Fukurogaeshi no jutsu—to go deep, to appear to change sides completely—a method effective in exact proportion to the risk of the technique. It would have been impossible without the conveniently incriminating background of Samuel’s London theft. He could see nothing of Ikeno’s doubts as the man sat cross-legged on the cabin floor, lifting rice on his slender, enameled hashi from a bowl, as delicate and graceful as a girl in his movements, and yet with a power hidden, as his suspicions must be.
But Samuel, too, could use chopsticks with refinement. He knelt barefoot in his Western clothes and ate little, quickly, enough to satisfy politeness and calculated to show at the same time his own discipline. Eating, like sleeping, was a pleasure to be leisurely indulged in times of relaxation. This was not one of them; he wished Ikeno to see that he understood it.
He wished, in fact, to keep Ikeno baffled as to what he understood and did not. The man spoke an awkward and schooled English, painfully accented; Samuel deliberately addressed him as superior, refusing to use English, answering persistently in the humble forms of Japanese to any English question. He knew that he was outside all experience: an elephant taught to waltz, not expected to be anything but Western and clumsy, and yet with training that must be as obvious to them as theirs was to him.
He would make mistakes, that he knew. Dojun had rebuked him often enough for transgressing some obscure line of correct behavior, for embarrassing himself with Western ignorance. But his mistakes, perhaps, would win him more credit for what he did correctly. A perfectly trained talking dog might arouse suspicion; an imperfect but willing one had an opportunity to draw the spectators into sympathy.
“You wish to give me fidelity, hmmm?” Ikeno had a soft face, soft eyes, lashes like a woman’s, but an aristocratic hook to his nose and an upward slash to his brows that caught the savagery of the Japanese paintings of ancient warriors. He looked young, not much older than Samuel by haole standards. Which meant he was likely forty or more. “I don’t understand you.”
He’d finally given in to speaking Japanese, but he was rude in his tone. Samuel bowed deeply, ignoring it. “With fear and respect, this insignificant person begs Ikeno-sama to deign to spare a few moments of attention. I’ve little to offer that you need, a poor business and few leaking ships, but perhaps you might condescend to make some use of my education at the hands of Tanabe Dojun Harutake.”
“And perhaps I should cut your head off, if the Tanabe has sent you.”
Samuel bowed again, then raised his head and stared into Ikeno’s eyes. “May you pardon my impudence, but I have not been sent. I owe giri to Tanabe Dojun no longer.”
“Do you not? That isn’t what I’ve heard about you. I’ve heard that you visit him in his house, and take sake with him. I’ve heard that he is a father to you. Even now he lives in your new house, and plays the servant to your wife.”
“With respect, he is not my father. I share neither name nor family with him.” Samuel lifted a thumb toward his hair, a quick motion of self-mockery. “As the honored Ikeno-sama may see with his own eyes.”
Ikeno smiled a little. “And he’s instructed you anyway. He has told you, perhaps, of the method called fukurogaeshi, and sent you here to make fools of us. He’s done you no favor. When I send your head back to him, I’ll turn the bag inside out. Maybe then he’ll realize that we are not baka.”
Samuel lowered his gaze. “He’s told me of this fukurogaeshi no jutsu. He didn’t ask me to execute it here. He has asked nothing of me lately, beyond the sanctuary of my deplorable house. Perhaps—” He allowed a note of bitterness into his voice, “—he didn’t think I was capable of accomplishing it.”
Ikeno said nothing. Samuel felt one of the other men move closer behind him.
“Deign to order your honored retainer to swing his sword,” Samuel said quietly, “if my impertinence in asking to assist displeases you.”
“Are you ready to die?”
“If the respected Ikeno-sama does not think me worthy of his service, I am ready.”
“lie! Worthy!” he snarled. “I think the Tanabe sent you here to make a fool of me!”
He jerked his chin at the swordsman. In the whistle of the blade Samuel’s body recognized intention; he heard his executioner exhale with the effort of the swing; the sword flashed in the edge of his vision, light glittering along a horizontal plane.
He didn’t move.
