its own—during the time spent inside Kaede read poetry and old tales aloud to her daughters, and Takeo spent long hours overseeing the records of administration with Sonoda, and for relaxation studied painting with an artist of the black-ink style and drank with Kenji in the evenings. The girls were occupied with studying and training, and there were the diversions of the Bean Festival, a noisy and cheerful occasion in which demons were driven out of doors into the snow and good luck welcomed in, and Shigeko’s coming of age, for the New Year had seen her turn fifteen. The celebration was not lavish, for in the tenth month she was to receive the domain of Maruyama, which was inherited through the female line and had passed to her mother, Kaede, after the death of Maruyama Naomi.

  It seemed that Shigeko would eventually be the ruler of the Three Countries, and her parents agreed that she should take over the Maruyama lands this year, now that she was an adult, establishing herself there as a ruler in her own right and learning firsthand the principles of government. The ceremony in Maruyama would be both solemn and splendid, confirming an ancient tradition and, Takeo hoped, establishing a new precedent; that women might inherit land and property and run their households or become heads of villages, equally with their brothers.

  The cold weather and the confinement indoors sometimes frayed nerves and weakened health, but at even the bleakest time the days were lengthening as the sun returned, and in the bitterest cold the plum trees put out their fragile white blossom.

  Takeo could never forget, however, that while his closest family was shielded from cold and boredom through the long winter months, other relatives of his, two young people not much older than his daughters, were held in captivity deep within Inuyama castle. They were far better treated than they had expected to be, but they were prisoners, and faced death unless the Kikuta accepted the offer of a truce.

  After the snows melted and Kenji had departed on his mission, Kaede and her daughters left with Shizuka for Hagi. Takeo had noticed his wife’s growing discomfort with the twins and thought Shizuka might take one of them, Maya perhaps, to the hidden Muto village Kagemura for a few weeks. He himself delayed leaving Inuyama, hoping to hear from Kenji within the month, but when the new moon of the fourth month came and there was still no news, he set out somewhat reluctantly for Hofu, leaving instructions with Taku to bring any message to him there.

  Throughout his rule he had journeyed in this way, dividing the year between the cities of the Three Countries, sometimes traveling with all the splendor expected of a great lord, sometimes taking on one of the many disguises he had learned in the Tribe, mingling with ordinary people and learning from their own mouths their opinions, their joys and grievances. He had never forgotten the words that Otori Shigeru had spoken once to him: It is because the Emperor is so weak that warlords like Iida flourish. The Emperor ruled in name over the entire country of the Eight Islands, but in practice the various parts took care of their own affairs—the Three Countries had suffered conflict for years as warlords strove for lands and power, but Takeo and Kaede had brought peace and maintained it by constant attention to every aspect of the land and the lives of its people.

  He could see the effects of this now as he rode toward the West, accompanied by retainers, two trusted bodyguards from the Tribe—the cousins Kuroda Junpei and Shinsaku, known always as Jun and Shin—and his scribe. Throughout the journey he noticed all the signs of a peaceful and well-governed country: healthy children, prosperous villages, few beggars, and no bandits. He had his own anxieties—for Kenji, for his wife and daughters—but he was reassured by all he saw. His aim was to make the country so secure that a girl child could rule it, and when he arrived in Hofu he was able to reflect with pride and satisfaction that this was what the Three Countries had become.

  He had not foreseen what awaited him in the port city, nor had he suspected that by the end of his stay there his confidence would be shaken and his rule threatened.

  IT SEEMED THAT as soon as he arrived in any one of the cities of the Three Countries delegations appeared at the gates of the castle or palace where he was staying, seeking audiences, asking for favors, requiring decisions that only he could make. Some of these could in fact be passed on to the local officials, but occasionally complaints were made against these officials themselves, and then impartial arbitrators had to be supplied from among his retinue. This spring in Hofu there were three or four of these cases, more than Takeo would have liked, and it made him question the fairness of the local administration; furthermore, two farmers had complained that their sons had been forcibly conscripted, and a merchant divulged that soldiers had been commandeering large amounts of charcoal, wood, sulphur, and niter. Zenko is building up forces and weapons, he thought. I must speak to him about it.

