They arranged to meet there a few days after the Star Festival. Takeshi would ride from Yamagata; Shigeru would take the northern way across Yaegahara.
“Now I must go to my Tase and tell her the good news,” Takeshi said. “She’ll be happy if we go to Yamagata. She longs for me to meet her family. I’ll see you at the Ogre’s Storehouse.”
“Till then,” Shigeru replied, and the brothers embraced.
SHIGERU WANTED to leave immediately, but while he was making preparations for his departure, his mother began to complain of feeling unwell. She was often affected by the summer heat and he thought little of it. Then Chiyo told him there was some virulent fever going around: many people were dying in Hagi.
“Almost from one day to the next,” she said with foreboding. “They are well in the morning, in the evening they are burning, and by dawn they have passed on.”
She encouraged him to leave at once to protect himself.
“My brother has already gone away. I cannot leave my mother to die with neither of her sons present,” he replied, filled with concern for her and anguish at the delay her sickness would cause him.
“Shall I send word to Lord Takeshi?” Chiyo asked.
“Insist he does not return home.” Shigeru said. “There is no point in him risking infection.”
That night, two of the household servants died, and the following morning his mother’s maid followed them into that other world. When Shigeru went to his mother’s room, he saw that she, too, was near death. He spoke to her, and she opened her eyes and seemed to recognize him. He thought she might reply; she frowned slightly, then murmured, “Tell Takeshi…” but she did not go on. Two days later she was dead. The next day he felt a sense of doom descend on him; his head ached fiercely and he could eat nothing.
By the time his mother’s funeral took place, Shigeru was delirious, burning with fever, assailed by terrible hallucinations, made worse by his sense of urgency that Takeshi would go to the Ogre’s Storehouse and Shigeru would not be there.
Chiyo hardly left his side, tending him as she had when he was a child. Sometimes priests came to the doorway and chanted; Chiyo burned incense and brewed bitter infusions, sent for a spirit girl, and muttered spells and incantations.
When he began to recover, he remembered her weeping beside him, the tears falling, it seemed, throughout the night, when they were alone in the struggle against death and all formalities were removed between them.
“You did not need to cry so much,” he said. “Your spells worked. I have recovered.” He had felt well enough to bathe, and he sat in a light cotton robe-for it was still very hot-on the veranda while the upstairs room where he had spent so many days of sickness was cleaned and purified.
Chiyo had brought tea and fruit; though she was delighted that he was well, her eyes were still puffy and red-rimmed. She looked at him and could not control herself. He saw the grief was for something else and fear stabbed at him.
“What has happened?”
“Forgive me,” she said, her voice breaking with sobs. “I will send Ichiro to you.”
Shigeru waited for his old teacher with mounting dread. The man’s face did not reassure him: he was as grief-stricken as Chiyo. But his voice was firm, and he spoke with his usual self-control, without shrinking from the blow or trying to soften it.
“Lord Takeshi is dead. A letter came from Matsuda Shingen. He died in Yamagata and is buried at Terayama.”
Shigeru thought stupidly, He will not be waiting for me. I don’t have to worry about that. Then he could hear nothing but the sound of the river beyond the garden. Its waters seemed to rise around him. He had lost Takeshi in its murky depths after all. Now all he wanted was for the water to submerge and choke him.
He heard a harsh sobbing and realized it was himself, a terrible pain spreading through chest and throat.
“It was the fever? He did not escape it?”
Why now, just when they were about to act together? Why had the plague not taken him in his brother’s place? He saw Takeshi on Raku’s back, galloping through the water meadows, his look of delight when he won the race, his face bright, intensely alive, the emotion with which he spoke of the girl, Tase.
“I am afraid not,” Ichiro said bleakly. “No one knows what happened. Matsuda says the body bore many wounds.”
“He was murdered?” Shigeru felt the sword cuts in his own flesh. “In Yamagata? Did anyone know who he was? Has any reparation been made?”
“Believe me, I have tried to find out,” Ichiro said. “But if anyone knows, they are not telling.”
“My uncles have been informed, presumably. What has their reaction been? Have they demanded apologies, explanations?”
“They have expressed their deep regret,” Ichiro said. “I have letters from them.”
“I must go to them.” Shigeru tried to rise but found that his body would not obey him. He was trembling, as if his fever had returned.
“You are still not well,” Ichiro said, with unusual gentleness. “Do not confront them now. Wait a few days until you are fully recovered and have regained your self-control.”
Shigeru knew Ichiro was right, but the pain of waiting, while he did not know how Takeshi had died or what the Otori clan’s response would be, was intolerable to him. The days of grief and mourning dragged slowly by. He could not comprehend the cruelty of fate that had given him a nephew only to take his beloved brother.
Kenji will know, if anyone does, he thought, and wrote to his friend, sending the letter through Muto Yuzuru. He tried to heal grief with rage. If his uncles would do nothing, then he himself would have to avenge his brother against the men who had killed him, against their lord. But the lack of knowledge paralyzed him, leaving him unable to act. He longed for the days of fever to return, for with all their torment they had been more bearable than this terrible helpless grief. He had thought himself not made for despair, but now its darkness closed around him. When he slept, he dreamed of Takeshi as a child in the river. He dived repeatedly, but his brother’s pale limbs slipped from his grasp and his body disappeared with the flow of the tide.
Awake, he could not believe Takeshi was dead. He heard his footfall, his voice, and saw his shape everywhere. Takeshi seemed embodied in every object in the house. There he had sat, this bowl he had drunk from, this straw horse was one he played with years ago. Every corner of the garden bore his imprint-the street, the riverbank, the whole city.
Seeking some activity to distract him, he thought he should check on the horses now that Takeshi was no longer there to care for them, and found that Mori Hiroki had taken it upon himself to oversee them. They grazed unconcerned; he was relieved to see the black-maned gray still there, Raku, who would forever remind him of his brother, and the black colt from the same mare as his own horse, Kyu.
“Where is the bay?” he said to Hiroki.
“Takeshi took him,” Hiroki replied. “He made a joke about it, saying Raku was too recognizable, and Kuri was a better disguise.”
“Then we will never see the horse again,” Shigeru said. “If he survived, someone will have stolen him by now.”
“It’s a shame. Such a clever horse! And Takeshi had taught him so much.” Hiroki continued to stare toward the horses while he said, “His death is a terrible loss.”
“So many of us are gone,” Shigeru said. So many of the boys who fought each other with stones.
TWO WEEKS LATER, when he was beginning to recover some of his physical strength, Chiyo came saying a messenger had arrived from Yamagata.
“I told him to give me the letter, but he insists he’ll put it into no one’s hands but yours. I told him Lord Otori did not receive grooms, but he won’t go away.”
“Did he give his name?”