The Shadow and the Star (62 page)

Leda had become quite uncomfortably doubtful by the
time they reached the little pier that stretched like a tipsy ribbon out into the still harbor. "Are you certain this is the correct direction? It seems overly far. There isn't a residence in sight."

It was at least the twentieth time she'd suggested some mistake had been made. The air seemed dustier here, hotter, the profuse and shadowed greenery of the city having long since given way to flooded paddies and dry brush, interrupted only by palms that looked as inviting as ragged and stooping dustmops.

The kau-kau man jumped down and lifted the table from behind the buggy seat. "Right way, missy! Only got boat now. Take boat, go there chop-chop."

"Boat?" Leda looked dubiously at the small craft tied not far along the dock, just out of the mud-fiats. She brushed away a mosquito. "I really don't think I'd like to take a boat."

"Only way get there, missy! Come, Ikeno fix table, you want, eh?"

"No," she said, taking the decision that had been creeping upon her for the last half hour. She picked up the horse's reins. "No, I certainly don't wish to go a step farther."

"No want go?" He shook his head, and then broke into a grin. "I take table, then. Get fix, bring back you house tonight, OK?"

Before she could protest, he bore the broken table off down the pier and set it carefully into the boat. Leda frowned. She had recently come to the conclusion that she was being kidnapped, and the present time appeared ripe to make her escape. However, as the man seemed genuinely kind, in the manner of all of these islanders, and more interested in the table than in her person, the kidnapping conjecture appeared to be an overstatement of the case. The table was of considerable value to herself, of course, but she could not see that it held any serious prospect of ransom sums.

She also realized, as the horse began to move purposefully toward the nearest bush, that she was not much hand at driving. In point of fact, she'd never gone so far as to touch the reins before. She tugged on the bit, trying to discourage the browsing, and found the buggy moving rapidly backward toward the water.

"Ho!" she cried. "Ho, ho—please, stop! Do stop!"

The kau-kau man came pelting back up the pier. He grabbed the horse by the bridle just as the rear wheels sank into the tiny waves lapping against the mud. After Leda became convinced that in order to prevent the horse from moving backward it was counterproductive to hang onto the reins, he coaxed the animal back on shore.

"You drive town by you self, missy?" he asked skeptically. "Maybe more better you wait here."

She gathered her skirts. "Tie him up, if you will. I'll go with you."

"Good thing, missy!" He quickly unhooked the horse from the traces and set it free. Immediately the animal swished its tail and began to amble back the way they'd come.

"Won't it wander off?" Leda asked in alarm.

"No, no. No wander. Stay there—grass, you see? Horse always like grass. Come along boat, missy."

Leda didn't see any grass. In another moment, she didn't see any horse. There was nothing to be seen but bushes and tall canes and the sandy two-wheeled track that ended at the pier. Everything seemed silent, except for a strange tuneless clatter that sounded like a hundred children banging on distant cookpots. It came on the wind and drifted away, leaving quiet again.

"Come along boat, missy. Ikeno fix table."

She pressed her lips together. But the little kau-kau man wasn't forcing her, nor doing anything brutish, as one imagined kidnappers must do. He just leaned over the pier, holding the boat up close, grinning cheerfully at her as he told her to watch her step.

A few hundred feet out onto the water, her suspicions revived in force. She had expected the kau-kau man to row for the nearest finger of land, readily in view off to the left. Instead, he seemed headed for the low, desolately empty-looking island in the middle of the lake. "Where are we going?" she demanded. "I insist that you point out where you're taking me!"

He pulled steadily at the oars, not answering. Leda craned to see over his shoulder. As they passed a sandy point, the masts of a stubby fishing vessel came into view, and she realized with a shock that he was heading for it.

"I shall leap overboard!" she declared. "Unless you turn about at once!"

"Sharks," the kau-kau man said succinctly.

Leda drew in a breath and closed her eyes. She gripped the sides of the boat, and then snatched her fingers in and held them in her lap. "You won't get any money. My husband won't descend to paying you a farthing."

"This place got shark-goddess," he said conversationally. "She name Kaahupahau.
Kanakas
say she live here this harbor."

"How quaint," Leda murmured.

Be brave
, she said to herself.
You must not panic
. She held the table against her knee and thought that if he tried to attack her, she could fight him off with the sword.

