The Name of the Blade, Book Two: Darkness Hidden (25 page)

After a moment, I heard my father’s footsteps retreating, and the sound of the door swinging to. I stayed where I was, gritting my teeth to keep the sobs inside.

The rattle of china made me look up again. I hadn’t even heard the door open.

My father set a TV tray down on my bedside table and one of his first-aid kits on the edge of the bed. The tray held a mug of tea, a plate of buttered toast, and a bowl of soup.

“You can hit out at me all you want, Mio,” he said, folding his arms. “This time I’m not going to fight back, or walk away. I’m your father.”

“Congratulations,” I sneered. “It only took you fifteen years to figure that one out.”

I closed my eyes again, huddling against the bedhead. I didn’t know why he was suddenly acting all nice, or what he wanted, but I wasn’t playing along.

Dad settled the tray on the bed in front of me. Then, moving faster than I would have thought possible, he somehow got me propped up against the pillows – and the next thing I knew, the tray was over my knees, and a mug of tea was in my left hand.

“Stop doing that! Stop – stop
arranging
me like a child!” I shrieked, banging the tea back down onto the tray. “Where’s Shinobu?”

“Downstairs waiting for you and me to finish talking,” he said. “Don’t worry, I haven’t tried to chase him off. I doubt if I could. He read me the riot act after you ran up here. He told me a little bit about what you’ve been through. You need to refuel before I patch you up.”

I knew I was gaping at him again, but I couldn’t help it. Who was this calm, imperturbable, care-taking person, and what had he done with my father?

“It’s getting cold,” he said, seating himself in the creaky old chair that went with my desk/dressing table. “You hate cold toast.”

I felt slow and bewildered, as if I was trying to make sense of a dream. Nothing was unfolding the right way, the way I would have expected it to. The smell of the food was making my stomach do crazy leaps inside me, but I wasn’t sure if it was hunger or nausea. I probably did need to eat. I clearly wasn’t getting rid of my dad until I had at least made an effort.

I tucked the katana in tightly next to my leg and picked up a piece of toast.

My father smiled. It was infuriating.

“What do you want?” I snapped.

“I want to tell you the truth. Keep eating.”

I munched on the toast and washed it down with some tea, then picked up the soup spoon. “There. I’m eating. Satisfied?”

He shook his head. “You are so angry. So like me.”

I dropped the spoon.
“What?”

“I’m not trying to insult you. It’s the truth.”

“You’re out of your mind. In what bizarre universe are you and I anything alike? You’ve spent my whole life trying to change me and fix me and make me over into something else! Why would you do that if I’m so like you?”

“Because you’re my little girl and I just – I wanted you to be
happy
. I wanted you to be … safe.”

The words
Safe from what?
formed in my mouth. They died unspoken as I looked down at the katana, and my bruised, bloody fingers wound around the saya like a knot of skin and bone.

My father nodded. “Exactly.”

I picked up the tea again with my free hand. “All right. Start talking.”

“You must have figured some of this out already, I think. Our family has dedicated itself to protecting that sword for the last five hundred years—”

“I know that. No thanks to you, since you’ve lied to me my whole life.”

“And I would do it again, if I thought it would work.”

I gaped at him, stunned that he had the front to admit it.
“Why?”

“I never, ever wanted you to be involved with the katana. I never wanted you to know about any of it. Understand, Mio – growing up a Yamato was like growing up in a cult. And the cult had one belief, one principle, one rule that was to be followed no matter what. That the sword was more important than any of us.”

I frowned. “Ojiichan wasn’t like that.”

“Oh yes he was.” My father stared down at his boots, face hidden from me. “He didn’t know why the katana was so incredibly important, or why it had been entrusted to us, or even what it really was. But as far as he was concerned, that was just the way things had always been. The way things were. The sword was everything. The reason for our existence. The reason for my existence.”

He looked up, and my mouth went dry, despite the tea I had just drunk. There was something in his eyes. Something terrible. A kind of dull suffering, worn-out and weary, and yet still overwhelmingly hurtful. The kind of suffering that might be carried for a whole lifetime without someone ever getting resigned to it…

“Ojiichan couldn’t have believed that,” I said, suddenly moved to try and comfort. “You don’t – I mean, he loved you. He did love you, Dad. He loved both of us.”

