Cloud of Sparrows (47 page)

“Of course. Since you know she is a ninja, then you must also know she is in my employ.”

“I would come to that conclusion, yes.”

“And I knew, of course, that you would uncover all of these facts before very long.” Kawakami permitted the satisfaction he felt to show on his face. “Like all clever people—and you are very clever, Lord Genji, no one would deny you that—you tend to disregard the cleverness of others. Did you really think me such a fool that I would expect Heiko’s secret to remain secret?”

“I must admit, I formerly had such thoughts,” Genji said. “I see they were mistaken.”

“More mistaken than you realize. You thought I sent Heiko into your bed so she could betray you, possibly even kill you, at a moment I deemed propitious. Not unreasonable, since this is the assignment Heiko also thought she had. Perhaps the two of you have discussed this in some detail by now?”

Kawakami gave Genji an opportunity to respond, but he did not.

“How could I have such a plan? For Heiko to do such things, she would need to be treacherous and deceitful to a grotesque extent. No external semblance of beauty could conceal such ugliness from a man of your subtle understanding. On the contrary, my true purpose demanded an entirely different sort of woman. One possessed of great sensitivity, passion, sincerity, depth. Exactly Heiko, in other words. Like a doting father, I had only one wish for her. That she find true love.”

Kawakami paused again, savoring the pendant moment. The growing dismay on Genji’s face intoxicated him.

“May I permit myself to hope that she has?”

Before Kawakami ascended to the title of Great Lord of Hino, which was then held by his uncle, he fancied himself slighted by Yorimasa, the son and heir of Kiyori, Great Lord of Akaoka. The occasion was unimportant. The injury, real or imagined, merely added heat to the already existing hatred established by Sekigahara. It further offended him to see such a drunken, opium-addicted wastrel esteemed for the visionary abilities that supposedly ran in his blood. Kawakami knew true vision was based on having information that others did not want known. Acquiring this required diligence, skill, and a natural ability carefully nurtured. Inherited magic had nothing to do with it.

He contemplated for some time the retributive actions open to him. A duel was out of the question. Even intoxicated, Yorimasa was deadlier with a sword than Kawakami on his ten best days combined. And if, against all probability, he somehow managed to prevail, he would then have to deal with Yorimasa’s younger brother, Shigeru, whose reputation was already beginning to rival the legendary Musashi’s. Defeating him left the realm of the improbable and entered that of the clearly impossible.

Assassination was more reasonable. The Kawakami clan had, through an historical accident whose origins had grown vague over time, the allegiance of a small clan of ninjas. When Kawakami imagined Yorimasa’s death in such a covert manner, he felt not the slightest joy. It wasn’t important that everyone knew who was responsible. But Yorimasa had to know before he died, or where was the satisfaction?

The answer came to him one day when he was accompanying Ryogi, the procurer, on a tour of villages in the outlying parts of Hino Domain. Kawakami’s interest in geishas had led him to secretly invest in several of the leading houses. His interest was not in sex, however, but information. Geishas knew things no one else did.

“Some who fancy themselves connoisseurs say manner is everything,” Ryogi said. “This is the accepted view of the old Kyoto school, of course.” Ryogi laughed. “It is the view of blind men. Appearance, my lord, is far more important. Behavior can be compelled. Appearance is either there or it is not. A woman cannot be forced to be beautiful.”

Kawakami nodded assent, though he did not agree, because that is what required the least effort. He did not spend time with Ryogi to exchange words with him. The old procurer was crude, harsh, stupid, given to foul habits of every kind, and profoundly repulsive in almost every way imaginable, including personal hygiene. He had only one positive attribute, the astounding ability to see rare beauty in a woman when she was still a very young child. Because he was held in such low regard, Ryogi’s discoveries never found their way to the best geisha houses and were therefore never properly nurtured. The beauty that eventually blossomed was invariably wasted in some low-level brothel in the worst parts of the Floating World. That was how Ryogi had come to his attention. Kawakami had, on several occasions, noticed the most extraordinarily beautiful faces staring out from behind the wooden bars of some of the very worst brothels in Edo. Upon inquiry, he discovered two things. First, the women, prematurely ruined by years of ill use no matter how young, were invariably unsuitable for his purposes. Second, each and every one had been sold to the proprietors by one particular man.

