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

  Bran looked instinctively to the sea to see if there was any new ship on the horizon, but of course, there couldn’t have been one. They were in the middle of an open ocean, inside a fierce storm which reduced visibility around them to less than a mile. There was no way anybody could find them here — not even, this time, by accident.

  “No. And that’s partly the problem. Because of that,” he pointed to the wall of clouds, “we’ve had no messages from home for weeks.”

  “Surely everything’s fine?” Bran said. “You said yourself; it’s far from the wars of the old world. What could go wrong?”

  He was trying to cheer Leif up, but, much more so, he was intrigued to learn anything new about the chaplain’s land.

  “I can’t help thinking our dragons could be better used to keep the peace back home,” Leif replied with a sad smile. “There are tensions between the provinces, conflicts, even violent confrontations…”

  The irony of the situation became clear to Bran. If his suspicions were right, the Black Wings would be used in quelling a Yamato civil war, while conflict grew in their home land unabated. This made the question that was constantly on his mind even more burning.

  “What do the Gorllewin really want from Yamato?” he asked. “What were you looking for in Qin?”

  A way to win your own war?

  Leif smirked.

  “What do all nations want from others? To discover… to trade…”

  “To conquer,” Bran added helpfully.

  “We are a warrior people, true,” Leif nodded, “but I don’t think we are ready to strike at the country as powerful as Yamato just yet. Not while our own straits are still so dire.”

  “And yet, this is no merchant ship,” Bran said, waving his hand, “and your dragons are not here to help you haul the gifts from the ambassador.”

  “From what I hear, the Yamato are notoriously difficult to talk to. It helps to have an… edge to the negotiations.”

  “But what is the aim of the negotiations? You wouldn’t go through all this trouble just to get first dibs on…” Bran bit his tongue; he had to be careful — if his questions were too detailed, it would betray his intimate knowledge of Yamato, “…whatever it is these people have to sell.”

  Leif stroked his golden beard.

  “You’re right, I suppose, but I’m just the chaplain. The real deals are being settled right now on the other side of that demonic storm.”

  The ship heaved from side to side. Bran grabbed the rails tight to stop himself from sliding away.

  “How long are we supposed to stay here like this?” he asked.

  Several days had passed already since they’d reached this featureless expanse of the sea and stopped, using just enough engine power to prevent the storm from pushing them back out into the open ocean.

  The flotilla had been sailing at full steam for the previous three weeks, and from what Bran could tell — checking the positions of stars with what he remembered from his journey — they almost circumnavigated the whole of Yamato, from south-west to north-east. Bran wished he still had Von Siebold’s map with him, but he’d got rid of it before the soldiers decided to search him. Even without it he could roughly guess that they were nearing Edo.

  “Until the Sea Maze opens,” replied Leif, “and only the Vice Komtur knows when that will happen.”

  “And how does he know?”

  “He knows,” Leif said with a mysterious smile, “and you shouldn’t be asking so many questions.”

  Bran had long suspected the Grey Hoods had some way of communicating with the Yamato mainland; of sending messages across the Sea Maze. Leif either didn’t know what it was or refused to divulge such sensitive intelligence, but Vice Komtur Aulick’s moves were clearly coordinated with some source of information on the other side.

  Another freak wave wobbled the ship and Bran came dangerously close to losing his teeth on the railing. After that, came a lull in the storm and wide cracks emerged in the clouds, letting in the sun not seen for several days.

  “I’ll go check on Emrys,” he said.

  Leif looked at him suspiciously. According to his deal with the Vice Komtur, he should be accompanying Bran everywhere on the Star of the Sea, but it was plain he couldn’t be bothered.

  “Just don’t do any tricks.”

  The Gorllewin had agreed to keep Emrys with their own dragons. The jade-green dragon was so small compared to the other three Black Wings that it managed to fit into what amounted to storage space next to the big stalls.

