For Anita and for AddictedtoSD. For being there from the start, and subsequently refusing to let me stop, through the good chapters, and the bad ones. All my thanks.
In Nijo's Shadow
Part One
It was in the days just after the fall of the shogun that we were most alive. A time when we had felt, really felt, finally, that there was something to die for.
We had taken it for granted for so long, our two hundred year dynasty that couldn't fall, our own assured glory, whether we survived or died made no real difference. We lived in luxury and died in pointless bickers with each other for lack of any other enemies. We scuffled and fought over such pointless things as honour. We were warriors without war, and the days were slow and empty.
I was known as a prodigy then, in days of peace. Youngest son of Ahiko Rukawa, who was a feared swordsman and personal friend and bodyguard to the shogun himself. I too was renowned as a rising swordsman in my turn. At the age of seventeen I was all set to follow my father's path - to take over my father's seat near the heart of the shogunate. It seemed like my destiny, and I longed for it with a yearning that dwarfed anything I'd ever felt before. My place in the world. What was due to me. The harvest of all the hours spent swinging a sword until my hands bled. It had all been for this.
As children I, and my six elder brothers, had run rampant within the palace walls, scolded by the servants, but growing up like kings. We had watched our father work - shadowing the great general's steps no matter where he went. We had heard of Nijo Castle, beyond the mountains to the West in Kyoto, the true seat of the Tokugawa clan, but still we puffed with pride to know that the shogun lived here with us in Edo for most of the year. And though we knew that this Edo Castle of ours, site of government for the entire country, was only our temporary residence on account of our father's position, it was home to us. We loved it, and we knew no other world.
I shall remember it always. The feel of the weeping willow's leaves lashing across my cheek as we ran and laughed beneath her canopy, tugging heartlessly at her beautiful branches as we wove a secret den for ourselves behind the curtain of her leaves. The sight of the blossoms in spring lifting from their binds to flutter in brief, new-found freedom, only to fall ever so gently to the still surface of the lake like a thousand butterflies. The warm, roasted scents that drifted daily from the palace kitchens, the temptations of exotic almonds, sweet sugary treacle, plums and pears dipped in honey and glittering like gold before our eyes, were often too much to bear.
And so my childhood passed in a land of absolute beauty. As one of Ahiko Rukawa's sons naturally I had trained daily, for hours at a time, at the sword school founded by the Tokugawa shogunate two hundred years before. There, I gradually surpassed everyone I met. My eldest brother was eight years older than me, yet by the time I was ten, I was his equal with a sword. By the time I was eleven, I could reliably beat him in any spar.
They praised me. They spoke of my father, and how I had inherited his great skill, at how life would bring me everything I needed, such was my talent, and I believed them. Such naivety, I believed it. The whole world was changing around us and we didn't even know it. Sheltered by the palace walls, blinded by the elegant landscaping, we didn't know it. We didn't know anything.
And then, abruptly, or so it seemed to us, came the day that we were defeated. The warring factions trumpeted their victory at Kyoto, claiming the imperial dominance over the Tokugawa clan.
We later learnt that the shogun my father so revered, dedicated his entire life to, had fled from the battle leaving his men to die. That same shogun returned to us, defeated, at the castle in Edo with only a small surviving entourage. My father was not among them. He had been left behind on the plains before Nijo Castle; just another tattered body on the field.
The imperialists declared the Japanese people a restored people, no longer to live under tyrannous oppression, but to exist in peace and steady growth, isolated from the evils of the Western nations, under their true and rightful emperor. Then they turned their marching feet towards the castle at Edo. Towards our home.
All this was meant to be glory. There were celebrations among the common people, spectacular affairs where people who had nothing at all, barely enough to feed themselves, still scrapped together large parties and gatherings in their communities in honour of the restoration of the great emperor Meiji. And we, the scrabbling remains of the Tokugawa shogunate, who had kept peace and stability in the name of the emperor for over two hundred and fifty years, loyal to him until our last breathes, were abruptly cast as the devils, the rebels, the enemy.
