father had iron skin, iron horns, iron fangs. Yet their commonalities were uncanny. Makoto was possessed of second sight; his father was clairvoyant. Makoto was the only one who could hear his father, and his father would speak to no one but Makoto.
“One thousand three hundred four,” his father told him. Makoto wrote it down again. Was it an address? A date? A code? He didn’t know, but he knew his father could not be rushed. Makoto would have to be patient—no easy thing, given the success of his sermon at the airport. He wanted to do more, to say more, to deliver the light and the truth to as many as could hear it. It broke his heart to see so many people in fetters. But his father spoke only when he had a mind to, so Makoto had to wait.
He heard a knock behind him, but then his father was speaking again and Makoto could not answer the door. “Rope,” his father said. “Razor. Children.”
“Yes, children,” Makoto said, and proceeded to sketch them in his notebook.
“Daishi-sama,” Hamaya Jiro said softly. “Your disciples have come to call.”
“Not disciples,” Makoto said. He’d seen these men before their arrival. His father had too.
He picked up his father and pressed him to his face. They were a perfect fit for each other. His father’s rust-brown fangs nestled into Makoto’s wiry beard; the interior curves of his iron cranium were precisely the size and shape of Makoto’s forehead. The two of them perceived the world through the very same eyes.
Footfalls and creaking floorboards tracked the passage of a small group through the apartment. They followed Hamaya upstairs, through the meditation room, and into the small audience chamber behind it. Makoto bound his father to his face with leather thongs, then ascended the stairs, meditating on every step and every breath. He smelled warm candle wax and incense, and enjoyed the reflection of flickering flames on the serene white walls. From a closet he retrieved his vestments: a heavy yellow mantle to don over the thin white robes he already wore; a long, thick stole crosshatched yellow over white; eight beaded bracelets on his wrists. With these, Koji Makoto became Joko Daishi, Great Teacher of the Purging Fire.
When he entered the audience chamber, he found four men waiting on their knees. As soon as Makoto stepped into view, they immediately prostrated themselves. “Praise be to Joko Daishi,” they all said.
“And may the light shine upon you. Tell me why you have come.”
“We saw what you did at the airport,” said one.
“It was so . . . profound,” said another.
“We came because we want to be a part of whatever comes next,” said a third.
“You are all liars,” Makoto said. “Better to cut out your tongue than to lie to one who hears the voices of demons.”
He stepped closer to them, his hands at heart center, his eyes downcast. He noticed an ink stain on the cuff of his white robe, and made a mental note to scrub it out before it set. His father told him all four men were armed, and showed him where they wore their pistols. “You have no faith,” he told them. “Your paymasters decided I have crossed a line I ought not to have crossed. They lack vision. Now they have decided to remind me there is no place the Wind cannot reach. But who knows that better than I?”
The false acolytes exchanged glances, perhaps hoping for a cue to act. “Ah,” Makoto said. “You were not told I am of the Wind? You were told, perhaps, that I do not know the Wind exists? Rest easy, my sons. I know the breast from which you suckle. I was once a cub like you. And those of the same family should not fight among themselves.”
They shifted on their knees. One of them seemed relieved. The others were harder to read, but Makoto’s father could read their minds. They were ready now to hear the truth.
“I have transcended the Wind,” Makoto told them. “I am become the light, the brightest fire. Behold, now, the teaching of Joko Daishi.”
He kicked the first man in the face, snapping his spine, killing him instantly.
The other three reacted with the speed and assurance of pack hunters. The closest of them dove straight in, attempting a takedown, as the other two jumped to their feet. Makoto simply hopped over the man shooting the takedown, using him as a stepping-stone. With his left palm Makoto trapped