The Iris Fan

40

Lady Nobuko shrieked, recoiling in fright. Sano, Reiko, Masahiro, and Akiko exclaimed. Yanagisawa and Yoshisato stared, shocked and aghast. Sano stated the obvious fact: “You’re not dead.”

Lord Ienobu wrinkled his brow. He suddenly resembled his uncle. He hesitantly raised his finger, as the shogun had often done when he wanted to ask a question he thought might be considered stupid.

“Speak,” Sano said, startled by the change in Lord Ienobu.

“Who are you?” Lord Ienobu glanced at the other people. “Who are they?”

“Don’t you know?” When Lord Ienobu didn’t answer, Sano realized he was waiting for permission. “You can talk to me.”

“No. I don’t know.” Lord Ienobu noticed the corpses of the shogun and the slain guards; he pursed his mouth. “What happened?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“No.” Lord Ienobu seemed only mildly worried. Hirata had tried to kill him, been too weak, and only damaged his brain, Sano thought. “Who am I?”

With the vexed air of a man saddled with unfinished business, Yanagisawa drew his sword and said, “You’re dead now.”

Running footsteps and excited shouts resounded. The partition between the shogun’s bedchamber and the corridor opened to reveal a squadron of Tokugawa troops. “Lord Ienobu, we’ve beat back the invasion,” the leader said. “The castle is secure.” His voice trailed off as he and his men took in the scene-the dead shogun, the strewn corpses, and Yanagisawa ready to slay Lord Ienobu. “Get away from him! Drop your weapon!”

Yanagisawa froze, let his sword fall, and stepped backward. His face was a picture of outrage because his fortunes had reversed yet again.

“You’re safe, Honorable Lord Ienobu,” the leader said. “We’ll get rid of this filth for you.” He and his troops advanced into the bedchamber.

Reiko and Akiko moved nearer to Sano. Glad that they cleaved to him no matter how Reiko felt about him, Sano couldn’t believe they’d come so far and gone through so much, and yet now all was lost.

Lord Ienobu looked to Sano. Sano spoke instinctively: “Tell them to back off.”

“Back off,” Lord Ienobu said.

The troops hesitated, confused. The leader said, “What?”

“Tell them that’s an order,” Sano said, “and they should leave us alone.”

“That’s an order,” Lord Ienobu repeated. “Leave them alone.”

His men gaped at one another, then backed away. Sano was stunned to discover that Lord Ienobu would do whatever he said. Everyone else looked just as stunned. Yanagisawa said, “Order them to tell their generals to surrender to my army.”

Lord Ienobu looked to Sano again. He was like a baby chick just hatched from the egg, thinking that the first live creature it noticed was its mother, instinctively accepting Sano’s direction. Thinking fast, Sano said, “Not surrender. Call a truce.”

“Call a truce,” Lord Ienobu said.

“You cast some kind of spell over him,” the leader accused Sano.

“Not I,” Sano said with a glance at Hirata.

“Do as I say, or I’ll have your heads,” Lord Ienobu said. He was apparently capable of phrasing his own sentences as well as parroting Sano’s.

Vacillating between fear of him and suspicion toward Sano, the men glanced at one another. Then they departed.

“Call them back!” Yanagisawa ordered Lord Ienobu.

“Touch your nose,” Sano said.

Lord Ienobu raised his finger and tapped his nose.

Yanagisawa went livid with anger as he comprehended that Sano had sole control over Lord Ienobu and therefore over the regime. “You’ve ruined everything. You always do.” His tone was as deadly as the sword he picked up from the floor as he advanced on Sano. “But this is the last time.”

Sano heard Reiko, Masahiro, and Akiko exclaim in alarm as he reached for his sword-which Hirata had shattered to pieces. “Wait.” He was acutely conscious that Yanagisawa wore full battle gear while his own head was bare and his body minus its armor. “We can work something out.”

Yanagisawa fumed through clenched teeth; he would have spit fire if he could. “Oh, no.” His eyes blazed under his helmet. “I won’t give you another chance to spoil things for me. I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago.”

The weight of his armor slowed his rush at Sano long enough for Sano to snatch up Hirata’s sword. Then Yanagisawa was upon Sano, lashing and shouting, “For twenty years-whatever I tried to do, you were always there to trip me up! Well, no more!”

