The Shattering Waves (The Year of the Dragon, Book 7) Page 5

  Furious now, Atsuko started taking off the garments layer by layer. The panicked handmaidens shooed the confused painter out of the garden before she reached the under-coat. She cast all her clothes into the dirt with great satisfaction and ordered a plain kosode robe.

  “And a bowl of water! I have to wash this paint from my face. I don’t even know why he bothered with the drawing, I should have just pressed my face against the canvas.”

  None of the court ladies dared to utter a word, but their looks said everything. She didn’t care. She knew some of them already thought her undeserving of the Taikun’s attention. Most of the women of Ōku, the Inner Palace, were descended from ancient Edo families, related to the ruling clan by blood and alliance. She was some upstart country bumpkin, a so-called princess from the deep south, barely even worth calling a Yamato — and to make things worse, her father was reportedly supporting a rebellion brewing in the south. It didn’t matter what she did or how she behaved. She would never earn their acceptance. Only Iesada’s seemingly unconditional love for her was keeping them at bay.

  Once, she overheard two of the handmaidens accusing her of witchcraft, of producing love potions and sucking life energy from the Taikun. She shrugged the rumours off, but the truth was, in recent weeks His Highness had grown weaker and ailing. He refused to see the court physician or the priests, and so it was up to Atsuko herself to figure out the reason for her husband’s weakness.

  “Where’s Mineko?” she asked from under a hot wet towel. “Tell her to meet me at the private study.”

  The court lady to whom she addressed the question winced and bowed. “Yes, kakka.” They hated Mineko even more than her — she was a servant girl from Satsuma household, the only handmaiden from Chinzei, and the only person in the entire court she trusted.

  Atsuko threw on the gown, wiped most of the powder from her face, and left the fuming court ladies and handmaidens busy picking up the scattered robes from all around the garden.

  “My lady,” Mineko entered with her eyes downcast. “You asked for me.”

  “Is my husband busy?” Atsuko asked. She had asked the servant girl to keep track of Iesada whenever she herself could not accompany him.

  “His Highness is at an audience with the lords of Aizu and Echigo. I’m told it will last for several hours, at least.”

  “Excellent. Come with me. There is still one more wing of the palace left to check.”

  Her careful and patient investigation brought a few clues about her husband’s nightly activities. She knew, for instance, that it all had something to do with that creepy Chief Councillor Hotta.

  She also knew there had to be a room, or a hall, somewhere in the Inner Palace, hidden from passers-by, where her husband disappeared to whenever the Chief Councillor called on him.

  She had been trying to locate it for days, but it wasn’t easy — there were hundreds of rooms and corridors in the palace, and she only had an hour or two a day to perform her searches undisturbed.

  She led the girl down a narrow hallway behind the Passage of Bells, out through the Bridge of the Crescent Moon, past the wisterias and into the Halls of … she couldn’t remember the name. This was a newly built part of the palace, the wood was still young, fresh, creaking as it settled into shape. The nearest half of it, which she had already explored, was a maze of warehouses, where bales of silk cloth lay among chests of cha and planks of cedar wood. The far end of the hall remained a mystery.

  “Stay here,” she ordered Mineko. “You know what to do.”

  The servant girl nodded and stood watch at the entrance to the corridor. The hallway was cold and dark, as if something inside was blocking all the light and warmth of the summer outside. Atsuko rubbed her shoulders and lit a small oil lamp. The corridor turned right and then left before coming to a stop at an unmarked door made of rough cypress. An odd quiet roaring sound came from inside, resembling a faraway ocean wave.

  With a trembling hand, she drew the door open.

  The ornate golden stand in the middle of the octagonal room was as ancient as the building around it was new. Its four legs were sculpted into a paw of a tiger, a turtle’s leg, the talon of a phoenix, and a dragon’s claw. The rim, carved with ocean waves and fish tails, was inscribed with the crests of old clans from before the Civil War — even the Taira’s butterfly was there — indicating the object’s age.

