Child of Vengeance (21 page)

Eventually he stumbled upon the guardhouse, though it would have been easy to miss it. It was a squat, ugly thing, the dark tiled roof of it emerging above eaved stone walls blackened by the years, humbled by the surrounding merchant warehouses and inns that displayed their wealth in lurid paint and elaborate carvings.

The moat surrounding it had once been five paces across, but the widening of the roads for ease of commerce had not taken the economics of sieges into consideration, and so what was left was essentially a gutter the depth of which was twice the height of a man. The original bridge remained, though, arcing out into the street and providing a small amount of shade for laborers to sit in and doze.

Atop the gateway were two severed samurai heads upon spikes, their hair immaculate and their faces as clean as men just bathed. Beneath them carved on slabs of wood were their names. The pair must have been executed in the morning and they would be gone by the evening most likely, for to let any sign of rotting or corruption show would be an obscene disgrace to even the gravest of enemies.

Indeed, a man waited diligently with a long pole to swat at any bird that might try to peck at them, as the two were not displayed to be humiliated; they were there to show from the cleanness of the cuts to their necks that they had died a dignified seppuku and all shame was therefore expunged. It was no hanging threat of law, but an example of fine men who believed in it and the moral order of all things, and who had demonstrated that belief in the purest fashion.

Redeemed though the pair might have been, their dead gaze did nothing for Bennosuke’s nerves. He stood before them for a few moments summoning the courage to enter. First impressions counted a lot, and he knew that his rash already counted against him. These were the men who would hold his life as theirs, and he needed to convince them that he was worthy of that trust. He clutched his hand around the longsword at his side, and pushed on over the hump of the bridge.

The courtyard within was practical in design, square and hard and bereft of tree or sand or art, but also, mercifully, of the crowd of the street. A handful of Shinmen’s samurai were there, engaged in labor or drills or hearing the complaints and disputes of storeowners and travelers who felt themselves wronged. Lining one wall was a low, wooden cage in which miserable men sat in filthy sawdust awaiting judgment.

Bennosuke had no eyes for any of them. He had set his face in what he thought was confidence, somewhere between earnestness and a scowl, and he marched directly to the guardhouse proper. An aging samurai sat cross-legged in a room open to the day, a small forecourt in which people could stand without removing their sandals before him.

The man was leafing slowly through a ledger of yellowed paper, and did not look up as Bennosuke approached. The boy swallowed as he strode, his stomach squirming. In his head, he practiced the lines he had been muttering under his breath all morning and ran through the motions of his hands as he would present Munisai’s missive. When he came before the man he snapped out a bow he hoped was appropriately military.

“Sir,” he said, “I seek Captain Tomodzuna.”

“You’re out of luck, then, I’m afraid,” said the samurai, eyes not
leaving the ledger. “The earthquake last week caused a landslide up in the hills. He’s away assessing damage to the roads.”

“Oh,” said Bennosuke. Suddenly his preparation was for naught; Munisai had told him to report to the captain alone, so what now? He found his throat growing tight and he barely managed to croak, “Ahh, when will he back?”

“Tomorrow, most likely,” said the man. “I’m the lieutenant here, though—can I help you with anything?”

“Ah, no,” said Bennosuke, and as his face began to warm he put all his concentration into keeping a stammer from his voice, hoping not to betray any hint of indecision. “I’ll, ah, I’ll come back tomorrow, then.”

The lieutenant looked up at him for the first time, putting the document down. “Are you all right, lad?” he asked, seeing the unease of the boy. “Are you in trouble?”

“No, no, I’m fine, really,” said Bennosuke, his mind whispering to him that he was a fool and it was going wrong and he had to leave, he had to flee. “I’ll be going, ah, thank you.”

The boy bowed twice like a lowly courtier opening a door for a noble would, and then scuttled back across the courtyard and out of the gate as fast as he dared, feeling the back of his neck burning.

The lieutenant rose to his feet stiffly, slid his feet into a pair of sandals, and slowly walked out into the courtyard trying to work the crick from his back. He watched the strange boy until he was gone, and though he was merely bemused by the encounter, he became aware that someone had taken a far more vivid interest in the lad—in the cage, one of the prisoners was pressed up against the bars.