That much, every muscle and cell in him knew, like breathing—the difference between a killing strike and one that would fall short. He knelt relaxed as the blade struck, sliced his collar: the sudden sting of a light cut and the scent of blood revealing how close this slash had come.
Ikeno’s face was expressionless. A little too indifferent. The long silence might have been interpreted as detachment, but Samuel rather thought it was surprise.
He bowed all the way to the floor, touching his forehead against the back of his hands. “With reverent thanks for my worthless life.”
“You wish to betray your master.” Ikeno’s voice was a sudden snap. “Not even a dog betrays its master.”
Samuel’s jaw grew taut. “I’ve kept faith.” With his posture rigid, he made as if to speak, and broke off. Then in a low, passionate voice, he said, “Tanabe Dojun has tested me in all ways. I’ve not failed him.”
“You are here.”
“He’s made a mockery of me. He holds my competence in contempt.”
The echo of Samuel’s words died away in the still cabin. There was that deep anger beneath the ice in him; he allowed himself to feel it; to let Ikeno see it in his spirit. Giri—righteous duty. A man owed that blood-duty to his master; but he owed too a powerful giri to his own name. In a hundred old legends of Japan, warrior-heroes who would have done seppuku—slit their own bellies at an order from their lord—turned about and spent their lives in taking vengeance on the same lord for a far lesser insult than disdain and mockery. It was correct behavior. It was a thing Ikeno would understand.
“With my body I still bow to Tanabe Dojun Harutake,” Samuel said. “But in my heart, I’m masterless. I’ve come to the honorable Ikeno-sama to offer my miserable aid in his praiseworthy quest. I stole the Gokuakuma’s mounting in London, but I’d not yet been able to reach the blade.” He made a short, jeering laugh. “Respected Ikeno-sama had no need to break into my office—I’d have given the mounting in gladness if I’d known who wanted it. This is giri that I owe to my name.”
“On what terms, this giri?”
Samuel didn’t speak at once. He looked at each of the other three men in the cabin in turn. Ikeno made no move to dismiss them. In English, Samuel said slowly, “Dojun-san trained me for the Gokuakuma. I loved him. I honored him. I have not failed at any test. None! And he puts me aside, only because—” His mouth curled in scorn. “—I am…what I am. Not Nihonjin. White. I’m not to be given the trust. He has taken a boy—a boy of fourteen!—in my place, now that immigration is again allowed.” Slowly, he turned his head aside and spit at the floor. “I will not wear this shame he gives me.”
One of the other men growled, but Ikeno moved his hand in a slight, soothing gesture. In Japanese, he said, “You assert a stain on your honor? I thought there was nothing important but money to a barbarian.”
Samuel came to his feet. The man behind him with the sword reached out. In a backward strike and block, Samuel trapped him against his own blade. They stood locked, while Samuel deliberately made no further move, only held the man so that if he shifted in any direction, he was cut.
“Most feared and respected Ikeno-sama.” Samuel let the other man go, thrusting him off, and turned with a bow from the waist. “Forgive my poor ears and blind eyes. I didn’t hear the wise and honorable words just spoken.”
He straightened. Ikeno stared meditatively at him. Samuel looked back beneath lowered eyelids, holding his deferential posture with a visible defiance.
“What assistance,” Ikeno asked slowly, “does the barbarian Jurada-san offer in part
icular?”
Samuel recognized the elevation of his surname to an honorific. “Respected Ikeno-sama is in possession of the Gokuakuma’s mounting. The blade is required.”
Ikeno inclined his head, acknowledging the obvious.
“Dojun is aware of the theft of the mounting. He assumes that those who seek the Gokuakuma have it; he does not suspect that I myself stole it. He knows of your presence here, and surmises that the mount is in your hands. So he proposes to take the blade off the island; go into hiding elsewhere.” Samuel shrugged. “I don’t know where it’s hidden or where he intends to go, but I’ll know when he makes his move, and how.”
“The Tanabe trusts you with this?”
“He trusts me with nothing of importance. But he depends on my devotion. I know him well. And I know the island. I can do what I say.”
