Blade Of The Immortal Fan Fiction ❯ Abstinence Education ❯ Part Forty-Six ( Chapter 48 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Madame Manga 
Manji leaves Rin and heads to Edo by himself... why, he didn't say.
Anime/Manga: Blade Of The Immortal Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Hentai / Drama / Samurai | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 07.10.2009 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 904 | Status: Completed
Manji leaves Rin and heads to Edo by himself... why, he didn't say.
Anime/Manga: Blade Of The Immortal Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Hentai / Drama / Samurai | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 07.10.2009 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.4K | Visits: 904 | Status: Completed
A shorter installment than I usually post, but relatively complete in itself. This is the narration change I mentioned a while ago; we've backpedaled a few days in story time, and it's now the night that Manji left the deathly ill Rin with Yoritawa and headed off by himself. Where to go? What to do? He didn't say...
The characters and universe of Blade of the Immortal/Mugen no Junin are copyright by Hiroaki Samura and do not belong to me. Not one sen will come into my hands in consequence of this story. Warnings for sex in various forms, including quasi-incestuous themes and a sixteen-year-old female paired with an adult male. Violence and dismemberment are legally required in any BotI fic, though right now everyone's trying to give peace a chance...
Doushin: A small number of lower-ranking samurai served as Edo foot police; they were paid official stipends, but those were too low to live on and had to be supplemented with 'contributions' from the merchants and others in the districts that the doushin patrolled with their assistants.
Abstinence Education
by Madame Manga
Part Forty-Six
The waxing half-moon set at midnight, and the dark roads of the Kanto sank into greater darkness. When the trees receded and the sky lay open above him, the silver rivers of stars rippled through the overarching heavens, allowing a faint echo of their luminance to fall to his path like spray. Unlit farmhouses and glimmering fields spread out before him on each side of the road, the heavy heads of the late-harvest grain swaying and yielding to the slightest wind like circling ripples on a pond.
Other fields had been reaped and burned over, so that blackened swathes of earth surrounded him sometimes, like pits without bottoms in the night; the presence of smoke lingered near the villages. He strode in the darkness as no nocturnal animal would ever move, not lurking nor starting: as straight and as fast as the road and the night allowed. Nothing followed him. When yellow-glowing candle lanterns borne by attendant watchmen bobbed along the village streets, he backed into the silent shadows of fences or walls until they passed, and then went on.
Under the roof of the forest almost nothing at all was visible; he seemed impelled onwards no matter how dark the way ahead. He blundered off the narrow and winding path again and again and had to feel his way back, reaching out to touch the mossy trunks of trees and sliding his feet between boulders until he stepped back down into the worn and trodden earth’s vague and meandering guidance. Once he walked from a rail-less footbridge into a stream and slipped from a slick stone, soaking the front of his clothes and provoking a brief firestorm of curses to startle foxes and owls. Still he struggled out of every dead end and obstacle by half-blind instinct and kept going, his progress slow and erratic but never stopping.
At the first sign of the sun, his pace quickened, and as the gray light grew sharper he moved accordingly faster; he hit a gallop just before the edge of day crawled up from the sea.
Not for long, though he covered a great deal of ground in that dawning hour. Shops were opening, women waited at wells to draw water, a few people turned their heads to watch the swordsman’s silhouette speed by in the morning mist with his head down, his legs pounding in a dead run as if he meant to outrace the light. Other travelers appeared on the roads, peddlers, pilgrims, all with their own burdens, and the fog began to lift.
At the outskirts of a village, he secured his scarf to shadow his face, waited in a crouch by a road marker until no one was nearby and approached the group of roofed notice boards that stood at the foot of a bridge. Descriptions of lost property, runaway servants and wives, and an alert for a wanted criminal. The drawing of a scarred face in the center of the notice grimaced back at its subject; the killer of a hundred chuckled in his throat without parting his lips, glanced behind him and turned off the road to hide his tracks in the slow and tangled forest.
