THE KEEPER OF SECRETS

One

Ripples in the Water

Though it had begun long before, I cannot shake from my memory the night of the red moon. Like the beat of a butterfly’s wings that creates the mighty taifun, the impetus of the storm had begun long before I found Takahase Himatsu on one of the balconies of Nagoya’s castle. I had no notion of how long he had been standing there in the cool chill of the evening, but from the uncomforted arch in his back and the hard set to his brow, I knew he had been brooding there for quite some time.

Himatsu held a well-deserved place as a hatamoto, one of the twelve highest ranking retainers of Nagoya’s warlord. He stood a few centimeters taller than the average man and was lithe of form with the powerful build of a seasoned warrior. His skin held only a trace of the sun and age his twenty-five years should have acquired. Whenever he smiled, his eyes were a pleasant chestnut color, complementing his narrow nose and square chin. Long hair as black as a raven’s underbelly fell from a gathered knot atop his head, partly obscuring my view of his face. He wore the garb of a Suzume samurai, a blue and white kimono tied with a black obi. A pair of sheathed swords were tucked into the sash. The weapons were old and worn, and the hilts were mismatched, but they were a mark of samurai authority no commoner in Suzume Katsu’s fief could dispute. The sheaths of the long katana and short wakizashi protruded from his obi like a wasp’s stinger as he leaned thoughtfully upon the balustrade. Perhaps it was a forewarning to his mood, but even Himatsu’s wasp sting was preferable to solitude on such an ominous evening.

“Good evening, Takahase-san,” I said with a polite bow. “I thought you were at the feast with our illustrious daimyo.”

Himatsu only looked at me for a moment with dark, stoic eyes. “I was at the feast, but I’ve grown tired of politics tonight,” he said at length, not bothering to return the bow.

I drew up to his side and pondered the same spot on the horizon where he gazed, the large, red moon that hung low in the night sky. “I understand. Politics are for the devious and crafty, not for the pure of heart, eh?” I said with a laugh.

“But politics is all Katsu talks about,” he moaned. “Politics, politics, politics. I can barely hear myself think with he and his generals carrying on. And Hokori is even worse than his father. He drones on about women and sake and opium. He isn’t even daimyo yet, but he thinks he is entitled to every nubile virgin, sake brewery, and opium refinery in all of Japan, let alone the whole province. Katsu is at least modest about his vices, or at least prudent enough to not bore his hatamoto with them.” He sighed and glanced at me before withdrawing into himself again. “Gomen nasai—I apologize, Jūsan. I’m sorry to bore you with my complaints. Your noble ear deserves better.”

I smiled with whimsy, for I remembered once being a young, idealistic man with dreams and questions and vexations. “Think nothing of it. Katsu pours far too much honey in my ears as it is. Even still, is it truly so bad to be hatamoto to one of the most powerful daimyo since the Crisis? Katsu is as generous and caring as a Post-Crisis leader can be in most regards.”

“But Katsu will not hold his power forever. I fear Hokori, given his wanton vices, will not heed the teachings of his father when the gods take Katsu from us.”

I nodded. “I pray to the Ancestors that Katsu lives long on the Suzume seat of power.”

“The longer Hokori remains in his father’s shadow, the better.” He shook his head. “It still does not comfort a restless mind, though.”

“None of your friends were present?”

“Just some old political idealists, an overgrown boy wishing to be daimyo before his time, and too much sake.”

He stood silent for the longest time, listening to the wind, the crickets, and the quiet sounds of nearby Ise Bay. I knew he was not simply ignoring me, for the sorrowful gleam in his eye returned while he gazed out into the unknown of the night.

“I feel politics is not the only thing that chased you out here on this fine night,” I observed. “I am no fortune teller, but I can recognize an oppressed spirit when I see one.”

The wind blew gently through his dark hair. “I don’t know what to say,” he said after a time. “I am not sure how to say it.”

“Try,” I smiled. “You never know unless you try.”

His eyes fixed on the red moon. “I... I can feel... something.”

My eyebrows furrowed with curiosity. “Feel what?”

