Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein Page A

reflection it captured of the leaves above. It is an Inazuma blade, he thought. Of course there will be stories. Men would kill—men have killed—to possess a sword such as this. Where such treasures are concerned, the imagination is sure to wander.
    Saito gave the sword a final polishing and, withdrawing his own tachi , sheathed his late master’s weapon in his own scabbard. It fit well enough—not perfectly, but not so loose as to rattle free. Then, removing the inimitable weapon and its sheath from his belt, he sat down and quickly unwound the cord wrappings from both swords’ handles. Then he switched them, rebinding the Inazuma with the wrap from his own sword. Though it felt like a violation of Bushido in his gut, in his head he was certain it was not. He tried to convince his gut of that as he switched the braided cords wrapping the scabbards, binding his own around the one carved for Beautiful Singer.
    Apprehension gnarled his brow as he eyed the tsuba , the round metal hand guards on each sword; switching those would takemore time and tools than he had available. The illusion would not be complete. But then, it should not need to be. There would be no reason for anyone to examine the sword Saito wore on the trip home. If the others were loyal at all, their grief over the master’s honorless death would overwhelm any other concerns.
    Once the handle and scabbard of the Beautiful Singer were bound, Saito hastily rewrapped his own sword with the orange-and-yellow cord taken from Lord Kanayama. With both weapons disguised, he thrust Kanayama’s magnificent prize through his own belt and returned his old sword to the late master. It was then that he heard voices approaching over the ridge. With one silent movement, Saito regained his feet and drew the Inazuma sword. The peerless blade glittered as it struck the head from Kanayama’s body. The blood was minimal, most of it having already turned the ground to red mud, but Saito cleaned his new weapon anyway. As he whipped it through the air to resheathe it, the blade truly sang, its song high-pitched, nearly inaudible, yet nonetheless unforgettable. Though he could never explain how, Saito was immediately aware that this song had words, and in that moment he knew his fallen master’s death poem:
The glorious sun,
nigh on reaching its zenith,
shaded by my hand.
    “That’s perfect,” Nakadai said later when Saito recited the poem to him. “Yes, the lord himself could not have composed better. Too bad that it’s all too true.”
    “What?” Saito looked up at his friend, distantly aware that Nakadai had spoken. The whistling song of the sword still clung to the air, washing over everything else.
    “The master’s life,” Nakadai observed. “Surely you see it. He was the sun, shaded just as he was the coming to the peak of his skills. Or have you written a poem better than you even knew yourself?”
    “No…the poem wrote itself for me.”
    Nakadai laughed. “Well, then, perhaps you’ve attained a glimpse of enlightenment. Maybe you should shave that old topknot and join a monastery.” Nakadai chuckled again, but Saito bristled at the thought of retiring his weapons and his station as samurai. He forced a laugh all the same.
    They agreed to build a pyre for Kanayama’s body just outside the woods, for it was possible that Lord Ashikaga would not allow a proper funeral if they carried the body home. Despite whatever demon had taken hold of the master in his final days, for most of his life Kanayama had been an indomitable warrior and the object of unquestioned loyalty.
    The sun had set by the time they’d gathered the mountain of wood they needed, for to burn their lord’s very bones to ashes, they needed heat one usually found only in the heart of a forge. At Saito’s suggestion, Kanayama’s swords were burned along with the body. The lord should die with at least that much honor, he argued. Nakadai quickly agreed: if the ghost stories were true, he