Our leader, the shogun, soon surrendered entirely. Edo palace fell and was occupied by the group of the newly-celebrated rebel samurai who declared themselves loyal to the Meiji Emperor himself. They would come to be the first Meiji government.
It was a time of great change, excitement and wonder for all Japan. But the strongest memory I have of that furious period was standing still and silent on the deck of the ship as we fled from Edo, our precious home, and followed the ragged and defeated remnants of the Tokugawa samurai army to Hokkaido.
That was the day I grew up.
I awoke. And suddenly I was there. No longer were we assured our honour in death. Finally, finally, fighting to survive after so long.
We rose up, the last great battle, a samurai army the like of which you've never seen. And this time I was old enough to rise with them. My sword, I told myself, would be needed. I was seventeen years old, but I was equal to any man. Blades that would have long rusted had it not been for constant polishing were urged into motion again. The rich Hokkaido earth beneath our feet became a blood bog with our long-dormant power. We slew a thousand men, standing immortal at the centre of a spray of weaponry, delivering our arts with all their precision and elegance. Blood flew, yet did not stain our hakama. We, the resurrected gods.
Those lost days. I look back on them and know, now, that those short, bloody battles for a lord already lost were perhaps the greatest moments of my life.
But we were already defeated, and an end was inevitable. Slowly everything ground to a close, like a great train hauling its breaks and rolling to a stop punctuated with that last final lunge before motionlessness. I was alive, so many of my brethren were not, but this was the real end.
The remaining Tokugawa leaders were imprisoned to patiently await their execution. As for me, I was too young and unimportant for the opposing forces to care about. They didn't bother to waste their time and resources to destroy me. They simply stripped me of my name, my title, my samurai class, and left me to fend for myself.
They made us common, took away our souls and our self respect. Those that had once feared us as samurai feared us no longer. We became common mercenaries, drunkards, bullies and thieves. We lost ourselves, and we had no way back to the light.
And me? I fled Hokkaido, the site of our defeat, and found my way to the new capital – Kyoto. To the streets below Nijo Castle, the new seat of the newly restored emperor. And there, in the attempt to lose myself, I found alcohol. Alcohol and women.
The alcohol made me forget myself, but the women always reminded me again. I'd see them and remember - I was the whore now. For all my skill, my perfect upbringing, for all my unfulfilled promise, I was the one with the debts and the black future and the scorn of those that had once looked up to me. I was the one with my pride in the gutter. Even the silk-clad prostitutes of Shimabara had more than me. Even as I used them, I could feel their mocking thoughts and scornful eyes.
Many of those I had grown up with took their own lives. People I had lived beside, and then fought beside. People who were my peers. The three of my brothers who had not already found death of the field. All of them chose an easy way out. There was the possibility of following them, yet I never could bring myself to it. After all, what honour had I left to preserve? What was the point of that?
So it became a long list of procrastinations. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I will leave this world. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I will restore my honour. Until tomorrow became weeks, and then months, and then the idea was discarded all together. It was too late. Now, there seemed little point. I might as well carry on as not.
And then there was him.
He seemed like a prince among paupers when he moved through the gathered painted faces of the brothel women, his sleeves hitched up with string to reveal strong, hairless forearms, carrying the heavy taru of sake to and from the kitchen, his simple cotton yutaka shifting with his motions. He was dressed like a servant, true enough, but there was something in his features that couldn't be disguised by common wear. His body was strong and his arms sculpted as if he'd been labouring all his life and yet somehow I couldn't bring myself to believe it. He looked, at least to me, like he could have been one of the marble statues I'd seen in the palace kitanomaru gardens. Elegant and refined strength matched with distant, other-worldly perfection. More spirit than human.
And then there was the tiny, elegant bow of his thin obi. Set against the small of his back, so simple and easy to undo. So unlike the complicated yards and yards of fabric the women wore, intimidating in complexity. This was a knot that if you pulled, it would unravel, and the cotton would slide from his shoulders inch by inch like a waterfall.
