up your wounds is serving double duty in the kitchen.”
“It shows. Her cooking tastes like medicine . . .” He trailed off, because his sluggish, staggering mind had finally latched on to the most important thing Katsushima had said. “Did you say Oda? You can’t mean Oda Tomonosuke.”
Katsushima only answered with a mute nod.
Daigoro’s thoughts stumbled over each other like rocks falling downhill. They all tried to hurry out of his mouth at once, and the result was a mishmash of quasi-words. At last he managed to say, “Why? Why would he save me? I slew his son.”
“He felt he was duty-bound to help.”
Daigoro did not miss the smugness in Katsushima’s tone. “Oh no. What did you do?”
“I told him if it were not for his idiotic son killing your idiotic brother, both of your houses would have escaped their evil karma. Of course I put it a little more politely than that. Have a care when you speak to him, Daigoro. His family has suffered as much as yours.”
“I find that difficult to believe.”
“Believe what you like. Just be delicate in handling him.”
Daigoro choked down another pasty mouthful of liver. “If I live long enough to speak with him. This vile mash may kill me yet.”
“Keep eating.” Katsushima spoke like a father to a child—or rather, like a mostly sober friend to a reckless drunk. For the first time Daigoro noticed Katsushima was almost as poorly off as he was. He seemed older than his years, hollowed out somehow, like a sloughed-off snakeskin. Black silk stitches traced thin, weeping lines on each cheek, and Daigoro suspected he’d find many more stitches under the cotton fabric binding both of Katsushima’s forearms. Clearly the old rogue was holding himself together for Daigoro’s benefit. Equally clear was that he’d prefer to push Daigoro out of bed and go to sleep himself.
“You’re a good friend, Goemon.”
“You’re talking like a drunkard. Here, flush it out.” He pressed a stout Bizen water cup into Daigoro’s hands.
Daigoro did as he was told. He knew Katsushima would not tolerate rebellion. The rough clay of the cup pricked him when he touched it to his lips. Exploring with a cautious, delicate fingertip, Daigoro found the lower half of his face was burned and blistered. The tea. He remembered now: that priest-assassin had tried to pour scalding-hot poison down his throat.
That thought spawned visions of the assassin’s awful wounds. Every one of them should have been fatal, yet somehow that mysterious tanto staved off death. Thinking of it made Daigoro recall his first waking memory after the fight: that very dagger, sliding sickeningly out of his body. That sparked off a new realization about his friend Katsushima. “You believe in enchanted swords now.”
“Hm?”
“You stabbed me. With Streaming Dawn. That’s the first thing I felt when I came to: that knife, stuck in my back. Let me tell you, it hurts a lot more coming out than going in.”
“The sharp ones always do.”
“Yes, well, my point . . .” It took him a moment to remember what he meant to say. His thoughts were swimming through muddy water; it was easy to lose sight of them. “My point is that you stabbed me with it. You wouldn’t have done that unless you thought it would save me. You had to believe in the power of Streaming Dawn.”
“Ehh.” Katsushima grunted and shrugged. “What other options did I have? If I did nothing, you were sure to bleed to death. I tried the knife because there was nothing else left to try.”
“No. You believe now. I can tell.”
“You still sound like a drunkard.”
Katsushima gave a didactic look at Daigoro’s water cup. Daigoro obliged him and drank. “Thank you, Goemon.”
“Shut up.”
“I suppose I ought to thank Oda-sama too, sooner or later.”
“Let it be later. Gather your strength.”
“No, it may as well be now.” Daigoro shot a foul glare at his livers and ginseng. “I’ve already got a bitter taste in my mouth.”
35
He found Lord Oda Tomonosuke praying at the small shrine erected by one of his forebears in a remote corner of the compound. The shrine was as neglected as everything else Daigoro had seen here. Its proud torii, once a brilliant orange, had faded to the color of peach flesh. Its paint had chipped and cracked in a hundred places. The surrounding gravel seemed dirty somehow, as if the rain had deliberately neglected this place. Clearly no groundskeeper’s rake had been here in ages. Fresh sticks of incense burned in a bronze