Flame in the Mist Read online

  “Oddly smart, then.”

  “Two qualities that engender concern. I don’t trust him.”

  “What’s to trust?” Ranmaru tossed a silk cushion onto the packed earth, then took position over the ledgers strewn across the scarred low table. “Anyway it’s unlike you to care about such a thing.”

  Ōkami remained standing. “We should leave him in Inako. He won’t last a day in its bowels.”

  “Or perhaps we should simply let the forest have him.” Ranmaru shrugged.

  “Perhaps.” The Wolf did not sound convinced.

  Ranmaru stopped skimming through the ledger. “Do you suspect he knows anything?”

  “No. But he makes me feel . . . uncomfortable. I’m not certain why you wanted to bring him here. Why you thought he would make a good addition to our ranks.”

  Ranmaru paused. They were both aware that very little made the Wolf uncomfortable. Ōkami had spent his formative years impressing a sense of discomfort onto others. Impressing it and taking advantage of the aftermath.

  It was far easier to bend the will of those amid strife.

  “Sanada Takeo is different from anyone else in the Black Clan,” Ranmaru said. “He’s lost in a way that intrigues me. Intelligent in a way that could make him quite useful to our cause.” He paused again. “What about him makes you feel uncomfortable? It’s odd for anyone this insignificant to bother you so.” The beginnings of a smile began to cross his lips. “Or for anyone to remain unchecked after repeatedly challenging you.”

  Ōkami said nothing for a time. “Does the boy not make you uncomfortable?” he finally asked, his voice inexplicably hesitant. “Does he not—make you ask yourself strange questions?”

  “No,” Ranmaru replied. “Not any more than usual. I’ll agree he’s strange. But have you seen Ren?”

  “Ren is a boy lost between two worlds. That tends to happen when you witness your parents being butchered before your eyes,” Ōkami said. “Of course Ren would be strange.”

  “Well, it’s possible Sanada Takeo has seen such things as well.”

  “Possible. But unlikely. He’s far too green to have witnessed anything truly horrific. Did you see how long it took him to put together a simple tent?”

  “I thought you left that tent to test him.”

  “That’s immaterial. For someone as smart as he, Sanada Takeo should have realized he was missing pieces long before Yoshi brought it to his attention. It’s obvious the boy has never had to fend for himself in his life. He’s coddled in a worrisome way. Likely the son of a wealthy man—book learned and world foolish.”

  Ranmaru sighed. “I leave it to you, then. Whatever decision you make as to whether the boy stays or goes, I support you.” His left brow arched high into his forehead. “But he’s your responsibility in Inako. You earned that privilege by antagonizing him as you did today. And if I were you, I would be far more vigilant about how much you allow Sanada Takeo under your skin.” Ōkami turned at this, clearly intent on disavowing the notion. But Ranmaru raised a hand, cutting him off before he could speak.

  “Take Takeo to the teahouse as promised, then do what you will with him afterward.” Ranmaru flattened a blank sheet of washi paper and began rubbing a dampened ink stick into the inkwell beside him. “Though I’m inclined to let Takeo stay, as he might prove to be quite an asset. Oddly smart ideas notwithstanding.”

  Ōkami did not respond immediately.

  “We shall see.”

  RIVETS OF GOLD AND PETAL PINK WATERS

  Inako.

  A city of a hundred arched bridges and a thousand cherry trees. A city of mud and sweat and sewage. A city of golden cranes and amber sunsets.

  A city of secrets.

  The imperial city had changed in the four years since Kenshin had last been within its walls.

  It was clearly bigger. The outskirts of Inako now pressed beyond the fields and forests that had ringed its borders in the past. Snaking through the city’s center was a gently flowing river littered with dying blossoms. Its petal pink waters were a painted stroke separating the tiled roofs on either shoreline—a swell of blue-grey clay, rising like the sea, bandied about by a storm.

