Disciple of the Wind Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS

  OF THE FATED BLADES

  Year of the Demon

  “I am utterly addicted to this series! Steve Bein avoids sophomore slump with brilliant ease in this sequel to Daughter of the Sword, and continues to surprise and captivate with exquisite tension and terrific characters in an amazingly well-crafted mystery. I can’t wait for the next one!”

  —Diana Rowland, author of Touch of the Demon

  “Gripping… . Bein combines the best parts of police procedurals, buddy-cop films, historical fantasy, and intrigue-laden adventure, enhancing them with painstaking research and attention to atmosphere.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “There’s no doubting the authenticity of Bein’s creation as he elegantly binds all the elements together.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Bein excels beyond any history lover’s wildest imagination with exceptionally researched, vivid depictions of ancient Japan.”

  —Romantic Times

  “[Bein is] not a one-book wonder. Year of the Demon is a darker story that excoriates its characters much more than was thought possible … a good follow-up to one of my favorite debuts of all time.”

  —Fantasy Book Critic

  “Part thriller, part police procedural, part historical, and part urban fantasy, Year of the Demon is simply a book for people who like to read. It has something for everyone, and Bein does an amazing job of weaving them all together into a fascinating story.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  Daughter of the Sword

  “A noir modern Tokyo overwhelmed by the shadows of Japanese history … a compelling multifaceted vision of a remarkable culture, and a great page-turner.”

  —Stephen Baxter, author of Iron Winter

  “Daughter of the Sword really captured my imagination. The interweaving of historical Japanese adventure and modern police procedural, Tokyo-style, caught me from two unexpected directions.”

  —Jay Lake, author of Endurance

  “Effortlessly combines history and legend with a modern procedural … will have you staying up late to finish it.”

  —Diana Rowland

  “An authentic and riveting thrill ride through both ancient and modern Japan. Definitely a winner.”

  —Kylie Chan, author of Heaven to Wudang

  “Bein’s gripping debut is a meticulously researched, highly detailed blend of urban and historical fantasy set in modern Tokyo… . Bein’s scrupulous attention to verisimilitude helps bring all the settings to life, respectfully showcasing Japan’s distinctive cultures and attitudes.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “One of the best debuts I have ever read … an epic tale that heralds the emergence of a major talent.”

  —Fantasy Book Critic

  “A great police procedural urban fantasy that deftly rotates between Mariko in present-day Japan and other warriors in past eras.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Daughter of the Sword reads like James Clavell’s Shogun would have if it had been crossed with high fantasy by way of a police procedural.”

  —Otherwhere Gazette

  “Magic swords and samurai set alongside drugs and modern Tokyo and all blending in together to produce an engrossing and original story.”

  —Under the Covers

  “I loved the plot of this book… . I would recommend it to those who like fantasy and those who take an interest in Japanese culture.”

  —Book Chick City

  “Daughter of the Sword is a gritty and compelling police procedural … written in beautiful and exotic detail.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “If you love reading about faraway places, historical fiction, and fantasy, this book should definitely be on your list.”

  —Literal Addiction

  “It knocked my socks off. I couldn’t put it down… . Daughter of the Sword is an urban fantasy novel that is absolutely different than any other urban fantasy novel I’ve read before, written with an infectious passion, a soft touch, and an understanding that transcended its pages. This is a series to watch out for.”

  —Bookworm Blues

  ALSO BY STEVE BEIN

  THE FATED BLADES SERIES

  Daughter of the Sword

  Only a Shadow

  Year of the Demon

  Disciple of the Wind

  Streaming Dawn

  ROC

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland |Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Steve Bein, 2015

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Bein, Steve.