Kawakami was accompanying Ryogi on this procurement mission because he hoped to learn the skill himself. In this he had been unsuccessful. The three little girls selected in the villages they had visited were pretty enough, but he could discern no common feature or quality hinting at the beauty Ryogi assured him was there.

“Thank you for the lesson,” Kawakami said. He gestured to his assistant to give Ryogi his payment.

Ryogi took the gold coins with an obsequious bow. “Isn’t there another village in the last valley? I see smoke. And I think I smell something, too.”

“
Eta
,” Kawakami said. Eta were the hereditary outcasts who did the foulest necessary work. They were disdained by even the most lowly peasants.

“Butchers?” Ryogi said, sniffing the air like a mongrel.

“Leather workers,” Kawakami said. He turned his horse in the other direction, back toward the castle and away from the disgusting odor the shifting wind now strongly blew his way.

“I’ll take a look,” Ryogi said. “You never know where beauty may be found, eh?”

Kawakami was about to bid him good day when he thought better of it. To know what others did not sometimes required going where others declined to go.

“Then I will accompany you awhile longer.”

“My lord,” his senior bodyguard said. “Do not risk pollution by entering an outcast village. There is no reason. How can there be beauty among those who skin and work the hides of slaughtered beasts?”

“And if there is,” another bodyguard said, “what man can overcome his disgust enough to bother with it?”

“Nevertheless, we will continue with our guide.”

As soon as he saw the child, about three years of age, Kawakami knew. He didn’t need Ryogi to tell him, though Ryogi did.

“She will devastate many men,” Ryogi said, “before she is worn down by them. Who are her parents, her siblings?”

The gathered outcasts continued to press their heads to the ground. No one spoke. They were all too stunned and frightened by Kawakami’s presence. Never before had a samurai, much less the heir himself, set foot in their village.

Kawakami said, “Answer.”

“Lord.” A man and a woman shuffled forward on their hands and knees without lifting their eyes from the ground. Two boys and a girl, between five and eight years old, followed their lead.

“You, woman, look up.”

She did so with great hesitancy, lifting her head, but not her eyes. Her face was remarkably pretty, though she was past the first blush of youth, and her form not entirely inelegant. If Kawakami had not known, he would not have guessed her cursed lineage.

“Not bad,” Ryogi said. “But the mother is nothing compared to what the daughter will be.”

At Kawakami’s signal, one of the bodyguards dropped some coins on the ground. The little girl was put on one of the three broken nags Ryogi had strung along behind his horse. The party departed.

At Hino Castle, Kawakami paid Ryogi a bonus for his excellent instruction. The procurer left for Edo the next morning, along with his four new pieces of human merchandise. That night, he stopped at a way station. When he did not come to breakfast, the innkeeper went to check. He found Ryogi’s neck slit from ear to ear. Three of the little girls had exited this life in the same way. The fourth was missing.

As he had been instructed, Kuma the Bear took the eta child to his own village, the home of the small clan of ninjas to which he belonged.

“What’s your name?”

“Mitsuko.”

“I’m your Uncle Kuma.”

“You’re not. I don’t have an Uncle Kuma.”

“Yes, you do. You just didn’t know until now.”

“Where’s my mommy?”

“I’m so sorry, Mitsuko. There’s been a terrible accident. Your mommy, daddy, brothers, and sister have all gone on to the Pure Land.”

“No!”

“Kuma you have already met,” Kawakami said, “though the introduction was not formal. Your outsider friend, Stark, shot him right after the bombardment of Edo. Perhaps you remember?”