Covered by dry leaves for a blanket and camouflage both, he finally slept between the roots of a giant tree with one hand gripping the hilt of a bared blade.
The sun slanted low through the branches and the wind was rising when he woke. For a few minutes Manji didn’t move at all except to let his eye follow the stirring branches above him. Clouds, bright-edged but as gray as the ocean, rolled in slow surges up the sky and took the sun under cover.
“Rain,” he said. “Great.”
He sat up and stretched out, scattering leaves.
Although his expression was neutral, his eye roved restlessly over the area and fixed on a point before him. Nothing was there, but he frowned and clenched his lips, and then let his features gradually relax. Something in the set of his gaze softened, and a smile disturbed the firmness of his mouth. He spread out his hands and looked at them, palm up. As if by themselves, they curved and made cradles, and he weighed in them something yielding and tender. His smile increased and grew crooked.
Gently, gently, as he handled that unseen tenderness – which became an effort and a tension, and then his fingers made claws and his fists closed down. He stared at his bulging knuckles, the strong tendons pressing themselves to whiteness while his hands shook. Breathing harder, he released his grip on nothing. He hid his face from himself for a few moments, hunching over with his fingertips on his forehead, palms over his eye sockets. His lips moved: a name that he didn’t voice. Then he snatched his hands away and threw them out in a helpless gesture. He raised his face to the darkening sky, shaking his head as if to deny the encroaching clouds. “Dammit... if I ever see you...”
That mood roiled for a few moments, then faded as he gradually grinned again, now directing his derision inwards. He leaned back against the tree, folded his arms and closed his one good eye. “She lives, she dies. Keep looking at what’s in front of you... idiot.”
When Manji stood up, his face held only purpose. Not perhaps a purpose he knew he could achieve or one that would bring him the least satisfaction even if perfectly executed, but it was an ache he either had to salve or to cut away. From the front of his clothing he withdrew a folded paper, somewhat water-stained. He opened it with care but didn’t lay it out flat, cupping it in his hand while he searched for something else in his sleeve.
In the lengthwise crease of the paper lay an even longer lock of black hair, bound with a twist of itself and folded twice to fit its enclosure. Another object emerged from its hiding place held gingerly between his finger and thumb, a gilded pin too ornate for any woman other than a courtesan. He laid it along the lock of hair and stared at the artifacts for a moment, his expression sullen and somber. Then he shrugged with a deprecating grunt: too little, too late, possibly absurd as well as useless, but a duty nevertheless. The paper folded again, he put it away.
He settled his swords in his belt and made for the road. Emerging from the trees, he looked towards the water. Under the haze of household fires, extending in lines and open squares and greater gatherings far into the distance, thronged the countless roofs of Edo.
“Bath. Shave. Hairdress no, I don’t want a goddamn scalp job. Just pull it back and gum it nice and stiff.” Manji ducked under a bathhouse curtain and took off a brand new basket hat, then tossed a bundle of second-hand clothes onto the wooden floor of the entryway. “Get all this crap freshened up along with the rest of my duds, and make it snappy. I don’t want to spend all day... and I got cash.” He reached into his sleeve and brandished a coin.
“Ah... you have an audience with your superior, sir?” The bath attendant caught the coin out of the air. A girl scurried to pick up the clothes and take Manji’s sandals when he shed them in the genkan. “Very pleased to serve you, of course... come right this way.”
“An audience? ...So to speak.” He pulled his swords from his belt, gave a sour grin and followed the man into the steamy interior of the bathhouse.
About three hours later, the wet streets shone like dull metal under gray skies. With his hair bound in a severely tight and folded-back topknot and the basket hat pulled down over his face, Manji walked into a restaurant down the street from the bathhouse and took a seat in an isolated corner. Over his alarmingly clean black and white kosode, which he had looped up and stuck into his belt above a close-fitting pair of ankle-length leggings, he wore a hip-length black haori jacket. His twin hilts pushed out the left side of the haori and gave him a semi-official air of width and gravity.
