Boris Akunin - The Diamond Chariot

I could sit watching,

Watch it till the break of dawn –

The flame of the fire

1 Hidden village (Japanese)

2 In Japanese neko-chan means ‘little cat’

3 Shinran (1173–1263), the founder of the Jodo sect of the school of the Way of the Pure Land

4 A unit of area (0.033 m 3)

5 A unit of length (1.81m)

HE DIDN’T ANSWER

Fandorin lay on the ground and looked at the sky. At first it was almost black, lit up by the moon. Then the highlighting disappeared and the sky turned completely black, but seemingly not for long. Its colour kept changing: it became greyish, acquired a reddish glaze and started turning blue.

While Midori’s final words were still ringing in his ears (‘Farewell, my love. Remember me without sadness’) – and that echo lingered for a long, long time – tears flowed unceasingly from benumbed Erast Petrovich’s eyes. Gradually, however, the echo faded away and the tears dried up. The titular counsellor simply lay on his back, not thinking about anything, observing the behaviour of the sky.

When grey clouds crept across it, crowding out the blue, Tamba’s face leaned down over the man on the ground. Perhaps the old jonin had appeared earlier, Fandorin wasn’t entirely sure about that. But in any case, until this moment Tamba had not attempted to shut out the sky.

‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘Now get up.’

Erast Petrovich got up. Why not?

‘Let’s go.’

He went.

He didn’t ask the old man any questions – he couldn’t care less about anything. But Tamba starting talking anyway. He said he had sent Masa to Tokyo. Masa had been very reluctant to leave his master, but it was necessary to summon Tamba’s nephew, a student in the faculty of medicine. Dan was the only one left, if you didn’t count the two who were studying abroad. They would come too, although not soon, of course. The Momochi clan had suffered grievous losses, it would have to be restored. And before that Tamba had to settle accounts with Don Tsurumaki.

The titular counsellor listened indifferently. None of this interested him.

In the clearing beside the ruined house a huge stack of firewood had been piled up, with another, smaller stack beside it. On the first stack there were bodies wrapped in black rags packed close together in three rows. Something white and narrow was lying on the second one.

Fandorin didn’t really look very closely. When you’re standing up it’s awkward to tilt your head back to look at the sky, so now he was mostly just examining the grass at his feet.

‘Your servant spent several hours chopping and stacking the wood,’ said Tamba. ‘And we carried the dead together. They are all here. Most of them have no heads, but that is not important.’

He walked up to the first stack of wood, bent over in a low bow and did not straighten up for a long, long time. Then he lit a torch and touched it to the wood, which flared up immediately – it must have been sprayed with some kind of combustible liquid.

Watching the fire was better than watching the grass. It kept changing its colour all the time, like the sky, and it moved, but still stayed in the same place. Fandorin looked at the flames until the bodies started moving. One dead man squirmed as if he had decided to try sitting up. That was unpleasant. And there was a smell of scorched flesh.

The titular counsellor first turned away, then walked off to the side.

The fire hissed and crackled. But Erast Petrovich stood with his back to it and didn’t turn round.

After some time Tamba came over to him.

‘Don’t keep silent,’ he said. ‘Say something. Otherwise the ki will find no exit and a lump will form in your heart. You could die like that.’

Fandorin didn’t know what ki was and he wasn’t afraid of dying, but he did as the old man asked – why not? He said:

‘It’s hot. When the wind blows this way, it’s hot.’

The jonin nodded approvingly.

‘Good. Now your heart won’t burst. But it is encrusted with ice, and that is also dangerous. I know a very good way to melt ice that shackles the heart. It is vengeance. You and I have the same enemy. You know who.’

Don Tsurumaki, the titular counsellor said in his head, and listened to his own voice – nothing inside him stirred.

‘That won’t change anything,’ he said out loud.

Tamba nodded again.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

‘You know, I found her,’ the old man said quietly a minute later, or perhaps it was an hour. ‘I had to rake through the beams and the planks, but I found her. She’s there, look.’

And he pointed to the second pyre.

That was when Erast Petrovich realised what it was lying there, covered with white material. He started shaking. It was impossible to stop the shuddering, it got stronger and stronger with every second.

‘She’s my daughter. I decided to bury her separately. Come, you can say goodbye.’

But the titular counsellor didn’t move from the spot – he just shook his head desperately.

‘Don’t be afraid. Her body is shattered, but I have covered it. And half of her face survived. Only don’t go close.’

Tamba didn’t wait, but set off towards the pyre first. He threw back the corner of the cover and Fandorin saw Midori’s profile. White, slim, calm – and as beautiful as in life.

Erast Petrovich dashed towards her, but the jonin blocked his way.

‘No closer!’

Why not? Why not?

The titular counsellor tossed Tamba aside like a dry twig, but the old man grabbed him at a slant round the waist.

‘Don’t! She wouldn’t have wanted it!’

The damned old man was tenacious and Erast Petrovich couldn’t move another step farther forward. He went up on tiptoe to see more than just the profile.

And he saw.

The other half of her face was black and charred, like some terrible African mask.

Fandorin recoiled in horror and Tamba shouted angrily:

‘Why do you shrink away? Dead ninjas have no faces, but she still has half of one. Because Midori had become only a half-ninja – and that’s because of you!’ The jonin ’s voice shook. He lit another torch. ‘But never mind. Fire purges everything. Watch. Her body will bend and unbend in the tongues of purifying flame and then crumble into ash.’

But Erast Petrovich didn’t want to watch her poor body writhing. He strode off towards the forest, gulping in air with his mouth.

Something had happened to his lungs. The air didn’t fill his chest. The small, convulsive breaths were excruciating.

Why, oh why had he not listened to Tamba! Why had he gone up close to the pyre? She had wanted to part beautifully, following all the rules, so that her tender face and her words of farewell would remain in her beloved’s memory. But now – and he knew this for certain – everything would be overshadowed by a black-and-white mask: one half indescribably beautiful, the other half the very incarnation of horror and death.

But what was this that had happened to his lungs? His breaths had become short and jerky. And it wasn’t that he couldn’t breathe in – on the contrary, he couldn’t breathe out. The poisoned air of this accursed morning had stuck in his chest and absolutely refused to come back out.

‘Your skin is blue,’ said Tamba, coming up to him.

The old man’s face was calm, even sleepy somehow.

‘I can’t breathe,’ Fandorin explained abruptly.

The jonin looked into his eyes and shook his head.

‘And you won’t be able to. You need to let the bad energy out. Otherwise it will suffocate you. You have to shatter the ice that has gripped your heart so tightly.’

He’s talking about the Don again, Erast Petrovich realised.