  Kenshin’s mother had once said the entire story of the imperial city could be told by its roof tiles alone. The curved clay marked where the grandest sections of Inako gave way to its poorer thoroughfares. Its downtrodden lanes. Where the rounded tiles and the gleaming angles dipped into dusty disrepair. Where they vanished into the parts of the city Kenshin had never frequented.

  The number of cracked and misshapen rooflines had become even more staggered and crowded in the last four years. Strange how—regardless of wealth or circumstance—they all appeared to use the same kind of tile. The same color. The same shape.

  A strange marriage of chaos and conformity.

  In that same way, Inako looked smaller to him now. Despite its obvious growth.

  Kenshin mulled over this as he rode with his men past the main gates of the city. Vendors lingered on either side of a long dirt lane, selling neatly stacked fruit and freshly washed produce. Several children hawked small hemp sacks of crisp rice crackers, their faces and hands clean despite the ragged appearance of their clothes. A stall displaying perfect rounds of sweet daifuku caught Kenshin’s eye as he passed by. He smiled as he remembered how much Mariko had loved to eat the fluffy rice cakes filled with sweetened bean paste. How they’d always fought over the last of the daifuku whenever their father had brought home a box from Inako.

  As children, Kenshin and Mariko had squabbled quite often, their fights becoming the stuff of legend. As epic as the wars depicted in their history lessons, replete with subterfuge and elegant misdirection. Kenshin had always tried to best her physically, while Mariko had always fought to unseat him mentally.

  His sister had won more times than Kenshin had cared to admit.

  He smiled to himself as a shower of memories descended on him.

  Mariko was not dead. She was simply fighting a different kind of war. Though Kenshin had yet to understand her purpose, he believed in his younger sister. Supported her.

  Just as he knew she believed in and supported him.

  They would always be there for each other. Whatever may come.

  Kenshin’s small convoy paused as imperial guards inspected the endless line of wagons and weary travelers entering Inako.

  As soon as the Hattori crest was seen, he and his men were waved past the line. Kenshin had elected to take only fifteen of his best soldiers with him to the imperial city. Five samurai and ten ashigaru. Before he’d left his family’s domain at dawn, Kenshin had realized a larger contingent of men would draw more whispers. Elicit further speculation.

  He did not want anyone to suspect the truth behind why he’d journeyed to Inako. Though it was unlikely, there was still a small chance not everyone at court knew about the events that had befallen his sister in Jukai forest. When he’d returned home, several of his father’s advisors had informed him it was possible the Black Clan was to blame for plundering Mariko’s convoy and setting fire to her norimono. The notorious band of thieves was known to haunt that section of the woods. Initially Kenshin had thought to seek them out. To feather his soldiers throughout the hills and hunt them down.

  But doing so without hesitation almost felt . . . too easy. The Black Clan did not usually attack convoys containing women and children. Assigning them immediate blame felt prearranged. As though someone intended all along for Kenshin to split his forces and lose his footing in a relatively short time. The suggestion reeked of the same elegant misdirection he had grown accustomed to while warring with his sister.

  Except that now, the battle was not over a sweet treat. But over lives.

  If Kenshin could be certain of anything, he could be certain of this: such machinations had been and always would be the purview of those in pow
er.

  First he wanted to hear what the nobles in the imperial city had to say. He hoped the story of the Black Clan had not spread too far. Hoped it remained within the inner circles of Inako and stayed that way for however long it could. At least until Kenshin was able to recover Mariko safe and sound. And before word of their family’s misfortune spread throughout the empire and ruined the Hattori name beyond repair.

  Apprehension gripped Kenshin as he rode through the winding streets of the imperial city, his back straight and his features impenetrable. Behind him, mounted samurai and foot soldiers bearing banners emblazoned with the Hattori crest trailed in neat formation.

