Iron and Indigo
by Gail Riordan
Title: Iron and Indigo
Author Name: Gail Riordan (aka JenniferGail) Lferion on LJ
Fandom: Star Wars - TPM
Characters|Pairing: Qui-Gon Jinn (Jin)/Wa, Jin/Other, Wa/Ofc
Genre: Drama, AR – Indigo Warrior-verse
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 21,000
Archive: To MA only.
Disclaimer: George Lucas &etc. owns Star Wars, not me. Tem-ve came up with the alternate universe. No harm, no foul, no money.
Summary: Wa forges the sword as a relationship was forged.
Warnings: Some non-con, some het. Historical liberties are taken.
Written for: Bonus-track fic for Tem-ve's Indigo Warrior zine.
Author Notes: Prequel to Tem-ve's "Indigo Warrior". As in her story, Wa is 'played' by Ken Watanabe.
Story notes and sources at the end.
Assembling the Materials: The Scent of True Metal
The pieces that spoke came to his hand slowly: that hoop, this strap, that other odd melted lump. All the ordinary detritus of any smithy anywhere under Amaterasu's Eye - broken bits and bent pieces, metal trash that Oe dumped on his doorstep. But as Watanabe Kenji, master-smith, sorted through the oddments, the refuse, there would be pieces that sang, that spoke to him by touch, weight, smell, taste. Special pieces, one day to be made into ... something special. Those bits had gone into one corner, one bin, one cabinet. The metal that did not speak became hinges or nails or hoes, melted down and remade into useful, ordinary objects.
The collection of true-metal grew gradually in the dark over the years, and Wa never spoke of it, though Aya knew of it. He never even allowed himself to think of it much, but listened to each salvaged nugget with both hands.
***
When Tokugawa-dono sent word to his home province of Mikawa that skill and manpower were needed for the army and the push against the Higo rebellion, the newly qualified, newly married blacksmith of Shitara answered the call.
Wa met Hasegawa Kaemon, samurai, in Tokugawa-sama's camp. Met him, indeed, coming out of Tokugawa-sama's tent, wearing nothing but a fundoshi and an interesting set of rope marks. Forcibly struck by his height, presence and the luxurious length of his hair, only half caught in an upside-down topknot, Wa had said nothing, had not even bowed in politeness at one so obviously samurai.
Their eyes met: indigo and iron. For a long moment the air braided them together, until one of the functionaries spoke loudly, announcing Craftsman-kaji Watanabe Kenji into the presence of the war leader Tokugawa-sama.
Forge-welding the Billet: Flux and Flow, Force and Fire
Clang! Clang clang clang tang ting.
The jarring of the hammer on hot metal was so familiar that Wa had long since ceased to notice. The din of steel on iron was informative, comfortable music.
Pour on more white-flux. Put the billet back in the forge, check the fuel, the airflow.
The heat patted his ruddy cheeks, an old and mischievous friend. The edges of the metal reddened quickly in the flame, more slowly the center. Eager to be worked, it would be hot enough when the edges glowed yellow-white, and the flux had vanished.
Only the moon bore witness.
Once the collection of layers that made up the billet had been innocent, mere detritus. No more. Back-piece, blade-piece, side-pieces wrapped around the core-piece, each piece forged and folded, folded again. The core-piece was soft, mostly iron. The blade-piece hard, stiff, many-times folded steel. Wrapped in wire and clay-soaked paper, it was a blunt, unwieldy object, a billet, a thing that was going to be something, nothing like a sword.
Hot enough to work again. Wa pulled out the forging rod with the billet on the end and positioned it with effortless skill on the anvil. Applied the hammer. Clang!
To the ignorant eye, the metal was still innocent, merely iron-black. Eyes could not see the charcoal that made iron steel, nor were the layers painstakingly pounded out visible beneath the scale and flux-grime. To the ignorant, Wa might be making a billet for a scythe, an iron poker, something large but ordinary. Though even the ignorant might wonder why he worked at night. Wa was once again glad he was over the hill from the village, not constantly subject to prying, curious, ignorant eyes.
Sympathetic eyes that did nothing but remind him of what he had lost. Aya, dead these five moons, taken from him by the heat-fever with scorching quickness, one day flushed, the next dizzy, two days later dead. She so small, so fire-eaten there was hardly anything to burn, at the end. Tamae was only eight. If her mother was only across the Sanzu, only across a river, why couldn't they just go fetch her back?
Wa hadn't found a way to explain to her yet that 'across the Sanzu' was an expression. That the Sanzu wasn't a regular river, the other side an ordinary place. That the land across the Sanzu was the spirit-country, the land of the dead, and the Sanzu itself the boundary that nothing living could cross. Perhaps it was because he hardly believed it himself.
With Aya gone, the only other person who mattered to him as she had was very much on his mind. Hasegawa Kaemon, the Indigo Warrior. Kaemon, his friend.
The forging-hammer sang in his hand as the billet grew a little thinner, a little denser.
Now the hiding place he had prepared in the floor would see use, for any eyes that did understand what they were seeing would know the thing for what it was -- and he was not a blade-smith, with the rights and privileges thereof, but merely a blacksmith, having chosen service to his village over service to the Tokugawa.
Steel was not permitted ever since Toyotomi's decree.
He made it anyway.
***
Wa had learned Hasegawa Kaemon's name soon enough, and the fighting-name of Indigo Warrior that went with him. He listened eagerly to the stories told: how Indigo-san had held the bridge at Tedorigawa with five men and a boy when he himself was hardly old enough to put up his hair. How Indigo-san had brought the news of Oda treachery through the spring storms and all the combined Oda and Toyotomi forces. But no clan-tales, no ancestor stories. And no-one knew what his child-name had been, or how he had come to be the Tokugawa's personal student and aide.
