The Chrysanthemum Seal (The Year of the Dragon, Book 5) Read online

  He was trying to sound nonchalant, but in truth, the Ship was the matter that worried him the most. It was bad enough to not receive the supplies and cash that came with the Ship every year; but this was not a normal year, and this ship was not the usual one. It wouldn’t just disappear in a storm, as happened a couple of times with the old galleons. Something must have happened. Something bad.

  “Would you like my Scryers to try to find out what’s going on? If you’d only give me a few more details…”

  Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?

  Suddenly Curzius felt very tired of this conversation. He did his best to smile and bowed his head.

  “Thank you, kakka, but I’m afraid until the Ship comes through the Sea Maze, there’s very little we can do.”

  “Then I will order my monks to pray for its safe return.”

  “You are too generous, kakka.”

  “Nonsense. We must stick together. This will be a difficult year for all of us,” said Naomasa, pouring Curzius yet another cup. “This year of the Dragon.”

  “And it’s barely half-way through,” agreed Curzius, wiping his brow with a silk handkerchief. His face, reflecting in the saké was beetroot-red. “I dread to think what the summer will bring.”

  Naomasa smiled broadly.

  “Would you like to have another game of ‘feather-ball’?”

  CHAPTER I

  The ringing of swords and chaotic cries coming from behind the thick, bronze door filled the dark, narrow corridor briefly, soon replaced by gurgles of agony and then silence.

  Lord Shimazu Nariakira nodded at the tall, burly samurai, who pushed the door open. The torch in his hand shone at a bloody scene: four men, lying in pools of their own blood on the stone floor. One of them wore a Satsuma uniform, the other three — that of the Hosokawa of Kumamoto. Five other Satsuma soldiers, bleeding from many wounds but still alive, stood back, bowing, and formed a corridor down which Lord Nariakira approached the dead men.

  “Those were the last of the rebels, kakka,” said the samurai with a hint of pride in his voice, wiping the blood off his face.

  Nariakira nodded. “They fought well. Make sure they are buried with honour.”

  He was in a sour mood. He disliked unnecessary bloodshed. The rebels had to be dealt with, of course, but it didn’t make the loss of useful lives any easier.

  Somehow, a few of Hosokawa’s retainers had got wind — a mere suspicion — of how the handover of power had come about, and rebelled against the daimyo’s son, and, by extension, Lord Nariakira, his new protector. The fighting was brief, and confined mostly to the winding corridors of the Kumamoto Castle.

  “How did they know?” he asked nobody in particular.

  “We believe perhaps… Hisamitsu-sama…”

  My dear little brother?

  He stepped over the bodies.

  “I know this man,” said Nariakira, leaning over the last of the dead men, who fell defending a small wooden door: the last door at the end of the last corridor at the top level of the donjon.

  “That’s Captain Kiyomasa, their leader, kakka” the tall samurai explained. “Half our losses are down to him alone.”

  The daimyo punched the wall in anger.

  Damn you, Kiyomasa. You lived through dragon fire for this…?

  “Give his family four hundred ryō. Tell them he died in the line of duty.”

  “But kakka…!” the samurai burst out before remembering to whom he was speaking. He bowed sharply. “Of course.”

  “And, Commander…” Nariakira wished he could remember the man’s name. Bushy-browed and square-jawed, he had the kind of face one does not easily forget. But recently the daimyo had too much on his mind.

  “Find as many of Kiyomasa’s former soldiers as you can.”

  “Certainly, kakka. What do you want me to do with them?”

  “Make sure they remain loyal to us. They are some of the best men in Yamato. In a month, I want you to turn them into my personal guard.”

  The samurai’s square face beamed and he bowed deeply. The office of a daimyo’s bodyguard commander was more than enough reward for his prompt dealing with the short-lived rebellion.

  Nariakira turned his attention to the wooden door.

  “What was it that they were defending so fiercely…?”

  The door was unlocked and swivelled open under his touch. Behind it was a tiny room, more of an alcove. The daimyo waved his hand, and one of the soldiers got nearer with the torch.

