Kenbei’s mouth opened in a little O. Azami’s bunched up as if she meant to spit venom. “And I sincerely thank you for your ideas about my mother’s title,” Daigoro went on. “I will arrange to have it passed on to her husband. But Yasuda Okuma-no-kami is too cumbersome, neh? Better to give a little lord a little name. I think he will enjoy the name Okuma-no-kami, Protector of the Okumas, and never miss the Yasuda. I cannot draw your blood from his veins, but I can ensure that he will never know he is descended from your twisted, sickly branch of the Yasuda tree.”
At last Kenbei marshaled the courage to speak. “You’re making a mistake. How long do you think you can escape these so-called ‘bear hunters’ if the clans of Izu turn against you?”
Daigoro took a step closer, looming over them. “There’s another side to that coin. What happens after you betray me to the bear hunters? When I butcher every man Shichio sends after me, will he see you as an ally? Or will he think you conspired with me to set a trap?”
Kenbei worked his mouth but could not speak. He reminded Daigoro of a carp sucking at the surface of a pond. “Do not follow this path, Kenbei. Hideyoshi will snap up the whole of Izu and you will be crushed under his heel. So choose your father’s path instead. Keep your faith. Stand fast with your neighbors. But make your choice somewhere else, Kenbei. You have worn out your welcome here.”
Daigoro did not bother to see them out.
18
By sundown the next day, the Okuma coop was populated with pigeons again. They came one by one, nearly all of them from the north, since the Okuma compound lay on the southern reaches of the Izu Peninsula. They had all been raised here, trained carefully from their youth, then delivered in delicate cages to the coops of distant lords. They returned home unerringly, always with a tiny scroll case bound to one leg. Every time they came home, they were caged again and sent back to the coops of the distant daimyo. It never seemed to trouble them much, but this time their homecoming had them spooked. The lingering scent of fox still hung on the air.
“Here comes another,” Aki said. They heard it before they saw it: a noisy fluttering on the ledge just outside the little octagonal window. Then came the bobbing gray head, daring a furtive glance inside before deciding in its tiny brain that there were no longer any foxes about. At last a full-breasted male came into view, big enough that he had to squeeze himself through the window into the coop.
Daigoro and Aki stood arm in arm watching the bird. The pigeon coop was in the dark and dingy attic of the Okuma stables. The horses and birds took shelter in the same structure, which made it a malodorous place, nowhere more so than in the attic right next to the coop. It was not a place the lord and lady of the house would ordinarily find themselves. But Daigoro was no longer a lord, and in any case he could not allow any gossip to escape this attic. Thus far the birds only brought bad news and worse news, and though the pigeon keeper had been hired specifically for his discretion, any man’s tongue might waggle if the troubles on the horizon loomed large enough.
First came the news that Aki’s father had no intention of bailing the Okumas out of their current predicament. He said a ship that could not right itself might well deserve to sink. It did not seem to trouble him that his daughter was aboard that ship. If he thought she would come swimming back to him after House Okuma foundered, he did not know his daughter very well.
It was a good thing Aki had built her own net of spies, because it was no easy thing to communicate without pigeons. The Inoues were easy enough to reach, as they were close neighbors; a swift rider could reach them in a day. The Green Cliff was just a half-day’s ride, but no help would come from there. Lord Yasuda had been sick for months, and after his most recent turn for the worse, his healers kept him perpetually asleep. They said the aging lord needed all his strength to fight off the devil that beset his lungs; a steady diet of poppy’s tears