In a crowd of peacocks (all the young samurai dressed as brightly as their funds and lords would allow) Indigo-san was a somber raven, in blues and greys, dark greens and blacks. He towered over the others, and his rough silks and tough cottons drew Wa's eye as none of the fine silks did. He was as young in years as the other student-warriors, but his eyes were already old: disconcerting and compelling beneath that broad, unshaven forehead, that astonishing fall of hair.
Ieyasu-sama taught him personally, when they were not actively engaged on campaign. Drilled him in the arts of the two swords, the bow and spear, fan and knife and staff. In fighting with no weapon at all but mind and body. At night, judging by the shadows on the tent walls, and the whispers and chuckles of the guards, the drilling was of a different kind. If Kaemon-san had a tent of his own, Wa did not know of it.
Wa wondered why such an ordinary sight as wall-shadows should make his chest ache and his groin burn. He did not seek the chrysanthemum road. He had a wife, whom he loved, and who could set him aflame with a look, a smile, a glimpse of thigh, of demure, bent neck. Why should he, a married blacksmith, care that Hasegawa Kaemon was the Tokugawa's apprentice in all things?
But he did care. And as the days and weeks passed, he was beginning to suspect that Indigo-san cared as well.
Drawing out the Steel: Patient Rain
Clang! Tang tang ting ting ting tap tap. Again into the forge, immersed in cherry-red coals.
No longer a coarse billet, but beginning to become a blade, lengthening and thinning with each application to the anvil, each beat of the hammer. The Evening Star glittered in the tree branches, the thin moon on the swift stream behind the workshop.
The wood of the broad old support-beam swiftly blackened but did not burn. The metal did not grow brittle or break under the unschooled blows.
This would be a blade for a tall man, possessed of both grace and strength. All through collecting the iron and making the billet, Wa had thought it would be a katana, the signature long sword of a samurai. But as he drew out the steel, he came to know that that was not the form for this blade. This would be more than a katana, longer, thicker, heavier. This would be a war-weapon, a dotanuki, a blade to cut through torsos, armor and all.
***
As a craftsman, a smith, a kajiya, Watanabe Kenji was worthy of respect, honored for his skill, and his ability. Especially since his skill and ability kept the blades sharp, the rivets fastened, the spear and arrow points plentiful. And although Wa was one of several smiths attached to the camp, it was his hammer that most often set to rights the Tokugawa's gear, Wa's tongs and punches and muscles that made the little things Ieyasu-sama requested, Wa's stones and powders and polishing cloths that restored the edges to his blades. Ieyasu-sama respected skill.
But preference - especially based on skill, not family, (though Wa was from Ieyasu-sama's own birth lands) - bred jealousy. And Wa's own preference for solitude over sociability, not to mention his forthright manner of speech, got him in trouble on more than one occasion.
It was Kaemon who rescued him, flailing, from the folds of an ornate woman's kimono dropped unexpectedly over his head as he left the forge, Kaemon who warned him by a look, or a laugh, or by his mere presence to be aware of another 'practical joke', Kaemon's quick reflexes that kept him from being badly burned when the quench-pot proved to have been filled with oil, not water.
After that little incident, Kaemon was a frequent, unobtrusive presence, always with a book, or a brush and paper, or hand-work. He re-directed jealousy and encouraged honor and respect just by being there, teaching by example that all work, all resources, were of value: tools, trees, words and men. The harassment stopped, and while the rest of the young samurai and most of the older ones, as well as the other craftsmen decided to consider Wa a tool, useful but otherwise to be ignored, Kaemon did not.
Wa began to understand -- by the weight of a blue-flash gaze, the shadow of presence, the quiet word or apt quote and a thousand other small things -- that to Kaemon, he, kajiya, was a man. A desired and desirable man. A friend.
But Indigo-san was Ieyasu-sama's. He was Aya's, a smith black with the smoke of his working. Never mind the fire in his heart, the fire in his loins. The fire in the forge was hot enough.
Shaping the blade: Breathing with the Heart
Tak, tak, tick tick tick, tick tick tick, tick tick tickticktick.
The best swords were forged entirely to shape, the grinding stones used only to remove the heat-scale and expose the fine layers of steel to the polishing cloths. Wa was in no hurry. As far as he knew, the man for whom he made this was quite possibly not alive, and in all probability, if he was alive, in no position to use it. But the metal desired to be worked, the blade made.
Now the smaller hammers saw use, and the work went slowly indeed. Upsetting - thickening - the tang-end, the extension of the blade-steel that would be held by the hilt; drawing out the edge without thinning the spine, working in the hint of the long, gentle curve from base to point, shaping the point, the angle just so.
Heart and mind must be in accord for this work, and many nights the days had been too busy, too fraught for Wa to have the necessary center for this part. There were all the preparations for his son, Watanabe Takayasu's, upcoming wedding to the rice-merchant's heiress. There was the need to think of finding an apprentice, put off for many years in the hope that Takayasu would change his mind and choose the forge over accounts and figures.
But however slowly and erratically, the work went forward, and the shape of the blade revealed itself.
***
The Siege of Odawara was a slow, brutal, ugly business. Men and horses died on the steep slopes leading up to the castle, brought down by loose scree, slick rock, and the flung stones and arrows of the defenders. Desperate sorties blooded both attackers and defenders, and as the season drew deeper into summer, the heat, close quarters and shrinking water supply brought fever and wound-sickness to both hill and plain.
Many was the night when Wa longed for the comfort of Aya's arms, the clean smell of the pines of Shitara on the slopes of the mountains of northern Mikawa. Remembered the ease (and forgot the boredom) of making nails for the carpenter, hinges and handles for the cabinet-maker; and not the need to make hoop after hoop for the cooper's coffins, or yet another cauterizing tool.
