The Iris Fan (44 page)

Not true, but Sano would issue a pardon for Dr. Ito.

Lord Ienobu raised his hand. Sano said, “You may speak.”

“I’m hungry. Can I have something to eat?”

As Sano led Lord Ienobu from the chamber and everyone bowed to them, Sano imagined Yanagisawa fuming at him from the netherworld.

*   *   *

AT THE MORI
estate, Hirata lay on his back in bed, his eyes half closed, while his wife and children held a vigil around him. He felt no sensation in his body. It was like a carcass connected to his head, swollen with blood and poisons leaking from its damaged organs. He drifted in and out of consciousness, through different dimensions in time and space, as his brain gradually died.

He saw Midori crying and the solemn faces of Taeko, Tatsuo, and Chiyoko. He and Sano rode their horses through Edo, laughing together at some joke. He sat cross-legged outside a mountain temple, meditating. He and General Otani dueled on the battlefield at Sekigahara. They were the only ones still standing; the field was strewn with corpses. They lunged and swung their swords at each other. Cuts in their armor oozed blood from their wounds. General Otani roared, “Damn you for ruining everything! I’ll make you pay!”

There was no one to break the spell that had put the ghost inside Hirata. They were both shackled to Hirata’s mortally injured body.

Hirata floated in darkness, near the mouth of a cave where strange lights and shadows flickered. The cave was the portal to the netherworld. The sound of Midori crying returned him to his bed. She crawled onto it and wrapped her arms around him. Hirata couldn’t feel her except where her face, wet with tears, touched his.

“We can’t part like this.” Her murmur in his ear was raw with sorrow. “The last words I said to you—” Time inverted. They were in the alley in Nihonbashi. She screamed, “I hate you! I wish you were dead! I never want to see you again!”

Now, as they lay together, Midori wailed, “I wish I could take it back. I didn’t mean it. I was so hurt, I wanted to hurt you. I never—”

They stood facing each other at the portal to the netherworld. They were as young as when they’d first met nineteen years ago. Hirata was healthy and strong, Midori fresh and pretty. Her tears gleamed on smooth, rosy cheeks. “I never stopped loving you,” she said.

Joy elated Hirata. His wife loved him despite all the wrongs he’d done her. He took her in his arms. She clung to him and whispered, “Please say you forgive me.”

On the corpse-strewn battlefield, Hirata and General Otani were so wounded and exhausted, they could barely lift their swords, but they kept fighting. In the room where Midori hugged the paralyzed wreck that he was now, Hirata moved his cracked, gray lips and whispered, “… I forgive. Do you?”

“Yes!” Midori wept with relief and gratitude. The shadows and light from the netherworld played across her young, smooth face. “I love you,” Hirata said, as young and ardent as on the day they’d married. He stepped free of her embrace. “I have to go.” A sense of peace comforted him: Their separation was only temporary. “Tell the children…”

“Good-bye for now,” he whispered to Taeko, Tatsuo, and Chiyoko.

He saw their tearful smiles and heard them echo his farewell. As he backed away from Midori, she ran after him, arms outstretched, calling his name. The distance between them widened and her figure shrank. “I’ll be waiting for all of you,” Hirata called.

He collapsed on the Sekigahara battleground. General Otani fell beside him. Darkness obliterated the field, the dead soldiers. The portal to the netherworld beckoned. Hirata crawled through it, dragging General Otani with him. General Otani beat at him with armored fists and shouted, “Damn you to hell for all eternity!”

They were across the threshold. As they melded with the light and shadows, Hirata’s last sensation was the ghost disengaging from him, like a chain around his spirit loosening and crumbling away.

*   *   *

MORNING DAWNED COLD
and clear, with a wind that chased white clouds across the pale blue sky as the sun rose. Servants outside the castle lugged away dead horses, raked up arrows and bullets, and mopped blood off the streets. Sano rode accompanied by a big retinue of troops from the same army he’d fought against two days ago. The man who controlled the shogun was a target for assassination.

When he reached Kan’ei Temple, Sano left his horse and retinue outside the cemetery. He entered the gold-trimmed, red double gate flanked by pillars. On a stone pedestal surrounded by evergreen trees and snow stood the shogun’s funerary urn—a big stone drum with symbolic carvings. A few wooden prayer stakes were planted in the ground around the base amid a few rice cakes, cups of sake, and lit candles. The fact that the shogun had the measles had been kept quiet, and so had the stabbing. The citizens wouldn’t learn of his death until they returned to Edo, and in the aftermath of the war, his officials and troops were too busy to visit his grave.

