Daughter of the Sword: A Novel of the Fated Blades Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  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 Stone Spring

  “A sharp and superb urban fantasy, Daughter of the Sword is the perfect melding of skillful prose, fascinating characters, and compelling story.”

  —Diana Rowland, author of Sins of the Demon

  “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 Green and Mainspring

  DESTINY EMBODIED

  Above the bed, on a black lacquered rack on the wall, was the sword.

  He went to it, took it down from the wall, and handed it to her. It was surprisingly heavy, and much bigger than she’d expected. But then, she’d never held a real sword before. She’d seen them in museums and castle tours as a girl, of course, and in truth she’d always wanted to open the glass cases and pick them up. It was strange to hold one now, sort of a girlhood fantasy brought to life. A tiny part of her wondered what that meant about her. Saori’s girlhood fantasy was to have a pony.

  “Unsheathe it,” Yamada said.

  She obliged him, laying the polished, cord-bound scabbard on the mattress. The sword’s naked steel reflected everything in the room, distorting and stretching the images. Mariko could hardly imagine fighting with it, but as soon as that thought entered her mind, she immediately sensed how easy it would be to cut through bone and muscle with a blade this big. And of course the samurai that fought with such weapons were assuredly larger than Mariko’s fifty kilos and 165 centimeters. The sword might not have been all that big to them.

  “Impressive,” she said, hefting it.

  “It ought to be. It guides the forces of destiny.”

  A moment passed before that sunk in. “The forces of destiny?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sir, are you suggesting that this sword is magical?”

  “That’s one word for it.”

  Mariko returned it to its sheath. “And that’s why the thief came to steal your sword?”

  “Why, of course.”

  DAUGHTER

  OF THE

  SWORD

  A NOVEL OF THE FATED BLADES

  STEVE BEIN

  A ROC BOOK

  ROC

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Roc,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, October 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Steve Bein, 2012

  Book Two was previously published in a slightly different version as “Beautiful Singer” in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future, volume XIX (Galaxy Press, 2003;).

  Quotes on page 276, 278, 279, 287, and 288 from Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Translated by Samuel B. Griffith. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Bein, Steve.

  Daughter of the sword: a novel of the fated blades/Steve Bein.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-61542-3

  1. Women detectives—Japan—Tokyo—Fiction. 2. Detective and mystery stories. I. Title.

  PS3602.E385D38 2012

  813’.6—dc23 2012002730

  Printed in the United States of America

  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.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  Table of Contents

  Book One: Heisei Era, The Year 22 (2010 CE)

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Book Two: Kamakura Era, The Year 124 (1308 CE)

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Book Three: Heisei Era, The Year 22 (2010 CE)

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  Book Four: Azuchi-Momoyama Era, The Year 20 (1587 CE)

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  Book Five: Heisei Era, The Year 22 (2010 CE)

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  Book Six: Azuchi-Momoyama Era, The Year 20 (1587 CE)

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  Book Seven: Heisei Era, The Year 22 (2010 CE)

  51

  52

  53

  54

  Book Eight: Shōwa Era, The Year 17 (1942 CE)

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  Book Nine: Heisei Era, The Year 22 (2010 CE)

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  Glossary

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgment
s

  About the Author

  BOOK ONE

  HEISEI ERA, THE YEAR 22

  (2010 CE)

  1

  The sword in Fuchida Shūzō’s bed was the oldest known of her kind, and he loved listening to her song.

  A tachi in the shinogi-zukuri style, she was forged by the great master Inazuma. She lay now on Fuchida’s bed, nestled in his black silk sheets and framed in a rectangle of sunlight. The arch of her back was as graceful as any woman’s. Small waves ran the length of her blade, no bigger than clover petals, never wavering more than a centimeter from her razor edge. When he lay this close to her, Fuchida could see the grain of her forging, faint silver lines like wood grain in her shinogi-ji, the flat surface between her edge and curving spine. A train rattled by on the Marunouchi Line, distant enough that he could barely hear it, close enough that it drowned out the subtle ring his thumbnail made when he traced it along her ridge. The early evening rush of Tokyo traffic murmured through the open bedroom window, spoiling any chance of hearing her song.