I must confess I spent a good deal of time watching that knot.
Perhaps you think I am mad; that a young man surrounded by beauty and softness and women for my taking, would spend the hours admiring the ankles of a servant boy. But such is how I am.
So I would watch him throughout the evenings, as he came and went from the kitchen, even as I had female silk-clad bodies pressing against my arm where I sat sipping cheap sake. But my interest didn't dissipate, if anything it only grew stronger. The more I watched, the more curious I became.
I tried to wheedle information out of them, the women who opened themselves willing for me in exchange for a few coins. His name, his identity, when he'd come to work here, where he lived. I asked but never received any answers. Just excuses and denials - I don't know – they'd say. There are so many servant boys here, which do you mean? And every time I'd grow frustrated. There was only one I could possibly mean. There was only one with such blue eyes and such perfect features. Only one who looked as if he could have been descended from Tsukuyomi himself. I knew they were playing false with me when they denied any knowledge of him, but what could I do?
So I watched him from that distance, drinking away what little money I had left. I had no home, no friends, no allies. I had no cause to fight for, no family to protect. I was a wanderer who didn't wander. I haunted the streets of Kyoto like a ghost, steadily fading away. I wore my formal samurai kamishimo not from pride, but because I had no other clothes to wear. The small savings I had been able to escape Sapporo with had nearly gone. Once the money ran dry I wouldn't be able to afford these simple escapes any longer, but I wasn't really aware of things like that. I'd not been brought up to wrestle with finances. It had always been expected that I would rely on the patronage of a powerful daimyo, or perhaps even become one myself. I didn't have any other concept of work, of savings, or the true value of money.
Even if I had, there was little I could do. There was a constant chill at my waist where my long-faithful sword should have been. No comforting weight at my belt. Government police had taken my blades – my samurai soul - from me and left me thus empty, without even the simple means to defend myself or work the only trade I knew. Rendering the calloused skin of my hands meaningless. Leaving all those years of practice in the dirt.
Sometimes, during the day when the bars were not yet open, I sat at the kerbside and just watched the life of Kyoto walking past. The elegant geisha, hair full of flowers, faces painted right down their necks. They all looked so young, so unhaggard, so many worlds away from me. Yet none of them could match the stunning beauty of even the most meagre chambermaid at Homaru Palace. The women who had attended the shogun had been beautiful beyond compare. Sometimes I would close my eyes there on the side of the street and the sights of Kyoto would be replaced by the perfect tranquillity of the pond at Hasuike-bori, the trees that wound their way down to the still water, the slate grey boulders gently mossed with bright koi fish flashing between them. I saw the rocky paths thrown with white gravel where were had once scampered carelessly in childish joy. The weeping willow under whose branches we had attempted to make a home.
At those times, remembering a past that was lost to me, bitterness and longing would rise up in me like waves.
It was as I sat like that one afternoon, lost in regretful dreams on the street in front of the brothel, that someone caught and tripped on one of my outstretched legs. They stumbled noisily, and, my daydreams interrupted, I looked up irritated.
My exclamation of rage died on my lips when I saw that it was that servant, the very one I had always watched, carrying a large basket of dates which was obscuring his view of the road ahead. The load must have been heavy for his footfalls sounded like hammers on the dust of the road.
Realising that he had collided with someone he set the basket down and hastily apologised with a low bow. It was the first time I had ever heard his voice. Deep and warm and comfortable and he spoke with easy formality, asking my forgiveness.
Annoyed, I looked down and saw that in the collision, the thong of my willow-wound sandal had snapped. My daydreams had put me into a foul mood and, upon seeing the damage, I snapped at him angrily, demanding that he compensate me for it.
He straightened from his apologetic stance and looked me over briefly. My dirtied clothes and face, the air of dejection that hung around me, my sorry story was plain for anyone to see. I was a fallen samurai. I was not worthy of their respect or fear, though I demanded it still. I was arrogant and prideful, clinging to the past, embittered by my fall, lost, homeless, pathetic and utterly pitiful.