  It was a small armoury. Not the main arsenal of the Kumamoto Castle — they had taken it over a long time ago; this one seemed more like a treasury of weapons. Ancient halberds and pikes, elaborate spears, and precious swords, hanging on walls, scattered all around the room, and lying on the floor; a prized coat of armour, made of gleaming white lacquer scales stood prominently in the middle. Nariakira had seen an identical one in Hosokawa’s personal quarters below.

  The original.

  The fierce mask gazed at the man with its empty eyes. But something else drew the daimyo’s attention: a sword stand of dark red lacquer at the foot of the armour. The longer katana was missing, and only wakizashi, the short sword, remained, in a plain black sheath. It was marked with the Hosokawa crest — and the horned circle; mark of the Roman priests.

  “Where’s the other sword?” asked Nariakira, his voice suddenly hoarse.

  The Commander answered in a whisper.

  “We didn’t know these were in here.”

  The daimyo made a step forward and slowly reached for the short sword. The hilt buzzed in his hand. He unsheathed it carefully, by an inch, smoothly and noiselessly. The blade was jet black, as if glowing darkness, and it let out a high-pitched, quiet hum. The sword called for blood. But not his…

  “Get me Yokoi-dono,” he ordered.

  A quick, loud rapping on Satō’s door stirred her from a shallow dream.

  “Later, Dad,” she murmured, annoyed.

  “Come quick, Takashima!” a rasping, male voice said.

  She opened her eyes at once and sat down. It was pitch black in the room.

  “What is it?” she asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “You wanted me to let you know when the Ship arrives. So hurry up!”

  “Eeh!”

  She jumped up in an instant and stumbled about on the floor in search of clothes and light. She threw on the vermillion gi jacket and the black hakama, tied it hastily and parted the door with a crash.

  “Well, what are we waiting for, Yukihige-sensei?”

  The man grinned at her and led the way, out of the dormitory, past the school gates and out onto the sleepy, dark, ash-covered streets of Kagoshima.

  “Actually, there’s no need to hurry,” said Yukihige, slowing down. “It just emerged off Sakurajima.”

  Satō only knew this man by his nickname – Yukihige, Snow Beard — referring to some seldom-told laboratory accident from his youth. Now he had a real beard, black with threads of grey, framing a mature, sharp face. He was the head teacher of Ice Wizardry at Shigakko, Nariakira’s Rangaku Academy in Kagoshima. And, of course, he had known her father, though he was reluctant to share too many stories of their youth.

  Their sandals shuffling on the ash-covered pavement, they emerged onto the harbour, where several other wizards had already gathered, awaiting the Ship’s arrival. The largest pier in the harbour had been prepared for its welcome, blocked off by a make-shift bamboo barrier and a row of armed guards. Only a few men were allowed beyond; in the hazy-grey light of rising dawn, Satō recognized the Daisen, Torii Heishichi, lanky and unassuming as always, setting up some complex apparatus on a tripod.

  The wild rumours had started circulating around the Academy not long after her arrival in Kagoshima. That the Bataavians would openly sail into a harbour other than Kiyō was of itself a major break of the Taikun’s rules; almost a declaration of rebellion on Satsuma’s part, but that wasn’t all: the Ship was supposed to be something els
e this time, something unexpected. Something big.

  “There it is!” shouted one of the men. They were all men, of course.

  She reached out on tip-toes.

  That the Ship would at least be a mistfire one, she had no doubt; why else would the Bataavians and Shimazu-dono go to so much trouble and secrecy? Perhaps it would even be an ironclad. As the rumours grew, so did the ship in her mind: at first, it was an armoured gunboat, then – a frigate; the last batch of gossip made it out into an enormous dorako carrier.

  “My uncle works on a merchant ship to Nansei,” one of the students kept saying, “he told me he saw a huge black ship pass him by, filled with dragons! It must have been the Bataavians!”

  The clouds finally parted and the first rays of the rising sun lit up the Bataavian vessel. It was closer than Satō had expected; less than a quarter of a ri from the shore.

  “But… it looks just like the ones in Kiyō,” she said, slumping in disappointment.

  The vessel approaching the pier, led by a small pilot barge, was the usual Bataavian merchantman of the sort Satō had grown up watching moor every year at Dejima.