  He rose, careful not to disturb her, and walked naked to the window to close it. Beyond the glass stretched the crazed labyrinth of Shinjuku, a werewolf in urban form, biding its time until nightfall to unleash its full madness. Businesses stacked three and four high wallpapered their steel-and-glass faces with signs of neon and animated LEDs: pachinko parlors and noodle shops, nightclubs and strip clubs, Nova language schools and Sumitomo cash machines, shot bars and smartphone dealers. And somewhere beyond all that, there was a second Inazuma. Fuchida had spent fifteen years searching for it, and at last it was within reach. He could go and claim it at any moment. A voice deep within him cried out for it. He needed to get it now.

  He silenced the voice through sheer force of will. This was no time to start indulging impatience. He knew where that road would lead. Better to close the window and close off his longing for the second sword.

  The air blowing in was cool at this height, twenty-two stories above the street, and the heavy scent of moisture promised evening rain. Fuchida slid the window shut, watching his reflection shift in the glass. In this light he could see only his darkest parts: long black hair, eyes like black coffee, shadows under his pectoral muscles. The blues and blacks and purples of his tattoos traced a random spiderwebbing pattern down to the black triangle of pubic hair. There were darker parts to him, features not visible to those outside the window. Throats sliced open, women beaten, enemies buried in the concrete foundations of high-rises and public schools. Dark desires and darker deeds did not reflect in glass.

  He looked down at his tattoos. Dragons and spiders crawled up his arms. A fiery buddha dominated his chest, sword and vajra in hand. The dragons and buddhas shed tears, every teardrop marking a kill. There were so many now that he’d lost count. He insisted on the traditional method for every tattoo, grateful for the discipline the hooks and hammers had drilled into him. With the second Inazuma so close, he needed every bit of that discipline not to rush out and grab it. It was said that the Inazuma blades changed the course of history. There was no telling what Fuchida could do with two of them.

  For all the years he’d spent hunting the second sword, even Fuchida himself hadn’t known exactly how he would use it. Gut instinct had long assured him that with two Inazumas he could carve out his place in history, but it was only a few weeks ago that he finally understood how. It could only be fate: after fifteen years of searching, nothing; then, as soon as he discovered how to make his mark on the world, the second blade suddenly revealed itself to him. He and the swords were meant to be together. It could be no other way.

  He slipped back into bed with his beloved. She was beautiful beyond description. If not for that second sword, he felt he could lose hours just trying to put a name to her colors. The gleaming gray of her shinogi-ji might be called gunmetal today, but she was already a hundred and fifty years old by the time the Mongols first brought guns to Japanese shores. The pale silver of her tempering had no name at all; it was to be found only in the lining of clouds, and only then when the sun struck at just the right angle. She seemed to glow with her own light. No sonnet had ever described colors so pure; no love song had ever been sung of a woman more beautiful. The thought of lying with two such beauties was enough to make his heart race.

  He’d taken to sleeping with her years ago, but couldn’t remember how long it had been since they’d started sleeping naked together. He did remember that he’d first done it as another way to test himself. Her blade was so sharp that if he dropped a tissue over her, its own weight would be enough to cut it in two. A bad roll in his sleep would push her deep into his flesh. Even if she did not kill him, there was hardly anywhere she could cut that would not spoil his tattoos. And he had no doubt that she would kill him if he gave her the opportunity. She’d killed men before, dozens of them. Ancient samurai had slain hundreds on her edge, but that was true of any number of swords. The beauty in Fuchida’s bed had a will of her own, and a murderous will at that. It was said that she’d killed any who professed to own her. It was said no man could master her. Fuchida Shūzō was the first to prove the legend wrong.

  And soon he would forge a legend of his own. Two Inazumas. No one had ever owned two before. Even Master Inazuma himself had never been in the presence of two of his own blades; it was said that he forged but one at a time, devoting himself to it as a priest devoted himself to his god. All Fuchida had to do to claim his place in immortality was to claim the second sword.

  And now that sword was so close that it was all Fuchida could do to stay in bed listening to his beautiful singer. With two fingers he caressed the whole length of her, his fingertips drawing a keening note from her as they ran along her tempering. His desire for her was no less for wanting the other sword. It was so close. The woman who owned it was only across town. She was a policewoman, an unlikely owner for such a treasure, and tracking the sword to her had been considerably harder than Fuchida could have imagined. Fifteen years, and now the sword was within his grasp. His breath quickened at the thought.

