Free Brilliance of the Moon by Lian Hearn Page A

course.” Niwa got clumsily to his feet and clapped his hands.
After a few moments the old woman, lamp in hand, came to show us back to our
room. The beds were already laid out on the floor. I went to the privy and then
walked in the garden for a while to clear my head from the wine. The town was
silent. It seemed I could hear my men breathing deeply in sleep. An owl hooted
from the trees around the temple, and in the distance a dog barked. The gibbous
moon of the fourth month was low in the sky; a few wisps of cloud drifted
across it. The sky was misty, with only the brightest stars visible. I thought
about all Niwa had told me. He was right: It was almost impossible to identify
the network that the Tribe had set up across the Three Countries. But Shigeru
had done so, and I had his records.
    I went to the room. Makoto was already asleep. Kahei was talking
to two of his men who had come to keep guard. He told me he had also put two
men to watch the room where Kaede slept. I lay down, wished she were next to
me, briefly considered sending for her, then fell into the deep river of sleep.
     

3
    For the next few days our march to Maruyama continued without
event. The news of Jm-emon’s death and the defeat of his bandits had gone ahead
of us and we were welcomed because of it. We moved quickly, with short nights
and long days, making the most of the favorable weather before the full onset
of the plum rains. As we traveled, Kaede tried to explain to me the political
background of the domain that was to become hers. Shigeru had already told me
something of its history, but the tangled web of marriages, adoptions, deaths,
that might have been murders, jealousy, and intrigue was mostly new to me. It
made me marvel anew at the strength of Maruyama Naomi, the woman he had loved,
who had been able to survive and rule in her own right. It made me regret her
death, and his, all the more bitterly, and strengthened my resolve to continue
their work of justice and peace.
    “Lady Maruyama and I talked a little together on a journey like this,“
Kaede said. ”But we were riding in the opposite direction, toward Tsuwano, where
we met you. She told me women should hide their power and be carried in the
palanquin lest the warlords and warriors crush them. But here I am riding
beside you, on Raku, in freedom. I’ll never go in a palanquin again.“
    It was a day of sun and showers, like the fox’s wedding in the
folktale. A sudden rainbow appeared against a dark gray cloud; the sun shone
bravely for a few moments; rain fell silver. Then the clouds swept across the
sky, sun and rainbow vanished, and the rain had a cold, harsh sting to it.
    Lady Maruyama’s marriage had been intended to improve relations
between the Seishuu and theTohan. Her husband was from theTohan and was related
to both the Iida and the Noguchi families. He was much older than she was, had
been married before, and already had grown children. The wisdom of an alliance
through such an encumbered marriage had been questioned at the time, not least
by Naomi, who, although only sixteen, had been brought up in the Maruyama way
to think and speak for herself. However, the clan desired the alliance, and so
it was arranged. During Lady Maruyama’s life her stepchildren had caused many
problems. After her husband died they had contested the domain—unsuccessfully.
Her husband’s only daughter was the wife of a cousin of Iida Sadamu, Iida
Nariaki—who, we learned on the way, had escaped the slaughter at Inuyama and
had fled into the West, from where it seemed he now intended to make a new
claim on the domain. The Seishuu clan lords were divided. Maruyama had always
been inherited through the female line, but it was the last domain that clung
to a tradition that affronted the warrior class. Nariaki had been adopted by
his father-in-law before Lady Maruyama’s marriage, and was considered by many
to be legal heir to his wife’s property.
    Naomi had been fond of her husband and