“Of course he did,” my father said wearily. “But you’re old enough by now to know that there is no universal definition of love. To my father, ‘love’ didn’t mean giving the people he cared for choices and freedom and letting them be happy. It meant moulding them into what he thought they should be. There were no other options.

“Do you know why he brought me to this country? It wasn’t because my mother died, Mio. It was because she wanted to leave him, and she wanted to take me with her. But his family had dwindled until he was the only one left, and he couldn’t risk having the line of Yamato sword-bearers broken. So he stole me in the middle of the night and fled here. He gave her no warning, no trail to follow. He just told me my mother was dead, and he took me away. I was too young to realize what had really happened.”

One of my hands crept up to my mouth. “He wouldn’t – he couldn’t have – that can’t be right.”

My father ignored my feeble interruption. “From the moment that I was old enough to walk, he trained me. Sword work, fighting skills, concealment, endurance, the names and weaknesses of every monster in every myth, and most of all, he trained me to revere the sword. The sword was everything.”

Ojiichan’s voice echoed in my mind, passionate and persuasive.
Swear on your life. Promise me, Mio
.

“But you
don’t
believe that,” I said slowly. “Do you? So what happened?”

“My mother died. For real. Father had kept track of her, so he knew when she got sick, and when the cancer finally… Well, I believe he loved her too, in a sense, even though he left her behind in that brutal way. I suppose the shock of knowing that she was gone made him – vulnerable. Opened a chink in his armour. And because the burden of his lie had always troubled him, and he wanted absolution, he confessed to me. That my mother had been alive all those years. That she had searched for me until the day she died.”

His voice choked off, and he grimaced, clearing his throat. “I gave him what he wanted – because I always did. I told him what he wanted to hear. That I understood. Forgave. But it wasn’t true. I didn’t understand. And I don’t think I’ve ever forgiven him. Not even now. I don’t think … I don’t think I ever will. Because she never knew what happened to me, or where I was, or if I was dead or alive. I’ll never know… Anyway, a year later, the day he had been waiting for all my life came around. I was finally sixteen and he ceremoniously took the blade from the box to hand it – and the title of sword-bearer – over to me… I looked at it, and him. And I asked: Why?”

“Why what?” I breathed.

“Why
any of it
,” he said, eyes flaring with sudden intensity. “Why we followed the rules, believed in monsters and magic, and trained until we bled. Why we dedicated our lives to an item which had never benefited our family in any way, or lead to anything except sacrifice and loss. Why things had to be the way they had always been.”

There was a pause as my father stared at the sun shining in through the window. Eventually I spoke. “How did he take it?”

“About how you would expect,” he said dryly, turning his eyes back to me. “I ran away for a while. Over a year, actually. All his training had taught me how to take care of myself, at least. I lived rough.”

Ran away? Lived rough?
Dad?
He threw a fit if I hung the dishtowel up the wrong way!

Maybe … maybe that’s why he throws a fit if I hang the dishtowel the wrong way…

“When I eventually came back, my father had changed. He looked years older. He’d had a taste of what he put my mother through. Searching for me everywhere, not knowing if I was alive or dead – he thought I was gone for good, that he’d lost the only person he had left. So, even though he still thought I was wrong, he told me he would accept my decision. He promised he would respect my right to choose my own path. To prove it, he took the katana and locked it in the travelling chest with a brand-new, shiny lock, and gave the key to me to keep. It was a symbol that I could trust him.”

My father’s eyes focused on me again. “I still have that key. I’ve carried it with me every day for over two decades. So what happened, Mio? What changed my father’s stories from myths to reality? How did you end up with the katana?”

I heard Ojiichan’s voice in my head again, as clear as it had ever been.

Promise me on my life, on your mother’s life, on your own life
.

You will keep the sword hidden, no matter what
.