Manji didn’t remove the low-hanging hat when the restaurant’s young waitress skipped over with a pot of tea; his face wasn’t visible except from the upper lip down and his jaw shone from his fresh shave. The waitress set down the teapot and a cup, peered at him with curiosity while he ordered a meal, then repeated the order in a shrill yell to the counterman and skipped to the next customer’s table. In a few minutes she brought Manji a tray loaded with steaming fried noodles, pickles and a bowl of soup; she watched for a moment while he shoved noodles into his mouth with noisy slurps and an expertly wielded pair of hashi.
“You a cop, samurai-san?”
He kept inhaling noodles and said nothing.
“’Cause I thought you sort of dress like one... sort of. Nah... you’re no Edo doushin. Are ya?”
Manji grunted and tapped his teacup. She put a hip against his table and poured for him, letting the spout drip on the tray. Manji drained the cup and returned to eating.
“You on the neighborhood guard, then? Like, a new hire? ‘Cause I don’t know you... yet. I always like to make the new guys feel welcome...”
He gulped down his soup, dug into his sleeve and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle of coins. “What’s the tab?”
“Can’t I getcha anything more, samurai-san?” She put flirtatious meaning into the offer. “Yer a silent one... at the feed trough, anyhow.”
Manji kept his gaze on the table. “Nope.”
“What, no drink at all? You got a hefty purse there.” The waitress giggled. “I bet you could spend a coin or two on a girl and never miss it. Got a yen to warm the futon? I’m available!”
“I said ” He looked up; the phrase stuck in his mouth.
“What’sa matter? I’m cute, ain’t I?” The young waitress smiled at Manji, then bobbed her head over her shoulder at the counterman. Her round hair ornaments bounced on the ends of her twin braids. Manji blinked hard a couple of times as if he felt something in his eye. “There’s my big brother yonder with the sake kegs – he handles the cash end for me. We do our bit to keep the rent-a-cops happy, see, so he’ll give you a nice discount. How about it?”
Manji stared at her, wordless and looking as lost as if he had forgotten his own name. The waitress fluttered her lashes over her big eyes and leaned towards him with both her slender arms on the table. Manji swallowed hard. “Ooh, looky there. You like me pretty damn good, don’tcha?” Her braids swung forward to caress her pink cheeks and the slight swell of her breasts pushed out the overlap of her loose clothing as she waggled her slim shoulders. “I like you too, samurai-san... and heck, you look like you’re starving for somethin’ sweet!”
An expression of pained resignation crossed Manji’s face, and then he started to chuckle as if at a cosmic joke. He slumped a little and shielded his vision. “Aw, shit...”
“Somethin’ funny?” She looked quizzically at him. “Do I got seaweed in my teeth?”
“What’s your name, kid?” said Manji from under the shadow of his palm.
“I’m Yari, and I’m sixteen! How ‘bout you, samurai-san?” She extended one little hand to him. “C’mon upstairs and let’s get better acquainted.”
His fingers twitched; his lips compressed. “...Sixteen?”
“Hey, bring it on. I’m plenty old enough to handle what you got! I bet you can show a girl a real fine ”
Manji reached into his sleeve again, slammed down a handful of money, kicked over his stool and marched out the door.
“Sheesh!” Yari put her hands on her hips and glared at his departing back. “Well, fine then ooh, looky there!” She scooped up the coins and giggled. “At least he left a damn big tip...”
“Hey. Hatchobori, and get moving.” Manji’s toe disturbed a sleeping boatman. The man blinked up at him, then stirred himself, stretched and yawned and sat up at his sweep oar.
“Sure thing, danna. Or should I say officer?” As Manji stepped down into the little canal boat and settled his swords, the boatman examined his clothes much as the waitress had done. “Seeing as yer heading that way? Don’t know you offhand.”