"When the siege is finished, and the battle won, I will ask leave to return home," Wa told himself. "When the summer is over and the year's campaigning done, I will ask to be released from this service."
But in the final days of the siege, a last convulsion of desperate effort brought the defenders out from behind their high walls and down the scarp into the very tents of the besieging army. They brought fire and oil and every last one of their arrows, and their hearts and arms were driven by the knowledge that they were all dead men, no matter what happened, for the castle was out of resources and would fall whatever they did, unless by a miracle they could win through in one final throw.
"Wa! Douse the forge, now!"
Such was the force of the command that Wa obeyed without hesitation, catching up the water barrel and pouring it out on the coals in one motion. Steam hissed and boiled, filling the small clearing where the forge was set. In the sudden murk, a gauntleted hand gripped his elbow, drawing him backward.
"Quickly, come with me." The voice was Kaemon-san's, low and urgent. "The Ho^jo^ army is headed this way."
Wa went, ears ringing with the unnatural silence of the doused forge, the all but undefended camp. It seemed like the silence of the sea preparing itself for a great wave. Kaemon moved quickly, cutting across the neat lines of the different encampments, startling livestock and the occasional servant. Kaemon collected them all as he went, urging speed and silence.
Shortly they came to the upthrust of rock that marked one edge of the camp, and Wa noticed that many of the noncombatants were gathered there, and with them were a quantity of spiked tent-poles. As Wa was still trying to catch his breath, Kaemon snatched up one of the poles and thrust it into Wa's hands.
"Hold it like this," pushing Wa's hands further apart, closing Wa's fingers around the wood. "Brace it against the ground for as long as you can. Keep your feet apart. Yes, just as you do at the forge."
Others were listening now, and the brighter ones had taken up poles of their own and were making a creditable job of following Kaemon's instructions.
"The Ho^jo^ men are desperate. They will not see that you are not warriors, and if they come this way, they will attack. Use the poles to fend them off, like so." He demonstrated a forceful thrust and recover. "Follow through, but let them come to you, do not go after them. Climb the rock if you have to." All the while Kaemon was adjusting grips, correcting stances, shooing the timid back into the curve of the rock where they would have the most protection. "They may not come this way. It is not you they seek. But that is not a thing to depend upon. Watanabe Kenji-san, do you understand? Will you do this?"
Burning blue held Wa transfixed. His hands tightened on the pole. His hips bent in a reflexive bow. "Yes, sir."
"I put you in charge of this." A stern look at the gaggle of pole-carriers. "The smith has authority here, is that understood?"
A murmur of assent.
"Good. I expect to see all those tent-poles back in their proper places, and all of you with them in the morning." Kaemon bent his gaze back to Wa, and his expressive mouth was grim. "I must return to my place. I will come to the forge when I can." Live, dammit!
First sharpening: Snow in summer
The grindstone rasped and whirled, spun by the steady rhythm of Wa's foot on the treadle. Black scale melted away, revealing grey metal, the planes and angles true and flat. Then the sen plane, one of his most cherished tools, and what the grindstone had made smooth became like glass, ice, water, white and silver in the moonlight.
***
The maddened Ho^jo^ army had not approached their stronghold, and Wa had not had to put Indigo-san's hurried lesson in spear-work to use. The din of battle had carried to their position, though, the screaming of the iron rain of arrows, the thuds and shouts and shrieks of steel on leather, flesh, steel. Wa stood steadfast with the cooper, the harness-maker and several cooks, as the afternoon wore on. The wood grew wet in his hands, then dried.
Eventually the carnage ended. The fires were put out. The bodies were removed from the places of the living. The tent-poles went back to their tents, the people to their respective encampments.
Wa waited at the forge, putting things to rights in the long twilight of late summer. Kaemon did not come. He did not come with the dawn to share Wa's strong, pungent tea. Finally, Wa went looking.
Kaemon had taken an arrow to the shoulder, another to the thigh, leading a squad of Ho^jo^ men away from the non-combatants, toward Ieyasu's position. Ieyasu's chiurgeon had seen to him personally, and the apothecary had dosed him with syrup of poppies, to make him sleep after the extraction.
It frightened Wa deeply to see Indigo-san laid low. All thought of leaving the army, of going back to Shitara fled. He would not leave with Kaemon ill. He could not. Live, dammit! he shouted in his heart at the pale form wreathed in black hair on the mat. "Live," he whispered, holding watch at his side in the evening. "I'll make a cauterizing point just for you," he threatened, voice thick. "I'll poke you where it will really hurt." Nonsense, curses, babble. Late that night, Wa was rewarded with a stirring, and Kaemon opened his eyes briefly. The drug would have left Kaemon nearly blind in the low firelight, but Wa knew he had been recognized, and when Kaemon slipped back into sleep, the lines on his face had eased.
Kaemon's wounds healed, cleanly if not quickly, and Wa knew he would not be asking for leave to quit the army. How could he, when the Indigo Warrior found his forge a refuge in which to heal, his company a comfort?
Applying the clay: Understanding earth's embrace
Three principal surfaces, three types of quench-clay. Wa hissed through his teeth and muttered imprecations under his breath at the effort of laying down the stuff evenly, smoothly. Writing brushes were not his tools of comfort. He had been mildly surprised to discover that there were any in the house. They must have been his son's.
Build up the layers on back and side-ridges, bring the clay almost to the point, cover the whole of the tang. When those are done, do them again, extending the clay a hairsbreadth further toward the edge. And again. And again. Finally, lovingly, painstakingly, Wa carved and brushed the last thin layer that would define the temper-line just above the edge into wave shapes.
