“Five is the highest number, according to tradition. It’s written in the Meibutsuchō that there is another sword with a name among the five.”
“There cannot be another. There are five names, and five blades.”
“But you read it, didn’t you? That among the meitō, there are the five great swords, and another sword among the five?”
“I read that. I never understood it. I’m accustomed to that when I try to decipher Japanese writing.”
Dojun smiled a little. “Well, it’s only a foolish puzzle anyway. The monks might make something philosophical of it, but the truth is that there’s a sixth great sword, and the appraisers who compiled the Meibutsuchō were just afraid to write down its name.”
He picked up the pitcher of sake, holding it over Samuel’s wooden masu. He poured gracefully, and set the carafe down again.
“Better,” he said, “if they’d just left it out entirely, instead of telling nothing to someone who doesn’t know, and hiding nothing from someone who does.”
Samuel sipped his warmed wine.
Dojun watched him. A trace of humor still lingered at his mouth. “Patience!” he said. “You ask too many questions.”
Samuel waited. The old sense of focused calm was flowing back as he listened, not to Dojun’s words as much as to his certainty. Samuel felt his own significance in that certainty, knew that nothing Dojun told him was without purpose.
“Gokuakuma. That would be the name of this sword, if it existed. The Highest Demon. Someone told me they went to the Christian school and heard about the angel who became the devil. That is the spirit of this sword.”
“If it existed.”
“The blade is two shaku and five sun in length. Six inches under an American yard. It’s a wide blade, to balance the length, with grooves on each side at the back of the curve. Below the tang, it’s engraved with the demon called the tengu, long claws, wings, and a savage beak. The tang isn’t signed. It’s only marked with those characters—Goku, aku, ma. There is not a sword-maker in all history who went by such a name.”
Samuel recognized the inventory of attributes that typified the descriptions from the Meibutsuchō, the catalog of the famous swords of Japan. It only needed a history of ownership and daring deeds to be complete, though there was no such record, no such sword, described in what he’d read. “Is it lost?”
“No. It is not lost. It is…potential.”
In the lamplight, Dojun’s face looked timeless, no older, no younger than what he had always seemed to Samuel. Only his black hair was different, cut years ago to the short Western manner. While everyone and everything else changed around him, Dojun remained.
He held up his hand, closing it into a fist. “Without a hilt, a good blade is merely dangerous. You cut your fingers if you aren’t careful when you handle it. Given luck, you might kill someone with an unmounted blade. You might just as easily kill yourself. But mounted, with a hilt made for a man’s hand, a guard to protect him and a sheath to be carried—potential becomes its own truth. The spirit in the blade is now the spirit in the man.”
Samuel thought of the ceremonial sword he’d stolen, the dull iron stem within the gorgeous mounting. He began to sense what was coming.
“Gokuakuma is a beautiful thing, and terrible. It’s older than anyone knows. The first certain record is from seven hundred years ago, when a sword with a golden hilt appeared in the hands of Minamoto Yoritomo as he swept away the Taira clan from the capital and destroyed the boy emperor. But to be in power is not enough—the Gokuakuma demands more. Yoritomo rid himself of his own brother and slaughtered those in his family who hindered him. At his death, his wife’s family, the Hō-jō, came to own the sword—and the demon in it possessed them. They killed Yoritomo’s heirs, assassinated the clan down to the last main line, and took control. Still the danger of the blade was not recognized, only the power. X samurai made a plan to obtain it, stealing the blade and leaving another in the mounting. This rōnin, whose infamous name is erased from history, at first appeared successful, gathering other rōnin to follow him, and coaxing the Hō-jō vassals to his will, but when he tried to use it in combat, the blade failed him, flying from the hilt he’d forced on it, causing him to fall from his horse and impale himself.”
Dojun stopped. Samuel watched him steadily.
