Wood stolen from other pyres
Nine papers—eight tears, eight times over—the sound was lost in the rustle of patched-together silk. Under clear skies, it was lost in the sound of pouring rain as the worms on the third floors of Kuri farmhouses chewed through mulberry leaves. Oden's vassals, nine in all gathered, in a nearby field.
The triangular shoulders of the servant's uniform, the kataginu, were easily traced in the evening light. Clowns on the Noh stage and samurai on the kabuki wore it—one portraying a common servant, one a showy warrior. It suited Kanjuro's role.
The theatre was closed to him. Peering from the wings, gaslights showcased blood spreading across the boards and, more dimly, splattered over the faces of the patrons on the cheap earthen-floor right in front of the stage. The star attractions of the show, Kanjuro's parents, hacked to death by vigilantes. If anyone knew he was also from that clan, it'd be curtains for him too.
Buying and selling and weighing and counting at the markets and small shops were lowly occupations, but even those were closed off to Kurozumis, so Kanjuro scraped a few coins together here and there selling calligraphy brushes. He stole hair for the bristles from the dead and the living.
"Persecuted, eh?" Oden had asked, rubbing at the back of his head where the teenaged thug had tried to scalp him, "Might've deserved it."
Corpses were less frightening than the shogun's son. Kanjuro had been thirteen, and why he even thought that stealing a single hair from the head of Kozuki Oden had been possible was beyond him, but there was so much of it, surely he had enough to spare. At least the attempt brought him under the Oden castle roof.
Bumbling into each and every situation, Kanjuro eased the worries of his lord and sorry bunch of followers by making them laugh. And he fought them. But he also fought beside them. His brush, strapped to his back like a nodachi, breathed shaky life into any design he drew, and drew blood when held as a sword.
Oden's vassals, nine in all, gathered in a nearby field.
Inu had come back from his travels decked out in garb reminiscent of the clothes he and Neko had worn when they first washed up on the beach so many years ago.
Crisp and functional, the style reminded Kanjuro of the contraband paintings of overseas soldiers or explorers he'd spied in the capital, or when creeping through houses. Some of the new emperor's men flaunted similar attire.
Neko snuggled up all cosy and warm in a wide haramaki. In Kuri's heyday, he'd worn it to keep his kimono in place, but nowadays it wrapped around some kind of long sleepwear, and Neko looked ready to roll into bed. Unorthodox as the items were, the cloaks and coats of rulers draped the Minks' shoulders. The years they'd spent overseas with Oden had changed and reclaimed them.
In Kuri's brighter days, Raizou's ninja yoroi was of the highest quality, but the nine retainers couldn't hold their own against Orochi, especially without Oden, and it was as mended and stitched now as when they'd first come across the broken-hearted shinobi in the Udon woodlands.
Ashura Doji wore his kimono loosely and was as likely to strip it to his waist as not, intimidating everyone. As glamorous as kabuki headliners, Denjiro, Kiku and Kin'emon set kimono and hakama trends everywhere they went, even with clothes as threadbare as the lands of Wano itself. Kawamatsu scrubbed up nicely. Commendable for a fishman.
Despite hard times, despite the rags they wore, they were Kozuki samurai. A far cry from the unwanted, unwashed lowlifes and beggars who'd first crossed Oden's path.
Oden's vassals gathered in a field nearby the farmhouses that tended the silkworms. Eight papers each were placed into the pouches or pockets or containers that held the friends' individual vivre cards, and then they parted ways.
Kanjuro's arm, raised in farewell, dropped to his side. The purple and yellow haze of the sinking sun was truly lovely. Pulling the cards out of the pouch tied at his waist, he lined them up on his cupped hands, and tried to remember which card was which.
Neither a gust of wind, nor the flap of the wings of a crane sent them flying into the air, but Kanjuro couldn't hold back a twitch at the back of his nose and he sneezed. The cards eddied and swirled away from his palms, and then shot into the wings of a crane. Kanjuro swiped at one and then another, but was only able to save four.
A scrambled muddy mess, all were serrated so none were his own. Kanjuro's vivre card reformed each time it was torn. He pocketed them. They still had their use.
The razzle-dazzle of the bonfire on the edge of the capital flickered over the faces of the villagers. Smiling and laughing, they warmed their hands by the flames. Warmth that Lord Orochi had generously provided.
Kozuki Sukiyaki, the previous shogun, had selected Orochi as proxy-successor at his son's request. That selfish bastard, the so-called rightful heir, had been off touring forbidden lands. Lands they couldn't even dream of without the threat of arrest.