***
With the fall of Odawara, all the Kanto - the several districts to the north and west that encircled the Bay of To^kyo^ - was now the Tokugawa's domain, and the Toyotomi had decreed that Ieyasu should remove entirely from Mikawa and surrounding areas, and take up residence there. Ieyasu had settled on the fishing village of Edo as his headquarters.
Those with family were given leave to visit them over the winter, and somehow (Wa was fairly certain he did not want particulars) Kaemon had obtained permission to go with Wa to Shitara.
They went slowly, letting the horses set the pace. Wa insisted on easy stages, saying that as he was unused to riding, and they had plenty of time, they should stop at the convenient inns and roadhouses, and not push on into the dark of the early evenings. He had a nose for a good bath-house, and tried to see to it that Kaemon's still-healing leg and shoulder got a good hot soak at least every other day. Indigo-san did not argue, though he did raise his eyebrows more than once at the sun only a third down the sky.
When they arrived at Shitara, the sun was just dipping below the stands of pine that clustered thickly behind Wa's house and workshop. He greeted his wife, was introduced to his son, and then had the unexpectedly delightful pleasure of seeing tiny Aya, baby on her hip, reduce the great Hasegawa Kaemon to abashed silence with one level look and a gentle smile.
It was not a moment that lasted long, for Aya immediately noticed Kaemon's stiff bow and hesitant step, and chastised her husband for keeping his friend standing.
Aya welcomed Kaemon into the house, and within hours it was as if he had always been a part of the family. Undisputed mistress of her household, she chided and cosseted both of them just as she did little Taka-chan, and occasionally shooed them out to the workshop, or down to the village when the snow-dimmed rooms became too small for four people.
Over the too-short season, Kaemon's strength gradually returned, and Wa strove to regain his center.
One night, Wa woke with the moon in his eyes, Aya in his arms, and a dream of Kaemon stepping out of the bath splendid and erect, blue eyes on fire for him, for Wa; and Wa was achingly hard, filled with a need that the cherished softness nestled against his chest did nothing to assuage. He ached for chiseled strength as well.
Chiseled strength that lay sleeping mere feet away on the other side of the hibachi. Wa's house was small, the mountain winter cold. Putting the futons in the room with the fire-pit only made sense.
He had thought that being with Aya would dispel his desire for Kaemon, but it seemed that the gods had a sense of humor, and having the one only made the other more beautiful, not less. Wa sighed, and tried to coax himself back to sleep by listening to the hushed sounds of the night. Aya's breath puffed against his breast. A distinctive, regular, faint whistle marked Kaemon's sleeping breath, the artifact of a broken nose. Wa tried to muffle his frustrated groan in a fold of the quilt, but Aya was awake, pressing sleepy kisses to his chest, licking his nipples in the way she knew he liked. He tightened his arms as she opened to him, guided his sword to her sheath, and he groaned again, rocking against her, tangling his hands in her hair.
Aya murmured nearly inaudible love words to him, moving her hips, dancing with him, bringing him quickly to completion. Her own pleasure was obvious in the flutter of her belly against his, the eagerness of her hands pulling his head down to hers, her fierce kisses. When he was done, she cradled him, and kissed away the slow tears that traced his cheeks. "What is it, love?" she asked him, low and caring. "What is wrong?" But he could not answer with Kaemon there, even with the whistling breath proclaiming him deeply asleep, his very proximity causing aftershocks in Wa's groin.
Eventually he slept, restlessly, and rose earlier than was his wont. The room was cold.
He went for more wood for the fire, and was struck with tenderness when he returned. Two big futons, one small, close to the warmth. Three forms curled beneath thick quilts. Two rivers of black hair fanned on pillows. Two faces in sleep, one delicate, one anything but, both dear beyond words.
Kannon the Merciful, he loved them both. He wanted them both. Very quietly he blew on the dim coals and built up the fire, lest either take chill. He did not know how to tell Aya, but tell her he must. Kaemon, he suspected, already knew. Had known these many weeks. He retreated to the simplicity of his forge, and set himself to making nails: mindless, useful.
Late in the morning, Aya came out to the workshop where he was puttering, and settled herself neatly on the wide ledge at the end of the water-box. "Kaemon-san has gone to the village to get some things for me, and I think to test his leg. He has taken Taka-chan with him to be fussed over by the amas, the grandmothers. He will be gone some hours and will be noisy on his return." She patted the ledge seat beside her. "Come, Wa-chan, Ken-chan. Tell me. Tell me what is the matter. It has to do with Kaemon-san, I know." Her voice was gentle but unyielding, her gaze loving, but allowing no escape.
Wa found himself kneeling before her, his head in her lap as if she were his ama and he a child in truth. She smoothed her hand through his hair. "What ever it is, love, it will be all right. Tell me, please."
After that, the words came, a river breaking free from the ice, first trickles and drips, then a swift torrent, scouring away misery and fear like dead leaves in the stream.
When he was done he looked up into her face. Her hand had stilled, but not left its comforting place. There was no revulsion, no accusation in her eyes, only love. No surprise either. Was he the only one who hadn't known? Probably. Aya folded him in her arms and kissed him gently. "So. You love him, and desire him, and you know he does not despise the iris and chrysanthemum garden. You love and desire me. You love two people. Why does this make you unhappy?"
"You don't mind? Truly?"
"Why should I mind? I love you, you great lump. I am glad you have more than me to love, and I am very glad that he is there to look after you, when I cannot, and give you things to think about other than cold metal and dull swords." She leaned down and bumped noses with him playfully. "I love him too, you know. He is just like the hero-brother in all the stories, only human. And he cares about you. About your life and your happiness. Our happiness." She pushed at his shoulders and stood up. "Now get off the cold floor and kiss me properly, silly man."
With incentive like that, how could he not? Wa got up with alacrity to do his wife's bidding. After a pleasant interlude, he stopped long enough to ask how she knew Kaemon cared about their happiness.
