Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate (11 page)

“You’re comparing me to the dead? That’s bad luck, and I don’t need yours on top of my own.”

“I meant only that Seita seems worried. So do you. Would you mind telling me why?”

Kenji took another drink, and then made a face. “I don’t know that. I don’t even know,” he said, taking one more drink and then scowling, “why this fine saké tastes like ditchwater on my tongue. I had thought my spotting that
tengu
was an opportunity, but ever since I helped drive it out I’ve been jumping at shadows. Perhaps the wretched creature cursed me.”

I took the opportunity to ask a question that had occurred to me long since. “Why would a
tengu
try to enter the city in the first place?”

Kenji shrugged. “They are tricksters not unlike foxes, but their special delight is misleading the righteous.”

“Then you certainly had nothing to fear from it, and I can understand the attraction since the capital has so many temples and monasteries. So why, then, are we not overrun with the creatures?”

Even the deliberate insult did nothing to either provoke a response or lighten Kenji’s mood. “Simply because we
are
thick with temples and monasteries, and powerful ancient shrines, Lord Yamada. The spiritual forces arrayed against any such intrusion are great, especially in the direction of the Demon Gate. That’s why Enryaku Temple was founded to the northeast of the city in the first place.”

“And yet it felt it could saunter in through that very gate, albeit in disguise, in broad daylight. Perhaps our defenses have been weakened.” I then told Kenji what Seita had told me, ‘dark cloud’ references and all.

“From which direction does this dark spirit come?” he asked.

I frowned. “I don’t know. Sullen fool that I am, I didn’t think to ask.”

“Well, you
should
have asked. Directions and paths of advancement or retreat are crucial in these matters, so it could be important. Perhaps this dark spiritual energy is what I have been sensing. It would explain why the barriers were low enough to let a
tengu
inside the city in the first place, and why everything seems so wrong.”

So Kenji did indeed sense what Seita had referred to, and perhaps the same thing that, in my own dull way, had been troubling me as well. “That’s the way I feel about that girl’s death,” I said, because it was true.

“I think perhaps this extends beyond even that,” Kenji said. “But I do not know how or what this thing might be.”

I had an idea. “Meet me at Rasha gate, at sunset two days from now. I have an appointment with Seita, but these matters are closer to your understanding than mine. Perhaps you can think of some questions that would not occur to me.”

“Doubtless true,” Kenji said, rubbing his chin. He looked thoughtful, or at least as thoughtful as Kenji ever did.

“You’re going to meet the person who sent the message about your father tomorrow, yes?”

While I had thought of myself as ambivalent on the matter, when Kenji asked the question straight out my answer came of the same spirit. “Yes, I am.”

“Do you think that is wise?”

“I most certainly do not. I have no idea what I’m getting into.”

“Then perhaps you could persuade Prince Kanemore to accompany you. Just a thought.”

I sighed deeply. “First of all, I can take care of myself. As for Prince Kanemore, he is a friend but he has his own concerns, and this is my family business, not his.”

“Even so.”

“Let us get back to the matter at hand. There is no need to stall, Kenji-san. I know it is a long walk to the southeast gate, and this really isn’t your affair. I have patronage at the moment, so I can make it worth your while.”

“No need,” Kenji said, sounding reluctant. “It occurs to me that perhaps this
is
my affair, though I wish it were not so. If this ‘darkness’ does indeed have eyes, then perhaps it has already seen me through that
tengu.
”

As with Seita, I did not argue. Kenji might very well be right, and as I had said, such matters were closer to his realm than mine. In two days, perhaps we would know. As for myself, tomorrow I was to meet the author of that poetic message concerning my father. With the events surrounding Taira no Kei’s death, the matter had been given rather short shrift in my concerns, but now as the time grew nearer—and despite the fact that Teiko’s brother and son required my foremost attention—I found my curiosity growing. Who even remembered my father or cared about the loss of my family’s lands and future? My hopes were not terribly high, but I thought that perhaps tomorrow there would be at least one question answered.