  “No, look!” cried the sailor’s nephew into her ear, “between the main-mast and the fore-mast.”

  “Between the what and the what?” she asked, annoyed.

  “The middle one and the one at the front,” the young man said, pointing.

  Satō squinted and saw a narrow metal funnel, about half the height of the middle mast, jutting out of a box-like structure. As the ship turned to its side, she noticed the large paddle-wheels, silent, rolling slowly back and forth on the waves…

  “It is a mistfire…” she whispered.

  The ship was listing slightly, battered and bruised, boards torn from the planking, the masts crooked; the main mast in particular looked as if it had just been mended, and in some haste, too. Patches of timber planking on the sides were missing, revealing sheets of iron cladding, ripped and charred in places.

  “She looks like she’s been through a war,” Snow Beard said, frowning.

  “Maybe the Taikun’s ships found it…” pondered Satō.

  “No way, they have nothing that could match this ship,” said the sailor’s nephew. “Look, she’s got more guns than our entire fortress!”

  The ship struck its sails, and the sailors heaved the anchors overboard. Satō had watched this kind of vessel at Dejima enough times to know it would take hours before it fully moored and anyone on board could get off onto the pier.

  “I’m going back to sleep,” she said to no-one in particular. “Nothing else will happen until noon.”

  “What’s that on the forecastle?” asked the sailor’s nephew. Something in his voice made Satō stop and turn her head. On the front deck of the ship, a huge coil of gold lay, glinting and shimmering like a giant snake skin.

  As the ship heaved at the anchor, the coil stirred, and a coal-black eye opened.

  “It’s… it’s…” Satō gasped.

  It’s a dragon!

  The city was in disarray.

  The Kagoshima wizards may have been prepared for the Ship’s arrival, but the ordinary townspeople had been kept in the dark. And when the first panicked citizens ran down the streets, shouting about an “invasion”, and “monsters”, dread erupted and spread everywhere like the ash cloud of Sakurajima.

  The commoners and nobles alike crowded the paths leading for the hills, looking for shelter in the thick woods. Some of them remembered the dreadful news from Qin; others heard vague tales from the North, gossips of the monsters invading the coast near Edo. But for most, the arrival of foreign ships in Satsuma meant only one thing: the Civil War. The memory of Vasconians and Bataavians roaming Yamato freely among the chaos and bloodshed was all too alive.

  Lord Nariakira’s heralds tried to play the Ship’s arrival as proof of Satsuma’s importance. “Our daimyo made allies with The Bataavians!” they cried in the cross-roads and markets to whoever listened, adding only to the confusion.

  Satō would have loved to stay and find more out about the golden dragon, a Qin long that in some inexplicable way found itself on a Bataavian ship bound for Yamato. She wanted to study the Bataavian machinery of the Ship, too. She would have given much to discuss the finer points of mistfire technology with the crew. To feel, for even a moment, a part of the greater community of wizards spread all over the world, instead of being always kept in the dark on one, small, remote island.

  But it was not to be. The final time she had seen the Ship and its crew was as she looked back from a hilltop north of Kagoshima’s gates, where the Hitoyoshi highway looped around Lord Nariakira’s summer gardens. It was little more than a speck of brown and grey, recognizable only by the three masts rising above the roofs of the city like mighty cedars.

  The order to march off had arrived in the afternoon of the Ship’s day of arrival. It bore the daimyo’s seal; there was to be no protest, no grumbling. The departure was imminent: they only had one day to prepare.

  “A lode of Ice was discovered high on Mount Ichifusa,” Yukihige had explained, unhappily. He was also ordered to accompany the expedition.

  “Mount Ichifusa… where’s that?”

  Satō had hoped yet it would just be a brief excursion. But her hopes were promptly shattered.

  “On the eastern end of Hitoyoshi Valley.”

  Hitoyoshi…?

  “Eeh, but that’s days away!”

  “I know,” Yukihige said with a scowl. “Best be off quickly, then. Wear something warm,” he added with a weak smile.

  I bet they’ll be long gone by the time we get back, Satō thought, resigned to her fate.