  When Bran made his way to the stable deck, the three dragon riders were already there, also making use of the respite to make sure their mounts were in good health. One of them nodded at the boy; it was Frigga, a flax-haired shield-maiden, the third rider, who had not taken part in Bran’s capture on Tamna Island. The other two gave him cold looks. They weren’t friendly — Bran suspected they had as little warm feelings for the Wizards as he had for the Sun Priests — but, he had to admit, at least they treated him fairly. So far, he had no reason to complain about his treatment on the ship.

  Grey Hoods. Old Faithers. Sun Priests. Growing up, he had learned to associate those terms with fear and revulsion. The Wizardry Wars may have been ancient history, but Rome was still a sinister presence on everyone’s minds, just beneath the horizon of their thoughts. Dylan would certainly have expected Bran to think of the Star of the Sea’s crew as enemies. And it should have been even easier to hate the Gorllewin now that he knew that they were making deals with the likes of Ganryū and Black Lotus, that they were preparing something sinister in great secret from the rest of the world. But, after the month he’d spent among them, things weren’t so easy anymore. Enemy or not, he had more in common with them than he ever had with the Yamato. He may have been a prisoner, but at least he wasn’t a barbarian. Frigga, Leif, Thorfinn, even Aulick… those were real people, real lives, not vague threats and slogans from Miss Farnham’s history lectures.

  He nodded back at Frigga and passed the others quickly by with his eyes at his feet.

  He entered Emrys’s “stall”. Even this was far too big for the little dragon, which seemed almost lost in the vast space of the cargo hold. There were still crates, barrels, and iron drums piled under the walls, leaving just enough of the floor for the jade green dragon to stand with its wings folded.

  The Black Wings were noticeably absent from Leif’s sagas, Bran noted. The dragons of the Gorllewin that he had seen before were either the stocky, resilient Whites of the Norsemen, or the all-too-familiar Reds of the Prydain. Nothing out of the ordinary, certainly nothing that would explain the origin and existence of beasts as enormous and powerful as these. It seemed a wonder that they could even fly, let alone be useful in combat. The Imperial Golds, the largest breed Bran had ever heard about, had a wingspan of a hundred and twenty feet, but these had been bred for size and prestige, and were used only for ceremonial fly-throughs of the Dracalish royal family. The wings of the black dragons, Bran assessed, spanned easily a hundred and fifty feet, if not more. And yet the mounts were as sleek, fast, and agile as the Blues or Silvers of the Royal Marines.

  To Bran’s surprise, Emrys was asleep, unperturbed by the raging storm outside. The rider sent a mild stirring pulse, and felt the grogginess of the beast’s waking thoughts affect him as well. He rubbed his eyes and yawned.

  “I can’t believe you slept through all that,” he said, stroking the dragon’s scaly neck. Emrys raised its head, hissed lazily, and snorted a puff of gaseous steam. The entire room was filled with the smell of methane, but Bran had gotten so used to it he barely noticed it. It did mean, however, that he was left alone with his thoughts in the stall most of the time.

  “We’re almost across the Sea Maze,” he said. “In a few days we’ll be back in Yamato.”

  The dragon shook its head, annoyed.

  “I know, I know,” said Bran, “but it’ll be different this time. We’ll make a run for it as soon as we’re safe on the other side. W
ith my knowledge of Yamato and your wings, we’ll lose them in no time.”

  And then what…?

  For a brief moment before his capture he had considered returning to warn Satō and Nagomi of the impending danger. But it’d been over a month since he had last seen the girls. Who knew what happened to them in the meantime, or where they ended up...?

  And would they even still care about what he had to say?

  When he was leaving Ganryūjima, Dōraku was certain a war was inevitable. Perhaps it was already too late. Perhaps Yamato was already engulfed in a bloody conflict.

  “Satō was supposed to go to Satsuma,” he mused loudly. “She would be safe there. And she probably took Nagomi with her… but Satsuma is so far away. Getting there will be almost as hard as getting to Qin.”