“I do.”

“Needless to say, Mitsuko—you know her by her professional name, of course—is not an orphan.” He signaled to his adjutant, who poured sake for him. This was an occasion that called for something more festive than tea, even if he had to drink it alone. “Both her parents are still alive, as are her two brothers and older sister. There is a remarkable family resemblance among them all. Particularly between Mitsuko and her mother and sister. It is quite pronounced, now that she is an adult. Naturally, the inescapable hardships of eta life have taken their toll. But not on Mitsuko. Are you sure you will not partake of some sake, Lord Genji? It is genuinely of the best quality.” He was sure Genji did not miss his emphasis on the word “genuinely.”

“No, thank you.”

“Have you no words of wit or wisdom to offer, my lord?”

“I do not.”

“A pity you failed to foresee this.”

“Not really,” Genji said. “No harm has been done. My feelings are unaffected by your slander.”

“Your feelings?” Kawakami laughed. “They should be the least of your concerns. A Great Lord sharing his bed with an eta, the polluted offspring of stinking, offal-eating, hide-stretching degenerates. I am sorry you will not survive to experience the furor this news will excite when it becomes public. It will put an unfortunate and indelible stain on the reputation of your clan, even as it is extinguished. The only thing better—or worse, depending on your viewpoint—is if you and Heiko had children, or even married. Regrettably, the pressure exerted by outsiders has forced a compression of events. Things do tend to speed up when they are around, don’t they?”

“No one will believe such a ridiculous allegation,” Genji said.

“Do you think not?” Kawakami said. “Picture mother and sister standing by her side. Will anyone have the slightest doubt then?”

“That will not happen,” Genji said.

“Oh? Do you foresee that?”

Genji smiled. It was a slight smile, and lacked the assurance of his former smile, but it still irritated Kawakami. “I have foreseen what is necessary. And heard the same. With your permission, I will impose upon you no longer.”

Kawakami’s adjutant and bodyguards looked at him, waiting for the signal to cut Genji down. He did not give it. Let him return to Heiko. Let him look at her now and feel what he must inevitably feel. Such agony that Kawakami could imagine was worth more than Genji’s immediate death.

Patience had its own pleasures.

Never more than now did Genji feel the painful limitations of prophecy. As hopeless as his situation seemed, he knew he would not die here. He had to live to be assassinated in another place, at another time, and to meet Lady Shizuka, who will weep for him, and to have his third and final vision. Yet what good did that knowledge do him? He had blindly entered a trap of the worst kind.

Eta.

He could attempt a pretense with Kawakami but not with himself. The revelation of Heiko’s origins devastated him.

Eta.

In Genji’s entire life, not one had even been permitted in his sight. Butchers, leather workers, waste handlers, grave diggers, corpse carriers.

Heiko was one of them.

Eta.

He fought down a wave of nausea.

“My lord, are you unwell?” Since Genji’s return, Hidé had waited patiently for his lord to break his silence. Only concern that he might have been poisoned by the treacherous Kawakami made Hidé speak first.

“I have bad news,” Genji said. In his absence, his remaining men had built a wall of dead horses around their tiny redoubt. Their thick bodies rendered the position essentially bulletproof. Genji would have been more able to appreciate this ingenuity had the animal corpses not reminded him so forcefully of what he had just learned. He did not look at the faces gathered around him. If he did, he would have to look at Heiko or she would notice his failure to do so, and he could not look at her just yet. Instead, he kept his eyes on the silk-wrapped box he had brought back with him.

“Lord Shigeru is dead.”

The shocked gasps Genji heard told him the men had hoped what he had hoped. That Shigeru would arrive at the last minute and somehow miraculously scatter the hundreds of enemies who surrounded them. Shigeru could do it if anyone could, and only Shigeru.

“Is it certain, my lord?” Hidé said. “Kawakami is full of tricks. Might this not be one?”