Laura Rowland - The Iris Fan

A shocked exclamation burst from Sano, Reiko, and their children: “Hirata!”

Hirata stood with one arm supporting Lord Ienobu. He looked leaner, stronger, but aged far beyond the years since Sano had last seen him. Rigid with an unnatural tension that clenched his jaw and tightened the muscles around his dark-shadowed eyes, he said, “Don’t come near him.” His speech sounded strained, forced.

Yoshisato said to Sano, “It’s your chief retainer?”

Yanagisawa said, “The traitor and fugitive?”

They were so astounded that they forgot to be angry that Hirata had disrupted their mission to kill Lord Ienobu. The gangsters made confused motions with their spears. Lord Ienobu shrank in fear from his savior. The shogun remained unconscious. Lady Nobuko sat like a broken doll; she’d fainted. His own knowledge about Hirata hadn’t prepared Sano for what he’d seen; Hirata’s powers were magnitudes greater than he’d thought. The confrontation that had been in the making for so long was now upon Sano, although this wasn’t a time, place, or audience he could have imagined. He and Hirata gazed at each other across the space of more than four years, a valley of bitter estrangement.

“That’s enough meddling.” Sano wouldn’t bother to rehash the past or hear excuses. He was so angry at Hirata for his latest crime-killing the shogun’s boy-that he just wanted Hirata gone and all ties between them severed. “Get out.”

Hirata’s expression filled with misery-he knew, and cared, how Sano felt-but he said, “I can’t. We have to protect Lord Ienobu. We have to make him the next shogun.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Yanagisawa demanded.

Lord Ienobu’s little jaw sagged with dismay. “It’s you that’s been helping me? Not the gods?”

“Yes,” Hirata said. “Me, and the ghost.”

“What ghost?” Yoshisato asked.

Fear of the supernatural trickled through Sano as he looked around for the spirit that had been manipulating Hirata from beyond the grave.

“Have you been leaving money on my doorstep?” Lord Ienobu asked, incredulous. “Did you kill my enemies?”

“The ghost of General Otani. He died during the Battle of Sekigahara. He made me kill them. He made me steal money and give it to you.” Hirata spoke fast, then was silenced as if by a hand squeezing his throat.

“Why?” Lord Ienobu seemed abashed because he’d thought the gods were on his side but it was really a fugitive who claimed to be in league with a ghost.

“Shut up and get out, Hirata,” Sano said. “That’s an order.”

“Because General Otani wants to avenge his death by destroying the Tokugawa regime.” Hirata forced the words out, choked on them. The authority he answered to apparently didn’t want the story told, either. He flung Sano an anguished, apologetic glance.

Puzzlement joined the chagrin on Ienobu’s face. “How is making me shogun supposed to accomplish that?”

“You’re planning to conquer the world,” Hirata said, his strangled voice barely intelligible. “You’re doomed to fail. The foreign barbarians are too powerful. You’ll take the regime down with you.”

Dismayed to have his secret out in the open, furious because Hirata had punctured his conceit, Lord Ienobu insisted, “I will win! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You’ve said your piece,” Sano told Hirata. “Go. Don’t add to the trouble you’ve caused.”

Hirata shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Just blow out of this room the same way you blew in,” Yanagisawa said.

“If you have any sense of honor left, you will go,” Sano said. “You’ll let us take care of Lord Ienobu, and he won’t destroy the regime.”

“My honor is gone. And I can’t stop what’s going to happen. All I can do is apologize. I’m sorry I was disloyal.” Hirata’s desolate gaze encompassed Masahiro, Reiko, and Akiko. “I never meant to hurt you. I was stupid and greedy and I didn’t know what I was getting into, and if I could go back in time and kill myself before General Otani got hold of me, I would. Please forgive me.”

Sano couldn’t help feeling moved by Hirata’s plight, but there could be no forgiveness while the transgressor was still transgressing.

“Quit whining!” Yanagisawa said. “Get lost!”

“I owe you an apology, too,” Hirata said, “for Yoritomo’s death.”

“What?” Startled and distracted, Yanagisawa asked, “Why?”

“It’s a long story, but I was responsible.”

Yanagisawa opened and closed his mouth, dumbstruck, unsure whether to believe Sano wasn’t the one at fault. Hirata turned to Reiko. “Tell Midori-” He gulped; his throat jerked. “Tell her and the children I’m sorry.” His eyes glistened.

“Tell them yourself.” Reiko’s manner was gentle, sympathetic, entreating. She extended her hand to Hirata. “Come home with me. Midori and Taeko and Tatsuo and Chiyoko miss you so much. They would be so happy to have you back.”

“No, they wouldn’t.” Hirata sounded certain, forlorn. “Not if they knew what I’ve become.” His voice broke. “I’m sorry I killed the boy Dengoro, and the Dutch translator, and those officials. I’m sorry I framed Lord Yoshimune and his cousin. After the shogun was stabbed, I stole Tomoe’s socks, dipped them in blood in the shogun’s slop basin, and buried them outside the daimyo district. General Otani made me.”

“Stand away from Lord Ienobu, or I’ll make you sorrier.” Yanagisawa waved his sword at Hirata, but the gesture was tentative; Hirata had put the fear of the supernatural into him.

“General Otani’s not here,” Sano said. “What you do next is up to you.”

“He is here.” Hirata’s face bunched up; he looked like a child about to cry. “He’s inside me. I’m possessed by his spirit. Watch!”

He lowered the arm he held around Lord Ienobu. Stiff and trembling, it moved down slightly, then snapped back up. His hand locked like a steel clamp on Ienobu’s shoulder. His face reddened, strained, and perspired with effort while his body jerked as if punched from within. Lord Ienobu shrieked, “Help!” Hirata screamed in pain. As Sano and the others watched, amazed, Hirata stopped jerking and screaming and went limp. He and Lord Ienobu hovered above the floor, then descended to settle gently on their feet.

“See?” Hirata’s voice was an agonized croak.

Sano was horrified by the grotesqueness, the indignity of having an alien presence in control of one’s body. His anger at Hirata faded into sorrow. All the ardor, the talent, and good intentions in Hirata, wasted because he’d been reduced to a puppet of a demon!

The flabbergasted silence was broken by a soft, sighing groan. All attention turned to the shogun. His chest no longer rose and fell. The physician felt his neck for a pulse, then raised his own stricken face. “His Excellency is dead.”

The news thunderstruck Sano.

The lord he’d served for twenty years was dead.

He was catapulted out of the reality in which he and Yanagisawa and Lord Ienobu were fighting for control of the regime into another dimension of darkness and agonized howls. There he joined multitudes of samurai who, throughout history, had lost their lords. A grief as much theirs as his own stabbed Sano to the heart.

The shogun was gone! Even though Sano had often hated him for his capriciousness, stupidity, cruelty, and cowardice, none of his faults mattered now. In death the shogun claimed the full magnitude and dignity of his office. The gray, wasted effigy in the bed was to Sano what every lord had been to every samurai for time immemorial-the purpose of his existence.

Sano felt as bereft as if someone he’d dearly loved had died. His body reacted even as his mind struggled to absorb his loss. His eyes gushed tears. He sank to his knees, removed his helmet, and bowed his head. Masahiro did the same; Reiko and Akiko knelt, too; they were following Sano’s example; they didn’t know what else to do in this unprecedented situation. Hirata’s arm dropped. His expression shifted between triumph and defeat.