When Oden had returned, as strong as he was—strong enough to have saved the flower capital from the Mountain God, strong enough to use its child to carry his palanquin—he turned a blind eye to the fathers and husbands and sons imprisoned under the new leaders' command.
He turned a blind eye to lands and forests stripped and to the families starving in their homes—those who had them. Oden's every step as he danced naked in the streets undercut Lady Toki's reassurances like the tinkle of a jester's cap and bells.
What had the Kozuki clan done to free Wano's people from the fetters of the new shogun and emperor?
Their cheer licked at the air as the bonfire devoured furniture and trinkets and hangings, all stamped with the Kozuki crest.
"You were here just last week."
Light shining through the elm dappled the wooden engawa-porch running alongside the visitor's room of Oden Castle. Orochi knelt on the hardwood, waiting for admission to the main room. Once granted, he removed his footwear and entered, immediately dropping to his knees and then flattening himself on the floor.
"You understand, Lord Oden—" The tatami under his fingers was smooth, the odour of freshly woven reeds tickled his nostrils. So different from the rotting, unpolished boards of the hovel he was squatting in. "—Lord Yasuie is a great man, and I owe him a great debt."
Shimotsuki Yasuie, the daimyo of Hakumai, was strict but fair. And easily taken for a ride. The region was on the other side of the country. Any news took time to reach Kuri, but if Yasuie was going to hunt him down, he would've done so by now.
"My family's illness has worsened and I've already asked him for so much." Orochi rose to his knees and wrung his hands before bowing almost flat again.
He'd left the Shimotsuki residence and lands without notice, and with reappropriated riches. Shimotsuki probably chalked the theft up to coincidence. Only one month's service and they gave him the benefit of the doubt. Fools.
Orochi peered up at Oden from between his bowed shoulders before quickly staring back down at the flooring. Oden was a soft touch too. The Hakumai daimyo had taken him in when his father, Sukiyaki, had disowned him, expelling him from the capital and castle.
Disgust trampled Oden's face and he waved a hand in annoyance, but he didn't show any lack of trust. Orochi grovelled so he'd never have to do so again. He grovelled because a Kurozumi should.
The pink-haired samurai, Kanjuro, raced over and knelt by his master's side.
Kanjuro met Orochi on the engawa and passed double the gold and silver that had been requested. As a Kurozumi should.
Using the funds he'd accumulated from both Shimotsuki and Oden as leverage, Orochi teamed up with Kaidou. Wano needed an emperor. Orochi needed a powerful ally. Wano craftsmen needed an outlet for their superb forging and smithing skills. And the World Government was always short of weapons.
Shogun Orochi hadn't disposed of all the Kozuki family's possessions, not yet. There were fine pieces among them, particularly the stonemasonry. Anything with their crest was stored, and combustible items were burnt week by week, usually publicly.
Stamped, embossed or carved with the Kurozumi crest, Orochi had replacement finery and furnishings crafted. Vacant of heart and mind, the idiot lord constantly dancing through the streets in his birthday suit correlated with a sharp growth in Orochi's stocks. It pleased him to no end. Capital capital.
With Wano's protector all but having deserted the land, the shogun and emperor mined the kingdom to its core and plundered its natural resources. As pirates should.
Kagome, kagome
The bird in the basket
Orochi pulled a box from the tansu. Wooden sides planed, shaved and chiselled, they easily slot together, not a nail to be seen—although Wano had nails, of course, and Kaidou had a thousand creative uses for them.
When, oh when will it come out
In the night of dawn
Inlaid with maple, the family crest was carved into all panels of the darker walnut, including the lid.
The crane and turtle slipped
Who is behind you now?
Higurashi's seal lifted. Thank the gods Orochi's guide and mentor had taught him the rhyme to release the spell. Her death had been unfortunate. She was tactical. Her part in bringing about Oden's defeat had been pivotal, but subterfuge always carried a price. Sometimes victory, sometimes loss. The old witch had served the Kurozumis well.
Orochi raised the box's cover and peered at the papers—four pieces resting on the base. The idea of not knowing what the shadows of Kuri were up to would have been absurd.
Nine scabbards were present on the night of Oden's death. Four entered the burning Oden castle and none left. Giggling and whispering behind his back, the people ridiculed Orochi's fear of the warrior's return. He knew they did. The grave markers stood outside the ruins of the castle, but the samurais' bones had never been brought to him.
Shoulders stiffening and then releasing, he swayed in a gentle serpentine motion. He grabbed at the small bell on the low table in front of him, knocking it to the floor. Shivering, he snatched it up and rang. Why wasn't a warm bath already filled?
