There might have been a hundred by now but the Wind assassinated the other ninety-nine. For all Mariko knew, she could be next on their list.
BOOK FOUR
AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA PERIOD, THE YEAR 21
(1588 CE)
17
Daigoro cradled his stepfather in his arms. He decided he could get used to the feeling of holding a baby.
Lord Yasuda Gorobei was warm and soft and smelled like comfort. His tiny eyes clamped shut against the sunlight and he snuggled his face into Daigoro’s kimono, bound and determined to sleep.
His father, Yasuda Kenkichi, had died just as he lived: drunk and disgraced. He met his end facedown in a puddle of muddy rainwater after a brutal tavern brawl. Kenkichi’s father, Kenbei, had then taken custody of his grandchild, despite his many winters and his obvious disdain for fatherhood. His wife, Azami, was twenty years his junior but evinced the same indifference to motherhood. To judge by her stout arms and beetled brow, she would be more at home in a smithy than a nursery.
They had surrendered their custody when Gorobei married. Daigoro had arranged his mother’s marriage to little Gorobei to protect her from Shichio, who had designs on her hand and then on House Okuma itself. Once Okuma Yumiko became Lady Yasuda Yumiko, she was out of Shichio’s reach.
Now she was recovering from the many blows she’d suffered over the last year—first her husband’s murder, then the death of her eldest son in a duel. As a younger woman she’d miscarried two pregnancies between Ichiro and Daigoro, and now her only remaining son could be executed simply for coming home to her. Her grief had visibly aged her. Crow’s-feet stretched from the corners of her eyes, lengthening like cracks in ice, and her back had taken a slight but noticeable hunch. Now, after only a few weeks of caring for her newborn husband, she was standing taller. If she grew any new wrinkles, they would be laugh lines.
It helped that she was not alone in raising the child. Akiko was a tremendous help. Also, Yasuda Kenbei and his wife, Azami, had taken residence in the Okuma compound. They occupied the adjoining rooms that had once belonged to Daigoro and his brother, Ichiro. The brothers wouldn’t be needing their rooms any time soon: one was dead and the other was a fugitive ronin, legally banned from setting foot on House Okuma’s lands. Shichio had roving patrols enforcing that ban, but they didn’t know the footpaths crisscrossing the estate, while Daigoro had grown up playing hide-and-seek back there.
Thus Daigoro and Katsushima had slipped in unannounced and undetected, using a nigh-invisible postern gate in the orchard. Aki had long since arrived, since she traveled by horse and the main roads were still open to her. Her relief at seeing Daigoro alive was as palpable as the breeze. Daigoro’s mother was delighted to see him too, though her husband was not, since all the fuss made it harder to sleep. The scent of unfamiliar women unsettled him, so he started to cry whenever Aki picked him up. Yet as soon as Daigoro took him, he pinched his eyes shut and nestled in to resume his nap.
“Daigoro, it is so good to have you back,” his mother said. “How are you healing?”
“Better and better by the day.” He curled and opened his fist to prove it. He didn’t mention the stripe of pain in his right thigh. A sword had caught him there at the Green Cliff, and though the wound had healed over, three days of hiking through the backwoods had aggravated the muscle. Before bedding down for the night Daigoro would pay Old Yagyu a visit. His thigh was dreading it already: Yagyu’s massaging fingers would press deeply enough to bring tears to Daigoro’s eyes, but in the morning the leg would feel like new.
“Daigoro-san,” Yasuda Kenbei said. His tone was a little too informal, a little too insistent, almost like a parent chiding his adult child. “We must speak. Alone.”
Kenbei was as grim-faced as his wife. His cold, steely eyes made Daigoro think of storm clouds. He was resplendent in Yasuda green, distinguished and lordly with his graying topknot. In time, perhaps his hair would go as white as his father’s, Lord Yasuda Jinbei. Of all of House Okuma’s allies, Lord Yasuda was Daigoro’s favorite. In truth he was more like an uncle than an ally, though sadly he hadn’t left his sickbed in months. When Daigoro had last seen him, Lord Yasuda’s face seemed as hollow as a