Manji glanced up from under his hat and put down a package wrapped in a cloth. “Nah, I don’t live in the police district. But... my sister married a cop, so I used to slip in and out once in a while. You know it?”
“What I can see of it from the water, danna.” The boatman stood, pushed off from the floating dock and sculled his oar in the murky water to move into the middle of the narrow channel. “I know all the turns and bridges this side of the Sumida River... been rowing this boat since I was a nipper.”
“Carry a lot of fares from Hatchobori? Hear the news?”
“Ah, don’tcha know it. Ain’t nothing like a canal for carryin’ gossip... and stuff that smells lots worse than loose talk.” The boatman chuckled, unhurriedly propelling his craft through a patch of floating detritus.
Manji made a speculative face. “I haven’t been in Edo for a while, and I’d like to catch up before I go visiting. Gimme some of the local dope to pass the time, hey?”
The boatman’s lazy expression hardly changed. “Whatcha want to know, danna? Births, betrothals, funerals?”
Manji dismissed that with a wave.
“Oh, the high-smellin’ stuff?” The boatman stooped as a low bridge passed over their heads. “Young samurai gentlemen caught sneakin’ into cathouses? Drawing swords over whores? Oh hey, there’s a helluva tale I just heard ‘bout the son of a wakadoshiyori councilor ”
“Nah, I’m more interested in the rank and file. Point of fact... it’s not the recent news I’m after.”
The boatman stood up again and looked inquiring. “Rank and file?”
“Cops... in Hatchobori.” Manji sniffed hard through his nose and ran a finger down one sword hilt. “You ever heard of a family with a hereditary doushin office... whose head of household is laid up in bed and living on nothing but his stipend? For about three years now?”
“I might’ve...”
“He’d be a young man though, maybe twenty-four, twenty-five by now. His father was teaching him the ropes out on the street when they got the worst of a fight. Dad got run through. Son lost his sword hand and a leg.”
The boatman creased his forehead. “...Ahh... you got a name on this fellow, danna?”
“That’s what I’m asking, dimwit. Their name.”
“Well, I dunno...” The boatman blinked when Manji dug into his sleeve with a growl, then showed him a string of coppers. “Danna?”
Manji dropped the cash on the seat beside him. “For a big town, Edo hasn’t got a lot of cops. Official titles, that is I don’t count all the low-life assistants who get their cut of the shakedown take. There can’t be more than one doushin family by that description. So rack your brains, what you can locate of ‘em.”
“Err...”
“He’s an opium smoker.” Manji grimaced, spat over the side into the canal and glanced up with a half-snarl. The boatman went a little pale. “His kid sister used to buy him his dope... and a couple times a week she’d have taken a canal boat to get it, because there sure isn’t any place to score the shit near where all the cops live, and she wouldn’t have wanted to go through the district gates anyhow, not with that on her. She’d probably have to make it all the way down to the main riverfront to find what she was looking for. You’d know all the dicey holes... you’d be able to take her right where she wanted to go.”
The boatman looked at the money.
“This would have been more than a year ago. Just a girl, but samurai-proud to the bone. Maybe sixteen years old at the time, talking like a woman of fifty who’s choking to death on a poetry anthology. Probably all veiled up for the trip, and she’d do it at night, but if you ever saw her face... even just her eyes under a hat... you’d remember it.”
A brief silence, then the boatman sighed. “Yeah.”
“Thought so. Name?”
“Don’t know her name, ‘cause she didn’t have occasion to say it anyhow. The family, though... I got curious, I don’t mind admitting, and I did a little askin’ around myself.” Manji picked up the string and shook it. “...Kuroshima. Their name’s Kuroshima. I ain’t seen that fine young lady for a long time now, like you said... but I remember.”