“Friend of yours?” the lieutenant asked, strolling to stand before him.

“You have to let me out now,” said the prisoner, eyes locked on the space where the boy had been.

“It seems you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way jails function,” said the lieutenant.

“I’ve sobered up. You can’t keep me here—I’ve committed no crime.”

“Is that so?”

“A few tables overturned,” muttered the prisoner.

“You struck that girl, and don’t even try to deny it. Face was all swollen up, the poor thing.”

“It was a backhand, I didn’t punch her …” said the captive, and when that simply hardened the lieutenant’s face, he sighed and waved a resigned hand. “Then I’ll give her a handful of coins, or a bucketful—do you know who my master is?”

“Yes,” grunted the lieutenant ruefully. “There’s a reason you’re better off than some of your friends in there.”

Within the cage the handful of other captives glowered through bruises and scabbed blood. The prisoner, an empty stomach the worst of his maladies, ignored them.

“If you know who he is, then you know to let me out now,” he said to the lieutenant, and for all he wanted to deny it, the lieutenant knew this was so.

After a few moments he reluctantly produced a bundle of iron keys from his waist and began to search through them.

“Think that could be you up there?” he asked, nodding at the backs of the two heads over the gateway as he flicked the keys around the ring one by one. “That kind of dignity? There’s a place, you know, where they send the savages—the thieves and the arsonists and the ravagers of women—and you don’t get that kind of respect. There’s scourges and nails and red-hot iron and all kinds of things, and if you’re not careful, lad, no matter who your friends are—”

“Will you shut up and find that damned key, you old fool?” snapped the prisoner. “I need to get out now!”

The keys froze in the lieutenant’s hands. He looked at the prisoner for one dark moment, and then he casually tossed the bunch of them to one side. “Oh, would you look at that? I seem to have misplaced the keys,” he said, and then, scratching his head in pantomime, he ambled over to scoop a cup of water from a cistern. “Perhaps a cool drink of water might clear my head and help me remember where I put them, hmm?”

He took a pointedly small sip, his eyes not leaving those of the prisoner. The man in the cage’s hands tightened on the bars, his lips becoming thin. The lieutenant counted twenty heartbeats before he took another tiny mouthful from the wooden cup.

The prisoner understood, held his tongue, and sat back. He was
not an idiot or a lowborn—he was samurai, and beneath the filth and the flecks of sawdust that stuck to him, he wore a rich burgundy kimono.

ALMOST AS SOON
as he left the guardhouse, Bennosuke was cursing his stupidity and his timidity. It was some great warrior who got flustered by nerves and a conversation that did not follow the minutiae he expected. Mighty was the soldier who was sickened with shyness, indeed. He would have to wait until tomorrow to return. Sidling back sheepish and asking for lodgings would just make him appear weaker yet, and so now he would have to find somewhere to stay on his own.

He wandered around, as lost as he was before. Inns were easy to find, but here in the center of the town and upon the merchant’s road, they were all too rich for his meager purse. Men stood outside offering him fine shellfish and beds warmed by beautiful girls and songs played by master musicians and all manner of things, but not one could give him simply a mat and a roof and a bowl of rice.

Bennosuke walked and walked with no success, growing ever more despondent. His feet began to ache, the thongs of the sandals between his toes grating raw the soft flesh there, and eventually he admitted defeat. He stopped and sighed, casting his eyes round dejectedly as the people pushing past him muttered about his obstruction of their passage.

The boy found himself next to a potter’s shop, a small place open to the street with vases and bowls displayed upon chests and tables. In the center of the room the potter himself sat upon woven straw mats, painting a plate. He was an old man, a small length of rope bound around his skull keeping his gray hair out of his eyes, his tongue running the length of his lips as he worked.

Bennosuke broadened his shoulders and stuck his chest out, for though he was miserable he knew that he should still try to appear like a man as he moved to stand in the doorway. He coughed pointedly and then spoke in a voice striving for depth: “A moment if you will, good craftsman.”

“Eh? What’re you wanting?” said the potter irritably, blinking his focus away from the detail he was painting. The pair of swords
silhouetted at Bennosuke’s side checked his tongue. “Oh. Ahah, a thousand apologies both honest and eternal and so on, young sir. You would care to become a patron of my humble establishment?”

