KATANAGATARI 1

■　■

It was hard to say how old she was─she looked young, but gave off a strange air of experience. Her abundant jet-black1 hair, allowed to grow indefinitely, was tied back into two trailing tails.

And that black miko costume.

Hers must have been a little different because she was the mistress.

“Meisai Tsuruga was the name of the priest who oversaw the shrine before me. I figured why not try it on for size. My real name? Can’t remember. Or maybe I never had one. Brigands have no use for names,” she said sociably.2

■　■

He had a look over his shoulder.

The building complex5 was no less majestic than the thousand stairs or the enormous torii. Triad Shrine was a fastidiously kept example of gongenzukuri.6 Togame had only just explained this was a kind of yatsumunezukuri7 where the honden8 is separated from the haiden9 by a patio of stone─

But Shichika had soon forgotten all of that. All he saw was majesty. This kind of an emotional response was not beyond him. But then again, who could take the word “majestic” as a compliment from him, when until recently, his concept of architecture was limited to that ramshackle hut on Haphazard Island.

Togame the Schemer and Meisai Tsuruga─the brigand gone miko─had gone off together, to confer in the privacy of the honden.

The time had come─for diplomacy.

“…Hrmm.”

Of course.

Shichika knew his presence would have resulted in no benefit─since, as a rule, he was always in the way. At best, he would butt in with a random comment and derail the conversation. He understood why Togame had told him to “Go play over there, Shichika”─if she wanted him to amuse himself, alone, there were other ways she could have said it, but whatever.

Still, scenes from last month passed through his mind.

Ginkaku Uneri. Lord of Gekoku Castle.

Master of Iainuki, withdrawn into his Danger Zone─

He had dared to draw his sword against Togame, a servant of the bakufu, during that session of diplomacy─Shichika had swooped in to the rescue, but in his absence, Togame could have been sliced in two.

Proud as she was about being weak as shoji paper.

A schemer who had no use for weapons.

All the more reason why his presence was essential. And it was no less true during a round of diplomacy.

What about the venom of the Shikizaki blades?

Just having one will make you want to kill─

No.

That much was clear to her, too. If Shichika understood something, then so much the more Togame─after what had happened to her last month, she must have a solid strategy in mind.

Besides, she had showed up at Haphazard Island on her own─in terms of pluck, she came with a warranty.10

Shichika could worry all he wanted. Despite having teamed up with him for the Sword Hunt, Togame would probably never stop acting like she was going it alone. Even Shichika, dim as he was, saw this.

And he was fine with it.

He was a sword.

A katana, by the name of Yasuri─of the Kyotoryu.

It was common practice to give up your sword ahead of an important meeting─Shichika had learned this from their diplomatic chat on Haphazard Island. His sister Nanami had relieved Togame of the katana she had been carrying, out of character. Which made his presence last month, at Gekoku Castle, an exception.

Yeah, that was different.

Meisai Tsuruga and Ginkaku Uneri were nothing alike.

Uneri had been a drawn sword11─in perverse contrast to his style of swordplay, the man himself was like a katana whose scabbard had been lost. But Meisai was different. In the first place─

Right.

She was not wearing a sword.

So long as she was not pulling a Komori and storing one in her stomach─the Legion’s owner carried not a piece of the thousand.

The poison.

In that case, the sword’s poison─couldn’t reach her.

As they had ascended the remainder of the stairs alongside Meisai, from the eight hundred and fiftieth step up past the thousandth step, where Shichika was sitting now, and proceeded onto the shrine grounds─Togame, resigned to the horror of being witnessed in her posture, had not ordered Shichika to put her down─the Mistress of Triad Shrine had welcomed them with the openness and congeniality one extends to friends of ten years standing.

Laughing heartily…

“Hahaha! From the bakufu? Sure you are─just kidding, I believe you. This kind of a story is much more fun when you believe it.”

Togame must have been planning out her diplomatic hand all hundred and fifty of the steps. It would be going too far to say she plumbed the essence of Meisai over the duration of their climb, but the Schemer seemed ready to decide on the course of conversation.

They would wind up fighting one on one, if worse came to worst.

So Togame had predicted.

The lady doesn’t look so tough.

Meisai was tall, but only for a woman─next to Shichika, her height was not an issue. It didn’t look like she spent much time training. Of course, since he had met so few people, he was not equipped to judge an opponent’s prowess from her appearance.

Still, she didn’t carry a sword.

Did not carry one─was unarmed.