All the dark and twisted things he saw in me. I am quite sure he saw it all.
Still he got to his knees in the dust of the road beside where I was sitting and held out his hands to remove the snapped sandal from the sole of my foot. I let him do so, watching the top of his head move as he leaned over the shoe and set to work, his large, work-worn hands demonstrating a surprisingly delicate dexterity that his muscular size didn't suggest.
I stared at him as he worked, noting all over again the impossible perfection of his strong shape, how his skin was unblemished and boyish. Not the alabaster prince I had imagined. He was warmer, much warmer, than that. I guessed his age was similar to mine. Subconsciously I lifted my hand to my own face. I hadn't looked into a mirror in months and I had no idea what I looked like now. How did I reall appear to him?
I struggled for a little while, and then I finally found my voice enough to demand, "your name?"
He paused in his work for the briefest of moments to reply "Akira."
No family name, I noticed, like most of the peasants. The commoners were often prone to take the names of their samurai daimyo, but in this period of unrest all the daimyo were being upended, changed or slaughtered, and the people no longer knew under what name they existed.
After a moment the boy lifted the sandal up to show me how he had repaired it. It was elegantly done so that the break was barely visible. I could not have done such a good job myself. I took it back from him with a little reluctance, begrudging in my thanks.
He peered at me then, squinting his eyes as he looked up into my face with as much curiosity as I had paid to him when I had thought he wasn't looking. He seemed a little surprised by what he saw.
"You're young," he declared in some bemusement.
I frowned. No doubt it had been meant as an innocent comment, from a simple mind, so I forgave myself the chore of sifting through the possible implications of that statement.
But still I wondered - did I appear old, then? Was my seventeen-year-old face wrinkled, hair greyed? Honestly it wouldn't have surprised me. I felt like I'd lived a thousand years too long.
"What's your name?" He queried next, with not quite the appropriate amount of respect, but still the painstaking effort he'd put into my mended sandal seemed to warrant some regard.
"Rukawa" I replied, a touch haughtily, the high ancestry of my family name feeling like a comforting blanket around my long injured pride. "Rukawa Kaede. Son of-" but then I stopped myself halfway. What good would invoking the name of my slaughtered father do now? I scowled and left the sentence incomplete.
"Rukawa" Akira repeated thoughtfully, looking over me once again. He sat back on his haunches, making himself more comfortable, as if he had the intention of sitting and talking with me all that bland afternoon. "What is your story, Lord Rukawa?"
"Story?" I echoed, arching a brow.
Akira gave a patient nod. "What paths did you choose to bring you here, to this place, at this hour?"
When I did not reply he gave an encouraging smile; "Everyone has a story to tell, in this day and age. You were born a samurai; that I can see. But now, where are you heading?"
I stared at him and could not answer his question. He spoke of chosen paths, but I had never made a choice in my whole life. I had only ever stepped the path that was laid out before me. I had left my fortune to destiny. My story was a story of obedience to the wills of others, and my final sorry fate heavy in their hands. I was heading nowhere at all.
He heard my silence and a flicker of disappointment appeared in his features. "I love the samurai arts," he told me forthright, puzzling me with what seemed like an abrupt change of subject. "But the world is changing. The war at Kyoto was fought with guns, not swords. Great sticks that rain death, killing the skilled and the unskilled without even getting into range to strike." A shudder ran through him as he recalled the unpleasant memories. I wondered if he had snuck to the edge of the battle to watch the mighty samurai clans come to clash, and seen more blood than he would have cared to.
I knew of the guns he was referring to - I had seen them myself in Hokkaido. Before that battle I had comforted myself that my father had died a noble warrior's death, but in the end it seemed he, so much for being the most celebrated swordsman in the country, had simply been peppered with metal shards by unskilled foot soldiers. All that glorious talent so easily decimated.
Yet Akira's seriousness struck me through my melancholy as he spoke again, his strong and dark eyebrows rising emphatically with his words. "The ways of war are changing. There's no place for the samurai anymore."