“And what return for your honored contribution?”
“Only to see the Gokuakuma whole, Ikeno-sama. To see it with my own eyes, and know that it’s out of the hands of Tanabe Dojun, who has spent his life in guarding it from being made complete—as I’ve spent my life in preparing to take his place…until he chose to supplant me.”
“Perhaps, in your eagerness for this reprisal, you wish the Tanabe to see it, too?”
“That isn’t necessary. It would be dangerous. For me to see it, for me to know that the defilement of my honor has been cleansed in a proportionate manner—that is enough.”
Ikeno nodded. “I compliment you. When the world is tipped, it should be balanced. Your design seems a precise vengeance for the indignity offered.”
Samuel returned to his most formal demeanor. “The undeservedly generous praise of honored Ikeno-sama causes a heavy weight of gratitude.”
His enemy regarded him with austere, intelligent eyes. “What of the weight of gratitude, then? Your teacher has made a man of you. You owe him.”
“I owe him. And he has taken from me the means of repayment.”
“Giri is hardest to bear when it is two sides of the same heart. What will you do to pay your debt to him, Jurada-san?”
Samuel returned the fathomless look, unflinching. “To betray Dojun-san is shame beyond enduring. When it’s done, when I give you the Gokuakuma…there’s nothing left to me but what honor requires.”
Ikeno inclined in a bow that recognized equality. “If it must be so. Bring me the blade—and you may use the Gokuakuma with honor on yourself.”
Thirty-five
Leda had become quite uncomfortably doubtful by the time they reached the little pier that stretched like a tipsy ribbon out into the still harbor. “Are you certain this is the correct direction? It seems overly far. There isn’t a residence in sight.”
It was at least the twentieth time she’d suggested some mistake had been made. The air seemed dustier here, hotter, the profuse and shadowed greenery of the city having long since given way to flooded paddies and dry brush, interrupted only by palms that looked as inviting as ragged and stooping dustmops.
The kau-kau man jumped down and lifted the table from behind the buggy seat. “Right way, missy! Only got boat now. Take boat, go there chop-chop.”
“Boat?” Leda looked dubiously at the small craft tied not far along the dock, just out of the mud-flats. She brushed away a mosquito. “I really don’t think I’d like to take a boat.”
“Only way get there, missy! Come, Ikeno fix table, you want, eh?”
“No,” she said, taking the decision that had been creeping upon her for the last half hour. She picked up the horse’s reins. “No, I certainly don’t wish to go a step farther.”
“No want go?” He shook his head, and then broke into a grin. “I take table, then. Get fix, bring back you house tonight, OK?”
Before she could protest, he bore the broken table off down the pier and set it carefully into the boat. Leda frowned. She had recently come to the conclusion that she was being kidnapped, and the present time appeared ripe to make her escape. However, as the man seemed genuinely kind, in the manner of all of these islanders, and more interested in the table than in her person, the kidnapping conjecture appeared to be an overstatement of the case. The table was of considerable value to herself, of course, but she could not see that it held any serious prospect of ransom sums.
She also realized, as the horse began to move purposefully toward the nearest bush, that she was not much hand at driving. In point of fact, she’d never gone so far as to touch the reins before. She tugged on the bit, trying to discourage the browsing, and found the buggy moving rapidly backward toward the water.
“Ho!” she cried. “Ho, ho—please, stop! Do stop!”
The kau-kau man came pelting back up the pier. He grabbed the horse by the bridle just as the rear wheels sank into the tiny waves lapping against the mud. After Leda became convinced that in order to prevent the horse from moving backward it was counterproductive to hang onto the reins, he coaxed the animal back on shore.
“You drive town by you self, missy?” he asked skeptically. “Maybe more better you wait here.”
She gathered her skirts. “Tie him up, if you will. I’ll go with you.”
“Good thing, missy!” He quickly unhooked the horse from the traces and set it free. Immediately the animal swished its tail and began to amble back the way they’d come.
“Won’t it wander off?” Leda asked in alarm.
“No, no. No wander. Stay there—grass, you see? Horse always like grass. Come along boat, missy.”