  The gold-enamelled panels slid open and Dylan saw before him a large, formal chamber, with the floor of packed yellow straw and walls of painted wood. The only object out of place in this austere room was a man-sized Qin vase of blue and white china.

  This is the land of riches the Bataavians were so secretive about? he wondered, not for the first time.

  They had been kept on the Bataavian ship for a week, waiting for an audience with the man Dylan understood to be the local warlord, and a friend of the Bataavian Captain. From the window of his cabin he could see the calm, round bay and the tall, conical volcano, spewing columns of smoke and dirt.

  It’s certainly picturesque, he thought, like the Bay of Neapolis in summer.

  But even the natural beauty of the city was marred by a constant layer of black volcanic ash that found its way into the food, water, and bedding.

  There is nothing here that would be of interest to anyone.

  From the deck he had been observing this strange city of low-rise wooden buildings. There was some golden glint on the roofs and walls of the larger buildings, but even if it was pure gold leaf it wouldn’t amount to more than a chest of the stuff. There were no ships in the harbour other than fishing junks and a few wooden barges carrying rice and timber. One detail was jarring — a battery of modern-looking iron cannons on the harbour wall – but Dylan assumed they were simply a gift from the Bataavians, an expensive, but useless, decoration.

  Short, squat men in plaid skirts, with their heads shaven, walking everywhere on foot, purposefully and with grim expressions on their faces, and women, wearing elaborate robes and haircuts, following them with forced smiles which turned into grimaces of tiredness as soon as their men turned away. Soldiers going to and fro, brandishing spears and sabre-like swords, wearing bits of ancient armour which looked as if they wouldn’t stop an arrow, much less an air-gun pellet. Once in a while some of them came by, either to watch the vessel itself, or to check on Li’s great golden dragon, now sleeping in lazy coils on the forecastle.

  On the fourth day Dylan saw a thin man in an orange jacket and black skirt, who stood on the pier and studied the Soembing with great care, while the sailors were busy mending the damage done by Afroleus to the quarterdeck. He heard a nasty crack as the wooden crane carrying a platform of crates snapped; the load rolled strai
ght towards the men and, in an instant, the lanky Yamato reached out his hands and shouted something Dylan could not hear in the din. Flame spurted from his fingers and the crates burst into harmless splinters. The Yamato man cleaned bits of burnt wood from his robe, adjusted his spectacles, and returned to studying the mistfire capstan.

  Dylan’s knuckles tensed up on the railing.

  That was a… Chwalu’r dân! Western magic!

  The man from the harbour was in the audience chamber. Dylan recognized his gangly form instantly. What he hadn’t noticed before were the burn scars covering the bespectacled face. The kind of injury Dylan had seen many times before.

  He also had the sunken, absent eyes of an addict.

  Cursed Weed, thought Dylan. Or worse.

  He scanned the rest of the room. There were no chairs or benches, everyone was kneeling or sitting cross-legged on the straw floor, like musicians in the Qin court. Right in front of Dylan, on a small raised dais of packed straw, sat the local warlord, “daimyo”. His clothes were plain, a dark grey vest and skirt over a black tunic, marked only with a crossed circle sign on the shoulders. He was holding a wooden paddle in his right hand, a mark of office, Dylan guessed, though it looked more like a fly swatter.

  He’s dressed almost like a commoner.

  He couldn’t tell whether the austerity of the place was real or merely symbolic. The robes were plain, but made of fine, precious silk. The sheaths of the swords were simple, yet masterly crafted.

  The other men sitting around the warlord looked similar, wearing the same hair-styles and robes as their master. The only difference was in their poses: solemn, subdued, with none of the self-importance and certainty of power beaming from the man in the middle.

  There was also a young woman sitting to the right of the warlord; her eyes were pale with advanced cataracts. She must have been completely blind, yet she seemed to be looking straight at Dylan from the moment he had stepped into the chamber.

  And who might she be? His truth-sayer?

  He had seen such people employed at the courts of the Orient before. Trained in the arts of subtlety, they allegedly sensed the emotions of those they interrogated. Sometimes they would deliberately blunt one of their “conventional” senses, claiming it increased their attunement to the “hidden truth”. The girl, if that was indeed her role, had a natural advantage…