hobbling gait left distinctive footprints. “My lord,” he called back, “may we stay until after sunset? Your daughter is not fond of riding in this heat.”
The old bastard actually had to think about it. “Very well,” he said at last. “I suppose you’ll be wanting something to eat too. Akiko may dine with me. You and your man will eat at the servants’ table.”
Your man was Katsushima Goemon, who was just emerging from the towering gatehouse. He was not yet fifty, but his hair had grayed and long years of traveling the countryside as a ronin had wrinkled his sun-browned face before its time. Sitting still, Katsushima might have passed for sixty-some years, not forty-some. But those who saw him move beheld a tiger in human form. Quiet, surefooted, inhumanly fast, Katsushima was the victor of more than fifty duels. He attributed his success to patience, a virtue he was forever trying to instill in Daigoro. Daigoro figured patience probably came much more easily to a man whose sword was quicker than thought.
Katsushima strode toward Daigoro with a stern look clouding his face. He carried a great bow and a single arrow in his hand. “I couldn’t do it,” he said.
“Couldn’t do what?” Daigoro asked.
“It was that damned palanquin. Once he was inside, I never had a clean shot.”
Aki gasped and rushed to Daigoro’s side. Shocked as she was, she still managed to keep her voice at a whisper. “Buddhas have mercy! You didn’t plan to shoot Shichio, did you?”
Katsushima frowned at her in exactly the same way he would regard a talking butterfly. “Why on earth not?”
“This is my father’s land!”
“And your father prefers tiny leaden balls to arrows. Everyone knows that. No one would lay the blame at his doorstep.”
“Your target was on his doorstep!”
Katsushima shrugged. “An errant shot. Loosed while pheasant hunting. Or peacock hunting, as the case may be.”
He smiled at his own witticism. Aki did not reply in kind. Keeping her voice at a whisper only made her sound angrier. “Daigoro made a vow to my father—”
“And my name is not Daigoro, as you may have noticed. Nor is it Okuma. My quarrel with Shichio is my own.”
Aki fumed like a volcano. She balled her fists as if she were actually going to strike him. That would have been a grievous mistake. Katsushima entertained her outbursts because he seemed to find them amusing. Being punched by a teenage girl would not amuse him. He was not above striking a woman—few men were—and he rode with Daigoro as a friend, not a retainer. Akiko may have been mother to the heir of House Okuma, but Katsushima had never sworn loyalty under an Okuma banner. He certainly had no fear of Aki’s father, nor of any other man whose idea of battle was hiding in a tower and pouring black powder down a metal tube.
But Aki was highborn. Perhaps she should have feared a dusty itinerant ronin, but she didn’t have it in her nature. “You will take that look off your face.”
“Aki, please,” Daigoro said, taking both of her hands in his own. When she would not turn to face him, he stepped between her and Katsushima. “I have few friends left in this world. I would not have them fight. In any case, Goemon never loosed his arrow. No harm done, neh?”
“Neh,” Katsushima grunted. “And we’re not likely to see a better opportunity, Daigoro. He’s getting wiser, hiding in that sedan chair instead of traveling ahorse. That troubles me.”
“It troubles me more that my former father-in-law advised him to double his bodyguard.” Daigoro ran his palm over his scalp. He had a field of short bristles where he once shaved his head in the manner of a samurai. He did not have the heart to snip off his topknot entirely, but he could not bring himself to shave his pate every morning. That was an Okuma’s birthright, not Daigoro the ronin’s. “But the peacock did bristle at that, didn’t he?”
The anger seeped out of Akiko’s face. She enjoyed seeing her husband being clever. “What are you thinking?”
“He has men enough,” Daigoro said. “He told your father he’s got eyes watching every port, every crossroads. That’s a lot of eyes, neh? So he could double his bodyguard, or even triple it. Instead he protects himself from me by hiding in a sedan chair, and he sends his men out far and wide. Why?”