“No, I am samurai,” Bennosuke said, enjoying the man’s reaction. “What do I need a plate for?”

“To eat from, sir?” the old man said. Bennosuke flushed slightly, and his shoulders fell to somewhere more natural. His masquerade of grandeur had failed twice now; perhaps humility was worth a try. He licked his lips, and spoke in a less pompous tone.

“That may be, but I am searching for cheap lodgings. Could you help me?” the boy said.

“Which way are you going, sir?” the man said, thinking. “Westward or Kyoto bound?”

“I …” said Bennosuke, beginning to construct a lie, but then he remembered honesty was part of humility. “Actually, I’m staying here. I’m to serve under Captain Tomodzuna.”

“Oh—you’re Lord Shinmen’s man?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, I used to serve the old lord, the current Lord Shinmen’s father, sir, years ago,” the potter said, nodding as though he were a sage. “Carried a spear for him through two battles, one up in the hills and the other over to the east somewhere, sir. Killed three men, sir.”

“What do you mean?” said Bennosuke, confused. “Artisans are forbidden weapons.”

“We weren’t always, master samurai. Whole armies of artisans and peasants used to be drafted to serve the lords, until one day they decided we no longer had the right blood to wield spears,” said the man. “Wish they had done it before I dangled my ass out over the edge of hell for them. Or they hadn’t done it at all.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Who else? The government, samurai, you know—your folk,” said the man. “Hierarchy is everything, isn’t it, sir? Above all sits the emperor, out of the sight of us, and then there’s what …? My lot is to serve you samurai. You serve our Lord Shinmen. Lord Shinmen has some power, but not so much. He serves the great lords, and above them still sit a handful of men who have no formal name for their
kind of power. Call them greater lords, if anything, and the closest one to us is the Lord Ukita. And whom does he serve?”

“The Regent Hideyoshi Toyotomi,” said Bennosuke.

“Indeed, and when he came to power he was the one who decreed that none but samurai could have swords or spears,” said the man, and then a malicious glint came into his eyes and he leaned in closer. “And therein lies the interesting thing.”

“What?”

“Toyotomi was born a rice picker. Why do you think he never took the noble title of Shogun—he’s forbidden it! Fought his way up through the Oda clan, took power bit by bit. Forgot where he came from along the way, prevented anyone else from following him, and sure enough kept his swords and his country,” said the man, and then smiled as he realized the tone he had taken. “I’m not bitter or anything.”

“You shouldn’t be,” said Bennosuke. “You let them take your weapons from you, after all.”

“Hard to say no, what with your wife and your mother and father all at home under the yoke of samurai, none of them with a spear or an ax between them. Still, one door closes, sir. Afterward I got started here, and well … I suppose I have your kind to thank for this,” the old man said, and gestured around his shop with the same smile as before upon his face.

“Well, that was the choice you made,” said Bennosuke. “I’d die before I surrendered my swords.”

“Would you, sir? Really?” said the man, slyly enough that Bennosuke could not respond, and the potter’s smile unfurled completely at Bennosuke’s silence. Sardonic as the grin was, the boy felt himself smiling in return. It was as though the two of them were sharing a dirty secret.

“It’s a dangerous game you’re playing,” said Bennosuke. “If another samurai heard you slandering them or the regent so, he could lawfully kill you. Why do you say such things?”

“I don’t quite know, sir,” said the potter. “Maybe it’s because I’m old enough that I’m no longer bothered about dying. Or maybe it’s because you’re young enough that you might listen, sir.”

Bennosuke made to reply, but a scream of challenge came from behind him. The boy turned, caught a glimpse of burgundy motion rushing toward him, and then something flashing at his head. Impulsive instinct made Bennosuke’s body take a step to the side, and whatever it was it slashed past him close enough that he felt air upon his face.

It was a sword, he realized.

There was a young samurai in a burgundy kimono before him, murder in his eyes. The blade in his hands swung around for a second try, but he was slow and Bennosuke found his own body lunging forward to grab at the man’s wrists. The boy’s ankle hooked behind his, the full brunt of his weight barreled onward, and then the burgundy samurai was sprawling on his back.