“The Gokuakma fits only one mount: one hilt and one scabbard—only the real blade will seat true in the golden hilt.” Dojun’s voice took on a dreamlike, chanting quality. “It was Ashikaga Takauji who reunited the true mount with the blade, attacked the Hō-jō, and forced them to cut their bellies in seppuku. Sixty years of war ensued, until the grandson of Takauji came into possession of the Gokuakuma and its strength. But he was wise, and separated the blade from the hilt again. He placed the mount in his Golden Pavilion, where it could be enjoyed for the beauty of the craftsmanship, and the blade in the care of monks in the mountains of Iga. While it lasted, the country enjoyed peace, the golden age of the Ashikaga, but the Gokuakuma has its own pattern. The sword calls out to be made whole, and it calls most strongly to the ones who are…‘not-quite’—those who are in great power but not at the peak. The brother of the shōgun Yoshimasa burned down the monastery to obtain the blade, reunited it with the mount, and initiated civil war. For centuries the sword passed from one hand to another, amid wars and chaos, until Nobunaga obtained it, entering then into the hands of a man of military genius.
“Nobunaga conquered central Japan, but was murdered in his prime by an ambitious vassal. His general Hideyoshi, with both genius and the Gokuakuma, eliminated his rivals, united all the country, and declared war on China and Korea. He ordered all swords confiscated, or registered, to be carried only by samurai. It was his successor Ieyasu who claimed the Gokuakuma and destroyed the remnants of Hideyoshi’s family. But this Ieyasu took warning from the fate of the heirs of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, and made a profound dedication to separate the Gokuakuma again. He asked the divine emperor to consecrate the protection of the blade to a single family, whose duty it was to hide and guard it. And for two hundred and seventy-three years, the Gokuakuma has been kept from being made whole.”
“I have the Gokuakuma’s mounting.” It wasn’t even a question. Samuel knew it, without having heard a description of it, without an explanation of how it was possible.
“You have the mounting.” Dojun inclined his head and shoulders. “And I have the blade.”
The dry irony in his expression slowly sank into Samuel’s consciousness. “You!”
“I’ve guarded it for twenty-one years. I’ve kept it hidden, and apart from the mounting that makes it complete. When I yield my life, the trust will pass to you.”
Samuel gazed at him, with certainties sliding.
“It’s what you’re trained to,” Dojun said simply.
The empty masu sat in Samuel’s hands, a small square shape. Silence, silence…he felt bewildered.
“Knowledge passes like a stream from heart to heart. The duty came to me from my own blood clan; when I was a child I was cultivated as you have been, in the art I’ve taught you, and more. In peace, we kept alert and ready; but it’s in the time of change that the Gokuakuma is most lethal, that possession of it breeds aggression in the spirit; that it is hunted most zealously for the power it brings. I was given this task, when the samurai revolted against the Shōgun—to escape with the Gokuakuma, to hide and wait. In those days Japan was under seclusion; it was death to leave the country without permission, and those who sought the Gokuakuma hated the Western barbarians most fanatically of all. I was one of a single shipload of men who, during the turmoil of civil unrest, signed contracts to come here as laborers. We were already on the ship when the government fell to the rebels, who took stronger control of the country. Our passports were canceled. But Americans held the contracts—” He smiled suddenly, an unexpected humor springing from his dispassionate recital, “—and Americans really care nothing for emperors and shōguns and demon swords
. They’d paid good money for this ship and these workers, and so they sailed with us out of Yokohama Bay before dawn, without lights.” He looked down into his interlocked hands, his mouth curved, as if the memory still amused him.
Samuel didn’t move. He sat staring at the man who had dominated three-quarters of his life.
He felt as if the last leg of a chair had been kicked out from under him.
“For this sword?” he said. “Everything you’ve taught me; it’s all been—for a sword blade?”
Dojun watched him. Samuel heard the incredulity in his own voice.
“In my clan,” Dojun said, “one who does what I’ve done is called a katsura-man I’m like a katsura tree planted on the moon, cut off from those who sent me. Here I must shed my own seed, foster it, so that it will survive when I’m gone. You I chose when I first came. Shōji, the boy who sweeps—he is the next.”