Sano pressed his prayer stake into the hard soil. He bowed his head as he came to the humbling realization that although it was easy to criticize someone else’s shortcomings as a dictator, it would be harder to avoid making mistakes now that he was in effect the dictator himself. The shogun had taught him a valuable lesson—how not to rule a nation. How to rule it well was up to Sano.

He heard a step behind him, turned, and saw Lord Yoshimune. “I hope you don’t mind my joining you.”

“Not at all.” Sano was finished, for now.

“I want to thank you,” Lord Yoshimune said as they stood side by side at the grave. “So does my cousin Tomoe. If you hadn’t discovered that it was Lady Nobuko who stabbed the shogun, we might have been put to death by now.”

“All in a day’s work.”

“I’d like to repay you for saving my life and Tomoe’s. Whatever I can do for you, just ask.”

Sano recognized that Yoshimune, like any astute politician, wanted to be on the good side of the power behind Lord Ienobu. “Support the new shogun.” Lord Yoshimune had already helped him bring the council under his control. “Tell the other
daimyo
to do the same.”

“That’s little enough. I suppose you’d rather not call in the whole favor until I’m in a position to do more for you.” Contemplating the grave, Yoshimune said, “I’ll be shogun someday.”

“When Lord Ienobu dies, his son will inherit the dictatorship. His son’s only two. He could reign for a long time and outlive you.”

Yoshimune shrugged, unperturbed. “Anything can happen. The events of the past few days have proved that. Besides, I feel lucky.” His grin showed a hint of his old brashness. “When I’m shogun, if you’re still around, I’ll give you a nice position in my regime.” He bowed and departed.

Sano bid the dead shogun a silent, grateful farewell, then went to join his retinue. He had another meeting that promised to be less friendly than this one.

*   *   *

TAEKO STOOD, HER
face puffy and tear-stained, on the veranda of the guest quarters of the Mori estate. She’d come outside for a respite from trying to comfort her brother and sister while her mother and the servants prepared her father’s body for the funeral. In the garden where she and Masahiro had quarreled, patterns of sunlight and cloud shadow moved across the muddy snow. She looked at the opposite wing of the house and thought of Kikuko dead and all the blood. She’d wished Masahiro’s wife would die, and she felt as guilty as if she herself had cut Kikuko’s throat.

Masahiro came out of the house and stood beside her. Taeko felt even guiltier. She still loved him and wanted him so much that his very presence made her tremble. After everything that had happened, she was still hurt by his betrayal and terrified of what would become of her. What a selfish person she was!

“Can I talk to you?” Masahiro sounded uncertain and nervous.

She couldn’t look at him, didn’t deserve to have him with her. Afraid of what he would say, she nodded.

“I’m sorry about your father.”

Fresh tears of grief, shame, and guilt burned down Taeko’s chilled face. She was worrying about her troubles when her father had sacrificed his life! She knew what courtesy required her to say to Masahiro. She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry about your wife.”

But it was only half true. She was sorry that Kikuko had died in such a horrible way, murdered by her mother, but she wasn’t sorry Kikuko was dead.

“So am I,” Masahiro said with a sigh. Taeko stole a glance at him, to see whether he was heartbroken. But he only looked exhausted. “This probably isn’t a good time … so soon after … but…” He drummed his fingers on the veranda railing and said gruffly, “I want to explain why I … the other night … well, you know.”

Taeko gripped her arms under her sleeves, pressing them against the baby, as the memory of him and Kikuko sickened her stomach.

“I didn’t mean to,” Masahiro said, “but she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. And she somehow knew the things I wanted. It was so … exciting, we did it three times, all different ways. I couldn’t help myself.”

The news that he’d betrayed her not once but three times, and the awe in his tone, were like stabs to Taeko’s heart, and he didn’t seem aware that he was hurting her. It was her punishment for wanting Kikuko to die.

“But I didn’t love her. I don’t think I ever could have. Because it’s you I love.”

The passion in his voice astonished Taeko. She turned to gape at him. He seized her hands and said, “Please tell me you don’t really hate me! Please take me back!”