“Triad Shrine is still a shrine, but at this point, in name only,” she had said on the steps. “There isn’t a single priest left. No one but us miko─you’d call us a convent,12 if we were a temple.”

Shichika had tried asking Meisai about the strange outfits he had seen the Kuromiko wearing in the world below. Swordless, and without the white talisman with which the others hid their faces, Meisei only came across as strange because her hakama, ordinarily red, was black─yet it underscored the eccentricity of the other maidens encountered en route.

“They aren’t just down below. There’s more up here.”

It was hard to say whether it was intentional, but Meisai had dodged his question by offering the irrelevant detail.

“Maybe fifty of them. We’re a fortress now─it’s part of our duty to patrol the neighborhood. I have so many to take care of, the only way to make room is to scatter them around.”

When Togame had explained the situation, Shichika had put two and two together and assumed the miko must be friends of Meisai from her brigand days─but evidently, he was wrong. Seven years back, when she took over the shrine─she stepped out of the game entirely.

Supposedly she never saw those friends anymore.

Then again.

There was something odd about this shrine regardless.

Not mainstream, Togame had said.

“Man…”

He had not been subjecting his brain to anything too difficult, but it had somehow filled up to capacity, and Shichika keeled over, lying flat out on his back. If the torii were a guillotine,13 he would be the star of a beheading. And in that posture─a number of miko entered his field of vision.

Kuromiko.

Like he’d seen below.

Miko─dressed head to toe in black.

It was hard enough for Shichika to tell people apart, but when they wore the same clothes, carried swords in the same fashion, and hid their faces with the same type of veil, differentiating them was hopeless─any given one looked like the rest. You did not have to be Shichika to think so. The talismans hid their faces perfectly, and they all wore their hair in more or less the same style.

“Convenient for a screen adaptation.”14

That was what Meisai had said.

Shichika had not caught her meaning.

Not if it’s live-action, Togame had taken issue with the remark. Shichika had not understood this either. But maybe that was for the best. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to.

But even if they looked basically the same, Shichika could tell that the miko working on the upper compound outranked the guards that they had seen below.

Which reminded him of something.

He had his worries about his boss Togame engaging in diplomacy in a closed room with the enemy (and once diplomacy was underway, things were out of his hands)─but something else was eating him.

Sento the Legion.

All fifty of the Kuromiko who were tending to the grounds─not like he had checked them all, but from the looks of it, they were armed─had a sword slung from her hip. Here and there, he saw one with her sword on the right, instead of the left, but he guessed that only meant those miko were left-handed.15

Those swords─were pieces of the Legion.

That’s what Togame had said, anyway.

And yet─something felt off to Shichika.

This, too, involved last month. The moment he beheld Zanto the Razor at the hip of drowsy Ginkaku Uneri, in Gekoku Castle─he could sense the sword was among the Twelve Possessed of Kiki Shikizaki.

He was certain.

And as it turned out─he was right.

At the time, he thought it was a hunch─knowing he could easily be wrong, he had told himself not to make a hasty judgment.

But when he brought it up with Togame, she suggested that since Shichika was a swordsman, perhaps something in him could sense the presence of a Shikizaki blade.

That would mean these things had souls,16 or some similarly fantastical idea. Shichika acknowledged the possibility. But this time─

He felt nothing.

When he saw the swords the Kuromiko carried, he felt none of that sensation he experienced the month before─neither the ones on the guards under the mountain, nor the ones on the maidens up on the compound elicited a special reaction.

They felt like─normal swords.

That was all.

Hmm.

He must have been pretty bored to fixate on a thing like that. No doubt Togame had forgotten that exchange by now─well, with her memory, it was unlikely she had actually forgotten, but to be sure, it had not been grouped with her important memories. Barring a reminder, she would probably never think of it again. Her line about him sensing a presence? She probably hadn’t meant anything by it.

But Shichika thought it had been an interesting idea.

Fantastical as it was.

Shichika believed it was possible─in fact, he hoped that it was true.

That things had souls.

That katana could have souls─since after all.

Shichika Yasuri was a sword himself.

Still─yeah.

Togame had been absolutely sure, so the swords the Kuromiko carried must be pieces of the Legion. They had to be. Shichika decided that the lifeforce he sensed the first time he saw the Razor was a figment of his imagination, and promptly switched off his brain.

“Hey.”

When one of the Kuromiko happened to come near Shichika’s spot─not because she had any business with him, but simply trying to get by, so she could descend the stairway─he went ahead and greeted her. If she seemed friendly, he could ask about those talismans. With those things covering their faces, did they ever have trouble watching their step?