  What stood on top was even stranger: suspended in a large bowl of gold and silver, which levitated over the stand thanks to some old spell, was an orb of milky glass. Inside it swirled mists and fumes, grey, white, and black, like a miniature sea storm. She stepped closer, careful not to spill the oil out of her lamp — the tiniest stain on the floor would betray her presence here. By the flickering light, she peered inside the orb.

  There was a shape inside the whirlpool of vapours — a map of all of Yamato. It wasn’t drawn on paper or carved into metal, but was a detailed, three-dimensional sculpture of the country, with grey mountains, green forests, and patches of drab browns and yellow where the rice paddies ached for autumn rains. The islands floated on water, which was the deep blue colour of the open ocean, rather than transparent. The more she looked into the orb, the more she was certain that no human hand or tool had been involved in creating this map. The entire orb reeked of magic.

  This must be some spying device, she concluded, or a tool for planning wars. Is this what Iesada is doing at nights?

  She focused on the golden stand. The legs were covered in age-old dust, meaning that no cleaners were allowed to touch it — or even see it, she bet. Even the part of the wooden floor upon which it stood was dusty and grimy with decades of candle wax and lamp oil.

  This thing has never been moved.

  Intrigued, she turned to the walls. These were old, too, blackened with soot, painted with scenes from all eight corners of Yamato in the style of ancient masters. At last, her education in art proved useful — the paintings were at least eight hundred years old. Only the wall with the door was new, replacing rotten boards.

  This place is older than the whole castle. Older than Edo.

  The new warehouses must have been built around this, she realized, to conceal it from view. To hide it from … her?

  No, the wood is not that fresh — and it would take several months to commission its construction.

  Hotta. The Chief Councillor had risen to power the previous year; enough time to build a whole new building in the abandoned part of the palace gardens.

  Why would they start using it only now? Is it because of the war?

  She reached her hand to the orb’s surface. She felt a cushion of electricity between her skin and the glass. The mists swirled to her hand. She pressed both her palms to the orb. It lit up bright and vibrated under her touch.

  A gust of wind, birthed in the golden bowl, enveloped her body, tearing at her hair and clothes. The whirlwind filled the octagonal room with its howling. It sounded almost human, like a wailing of tormented souls. The orb grew and engulfed her within it.

  She hovered over the map of Yamato. The islands were surrounded by a band of black clouds, spinning around it in a mad dance, the wailing louder and more distinct. She was now certain she heard voices in it.

  Curious of what the map could do, she focused on her hometown, Kagoshima. The view zoomed towards Chinzei. It was blurry on the edges, but in the middle she saw clearly the harbour, the ever-fuming volcano, and the tiny dots of the warships ready to sail.

  It looks so real!

  The centre of the city was a smouldering black pit. This frightened her. She swiped north, past the mountains of Kirishima, past the great Aso-san caldera, all the way to the Dan-no-ura Straits. She stopped over another burnt-out shell of a city.

  This is Mori clan’s domain. Chōfu. Is Iesada planning to burn the rebel cities down one by one with the help of the barbarians?

  As she stared at the destruction, a tiny black cross passed between her and the surface of the earth. She flinched
in fright. The cross vanished as it dived towards the harbour.

  That … that was a dorako. Then it dawned on her. This isn’t a map. This is reality. I’m seeing all of Yamato as Gods would see it. So it is a spying device — a most powerful spying device!

  She focused on zooming the map back onto Edo, wondering if she could see herself in the palace. This exercise made her dizzy and nauseous. Controlling the orb was proving a great strain on her mind. She tried again. With great effort, the view shifted over the eastern sea, almost touching the edge of the band of storms. Impatiently, she tried to brush the clouds aside with a phantom hand. To her surprise, the storm moved in a great swirl, away from her fingers, revealing the clear surface of the ocean.