I stared at him, this common boy so sure in his words, speaking like a great scholar or philosopher. What did he know? What could this servant boy possibly know of the hundreds of years of history, of legacy, of a family name that I and I alone carried on my shoulders? How could he stand there and tell me to wipe my history away after I had sweated and toiled so long and so hard to preserve it? How could I unbecome the very thing that I was?
To not be a samurai would be like asking the trees not to bear leaves, or for the tiger to stop being a tiger. It wasn't possible. I didn't understand, and I couldn't see.
He left me then, strange, perfect boy that he was. Picking up the basket of dates with his strong arms and hoisting it towards the doors of the kitchen without looking back again.
It felt suddenly cold there by the wayside without him. Much colder than it had been before. Still I remained there immobile for the rest of the afternoon, just staring blankly forward, utterly idle. No one else came to talk with me. Of course they didn't. No one ever did.
Once the sun had sunk low in the sky I finally moved. I looked in my money pouch and saw that I had enough, and then rising from my seat, legs aching with sitting in one place for so long, and made my way into that so-familiar bar where Akira worked, hoping to lose myself again.
I sat at my usual table and ordered my usual round of cheap sake. I had no reason to suspect that it wouldn't be another night just the same as all the others that had preceded it since I had arrived in this broken city.
The bar was an unpleasant and grubby place, a big, smoky room with low round tables, sticky with residues, and cushions well worn and frayed. The women wore gaudy colours to cover a lack of sophistication. They smeared their lips with red and wore silk kimono once vibrant but now worn and faded like the cushions and throws they knelt beside. They all of them had lines of worry and encroaching age under their face paint. They tried to hide it as best they could, as if their hopeless reality was something of which they ought to be ashamed. Not that I could blame them for that. I felt so much the same way after all.
The woman who joined me at my lonely table that evening was one I had come to know quite well. She liked me, perhaps because I was more gentle than most, while other girls kept away, made nervous by my fierce appearance. She was sweet enough, keeping quiet unless I addressed her directly, which I seldom did. She dedicated her time to me, sitting at my side, tending my needs, pouring sake and pressing herself against my arm in soft suggestions. I mostly ignored her until the time would come when I would take her to one of the unremarkable rooms at the rear of the building and bed her so that my frustrations might be released, and she might be paid for her efforts.
We'd gone through this routine several times before and so she was familiar and accommodating of my ways. It was an uneasy alliance, of which neither of us were fond, but in which both of us found necessity.
However, as the tenth hour of the evening rolled on, there was an unexpected commotion at the door.
I looked up as three large samurai strode inside, hands on the hilts of their long-swords as they surveyed the gathered patrons and whores who looked up unanimously at their entrance. It was odd to see such men here. A low-class brothel like this was a place for the socially excluded, not for rising gentry. They didn't belong here, that much was clear. Still they stepped purposefully in my direction when they caught sight of me, and the woman by my side moved closer to me in nervousness. I watched them approach without much care. It didn't have anything to do with me.
"Rukawa Kaede, son of Rukawa Ahiko?" One of them demanded, levelling with my table.
I took a quiet sip of my sake. The entire bar was looking our way. With movements utterly unhurried I set my cup down, moving the sharp alcohol around my mouth, though my teeth, tasting it leisurely.
Finally, after excruciating moments, I met their stare head on. "What business might you have with me, lords?" My words were polite, but my tone dripped with derision.
"Got some attitude for a boy who still smells like milk" the nearest one snarled, running his hands up and down the length of his sword hilt suggestively. "Sure you can handle these women, kid?"
I tilted my head as if the question made no sense to me and just gazed steadily back. The conversation stalled, until one of the other men stepped forward.
"We've heard your sword surpasses even your father's. Is that true?"
I shrugged, noncommittal. It hardly seemed to make any difference. The days of my father were over. However my casual silence seemed to annoy them.
"Fight us!" the first declared forcefully, leaning forward, eyes shining with bright conceit. "One on one. We'll pay you. Five ryo. Ten, if you're really as good as they say."
