“Indeed,” said Kurita, and his benevolent manner stirred something long forgotten in her mind: sitting with her father as he told stories about The Republic or, better yet, how he’d met her mother. “Then we have fulfilled our duties well.”
Katana frowned. “Tono?”
“You forget that a coordinator is the null space within the wheel. Without a hub, there is no wheel. The Combine turns, but it does so firmly anchored to the gap that is our silence. Do you think we have neither eyes nor ears? Of course we followed your course; we were heartened when you stood for your Dragon’s Fury, and more so when you declared for our cause. Once we divined Sakamoto’s true intent, we made sure that our heir was behind him at nearly every step. So, do you truly believe that our heir would’ve let you live without our consent?”
“Ie, Tono,” said Katana, but she was confused and this upset her. Hadn’t this been precisely what she’d been working for over these many months? And yet, Katana understood now that the coordinator had never been asleep; the coordinator was the unseen master pulling the strings of his many puppets. “So you tasked me.”
“And you did not disappoint. Else…” Kurita let his voice trail away, leaving the threat unspoken: Else we would have had your head.
“I am not my father’s daughter, and would never desert the Combine.”
“Really?” Kurita’s eyebrows wriggled in a display of mischief that was reflected by the sudden sparkle in his eyes. “You were governor, duchess, prefect. So many Republican honors the Combine never sanctioned. And as for your father, do not deceive yourself that he acted without the coordinator’s consent.”
“Consent? My father lost everything. He turned his back on the Combine. He was a governor!”
“So? Despite your trappings, you never lost the honor that resides in the heart, and whatever else your father lost, he was never stripped of his.”
Why they were talking about her father at all was a mystery. “I still have my honor, Tono, and am ready for whatever my Coordinator wishes. Command me. If you wish my death for my disobedience, I only ask to choose my kaishakunin so that I may be sure he will strike cleanly.”
For a moment, the coordinator’s face was deathly still, and she steeled herself, only hoping that the Old Master struck well. An irony, that: that her father should have been kaishakunin to the man whose brother would behead the father’s daughter.
Then she saw a change come over the coordinator’s features. His mouth twitched. His eyes narrowed. And then he laughed: a rich, warm, full-throated bellow that was astonishing, if only because, a few seconds before, Katana was convinced she would die.
“Katana Tormark.” Tears of mirth squeezed from the corners of the coordinator’s eyes, and he wiped them away with both thumbs. “If we’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.” Kurita broke off, flipped open the case of his finger watch and tut-tutted. “Look at the time. How late it is!”
He clapped three times. Instantly, a shoji slid open and two palace guards appeared. Spying them, Katana’s legs went a little numb. She didn’t know why she felt surprise; clearly, disarming her had been the coordinator’s plan. Now, they’d take her into custody, to prison and then…
What the coordinator said next stunned her to the core. “Show our guest to her rooms. She will want to bathe and rest after her long travail. Treat her with courtesy for she is an honored guest and our new warlord—of the Dieron Military District.”
The coordinator gave her an expectant look. But, at first, Katana just stared, unable to comprehend what Kurita meant. Then a surge of astonishment swept her from tip to toe, and suddenly, everything came clear: the coordinator’s allowing Sakamoto to show his true colors; the latitude he’d given her to demonstrate where she stood. But this last, what could it mean? Wasn’t it far more, well, expedient to name her as Benjamin’s Tai-shu? Then, in the next instant, she saw why Kurita could not.
Because there are the other warlords; they’d never stomach this, and besides, they’d get the wrong idea: that knocking each other off is how you rise in the ranks. But giving me Dieron means he’s still testing me, seeing if I can pull this off…
She saw that Kurita was still waiting, and the wordless look they exchanged told her: He knew her thoughts, and she was correct. She finally said, “Tono, I… I don’t know what to say…”
“Yes would be a start. There is work still to be done, Katana, and we do hate loose ends. And Tai-shu Tormark”—Vincent’s features creased in a smile—“we dine at eight.”
Epilogue
Katana’s Journal
15 January 3136
Andre said take a vacation. Right. I’ve been so busy planning for our next offensive I haven’t changed my socks. And Mizunami? That’s in the Pesht District, hell and gone. But then I’m staring at a holovid, and the coordinator’s ordering me to go. Well, you know, what can you say?
Andre suggested this out-of-the-way place. Five-Waters, because of the rivers that converge there to form the great Okuninoshi: twice as wide and three times as long as the Amazon on Terra. That’s a lot of river. The path we took—Andre and I in the lead, the Old Master trailing a meter behind—meandered along the shore through fragrant river grasses. Clouds of iridescent blue butterflies danced over fields of tiny white blossoms. Giant Mizunami cypress with beards of gray-green moss hugged the riverbank, and the water was so clear and clean I could see a mosaic of multicolored pebbles, and silver fish undulating between roots as thick as my leg.
Okay. It was pretty. But why would the coordinator…? Then it hit me. I turned to Andre. “You set this up.”
“My lips are sealed.” And then Andre grinned like a little kid who’s shorted your sheets. You’d think being promoted to tai-sho and my right-hand man would’ve brought him down a notch. He lifted his chin at a small rise a klick away. “Over that hill.”
I was ready to rip out his tonsils but settled for grumbling and nasty looks. But it wasn’t until we mounted that rise and I saw the house that I started to get an inkling that something was really up. Wasn’t the house so much; nothing more than a few airy rooms with a covered porch wider than an engawa and shojis open to the breeze. A white gravel path led to three wooden steps in front of the house; at the back, I saw another curl of gravel, this one winding to a garden of Japanese cedar, Keyaki and ground cypress. We took that meandering path through willowy green bamboo—and then I saw it: a cone of light. An old man sitting on a crag of black stone; back turned, a long shock of snow-white hair. Sunning the same, lazy way a lizard warms itself on a rock. The rock perched at the edge of a Katesansui ; you could immediately tell that whoever tended this stone garden took great care, raking patterns to represent ocean waves crashing against the shores of rock islands haloed with azaleas and deep green moss. Our footfalls made a sound like eggshells fracturing, and the old man turned.
Even now, though it is very late and the flame from my candle threatens to drown in hot wax, I remember that moment, that eerie frisson of something very close to fear. Tripping over a secret hope? A desire? I don’t know. That old man’s face was pruned by wrinkles, and age had bent his back so that he seemed to fold in two, but I knew… and somehow, finally, I managed a single word: “Father?”
He tottered to his feet. He was very thin, his limbs no thicker than twigs, and his fingers were gnarled by age and long use. Still, he was a warrior; you could tell from the way he held himself. “Gashi, Musume,” he said, in a voice still surprisingly rich.