The following day I spent most of my hours in matters of little consequence, and that evening as the waning moon rose I presented myself at the newly repaired gate of the once-ruined mansion. After a short delay it was opened by Nidai. He still wore his tattered red sash, but his clothing otherwise had been much improved and his hair freshly cut.

“Lord Yamada,” he said, bowing low. “Welcome.”

I suppressed a smile. “So you have progressed beyond simple messenger, Nidai-kun. What is your involvement in this affair?”

“Thanks to my proper conscientiousness as a messenger I am now a lady’s servant, Lord Yamada. Certainly better employment than fighting my comrades for fish-heads stolen from the market. Mistress is expecting you, so if you will follow me . . . ”

“Lead on, then.”

I had to say that the workmen had been more than diligent. While the water in the small garden pond was now a muddy brown, at least the worst of the water weeds and scum had been cleared away. As for the rest of the garden, the brush had been cleared and the path relined, and the trees properly pruned. On the house itself, two of the sliding screens facing the gate had been replaced completely and the rest expertly patched. Another day or two and the place would be better than presentable.

Nidai kneeled again by the main screen serving as the doorway and slid it aside, bowed me through, and then closed it again. I entered warily enough, but the half-expected ambush did not materialize. Instead, I was in a large central room; the floor had been freshly scrubbed and cushions spread near a small dais. The setup reminded me of Princess Teiko’s audience chamber, though on a smaller scale and with only Nidai and myself in attendance. The lady, if any, was nowhere to be seen.

“So, do I now await the pleasure of your mysterious employer? If I am to do so, I will at least be comfortable.” But before I could sit, Nidai quickly steered me away from the floor cushions and up onto a low stool on the dais itself.

“Your seat is up here, my lord. It is my mistress who craves audience.”

“Well,” I said, for want of something more clever or to the point.

Curious.

Nidai bowed low. “Will you see my mistress now?”

“That is why I am here,” I said.

Wearing a three-layered
kimono
with formal overcoat, the woman entered through the left-hand door and more floated than walked to a cushion in front of the dais. She then kneeled in one smooth motion and bowed low to me. I followed all this with an interest that was slowly overshadowed by a growing certainty. I knew her. The lovely face, the long black hair tied back with two separate ribbons, the grace and beauty of her movements, all as I remembered.

“You are the
asobi
at Yasada Shrine in Gion. I saw you dancing near there.”

She did not look up. “I am honored that you noticed this worthless person. I am called Hikaru-no-Yuki.”

Shining Snow.

It wasn’t an actual name; rather a professional or use-name of the sort
asobi
often adopted. A girl of a poor family was often apprenticed—sold, really—to an older
asobi
with no daughters of her own, thus to be raised by the older woman and trained to become an
asobi
in her turn and support her mentor when the older woman could no longer make her living as a dancer, singer, and courtesan. Yet there was training, and then there was being born to, raised with, and living a higher esthetic for the entirety of one’s existence. If the exquisite creature kneeling before me now had ever been a peasant, then I was the Goddess of the Sun.

“I would like to know your true name,” I said. “And please look at me as we speak.”

She raised her head. “This is my true name, Lord Yamada, so far as such things matter to either of us. You must realize that I once bore another, and I do not deny it. Please also realize that I am trying my best to forget that name. It no longer belongs to me.”

I could have insisted, but even if I had done so there would have been no way to tell if she spoke the truth or not; she had as much as said that she had no intention of doing so, at least so far as her name was concerned. I wondered if I would hear any truth at all this evening. I had been pondering that very question long before keeping the appointment, and was no closer to knowing the answer now.

“Why am I here?” I asked.

“Because I can help you,” she said.

“Then perhaps a better question might be ‘why are
you
here?’ ”

She smiled a grim smile. Even so, her dimples reminded me very painfully of Princess Teiko’s.

“Quite properly asked, Lord Yamada. As a woman forced to make her own way in this world, I full well understand the necessity of fair exchange. I am here because I believe you can help
me.
”

Now, perhaps, we were getting to the core of the matter. “What do you want of me, Lady Snow?”

She sighed. “I am no lady, as surely you know. But I thank you for the courtesy.”