  She had no time to guess what it may have meant. She heard faint steps and then felt herself grabbed by her shoulders and pulled away from the orb.

  “Mi … Mineko …”

  She looked at her own hands, pale and shaking.

  “My lady,” the servant girl said with urgency, “forgive me, but His Highness is coming. We must leave.”

  “Already?” Atsuko frowned. “It was supposed to be a couple of hours.”

  “But it was hours, hime! It’s almost night outside.”

  “But — I was here no longer than a few minutes! I don’t understand …”

  “Please, my lady,” the servant girl bowed, “there’s no time. Please, follow me, I found a side exit from the silk store room.”

  Li dimmed the elemental lamp at his desk and pushed the papers away.

  The report of the siege of Kurume was ready to be sent to Kiyō and, from there, to Qin’s Imperial Capital via the spirit writing.

  Not that there was much to report. Li agreed with the Dracalish Commodore: the real battle was still ahead of them; this had been just a skirmish, a test of strength. The Taikun was willing to give the rebels an illusion of control over most of Chinzei, while he concentrated his forces — and dragons — in the north, in the territory he and his daimyos held fast.

  He lit the Cursed Weed pipe and drew a long, strong puff. He looked out the window at the sleeping castle town below. Unlike the Dracalish, Li was still uncertain which side he — and, by extension, his country — should take in the conflict. The responses he received from the mainland were vague and non-committal. The trade through the Kiyō outpost had always been decent — and Qin never desired any more of Yamato’s riches, so there was no reason to want to change the status quo. The Qin Emperor was still too concerned with his own rebellion to worry about what was happening on some remote island.

  This, Li believed, was short-sighted. The time for isolation was long past. Qin — already overrun by the Westerners and their industrialized armies — needed to take a more active role in the affairs of its neighbours.

  Starting with Yamato.

  He was trying to convey this sense of urgency in his reports. The speed with which both the rebels and the Taikun modernized their forces reminded him of the triumphal march of the Ever Victorious Army — but with far less reliance on the Western help. Here, the three Dracalish officers served merely as advisors. The Faer had trained a small detachment of Satsuma warriors in Lord Shimazu’s bodyguard but, unlike in Huating, they had not formed a nucleus of an entire foreign-style division. Rather, it was up to the self-trained natives — the wizards of Kiyō and the magic students of Kagoshima — to lead the charge on Kurume Castle.

  It didn’t escape Li’s attention that it was Taikun’s own force, armed with thunder guns and formed into squares and wedges according to the latest Western practices, that purported to defend the keep until the rebels overran the ramparts and forced its surrender.

  Li was no Scryer or soothsayer, but he could foretell the future based on his experience and intuition, and it looked grim for Qin and its embattled Imperial Court. So he sent letter after letter, each more desperate than the previous, and with each vague, officious response, his frustration grew.

  A cool breeze wafted through the guesthouse room window, disturbing the flame of the lamp. He adjusted the elemental’s strength and closed the shutters. The cold remained, hanging in the air, freezing the tips of his moustache.

  “Have you come to threaten me again?” he asked the creature standing by the door.

  “It was you who wanted to see me,” replied the Fanged.

  Li put away the pipe. “You spoke to the boy, then?”

  “I didn’t have to. Like you, I have my ways of knowing what I need to know.”

  “Then, ah, you know what I wanted to ask of you.”

  “Such knowledge destroyed greater men than you.”

  Li paused before replying.

  “The need of my country is greater than that of any one man. The Black Lotus must be destroyed at any cost.”

  “I agree.”

  “You’re willing to trade it, then?”

  Dōraku spread his arms. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “What do you need?”

  “Same thing as last time. A ride.”

  “That’s all?” Li wiped his brow. The sweat was freezing on his forehead. “Why not just force it out of me?”

  The Fanged scowled. “That’s not how I usually do things. We’re going to spend a good few days together. I’d rather we trusted each other, than feared.”

