Dale Furutani - Jade Palace Vendetta

The companions in the kago had chosen to follow the Lady to ease her loneliness at being sent to a new family to live. The Lady’s new family, the family she was marrying into, would be expected to arrange suitable marriages for these companions in exile when the proper time came.

The remaining troops escorting the Lady marched past Kaze’s guard, their heads bent into the rain. They stood opposite Kaze’s troops, forming a corridor of honor for the Lady’s palanquin. Walking with the bowlegged gait of palanquin porters, two men carried the small covered platform hanging from a thick lacquered beam between the two rows of troops. The palanquins of the companions were put on the wet ground a proper distance from the changing of the escorts ceremony.

The rain had been reduced to a steady curtain, so Kaze decided to greet the Lady. He jumped off his horse. The wooden, C-shaped stirrups allowed him to ride in sandals, the front of his sandaled foot fitting into the open end of the C. The leader of the Lady’s escort came forward and announced his lineage and his assignment of escorting the Lady to the border. Kaze also announced his name and lineage and declared that his assignment was to escort the Lady from the border to the Lord’s main castle, a half-day’s journey away. Both men bowed to each other, each carefully bending at precisely the same angle to show they were equals. Now the responsibility for the Lady’s safety had been passed to Kaze.

He walked forward and saluted, kneeling on one knee and bowing his head. After announcing his name, Kaze said, “I have the honor of escorting you to our Lord’s castle. Despite the weather, I hope you will have a marvelous nuptial ceremony and that your life in our domain will be a happy one. There’s a teahouse less than half a ri down the road. We can rest there if you want, or we can continue to the Lord’s castle.”

Kaze expected the Lady to express her wishes through the closed door of the palanquin. Instead, the hinged door opened. One of the guards ran up with an oiled paper umbrella to keep stray drops off the Lady.

Kaze had his head bowed, looking at the earth before him. He didn’t immediately see the Lady, but he heard a soft, melodious voice saying, “That’s very kind of you, Captain. My party is soaked by the rain, and I think they’d like a chance to dry out before proceeding to the Lord’s castle.”

Kaze looked up at the speaker and his breath caught in his throat. Large brown eyes framed by expressive brows looked at him. Her face was serene, with high cheekbones and a small mouth. If she was discomforted by the heavy rain, she didn’t show it. Her gaze was steady and seemed to drink in tranquilly every detail of the scene before her.

Kaze tried to talk and found his voice catching. He cleared his throat and finally managed to say, “Of course, my Lady, your comfort and safety are my primary concerns.”

She laughed. It was the same tinkling laugh as at the waterfall, and Kaze was sure it was the girl, now grown into an incredibly beautiful woman. “I’m not discomforted,” she said. “Falling water never bothered me, although it might bother others. I simply suggested we stop at the teahouse so my escort can dry out. You and your men look soaked, too. I’m sure you’d all like to warm yourself by a nice hi-bachi.”

Kaze hesitated a moment, not sure if her remark about falling water was directed at him. Could she have remembered and recognized him after all these years? If she did, she gave no further sign and simply closed the door of the palanquin without additional conversation.

Mounting his horse, Kaze led the procession to the teahouse, his mind racing.

The next day, Kaze safely brought the bride to the Lord’s castle, and within a week the Lord and Lady were married. If the Lady recognized him as the boy at Dragonfly Falls, she never mentioned it during their time together.

A few years later, Kaze won a fencing exhibition in front of the Taiko, Toyotomi Hideyoshi himself. The combatants used bokken , wooden practice swords, but every entrant made a maximum effort to win for the honor of their clan in front of the ruler of Japan. As a result, several injuries and one death occurred during the competition, because the carved oak swords could be as deadly as any made of steel.

Kaze made it to the finals of the competition, his heart secretly glad that his opponent in the final round would be his boyhood nemesis, Okubo. The latter was not Lord of his clan yet, although his father’s age made it a certainty that he would be shortly. Kaze had known Okubo since childhood, because he had spent time as a hostage with Kaze’s clan after Okubo’s father had lost a bid to conquer Kaze’s clan in a war. Okubo’s period as a hostage was intended to guarantee his father’s good behavior, lest he lose his son and heir.

This period as a hostage had planted a deep-seated enmity and rivalry toward Kaze’s clan in Okubo’s heart, and Kaze relished the chance to defeat Okubo in the final match of the tournament. Right before the match, Kaze was approached with inducements to lose the match to Okubo. Kaze was so outraged by this attempt to guarantee a win for Okubo that he didn’t just defeat Okubo, he destroyed him. Okubo now carried a limp in his left leg to remind him of that match and Kaze’s reaction to the attempt to bribe him.

As a reward, Kaze was given command of a key castle on the border of his Lord’s domain. It was an unusual honor for one so young, but it was an honor that evoked no jealousy or comment from elder members of the clan. Kaze’s performance before the tournament and the glory that his victory brought to the clan made the promotion seem just and proper.

Right before Kaze left to take command of his new castle, his wife went to pay a good-bye call to the Lady.

“She’s so nice and so generous,” Kaze’s wife said, returning from the courtesy visit.

“Why do you say that?” Kaze asked.

“Well, look what she gave me as a farewell gift,” his wife said. “I really didn’t want to take it, but she absolutely insisted. She said it was most appropriate for me.”

“What did she give you?” Kaze asked, puzzled.

“Why, this piece of jewelry.” Kaze’s wife pulled a hairpin from her kimono sleeve. It was a long brass pin, with a silver decoration adorning the head of the pin. The decoration was a silver dragonfly.

Failing water, in the form of rain, was also involved the last time Kaze saw the Lady alive. It was the day he pledged to the Lady that he would find her daughter and rescue her.

Memories of that time entered Kaze’s mind. He shook his head, as if sending the drops of water clinging to his hair and face flying would also cast away the bitter memories of the day the Lady died. Sometimes memory can be like a bronze razor, Kaze reflected, lacerating the soul and shredding the heart, cutting deeply into the core of who we are and what motivates us. Kaze squeezed his eyes shut to block out thoughts of the past.

He sighed as he realized that there was also falling water involved the time he had seen the Lady’s obake. That time the water was in the form of tears. The skin on his arms wrinkled into bumps and Kaze told himself it was simply a reaction to the cold rain and not to his encounter with a ghost on a mountain pathway-a ghost that had no face, but that he still knew to be the dead Lady.

Next to him, Hishigawa woke and immediately started his grumbling about how uncomfortable he was, how wet he was, and how cold he was. It seemed that the litany of complaints from the merchant formed a kind of mantra, reminding Kaze of the miserable existence of man and how the petty complaints and suffering of one man could seem more important to that man than the anguish, pain, and death of others. There were three guards and four bandits lying dead where Kaze first met the merchant. They would have been happy for a chance to feel the discomfort of the rain.