Leda didn’t see any grass. In another moment, she didn’t see any horse. There was nothing to be seen but bushes and tall canes and the sandy two-wheeled track that ended at the pier. Everything seemed silent, except for a strange tuneless clatter that sounded like a hundred children banging on distant cookpots. It came on the wind and drifted away, leaving quiet again.
“Come along boat, missy. Ikeno fix table.”
She pressed her lips together. But the little kau-kau man wasn’t forcing her, nor doing anything brutish, as one imagined kidnappers must do. He just leaned over the pier, holding the boat up close, grinning cheerfully at her as he told her to watch her step.
A few hundred feet out onto the water, her suspicions revived in force. She had expected the kau-kau man to row for the nearest finger of land, readily in view off to the left. Instead, he seemed headed for the low, desolately empty-looking island in the middle of the lake. “Where are we going?” she demanded. “I insist that you point out where you’re taking me!”
He pulled steadily at the oars, not answering. Leda craned to see over his shoulder. As they passed a sandy point, the masts of a stubby fishing vessel came into view, and she realized with a shock that he was heading for it.
“I shall leap overboard!” she declared. “Unless you turn about at once!”
“Sharks,” the kau-kau man said succinctly.
Leda drew in a breath and closed her eyes. She gripped the sides of the boat, and then snatched her fingers in and held them in her lap. “You won’t get any money. My husband won’t descend to paying you a farthing.”
“This place got shark-goddess,” he said conversationally. “She name Kaahupahau. Kanakas say she live here this harbor.”
“How quaint,” Leda murmured.
Be brave, she said to herself. You must not panic. She held the table against her knee and thought that if he tried to attack her, she could fight him off with the sword.
He remained congenial, though, and when they reached the larger boat, he called out, and seemed much more interested in handing the table safely on board than in seeing to her. She sat in the rocking dinghy as he transferred the table, all too close to the shark-infested greenish-blue water that was clear enough to see well down under the encrusted hull of the fishing boat.
A shout of surprise and elation came from above, then instantly a scuffle and babble of foreign voices broke out. As the dinghy rocked, she looked about anxiously for any telltale fins.
“Leda!”
Sam
uel’s voice seemed to come out of nowhere. She jerked her head up. He was leaning over the rail, looking down at her.
“Oh, thank the good Lord!” She almost leaped to her feet in the tiny boat, but the violent motion of it made her sit back down hastily. “Samuel!” She put her hand to her throat in relief. “Oh, Samuel—what—is it a surprise party? My gracious, you very nearly—”
“Stay there,” he hissed, in a barely intelligible tone.
“There are sharks,” she protested, but he was gone from the rail. She heard him speaking in Japanese, a sharp and urgent tone, and then an answer from someone else.
Two Oriental men came to the rail and lowered a paltry rope ladder. They looked at her expectantly. When she hesitated, one of them spoke to her, and gestured for her to come up.
“Samuel?” she asked uncertainly.
A third man looked down at her. “Jurada wife-san, you are to come up. Many gratitude due.”
Leda really felt rather confused. “Gratitude?”
“This Ikeno,” the kau-kau man said, holding the dinghy up close to the ladder. “You go up, missy.”
“I’m sorry. Mr. Gerard asked me to stay in the boat.”
The man above spoke over his shoulder. After a moment, she heard Samuel’s voice. “Do as he says. It’s all right.”
He sounded—not quite himself. She gathered her skirt and delicately, gingerly took hold of the ladder, pulling herself up. With the help of the kau-kau man and the Oriental men above, and only one terrifying moment when she caught her foot in her skirt and the dinghy rocked madly, she got on deck and took a deep breath of relief. The kau-kau man pounded twice on the hull, shouted “Aloha,” and then pushed his boat away, manning the oars again.
Samuel stood barefoot in his white suit, with a shocking bloodstain at his collar. She almost tripped over the table in her relief as she went toward him. One of the Oriental men held the blade that had been inside the leg. Another had a complete sword in his hand, hilt and all. There did not seem to be any ladies present.