  But he would not indulge that crying voice in his mind. It pleaded with him: he needed to get out of bed, get dressed, get the sword now. Fuchida silenced it. He would be disciplined about this. He would spend a final night alone with his blade, one last night with his exquisite beauty before he brought another into their home.

  Killing the policewoman could wait until tomorrow.

  2

  It was exactly the opposite of a well-designed sting. Detective Sergeant Oshiro Mariko cursed herself for taking it, cursed Lieutenant Hashimoto for retiring, and cursed the new LT for taking a perfectly good plan and blowing it right to hell.

  Mariko would have preferred to stake out the suspect’s apartment. There were only so many exits to cover in an apartment building, only so many places a perp could run. That was especially true in the kind of building a low-rent Tokyo pusher could afford to live in, and this Bumps Ryota was definitely low-rent. Mariko could see him now, reflected in the window of the okonomiyaki restaurant right in front of her nose. Even from this distance, she thought he walked as if his feet did not touch the ground. He held his arms close to his chest, one palm flat against his cheek as if trying to restrain a nervous tic or muscular spasm.

  She should have said no. Hell, she’d tried to say no. She’d wanted to walk away as soon as the good plan hit the toilet. But something had drawn her back to this one, and it wasn’t just some vague sense of loyalty to Lieutenant Hashimoto. Her mother would have said that when a person feels compelled, that meant something was meant to be, but Mariko didn’t believe in all that destiny crap. She was a detective: she believed what the evidence supported believing. So with all the evidence pointing to a first-class fiasco, why hadn’t she said no? What made this case special?

  Bumps paced to and fro around a low flower planter centered in one of the main intersections of the open-air mall. Nothing special about him. Nothing special about this place either. A framewor
k of I-beams instead of walls, the beams painted the same pale blue as the bottom of a swimming pool. Mounted above them was a roof of translucent Plexiglas domes, giant versions of those eggs that pantyhose used to come in. Suspended below the huge half eggs were ranks upon ranks of glowing fluorescent tubes, giving everything below not one shadow but a host of thin overlapping ones. Bumps couldn’t have chosen a better place to be staked out by the police if he’d tried. No one on Mariko’s team would give even a moment’s thought to drawing down on him in a public mall. But Bumps’s position was better still, smack in the middle of a four-way intersection peppered with shoppers and a million little alleyways between all the shops. Even with a battalion Mariko couldn’t have put a man on every possible escape route, and with only two other officers for her sting, she couldn’t even cover the four cardinal directions. It was almost as if Bumps Ryota and this new Lieutenant Ko were on the same side.

  Mariko’s okonomiyaki shop was on the southeast corner of the intersection. She smelled hoisin sauce and frying shrimp from within, and saw Bumps’s skinny little reflection pacing back and forth in the foreground of her own. Short spikes crowned her image in the plate glass—her hair was still wet from the rain outside—and her eyes looked strained and tired. As well they might, she told herself, given the worst sting operation of all time, but she nipped that thought right in the bud. She already got too little respect from the men on her team; there was no point in undermining her authority further by undermining herself.

  She had a patrolman named Mishima about ten meters down the west corridor, sitting on a bench with a couple of shopping bags and looking for all the world like a tired, fat man waiting for his wife. In the north corridor she’d placed Toyoda in a sunglasses shop—a natural fit, since she’d never seen him without a pair of sunglasses propped in his close-cropped hair. Twenty meters past Toyoda the mall opened onto a dark street, traffic hissing by on the wet asphalt. Mariko had to trust Toyoda’s background as a soccer fullback would help him defend that corridor, because if Bumps got to the open street, catching him would become a whole new kind of nightmare. Every neon sign in this mall would linger as sunspots in her officers’ eyes, and a half-blind chase in traffic wasn’t Mariko’s idea of a winning strategy.

  Again she cursed Hashimoto for retiring. Why couldn’t he have left one week later? She cursed herself too for not sticking with the original plan, even if that meant taking whatever crap Lieutenant Ko might have for her afterward. Better to turn her back on the whole operation than to try to do it half-assed.