they performed this exchange of arms, Hideyoshi gave his benediction. “Shichio, I hereby name you samurai, as shall be all your heirs forever more. I leave it to you to choose your surname and your crest, which all shall honor. I also name you hatamoto, and I bestow upon you mine own arms, as badges of your honored station. Now swear your fealty to me, to my house, and to the emperor, may Amaterasu protect and preserve him.”
By the gods, Shichio thought, he can be quite officious when he sets his mind to it. He wondered whether this too was Nene’s doing. She was of samurai blood, from House Sugaihara far to the south; ritualism ran in her veins. Shichio despised three things above all others: sweat, ugliness, and the samurai class. The emperor might have ruled in name, but it was the samurai who struck fear into the heart of every peasant. The whole point of Hashiba’s rulership, the reason Shichio supported him in the first place, was that if one man could bring the empire to heel, that would spell the end of war. Without war, there would be no warrior caste. And now Shichio was to join that caste for good and all. He would have their respect, at the cost of his own self-respect.
Shichio pressed his forehead almost to the dust. Then he realized Nene would notice if he fell short of full submission when he accepted this great honor, and so he touched his sweating brow to the ground. He swore his oath, and Toyotomi no Hideyoshi, Imperial Regent and Chief Minister, bade him rise. Again Shichio could only do as he was told, mud-streaked forehead and all.
The pageantry was far from over. An adjutant vanished through a long slit in the fabric wall, returning soon afterward with Hashiba’s barber. Shichio had given little thought to this aspect of his supposed promotion. As if wearing the twin swords was not ugly enough, now he had to part with his beautiful hair. Other men might feel their hearts race at the approach of a wrathful samurai; Shichio’s heart quivered as the barber’s razor robbed him of all the hair atop his head. Topknot be damned, and damn the honors that came with it too; Shichio was doomed to go the rest of his life as a man balding before his time.
But what choice did he have? More pointedly, what choice had Nene left him? He could not turn down land, rank, and station. Originally he’d sought it in order to stay by Hashiba’s side. Now Nene had shackled him to this fishing village in the barbarian north. If he could swiftly get a son on this Urakami woman, would that be enough to free him? Was she even of childbearing years? Could he leave her to govern in his stead? The Bear Cub would be dead before the year was out. Once the whelp was gone, Shichio had no intention of spending the rest of his life languishing in obscurity. Somehow he had to find his way back to Kyoto. To Hashiba. And with any luck, to a shinobi who would take a bit of gold in exchange for putting a knife in Nene’s ice-cold heart.
At least the barber was good enough to wash the mud from Shichio’s brow. Then the highest-ranking officers came to call, and Shichio had to endure congratulations from all of them. They complimented the noble lineage of his swords and made the requisite jokes about the tan line left where his hairline once met his forehead. Shichio smiled and nodded and made many awkward bows, second-guessing himself about the level to which he ought to lower his head, given his new standing.
Dinner came as a welcome relief. The beef was exquisite, just as Hashiba had promised. Nene’s chief cook also served fugu, which he’d somehow delivered all the way from the Ryukyu Islands. Its poison brought a pointed spice to the sashimi that nothing else could match. Hashiba joked that the fugu alone was a good enough reason to conquer Shikoku and Kyushu. These were among his most recent conquests, and the gathering drank many rounds of sake in toasts to their swift defeat.
After dinner and drinks came the shamisen and shakuhachi, and Hashiba’s deplorable singing. Shichio, quite drunk, excused himself to have a piss and slipped outside. Then he found he really did have to piss, and after he’d relieved himself, he came back to find Nene outside the enclosure.