“…nkk!”

The Kuromiko shrank away and beelined17 in the direction she had come from.

Shichika dropped his jaw.

No guy enjoys a girl running away from him when he says hello, but Shichika was not equipped to feel that way. Even so, he thought this odd behavior suspicious. Meisai Tsuruga may call herself a miko, but she was the shrine’s mistress. In which case, it was understandable that this maiden would be scared of Shichika who was, after all, her boss’s “enemy”─nevertheless, something weird was going on.

That wasn’t hostility, at all─just fear.

But what was scary about Shichika?

Since he had yet to mention to Meisai that he was Master of the Kyotoryu─the Kuromiko could not possibly know who he was. What did an armed gal have to fear about an unarmed guy lounging on the ground?

This shrine’s weird.

That there was no one here but miko meant that it wasn’t functioning as a shrine, to begin with─Meisai had said as much herself.

Shichika lost himself in a recollection of the time Togame brought him to Yahata Shrine18 in Kyoto. He let his eyes fall shut.

He would sleep here for a bit.

By the time he woke, the negotiations would surely be over.

■　■

That said.

This woman was being straight with her─something made Togame sure of that. It was fine to be wary…but she probably had nothing to worry about.

“Well then.”

Meisai, who had entered the room first, sat herself down, cross-legged on the floor, without a cushion.19 Then she asked Togame to sit in front of her. Togame did as she was told and sat, on her heels,20 facing Meisai.

“Nice hair, young lady,”21 Meisai commented to start things off.

Togame’s hair was white down to the roots─it had not been dyed or turned white over time─certain events had made it that way. A young woman like her with completely white hair was unforgettable. Togame was used to hearing all about it. At this point, she thought nothing of it. However.

“I’m not young enough for you to call me young lady,” Togame stated plainly.

She had already been caught comporting herself so shamefully, lounging in the arms of Shichika, and could not risk being taken any more lightly. Meisai had declared that she believed Togame was from the bakufu, but did she really? The woman was likely forming her opinion as they spoke.

“But you are a young lady. In my eyes,” Meisai contended. “I recognize, young lady, that you may not be as young as you look─but neither am I as young as I appear.”

“…I’m sure.”

As I appear─unlike Shichika, Togame had great faith in her ability to notice personal details, but could not guess Meisai Tsuruga’s age. She was certainly older than Shichika or Togame─but a precise estimate eluded the Schemer. Or any estimate.

The former brigand─looked nothing of the sort.

True, her openheartedness was in line with the free and easy roguery22 that gave the brigands their air of romance─but there was something about her not of this world.23

And yet an island monkey─she was not.

A shrine standing atop a thousand stairs could not be further from the world.

But as the mistress of this shrine gone fortress, as the guardian of Mt. Taizan and Izumo, it would be wrong to say that she was truly separated from the world.

“Madame Meisai─”

“Take your time, dear─ah, there you are.”

Meisai gently blocked her visitor from diving into the discussion. The door had opened, and a Kuromiko stepped inside, toting a sizeable carafe24 of sake. Without a word, she proffered it to Meisai and scurried from the room.

Meisai popped the cork, held the spout to her lips, and guzzled sake with abandon. When she was through, she placed the carafe in front of Togame.

“Drink up.”

“…”

“On principle, I don’t discuss important matters with a person who won’t drink with me.”

Clearly it isn’t poisoned─Meisai promised. Without comment, Togame seized the carafe in both hands and took a long, smooth draught.

A sacramental libation,25 it seemed.

Not a single god hates sake─or so they say.

But if Triad Shrine had stores of sacred sake to offer26 to the gods, it was still an active shrine, in some capacity. Even without priests, they were doing the bare minimum.

“You know how to drink.”

“Thanks.”

Meisai seemed amused. Togame placed the carafe on the planking, with a thud, before dabbing at the corner of her mouth.

“Are we good?”

Togame. Haughty as ever.

Call it diplomacy, but she had no intention of toadying or groveling.

“Certainly. Now we’re friends. But why leave out the boy?27 Doesn’t this concern him, too? He is your man, I take it, young lady?”

“He is my sword,” quipped Togame. “On principle, if whoever I am speaking with is not carrying a sword, I leave my sword behind.”

“Your sword, huh.”

Meisai laughed.

…Togame was well aware that such a declaration carried little weight after that shameful first impression. There was no getting beyond a flub28 like that.