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. It’s not just the blood moon. It is like... a puff of incense smoke. It is there yet not there. It is not there, yet it is. It feels like... like...”

“A ghost,” I finished for him with thin-lined lips. Such a feeling was not uncommon, but never had I seen someone so entranced by it, someone so magnetized by it that his whole countenance lacked the youth and vigor it normally retained.

“Yes,” he answered. “Like a ghost.”

I pursed my lips. “Perhaps your Ancestors are trying to tell you something.”

He turned to face me for a moment, his eyes radiating fear and wonder at the same time. “And how can I know what they are saying?”

“I am the son of the Keeper of Secrets, Takahase-san,” I reminded him. “Regardless of my education, I do not know everything there is to know under the sun. I cannot predict the future any more than I can turn back the seasons.”

“Then perhaps the majo can tell me,” he breathed with uncertainty.

My eyebrows rose in disbelief. “The soothsayer?”

“Regardless of how I feel about her methods, she has ways of knowing things others cannot.”

“Maybe she’ll tell you things you wish you didn’t know,” I said. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten about your father already?”

I remembered Takahase Boshi quite fondly. Boshi had also been hatamoto to the Suzume daimyo and a good friend to my father and myself. When his wife Suki took ill, Boshi sought guidance from the majo. The witch spoke words that Boshi carried with sorrow as he laid his wife to rest in the ground before falling dead into the grave alongside her. I felt a pang of guilt for mentioning the majo, for I had forgotten the pain it had caused Himatsu. He was not a child by any means when his father and mother were stolen from this life, but he bore the grief of his loss well.

The sting of accusation was plain in his eyes, and instantly I felt I had wronged him. “Leave my father out of this,” he said firmly.

 “Gomen nasai, Himatsu. It was wrong of me to unearth such a painful memory.”

“Forget it.” His eyes never left the blood moon near the horizon.

“Nonsense. Boshi was stolen from us before his time,” I offered to ease his mind. “I shall light some incense to comfort his spirit and lift words to the gods to atone for my offense against his memory.”

“I would appreciate that very much.” Though his tone said otherwise, Himatsu still seemed bothered and remote. I had seen him withdrawn and elusive before, but often it he was only pondering a quiet, Zen reflection upon the stillness and tranquility of life. That night, however, had been different. Himatsu was truly troubled, haunted by something that even he could not identify.

I stood silent and listened to the sounds of life around us, waiting for his response.

“I think I will see the majo anyway,” he said as I turned to leave. “She doesn’t give bad news to everyone.”

“But with such a dark feeling in the air, she may not say what you wish to hear.” In a quick breath I composed:

“The beggar’s questions

Return hollow to himself

Like an autumn breeze.”

Himatsu was oftentimes sharper than I gave him credit for. He responded with:

“To steal chance against

Blades, spears, and naginata

Keeps a beggar fed.

“I am prepared to take that chance,” he added placidly. “I’ve been ready to do so ever since my mother and father died.”

“You are a man, Takahase-san,” I said with a deferential dip of my head, “and because you are a man, you have the privilege of making your own choices, regardless of their prudence or rationality. I shall take my leave, my friend,” I said with a noble bow. “May your thoughts not trouble you so, and may you wake in the morning with a fresh mind.”

Turning from the rail, he faced me for a moment; the wasp sting of his paired swords finally relaxed. “Where are you going?”

“To see my father. He wanted to see me before it grew too late.”

“Another find in the Archives?”

I shrugged. My father was a silent man who spoke to me of his discoveries only when he needed to. “Perhaps.” I paused. “Sayonara—Goodbye, Himatsu.”

“Goodbye, Jūsan.” Himatsu bowed regally and resumed his vigil upon the balcony, his wasp sting once again rearing its deadly point.

With a breathy sigh, I left him alone to brood on his dark thoughts.

Nagoya Castle embraced me once again when I stepped into its walls. The castle of grandeur and majesty was a testament to the emerging sensation of hope that Suzume Katsu handed out to his vassals. One of the first major edifices erected from the ashes of the Crisis, Katsu’s whitewashed, blue-trimmed stronghold was the most recognizable landmark on the ancient Tōkaidō road. It structurally mirrored the faded pictures of Nagoya Castle, where, according to the histories, three of Japan’s finest war heroes had emerged almost a thousand years before the Crisis. Always teeming with life and excitement, Katsu’s home served as a bastion of protection and goodwill to the commoners that lived within Nagoya’s protective walls.