It didn’t matter that he only
thought
he couldn’t have loved Kikuko; it didn’t matter that her death might be the only reason he wanted to be with Taeko again. Taeko pressed his hands to her face and sobbed, wracked by joy and guilt. Masahiro sniffled as they clung to each other. He stepped back to look at Taeko. His cheeks were wet from their tears. “Will you marry me?”

She was so unworthy of this good fortune. If he only knew about her evil thoughts toward his wife! She had to confess.

He misinterpreted her hesitation. “Oh, you’re worried about our parents. But I’ll stand up to them this time. I want to be with you, and our baby.”

“But—”

“I know, you’re not sure you should trust me.” He drew a deep breath, let it out, and said, “I’m not going to make any more promises I can’t keep. If somebody else like Kikuko comes along … well, I’m as weak and selfish as you said. All I can say is, if you marry me, I’ll try to be better.” Impatient, he said, “Will you?”

Taeko was impressed by his honesty, thrilled by the prospect of being his wife and their baby having a father. “Yes,” she whispered. She could live with knowing that Masahiro might hurt her again someday. She would probably hurt him again. They would make up. She would remember Kikuko, and she would try to be better, too.

Masahiro laughed, hugged her, lifted her off her feet, and spun her around until she laughed with him. “As soon as my father comes back, we’ll tell everybody.”

*   *   *

SANO LEFT HIS
retinue in the courtyard of an inn located down the street from the Shark Teahouse. He climbed the stairs to the balcony and knocked on a door. Yoshisato opened it. He wore plain cotton garments and a somber, aloof expression. The sight of him gave Sano a shock. Despite his tattoos, Sano could see Yanagisawa in him more clearly than ever. It was as if Yoshisato had absorbed some of Yanagisawa’s persona.

“Come in,” Yoshisato said.

Sano recalled Yanagisawa’s last words to him:
This isn’t over. We’ll meet again someday. Next time I’ll win.
Maybe they didn’t need to meet again in order for Sano to get his comeuppance. It was a son’s duty to avenge his father’s death. But Yoshisato gave no hint of aggression. Sano entered the room, which was small, sparsely furnished with a bedroll and a charcoal brazier on the tatami floor, but clean. He heard someone moving around in the chamber on the other side of the wooden partition. Yoshisato faced Sano and waited.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Sano didn’t offer the excuse that Yanagisawa had attacked first. Nor did he say he was sorry he’d killed Yanagisawa. That would be a lie, and Yoshisato would know and feel insulted.

Yoshisato accepted Sano’s qualified but genuine sympathy with a stoic nod. In the awkward silence, Sano looked around the room and noticed a trunk and a knapsack in the corner and Yoshisato’s cloak thrown over them. “Where are you going?”

“Back to Osaka.”

“To your gang?”

“Yes. My mother is coming with me.” Yoshisato slid open the partition. In the adjacent room Lady Someko knelt by a trunk, folding clothes into it. She looked up at Sano, smiled, and bowed. “It’ll be a fresh start for her.”

“You don’t have to leave Edo,” Sano said. “Lord Ienobu is going to pardon everyone who fought in the war against him.”

“You mean, you’re pardoning us.” Yoshisato’s eyes glinted with amusement; he was among those who knew what had happened to Lord Ienobu. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody that you’re the real shogun. But I am leaving. It’s for the best.”

“I came to offer you a position in the regime.”

“You don’t need to buy me off. You’ve nothing to fear from me—I won’t swear out a vendetta against you. Yanagisawa’s death was really his own fault.” Bitter sorrow twisted Yoshisato’s mouth. “He had a grudge against you, and he just couldn’t let it go.”

Sano was impressed that Yoshisato had the insight to realize it and not simply blame Sano. “I’m not trying to buy you off.” Sano was trying to assuage his guilt about hurting Yoshisato, whom he now respected more than ever. “The regime needs talented, capable men like you.”

Yoshisato’s thin smile said he saw through Sano’s ploy. “I’m honored, but no thanks.”

“Please consider it,” Sano urged. “Your life as a gang boss is bound to be violent and short.”

“And my life at court wouldn’t be?” Yoshisato uttered a sarcastic laugh that sounded eerily like Yanagisawa’s. “I saw what politics did to my father. They brought out the worst in him. I’m not following in his footsteps.”