She laughed and tugged at his kimonos, settling them back on his shoulders. "Surely you don't think a warrior trained like he is sleeps as heavily as all that, do you? He's trained to wake in a moment, at the smallest sound. A rustle or a whisper might be important. He gives us the grace of seeming asleep, and I think he takes pleasure in our pleasure." She laughed again at Wa's sudden blush, and laced her small fingers through his large ones. "I certainly don't mind. And," she directed a pointed glance to the gap in the cloth below his unravelling obi, "I can see that *you*," her other hand followed the glance, and Wa was squirming, fully erect, deeply aroused by the idea of Kaemon hearing them, pleasuring himself, "like the idea very well." Her hand found its target and he yelped and moaned, biting his lips. "Now. Let us go where you can put that hot iron to good use in comfort."
Wa could only nod and follow.
Later, as they lay tangled together in luxurious afterglow, Aya spoke again. "It comforts me to know, when I can't be with you, that you are loved. That the man I love finds pleasure and relief in the arms of one I also love and honor. That you have each other."
They did not speak of it again -- there was no need. And when, several days later, Wa looked up from his work and saw Aya and Kaemon in deep conversation, he felt again that welling tenderness, only this time without misery, and with the tiniest prick of anticipation, like the first new shoots through melting snow.
Annealing the blade: Flame-moths and iron fruit
The coals glowed, lambent in the shadowed smithy. The water-box stood ready, fed by the stream, reflecting the sky. The sword - for it was unquestionably a sword now - had been carefully covered in layers upon layers of clay for months, waiting the right time, the right moment. He had prepared the forge before, stacked the good hardwood, the straw and black-rock. He had even started to heat the blade before, and snatched it back out of the fire. This time, though, he would do it. It required to be done, or what was the point of making it at all? He shivered in the snow-muffled silence, cold in ways that had nothing to do with the season.
The longest night of the year. Shinkichi had the night off, enjoying a holiday with his family; little Tamae (not so little now, though, growing like a bamboo sprig) was visiting Takayasu and O-Yuki. That he would be up all night was no matter, and nothing he hadn't done before.
A puff of the bellows, a minute adjustment of the wind-screen. The forge was the perfect heat. (No proper fire-floor, but it would do, it would do. Get on with it, old man.) The moon reflected darkly off the clay, whitely on the wave-carved sliver of what would be the cutting edge. Thrust it deep in the coals, quickly, smoothly, no turning back.
Now for the waiting, tending the fire, minding the breeze, while the blade endured the long, slow agony of annealing. Not thinking about what the coming hours might bring. Not thinking of the black ice-shards that had once promised to be a sword of renown exploding from a too-cold, too-quick quenching. Not thinking of the churned ground and black stains and droning clouds of flies, the croak of ravens that marked battle grounds, execution grounds. Not thinking about the bitter taste of ash and the sting of smoke, the grim black banner of the pyre.
Irrationally, he had come to believe that if the sword died in the water-box, he would know Kaemon to be dead as well.
It was comfort to know that Aya waited for him across the Sanzu - it was torment to think that Kaemon might. No, Wa was supposed to wait for Kaemon, not the other way around, for all his smaller span of years.
***
The winter was over, and Wa and Kaemon rode north along the Tokaido Road, following the track of the first caravans from the strongholds of Mikawa to the new places being prepared in the Kanto. They went swiftly, not lingering on the way. They were men under orders, called to report. Still, the ride was pleasant with the signs of early spring all around them, and they did not spurn the convenience of the roadhouses and way-stations.
As they got closer to the Kanto, they were joined by other men, lords and retainers, artisans and workmen, until there was a river of men flowing toward the sea, and the seat of the Tokugawa.
When they did arrive, it was suddenly as if they had never left. The camp was still the camp, the tents and workplaces and cooking fires unchanged. Edo was too small to support the influx of men, a mere village overlooked by a rise that might once have supported a castle, and now held only a wooden watch-tower, beams still white from the axe and adze. But Edo did sport a fine bath-house built over one of the several local hot-springs, and it was near there that Tokugawa-dono ordered his own tents to be set, with those of his close retainers and favored support-staff near by.
There was Hideyasu's tent, and over there the armorer's pavilion. There, under a noble tree, was the oh-so-familiar pile of gear marked with the Hasegawa crest - Kaemon's place. All around him the neat lines of demarcation were laid out with stake and pole and painted cloth under the bright familiar banners. There was Wa's own encampment, hard by the main road, room enough for the working of long pieces, space enough to control a fire should a spark fly or hot metal find dry tinder. There was even -- wonder of wonders! -- piped-in water and a proper water-box, no need for the portable quench-pot, though it stood, reduced to a rain-catchment, under one of the eaves of the fine new roof. His own personal gear was there, neatly arranged, ready to set up.
And there, in pride of place on a slight rise, commanding a view of the water, the watchtower and several of the main approaches, was the canvas edifice that housed Ieyasu. The hub of the wheel. The center of the web. The peak proclaimed the triple mallow above the red-and-gold fan: Ieyasu was in residence.
Wa dismounted, clumsy for the first time in days, and stumbled as he looked over to see Kaemon landing lightly on the ground, all hint of stiffness or weakness gone. Kaemon reached out a hand to steady him, and frowned at the distress Wa knew he could see in his face. He followed the direction of Wa's glance.
"Ah."
Ieyasu would expect to see his student as soon as possible. Would already know from his runners that they had come in. Would almost certainly require Kaemon's attendance for the evening.
They had not spoken of the attraction between them in the last weeks before the New Year. They had not spoken of Aya's small gesture (one of Wa's hands, one of Kaemon's, pressed together between her own in silent benison, just before they mounted up to ride away from her and Shitara, back to the world of men) on the long road to Edo, nor acted on the growing desire that that tacit permission allowed. Not yet time. Not yet right.