  The scent of fresh water and swirling dust suffused the air as their convoy neared the deep moat enclosing Heian Castle. Kenshin left his ten ashigaru and three of his samurai in a clean set of barracks just beyond the curved stone wall at the edge of the moat. Then he and his two remaining samurai crossed the wooden drawbridge, pausing before the first set of towering black gates at the castle’s entrance. Gold-plated hinges and round-ringed handles glistened in the late-afternoon sun as Kenshin and his men waited to speak with the imperial troops manning the guard tower. When two of the soldiers stepped forward to address Kenshin formally, he noticed the silk banners flying on either side of the glossy black gates. Even the rivets were plated in gold.

  No expense had been spared to make Heian Castle a worthy seat for the empire’s heavenly sovereign.

  The imperial guards stood rigid, inspecting all the weaponry Kenshin and his men wished to bear with them. As samurai, Kenshin and his men were allowed to enter the castle bearing two customary swords each—a katana and a shorter wakizashi. Hidden weapons were considered dishonorable. As was the act of unsheathing a blade in the emperor’s presence.

  Just before the second pair of gates, Kenshin and his samurai were instructed to leave their horses with one of the stable attendants waiting nearby. Then they began to ascend the immense stone staircase leading to the imperial grounds. The weight of his armor and the heat of the early summer sun slowed Kenshin’s pace. But it also offered him a chance to take in the splendor of the imperial castle rising before him, each of its seven gabled stories and gilded rooftops flashing, catching, throwing endless rays of light.

  When the first of eight concentric baileys rose into view, Kenshin paused. This series of maru was famous even beyond the reaches of the empire. Its inner workings were said to be enchanted. Crafted by an ageless kind of sorcery. The first and largest maru was complete with a pond and mazelike pathways graveled by white stone. The pattern of its spiraling walkways served two purposes—one of beauty and one of befuddlement. It was designed to confound, for the entrances and exits did not flow in logical order. At all hours of day and night, the concentric circles moved in different directions, at different speeds, like wheels turning within each other. Absent a knowledgeable escort, a guest could get lost at Heian Castle without even trying.

  And an intruder?

  Would never make it out alive.

  Kenshin halted before taking the final step onto the trimmed grass of the first maru.

  This marked the only occasion he had ever been to Inako without his father. Without his family. Today would be the first day he and he alone would represent his clan before their emperor.

  Kenshin had not expected to feel so uneasy at this realization.

  But he did not show it. Would never show it.

  Instead he took the last step, careful to remain steady. To enjoy these brief moments to himself.

  While he still could.

  —

  Contrary to what Kenshin had expected, he was not instructed to go before the emperor upon his arrival.

  A fact that gave him pause.

  Instead Kenshin and his men were told to wait for a time on the enchanted maru. They crossed the perfectly manicured lawn, stopping only to watch the hundred-year-old carp and its gaggle of orange-and-white koi flit beneath the waters of an azure pond. One of the emperor’s attendants then bowed low before Kenshin, calmly leading him toward another maru, past another series of inner gates. As they moved through the arched entrance, Kenshin felt the ground beneath him shift. Felt it turn slowly to conceal their trail and keep him and his men from view. They quickly exited the second bailey and flew down a staircase leading to a grassy field ringed by a gathering of richly garbed onlookers.

  Soon Kenshin understood why he and his men had been brought here instead of being formally received by the emperor.

  They’d arrived at Heian Castle at a moment of spectacle.

  Beneath an eight-sided silk canopy—resting atop a tiered dais—sat Emperor Minamoto Masaru upon his black lacquered throne. The balustrades on either side of him were painted vermillion. Eight silver phoenixes were mounted at every post. Hanging between these posts were flashing mirrors and curtains of spun silk, stamped in their centers with the imperial crest of the Minamoto clan.

  Strange that the emperor had chosen to display the phoenix alongside his own crest. The Minamoto crest was one of gentian flowers and bamboo leaves—a crest that signified prosperity and granted its bearer protection against evil. The phoenix crest had always been associated with the Takeda clan—a long line of shōgun that had fallen from grace under a cloud of shame. When the last of the Takeda line had disappeared ten years ago, the thousand-year joint reign between emperor and shōgun—an emperor to rule the people, a shōgun to lead the army—had disintegrated.