Even before I was two steps inside, the loudness and indiscretion of the Suzume daimyo and heir caught my attention. Their boisterous, drunken laughter echoed throughout the walls, accompanied by the occasional plunk of an emptied sake cup zealously slammed down on a wooden table top. As quickly as I could, I pressed through the corridors, knowing that if Katsu managed to see me he would possibly detain me from reaching my father.

The laughter grew louder as I neared the feasting hall. I shuffled past with a shake of my head, not even bothering to look into the open shōji rice paper door.

“Jūsan!” came the earnest, bass shout down the hall. “Jūsan! Come, come!”

I tightened my fists and grimaced. After retracing my steps to the hall with annoyance, I peered in through the open door.

Suzume Katsu, Keeper of the Sword, sat on a silken pillow in front of a short, wooden table scattered with empty sake cups. The daimyo was a large, stout man with long hair dyed black to hide his growing years. His bronzed skin portrayed a man who had toiled many long years in the sun. A short beard and moustache covered his chin and upper lip, and his mouth and eyes were relaxed and smiling under the torpor of alcohol. He wore a blue-collared white kimono with a black obi.

Hokori, the son and only heir of the Suzume dynasty, was a striking mirror image of his father. Nearly ten years older than Himatsu, the daimyo’s heir was slim and handsome of face and powerful in body, well able to use the old sword resting sheathed by his side. His hair hung loosely in a long braid down his left shoulder, and a look of lust filled his eyes whenever he glanced at the geisha girl who played an airy melody on the koto in the corner.

Misuki Taka and Yabuse Kobushi, two of Katsu’s most prominent and successful taishō, were both seated on straw tatami mats on either side of the daimyo. Both middle-aged generals often drank freshly brewed tea or sake with the lord and heir either to socialize or to discuss pertinent political matters or other internal affairs. Both men were of the same ample girth as their lord, suggesting that they spent more time indulging themselves on life’s pleasures than upon upholding the duty of their station.

Yabuse Doki, one of Katsu’s eldest and most vigilant hatamoto, stood at attention by the door when I entered. Tall and imposing, he watched his lord like a hawk protecting its young. His hand was always resting on the hilt of his katana, ready to draw the old weapon in a moment’s notice, to throw himself before any threat. I heard the subtle sound of scraping metal as the sword moved an inch from its black, lacquered sheath. “Hiden-san,” he said with a bow, his aged voice the soft sound of flowing honey. The katana fell back into its sheath, but Doki’s alert hand never moved from it.

“Ah, Jūsan!” Katsu called out to me with more friendship to his tone than would ever be present when he was sober. “Come, come! Sit! Sit! Come drink some sake with your lord!”

Kobushi began to laugh at Katsu’s suggestion, and the two other men joined in to amplify the noise.

“Forgive me, my lord,” I said with an apologetic bow, “but I am on my way to my father. I promised to see him as soon as possible.”

“Nonsense!” Katsu countered. “Jūni will understand. Come have a drink with your daimyo. I can have some rice or sushi brought, if you wish. Anything you want!”

I waved him off. “I’m sorry, but I fear I shall need a clear head when I see him.”

“Ah! Then tea is what you need!” With an awkward grin, Katsu raised his ceramic sake cup towards the geisha in the corner with the koto. “Girl, give our friend some fresh cha to warm his spirits!”

The girl wordlessly turned her attention from the soothing, pleasant music she had been playing.

“Please forgive me for declining, Suzume-sama,” I insisted, “but perhaps another time?”

“The Ancestors once said, ‘There is no better time than the present,’” he recited while prodding Taka in the ribs. “Isn’t that so, eh?”

‘Too much sake dulls the senses’ was something else the Ancestors used to say, I thought.

“Yes, your lordship,” the graying Taka replied after rudely slurping more warm sake from his cup.

