allowed his body to marshal its forces for its final battle. Daigoro could not wake him in good conscience.
Aki was not quite so scrupulous. “How do you know this isn’t Kenbei’s work?” she’d said. “It serves his best interests to keep his father asleep.” When Daigoro had no response to that, she sent Old Yagyu and a handful of aides to the Green Cliff. Even Kenbei could not conscionably turn away the man who kept Daigoro’s brother Ichiro alive even after he’d nearly lost his head. While Old Yagyu ministered to Lord Yasuda, one of the aides slipped into the pigeon coop and used Kenbei’s own birds to deliver Daigoro’s missives.
Old Yagyu would stay at Lord Yasuda’s side, ostensibly to heal him, but his primary purpose was to defend the old daimyo from patricide. Kenbei could not be trusted. His brothers were of no greater help. Jinbei’s elder sons had replied with birds of their own, conveying their regrets. Kenbei’s behavior was disgraceful, they said, but as their father had formally given him charge of House Yasuda’s day-to-day affairs, they had no say in how he managed the ledgers.
The next pigeon had come from Lord Mifune Izu-no-kami Hiroyuki, daimyo of House Mifune and Lord Protector of Izu. Lord Mifune’s idea of help was simply not to call in his own debts. He thought it best to stand clear of this disagreement, lest he show favoritism—or so he said. It was almost true. No carrion feeder wanted a say in how other animals fought and died. His role was to wait on the sidelines and grow fat on the scraps of whatever was left.
The newest bird had come from Sora Izu-no-kami Nobushige. The scroll case lashed to its leg was lacquered blood red, which reminded Daigoro of Lord Sora’s bright red cheeks. Sora’s hands were perpetually red as well, some kind of skin condition in all likelihood, but he looked as if he’d just come from the smithy where he’d established his name. He talked that way too; all those years of hammering had left him half deaf, so he did not speak so much as shout. Between that, his arrogance, and his tendency to bluster on, Daigoro much preferred to converse with him via pigeon.
In a refreshing change from Lord Mifune and the Yasuda sons, Lord Sora was honest. Brutally so. In this case his message was simple: Kenbei had offered him the Green Cliff. In exchange, Sora would call in all his favors from House Okuma. Once Daigoro’s wife and mother were penniless, Kenbei would cast them out, seize the Okuma compound for himself, and turn over ownership of the most formidable holdfast in Izu.
It was a tempting offer, and not because a clan’s wealth was measured by its holdings. Sora Nobushige was obsessed with defense. Like Lord Inoue, he was cautious to a fault, but where Inoue relied on spies to keep him safe, Sora placed his faith in steel. His forge produced some of the finest armor in the empire. He tested his breastplates with a matchlock pistol at point-blank range. Daigoro could vouch for that; he’d put his own Sora yoroi to the test more times than he cared to count. Nothing could please Sora more than sleeping the rest of his nights behind the mighty moss-covered wall of the Green Cliff.
And yet there was that last line, the one that called the rest of the message into question. Make me a better offer. I want Streaming Dawn.
“Streaming Dawn?” Aki said. “I thought that was a myth.”
“It’s not. At least, I don’t think so. But wherever it is, it’s lost now.”
Some said Streaming Dawn was an Inazuma blade. Others said Master Inazuma was never so wicked as to forge a weapon like that. Whatever the legends said—and there were many of them—all of them centered around a knife and a beautiful woman. In some of the stories she was Inazuma’s daughter, or the daughter of whoever the true sword smith was. In others, she was wife, daughter, or sister to a great daimyo. In one version, she was a sword smith herself, the only woman ever to be ordained by the Shinto priest-smiths of Seki. Whoever she was, her fate was dark and cruel.
The details of her attack varied with the telling, but all agreed it was a samurai who killed her, and all agreed she suffered terribly before the end. Her killer was ordered to commit seppuku, and as the first rays of dawn streamed