  Emrys snorted in protest. Bran patted it on the snout.

  “You’re right. We’ll worry about that later.”

  First we need to get out of here in one piece.

  CHAPTER V

  The baby in Nagomi’s embrace started crying as she squeezed its arm gently in her left hand and made a shallow incision with a two-pronged needle. The drop of poison seeped into the wound and the baby’s cry grew louder and more frantic.

  “Shh…” she tried to calm it down. She felt the tiny wound with her finger. Nothing happened. She frowned and pressed harder. The finger traced a blue glowing line and the wound healed at once. She handed the baby back to the worried parents.

  “Is that it?” asked the mother, wrapping her child back in its simple rags. The father, meanwhile, carefully unrolled a single silver coin from his belt.

  They were poor commoners — not peasants, but townsfolk who’d fallen on hard times — and she knew that that single coin represented most of their fortune. She would never have dreamt of accepting it in the old days, but now she knew better.

  “They won’t believe it works if it’s not costly,” her father had explained when she first started administering the vaccine. “At first I was giving it away for free to the poor — you can’t control the disease if the poor are sick — but then they became suspicious and stopped coming. Some people started spreading nasty rumours… they thought, we’re poisoning them. So I started charging.”

  The coin would go to the local priests, who would then redistribute it among the needy. Such was the agreement, though Nagomi had her suspicions; since the Itō family began the inoculations, the local shrine had gained a new shiny roof and the priests’ robes had grown more opulent. The poor, on the other hand, seemed even poorer.

  She received the coin and put it on a small pile on the low table.

  “Your child is now safe.”

  The mother and father looked reluctantly at the baby, now quiet and smiling. She felt their distrust. She may have been a priestess, but curing smallpox seemed a wonder only Gods themselves were capable of. Eventually, they bowed deeply and left the little room where she accepted patients.

  There were four similar rooms in the house; in each one member of the Itō family administered the vaccine. The lines of people coming for the cure seemed endless — they came not only from Nagoya, but all around the domain; Nagomi’s father finally managed to convince the daimyo to allow free passage for anyone who wished to get themselves and their family vaccinated: nobleman and peasant alike. It was a grave breach of the law but fighting the epidemic required drastic measures.

  The door opened one more time. Nagomi reached with calloused fingers for another needle from the bamboo box.

  “That’s it,” she heard a deep voice, “there’s nobody else.”

  Nagomi started putting the medications away into the vials and boxes, but Torishi grasped her hand.

  “I’ll clean that up. You should rest, take a bath.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s the least I can do. You’re all miracle-workers to me.”

  The bear-man bent down to collect the utensils. He lived in a small hut he had built for himself in the garden, and was helping around the hospital, but did not work with the patients — they were too afraid of his long hair and beard, and foreign-looking clothes.

  Nagomi entered the steam-filled bathroom. She untied the red ribbon and shook her head, letting her hair tumble down her shoulders. They were black — dyed with indigo her father used to produce some of his medicine. Her fiery locks would not go down as well in Nagoya as in Kiyō.

  She took off the shiny white coat she was wearing as a physician’s assistant and folded it carefully into the basket, along with the vermillion hakama and obi belt, parts of the uniform she wore during her morning work at the local shrine.

  It’s like there’s two of me, she thought, watching her reflection in the steaming water. She touched the scar between her breasts; a memory of another time, another life. She stirred the water, and the reflection danced and split on the ripples. She sat on the edge of the cedar-lined bath, struggling to gather enough strength to wash before plunging in. Lately she was growing more and more tired at the end of each day, something that could not be explained by her daily duties. It worried her.

  She ran her fingers through water. It’s going to get cold, she thought. The servant worked so hard to heat it up.

  Old Yoshō had died a few weeks earlier, and the Itō household had gained a new servant in his place; a young girl from a nearby village.

  She never seems tired. Neither does Ine, and she’s studying all night after the hospital closes. What is wrong with me?

  Sacchan would have an answer. She giggled. Not necessarily the right one, but she’d have one.