I looked at him with unmasked disgust. Just more bored samurai looking for ways to die. Bothering me with their puny requests as if I had nothing better to do then drive their weak souls out of their soft, mortal flesh. Hardly what I needed in my life.
In answer I shook my head clearly for them to see. It wasn't as if I could accept the challenge even if I wanted to - I didn't even have a sword.
Unfortunately they were unwilling to accept my simple dismissal readily.
There were no further words. Once again there was no choice, and little or nothing I could do the sway the fate of my life. It had all been before me from the beginning. I could neither have predicted nor avoided what happened next.
Like lightning a sword drew and struck. It confused me for an instant, but my confusion soon faded back into reality, my hard-honed instincts prickling me.
She fell back in a grotesque spew of blood that did her no justice, her head separated from her body, her worn kimono soaking in the vibrant red of her short but violent death.
Her head rolled with a kind of sickly comical expression across the tatami floor, and bumped against a nearby table leg.
Screams suddenly burst forth from the rest of the patrons staring on in horror. I lifted my sake cup to my lips again with a long sigh. One sip, and I turned apologetic eyes upon the butterfly shattered on the ground. Innocent blood, I fancied, looked so much brighter, like it was made of sunshine.
Setting my empty cup down, I slowly pushed myself to my feet. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the servant, Akira, standing frozen in the kitchen doorway, immobile as he stared through the outbreak of pandemonium. However even as I stood I saw him finally turn and dash off as if overcome by the whole thing.
I felt very alone.
I looked down and watched the mended thong of my sandal shuffle along as my feet reluctantly followed the three grinning samurai out of the door.
They escorted me round into a side alley, wide enough for three men to stand shoulder to shoulder, more than enough room to swing a sword. All of them were jittery with excitement and blood lust. Three punks, riding high on the imperial victory, shouldn't have caused me any trouble. In ordinary circumstances, I wagered, looking at them critically, I could have cut them down. However, I still had no weapon. My enthusiastic assailants didn't seem to have taken this into account, or they just didn't care. They were only intent on adding the name of Rukawa to their list of conquests, and nothing but my defeat seemed to matter to them.
It wasn't the idea of death, or dying, that bothered me particularly. Rather I found it hard to stomach the idea of giving up our name so easily. And to men so undeserving of it too. But still, if this was perhaps a chance to escape what I had become, I could accept it.
So I shuffled my feet into the familiar lunge, the cool flecks of gravel grating under my sandals. A stance I had adopted a thousand times before, but never in circumstances quite like this.
Still it didn't occur to me to protest my unfair disadvantage. My hands moved automatically to grasp the non-existent sheath at my waist, closing around air, preparing to perform a lightning quick draw which would fail to save me this time, no matter how perfectly I performed it. I lowered my centre of gravity, bracing my feet against the floor so that I wouldn't loose my balance, lifted my eyes and prepared myself to die.
"My lords, wait!"
My eyes flickered to the side to see none other than Akira standing a few feet away from me, a long katana clutched in his hands.
"Lord Rukawa, your sword."
I stared at him in confusion, but he only held the blade out reverently for me to take, the barest hint of a knowing smile flickering at the corners of his lips. I hesitated, staring at the offered weapon with widened eyes. I hadn't held a sword in months after a lifetime spent handling one every single day. I wondered if I'd go mad if I touched this one now.
Still it held it out to me, and with my brow arched in suspicion, I took it uncertainly from him.
My hands, I realised, were gently trembling.
I looked it over dazedly, like a man who awakens from a dream to find riches in his hands. The sword was perfectly balanced, a weapon made by a master, not a cheap imitation or a punk's plaything. It was a good sword. One fit for a daimyo.
With my eyes still on Akira, not able to looked away from the dark amusement in his face, I slid the sheath into my uwa-obi where it sat with the reassuring weight I had missed so terribly. Things seemed more probable, less desperate, more optimistic, just with that weight at my side. As if control over my fate had been handed back to me, my depression lifted.