Sano was too busy parrying to strike back. Although he was the better fighter, he was worn out from his fight with Hirata, and Yanagisawa had the lethal energy of the insane. “This is for all the times you turned the shogun against me!” Yanagisawa hacked at Sano’s head. As he recited old grievances, his blade whistled, carving wild patterns that Sano frantically dodged. “This is for Yoritomo!”

Akiko ran at Yanagisawa, grabbed his leg, and shouted, “Leave my father alone!”

“Akiko, get away!” Sano yelled.

* * *

Yanagisawa kicked at Akiko while hacking at Sano, but she hung on. Reiko was horrified to see her daughter caught in the battle between Sano and Yanagisawa. She screamed and rushed to rescue Akiko. Yanagisawa swung at them. Sano whacked Yanagisawa across the chest. His blade didn’t penetrate the armor, but Yanagisawa faltered; he missed Reiko and Akiko. Reiko pulled Akiko off Yanagisawa, and he resumed attacking Sano.

“I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I do!”

Sano struck his knee guard. Yanagisawa yelped in pain and staggered. Yoshisato ran to help him. Masahiro chased Yoshisato, tackled him, and brought him down. Holding Akiko so that she wouldn’t run back into the battle, Reiko realized that Sano was bound to lose. Without his armor, already exhausted from his fight with Hirata, he panted as he dodged Yanagisawa’s frenzied slicing.

Seeing her husband attacked by Yanagisawa was different from seeing him attacked by Hirata. Somehow Reiko hadn’t really thought Hirata would kill Sano, and she’d been correct. Something in her had known that Hirata’s loyalty to his master would ultimately win out. Instinct had moved her to defend Sano, not the belief that he was in real danger and needed her help. But now the danger to Sano was real, mortal.

Akiko knew; that was why she’d tried to protect him. Reiko knew, too.

Yanagisawa had often tried to kill Sano. Nothing stood in his way this time.

Reiko felt a sensation like cold water dashed on her, rinsing from her eyes the haze created by her anger at Sano and from her mind the list of his misdeeds. During the past four years, she’d thought of Sano as a source of nothing but trouble. Seeing him up against Yanagisawa in their long-overdue fight to the death put him in a new perspective.

Yanagisawa embodied all that was evil and Sano all that was good.

The harsh light of comparison exposed the unshaded, black-and-white fact that Sano had taken honor too far, but Yanagisawa personified what happens when a man goes too far in the opposite direction. Sano and Yanagisawa had lived their lives in the same political arena; they’d experienced the same pressures and temptations; and Yanagisawa was what Sano would have become if not for Sano’s refusal to deviate from Bushido. Reiko had deplored his honor as a blight on her and her children’s existence, but now she realized that it was the talisman that had kept Sano from turning into Yanagisawa. It was the cornerstone of his relentless pursuit of justice during this investigation and all those they’d worked on together. It was an integral part of the man she’d fallen in love with nineteen years ago.

The husband she still loved in spite of, and because of, everything.

In the cold, lucid air of revelation, Reiko saw a new battle line drawn. It put her on Sano’s side, where she belonged, which she’d never really left. On the other side was Yanagisawa, the real enemy. All the fury and hatred she’d once directed at Sano now blazed at Yanagisawa.

How dare he attack her husband?

If Yanagisawa killed Sano, then Sano would die thinking she wanted to leave him because she didn’t want to be his wife. He would never know that it wasn’t true.

Reiko shoved Akiko into a corner, shouted, “Stay there!” and snatched a sword from a dead guard.

“No!” Sano shouted at her.

He’d said she would never learn to stay out of danger; Reiko would make him thankful for it. Savage with determination, she swung at Yanagisawa’s back while he fought Sano. Her blade grazed one shoulder then the other, cutting the lacing on the armor panels. They hung like broken wings. She sliced the cord around his waist and the shoulder straps of his tunic. As his tunic fell off, Yanagisawa realized what was happening. He rounded on her and lashed.

Reiko jumped back, her right arm spilling blood from a cut so deep and painful that her breath hissed out of her. She dropped to her knees, clutching the wound that immobilized her arm. Her own physical agony didn’t matter. She moaned because she was of no use to Sano now, when she wanted to be, when it counted the most.