  Had faded into remembrance.

  A part of Kenshin understood why the son of Takeda Shingen was unwilling to come forward, even following a decade of exile. His clan had collapsed in disgrace. His father had been compelled to end his life after conspiring to commit treason against the emperor. The emperor had been generous indeed to offer a traitor the honor of a warrior’s death. A chance to die so that his son might live.

  No one knew for certain where this disgraced boy—this rōnin—might be. If he was still alive, he would be around Kenshin’s age. Perhaps a year or so older. In time, rumors had spilled from the lips of drunken soldiers. Had rippled through lantern-lit gardens and spread like wildfire behind fluttering fans. The son of Takeda Shingen had become a beggar. A thief. A pirate. A whoremonger. He and his lost family had become the stuff of legend. A warning to all those who dared consider speaking out against the emperor.

  No matter how high a man rose in life, death was the greatest of equalizers.

  As a result of Takeda Shingen’s treachery, both the might of the army and the will of the people now rested with the emperor. Perhaps that was why Minamoto Masaru had thought to marry the two symbols under his own banner. A phoenix flying alongside a crest of gentian flowers. A bird risen from the ashes of a bloody history.

  The thunder of stampeding hooves tore Kenshin from his thoughts. Cheers erupted from the throng of onlookers seated on plush cushions, their servants balancing colorful silk umbrellas above elaborate headdresses. The noblemen sat nearest to the emperor. The empress and her female attendants were gathered on a lower dais positioned to the right.

  On the grassy field before them, the yabusame—the imperial army’s elite force of mounted archers—conducted an exhibition. Most of the imperial court had come to partake in the scene. Kenshin had heard from others who frequented Inako that the emperor often invited those in the nobility and their guests to witness the might of the empire’s army.

  The skill of its best soldiers and finest samurai.

  Though Kenshin was mildly interested in watching the display, he kept beyond the gathering of noblemen in their silken finery and the ladies of the court fluttering their folded fans. Kept apart and removed, as he often felt in such company. Kenshin had never been at ease around those in the imperial court. It was not that he harbored any judgment against them. He knew these shows of extravagance were necessary. They offered outsiders a glimpse of the empire’s glory, and
they gave its citizens a chance to revel in its greatness.

  As he continued watching the exhibition, Kenshin’s expression began to sour.

  These were skilled riders. Skilled archers. The best the empire had to offer.

  But it was still a show. And such immodesty did not sit well with the ideals of bushidō. Was not in keeping with the way of the warrior.

  Weapons were not meant for show.

  They were meant for war. Meant to be used in defense of a samurai’s lord. In defense of one’s family.

  And, above all, in defense of the emperor.

  A member of the yabusame soon drew every onlooker’s notice. The young rider sat atop a dappled steed. One side of his fine silk robe hung from his right shoulder—revealing the armored silver yoroihitatare beneath—freeing his arm for unencumbered movement. With a rattan-reinforced bow, he fired whistling arrows at a notched post, three times in rapid succession, all while riding faster—and more fearlessly—than any of his peers. Not once did the young warrior reach for the reins, but directed his horse entirely with his knees. Even from a distance, Kenshin could see how he rode—heels down, locked in placed, steady. Excellent horsemanship was a requisite of being in the yabusame. As was the ability to fire arrows at high speeds with uncanny accuracy.

  Not once did the warrior miss his target.

  Whispers of admiration rippled through the crowd. They unfurled into a steady murmur when a slight boy clad in silks stained a rare shade of yellow—almost like burnished gold—took position at the opposite end of the field.

  Kenshin did not immediately recognize him, but he felt certain the boy had to be the crown prince, Minamoto Roku. Though he’d never met him before, Kenshin had heard from both his father and from Nobutada that the crown prince did not possess a striking appearance, yet nevertheless managed to hold his own at court.

  Kenshin could see why now. There was a noble bearing to the boy. A distinct haughtiness to the set of his thin shoulders and the tilt of his pointed chin. The only member of court with finer robes was the emperor himself.