Wa observed the subtle shift, a straightening, a stilling, the almost imperceptible indrawing of Kaemon's presence. Now it was Indigo-san who stood by him, noting the banner of his lord-in-residence. But it was Kaemon who looked back at him from banked blue eyes, and Kaemon who said softly, "I will come to the forge. When I can."
Now it was too late for words, actions. Aya might not mind. Ieyasu ... would.
Still, friendship with Hasegawa-san was no little thing, and for the short months of spring he was in and out of the forge often, a frequent sight at Wa's fire-pit in the mornings, laughing and drinking Wa's strong, bitter tea. There were opportunities for debate, work-weary silence, even teaching (Kaemon had gotten a moon-spun idea about teaching Wa to read more than the rudimentary character set he possessed), but little for the kind of companionship that had begun to grow in the mountains. Those moments were mere snatches, crusts, crumbs in the busy, public, official world of the camp-city. Barely enough to keep a man from starving.
With the advent of summer and into the autumn, Kaemon was less and less in camp. He was the war-leader's long reach, his strong arm. Ieyasu sent him nearly the length and breadth of the country on his errands, delivering messages of courteous calligraphy backed with blue steel, bringing back information, observation, assessment that owed no loyalty other than to Ieyasu himself. When he was in camp, Ieyasu kept him close, always under his avid, watchful eye.
But Kaemon would make time to stop in at the forge, just as he always made time to be gracious to young Hideyasu who was often to be found there. He would let Wa know where he was going if he could, and would take small tokens and messages to deliver to the village on the mountain. Wa would give him the toys for Taka-chan that he made whenever he was particularly missing Aya (missing Kaemon too, truth to tell). Kaemon would bring him back news. So Wa knew that Aya was increasing, the child to be born in the first moon of autumn. Knew that the rice grew well and the village prospered.
As the hillsides faded from green to gold, Wa worried about Aya, about Kaemon. Aya was due soon to give birth. Indigo-san was over-due to return. Young Hideyasu gave Wa to understand that even Ieyasu was 'concerned'.
There were hostile clans between Edo and Shitara now. It was not the safe road they had ridden that spring.
Wa knew little about babies, but had been told that second children were easier than first, and Taka had arrived without trouble. Instead he imagined arrows, swords, early snows, unseasonable avalanches. It never occurred to him that a note from the village midwife would be the true danger.
The note came to Wa in the hand of a camp runner. One of the flock of boys that chased and flew, gathering and scattering like black-polled sparrows among the tents, the boy knew only what he had been told: the message had come in that day by one of the couriers, he didn't know who, there had been several. "But, oh! Wa-san! Indigo-sama is finally back, and was met at the outer watch-point by a whole squad, led by Hideyasu-sama! Wouldn't it be wonderful to be such a favorite of Tokugawa-dono? They hurried straight up to the big tent by the south road, swords and banners and everything! "
The boy chattered on. Wa stopped listening. Kaemon was back, with news of importance obviously. Wa would not see him tonight, and probably not tomorrow. But he was back, safe.
Wa looked down at the much-folded bit of paper he had been handed. The character for iron - *tetsu*, the character for Wa, those he knew. The personal mark of the scribe of Shitara and the symbol for the village, those he knew as well. The message was his -- "Iron Wa from Shitara" -- could only be him.
Carefully, he unfolded the paper. Obviously, the scribe had written it out, but who had sent it? What did it say? What was so important that it required paper and ink and probably funds for delivery?
The only character he knew of the message inside was "Aya", though he guessed at "Namiko" since that was the midwife's name, and nami - wave - was one of the characters Kaemon had been hammering into his head. Now Wa wished he had paid more mind to those lessons. Aya. The baby. (Who would be Kaemon if a boy, Kaeko if a girl. Kaemon-the-elder had been very touched that Wa and Aya would name a child after him.)
Happy news would have waited. Happy news would have come in early winter, after the delivery, the blessing, the naming by the priest. This was ... not-happy news.
And Kaemon, who would read it to him, and understand whatever it said, and help Wa to bear whatever that not-happy-news was, was tied up for the evening, bound to the war-leader's business, obeying the bonds of fealty and honor that made him samurai, and Indigo-san, and kept him away from Wa.
The message-boy was peering over Wa's hands at the note. "What's it say? Can you read it?"
"No."
"Oh." A world of disappointment in the boy's voice, but nothing to the terror growing in his own heart. The boy sighed, and turned to go, then grinned as he glanced across the road. "Oh! There's Nagamaru! He can read it for you! Hey, Naga-chan! C'm'ere!"
The little boy - no more than seven - trotted over, and Wa recognized the child as Ieyasu's second son, the first by his second wife. He wore a child's padded coat and pants, and there was a little wooden sword tucked proudly in his belt. "Don't call me 'Naga-chan'. I'm Nagamaru." He stretched vainly to see what was so interesting.
The older boy (all of a worldly and superior ten years, guessed Wa) ignored the complaint, and took the note out of Wa's hands, waving it in front of Nagamaru's face. "Betch'a can't read this!" he crowed.
"Can so!"
Dimpled hands caught at the paper, and Wa was afraid for a moment that the note would be torn before it ever got read, but the older boy let go immediately. "Prove it then. Read it out to us. Wa-san'll know if you get it right or not." With a smug, cheeky grin, the message-boy leaned against the post, watching Nagamaru expectantly.
Now on his honor, Nagamaru sat down and smoothed the paper on his knee, studying the characters with a frown. The high child-voice slowly spelled out the message. "Sent by Grandmother Namiko: Lady Aya good health. Seven. Moons? Oh, months. Seven months. Baby girl. Very small cat's mouth? No, very small kitten." Triumphantly, the boy stood, giving Wa back the note.