If all the townsfolk, everyone in the nation, laughed from defective SMILEs, whether in pleasure or pain, incurring his wrath at their impudence, then let that be on them.
Orochi knew Kaidou didn't suffer him gladly, but he did suffer him. Without each other, he wouldn't be shogun, or even breathing, and Kaidou's ranks would occupy only a small part of the land, if at all.
The spy in the Kozuki quarters had been reliable if not a bit clumsy. Kaidou didn't know Kanjuro by name, but the information he'd fed them was essential in trapping Oden and the samurai at Udon when the spineless daimyo finally grew a backbone.
Perhaps the mole played his role a little too well. By the time Orochi received the vivre cards, they were soiled and jumbled. Kanjuro only knew that his own wasn't among them. But after the great battle—the crackle of fire and smoke still blackening the sky, the stench of burnt flesh cloaking the land—two cards shunted across Orochi's hand. The Minks had escaped.
They had a head-start, and at that point the shogun didn't have the numbers or popularity to challenge a nation of human-hating warriors, even with Kaidou's backing.
Ten years had passed since he'd ascended to the shogunal office. Schools and dojos and martial art practices that ran in all regions were breeding grounds for rebellion, especially after Oden's grandstanding in his final hour.
Domestic insurgents needed to be purged before he dealt with any offshore scourges.
New recruits joined Kaidou's army day by day. The global underground quaked in its boots at that demon, and the underworld clattered its cloven hooves. Orochi isolated the scraps of vivre card belonging to the Minks from the others, although he kept an eye on them—their time would come. And he waited for the other papers to stir.
None did.
Not on the day of the fire.
The day after the fire.
The day after that.
None of the two remaining sections moved when he placed them on his hand and urged them to lift or shuffle across his palm. If the samurai were dead, a scattering of ash would have smeared the walnut.
Kanjuro was an empty vassal, he made such a good Kozuki that he'd been willing to die with them. Maybe the cards were blank, made up of nothing but mulberry thread.
But, no. Previously, Kanjuro had shared parts of the vivre cards belonging to Oden and his wife, Toki. Those had combusted. One, as his men riddled Oden with bullets and Kaidou fired the terminal shot and the past shogun's son fell lifeless into a vat of boiling oil. Imagine withstanding that for an hour, but at the end of the day even Kozuki Oden wasn't invincible. The other card had disintegrated when his men brought Toki down.
Four of the samurai were in the blazing castle, and only Toki left it, but the cards his spy had given him remained intact. Two cards pointed towards the inferno and then lay flat and still as a screech of falling beams and stones scolded the silenced night. But the paper didn't burn.
Momonsuke and Hiyori, the Kozuki prince and princess, were young and didn't have cards. Fire gobbled up everything. The children, the samurai. So the citizens believed. What was left after a blaze but ash?
Over time, Orochi swore that one card nudged its way along his hand by a thou or even less before faltering. But every time he or his men followed its activity, they were obstructed by the reeds and grasses surrounding the banks of rivers, lakes and ponds. Following the cards wasn't an exact science.
Seven years after the razing of Oden castle, the card that fluttered occasionally lost its sheen but none of its shape. Orochi had heard that Udon prison now held a kappa, and he ordered the beast be fed a diet of poisoned fish. Kurozumi blood was laced with arsenic, after all.
Guards couldn't get close to execute the kappa. How it'd been caught was anyone's guess. Orochi wanted it alive, but feeble, in order to lead him to the ghosts. If it was one of them.
Wano natives dismissed Toki's words. That was pleasing. All the same, palace ninjas and komusou monks, unassuming under their tengai hoods, gathered information and alms and kept an ear out for rumblings across the land. The prophecy could not be discounted.
People were weak. Undernourished and underfed. What could they do? Spectral samurai with no need for food were another matter.
He sent the head royal ninja, Fukurokuju—Kozuki Sukiyaki's former retainer—to Udon prison, and the man narrowly dodged a fishbone spat his way. It was a ninja's shame to be detected. The card pointed towards the cell.
Orochi increased the level of toxins. The vivre card curled and yellowed, but the creature lived on.
Kagome, kagome
The bird in the basket
He opened the detailed wooden box on the daily. Removed the seals on the daily. Twice daily. Before he went to bed.
When, oh when will it come out
In the night of dawn
For one year, three, five, ten years, eighteen, nineteen, the unknown card remained static, and whole. What did it matter? Kaidou's army expanded. Wano's fish swam belly-up, and rainbow slicks of petroleum decorated the rivers, but not in the area closest to the shogun's quarters. As pure as the people's love for him, water was plentiful.
