Heaven's Net Is Wide Lian Hearn (leveled readers .TXT) 📖

“You accuse me, in my own castle, of plotting?” Kitano let his rage rise in response, but Shigeru was not intimidated.

“Do I need to remind you that I am the heir to the clan?” he replied. “You will send messengers to Inuyama to demand the return of your sons, and you will not conduct any negotiations or other dealings with the Tohan without the knowledge and consent of my father and myself. You may give the same message to Noguchi. I will leave at once for Terayama. Lord Irie will return to Hagi as soon as possible after my arrival there, and my father will be informed. But first I expect you to reaffirm your pledges of loyalty to myself and to the Otori clan. I am displeased, affronted by your behavior. I think my father would be too. I expect your complete loyalty from now on; if my wishes are not complied with, if there are any further such lapses, you and your family will face punishment.”

His words sounded weak in his own ears. If Kitano or Noguchi defected to the Tohan, they could not be stopped except by resorting to war. He could see that the rebuke had struck home: Kitano’s eyes were smoldering.

I have made an enemy, Shigeru thought as the older man prostrated himself, swearing loyalty and obedience and asking forgiveness. All this is a deception. Both his penitence and his loyalty are feigned.

“HOW DID KITANO know my decision?” he asked Irie as they left Tsuwano an hour later.

“He may have guessed it; he may have set spies on us last night.”

“How dare he!” Shigeru felt the rage rise in him again. “He should be forced to slit his belly; his lands should be seized. But you yourself checked that we were not overheard.” The thought came to him fleetingly that Irie also was not to be trusted, but glancing at the warrior’s honest face, he put it from him. He did not believe Irie Masahide would ever entertain even the slightest thought of treachery against his clan. Most of the Otori would be like him, surely? But I must not be too trusting, he told himself. Even though I am inexperienced.

“He may use Tribe spies with their acute hearing,” Irie said.

“No one could have heard us-”

“No one normal,” Irie said. “But the Tribe have powers that go beyond normal.”

“Then what defense do we have against them?”

“It is cowardly to use them,” Irie said bitterly. “No true warrior would stoop to such methods. We should trust in our strength, in the horse and the sword. This is the way of the Otori!”

But if our enemies use them, what alternative do we have? Shigeru wondered.

8

Proving that Kitano’s fears about the onset of the plum rains were fabricated, the weather stayed fine and mild. Shigeru put aside his anger and unease to enjoy the pleasures of the journey. It took only three days to reach Yamagata, where he was received rapturously. He knew the town and its castle well, having often stayed there with his father. Every year in the autumn, the seat of government was moved from Hagi to Yamagata for three months, returning to winter in Hagi. Yamagata lay on the high road to Inuyama; it was as important for trade as it was for defense, and it was within easy reach of the most sacred place in the Middle Country-the temple at Terayama, where the worship of the Enlightened One took place alongside an ancient shrine where the older gods of the forest and mountain were honored. Here were the tombs of Shigeru’s ancestors: almost all of them buried here, the rare exceptions lying at the temple of Daishoin in Hagi.

The Otori loved Hagi for the beauty of its setting, for the islands that surrounded it, for its twin rivers; but they loved Yamagata for its closeness to Terayama and, more mundanely, for its inns and drinking places, its hot springs and beautiful women.

Not that Shigeru had any dealings with the women, though his eye was drawn to them constantly. Irie was somewhat ascetic by nature, believing in discipline and self-restraint, and Shigeru was influenced sufficiently by this and by his father’s disclosures to try to master his own desires.

They spent three weeks in the mountain town, during which time Shigeru met with the senior retainer, Nagai Tadayoshi, and the clan officials, and heard their reports on military and administrative matters. There had been one or two skirmishes on the eastern borders with Tohan warriors-nothing serious; the Tohan had been driven back with little loss of Otori lives, but these small straws might show the direction of the coming wind. And there were a number of people fleeing from the East, it was rumored, though it was hard to know how many, since they slipped across the border by mountain paths now that the snows had melted.

“There is talk of a religious sect,” Nagai Tadayoshi told Shigeru. “They call themselves the Hidden. They are extremely secretive and live alongside ordinary villagers with no one knowing the difference. It explains how they survive here: existing families that we know nothing about must take them in.”

“What kind of religion-one of the differing forms of worship of the Enlightened One?”

“Possibly. I have not been able to find out. But the Tohan seem to dislike them intensely and seek to eradicate them.”

“We should try to find out more about them,” Shigeru said. “They have no connection with the Tribe?”

“It does not seem so. There are very few Tribe families in Yamagata and the surrounding districts.”

How can you be so sure? Shigeru wondered but did not speak the thought aloud.

Still impressed by Eijiro’s ideas on farming, Shigeru asked Nagai to accompany him into the countryside to see for himself the methods used by the farmers, and their way of life.

“It is quite unnecessary.” Nagai was taken aback. “Lord Shigeru can be shown the records and the figures.”

“I want