A spasm went over Manji’s features: pain, inward anger, something close to sickness. For a moment he stared down into the blackish water as the reinforced canal banks slipped by and the high back walls of houses and courtyards loomed over the little boat. A few raindrops speckled the surface over the debris that floated half-obscure just under the skin of the water. He took a deep breath, blew it out through his nose, stretched his lips over his teeth. “...Kuroshima.” He pronounced it like a malediction on his own head. “Thanks, man. Here... catch.”
Manji smiled and tossed the string of cash in the air with a careless flip; the boatman snagged it on the end of his oar just before it fell into the filthy canal.
Continued...
The characters and universe of Blade of the Immortal/Mugen no Junin are copyright by Hiroaki Samura and do not belong to me. Not one sen will come into my hands in consequence of this story. Warnings for sex in various forms, including quasi-incestuous themes and a sixteen-year-old female paired with an adult male. Violence and dismemberment are legally required in any BotI fic, though right now everyone's trying to give peace a chance...
Doushin: A small number of lower-ranking samurai served as Edo foot police; they were paid official stipends, but those were too low to live on and had to be supplemented with 'contributions' from the merchants and others in the districts that the doushin patrolled with their assistants.
Abstinence Education
by Madame Manga
Part Forty-Six
The waxing half-moon set at midnight, and the dark roads of the Kanto sank into greater darkness. When the trees receded and the sky lay open above him, the silver rivers of stars rippled through the overarching heavens, allowing a faint echo of their luminance to fall to his path like spray. Unlit farmhouses and glimmering fields spread out before him on each side of the road, the heavy heads of the late-harvest grain swaying and yielding to the slightest wind like circling ripples on a pond.
Other fields had been reaped and burned over, so that blackened swathes of earth surrounded him sometimes, like pits without bottoms in the night; the presence of smoke lingered near the villages. He strode in the darkness as no nocturnal animal would ever move, not lurking nor starting: as straight and as fast as the road and the night allowed. Nothing followed him. When yellow-glowing candle lanterns borne by attendant watchmen bobbed along the village streets, he backed into the silent shadows of fences or walls until they passed, and then went on.
Under the roof of the forest almost nothing at all was visible; he seemed impelled onwards no matter how dark the way ahead. He blundered off the narrow and winding path again and again and had to feel his way back, reaching out to touch the mossy trunks of trees and sliding his feet between boulders until he stepped back down into the worn and trodden earth’s vague and meandering guidance. Once he walked from a rail-less footbridge into a stream and slipped from a slick stone, soaking the front of his clothes and provoking a brief firestorm of curses to startle foxes and owls. Still he struggled out of every dead end and obstacle by half-blind instinct and kept going, his progress slow and erratic but never stopping.
At the first sign of the sun, his pace quickened, and as the gray light grew sharper he moved accordingly faster; he hit a gallop just before the edge of day crawled up from the sea.
Not for long, though he covered a great deal of ground in that dawning hour. Shops were opening, women waited at wells to draw water, a few people turned their heads to watch the swordsman’s silhouette speed by in the morning mist with his head down, his legs pounding in a dead run as if he meant to outrace the light. Other travelers appeared on the roads, peddlers, pilgrims, all with their own burdens, and the fog began to lift.
At the outskirts of a village, he secured his scarf to shadow his face, waited in a crouch by a road marker until no one was nearby and approached the group of roofed notice boards that stood at the foot of a bridge. Descriptions of lost property, runaway servants and wives, and an alert for a wanted criminal. The drawing of a scarred face in the center of the notice grimaced back at its subject; the killer of a hundred chuckled in his throat without parting his lips, glanced behind him and turned off the road to hide his tracks in the slow and tangled forest.
Covered by dry leaves for a blanket and camouflage both, he finally slept between the roots of a giant tree with one hand gripping the hilt of a bared blade.
The sun slanted low through the branches and the wind was rising when he woke. For a few minutes Manji didn’t move at all except to let his eye follow the stirring branches above him. Clouds, bright-edged but as gray as the ocean, rolled in slow surges up the sky and took the sun under cover.