The geisha stood nervously, wondering whether or not I would stay or leave.

“More sake, too!” Taka shouted at her, flamboyantly waving his hand at her when she remained caught by indecision. “Off with you, you sluggish wench! Your daimyo gave you an order!”

I held a hand up to stop her. “That will be all right. I won’t be staying long.”

“But I still want more sake!” Taka said even more rudely.

The girl disappeared into the next room.

“Tell me, Jūni’s son,” Katsu continued. “What is so important that it keeps your father sequestered in the Archives for this past week? What sort of mysteries is he hiding from me?”

“My father only shares with me the things he deems worthy for me to know,” I told him. “He is the Keeper of Secrets, not I.”

Ignoring me, Katsu went on. “Surely it must be some new weapon or some new tactic we have never thought of. Anything that would help us keep peace against the Karasu would be greatly appreciated.”

“Yes!” Kobushi concurred. “Death to Karasu Taro and all his men, the bastards! And the Tomonoshi clans as well!”

“Death! Death!” echoed Taka. “Death to them all! Death to them all!”

Katsu pointed a wavering, inebriated finger in my direction. “If your father has found anything like Sun-Tzu’s timeless words of wisdom, I shall give him so much wealth he won’t know what to do with it all.”

“And women, too,” said Kobushi, throwing the four into uproarious laughter.

“I am certain Father’s discovery will be important, lord,” I offered, “but if you please, I must—”

“The Karasu know we have all the beautiful women in Japan,” Taka guffawed, “and that is why they seek to conquer us!”

“Perhaps if we give them some as a present and hide the rest, we could conquer them once and for all while they are distracted!” Hokori chimed in.

“No, no...” said Kobushi. How about we give them stuffed dolls that look like women? Taro’s apes aren’t even smart enough to tell the difference!”

I groaned inwardly. Now I knew why Himatsu had grown tired of them so quickly. “If you please—”

Katsu doubled over laughing. “Dolls?! Ha! They are like little girls!”

My face reddened with irritation. “I shall return if you need me, my lord,” I said, but Katsu had stopped listening a long time ago. I turned to the door and bowed to the guard.

Doki’s returned the bow, but his hand never left the hilt of his sword. “Pay them no attention, Jūsan. Though they are imprudent with their behavior, it will be forgotten, come morning.”

“As it always is for a samurai,” I nodded lightly to him in respect. “You do your job well, Yabuse Doki. May you have many years as a Suzume hatamoto.”

“Arigatō—Thank you,” he said solemnly.

As I turned to leave, I took notice of the sword Katsu retained by his side, the very blade that gave him his title. Resting gently beside the stout daimyo’s right arm was a katana in an aged, black sheath. Whether or not the sheath belonged to the original sword was anyone’s guess, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind the legendary proportions of such an elegant weapon.

The Unbreakable Sword of Victory had been made by the great swordsmith Masamune, a man who lived in Japan long before the Crisis. A masterful work of art as well as a functional weapon, the antique was worth far more than gold. It had been rescued from a museum shortly after the Crisis by a charismatic leader from Nagoya named Suzume Hayato who saw opportunity and seized it. With the legendary sword and the myths of history attached to the blade, Post-Crisis War peasants saw Hayato as an avenging god. The people even further deified him as he and his armies of hardy Crisis survivors slew their enemies, quickly establishing Hayato as the first daimyo at the beginning of a critical, survivalist era. The sword itself became Suzume Hayato’s ancestral sword, handed down from father to son on the daimyo’s deathbed. When the Crisis came, the Ancestors lost the wisdom to craft such fine weapons; each priceless blade found was treasured by those who would fight the Post-Crisis War. Since the end of the Crisis War, the line of Suzume succession had remained unbroken as the Masamune was passed on from father to eldest son for two hundred and ninety-seven long years.

In the second I caught sight of the Masamune, I swore a glint of jealously and lust flickered in Hokori’s eyes as he also focused on the sword. Perhaps Himatsu was right, I thought. Perhaps the Heir did wish to be daimyo before his time.

