Free Autumn Bridge by Takashi Matsuoka

lamps and flaming arrows served the same purpose. These were the same tactics the Huns had used during the centuries when the steppes of East Asia were theirs to command, tactics inherited by their Nürjhen kinsmen, and the same tactics the Mongols had stolen and used against them.
    In the spring of the second year of Go’s life among the Japanese, the Akaoka cavalrymen he had trained so well rode like Nürjhen warriors of old against the clumsy army of the Hojo regent, an army ten times their size, and destroyed it in a great slaughter on the Shikoku shore of the Inland Sea. When they returned from battle, Masamuné gave his youngest and most beautiful concubine to Go for a wife. By the fall of the next year, Go was the father of a son, whom he named Chiaki, using the Chinese characters
chi,
“blood,” for the Nürjhen blood in his veins, and
aki,
“autumn,” for the season of his birth.
    All was well until a second Nürjhen was born among the Japanese. Then Go had cause to remember that the blood that ran in his veins, and the veins of his two children, was also the blood of his sorceress mother and that other, Tangolhun of ancient times.
     
1867, QUIET CRANE PALACE
     
    “I see you are hard at work as usual,” Genji said.
    Emily had been so taken by her reading, she had not noticed his arrival at the doorway. She suspected he had been there for some time, watching her, before he spoke up.
    “Not working nearly hard enough,” she said, rolling up the scroll as casually as possible. Her feminine intuition told her it was best, at least for the time being, not to mention the different nature of the newly opened narrative.
    His appearance had undergone little change in the six years since they had met. This despite serious injuries suffered in battle, the tremendous stresses of political leadership in a time of nearly endless crisis, and involvement in an intricate web of plots and counterplots involving the Emperor in Kyoto, the Shogun in Edo, and rebellious warlords in the west and north of Japan. There was also possible foreign intervention to worry about, with the navies of England, France, Russia, and the United States always prominently in Japanese waters. If this were not complicated enough, there was also Kawakami Saemon to consider.
    Saemon was a son of Genji’s former nemesis, Kawakami Eiichi, who at the time of his death — under Genji’s sword — had been chief of the Shogun’s secret police. Saemon was Kawakami’s eldest son, by a lesser concubine rather than his wife, and had supposedly hated his father. When he and Genji met shortly after the unfortunate incident, he had showed every indication of friendliness. Furthermore, he and Genji were on the same side of the restoration question. They both favored the abolition of the Shogunate and the Emperor’s return to power after a thousand years of political eclipse. Genji seemed to trust the man. Emily did not.
    He was too much like his father in two ways. The first was in appearance. He was handsome and vain, and Emily had little faith in men who placed excessive importance on appearances. The second, more telling, was in behavior. He always gave Emily the impression of never meaning what he said, or saying what he meant. It wasn’t that he lied exactly. It was more an impression — of slipperiness, of insubstantiality, of an inclination toward treachery — than confirmable fact. Perhaps it was circumstance alone that gave rise to her doubts. She could not help but wonder whether any son could truly have kindly feelings for the man who killed his sire.
    She returned Genji’s smile with one of her own. His smile was as carefree as it had always been, and he still looked like a noble youth with no concern beyond the location of the evening’s entertainment. It was an appearance that had deceived his enemies into taking him lightly, and that mistake had cost many of them their lives. Bloodshed seemed to occur with disturbing frequency around