  She wiped her hand and reached into the basket. Hidden in the folds of the white coat was a letter she had received from Kagoshima a few days ago. It had gone through many layers of the complex censorship of the Owari province, but most of its contents remained intact. The wizardess had written about setting up at the Academy, her first lessons and experiments, her teachers and fellow students, local politics and rumours.

  She’s doing what she always wanted, Nagomi thought. And this — she glanced around the bathroom — this is what I have always wanted. Living with my family and helping people.

  It should have been a happy thought, but it wasn’t.

  It is what I’ve always wanted, isn’t it?

  “Nagomi, dear,” her mother knocked at the bathroom door, “dinner will be ready soon.”

  “Just a minute, mom.”

  She filled the small cedar pail with bath water and grabbed the bran soap. She froze. The surface of the water turned black, glistening like tar, pulsating with energy. Some vague shapes spawned in the ripples…

  No. Not again!

  She poured the water back into the bath and the shapes vanished. She was in no mood for another vision.

  I’m not washing today, she decided, and put her clothes back on.

  “There you are,” said Torishi. “We were worried about you.”

  The tiny Inari shrine was a little more than a wooden box on stilts at the end of a narrow path branching out from behind the Offertory building. She was kneeling between the two statues of foxes with her head bowed low, but she wasn’t praying.

  Inari was her favourite kami — the foxes’ fur reminding her of her own red hair. She often came here to think and meditate.

  “There’s another family with a child, waiting for the vaccine.”

  She stared at him blankly. “I’m sorry, I can’t do it today. Let Ine see them.”

  “Your sister is busy as well.” He studied her eyes. “Are you alright?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m tired.”

  He crouched down beside her and stroked her hair in a way her father no longer had the time to do.

  “It’s fine, little priestess. You can rest today.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not just today.”

  He scratched his long beard, twisting its ends in his fingers.

  “You are sick? What did your father say?”

  “He said there’s nothi
ng wrong with me, physically, and that I should stop brooding and take an example from Ine,” she said bitterly.

  She turned gruffly towards Torishi. He looked just the same as he had when she first saw him; rough and gentle. He gave her an encouraging smile. It calmed her down.

  “I know he only wants me to be safe, and that he’s glad we’re all out of Kiyō after all that trouble with Kazuko-hime, the Crimson Robe, and the Takashima family, but… Dad still treats me like a child, as if nothing out of the ordinary happened over the last two months.”

  “It happened to you, not to him,” Torishi said. “He would not understand.”

  “But you do, don’t you? You know what’s wrong about all — this…?”

  She waved her hand around, hoping he would help her put in straight words all the complex thoughts running through her head. He bared his teeth in a way that others took for an angry snarl, but she knew was a smile. “I know what it is. You miss adventure! Mountains! Forest!”

  She let out a quiet laugh. “I’m not like you, Torishi-sama. I didn’t grow up in the wilderness.”

  She knew he wasn’t being serious — it was just an attempt at lightening the mood. But, in a way, he was right. Her current life was nowhere near as exciting and fun as those few weeks she had spent with Bran and Satō.

  She thought about the High Priestess and the cause she had believed in — the cause which urged her to help a castaway barbarian and a banished wizardess. Nagomi had always been a part of her plans. The High Priestess had given her a mission… She never quite understood what the mission was, but it certainly went beyond simply helping Bran and defeating the Crimson Robe. The Prophecy was not yet fulfilled.

  The mightiest will fall.

  And yet here she was, cosy and safe with her family, while Lady Kazuko had died a traitor’s death in shame and infamy.

  And all for what?

  In far-away Chinzei there may have been rebellious factions and voices of discontent, but from the perspective of Nagoya, those were just murmurs far below the surface. Nobody in the city was even aware of any disruption. To her parents, the disturbance of recent weeks was all over, and they were grateful for it. Nothing had changed in Yamato and, it seemed, nothing was going to change.