“Merciful Buddha!” Nagatoki exclaimed. Kaze looked over his shoulder to see the young man, Sadakatsu, and Elder Grandma standing behind him in the doorway. They all had shocked looks on their faces, and Kaze thought he detected tears in Sadakatsu’s eyes.
“It’s all right, Yuchan,” Kaze said. “Your grandmother and cousin are here to bring you home, and you must remember Sadakatsu.”
Yuchan looked at the trio, then looked at Kaze. “Is it a dream?” she mused.
“No, it’s no dream. You’re saved. You will be going home.”
Yuchan crawled over to the cage wall closest to the door. She put her fingers around the bars and stared out. The fingers looked like dried twigs, they were so thin.
“Go get the key to the cell,” Kaze ordered Nagatoki. “It’s probably on that body in the hallway.”
“But that body doesn’t have a head!” the grandson said.
“Yes, but she probably does have a key. Check her kimono for it.”
Nagatoki left, and Sadakatsu went to the cage and fell to his knees, copious tears now streaming down his thin face. Yuchan looked at him and said, “Sadakatsu! Look, Sadakatsu, for once you are not the skinniest one in the room.” She held her hands out. Every bone in her hand was visible. “Even you are not as thin as this, Sadakatsu!”
When she made that joke, Kaze immediately knew two things. One, she was indeed from the same strong stock as Elder Grandma. Two, although it would take a long time to recover, Yuchan would eventually prevail over this ordeal. She might never be as pretty again, but she would always be as strong.
Nagatoki came back with the key. He held it away from his body like a repugnant thing. Perhaps it was. Kaze took the key and opened the cage. Yuchan painfully crawled out of the cage, too weak to walk.
“Get up and walk!” Elder Grandma ordered.
Yuchan tried to stand with the help of Sadakatsu but collapsed back to the tatami like a fragile autumn leaf. “I can’t,” she said.
Kaze picked Yuchan up in his arms. She was as light as a small child. “Thank you,” she whispered as he held her.
Elder Grandma handed her spear to Sadakatsu. “Here, let me have her,” she said gruffly.
Kaze hesitated a moment, and Elder Grandma turned her back. “Put her on my back. I used to carry her as a baby that way and I can certainly carry her that way again.” Kaze took Yuchan over to Elder Grandma and loaded her onto the old woman’s back, piggyback style. It seemed to give Yuchan comfort to be next to her grand-mother.
“That’s fine for getting out of here,” Kaze said, “but it won’t do for getting you back home. We should all leave Kamakura immediately. I don’t know what the authorities will think of all this and don’t want to bother finding out. We’ll have to roust some porters out of bed and have Yuchan carried in a palanquin. That will take money.”
Elder Grandma bit her lip. Her penurious nature did battle with her practical side, and for once practicality won. “All right,” she said. “Sadakatsu has the money.”
“Good,” Kaze said. “You start and I’ll join you. I have one last piece of business here.” Kaze had no desire to carve a Kannon for the dead in the villa and the palace, but he did want to do one thing.
Kaze left the room with the cell and made his way to the back of the palace. There, in a large common room, he found six girls, all dressed in sumptuous kimonos. They were startled by Kaze’s appearance and sat staring at him with wary eyes.
“You’re free,” Kaze said.
Several of the girls looked at each other, seeming not to understand.
“I said you’re free,” Kaze repeated. “The men who were guarding you are dead. You can leave any time.”
One girl stood with tentative movements. Another girl, with hard eyes, said, “Sit down!” The first girl sat.
Puzzled, Kaze said, “Don’t you understand me? You can go at any time.”
Hard Eyes said, “Where are we to go? Our parents sold us into prostitution. We have no home now. If we leave, we will have to wander, seeking some housemaid’s job, where men will use our bodies just as they do now, except we won’t get the fine clothes and luxury our current life can bring us. It’s just like a man to announce that we are free to go, but not to tell us where we can go!”
Kaze looked at Hard Eyes until she looked away from his even harder gaze. “Suit yourself,” he said. “The door to freedom is open. Freedom is never easy, for a man or a woman. You at least have the chance at it, if you want. If you don’t want, then that’s your karma.” He turned and left, catching up with the others.
Kaze and the four left the Jade Palace and Hishigawa’s villa. They went to the outskirts of Kamakura and Kaze found a porters’ lodging next to an inn. There he was able to get two palanquin porters out of bed.
At first the two porters were frightened by the sight of Yuchan, but Kaze told them she had been sick and needed to return home immediately to recuperate. After a brief consultation and a few minutes of haggling over price with Elder Grandma, who eventually triumphed by pointing out how light Yuchan was, Yuchan was safely tucked inside the palanquin.
“You should be fine,” Kaze said to Elder Grandma. “The authorities will be looking for me, but I doubt they will look for you.”
“Will you be fine?”
Kaze rubbed his shoulders. “Like you, I’m tough.” Elder Grandma grunted a reply, then went to look after Yuchan.
Nagatoki came up to Kaze and asked, “How many guards did you kill in the villa?”
“Too many. The best blades stay in their scabbard, but I hate to leave a job undone. I did not find out what happened to Mototane, but I decided to clear out that nest of vermin. I think I am still like a Muramasa blade, not a Masamune blade. I am sharp but still have to strengthen my spirit.”
“It’s too bad Mototane couldn’t be here to help us. He would have eliminated that bad lot, too.”
“Perhaps.”
“It’s a shame you couldn’t see how Mototane could fight. He was superb. I envied the way he could handle Sakuran.”
Sakuran was a word meaning falling cherry blossoms, one of many words used to describe the various states of the cherished sakura, the cherry blossom. “Sakuran?” Kaze asked.
“His sword was called Sakuran, Samurai-san.”
An awful chill touched Kaze. “What did the tsuba of Sakuran look like?” Kaze asked quietly.
“It was beautiful,” Nagatoki said enthusiastically. “It had the branch of a cherry tree around the outside edge and in the middle it had sakuran highlighted in silver.”
“Did the branch have gold highlights?”
“Why, yes. How did you know? Have you seen Sakuran?”
“Yes,” Kaze said softly. “I’ve seen it.”
Kaze knew Hishigawa was a liar from his first meeting with him. He had called the bandit chief Ishibashi, and that name should have been a clue that Hishigawa was lying. To get to the place where the bandits were attacking Hishigawa, Kaze had crossed a small stone bridge before climbing the hill. “Ishibashi” meant stone bridge. Hishigawa had crossed the same stone bridge and had used “Ishibashi” when he needed another name for Noguchi Mototane.
In Kaze’s world, names were important. Men fought and died to protect or enhance a name. In fact, the rulers of the land, the daimyo, had a title that meant “great name.” But Kaze, above all in his class, knew that names were ephemeral and not immutable. Kaze now used a name that was plucked from the air on a whim. His past name, which he had once put such store in, was now like the wind. Its effects were still felt, but it had no tangible existence. By the simple expedient of giving Noguchi Mototane the name Ishibashi, Kaze had been fooled and Mototane had died.
As a warrior, Kaze knew death much more intimately than most men, but even the most sheltered farmer understood that life was finite. Therefore, death by itself had little meaning to Kaze, but the manner of death had much meaning. There are good deaths and bad deaths. The Lady had had a very bad death, and this fact had driven Kaze to rage more than just the tragedy of her passing.