Regardless of Himatsu’s worries, I pushed the idea from my mind and left the daimyo and his entourage, fearing my father would grow distressed by my delay.

The Archives were just like I remembered from childhood. The dark, sooty stairwell was well hidden in a nondescript room of the castle, a place where men were never present to witness Father or myself enter or leave. Knowing how to open the door was a simple trick, but only my father, myself, and the eleven deceased Hiden before us knew of its secret. If, perchance, one would stumble upon the mechanism hidden in the wooden slats of the heavy fusuma screen, they would have walked down the cold, stone stairs to a door that only two people in all of Japan could open. The sturdy door was made of the heaviest wood the Hiden could find. The lock required a key as well as a simultaneous manipulation of what seemed an innocuous gouge in the pocked, stone wall. Without the key, anyone who attempted to open the lock would lose a finger as the weighted apparatus crushed down, uninhibited by the key’s counterweight.

The Ancestors were a very intelligent people, but they were also the biggest fools this world has ever seen. If not for their arrogance, there would have been no need for such hidden devices or secret passageways to keep from the world the potentially destructive knowledge they left behind.

With the key that was bound to my wrist by a steel chain, I opened the door and stepped inside. The Archives always instilled a sense of inspiration into my bones, as if the kami, the gods themselves, were speaking directly to my soul from the annals of the past. Shelves upon shelves were stacked upon more shelves, until there was no more room. Books and papers reached to the ample ceiling countless meters overhead; thousands and thousands of leaves of vellum and paper stretched as far as the eye could see. Even if I had been given two thousand lifetimes, I would never have been able to read every letter, every kana and kanji written from the last ten thousand years of the Ancestors’ history.

Books were not the only thing that occupied the grand cavern of a room where my aging father spent most of his waking hours. Thousands of articles made of things normal men could not even imagine flooded the other shelves. There were metallic items in shapes our blacksmiths could never even dream of making at the forge. Ceramic plates and bowls littered the otherwise drab shelves with life and color. Other pieces were made from a substance called plastic, a hard material that was flexible but breakable if stressed too hard. Bowls, utensils, and clear cases housing prismatic, silvery discs were all made from it, along with numerous other things that not even my father could identify. Wooden carvings, silver chalices, wrought gold, horned samurai helmets—anything and everything imaginable could be found in the Archives.

“Otōsan?” I called out into the hollow, musty air. “Father?”

“Over here, Jūsan.” Father’s weak, frail voice echoed with a sensation of endless wonder. “Come, come. I’ve been expecting you for some time.”

I craned my neck above the nearest shelf to see which of the many aisles my father had busied himself with for the past few weeks. “Gomen nasai. I spoke with Himatsu on my way here, and Katsu further detained me.”

“Not to worry, my son,” Father said in gladdened response. “Come, come! I have a strange thing to show you.”

I traced a path around the bookshelves, savoring the scent of old books, an aroma I had begun to appreciate in my middle years. It was the favorable scent of knowledge, yet the a stench told of the great responsibility I would bear once Father departed this life. “Katsu has been asking about you, Father,” I said cautiously, not knowing how he would react to the inquisition.

“Wondering if I plot to overthrow him and steal his Masamune, eh?” Father laughed as heartily as a man his age could. “Believe you me, with all the forbidden knowledge locked within these walls, I could overthrow all of Japan, had I the chance to decipher it. But no. Katsu forgets that is why we are here. We are here to prevent the world’s destruction from being repeated.”

Wading through the labyrinth, I finally came face to face with my father. Hiden Jūni sat hunched over on the backless benches spaced at regular intervals between the rows of shelving, his dark eyes stoically studying the faded page before him. He wore a traditional white Suzume kimono. His long, gray hair was tied at the top of his crown and at the nape of his neck into two flowing tresses that trailed over his shoulders. His face bore the wrinkles and lines of sixty years, and an oiled beard of almost white hair was trimmed to a few centimeters. His face always brought smiles around the castle, for everyone knew my father as the most polite, friendly man in the Suzume court of Nagoya.

“This is a puzzle to me,” he said, casually lifting the bluish gray book for me to see. “The words are fading, and some of the pages are missing, but what I can understand of it still perplexes me.”

