“Yes. And all the men of Izu. And Lord, please accept this gift as a token of filial duty.” Still on his knees, Yabu had offered his Murasama sword. “This is the sword that murdered your grandfather.”
“That’s not possible!”
Yabu had told him the history of the sword, how it had come down to him over the years and how, only recently, he had learned of its true identity. He summoned Suwo. The old man told what he had witnessed when he himself was little more than a boy.
“It’s true, Lord,” Suwo had said proudly. “No man saw Obata’s father break the sword or cast it into the sea. And I swear by my hope of samurai rebirth that I served your grandfather, Lord Chikitada. I served him faithfully until that day he died. I was there, I swear it.”
Toranaga had accepted the sword. It seemed to quiver with malevolence in his hand. He had always scoffed at the legend that certain swords possessed a killing urge of their own, that some swords needed to leap out of the scabbard to drink blood, but now Toranaga believed it.
He shuddered, remembering that day. Why do Murasama blades hate us? One killed my grandfather. Another almost cut off my arm when I was six, an unexplained accident, no one near but still my sword arm was slashed and I nearly bled to death. A third decapitated my first-born son.
“Sire,” Yabu had said, “such a befouled blade shouldn’t be allowed to live,
“Yes—yes,” he had muttered, thankful that Yabu had made the suggestion. “Do it now!” And only when the sword had sunk out of sight, into the very deep, witnessed by his own men, had his heart begun to pump normally. He had thanked Yabu, ordered taxes to be stabilized at sixty parts for peasants, forty for their lords, and had given him Izu as his fief. So everything was as before, except that now all power in Izu belonged to Toranaga, if he wished to take it back.
Toranaga turned over to ease the ache in his sword arm and settled again more comfortably, enjoying the nearness of the earth, gaining strength from it as always.
That blade’s gone, never to return. Good, but remember what the old Chinese soothsayer foretold, he thought: that you would die by the sword. But whose sword and is it to be by my own hand or another’s?
I’ll know when I know, he told himself without fear.
Now sleep.
The faint shout brought Toranaga out of his meditation and he leaped to his feet. Naga was excitedly pointing westward. All eyes followed his point.
The carrier pigeon was flying in a direct line for Anjiro from the west. She fluttered into a distant tree to rest for a moment, then took off once more as rain began to fall.
Far to the west, in her wake, was Osaka.
The handler at the pigeon coop held the bird gently but firmly as Toranaga stripped off his sodden clothes. He had galloped back through the downpour. Naga and other samurai anxiously crowded the small doorway, careless of the warm rain which still fell in torrents, drumming on the tiled roof.
Carefully Toranaga dried his hands. The man offered the pigeon. Two tiny, beaten-silver cylinders were attached to each of her legs. One would have been usual. Toranaga had to work hard to keep the nervous tremble out of his fingers. He untied the cylinders and took them over to the light of the window opening to examine the minute seals. He recognized Kiri’s secret cipher. Naga and the others were watching tensely. His face revealed nothing.
Toranaga did not break the seals at once, much as he wanted to. Patiently he waited until a dry kimono was brought. A servant held a large oiled-paper umbrella for him and he walked to his own quarters in the fortress. Soup and cha were waiting. He sipped them and listened to the rain. When he felt calm, he posted guards and went into an inner room. In privacy he broke the seals. The paper of the four scrolls was very thin, the characters tiny, the message long and in code. Decoding was laborious. When it was completed, he read the message and then reread it twice. Then he let his mind range.