“Rain,” he said. “Great.”
He sat up and stretched out, scattering leaves.
Although his expression was neutral, his eye roved restlessly over the area and fixed on a point before him. Nothing was there, but he frowned and clenched his lips, and then let his features gradually relax. Something in the set of his gaze softened, and a smile disturbed the firmness of his mouth. He spread out his hands and looked at them, palm up. As if by themselves, they curved and made cradles, and he weighed in them something yielding and tender. His smile increased and grew crooked.
Gently, gently, as he handled that unseen tenderness – which became an effort and a tension, and then his fingers made claws and his fists closed down. He stared at his bulging knuckles, the strong tendons pressing themselves to whiteness while his hands shook. Breathing harder, he released his grip on nothing. He hid his face from himself for a few moments, hunching over with his fingertips on his forehead, palms over his eye sockets. His lips moved: a name that he didn’t voice. Then he snatched his hands away and threw them out in a helpless gesture. He raised his face to the darkening sky, shaking his head as if to deny the encroaching clouds. “Dammit... if I ever see you...”
That mood roiled for a few moments, then faded as he gradually grinned again, now directing his derision inwards. He leaned back against the tree, folded his arms and closed his one good eye. “She lives, she dies. Keep looking at what’s in front of you... idiot.”
When Manji stood up, his face held only purpose. Not perhaps a purpose he knew he could achieve or one that would bring him the least satisfaction even if perfectly executed, but it was an ache he either had to salve or to cut away. From the front of his clothing he withdrew a folded paper, somewhat water-stained. He opened it with care but didn’t lay it out flat, cupping it in his hand while he searched for something else in his sleeve.
In the lengthwise crease of the paper lay an even longer lock of black hair, bound with a twist of itself and folded twice to fit its enclosure. Another object emerged from its hiding place held gingerly between his finger and thumb, a gilded pin too ornate for any woman other than a courtesan. He laid it along the lock of hair and stared at the artifacts for a moment, his expression sullen and somber. Then he shrugged with a deprecating grunt: too little, too late, possibly absurd as well as useless, but a duty nevertheless. The paper folded again, he put it away.
He settled his swords in his belt and made for the road. Emerging from the trees, he looked towards the water. Under the haze of household fires, extending in lines and open squares and greater gatherings far into the distance, thronged the countless roofs of Edo.
“Bath. Shave. Hairdress no, I don’t want a goddamn scalp job. Just pull it back and gum it nice and stiff.” Manji ducked under a bathhouse curtain and took off a brand new basket hat, then tossed a bundle of second-hand clothes onto the wooden floor of the entryway. “Get all this crap freshened up along with the rest of my duds, and make it snappy. I don’t want to spend all day... and I got cash.” He reached into his sleeve and brandished a coin.
“Ah... you have an audience with your superior, sir?” The bath attendant caught the coin out of the air. A girl scurried to pick up the clothes and take Manji’s sandals when he shed them in the genkan. “Very pleased to serve you, of course... come right this way.”
“An audience? ...So to speak.” He pulled his swords from his belt, gave a sour grin and followed the man into the steamy interior of the bathhouse.
About three hours later, the wet streets shone like dull metal under gray skies. With his hair bound in a severely tight and folded-back topknot and the basket hat pulled down over his face, Manji walked into a restaurant down the street from the bathhouse and took a seat in an isolated corner. Over his alarmingly clean black and white kosode, which he had looped up and stuck into his belt above a close-fitting pair of ankle-length leggings, he wore a hip-length black haori jacket. His twin hilts pushed out the left side of the haori and gave him a semi-official air of width and gravity.
Manji didn’t remove the low-hanging hat when the restaurant’s young waitress skipped over with a pot of tea; his face wasn’t visible except from the upper lip down and his jaw shone from his fresh shave. The waitress set down the teapot and a cup, peered at him with curiosity while he ordered a meal, then repeated the order in a shrill yell to the counterman and skipped to the next customer’s table. In a few minutes she brought Manji a tray loaded with steaming fried noodles, pickles and a bowl of soup; she watched for a moment while he shoved noodles into his mouth with noisy slurps and an expertly wielded pair of hashi.