* * *

Yanagisawa whirled to face Sano again. Sano lashed and knocked his helmet off. Except for their gloves and chain-mail sleeves, they were both vulnerable from the waist up. As they lunged and circled, retreated and trampled the dead, their whirring swords met flesh. Blood spattered. Gashes on Sano’s arms and shoulders burned. Masahiro and Yoshisato wrestled, their feet kicking, metal-plated knees banging, while they clawed at each other’s necks. Akiko was chattering anxiously as she tied her sash around Reiko’s arm. Sano feared that his wife was mortally wounded, his son outmatched by Yanagisawa’s. Lady Nobuko hugged herself, both eyes closed tight, terrified. Lord Ienobu watched with more curiosity than apprehension. Sano raised his sword, backhanding a slice at Yanagisawa’s head. His blade locked in a cross against Yanagisawa’s. His arm was already strained from his battle with Hirata. A muscle inside it twisted. The pain snapped open his fingers. His sword dropped.

Unholy glee shone in Yanagisawa’s eyes. As he swung at Sano, he slipped on the bloody floor. Sano hurled himself on Yanagisawa and grabbed the hilt of Yanagisawa’s sword. His weakened right hand slipped off. His left clung. They fell together and landed on the bed. Fighting for control of the weapon, they rolled over the dead shogun. A furious anger boiled up in Sano. Yanagisawa wasn’t the only one with twenty years’ worth of grievances to redress. Something in Sano had known it would come to this-him and Yanagisawa fighting to the death, over the body of their dead lord, to settle their personal scores. It was fate.

Sano pried back Yanagisawa’s fingers until bones cracked and Yanagisawa screamed. He got a clumsy hold on the sword. Yanagisawa swatted it out of his hand and punched his face. Momentarily blinded, ears ringing, nose bleeding, Sano reared back. Yanagisawa sprang and grabbed Sano around the throat. With his left hand Sano scrabbled at the thick, gloved fingers squeezing his windpipe. With his right he clawed at the floor in desperate search for the sword. He closed on a fragment of his broken blade. It was shorter than his forearm, with a jagged break at one end and the sharp tip at the other. He lashed it at Yanagisawa’s head.

Yanagisawa let go of Sano’s neck to protect his own face. He snatched at the blade fragment. Sano stabbed at Yanagisawa’s throat. Yanagisawa caught the jagged end before the tip cut him. Scuffling frantically, he and Sano rolled atop the shogun, each with both hands locked tight around the blade between their bodies. Sano felt its edge slit his right glove while they each hung on and tried to drive the tip through the other. Their legs kicked and scrambled. The blade sank into Sano’s palm. Pain flared. Warm blood spilled.

If he let go, he was dead.

He and Yanagisawa lay on their sides, across the shogun, face-to-face. Sano pushed. Yanagisawa pushed. They gasped and grunted, breathing each other’s breath. Yanagisawa’s bared-teeth grimace was a mirror of Sano’s own. Their bodies were as inseparably close as if they were lovers. Yanagisawa thrust. The tip grazed Sano’s stomach, cut through his robes, and pricked his skin. His muscles contracted as he thrust at Yanagisawa. He saw, at the edge of his vision, that Yoshisato had Masahiro pinned facedown, his knee on Masahiro’s back. Masahiro screamed as he struggled. Terrified that his son would be killed, desperate to be free to rescue him, Sano heaved with all his might. He and Yanagisawa roared as the blade sank into flesh. They both stiffened. Yanagisawa’s face reflected Sano’s surprise. They lay together, unmoving, muscles locked.

Yoshisato and Reiko came running. They looked terrified-they knew someone had been cut but not who. Sano wasn’t sure himself. He hurt all over, and the boundary between him and Yanagisawa seemed to have dissolved. Yoshisato and Reiko pulled them apart. Sano couldn’t catch his breath. There was blood all over him and Yanagisawa. Reiko and Yoshisato were crying. As Sano lurched to his feet, Masahiro and Akiko rushed over. They and Reiko supported Sano. Akiko hugged his waist. She wept with joy because Sano was unhurt except for his cut hand and other minor injuries; the blood on his stomach wasn’t his.

Yanagisawa remained lying on the bed, across the dead shogun. The broken, jagged end of the blade stuck out of his belly. Blood spread around it like the petals of a scarlet flower unfurling. The tip had been driven up under his rib cage. His face was white, ghastly, the mask of death upon it.

