but to lichens a thousand years old. No two lanterns were alike, and there would be hundreds of them in this forest, standing sentinel like the trees.
Daigoro had no idea how he would ever find his father here.
He’d spent his entire life trying to follow in his father’s footsteps. Here, from the moment he crossed under the first towering torii, he knew he was doing precisely that. His father had walked these very paths. His boots had trodden the same rain-slicked stones. But this place was so vast. There was no way of knowing which way to go.
“He came here to honor a worthy foe,” Daigoro mused aloud.
“But not to bury her,” Katsushima said. “These Shinto priests are notoriously prickly about contaminating their gods.”
Daigoro wasn’t sure notorious was the right word. Here of all places, the kami were at their most pure. A dead body was the ultimate pollution. But Katsushima was right: gods were entombed here, not assassins.
“He must have had her cremated somewhere else,” Daigoro said. “A Buddhist temple, probably. Then he came here to have a priest say prayers over the ashes.”
“Why?”
“‘A worthy foe deserves a worthy funeral.’ It was one of his maxims.” Daigoro continued to live by it. His brother Ichiro shared a tomb and a death poem with his murderer, Oda Yoshitomo.
“There’s wisdom in that,” Katsushima said. “It seems to me the cremation would have been enough, though. I’ve never known a dead man to fuss over his funeral rites.”
Daigoro shrugged. “Maybe demons are different. I don’t know. Truth to tell, I’m not even certain my father ever came here. We got that from Jinichi, and that man is far too credulous for my liking. By the Buddha, Goemon, he asked me if I could change into a bear.”
Katsushima shook his head and laughed. “You should have said yes. Maybe he’d actually set Kenbei straight if he thought he had a bear at his heels.”
Daigoro forced a laugh too. It sounded desperate even to his own ears. “You see my point, neh? This whole voyage might be for nothing.”
“That’s the dog talking. Defeated by the squirrel before the fight even began. You remember the story?”
“Yes.”
“Then show a little spirit, will you? I didn’t come all this way just to hear you whine.”
Daigoro willed himself not to blush. Katsushima was right: bellyaching would get him nowhere. He led his mare to the nearest fountain, then dismounted so he could purify himself. The water chilled the bones in his right hand, reminding him of the old pain there. He held the reins of both horses as Katsushima performed the purification rite, then stepped up into the saddle again. “Let’s suppose Jinichi had it right,” he said. “There’s no use supposing otherwise. If Father was here, if this really was the place where he cut down that thief . . . well, a fellow running off with a tanto stuck in his heart isn’t the sort of thing that’s easily forgotten. Someone must have seen something, or heard something, or overheard it secondhand. If we ask enough questions, we’ll get to the truth.”
Katsushima gave him a satisfied nod, and together they ventured deeper along the wooded paths. Their horses’ hooves clipped and clopped on the flagstones. Now and then a cold droplet from an overhanging branch would slip right down the back of Daigoro’s collar, making him shiver. Katsushima seemed undisturbed by such surprises. Then again, at thrice Daigoro’s age he’d had a few extra decades to bring his body’s unconscious responses to heel.
As they came across each shrine, one of them would dismount and step inside to make a few discreet inquiries. Usually it fell to Daigoro to do the asking; despite his lame leg dragging at him each time he stepped in and out of the saddle, he was not as heavily encumbered as Katsushima, who found the questioning quite embarrassing. Talk of demon assassins and magical knives was all too provincial for a ronin who had spent most of his days in sprawling cities like Ayuchi and Kyoto.
Late in the afternoon, in a beautiful broad-roofed shrine surrounded by ironwoods, Daigoro found an acolyte scrubbing the ancient floorboards. He was middle-aged, and therefore much too old to be charged with such trivial chores. Daigoro guessed the man must have been born into some other occupation at first, taking the cloth only later in life. He regarded Daigoro with an inquisitive, somewhat surprised look in his eyes, as if he were unaccustomed to seeing armed and