That, somehow, was the deepest shock of all—that Dojun had begun to train someone in Samuel’s place, and he had not even known it. Not suspected it. Never looked at Shōji and seen anything but a broom and bashful boy.
After a silence, Dojun said, “Recently I received word that the mounting had been sent to this English queen, in an attempt to render it permanently out of reach of those who would militarize Japan for their own ambitions.” He met Samuel’s eyes. “Fate, it would seem, has not collaborated.”
Samuel took a breath and rose, going to the stove to heat more wine. In the ritual action, he sought evenness. Balance. He could not, for the moment, think farther than that.
Dojun sat quietly.
“Forgive me!” Samuel broke the ceremony, speaking in a rigidly controlled voice. “I’m stupid, Dojun-san. I’m not Japanese. I don’t believe in demons.” He turned and faced Dojun, still standing by the stove.
“Don’t you?”
“No.”
“Ah. Then I suppose it’s angels that haunt you. Angels make you spend your life trying to become strong, and fast, and smart, and safe.”
Samuel lowered his eyes. He poured warm sake into the carafe.
“What are you trying to make yourself safe from, Samua-san, if you don’t believe in demons?”
He had no answer. He had thought…God, what he had thought humiliated him.
The effort of it, the endless commitment—and Samuel had never wondered why.
Want too much, you. Dojun had said that to him, warned him, over and over. And he had never heard.
Hadn’t wished to hear. Had only driven himself to the farthest limits of his strength and spirit for Dojun’s recognition, and Dojun’s regard, and Dojun’s friendship.
“There was a time when I wondered myself about the Gokuakuma,” Dojun said. “I doubted. I thought—I’m spending my life in exile, and for what? Because someone made a joke, maybe, and chiseled the word for ‘demon’ in the tang of an admirable blade. If I had lived all my life in Japan, such a notion might never have occurred to me, but it’s different here.” He held up his masu for the wine that Samuel poured. “Here in the West, one questions everything. And that goes nowhere, Samua-san. You can think until your mind becomes a spinning top, and find no answer. In the end, it makes no difference whether there’s a real demon in the sword. History says that a nation will rise to the command of the Gokuakuma. Men read history, and they’ll kill for that power. That I know to be the truth, because I’ve seen my own family die to keep the blade separate from the mounting that makes it whole.” He sipped slowly. “Perhaps that’s the nature of demons, that they live asleep in the minds of men, until a sword blade reflects the light that wakes them.”
Samuel scowled down at his hands. “Then destroy the sword.”
“Do you know of the starfish, that kills the oyster reefs? In the old days, when a fisherman caught one, he cut it in half and threw it back.” Dojun lowered his wine, set it on the floor. “And down in the reef, with no one watching, the halves grew into two starfish”
Samuel stood up, his body stiff. “And this is it? This is why you taught me everything? All that time—my God—so much time!” His clenched hands throbbed; he forced open his fists. “Tell me why you never told me!”
A pencil-thin throwing blade appeared in Dojun’s hand. Samuel made a slight evasion; his body recognized the direction of the strike before his mind did; the bo shurukin struck the wooden wall with a crack.
“When form and force are flawless, the motion that follows will be flawless.” Dojun’s gaze was level, unblinking. “Draw the bow, think without thinking, aim exactly right, and let go.” He lifted his wine in both hands and nodded. “That is what I’ve done. You are my arrow. I have let go.”
With a harsh exhalation, Samuel turned. He knelt and broke the seal, shoving the stove a half-inch aside in spite of the heat against his palms. The space he revealed held darkness. He plunged his hand deep inside.
It was empty. Empty. The Gokuakuma’s mounting was gone.
Leda had noticed a number of respectable ladies eating in the hotel dining room, which hardly seemed a dining room at all, but more like a veranda, with open windows that looked on the mountains on one side and the tops of tropical trees on the other. Everything was so relaxed—she decided that it might not be improper to take breakfast there, and indeed, the Hawaiian steward made her so welcome, and the Chinese servants in their coiled pigtails and spotless white linen were so smiling and good-natured, if not very fluent in English, that she forgot to feel uncomfortable. No one stared at her, but several of the naval officers and residents she’d met yesterday stopped to speak kindly before they went to their own tables and sat down to place settings decorated with piles of bananas, limes, oranges, and guavas.