And I remembered exactly what had started all of this. That day six years ago. Grandfather coming in the night before to tuck me in and tell me one of his stories about Japan, setting my little Mickey Mouse alarm clock to get me up early so we could “practise”. The way he had challenged my father that morning. Started a fight that would send Dad storming off. The way Ojiichan had sprung into action the moment my parents left us alone in the house. The crowbar from the garage – he had known just where to find it – and how skilfully he had used it to bust the padlock on the katana’s metal box.

The padlock he had promised never to open again.

I met my dad’s eyes for a long, tense moment as memories reordered themselves in my head, old events suddenly lighting up with new significance or fading away into the background. I had grown up in the middle of a battle between my father and my grandfather, and like most kids, I had chosen a side. I had chosen my grandfather, chosen to believe everything he did was right and everything my father did was wrong. But I was just a
kid
. I didn’t know what was really going on between them. I had made my decision based on who laid down the law and who sneaked me treats, who made me feel important and who made me feel like a baby.

Ojiichan had loved me. I was sure of that. But … I had carried the sword myself now. I knew what it could do, how it could
push
at you, even when it was sheathed, how it could get inside your head. My grandfather had been its guardian for
years
. What if Ojiichan had loved the sword more than he loved me? More than he loved my dad? More than anything, even his family’s safety and what was right?

What if I’d picked the wrong side?

Promise me. You will never speak of this to your father
.

I’m sorry, Ojiichan. But you broke your promise first
.

Haltingly at first, then faster, the words tumbling over each other in my eagerness to confess it all, I told my father how the sword had come to be mine. I told him about that day all those years ago, and the dreams, and the fancy-dress party. About Jack and Rachel, the Kitsune, the Nekomata, and the Foul Women. I told him about Shinobu. I told him everything.

Except the solution that Mr Leech had proposed to us. I couldn’t bring myself to think of that, let alone explain it to my father.

When I’d finished, Dad was silently scrubbing at his face with both hands. It took him a little while to speak. Then he said, “Do you know the worst part? I mean really, the most horrible thing of all?”

I shook my head.

“When I opened that bathroom door, I was sick with anxiety for you. Guilty. Desperate to make things better. But when I saw that you were holding the katana? For a heartbeat all of that was wiped out. All I could feel was jealousy. Jealousy that you had my sword.”

“It’s my—!” I bit the indignant exclamation in half and swallowed it, nearly choking on the surge of possessiveness. Involuntarily my fingers tightened into a fist around the saya.

He stared at my red-and-yellow knuckles and made a sort of chuckling noise that broke halfway through and became something else. Something low and hurt-sounding. “I never even took the sword from him, but it didn’t matter. It was in my blood. Every day, every single day, the compulsion has hounded me. Pulling at me. Calling me. Every day of my life since I turned sixteen and your grandfather held the katana out to me and told me it was mine.

“My hands were shaking with the need to reach out that day. My heart was thundering. I actually thought that I might die if I didn’t take the katana from him. But I also realized that if I laid my hand on the sword there in that moment, it would all happen again. I would become what he was. In twenty or thirty years I would look into my child’s eyes and sacrifice him or her to the katana, just as he was doing. I would take away my own son or daughter’s choices in life, rob them of their free will. I couldn’t do that. So I found the strength to say no.” He lifted his head to look at me again. “And in the end, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. In the end, the katana won. You ended up as its servant anyway.”

“I’m not its servant,” I said. The denial sounded weak even to my own ears.
Aren’t I?
No. Not now. But how much longer was I going to be able to hold out?

My father reached into his pocket and pulled out a yellowing, crumpled piece of paper. “This arrived for me at the beginning of last week. It’s from your grandfather. He left it with his solicitors along with his will. It was to be delivered to me just before your sixteenth birthday.”

“What does it say?” I asked, fascinated and unnerved.

“He asks for my forgiveness – again. And he says that you are special, Mio. As soon as you were born, he began to have dreams in which the spirits of the old country talked to him. They told him you were the key to everything. When you became the sword-bearer, everything would change. He says he thinks the sword will call to you more strongly than it has ever called anyone, and I will not be able to resist giving it to you. That trying would drive me insane.”