in, he plunged Streaming Dawn into his belly. He wailed long and loud, for there was no fate more gruesome than self-disembowelment. That was why a samurai nominated a second, a kaishakunin, to behead him if he should disgrace himself by crying out. But this man’s kaishakunin refused to carry out his duty, and somehow the doomed man did not die. For three days he suffered, and for three days he did not bleed.
Still the kaishakunin would not end it. Because his appointment had been affirmed by the daimyo’s court, he insisted that no one else had the right to take the killer’s life. That duty was his and his alone.
Three days became thirty. Thirty became three hundred. With every breath the knife shifted in the killer’s gut, so his every moment was sheer agony. He gnashed his teeth down to nubs. His fingernails gouged ruts in his palms, ghastly and bloodless. When he tried to remove Streaming Dawn, he found his own body defied him. His abdominal muscles clenched down tight on the blade. Even his viscera seemed to hold it fast.
The identity of the kaishakunin varied from story to story. Sometimes he was the murdered girl’s husband, sometimes her father. In Daigoro’s favorite version, the kaishakunin was her ghost, its dead ghastly white face hidden by helmet and mempo. That was the version that terrified Daigoro most as a child. In every telling, Streaming Dawn was said to be the cruelest blade of all, for it cut without killing. Daigoro’s mother told the story as a cautionary tale, warning her sons that someday, when they had wives and daughters of their own, they should never be cruel. His father saw a different moral in the story: death is nothing to be feared, for to cling to life is to cling to suffering.
Sora Nobushige had taken quite a different lesson. He seemed to believe the blade could do what even the best armor could not. It promised eternal life. That wasn’t a far cry from how the stories ended: when the kaishakunin was old and gray, still the doomed man lingered with Streaming Dawn in his belly. By then he was a quivering, withered husk. It was only after the kaishakunin died of old age that someone took mercy and beheaded the long-suffering murderer.
“‘Seventy-Seven Years of Seppuku,’” Aki said. “That was the name of the song a minstrel sang for us in my father’s court.”
“I think I know it. That’s the one where the killer is twenty-two when he commits seppuku, neh? His kaishakunin was the same age, and they both lived to the ripe old age of ninety-nine.”
“Yes. When I was little, it frightened me so much that I couldn’t sleep. But it’s a ghost story, Daigoro. A fable. Lord Sora will not pass up the Green Cliff in favor of a knife from a fairy tale.”
“My father always spoke of it as if it were real. He said he saw it once.”
“Saw it. Once. Unless he took it home and left it in your armory, what use is that to you?”
Daigoro threw his hands up. “Aki, what choice do I have? Sora believes it exists. If I can find it, I take away Yasuda Kenbei’s leverage. Your father isn’t backing him; he’s simply staying out of the fray. The same goes for Lord Mifune in the north, and even for Kenbei’s own brothers. He’s alone. Alone, you and Mother can deal with him. But united with the Soras? No. We’re in no position to take on two at once.”
“I don’t like it. Your plan hinges on a mythical, magical knife, and on the goodwill of an arrogant windbag who is old enough to remember when our grandfathers were children. Suppose Sora keels over dead. Then where would you be?”
Even as she said it, an ill omen made its entrance. A jet-black bird alighted on the windowsill. It was the rarest of specimens, a black pigeon, and yet it was a near twin to the bird that arrived earlier that afternoon. Only Inoue Shigekazu was mistrustful enough to dye his carrier pigeons black. Only he would worry about enemy arrows finding them in the dark.
“Another message from my father?” Aki beguiled the new arrival with a sprig of millet, then untied the tiny leather thongs binding the slender cylinder to its foreleg. “What could he want?”
“Probably to tell you to find a better husband.”
Aki’s fingers were much more adroit than Daigoro’s when it came to uncapping a scroll