I used to go out drinking and whoring with my friends.” He gave Katsushima a knowing wink, which Katsushima returned in kind. “I used to get good and drunk in those days, but if I was ever so drunk as to mate with a monkey, I cannot remember it. It must have happened, though, because I do not know how else Kenbei came to be so unlike his brothers.”
Daigoro chuckled. “As direct as ever, Yasuda-san.”
“Ha! Laughter. That’s more like it. Now introduce me to this bride of yours. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
* * *
In the end, Aki and Daigoro stayed at the Green Cliff for three days. It was long enough for a Shinto priest to marry them—redundantly, as Aki insisted—and long enough for the old man to embrace Aki as a granddaughter. Since Jinbei was so welcoming of her, Daigoro thought he ought to show House Yasuda similar generosity. “Lord Yasuda,” he said as they were readying to leave, “may I ask you to reconsider Kenbei’s fate? Even if you got him on a mistress, and even if your mistress was an ape, is he not still your son? You’re within your rights to turn him out, but . . . well, he is a Yasuda. Must he become a vagabond?”
Yasuda coughed. “It seems to me being a vagabond toughened you up some. He could do with a bit of that.”
Daigoro smiled and shook his head. “I suppose he could at that. But even so—”
“If he makes the same request, I’ll grant it. If not, he deserves to wander, or else to find a new den with that she-bear of his—or viper, or whatever it is I’m calling her these days.”
The old man laughed, which brought on a fit of coughing. Daigoro decided it was time to go, since his departure would remove Lord Yasuda’s last excuse for staying out of his sickbed. They bade their farewells and Aki and Daigoro called for their horses. Katsushima rode with them, and Old Yagyu too; his two new patients required more care than Lord Yasuda. Yagyu was optimistic about Katsushima’s hands, less so about keeping Daigoro’s gaping, bitelike wounds free of infection.
Daigoro’s mother and her infant husband sat in the shade of a palanquin, and an honor guard from the Okuma compound had ridden up to accompany them. They had brought one of Daigoro’s mares with them, wearing one of his old saddles, the kind that accommodated his withered leg. Sitting in that particular saddle, surrounded by that particular landscape, facing south on that particular road, it finally dawned on Daigoro that he was going home. Not merely the place of his birth but his house, his home, where once again he would sit as head of the clan and Lord Protector of Izu. He was Okuma Daigoro again. At the end of this ride, he would not just come back home; he would come back to himself.
He had the whole ride home to think about everything that meant for him—and not just for him, but for his unborn child, for the memory of his father and brother. When at last he reached the Okuma compound, riding through the great gate felt like stepping back into his own body. He swung out of the saddle, set foot in his courtyard, and said, “I’m back.”
BOOK ELEVEN
HEISEI ERA, THE YEAR 22
(2010 CE)
49
Mariko stubbornly dialed Han’s number again. He’d ignored the last four calls—or rather, he was tied up in the middle of a SWAT operation and didn’t have the attention to spare for personal calls. Mariko rang him anyway. It gave her something to do.
Otherwise, she was stuck sitting in the BMW, not four blocks from the Shinagawa rail yard. She’d have driven farther if only she knew where to go. The unfortunate truth was that she had no idea where Joko Daishi was or where he was headed. Her only clear idea was of what he’d do when he got there. He intended to purge close to a thousand children of their impurities. Or sacrifice them to purge Tokyo of its impurities, or some damn thing, anyway. Mariko didn’t know what the Divine Wind called it. Her term for it was mass murder.
Her call went to voice mail, so she called Han again. And again. On the eighth call he finally picked up. “What?”
“Car thirteen oh four,” she said. “Go to the north end and work your way back south; otherwise it’ll take you forever to get to it.”