Outside, birds clamored in the trees. A light breeze flowed in the window next to her. She looked dubiously at the fried fish—it appeared to be a large goldfish of the variety found in common household aquariums—that the Chinese waiter had brought her instead of the toast that she’d ordered. She was in the midst of attempting to explain the mistake to the obliging but puzzled servant, when Samuel walked up behind him.
He appeared quite tall next to the little Chinaman. “Take i’a go.” He spoke abruptly to the waiter. “Say cookee, fire the bread side ’ula ’ula some good, catchee coffee me.”
“Ah!” The waiter whisked away her goldfish with an apologetic bow.
Leda’s heart was pumping in quite an uncertain manner. He sat down across from her, not looking at her, gazing out the window and saying nothing. She curled her napkin in her lap, twisting it around her finger under the table.
“Good morning,” she ventured at last.
His coffee arrived. They both watched the waiter pour. The pleasant scent drifted to Leda as she raised her eyes from the servant’s crisp white sleeve and looked at Samuel’s face.
He was staring down into the black liquid, his mouth set in a brooding line. When the waiter retired, he met her eyes with a metallic lack of expression. “I want you to leave,” he said.
It was not a suggestion, as it had been yesterday, when it had cut her to the heart. It was an order.
“I’ll have a man here for your trunks at twelve o’clock.” Again he looked away, down at the flower-laden trees outside. “The ship sails at two.”
A tiny bird flew in the window and landed on the edge of their table. The waiter arrived with her toast, set it down, and waved. “Go! Go bird!”
The bird blithely stole a crumb directly from Leda’s plate, and then hopped across the cloth and took off, sweeping out the window.
Leda had no appetite for toast. She felt sick. She could not even find the breath to speak. She sat, watching the butter in the toast congeal.
She wished to ask if she had done something wrong. But if she had, she didn’t want to hear it, if it was so terrible that she must be sent away. And she knew, in her heart, that it was nothing she’d done. He didn’t want her here. He’d made it clear yesterday. He’d touched her roughly, as if she disgusted him, as if he could drive her
away by making something that had been so intimate and special between them into a coarse assault.
In an empty room. Against a wall.
She bit her lip, pressed her napkin and her fingers over her mouth. This was worse even than that—to be told in a public place, where it would humiliate her beyond reason to burst into tears.
His voice was utterly without emotion. “The captain will handle whatever arrangements you need. He’ll have a check to be drawn in San Francisco for the rest of your trip. Feel free to go wherever you like, but I would prefer to be…kept informed of where you are. If you would send a telegram to my office in San Francisco once a week, it would assure me that you’re—” He scowled out the window. “That you’re safe and well.”
The bird came back. It had brownish-orange feathers and a white band around its bright eye. It seemed almost tame, so bold was it in hopping up to pick at Leda’s toast.
“Will you do that for me?” he asked.
“Yes”
It was all she could manage, that one syllable.
“I’ll wish you bon voyage now. I don’t think—it will be possible for me to come to the ship.”
She swallowed with an effort and rose hastily. “Of course. There is no need.”
He stood up. For one instant she allowed herself to look at him, to impress on her memory what was beyond remembering. Once he was gone, it wouldn’t be possible to create an image bright enough, or perfect enough, because when she looked at him she couldn’t seem to see the man Mrs. Richards had called indecently good-looking. She couldn’t see the potent, flawless, angel-Gabriel fascination that caused the ladies at the far table to slide glances over their menus at him. She knew it was there, before her eyes, but in her heart she only saw Samuel—saw the unhappiness in him, saw that his set expression was a mask.
“Is there anything else I can do?” he asked.
She bent her head and shook it, wordlessly.
“Good-bye, Leda,” he said. “Good-bye.”