I tilted my head, only slightly, in recognition of the favour he had done for me, and turned back towards my opponents. This time, as I returned to my preparatory lunge, I knew I was facing down not death, but victory. Not darkness, but tomorrow.
The first man came at me, a battle cry on his lips as he charged, katana held in a wild jaunt back across his shoulder, ready to swing down and dismember me at the neck. He didn't get the chance. Akira's blade sung sweetly as it accelerated out of the sheath and took the man's life in one smooth pass.
Surprised, perhaps not having really expected a fair fight, the two remaining men quickly came at me simultaneously. I shifted my feet and turned the blade slightly, gripping it tightly in two fists.
Things moved faster than sight. I had long ago abandoned the effort to see with my eyes during battle. I trusted my body's instincts absolutely. A cut to the right as I moved one step back, the ring of metal on metal as swords collided, then a shower of sparks as they racked viciously together and with a final upwards thrust, the last of the three men fell obediently to the floor.
I pulled the blade out of the man's stomach and held it vertically, pointing down so the liquids could run off the blade to the dirt. It had been over in a matter of seconds.
Akira's silence was almost tangible. Still I ignored him resolutely until the blade had mostly cleaned itself. I looked again at the sword in my hand and felt a thrill of joy at the way the moonlight caught the metal like a smile. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Mesmerized by the delicate but deadly blade I lifted the sword to my eye to read the elegant calligraphy engraved into the metal near the handle.
"Sendoh" I read aloud. Then I looked up at him and waited for an explanation.
Instead of speaking, he simply held out his hand in a gesture that clearly asked for the sword to be returned. I didn't move.
"Where did you get this?" I demanded.
Instead of turning defensive in the face of my questioning, he simply smiled.
"It belongs to my family," he said, unconcerned. "It was my father's sword. Now it is mine."
I narrowed my eyes with distrust. "The Sendoh family" I said suspiciously, "held the Tokugawa seat at Nijo Castle. They were the long trusted allies of Yoshinobu Tokugawa here in Kyoto."
"That's right," he confirmed with all pleasantness, determinedly oblivious to the sound of the accusation in my voice. I was accusing him of stealing the sword – perhaps from the battlefield he had already confessed he had been to – but he steadfastly ignored my implications. Rather he tilted his head to the side and replied; "And I believe the Rukawa clan were the famous family of bodyguards charged with protecting the shogun at his residence in Homaru Palace over in Edo."
I opened my mouth, and closed it again. It was entirely possible he had learnt that from a loose-tongued samurai visiting the bar. Possible but, it seemed to me, ridiculously unlikely. I hesitated longer than I ought to, before I forced the query out, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, feeling like an idiot even as I said it, not really believing it.
"Are you saying that you are… samurai?"
But then I shook my head. I was being ridiculous. How could he possibly be from such a powerful, influential family, this boy? He was just a servant, low born, working in a brothel who had stolen a sword. What the hell was I getting so worked up about?
"No" I answered my own question with another shake of my head. "That's impossible."
He grinned then, wider than I had seen him do so yet. There was light in his eyes; excitement, I realised. But not blood lust, not like the three men before him. The desire to fight, not to kill, but to test skill, was something that lit him up and made him even more beautiful than before. I felt as if I was drunk with him. I wanted just to breathe him in.
"Let me prove it to you" he offered gamely, holding out his hand once again for the sword which I finally passed back to him with some reluctance. It was far and away the best blade I had ever touched. "Let's make a wager," he continued. "Whoever wins the spar must do as the other says."
I think I must have stared at him as if he were mad. Hadn't he just seen me cut down three men in the space of moments? Did he really think he had a chance against me?
Still he seemed unnaturally confident in himself, gesturing in invitation for me to retrieve of the swords from the defeated at my feet. I did so, not taking my eyes off him, somewhat bemused by the strange turn of events. It all seemed strangely surreal. I knew I ought to refuse – it was probably breaking a hundred rules of family bushido to engage in a spar with a commoner – but he had some kind of power over me I couldn't explain. Just the opportunity to spend this time with him, even here among the blood and guts of the slain, set my skin on fire.