  Disciple of the wind: a novel of the fated blades/Steve Bein.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-698-15885-6

  1. Women detectives—Japan—Tokyo—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.E385D57 2015

  813’.6—dc23 2014041804

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Also by STEVE BEIN

  Title page

  Copyright page

  JAPANESE PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

  BOOK ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  BOOK THREE

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  BOOK FOUR

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  BOOK FIVE

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  BOOK SIX

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  BOOK SEVEN

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  BOOK EIGHT

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  BOOK NINE

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  BOOK TEN

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47


  CHAPTER 48

  BOOK ELEVEN

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  Glossary

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  In memory of Jay Lake

  JAPANESE PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

  Spoiler alert: you’re going to find a lot of Japanese words in this book. Three general rules tell you most of what you need to know about how to pronounce them:

  1. The first syllable usually gets the emphasis (so it’s DAI-go-ro, not Dai-GO-ro).

  2. Consonants are almost always pronounced just like English consonants.

  3. Vowels are almost always pronounced just like Hawaiian vowels.

  Yes, I know, you probably know about as much Hawaiian as you do Japanese, but the words you do know cover most of the bases: if you can pronounce aloha, hula, Waikiki, and King Kamehameha, you’ve got your vowels. Barring that, if you took a Romance language in high school, you’re good to go. Or, if you prefer lists and tables:

  a as in father

  ae as in taekwondo

  ai as in aisle

  ao as in cacao

  e as in ballet

  ei as in neighbor

  i as in machine

  o as in open

  u as in super

  There are two vowel sounds we don’t have in English: o and u. Just ignore them. My Japanese teachers would slap me on the wrist for saying that, but unless you’re studying Japanese yourself, the difference between the short vowels (o and u) and the long vowels (o and u) is so subtle that you might not even hear it. The reason I include the long vowels in my books is that spelling errors make me squirm.

  As for consonants, g is always a hard g (like gum, not gym) and almost everything else is just like you’d pronounce it in English. There’s one well-known exception: Japanese people learning English often have a hard time distinguishing L’s from R’s. The reason for this is that there is neither an L sound nor an R sound in Japanese. The ri of Mariko is somewhere between ree, lee, and dee. The choice to Romanize with an r was more or less arbitrary, and it actually had more to do with Portuguese than with English. (If linguistic history had gone just a little further in that direction, this could have been a book about Marico Oxiro, not Mariko Oshiro.)

  Finally, for those who want to know not just how to pronounce the Japanese words but also what they mean, you’ll find a glossary toward the end of this book. If you have trouble keeping all the Japanese names straight, poke around my website (www.philosofiction.com) to find a list of characters showing who’s related to whom.

  BOOK ONE

  HEISEI ERA, THE YEAR 22

  (2010 CE)

  1

  Mariko would never forget where she was when she heard the news.

  She wasn’t all that likely to forget that afternoon anyway. It wasn’t every day that she met with the top brass. She saw her commanding officer, Lieutenant Sakakibara, almost daily, but this was her first meeting with his superior, Captain Kusama. And since Sakakibara was also in attendance, things were about to get either very good or very, very bad.

  There were only so many reasons a captain called one of his sergeants into his office, especially with a lieutenant in tow. She might be promoted to head up a special detail. On the other hand, they might advise her to seek a legal counsel in advance of an IAD investigation. Her partner, Han, had recently endured such an investigation, and come out the other side stripped of his detective’s rank. He and Mariko worked closely together, and he’d strayed outside the lines; was she implicated too?

  Maybe, but the captain was smiling when he opened the door. Kusama Shuichi was one of those men who only grew more handsome with age. His hair wasn’t thinning, he paid a lot of money for his haircuts, and he kept his office and his uniform as immaculately as he kept his hair. He’d earned an office on the top floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department headquarters, with a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the heart of the city. His desk was polished teak, twice as big as it needed to be, and empty but for his phone and a sleek black laptop. Others might have arranged the desk to face the windows, but Kusama’s desk was perpendicular to them, so that both he and his visitors could admire the view. Mariko didn’t miss this detail, and neither did she miss the subtext: either Kusama was unusually considerate of his visitors or else he wanted to make sure they knew how important he was. Mariko couldn’t say which.

  “Detective Sergeant Oshiro,” Kusama said, “Lieutenant Sakakibara, so very good of you to come. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Coffee for me, nothing for her,” Sakakibara said, his tone characteristically gruff. “She won’t be staying long enough to get thirsty.”