“You a cop, samurai-san?”
He kept inhaling noodles and said nothing.
“’Cause I thought you sort of dress like one... sort of. Nah... you’re no Edo doushin. Are ya?”
Manji grunted and tapped his teacup. She put a hip against his table and poured for him, letting the spout drip on the tray. Manji drained the cup and returned to eating.
“You on the neighborhood guard, then? Like, a new hire? ‘Cause I don’t know you... yet. I always like to make the new guys feel welcome...”
He gulped down his soup, dug into his sleeve and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle of coins. “What’s the tab?”
“Can’t I getcha anything more, samurai-san?” She put flirtatious meaning into the offer. “Yer a silent one... at the feed trough, anyhow.”
Manji kept his gaze on the table. “Nope.”
“What, no drink at all? You got a hefty purse there.” The waitress giggled. “I bet you could spend a coin or two on a girl and never miss it. Got a yen to warm the futon? I’m available!”
“I said ” He looked up; the phrase stuck in his mouth.
“What’sa matter? I’m cute, ain’t I?” The young waitress smiled at Manji, then bobbed her head over her shoulder at the counterman. Her round hair ornaments bounced on the ends of her twin braids. Manji blinked hard a couple of times as if he felt something in his eye. “There’s my big brother yonder with the sake kegs – he handles the cash end for me. We do our bit to keep the rent-a-cops happy, see, so he’ll give you a nice discount. How about it?”
Manji stared at her, wordless and looking as lost as if he had forgotten his own name. The waitress fluttered her lashes over her big eyes and leaned towards him with both her slender arms on the table. Manji swallowed hard. “Ooh, looky there. You like me pretty damn good, don’tcha?” Her braids swung forward to caress her pink cheeks and the slight swell of her breasts pushed out the overlap of her loose clothing as she waggled her slim shoulders. “I like you too, samurai-san... and heck, you look like you’re starving for somethin’ sweet!”
An expression of pained resignation crossed Manji’s face, and then he started to chuckle as if at a cosmic joke. He slumped a little and shielded his vision. “Aw, shit...”
“Somethin’ funny?” She looked quizzically at him. “Do I got seaweed in my teeth?”
“What’s your name, kid?” said Manji from under the shadow of his palm.
“I’m Yari, and I’m sixteen! How ‘bout you, samurai-san?” She extended one little hand to him. “C’mon upstairs and let’s get better acquainted.”
His fingers twitched; his lips compressed. “...Sixteen?”
“Hey, bring it on. I’m plenty old enough to handle what you got! I bet you can show a girl a real fine ”
Manji reached into his sleeve again, slammed down a handful of money, kicked over his stool and marched out the door.
“Sheesh!” Yari put her hands on her hips and glared at his departing back. “Well, fine then ooh, looky there!” She scooped up the coins and giggled. “At least he left a damn big tip...”
“Hey. Hatchobori, and get moving.” Manji’s toe disturbed a sleeping boatman. The man blinked up at him, then stirred himself, stretched and yawned and sat up at his sweep oar.
“Sure thing, danna. Or should I say officer?” As Manji stepped down into the little canal boat and settled his swords, the boatman examined his clothes much as the waitress had done. “Seeing as yer heading that way? Don’t know you offhand.”
Manji glanced up from under his hat and put down a package wrapped in a cloth. “Nah, I don’t live in the police district. But... my sister married a cop, so I used to slip in and out once in a while. You know it?”
“What I can see of it from the water, danna.” The boatman stood, pushed off from the floating dock and sculled his oar in the murky water to move into the middle of the narrow channel. “I know all the turns and bridges this side of the Sumida River... been rowing this boat since I was a nipper.”
