Free Gai-Jin by James Clavell

me.” He led the way through meandering gardens to a side door that was unguarded.
    “Go at once to Kanagawa, to the Inn of the Midnight Blossoms. It is a safe house, other friends will be there. Hurry!”
    “But, Sensei,” Ori said. “First we must collect our other swords and armor and money and—”
    “Silence!” Angrily Katsumata reached into his kimono sleeve and gave them a small purse with a few coins in it. “Take this, and return double for your insolence. At sunset I will order men to go after you with orders to kill you if you’re caught within one
ri.”
A
ri
was about a league, about three miles.
    “Yes, Sensei, I apologize for being so rude.”
    “Your apology is not accepted. You are both fools. You should have killed all four barbarians, not just one—particularly the girl, for that would have sent the gai-jin mad with rage! How many times have I told you? They’re not civilized like us, and view the world, religion and women differently! You’re inept! You’re fools! You initiated a good attack then failed to press forward ruthlessly without concern for your own lives. You hesitated! So you lost! Fools!” he said again. “You forgot everything I’ve taught you.” Enraged, he backhanded Shorin in the face, the blow savage.
    At once Shorin bowed, mumbled an abject apology for causing the Sensei to lose
wa
, to lose inner harmony, keeping his head bowed, desperately trying to contain the pain. Ori stayed ramrod stiff, waiting for the second blow. It left a livid burn in its wake. Immediately he, too, apologized abjectly, and kept his throbbing head bowed, afraid. Once a fellow student, the best swordsman amongst them, had answered Katsumata rudely during a practice fight. Without hesitation, Katsumata had sheathed his sword, attacked barehanded, disarmed him, humiliated him, broke both his arms and expelled him to his village forever.
    “Please excuse me, Sensei,” Shorin said, meaning it.
    “Go to the Inn of the Midnight Blossoms. When I send a message, obey whatever I require of you at once, there will be no second chance! At once, understand?”
    “Yes, yes, Sensei, please excuse me,” they mumbled together, tucked up their kimonos and fled, thankful to be out of his reach, more frightened ofhim than of Sanjiro. Katsumata had been their main teacher for years, in both the arts of war and, in secret, other arts: strategy, past, present and of the future, why the Bakufu had failed in their duty, the Toranagas in theirs, why there must be change and how to bring it about. Katsumata was one of the few clandestine shishi who was
hatomoto—
an honored retainer with instant access to his lord—a senior samurai with a personal yearly stipend of a thousand koku.
    “Eeee, to be so rich,” Shorin had whispered to Ori when they had first found out.
    “Money is nothing, nothing. The Sensei says when you have power you don’t need money.”
    “I agree, but think of your family, your father and mine, and grandfather, they could buy some land of their own and not have to work the fields of others—nor would we have to work like that from time to time to earn extra.”
    “You’re right,” Ori said.
    Then Shorin had laughed. “No need to worry, we’ll never get even a hundred koku and if we had it we’d just spend our share on girls and saké and become daimyos of the Floating World. A thousand koku is all the money in the world!”
    “No, it’s not,” Ori had said. “Don’t forget what the Sensei told us.”
    During one of Katsumata’s secret sessions for his special group of acolytes he had said: “The revenue of Satsuma amounts to seven hundred and fifty thousand koku and belongs to our lord, the daimyo, to apportion as he sees fit. That’s another custom the new administration will modify. When the great change has happened, a fief’s revenue will be portioned out by a Council of State, made up of wise men drawn from
any rank of samurai, high or low, of any age, provided the