  Mariko swallowed. Was that good or bad? With Sakakibara it was so hard to tell. A line of vertical furrows creased his bushy black eyebrows, but he always looked like that. On this particular afternoon he was especially enigmatic, because even he couldn’t help but take in the view. He crossed the room in three long strides and looked out across the city he’d sworn to protect. Mariko wished she could see his reflection in the window. She was more interested in reading his face than enjoying the Tokyo skyline.

  “Captain Kusama,” she said, “thank you so much for putting us into your schedule at such short notice. I know you must be a busy man.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Kusama said. “It’s my duty to be available to those under my command. To be honest, I had already planned on calling you in to my office. Imagine my surprise when I came in this morning and my secretary told me you’d requested a meeting! I suppose you want to speak to me about the Joko Daishi case, neh?”

  Mariko gulped. “I wasn’t aware you were following my work, sir.”

  “You? Of course. You were our media darling for a time. Oh, do relax, Sergeant. This isn’t a military tribunal.”

  Mariko breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you said that, sir.” He waved toward a chair in front of his sprawling desk and Mariko sat. “Begging your pardon, sir, but it’s not easy for me to relax when it comes to Joko Daishi. He’s dangerous.”

  “And due for release today. I assume that’s why you asked to meet with me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kusama nodded. “I’m afraid what’s done is done.”

  “Sir, you’ve got to do something. This guy isn’t just an ordinary perp. Better to think of him as a cult leader.”

  Captain Kusama sat forward in his seat. “I think you’ll want to watch your tone with me, Sergeant. I don’t take orders from my subordinates.” His smile soured. “I’ve read your reports, and frankly, I think ‘cult leader’ underestimates how dangerous this man is. ‘Terrorist mastermind’ is the description I’d have chosen—but perhaps you’re aware that I was the one who orchestrated the public relations campaign that kept any mention of terrorism out of the press.”

  Mariko winced. She hadn’t known of Kusama’s involvement, but she supposed she understood the logic behind his decision. It was damn cold logic, though. Koji Makoto, known better by his self-appointed religious title, Joko Daishi, sent a massive bomb into the Tokyo subway system. Mariko and Han spearheaded the manhunt for him, and were always a step behind. Then Mariko ended up on a subway platform with Joko Daishi’s lieutenant seconds before he detonated the device. Mariko put a bullet in his brain and saved the lives of fifty-two civilians, but the department had quashed any mention of the explosives. Better for the press to report a police shooting than a major terrorist threat thwarted at the last instant.

  It might have been good PR for the department, but it destroyed Mariko’s reputation. She could have been the hero, but since no one knew of the bomb, instead she became the hot-blooded cop who gunned down an unarmed man. Even at the time, Mariko thought it was the right decision to quash any mention of the bomb, however much that dec
ision stung. Now that she sat across from the man who had made that decision, she felt that sting again.

  “You do understand,” Kusama said, resting back in his chair, “it pained me to see you dragged through the mud like that. Even if I had no sympathy for my officers, from a public relations standpoint you were a godsend. The first woman in the department to make sergeant. The first woman to make detective. The go-getter cop with an addict for a sister, working your way up to Narcotics so you could save your family. The stories write themselves.”

  Now the sting jabbed Mariko in the heart, the lungs, the gut. “How do you know about my sister?”

  “I know everything about you, Detective Sergeant Oshiro. Maintaining this department’s good reputation is what I do for a living. It’s why I got the office with the best view. It’s why I wear captain’s stripes, and it’s why I’m concerned any time one of my officers takes a life. So yes, I know your sister has been in and out of rehab. I know you placed ninth in your division in last year’s Yokohama triathlon. I know your English is flawless, and I’d hoped to use that fact to our advantage with our city’s gaijin population. But that was before you shot Akahata Daisuke in the forehead. Bomb or no bomb, cult or no cult, that’s not the way we do things here.”