Dale Furutani - Jade Palace Vendetta

The rain had not abated, and the dreary wet weather matched Kaze’s mood. His children were dead. His wife was dead. The fate of his Lord was unknown. The Lady’s daughter had been kidnapped and presumably sold. The Lady had been tortured and dishonored. In his arms, she made an infrequent moan of pain but never complained as Kaze took her deeper into the mountains to get away from Okubo’s men.

Kaze was exhausted, but he would have willed himself to continue, except that the Lady seemed near the end of her strength. He found a sheltered spot under a crooked tree and made a damp nest for the Lady from pine needles and cut branches.

He sat next to her and asked if she wanted him to find something to eat.

“No. Not for me. Find something for yourself.”

“I’m not hungry,” Kaze lied. “We’ll rest here for a while. The rain seems to have made it difficult for Okubo to pursue us. We’ll go through the mountains, and I’ll find a safe place for you. Then I’ll make contact with the Lord. Just recover so we can plan our next move.”

“You know, I always admired you for your courage. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that. The Lord and I used to talk about it often. I wish I had some of that courage now. I don’t want to die.”

“You won’t die.”

She gave a faint smile. With her drawn face it looked more like a grimace. “You always were a very poor liar,” she said. “I can feel my strength and life slipping away. Still, I want to thank you for rescuing me. I wouldn’t want to die strung up like that. It’s a poor death. An inujini . A dog’s death.”

“Don’t die, Lady!”

“I don’t think I have a choice. There are still so many wonderful things I want to do. But the biggest reason I want to live is to make sure my daughter is rescued and safe. I can’t do that now, so I need your help. I don’t know how, but if she’s still alive I want you to find her. It’s my last wish and my last command to you.” She looked at him with feverish eyes black from strain and pain.

Kaze bowed his head in response to the Lady’s order. Hot tears flowed down his cheeks and mingled with the icy raindrops striking his face. Despite the pain, the Lady reached up and, using the sleeve of her kimono, brushed the tears from his face. It was a gesture that had no practical purpose, because his face was covered with raindrops as soon as her sleeve moved across it. Yet Kaze found comfort in the gesture. Her touch was so light it felt like a breeze caressing his cheek, the kind of soft breeze he felt when he climbed into treetops and put his face into the wind.

Kaze found it strange that the dying should be comforting the living. With his children gone, his wife gone, his clan defeated and in disarray, and the fate of his Lord unknown, Kaze thought that it might be best to follow the Lady in death when the time came.

As if reading his thoughts, the Lady stopped brushing away his tears and extended a weak hand. It trembled with the effort to keep it in the air. “Give me your wakizashi.”

Surprised, Kaze removed his short sword from his sash, putting it in her hand. The weight of the sword caused her hand to drop to the ground, but she clutched the scabbard fiercely. At first Kaze thought the Lady had lost heart and was going to use the short sword to commit suicide, but then she said, “This represents your honor and the ability to take your own life. Your honor is now mine until my daughter is found and safe.

“Promise me!” she said fiercely.

“I promise, Lady. But this is not necessary. I will honor my promise to find your daughter, as I have always honored my pledges. And you will be alive to see her and hold her again.”

The Lady looked at him with tired eyes. “I wish that were true.” She said no more and closed her eyes to rest. In a few minutes she had fallen into an exhausted sleep. Kaze tried to remove the wakizashi from her hand so she could rest easier, but even in her sleep she gripped the short sword.

Kaze sat next to her. He held his own kimono sleeve above her, holding it out like a tent flap with his other hand, despite his fatigue, to keep the raindrops off her face. In meditation, he had been taught to listen to his own breathing, because breath means life. Now he listened to the Lady’s ragged breathing. It became shallower and shallower, until it was barely detectable. Then it ceased altogether.

Kaze sat immobile, watching the pain-racked face relax slightly with the release of death. Then he did something he would never have done while she lived. He placed his hand on her cheek, gently cupping her face. Her position as his Lord’s consort made such an action unthinkable to Kaze while she was alive, but now that her spirit had departed her body, touching her face, as she had touched his, seemed the only comfort available to him after days of pain and sorrow.

He stared at her face, seeing her in happier days instead of the visage with black, sunken eyes and tightened jaw muscles before him. The face he tried to see was serene and kind, with the sparkle of good humor in its eyes. It was the same face he carved on the Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, that he made.

Kaze heard the door of the room slide open. Hishigawa entered, holding a sword. He dropped the sword’s scabbard on the floor, unsheathing its blade. Kaze realized it was his own sword, the Fly Cutter. Hishigawa slid the shoji screen closed and turned to look at Kaze. He smiled. “We use this room when we occasionally have a girl that won’t cooperate. I told you we buy maids for the villa, and when they are sufficiently seasoned, we convert them for sale to a brothel. Sometimes we have one who is recalcitrant about the new life we have planned for her. An hour or two hanging as you are is usually enough to make her see the error in her ways.

“You tried to steal Yuchan from me. Although it might be mildly amusing to torture you further, I am not a cruel man. I am reasonable. I am a businessman. I deal in judgments about what is profitable or not profitable to pursue. Keeping you alive is not profitable, so I have decided to cut my losses.” Hishigawa laughed at his pun.

He hefted the blade, looking at it. It caught the yellow light of the lantern, reflecting a silver arc against the walls and ceiling of the room as Hishigawa moved it around. Even through his pain, Kaze thought the blade beautiful.

“Since I paid for this sword, I thought I would use it,” Hishigawa said. “I don’t have the skill with the blade that you have, but you’ll find that I’ll still be able to take your head, even if it might take me two or three blows to sever it. I’ve ordered many deaths, but I’ve never killed a man myself, so this will be a novel experience for me.”

Hishigawa smiled again. “I know you samurai all like to do your fancy death poems when the end is at hand. But as I said, I am a man who deals in efficiency.” He put both hands on the sword hilt. “I believe it would be most efficient to dispatch you without allowing you to declaim the rubbish that you samurai like to yammer as poetry. You see, although I have to deal with you and your stupid wives because they are my customers, I really don’t like samurai. You’re parasites, feeding off the land and interfering with business every time you start one of your stupid wars.”

Hishigawa lifted the blade to the point-at-the-eye position, judging its weight and balance. “I suppose this really is a fine weapon,” he said conversationally. “Maybe I’ll be able to take your head with only one or two blows, instead of having to hack it off.”

Kaze stared at Hishigawa, and, although his body was in pain, he came to an epiphany. He was not afraid. Always in battle there was a chance of him dying, but now he knew that it was a certainty. And yet, despite the knowledge that he would die, Kaze was able to face it with a studied indifference, certain in the fact that life and death were the same and that existence is only an illusion.