Wa accepted the paper and found his voice. "Thank you Nagamaru-chan. That was well done. You do your teachers proud."
The boys left the smithy, and Wa clearly heard Nagamaru ask the other boy why someone would go to all the fuss of sending a message about a cat having kittens. A kitten. Whatever.
But Wa knew the scribe, and the midwife. He could hear their voices, deciding what to write.
"O-Aya fine. Seven-months girl-child very small."
Born too early. Probably too small. And the last word was not kitten, but cat's-mouth. The boy had read it right the first time. Little Kaeko would likely not live to be properly named.
Quenching the blade: Death-and-Life
Now. It was now or not ever. The moon that had glimmered low in the east when the clay-cloaked blade went into the fire now sailed high in the clear midwinter sky, sending white light streaming through the smoke-hole, bright in the dim smithy, a perfect circle on the water. For hours, Wa had watched the coals, the clay, the slender, crucial edge. The stack of hardwood had diminished, consumed to coals. The clay had browned, then blackened, then finally lit a sullen red. The edge gleamed, beads of blood-on-snow, autumn-leaf-red, a shade so subtle that it required shadow to be seen. Wa worked without lamps, only the coal-light, the better to see and hold the color steady. It was very cold, and Wa considered hot rocks for the water-box, but no ice skinned the surface, so he let it be.
Breathe. Center. Stand steady. His wrapped palms gripped the tongs, handles wide, jaws wide. Slide the mouth under the flat place above the tang, below the blade. Close. Hold. Lift the spirit and the living blade from out the sheath of flame. Turn. Shift the center from fire to ice, from flux to firm.
Now.
Now!
NOW!
The moon-shape shattered on the cherry-hot steel. Water hissed and boiled.
***
All day the sky had been threatening, the air heavy, humid, clouds mumbling and boiling but never quite spilling over. A fitting match to his mood, thought Wa, crawling out from bedclothes both clammy and hot. Nothing but a nuisance, he thought in the stifling noon, picking at his plain rice and mopping his face. Maybe this sunset would bring a breeze. Maybe night would bring Kaemon.
"O-Watenabe-san, Azumi-sama sends to tell you that Tokugawa-dono requests your presence this evening."
Wa looked up from where he was mindlessly polishing and ordering his tools and blinked. He had been expecting ... something, but not this. He could not possibly have heard aright. But the functionary who stood before him, bowing incongruously in the hazy evening light, was all too obviously serious. The Tokugawa's Own from the wax in his brand-new top-knot to the neatly braided thongs of the zori on his feet, this youth would never think to say anything but precisely what his lord told him to say.
"Pardon?"
Clearly the boy was not unused to stupefied reactions. Again he bowed and repeated the outrageous request that was not a request.
This time Wa managed to bow back. He swallowed the heart in his throat. "Thank you. I will come."
The young man turned to go, looking back expectantly at Wa. "If your honor would be pleased to follow me?"
"Now? You mean right now? Can't I clean up first?"
Well trained, the youth did not smile, but Wa got the impression of sympathy anyway. "Yes, kajiya-san, now, and no: there is no dishonor in the garments of worthy toil."
Wa fumbled off his leather apron, looked dismally down at his oldest, most work-worn kimono, his ashy, dusty *tabi* and fraying *zori*. At least his short brush of hair would be presentable.
Wa felt disjointed, entirely out of place, following this neat, polished creature up the road. The triple-mallow crest bobbed before him, white and stark on the riot of color that was the boy's kimono. The crest that Kaemon wore on his back, stamped between his shoulder-blades, on his breast, over his heart, over the arrow-scar. He rarely wore the Hasegawa house-crest, though it was his right, and he used it as a marker for his gear. Mallow-blossoms were naturally white, Wa thought irrelevantly. It was the ground they grew in that gave them color.
Perhaps this summons had something to do with Kaemon, and he should be pleased; perhaps it had something to do with Kaemon and he was right to be terrified.
Up the road in the glowering light, white canvas stained dun, ochre, rust, in the last rays of the sun under the restive clouds. The armored guard posted at the encampment gate passed them in without challenge or comment. The armed guards at the door of the great official tent bowed them on, past the broad painted door-flaps, and deep into the maze of canvas. Surely their destination was not Ieyasu's private tent.
It was.
Two hulking, silent men opened the door curtains, allowing Wa and the youth entrance, then followed them in, stationing themselves inside the anteroom, all the while unspeaking. In silence, they stepped out of their shoes. It was no comfort that the guard's sandals were of the same straw as his own, and nearly as worn.
There was another curtain, an inner chamber. With only the barest hesitation, the brightly-plumed youth pulled back the cloth and ushered Wa in.
"O-Watanabe Kenji-san, your worship, and Yamada Soru at your worship's request." The youth - Yamada Soru, presumably - dropped to a full obeisance. Wa followed, breathing hard. The floor had been fitted with tatami, smooth under his fingers.
Tokugawa-dono spoke, a rich voice, vowels still faintly echoing the lilt of Mikawa, of home. "Up, gentlemen, up."
Cautiously, Wa raised his head, eyes, he hoped, safely forward. Tokugawa Ieyasu sat at ease on a folding stool placed on a low dais, an elevation of two tatami mats, no more. His dress was casual, informal. At his side, preternaturally still, knelt Kaemon. Kaemon was fully and formally clothed. Every shade of indigo found a place weaving in and out of the bold pattern of cascading mallow-blossoms embroidered in white that made up his silk outer kimono. His stola-like *kataginu* was a dazzle of chrysanthemums on storm-clouds, the mallow-crest nearly lost in the pink and silver, blue and grey and black of the pattern. Even his *hakama* sported flowers, unlikely irises with blue-black leaves, red throats, grey petals. Crowning all, his top-knot was a masterpiece of upswept locks, artistic folds, revealing the long column of his throat, the strength of his neck.