I sat beside him on the bench and glanced at what he read. The pages were singed and the kanji just barely readable, yet with all my education I could not even make any sense of it. “What is the problem?”

“I do not know, my son. It is written in Old Japanese in an easily translatable style.” He focused upon the page. “Listen to this:

“‘He did not come only by means of water, but by water and blood,’” he translated. “What do you think that means?”

“It sounds like a legend,” I said. “A fable of the gods or of the misfortune of the Ancestors. A story of wars, perhaps? A man coming by blood is most certainly a conqueror, a great ruler.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps. But it goes on.” Father continued:

“‘It is the testifying soul, because the soul is truth.’” Father’s eyes slackened. “This phrase makes even less sense than the first. The soul is indeed real, but a testifying soul? Who would a soul testify to other than the Ancestors, the kami, to life and nature?”

“I do not know,” I answered to bridge the uncomfortable gap of silence.

“It is a riddle,” he concluded.

“Perhaps,” I said, eyeing the burnt book and the distress that perplexed my father’s features, “or maybe the answer does not want to be found. Perhaps it was meant to be buried along with the Ancestors. Perhaps it is forbidden knowledge like everything else in this forsaken vessel of the past’s memories.”

“But I am to find the meaning in everything gathered here and decide whether its knowledge is safe for our world to have again,” Father reminded. “That has been our family’s duty for two hundred and sixty two years. I cannot waver now, regardless of my age.”

I carefully took the old book from him and held it in my hands. Though it bore the scars of a thousand fires, the singed, heavy binding felt extremely cold to the touch. Icily cold. Unearthly cold, cold like the blank, worrisome stare Himatsu had borne out on the balcony.

“Himatsu spoke of a dark, elusive feeling plaguing him,” I said, running my fingers along the surface of the type-printed page of foreign-looking Japanese characters. “It bothers me that he did not know what plagues him.”

He looked up to me with concern. “I feel a similar darkness from reading those words.”

The book purposely dropped from my hands onto the bench as I stood with displeasure. “Then burn it, Father. Something so dark that it would send chills up a hatamoto’s spine the moment it was cracked open...?! You have read only a few lines; I dare not know what evil lurks in the rest of it.”

Father sighed. “But I am certain this is a remarkable discovery. I have been working on the accurate translation for days so I could find out why it had been so well hidden in the unlit corner. None of the catalogues made mention of it, not even in passing.” Noting my displeased reaction, he turned his eyes to me in what some would mistake for a glare, but Father never glared, not even when he was upset. “If it bothers you so, I shall leave it be for a time, but I cannot burn it until I am certain whether the knowledge within its binding is good or evil.”

He waved a hand into the air around us, to the shelves of useless, nameless technology that was over three hundred years old. “Though you know I would have wished you to have had a son, this is your inheritance, Jūsan, the treasures, knowledge, and birthright you shall pass on to Ichiko, and to her children’s children, and to her children’s children’s children. Hiden the Fiftieth shall guard this tomb of knowledge just as well if not better than we. Nothing should escape our eye; nothing should slip through our fingers when it concerns our posterity. Remember, even evil knowledge has its purpose. Without knowledge of evil, how can one truly discern between what is evil and what is not?”

“True,” I said, but my eyes refused to lift from the burnt book for even a moment. Everything within me wanted to destroy this Book of Riddles, this Book of Questions Without Answers, but out of respect and honor of my father, I remained silent on the matter.

“Now,” he said, adjusting the tie in his hair, “could you bring an old man some cha and some sushi with rice?”

“Of course, Father,” I said with a deep bow.

I left the Archives behind me, trading the dark, musty room for the clean air of Nagoya Castle. The change of atmosphere was greatly welcomed, but the image of the damaged book and the strange characters burned in the back of my mind.

Himatsu’s darkness was a plague, and it was spreading.

After bringing Father’s meal, I roamed the castle gardens with worry. Wanderlust and anxiety eventually drove me to the balcony where Himatsu had watched the blood moon. I had hoped to share my own concerns with him, but he was nowhere to be found.

©2004 Philip A. Lee