He remained congenial, though, and when they reached the larger boat, he called out, and seemed much more interested in handing the table safely on board than in seeing to her. She sat in the rocking dinghy as he transferred the table, all too close to the shark-infested greenish-blue water that was clear enough to see well down under the encrusted hull of the fishing boat.

A shout of surprise and elation came from above, then instantly a scuffle and babble of foreign voices broke out.

As the dinghy rocked, she looked about anxiously for any telltale fins.

"Leda!"

Samuel's voice seemed to come out of nowhere. She jerked her head up. He was leaning over the rail, looking down at her.

"Oh, thank the good Lord!" She almost leaped to her feet in the tiny boat, but the violent motion of it made her sit back down hastily. "Samuel!" She put her hand to her throat in relief. "Oh, Samuel—what—is it a surprise party? My gracious, you very nearly—"

"
Stay there, "
he hissed, in a barely intelligible tone.

"There are sharks," she protested, but he was gone from the rail. She heard him speaking in Japanese, a sharp and urgent tone, and then an answer from someone else.

Two Oriental men came to the rail and lowered a paltry rope ladder. They looked at her expectantly. When she hesitated, one of them spoke to her, and gestured for her to come up.

"Samuel?" she asked uncertainly.

A third man looked down at her. "Jurada wife-san, you are to come up. Many gratitude due."

Leda really felt rather confused. "Gratitude?"

"This Ikeno," the kau-kau man said, holding the dinghy up close to the ladder. "You go up, missy."

"I'm sorry. Mr. Gerard asked me to stay in the boat."

The man above spoke over his shoulder. After a moment, she heard Samuel's voice. "Do as he says. It's all right."

He sounded—not quite himself. She gathered her skirt and delicately, gingerly took hold of the ladder, pulling herself up. With the help of the kau-kau man and the Oriental men above, and only one terrifying moment when she caught her foot in her skirt and the dinghy rocked madly, she got on deck and took a deep breath of relief. The kau-kau man pounded twice on the hull, shouted "Aloha," and then pushed his boat away, manning the oars again.

Samuel stood barefoot in his white suit, with a shocking bloodstain at his collar. She almost tripped over the table in her relief as she went toward him. One of the Oriental men held the blade that had been inside the leg. Another had a complete sword in his hand, hilt and all. There did not seem to be any ladies present.

She stopped. She bit her lip. In a very small voice, she said, "Is it—perhaps—a costume party?"

"You've done well, Leda. The correct act. I thank you." Samuel spoke in an odd way, emphatic and slow. Then he added, without emotion, "It's business. Leda, do whatever I tell you. Instantly. Don't argue. The one speaks some English but when we run words together he won't understand. For God's sake do what I tell you."

It was peculiar to hear him say she'd done well so clearly, and then such forceful things in an utterly dispassionate voice. She swallowed, and bent her head. "Oh, yes. Of course. I was rather afraid that it wasn't a costume party." She looked up at him. "Are you hurt?"

"No." He smiled, and nodded, as if congratulating her. "Tell me how you got here with that blade."

"Oh, the sword? This sword? Samuel, I'm so dreadfully sorry I broke your bride-table! I only wanted to do as Mr. Dojun recommended, and take it from Lady Ashland's house to ours as the Japanese tradition says—so that we would have a good marriage, and you'd know I honor and respect you, but then Manalo's wife left him, and he overindulged in strong spirits, and he broke it, and fell asleep, and it's all gone wrong!"

"Bride-table?" he echoed in a strange way.

"Yes, you know—this one that you made for Lady Tess, the table a bride is to take to her new home with her own hands—had you forgotten?
Hano—hana—
something. It begins with an 'h' in Japanese. But it broke! Does that mean ill luck? I meant to fix it—I was coming to have it fixed. That little man happened along—is he a friend of yours? He said that Mr. Ikeno could fix it and no one would know the difference. Mr. Dojun told me you'd be pleased with me for fetching it to Rising Sea, so I did. Or rather, I was trying to—"

"Christ." The single word was a snarl. "
Dojun
brought you into this?"

Leda moistened her lips, aware of the way no one moved, and yet everyone watched her with a new intensity. "Well, he suggested that I fetch the table. I'd not have known of it otherwise."