“And I am barely a lord, as surely
you
know. Courtesy for the same, or call it a whim of mine. Now please answer my question . . . oh, but before you do—surely you know that Nidai is listening at the door?”

She smiled again and raised her voice just slightly. “Nidai-kun, if you are not well away from that door before I finish speaking, you will consider yourself dismissed. Are you still there?”

The frantic scramble out on the veranda did, in fact, begin well before Lady Snow had finished speaking, and the sound of Nidai running across bare wood had already ceased by the time she had gotten to her final word.

“He’s a good boy,” she said, “in his way.”

I grunted. “He’ll be a bandit or worse before he’s fifteen.”

“More than likely. Unless an alternative presents itself.”

“Which you seem to have done. Lady Snow, I gladly concede your perhaps misplaced benevolence toward that little scoundrel, but you have made implications in my regard which I know full well are beyond your power or anyone else’s to implement.”

“Mine? Of course. I have no power. Yet do not be so certain of the latter, Lord Yamada. Will you at least listen?” I indicated assent and she went on. “Now then, your father was executed during one of the northern campaigns, some seventeen years ago, yes? Upon his death it was revealed that he had, in fact, been an agent of one of the northern clans in league with the barbarians, yes?”

“Whether this is true or not, the ‘facts’ of the matter are common knowledge . . . among those who need to be aware of such things,” I said.

“You’d be surprised how many things become ‘common knowledge’ far from their original spheres, Lord Yamada. You’re of course right to wonder why one such as myself should have any interest or knowledge of this, but I trust it soon will become clear to you. Now then, if you’ll pardon my bluntness, I must ask—was your father guilty of what he was accused of?”

I shrugged. There was no point in evading the issue so far as I could see. “I believe he was, which is one reason I have my doubts anything can be changed now.”

“That seems a rather harsh view of your father’s honor.”

I almost laughed. “My father was never more than a very minor provincial lord completely under the domination of the northern branch of the Fujiwara. Like many others, he had a little and wanted more. It does my father no discredit to admit he was ambitious. It is simply the truth. If he saw treachery as the best means to an end, he very well might have seized it.”

“So certain of that, are you? Suppose I tell you he was not a traitor, and that the persons deliberately responsible for his ruin and disgrace are still alive?”

I didn’t answer for a moment. I wondered if this small emotion I was feeling was hope or resignation. “I would need proof, and very definitive and substantial proof at that.”

“Which is the one thing I do not have, unfortunately. Yet. That little omission also brings me back to your question. In this matter, at least, our desires can be said to be in harmony.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand. What concern is this matter of yours? Did you know my father?”

“Yamada no Seburo? No. But I knew an acquaintance of his. His name was Fujiwara no Kiyoshi.”

Again, that name. For a man dead fifteen years who
didn’t
happen to be a ghost, Kiyoshi certainly managed to insert himself repeatedly into my life. Judging from what happened the last time his name resurfaced, I wasn’t sure I liked the turn this conversation was taking. I chose my words very carefully.

“Again, what is he to me?”

“He was your friend,” she said softly. “And he was my lover. I was barely sixteen when he was murdered.”

I frowned. “Murdered? He died in battle.”

She looked at the floor. “I know the official account of the battle as well as you do, Lord Yamada, and I repeat: murdered. As was your father.”

My mind was spinning like a boulder falling down a mountain. I thought I saw something to grasp, and I did. “You are Taira no Hoshiko?”

Her expression was unreadable, but the ice in her voice seemed to lower the temperature of the room. “Lady Hoshiko . . . that creature with no mind or will of her own, that brittle, simpering little doll? Do not insult me so, Lord Yamada. Please understand—I have no doubt Kiyoshi would have made the little fool his official wife, or at least attempted to do so. Her family connections were second only to his own, and he did have some fondness for her, whereas I . . . well, we know my circumstances. But he belonged to
me
nonetheless, and he was stolen. You asked what I wanted from you, Lord Yamada, and I will tell you: I want you to help me win justice. If we achieve it for Yamada no Seburo, I achieve it for Fujiwara no Kiyoshi as well. The two were slain by the scheming of the same man.”