Komurasaki, the most beautiful woman in the land, hurried to his side whenever he beckoned, and his retainer, Kyoshiro, more yakuza than samurai, had his back. Life was good.
The brave deeds of the Kurozumi were taught in schools (the few in existence, all in the capital) and positive mention of the Kozuki clan was punishable by death. Shogunate coffers bulged with riches as the country destroyed itself from the inside out. Served it right.
Orochi hated Wano strictures as much as Oden had, even though the Kozuki clan had been a clear part of the problem. They'd forced his grandfather to commit seppuku when he'd had as much right to rule as any landed man.
Orochi and Oden and Yasuie were born into the class tasked with governing the people, generation after generation. Serving the shogun depended on who the shogun was. Loyalty to the master depended on how masterful he was.
Kozuki Sukiyaki's birth upset the natural order. The shogun back then, Sukiyaki's father, didn't have an heir, and Grandfather Kurozumi's elimination of fellow daimyo and plan to take over the role of the nation's supreme commander was clever.
Chance and pure strains, wild cards and fated, innovation and expectation, all paths led to the same door. With a little luck, spite milked from the fangs of a snake wasn't an antidote to venom but a compound that increased and fortified it across time.
The crane and turtle slipped
Who is behind you now?
Exactly to the day of Kozuki's pitiful defeat, Orochi extracted the unidentified card and placed it on his palm. The cat and dog and kappa's cards were pushed to the side. Orochi oriented the last card towards the castle ruins. And surely it was the wind, or his breath, or the waft of his robe that caused the paper to rise and fall and—did it?—inch across his skin.
He inhaled deeply and stood still. It spun like a magnetic needle not towards the castle, but the water.
Running, feet caught, zori snapping, robe entangled. Tumbling through the air, water cold, freezing, gasping for breath. Currents swept Orochi to the other bank.
Mud sank under his nails, water tugged at his clothes, he clung to the riverside until the torches drifted away from the opposite side of the river. His kimono drenched, he clawed up the bank, heart thumping in his head and ears and chest. A fuzz of fear for bearing the Kurozumi name, for the horrors of his grandfather's crime, for the loss of his parents, coddled his spine and crept to his crown.
Scales rippling, elongated and expanding, his neck extended. Anxious and vexed, the eight serpent heads of Orochi's sorcery wrapped around one another like a writhing fit of vipers.
A knock. The palace messenger jumped back in fright as a massive face, tongue hissing and slithering, neared his own in the room abutting the shogun's office. Orochi was upset and someone had to bear it.
The man scrabbled to the floor and bowed on all fours. Hands shaking, he pulled a scroll from the front of his kimono, unfurled it, and pushed it Orochi's way. From the corner of his eye, Orochi caught Kanjuro's flowing script.
(The crane and turtle slipped
Who is behind you now?)
His trusted source. Twenty years later. On the anniversary of the execution and incineration, precisely on the day referenced in Toki's curse of nine shadows, the vivre card rose and a ghostly silhouette dispatched a letter.
Kanjuro's strokes read so boldly and beautifully. That took gall and guts. Descendants of the daimyo-murderer were barred from studying in regular schools after the attempted coup. Any tutelage received was scant, inferior, and on the sly.
Part of it was Kanjuro's special power, and part his skill as an actor. If he was to be a calligraphy master, so be it. If he was to be a buffoon. So be it. Orochi felt no guilt in sliding the doors shut on all the country's schools except three in the capital.
The shogun read.
Foxfire Kin'emon,
Evening Shower Kanjuro,
Raizo of the Mist,
Kikunojou of the Lingering Snow
Kozuki Momonosuke,
were alive.
The heir was alive. That squirt was alive. One vivre card resurrected after lying dormant for two decades. Whose was it?
Orochi ordered guards on the coast to keep watch and within the day a small boat was sighted setting out with strangers aboard. Orochi's troops pursued, but lost them. The incompetents were beheaded.
Seek Zou, Oden had said, When the time comes. Kanjuro had passed on the words of his master to his master. And here they were, three scabbards on a boat following the segments of vivre cards that Raizou had carefully marked as Inu and Neko's, looking out for a wandering elephant. The island of Zou was perched on its back.
Swells and cresting waves splintered their boat near the elephant's leg. They hadn't checked for leaks when they'd hurriedly set sail and, as they bailed water in the rough ocean, Kanjuro drew tar to caulk the hull but used the wrong end of his staff and cut the boat in half instead, and burnt his hand. Kin, Momonosuke and he ended up on one half of the wreck, Raizou on the other.