“Carry a lot of fares from Hatchobori? Hear the news?”
“Ah, don’tcha know it. Ain’t nothing like a canal for carryin’ gossip... and stuff that smells lots worse than loose talk.” The boatman chuckled, unhurriedly propelling his craft through a patch of floating detritus.
Manji made a speculative face. “I haven’t been in Edo for a while, and I’d like to catch up before I go visiting. Gimme some of the local dope to pass the time, hey?”
The boatman’s lazy expression hardly changed. “Whatcha want to know, danna? Births, betrothals, funerals?”
Manji dismissed that with a wave.
“Oh, the high-smellin’ stuff?” The boatman stooped as a low bridge passed over their heads. “Young samurai gentlemen caught sneakin’ into cathouses? Drawing swords over whores? Oh hey, there’s a helluva tale I just heard ‘bout the son of a wakadoshiyori councilor ”
“Nah, I’m more interested in the rank and file. Point of fact... it’s not the recent news I’m after.”
The boatman stood up again and looked inquiring. “Rank and file?”
“Cops... in Hatchobori.” Manji sniffed hard through his nose and ran a finger down one sword hilt. “You ever heard of a family with a hereditary doushin office... whose head of household is laid up in bed and living on nothing but his stipend? For about three years now?”
“I might’ve...”
“He’d be a young man though, maybe twenty-four, twenty-five by now. His father was teaching him the ropes out on the street when they got the worst of a fight. Dad got run through. Son lost his sword hand and a leg.”
The boatman creased his forehead. “...Ahh... you got a name on this fellow, danna?”
“That’s what I’m asking, dimwit. Their name.”
“Well, I dunno...” The boatman blinked when Manji dug into his sleeve with a growl, then showed him a string of coppers. “Danna?”
Manji dropped the cash on the seat beside him. “For a big town, Edo hasn’t got a lot of cops. Official titles, that is I don’t count all the low-life assistants who get their cut of the shakedown take. There can’t be more than one doushin family by that description. So rack your brains, what you can locate of ‘em.”
“Err...”
“He’s an opium smoker.” Manji grimaced, spat over the side into the canal and glanced up with a half-snarl. The boatman went a little pale. “His kid sister used to buy him his dope... and a couple times a week she’d have taken a canal boat to get it, because there sure isn’t any place to score the shit near where all the cops live, and she wouldn’t have wanted to go through the district gates anyhow, not with that on her. She’d probably have to make it all the way down to the main riverfront to find what she was looking for. You’d know all the dicey holes... you’d be able to take her right where she wanted to go.”
The boatman looked at the money.
“This would have been more than a year ago. Just a girl, but samurai-proud to the bone. Maybe sixteen years old at the time, talking like a woman of fifty who’s choking to death on a poetry anthology. Probably all veiled up for the trip, and she’d do it at night, but if you ever saw her face... even just her eyes under a hat... you’d remember it.”
A brief silence, then the boatman sighed. “Yeah.”
“Thought so. Name?”
“Don’t know her name, ‘cause she didn’t have occasion to say it anyhow. The family, though... I got curious, I don’t mind admitting, and I did a little askin’ around myself.” Manji picked up the string and shook it. “...Kuroshima. Their name’s Kuroshima. I ain’t seen that fine young lady for a long time now, like you said... but I remember.”
A spasm went over Manji’s features: pain, inward anger, something close to sickness. For a moment he stared down into the blackish water as the reinforced canal banks slipped by and the high back walls of houses and courtyards loomed over the little boat. A few raindrops speckled the surface over the debris that floated half-obscure just under the skin of the water. He took a deep breath, blew it out through his nose, stretched his lips over his teeth. “...Kuroshima.” He pronounced it like a malediction on his own head. “Thanks, man. Here... catch.”
Manji smiled and tossed the string of cash in the air with a careless flip; the boatman snagged it on the end of his oar just before it fell into the filthy canal.
Continued...