The prison was a stinking cesspit of oily stone and rancid air. A forgotten hole into which Kigen justice poured criminals spared from death in the arena or outright execution; a pitiful, lucky few. Debtors and thugs, petty thieves and one-percenters crammed into tiny cells with bars of pitted iron and rotten straw on the floor. No sunlight. No air. Stale bread and black water and bare rock for a pillow.
The gate guard had taken one look at Hiro in his golden tabard and hissing, clanking suit of ō-yoroi before fumbling for his keys and opening the gate to the cell block. He bobbed and shuffled along a dank corridor, looking back over his shoulder every few feet as if to make sure they were still with him. Beckoning them down twisting stairs into the reeking dark. Small rats scurried away from the torchlight in the guard’s hand, larger ones with tails thick as Yukiko’s thumb standing their ground and screeching in defiance. Buzzing lotusflies swam in corpse-stench as they passed one cell. She covered her mouth and averted her eyes.
The guard halted deep in the prison bowels, indicating a cell door at the end of the corridor. Handing the torch over, he bobbed his head again at Hiro and retreated a respectful distance. Yukiko turned to the Iron Samurai, nodding toward the cell.
“I would speak to my father alone, Lord Hiro.”
He bowed, whirring gears and hissing chi smoke.
“As you wish, Lady.”
She approached the cell with slow, heavy tread, torch held high, heart breaking when she saw the pale, filthy figure hunched in the cage. Naked but for a vomit-stained rag, gray skin glistening with a sheen of sallow sweat, palsied with the agony of lotus de-tox. Teeth chattering, head bowed, arms clasped about his knees. Locked in a private hell and not stirring an inch at the light’s approach.
“Father?” The sob caught in her throat, voice breaking. She knelt in front of the cell door, jamming the torch between the bars. Flickering light crept across Masaru’s tattoos, the nine-tailed fox seeming to dance among the shadows. She reached toward him, fingers spread. The reek of the bucket in the corner made her want to retch.
“Father,” she repeated louder. He lifted his head slowly and squinted at the light, knotted tangles of graying hair hanging in dirty strings over his face. Recognition broke through the crust of withdrawal and he blinked, eyes widening, uncurling from his crouch.
“Yukiko?” he whispered, crawling toward her across the filthy stone. “Lord Izanagi, take me. Are you real, or another smoke vision?”
“It’s me, father.” She tried to smile, tears rolling down her cheeks, clasping
his hand between the bars. “It’s your Ichigo.”
His face was alight with joy, creeping past the pain and shining in his eyes.
“I thought you were dead!”
“No.” She squeezed his hand. “I saved him, father. The arashitora. He’s here
with me.”
“Gods above . . .”
“Where is Kasumi? Akihito?”
“Gone.” He shook his head, dropped his gaze to the floor. “I commanded
them to flee before we reached the city gates. I knew Yoritomo’s wrath would
be black. Yamagata . . .”
“I know. I know what Yoritomo did. To Yamagata. To us. I know everything,
father.”
He glanced up, confusion and fear dilating his pupils. The creases at the
corners of his mouth and eyes were cut deep; dark furrows in gray stone, scars
of a torturous secret held for years. Drowning the pain in lotus smoke, seeking
oblivion in drinking dens and gambling pits, hoping for some kind of end to it
all. Hollow respite from the secret twisting inside, whispering in the dark. The
secret they now shared.
“You . . .” There were tears in his eyes. The first time she had ever seen them.
“You know?”
“I know.”
His sigh seemed to come from the depths of him, someplace dark and poisonous, an exhalation of the toxin he’d breathed since that crushing day. Some
part of her had known, had always known. Ever since he’d crouched down beside her in the Shōgun’s garden and told her that her mother was gone, that she
had left and would never be coming back. That Yukiko couldn’t say goodbye.
And she had blamed him. She had hated him for it.
“Naomi . . .” His voice cracked at the name. “Your mother, she begged Yoritomo to release me from his service. Beseeched him on behalf of our family.
The babe in her belly. You had grown up without me. She did not want that life
for our new child. The Shōgun smiled and nodded, told us he would think on
it. That he would give us his answer on the morrow.”
Masaru blinked hard, screwing his face up tight and willing away the tears.
Yukiko held his hand as hard as she could, reached out and brushed his cheeks. “They killed her the next morning. I returned from the bathhouse and found
her still in bed. Eyes closed. Throat cut.” His voice broke. “The blood . . .” He stared down at his open, empty palm, silent for a long, terrible moment,
eyes filled with hatred.
“I snatched up the nagamaki his father had given me, and went in search of
Yoritomo, intending to take his head. I found him on a terrace overlooking the
garden, watching you play with the sparrows. He was only a boy, barely thirteen, but he looked at me with the eyes of a madman. And do you know what