And then there was this wager. I'd be lying if I told you that the possibilities hadn't already presented themselves to me. The things I could do with him, could make him do, if only I had the courage to demand them. If only I could admit to myself, and to him, just what enflamed me so badly. If I could have him, as if he were one of the kagema, I felt myself already trembling with the thought of it.
But I think most of all, and most secretly, I was hopeful of somehow finding something like a friend – someone whose situation was in so many ways similar to mine. I think what I wanted more than honour, or death, or the past returned to me, was just an end to this unbearable loneliness. I was standing on a frontier – never before in history had an entire social class been thus culled. I didn't know what I was anymore. I was desperate, truly desperate, to find that he was, as he claimed, a son of the Sendoh clan, a samurai by blood, fallen, like me, with the rest of the Tokugawa allies. I think I needed that most of all.
So I picked up a sword, swung it in a vicious hiss, testing it against the air, turning it around so I would strike on the side without a blade. It felt light and easy in my hand, like it was an extension of my own body. My confidence was high as I took up my position again, waiting for Akira to respond to the provocation.
He grinned, and then he moved.
Fast! I thought, bringing my blade up in surprise as the Sendoh sword came closer to my neck than was comfortable. It took all my wits to parry the swipe and move away. Almost immediately, it seemed, the blade was there again, at my left, driving for my undefended side.
My feet did an inelegant twist that very nearly sent me to the floor in my effort to avoid that swing.
Everything about our fight was fast and dangerous and absolutely phenomenal. It had been years since I'd had a serious challenger who was close to my own age. It wasn't only Akira's sword that was fit for a daimyo – his skill was too. In speed he matched me absolutely, blow for blow, with instincts that might even have surpassed my own. It was as if he knew where I would strike before I even turned my sword his way.
Sword, family, blood, heritage, all those things could be feigned, but there was nothing that could emulate a lifetime spent swinging a sword. Whether he was born from samurai stock or not, he was easily the most talented swordsman I'd ever known.
Still I like to think I was his equal, if not his better. I could have beaten him, I'm sure, if other circumstances hadn't moved against me. But I'd been drinking that evening, and my reactions were slowed while his remained sharp. I hadn't eaten proper meals in weeks, subsisting on small bites and alcohol. So in the end, once again, the wheels of my life came round to my detriment. My muscles exhausted themselves against Akira's unforgiving blows, my speed dropped off with each subsequent parry, slower with every thrust, until I could no longer keep up the furious pace we had started. Finally it was my exhausted body that broke down so that even as I knew what I needed to do, my muscles no longer heeded my commands. We broke apart after another lightning exchange of blows, and I felt my legs stumble beneath me, my head growing light with uncomfortable weightlessness. I was breathing hard, so hard, grating my lungs on the frantic rush of air, so I thought I might die from want of oxygen. I panicked, only briefly, feeling myself give way. I'd never felt so dependent, so out of control, so enslaved by my own weak flesh in my entire life.
And then, before Akira could attack again, I swayed where I stood, my eyes struggling even to focus, my whole body turning distant and numb. I couldn't even feel the texture of the sword grip in my hands any longer. Keeping my eyes on him, I finally lost my hold on the world. In the midst of our fight, in the middle of that dirty alleyway, my own bemusement written on my face, I am ashamed to admit that I fainted. And so, to my eternal shame, the wager was lost.
~tbc
ANs: Happy birthday Kaede! January 2012.
I confess I spent more time researching for this fic than I did writing it ._." I have so many notes on the Boshin War you wouldn't believe it.
This was supposed to be a one-shot, but then I kind of ran out of time, and I wanted to get something up for Kaede's birthday, so I cut it in half. Shame because it was meant to be my first attempt at writing a serious one-shot that wasn't just a bunch of semi-senseless waffle but I guess it was just not meant to be, alas!
Part two will contain Sendoh's story and some lemony content, so please look forward to it!