Blood of Tyrants. Naomi Novik
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not lied; and I hope I can answer you and die like an Englishman.”
To his surprise, however, Lady Arikawa raised her head and rumbled, low, making an objection. “I do not think that necessary yet,” she said, a thin translucent ruff around her neck frilling out.
Matsudaira sat up a little further, with rigid shoulders, and said grimly, “I must with the utmost respect disagree, Lady Arikawa.”
Laurence could not argue with the man’s courage, at least, to so incite a dragon to anger; Lady Arikawa might easily have seized and broken him like a toy without even rising to her feet, and by the swift slitting of her eyes seemed tempted to do so.
“You are charged to carry out a full investigation,” Lady Arikawa said. “We have yet no word from Nagasaki regarding any English vessel in the harbor, nor have the Kirin returned from their survey of the coastal waters, near-by. Surely we can wait for this intelligence to reach us before proceeding.”
“The foreigner is certainly condemned by the law, regardless,” Matsudaira said, after a moment. The grey dragon’s wings flared from her back, unsettled, and folded again; the clawed tips shifted back and forth, restlessly.
Sitting beside Matsudaira and sipping tea, Kaneko had shown no expression but level calm all the while; now he said quietly, “My lady, I most deeply regret my error, and—”
“That is enough,” she said, interrupting crisply. “What error can there be in the will of the heavens? Certainly it is only a great service to the bakufu that this barbarian is available to be questioned about these matters; it may be that much benefit to the nation may derive from his rescue. It would be a great impiety upon our part to disregard the means by which the gods have delivered him into our hands, through this vow which caused your eyes to light upon him where he lay in the road. If they did not intend him to be well-treated, they would not have arranged matters so. I cannot agree to a course which despises so clear a sign from the spirit world.”
She delivered these arguments with an air almost of triumph. Laurence thought he detected in them rather more sophistry than true religious fervor. He remained unable to follow all the undercurrents, but he gathered at the least that she wished to spare her vassal Kaneko whatever embarrassment he might suffer at being forced to renege on his vow of assistance. Laurence could only suppose that embarrassment to have consequences more extreme than he imagined.
Matsudaira did not seem persuaded, but at least her vehemence gave him pause; he said more cautiously, trying to answer her in the same lines, “And yet as a magistrate, I must pursue my duty to the law by every means: the gods would not have delivered him in ignorance of so commonplace a fact.”
“The gods would certainly not have expected you to disregard their wishes,” Lady Arikawa returned, with scorn. “Which indeed, they may have meant as a warning. Consider: it is well-known that men of other races are weak. The torture which brings truth from a Japanese may perhaps even slay a Western barbarian, and deprive us of further information.”
Laurence derived some black humor from the burst of indignation he instinctively felt at the nonsense of being any less fitted to endure pain: a fine and absurd thing it would be, to make a case for his own torture. However, the argument was ill-chosen on Lady Arikawa’s part; Matsudaira and Kaneko could not forbear a doubtful glance in his direction. Laurence was a head taller than any other man in the room, and he could have given any of them thirty pounds or more.
Of course, from Lady Arikawa’s perspective—near enough to twelve tons, Laurence would have guessed—the distinction was all much what like. In any event, Laurence closed his mouth on any retort he might have made, and stood wooden beneath their gaze; the weaker and more helpless they chose to think him the better, if they should set a commensurate guard upon him.
“It perhaps would be wise to employ a truly skilled practitioner,” Matsudaira said, after a moment, in a conciliatory manner. “I will send to Edo for a specialist in questioning the sick and the elderly. That will necessitate a certain delay, of course. Perhaps in the intervening time, further intelligence will render the questioning unnecessary, or the foreigner may think better of his lies and confess freely.”
Lady Arikawa inclined her head. “It will be convenient for you to keep charge of him here at Kaneko’s house, in the meantime,” she said—a rather strong hinting, there, and Matsudaira did not attempt to argue with her, but bowed his head in agreement.
Two guards were called in: Matsudaira’s men, Laurence thought; they wore signs of authority matching his own. They escorted him, but only back to his original chamber; and there was a tray of food set on a low table in the middle of the floor. Laurence did not hesitate to devour it, and then lay himself down on the straw mat to consider and to rest.
He roused from a half-sleep a little while later; there were voices, coming faint but audible through the walls, and speaking Chinese: Lady Arikawa, and Kaneko with her. “There can be no more honorable fate than to die in the service of Japan, even for a barbarian,” she was saying, in an anxious tone, low: Laurence could only surmise she preferred not to be overheard by the servants of the house. “Surely in delivering him to such an end, you will have assisted him?”
Kaneko did not immediately answer her, but then said, gently, “Most honorable lady, I regret to disappoint you. I vowed that whomever I found upon the road requiring assistance, whether a beggar or a digger of graves, I would serve him as I would my own grandfather, with honor. To see him dispatched as a low criminal—” He trailed off, and said no more.
“Oh!” Lady Arikawa said eagerly, “but that need not be so! I will speak with the magistrate. Why should he not be permitted seppuku instead? And then indeed you will have served him.”
Laurence heard no more of the conversation: the heavy crunching tread of the dragon faded, as though they had wandered away through the gardens. The guards were sitting together at the far end of the chamber speaking in low voices over cards: some sort of game of chance. They were armed with short but serviceable blades, and wore a kind of light, handsome armor, crafted of small plates of wood which overlapped one another neatly.
They rose to attention when Kaneko ducked into the chamber, a short while later, and bowing deeply left the room when he dismissed them. Laurence had been engaged in exercising his right arm, which was yet bruised all along its length with markings as of chain links pressed hard against the flesh. He had the movement of it back, however, and he thought he had worked it limber. Laurence did not rise; he had already managed to crack his head on the ceiling several times, and if the King did not require his officers to rise for the loyal salute on board ship, in similar conditions, Laurence was damned if he would do it for his jailor, here.
Kaneko settled himself on the ground with easy grace and regarded Laurence somberly. “I have come to speak plainly with you, Englishman,” he said.
“That, sir, cannot be anything but welcome,” Laurence said, without much enthusiasm; he had heard enough of the conversation in the garden to guess at Kaneko’s intentions: the man was looking for some means of eeling out of his vow, Laurence supposed, and meant to offer him some mean and cowardly alternative to death—imprisonment for life, perhaps, or a kind of indentured servitude.
Kaneko said, “Even if the bakufu had not decreed the death of all foreigners entering the nation without permission, the circumstances of your arrival would be dark. The shameful offense of your country-men in Nagasaki suggests a false character, and a league between your nation and China has been suspected for several years, now. Your ships have been reported in the northern waters near Peking, where no Westerners formerly were welcome—”
The existence of this traffic came as news to Laurence; so far as he knew, only the port of Guangzhou was open at all. “—and now, this appearance of a Celestial, in conjunction with yourself, and this British dragon you have mentioned,” Kaneko continued, “more than confirms our most extreme suspicions: the Celestials travel only with the Imperial family.”
Laurence could not disagree that such commerce indicated a more intimate connection formed between Britain and China than he recalled; this, however, pressed