  He made arrangements to send messengers to Kumamoto. The next day, however, Arai Zenko, who had been given his father’s former lands in the West and also controlled Hofu, came himself from Kumamoto, ostensibly to welcome Lord Otori but, as it soon became obvious, with other motives. His wife, Shirakawa Hana, the youngest sister of Takeo’s wife, Kaede, came with him. Hana was very like her older sister, even held by some to be more beautiful than Kaede in her youth, before the earthquake and the fire. Takeo neither liked nor trusted her. In the difficult year following the birth of the twins, when Hana turned fourteen, she had fancied herself in love with her sister’s husband, and had constantly sought to seduce him into taking her as second wife or concubine, she did not care which. Hana was more of a temptation than Takeo cared to admit, looking just like Kaede when he first fell in love with her, before her beauty was marred, and offering herself at a time when his wife’s ill health kept him from her. His steady refusal to take her seriously had wounded and humiliated her; his wish to marry her to Zenko had outraged her. But he had insisted—it seemed to deal with two problems at once, and they had been married when Zenko was eighteen and Hana sixteen. Zenko was more than happy—the alliance was a great honor to him; Hana was not only beautiful, she quickly produced three sons, all healthy children, and furthermore, though she never professed to be in love with him, she was interested in him and ambitious for him. Her infatuation with Takeo soon melted away, to be replaced by a rancor against him and jealousy of her sister, and a deep desire that she and her husband should take their place.

  Takeo was aware of this desire—his sister-in-law revealed more of herself than she thought, and besides, like everyone, the Arai often forgot how acute his hearing was. It was no longer as sharp as when he was seventeen, but it was still good enough to overhear conversations that others thought secret, to be aware of everything around him, of where each person of the household was, of the activities of the men in the guardroom and stables, of who visited whom at night and for what purpose. He had also acquired a watchfulness that enabled him to read the intentions of others in their stance and the movements of their body, to the extent that people said he could see clearly into men’s hidden hearts.

  Now he studied Hana as she bowed deeply before him, her hair spilling to the floor, parting slightly to reveal the perfect white of her nape. She moved with an easy grace, despite being the mother of three children—you would not think her more than eighteen years, but she was the same age as Zenko’s younger brother, Taku—twenty-six.

  Her husband, at twenty-eight, looked very like his father: large, powerfully built, with great strength, an expert with both the bow and the sword. At twelve he had seen his father die, shot by a firearm before his eyes, only the third person in the Three Countries to die in that manner. The other two had been bandits, and Zenko had witnessed their death too. Arai had died in the same moment when he had broken his oath of alliance with Takeo. Takeo knew these things taken together had produced a deep resentment in the young boy, which had turned over the years to hatred.r />
  Neither husband nor wife gave any sign of their malevolence. Indeed, their welcomes and inquiries after his health and that of his family were effusive. Takeo replied equally cordially, masking the fact that he was in more pain than usual from the damp weather and repressing the desire to remove the silk glove that covered his right hand to massage the scar where his fingers used to be.

  “You should not have gone to so much trouble,” he said. “I will only be in Hofu for a day or two.”

  “Oh, but Lord Takeo must stay longer.” Hana spoke, as she often did, before her husband. “You must stay until the rains are over. You cannot travel in this weather.”

  “I have traveled in worse,” Takeo said, smiling.

  “It is no trouble at all,” Zenko said. “It is our greatest pleasure to be able to spend time with our brother-in-law.”

  “Well, there are one or two things we need to discuss,” Takeo replied, deciding to take the blunt approach. “There can be no need, surely, of increased numbers of men under arms, and I’d like to know more about what you are forging.”

  His directness, coming as it did right after the courtesies, startled them. He smiled again. They must surely know little escaped his notice throughout the Three Countries.

  “There is always a need for weapons,” Zenko said. “Glaives, spears and so on.”

  “How many men can you muster? Five thousand at the most. Our records show them all fully equipped. If their weapons have been lost or damaged, it is their responsibility to replace them at their own expense. The domain’s finances can be better employed.”

  “From Kumamoto and the southern districts, yes, five thousand. But there are many untrained men of fighting age in other Seishuu domains. It seemed an ideal opportunity to give them training and weapons, even if they return to their fields for the harvest.”

  “The Seishuu families answer to Maruyama now,” Takeo replied mildly. “What does Sugita Hiroshi think of your plans?”