  “Trust?” Li snorted, against himself. “Yes, I suppose so. After all, what good is a trade without a little honesty. Still,” he said, playing with the pen over a blank piece of paper, “trust an Abomination — it will take some getting used to.”

  The Fanged reached into the sleeve of his colourful robe.

  “Perhaps this will serve as a token of good will.” He threw something at Li: a grapefruit-sized ball of tightly packed brown powder, wrapped in pale-pink petals.

  The interpreter caught it, put it to his nose and breathed in. He licked his lips. “Where did you …?”

  “Does it matter? It’s fresh, and as pure as it gets. I hope that’s enough to convince you I mean business.”

  “For that much Cursed Weed I’d fly you to Qin and back,” said Li. He put the ball into the desk drawer. His hands still trembled.

  “That won’t be necessary,” the Fanged replied. “First, I’d just like you to take me to Tosa.”

  CHAPTER V

  The meal laid out on the low oak table before Satō was plain but nourishing: a large bowl of rice and seaweed, a broiled sweetfish, some monkfish livers, and a plate of pickles. Certainly, her hosts did not want her to die of malnutrition.

  She had refused to touch the food on the first and second day — every morning, the plates and bowls were taken by a deaf and mute servant and replaced with new ones; every morning the set was a different one, taken from some collection of antique tableware. At last, she saw no further reason for starving herself and reached for the fish with the heavy metal chopsticks she’d been given.

  The chopsticks, like the chains holding her ankles and wrists to the floor and the wall of her holding cell, were made of the same bronze metal as the daggers Crimson Robe had thrown at her during the assault on the Takashima Mansion. They slowly sapped away her magic. Every day she summoned a blade of ice to kill herself with, and every time it was smaller and more brittle, until at length she couldn’t even make her fingers cold.

  That was when she decided to eat the morning meal. The hunger was stronger than she expected. She licked the bowls and plates clean and pushed the dishes away. She let her hands hang loose from the chains, twisting her body so that the wound in her stomach hurt less.

  She lived only because of a blood spell binding the wound together. Keinosuke’s blade had dug deep into her, piercing several organs, and coming out the back through the kidneys. Not even Nagomi’s prayers or Torishi’s leaves and willow-wood strips would save her now.

  There was something profoundly wrong with the way her shattered insides functioned, animated by the spell rather than by the movements of muscle and tissue.

  I am a living
dead, she concluded. Like the Fanged.

  But she was still breathing, she still felt hunger and thirst, and other needs of living flesh. The clay chamber pot in the corner of her room was in regular use — or as much as it would be for a person who did not eat for three days. The dark energy of the blood magic did not spread from the vicinity of the wound: it remained contained and localized, like a small, benign tumour.

  The mute carried the empty dishes away. Some time later — could have been half an hour, could have been half a day — another visitor entered the cell: the female Fanged in the Silver Robe. She sat down by the table opposite the wizardess and stared in silence. Her eyes were two deep black wells. Satō could only look into them for a few seconds before turning away with a pounding headache.

  “Why did you keep me alive?” she asked. Her voice came out harsh, croaking. “Why not let me die and turn me into your slave?”

  The Silver Robe scoffed. “We don’t need any more slaves. You shall join us of your own will.”

  “Never.”

  “Oh, not at first. It would be disappointing if you did! But it will take less time and effort than you think.” She raised a hand and formed a rune with her long-nailed fingers. “You’re already halfway there, you just don’t know it yet.”

  She tugged at the air. A burst of pain tore Satō’s insides. Silver Robe was ripping out the wizardess’s liver with her claws and Satō cried out and writhed in pain. After several long seconds, the Fanged dropped her hand and looked at the girl in disappointment.

  “Why won’t you fight me, girl?”

  “Fight …?” Satō raised her head. “How? You put me in these shackles … They block all my power.”

  “Not all power, fool! Only that of the elements. Just forget about them. Focus!”