Samuel closed his eyes. For an instant there was such a static fury in him that it almost seemed as if it passed through her like a wave of heat and ice. He opened his eyes, his face without expression, and turned away from her. Bowing toward Mr. Ikeno, he spoke in measured English. "Tanabe Dojun takes me for a fool once again," he said, with bitter emphasis on each word. "My wife is a foolish and inferior person, with value only to myself. As for her deed in providing the blade, nothing could be more surprising. The act is worthless, but accept the benefit it brings."

While Samuel's aspersions seemed somewhat overstated, Leda supposed that having broken the table, she was not precisely high in his estimation at the moment. She glanced at Mr. Ikeno, and found him watching her.

He bowed to her. "Jurada wife-san."

His alien eyes, so dark and unblinking, made her uncomfortable in a way that Mr. Dojun never had. She smiled slightly and nodded. "Good afternoon, sir. I'm pleased to meet you."

"Pray good will," he said. Then he gave a sharp order, and one of his crew ducked inside the low arch of the deckhouse. In a few moments, the man returned with a flat, enameled box and a felt bag, of a shape and length that Leda found dismayingly familiar. Mr. Ikeno took the bag and drew forth the weapon—the ceremonial sword of the golden bird hilt and mother-of-pearl inlaid in red lacquer, a sword that Leda would have recognized if she hadn't seen it for decades.

She looked up at Samuel, but he only watched Mr. Ikeno and the sword. Wild uncertainties flew through her mind: that he'd stolen the Jubilee gift to sell Mr. Ikeno, that he was a spy or a traitor or a sordid thief after all.

"How Jurada-wife possess?" Mr. Ikeno nodded toward the carved blade from the broken table and looked at her.

"It was in the—the limb." She found that she couldn't bring herself to say anything so coarse as "leg" aloud, even to a foreigner.

"Pardon, Wife-san. Rim?"

"Limb. Leg! This part. It was inside this part, as you can see."

"See, yes. Inside know you, Wife-san?"

"I didn't know. It broke, and I saw the sword." She resisted an urge to chew her lip. With all of these dangerous-looking strangers, she had no idea what was best to say. "So—here it is!"

Mr. Ikeno glanced at Samuel. "You are not fool, hope to cheat me with false blade, no?"

Samuel only stared at him, unmoving.

Mr. Ikeno motioned at the deck, and a woven mat was unrolled at his feet, the box placed precisely above center, its contents of folded cloth, obscure jars, and small tools set out in a neat pattern. With a somber air, Mr. Ikeno knelt and laid the golden scabbard on the mat. He drew the hilt partially out. Selecting an instrument that appeared to be a wooden pick from the box, he tapped lightly at a spot on the hilt. A small pin fell onto the folded cloth.

Then he drew the coarse blade completely free of the scabbard and hit his fist lightly against his forearm. The bar, already unsteady, loosened completely. He pulled it from the hilt and flung the crude iron over the rail.

As the splash died away, the man bearing the carved blade stepped forward, offering it with a deep bow. Mr. Ikeno took the sword, holding it above the cutting edge. He raised it upright and fitted the hilt to the new blade. It did not seem to suit. The tang stuck halfway in, not quite adjusting to the opening in the hilt.

Mr. Ikeno looked up at Samuel.

Leda had never seen a stillness in her husband's face like the unreadable stillness there now.

The Japanese man lowered his eyes again to the sword. He gripped the hilt of the upright sword and struck the end down into his open palm. The blade seemed to shudder, and then seated firmly into place.

"
Iza
!" Mr. Ikeno's soft exclamation seemed to break a spell. The men around shifted and murmured, grinning.

Mr. Ikeno bent over the hilt and tapped the pin back into place. He lifted the sword aloft to the sunlight. "
Banzai
!"

"
Banzai
!" The other men's shout echoed across the silent bay.

"May we go home now?" Leda asked.

Samuel smiled. "Listen to me, Leda," he said approvingly, in that smooth flow of English that he'd said Mr. Ikeno wouldn't understand, "no matter what happens, do as I say. Bow to this man, and to me."

She hesitated, and then obeyed him, copying the motion she'd seen him and Mr. Dojun do a hundred times.

Mr. Ikeno ignored her. He looked at Samuel and made a nod, the sword held across his chest, his shoulders stiff. "This honorable Jurada wife, may Kwannon favor. Petition ask, Ikeno petition grant. Future, honorable wife-san not alone while lifetime of Ikeno."