He looked up and saw the Bear Cub wriggling like a worm on a hook. It was no use; he was bound fast. Shichio hoped the wind would keep the boy from choking to death on the smoke. Usually that was how people died if you burned them. But if the breeze stayed steady, the flames would take their fill of him before he died.
Shichio had burned buildings before. People too. He’d put his own village to the torch, and had watched from a distance when Hashiba razed a Jodo Shin temple that harbored a suspected Ikko Ikki rabble-rouser. He’d never heard of black powder setting off a blaze like this, but he did know the stuff was fickle. A single fire arrow could kill an entire musket platoon if it pierced the right barrel.
Shichio shuffled awkwardly to shore, moving distractedly because he did not want to peel his attention away from the Bear Cub. Already the whelp grunted and cursed. The squeals would come soon. Then there would be noises piteous enough to turn Shichio’s stomach, sounds so inhuman that there were no words to describe them. They would float all the way to the top of the cliff, leaving that old ronin with the choice to burn them into his memory or throw himself over the precipice, to deafen his ears forever.
Shichio looked up there, and was rewarded with the orange glimmer of firelight on armor. His mask could see the ronin’s swords, and a clutch of arrowheads too. That sort of thing was hard to make out by daylight, but at night the mask’s vision was clearer.
Relishing in the mask’s second sight brought to mind that brief moment of satiety, the one he’d felt just as his fingers closed around Glorious Victory Unsought. The mask and the sword were born for each other. Shichio knew it the moment he first touched the sword, right after watching Oda kick the Bear Cub in the back of the head. That was a delight to see, but not half as satisfying as the touch of Inazuma steel. As soon as his fingers curled around its grip, the mask’s hunger was gone. Sated. Fulfilled.
It had stayed that way while Shichio tied up the boy, and if it began to stir, he had only to touch Glorious Victory and—
“No!”
He surprised himself with his ferocity. Oda jumped too. “The sword!” Shichio screamed. “Glorious Victory! It’s still inside!”
He could not believe he’d forgotten it. The flames were so hot, the threat of pain so near. And his moment of triumph was at hand. The Bear Cub, helpless before him. Fear and exultation, swelling so swiftly that they drowned out even the mask. Now it shrieked at him, biting at his mind with cruel iron fangs.
Oda Tomonosuke grimly presented his daisho to Shichio. “Here,” he said.
“Fool! You think these shoddy, rust-bitten—”
Oda punched them into Shichio’s chest, so he had no choice but to take them. “They are not for you,” Oda said, his voice like ice. “I am going to get your sword.”
Shichio looked at the blaze, which was bright enough now that the waterfall itself had become a fountain of yellow light. The wind had died and black smoke roiled from under the teahouse roof. Shichio could not see the whelp, but he could hear wheezes, coughs, and cries. No sane man could possibly set foot in that inferno.
Oda shed his belt, then his hakama, leaving his legs naked. He kept his kosode, but slipped his arms out of the sleeves so he wore it like a cape. He strode into the pool, the heavy fabric floating behind him like a shadow until at last it absorbed enough water to sink. Halfway to the teahouse, he dove under the surface, the long garment vanishing behind him like the tail of a sea dragon. The dragon emerged just where the teahouse veranda hung over the water. Oda pulled himself up in one smooth motion, hiked the sodden kosode all the way over his head, and crawled into the flames.
* * *
His father had taught him never to cry, but tonight Daigoro failed his father.
The smoke chewed at his eyes with hot, stinging teeth. Its claws would tear out his throat if he let them, but the air was too hot to breathe. He wanted to simply squeeze his eyes and lips shut and wait bravely for the end, but his body betrayed him. It would