of respect. In shaming him, these Okumas had shamed her husband. The fact that her husband found it hilarious made no difference. Nor did the fact that Shichio had run off like a sulking toddler to hide under the covers and cry himself to sleep.
All the same, Nene was intrigued by this boy they called the Bear Cub. Okuma Daigoro, his name was—or at least it had been until he’d renounced it. Son of Okuma Tetsuro, the Red Bear of Izu, who had sided with Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Mikatagahara and saved Ieyasu’s hide at the Battle of Komaki. Both father and son were tied up in stories of the Inazuma blades, which drew whispers of fascination at court. Nene knew little more of these Okumas. Their house was a speck of foam on the smallest wave in the smallest corner of the sea. Yet somehow this boy commanded Hideyoshi’s begrudging respect.
There was nothing begrudging from the men of the rank and file; they spoke of the Bear Cub as if he were Hachiman reborn. The god of war wandering the earth in human skin; that was what they were saying. Stranger still, many of the rumors were plainly true. All agreed he was a cripple, yet all agreed he’d bested General Mio—Mio, whom Takeda Shingen himself had once praised as the mightiest swordsman he’d ever known. True, that was years ago, but even if Mio was no longer the strongest, he was undoubtedly the biggest. By all accounts this Bear Cub was almost a waif. To hear the men tell it, the first blow knocked the boy so far across the dueling ground that Mio might just as well have delivered his next attack with a bow instead of his sword.
Little wonder, then, that the boy drove Shichio to madness. To be routed by a man with a host of banner poles instead of an army, and then to be outwitted by the same man’s sickly teenage son! It was too much for anyone to bear.
But Shichio wasn’t just anyone. He was her husband’s confidant. And he was drawn to power like sharks to blood. He would insinuate himself back into Hideyoshi’s inner circle given half a chance, and he certainly wouldn’t balk at poisoning Nene to do it. Now that she’d exiled him from power, he might kill her just for spite. The man never forgot a grudge.
“Hm.” She said it out loud without intending to. That was a small sign of how much he vexed her; Nene did not make a habit of losing her composure. But the thought of his many grudges inspired an idea in her.
“What?” Shichio snapped.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’d quite forgotten you were there.” She gave a little nod with her chin toward the tent. “Go on, then. Your guests will miss you.”
He snorted, turned on his heel, and returned to the feast. She hoped he had enough self-control to keep the anger from his face. It wouldn’t do for the assembled generals to start asking questions. That might require Nene to step back in and redirect the conversation, and she wanted a few moments alone with her thoughts.
Perhaps the Bear Cub could be of use. Shichio would never live down the shame of that wedding debacle, and even before the wedding, his grudge for the boy already burned as bright as the sun. Now that Shichio was samurai, it might even occur to him that he had honor to defend. For his part, the Bear Cub must have wisdom enough to know he could not rest until Shichio was dead. If Nene wanted to take the boy out of the game, she had only to rig a trap and offer Shichio as bait. The reverse was also true: to remove Shichio from play, she had only to set a trap with the Bear Cub as the lure.
Oh, yes, she thought, and what fun it would be to lay a double trap! Shichio was clever enough to sense a set-up, and he would never willingly expose himself as bait. But what if he believed he was not bait at all, but rather the trapper? If Nene could place the boy in a vulnerable position, Shichio would pounce on him, and if the boy was forewarned, he could counterstrike before Shichio landed the killing blow.
Now that was a clever notion. A bear trap, but in this case the bear was the trap. There was a witty haiku in there somewhere. Nene decided