Numb with disbelief, Sano squinted, as if in the light of a new day.

* * *

As he looked up at Sano standing over him, Yanagisawa was at first too indignant to feel any pain. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end!

He tried to sit up, to see how badly he was hurt. The blade shifted. The pain skewered through him. His whole body, the whole world, was made of the agonizing, indescribable, unbearable pain in his midsection. Yanagisawa’s mouth opened in a scream, but all that came out was a gurgle. Something was wrong with his lungs. As he gasped for breath, his thudding heart pumped blood from his cut viscera, through his abdomen, and out around the hole from which the blade protruded. His bowels released a warm gush; sweat poured from his skin. Freezing cold, he shivered violently. Yanagisawa knew enough about battle injuries to realize that this one was mortal.

He was dying.

He’d recovered from disasters in the past, but there was no recovering from this one. He’d always had a plan for triumphing over them, but all the plans in the world wouldn’t save him now. Death was the one enemy he couldn’t defeat.

Sano had delivered him into the hands of that ultimate enemy.

Helpless, trembling with anger, Yanagisawa beheld Sano, his hatred undiminished by the fact that he had only moments left to live. Sano had shattered his dream of ruling Japan and destroyed him. He whispered, “This isn’t over.” Every word wrung more pain from his innards. “We’ll meet again someday.” Blood frothed from his nose and mouth. “Next time I’ll win.”

Sano’s image blurred. Darkness encroached on Yanagisawa’s vision. His ears filled with a roaring sound like the ocean as the tide of his life force receded. Through it he heard Yoshisato call, “Father!”

Yoshisato knelt beside him, took firm hold of his hand, and kept him from floating out with the tide. The darkness brightened. Yoshisato’s tearful face hovered over him. Disbelief startled Yanagisawa. His tough, obstinate son who hated him was crying!

“Father, you’re going to be all right,” Yoshisato said, clutching Yanagisawa’s blood-smeared hand to his heart. “Just stay with me! Please!”

Yanagisawa dimly realized that Yoshisato had blurted the truth about their relationship. But it didn’t matter to Yanagisawa that the secret was out and he could no longer claim that Yoshisato was the shogun’s son and eligible to inherit the regime. Dying changed a man’s priorities, Yanagisawa discovered. Yoshisato cared about him enough to beg him to live! He wanted to tell Yoshisato how happy he was despite the horrible pain. He wanted to say that this joy was worth dying for and how sad he was that it required his death to bring them together. But he hadn’t enough breath. Fighting the pain, he lifted his other hand, stroked Yoshisato’s cheek, and whispered, “My son.”

Yoshisato cried, “No!” His eyes darkened with horror. It wasn’t that Yoshisato didn’t want to be claimed as his son, Yanagisawa knew. Yoshisato realized that Yanagisawa didn’t care if their fraud was exposed, because Yanagisawa knew he was dying.

“Don’t die, Father!” Yoshisato pleaded.

Yanagisawa wanted to weep, too, because he and Yoshisato had found their way to each other but soon they would be separated forever. He wanted to rail against the unfairness of fate; he wanted to curse Sano. But his fading spirit cleaved to the samurai code of honor he’d ignored all his life. A samurai had only one death and he shouldn’t waste it on unseemly displays of emotion. And Yanagisawa had a better use for his limited time on earth.

He gathered his scarce breath around the vicious pain that sent spasms through his body. “I wish I hadn’t waited until you were seventeen before I got to know you,” he said in a whisper so faint that Yoshisato leaned close to hear. “I wish we’d always been together.” Yanagisawa didn’t apologize for everything he’d put Yoshisato through; he knew that given another chance he would do it again, he would use Yoshisato or anybody else to further his ambition of ruling Japan. Dying didn’t change a man that much. Instead of wasting his last breath on lies, he said, “You’ve made me proud. You’re the best son I could ever have wanted.”

His voice was gone. His lips formed the words he’d never spoken to anyone except in jest or as a means of manipulation. I love you.

The roar in his ears drowned out the sound of Yoshisato’s voice begging him to hang on. The darkness pulsed with his weakening heartbeat, obliterated the world. The tide was unexpectedly warm and comforting. The last thing Yanagisawa felt was Yoshisato’s hand holding his.