Raizou had the power of flight and invisibility, but Kanjuro and Kin'emon didn't have the same ability. Some of Wano's seas were good for fishing, but most were rough and hostile, and after Kanjuro and his friends had taken in the sorcery of the fruits, they sank like stone if they fell into the water.
Luckily Kin'emon still had Momonosuke. Kanjuro could help him. His master had told him to act like a Kozuki. Become like them. And he had. It was important that the young master survive, or if he didn't, that Kanjuro saw his end, saw to it.
Kin'emon's swordplay blocked shots fired from the vessel that followed them part of the way, and they'd lost those Wano guards some whirling-furlongs-of-the-ocean ago. What were three samurai from a closed country doing on the wide open seas?
The men said visibility was poor in the rough ocean, but the sailors on the small vessel were inept and struggling. They said that their boat sank. A plank of wood was placed on the low table in front of Orochi. A bent nail split the fibres of a long strand of pink hair. Orochi threw the wood at them and called for his guards to arrest his guards.
After they left (in chains) Orochi put the cards belonging to the cat and dog on his palm. As always, they orientated towards wherever the elephant was walking. He placed the two other cards beside them.
Three cards pointed in the same direction, not two, but three.
He repositioned one of the cards, and then the other, and the third next to the scrap that gravitated towards Udon, but they all realigned themselves. Momonosuke might still be alive. Zou held the key. Whether Orochi's informant had survived the sinking of the boat or not, he didn't know.
Years before, Higurashi invited Orochi into the world of the black arts when she fed him the snake fruit that bore his name. He gained the features and powers of a mythical eight-headed serpent, which was just as well because it was impossible for a sorcery-user to swim and the citizens of Wano wasted no time in chasing a child down and into the river. His bite was worse than his bark.
Twenty years and one day after the victorious battle, he summoned Kyoshiro, and Kaidou's youngest calamity, Jack. One of the country's three top men.
Jack was twenty-eight, the same age as Kaidou's son, Yamato. Both had been at the execution, but Jack was four times taller now, and had been about six times as tall then. Yamato was no shrimp, but Jack was a monster with a wizardry that turned him into a mammoth.
Twenty years ago, his commitment to torching the castle and torturing the Minks for information had been admirable. Even at that age, his rage when the cat tapped at his trunk, saw him attack the cell of the Minks with such force that they were thrown out of the prison.
The deceitful Minks slipped out of their shackles (sea stone was useless on them), and even though their nonstop squabbling and dissension could've been used to turn one further against the other, they worked together to escape.
Even an eight year old shouldn't let a paltry cat and dog—foreigners—get the better of him. Especially one as tall as Jack. He towered over Kaidou now, and had dwarfed the Minks then. As an outsider, he must have understood that loyalty needed to be proven and proven again. Jack couldn't live the failure down.
Orochi passed him the three cards that had edged in unison to the tips of his fingers, and Jack followed the boat to the turbulence of Zou.
Tucked into the creases of his giant palm and the wrinkles of the skin below his mammoth fur, the cards were secure. At the height of battle with the Minks and later with the navy, Jack was aware at all times of their location. After the failed interception of the navy vessels—the failure to rescue the SMILE supplier, Doflamingo—Jack returned and attacked Zou a second time. All three cards still pointed towards the elephant.
One sweep of the creature's trunk was all it took to destroy Jack's ship and fleet. The elephant had been so placid before, why react now? Lying on the seabed waiting for his own rescue, the tides and the depths of the ocean teased the cards from Jack's hold.
Kagome, kagome
The bird in the basket
It was the hour of the Ox, between one a.m. and three. A time when Higurashi had found Orochi in an abandoned shack and revealed her witchery to the young boy, the way forward. The way to fight persecution was to fight.
When, oh when will it come out
In the night of dawn
The wooden drawers of the tansu slid out, the walnut box was set on the table. The maple inlay lit up so nicely in the light of the moon.
The crane and turtle slipped
Who is behind you now?
Flipping the lid, the remaining card was replaced with a sprinkling of ash. A small torch lit from those that lined the corridor singed both the lower-lid and the bottom panel. Things were afoot at Udon. It was rumoured the kappa might escape.
Kagome kagome
The bird in the basket,
When, oh when will it come out
In the night of dawn
The crane and turtle slipped
Who is behind you now?
The spell resealed the box.
Which three samurai had set foot in the boat, and what had happened to the fourth?
Ushimitsu Kozo carefully replaced the box in the tansu and snuck out of the castle to rob from the rich and give to the poor.
If the samurai had returned, he wanted to fight them.