Before Wa had a chance to imagine how Kaemon had come by such uncharacteristic garb, Ieyasu went on. "Come, come now. We are private, we are all men, and men of the sword at that. There is no need for ceremony here. You are the last; your places wait. Come and sit."
Best not to make him say it a third time, thought Wa, kneeling up. Best not to remind him I'm a smith, not a samurai. They were a small company, only seven, and flat cushions and table-trays marked where he and young Yamada were to sit. Yamada moved gracefully to his place beside another youth as beautiful and colorful as he. Wa shuffled over to the remaining place. A wonderful smell of food tickled his nose. His stomach began to unknot.
Genial, expansive, Ieyasu leaned forward, smiling at his guests. "Now, not all of you are acquainted, so I will make the introductions, so we may be comfortable." He rested a familiar - possessive - hand on Kaemon's neck. "My student, Hasegawa Kaemon, you all know." The hand lingered, and Wa did not imagine that lordly thumb caressing the thin skin of Kaemon's neck, the place his hair usually covered, now exposed.
Wa wasn't imagining that Kaemon was aroused, either; that his knees were just a little further apart, the cloth over his groin a little more pronounced that was usual. That Kaemon's freshly shaven cheeks were the faintest pink. That Wa's own flesh was stirring at the knowledge, at the sight of that lingering touch.
Ieyasu's other hand indicated the older man, tidy and nondescript, placed above the two youths. "Azumi Takayugi, rope-master. Brother to Azumi Takahashi, captain of messengers. " The other older man, with a narrow face and long, slender hands, white on his delicately patterned hakama; "Toroji-sensei, master of ink, come all the way from Kyoto to grace us with his presence." The man bowed at the compliment, the implied connection with the Imperial Court. "Yamada Soru and Ogami Yoshitsugu, promising flowers of their clans, come to me for polishing. I expect this evening to be ... instructional for them." The boys, alike as brothers, acknowledged the directive.
Ieyasu's hand was still caressing Kaemon's neck. Wa tried, desperately, to forget that he was wearing a patched kimono, spark-marked work pants. Wished he had hakama to better hide his unruly, thoughtless flesh.
"And, lastly, Watanabe Kenji, ironsmith-artisan, of Shitara in Mikawa, that Toyotomi now holds. It was my doing that he comes to us from the smithy, and not the bath, as I am sure he would have preferred. You are not to mind it. My sons assure me he is excellent company, and Kaemon here ... " another caress, "favors him."
What on earth did that mean? Wa found a polite smile, bowed stiffly. He would not think about the flesh an iris-patterned hakama was not hiding well enough.
Quiet servants were flitting in, placing the first course before each of them. Before the servant with Kaemon's portion could set it down, Ieyasu put out his hand. "The master must see to it that the student is nourished with food healthy for body and spirit." Obediently, the servant knelt, presenting the tray for Ieyasu's inspection. "It is well," proclaimed Ieyasu, "but let it be put aside for him, to partake of later."
Kaemon did not react, maintaining his still, calm centeredness.
Ieyasu turned to the table-tray at his side, preparing to lift the cover and take up his chopsticks. As an afterthought he remarked lightly, "Ah, a philosophical question, to consider while we eat. But what shall be the subject of our discussion, pleasing to all in this so-distinguished company?" A pause for effect. "Why, artistry, of course. And symbolism. We shall consider the artistry and symbolism displayed so fetchingly by young Kaemon here, in his attire."
Wa knew that Ieyasu was not normally this elaborate and flowery in his speech. Was it some kind of joke?
"Kaemon, your kataginu, please. Let the gentlemen see it more closely, feel the excellence of the weave. No, do not speak. It is not your place to speak here." Kaemon had not made any attempt to speak. That was for the benefit of the audience. Wa had no idea what it signified, though the slow smile creasing the cheeks of the rope-master told Wa that he not only knew, but looked forward with anticipation. (What was a rope-master, anyway? He obviously did not make rope. His hands were too soft.)
"That's right, boy, take it off. Give it to Toroji-sensei to admire."
'Boy'? To Hasegawa Kaemon, the Indigo Warrior? But Kaemon did not react, merely untucked the lappets of his stola and shrugged it gracefully off his shoulders, handing it to the Master of Ink seated before him. Then he returned to his fixed pose. Even without the kataginu to widen them, his shoulders were very broad.
"Now, shall it be clouds, or chrysanthemums we consider?"
Azumi answered Ieyasu with a chuckle. "Chrysanthemums, my lord. A more ... yielding ... subject."
When the fabric came to him, Wa was almost afraid to touch it, it was so smooth and finely woven. His rough hands would snag the delicate stuff. It was stronger than it looked, though, and was stiffened over the shoulders and down the hanging panels with thin paper and paste. The repeating pattern of chrysanthemums tossed their heads, deep pink shading in to pale peach, vibrant against indigo and ashy clouds. Clouds like the ones overhead, above the high peak of canvas, golden in the lamplight. He passed the garment on, handing it across to the boys.
The sun had set. The tent would be glowing, a festival lantern. No wall-shadows, though, there were lamps set all about the room.
Wa let the sophisticated conversation flow around him. He was not ignorant. He had grown up in a small house, a rural village. People fucked. People made love. Men had sex with women. Men had sex with other men. He supposed women had sex with other women sometimes. But he hadn't known there were so many ways to talk about it. So many different words and shades of meaning.
The men of rank spoke of how the chrysanthemum flower was receptivity, taking in, the act of being filled, of subordinating the body and the will to the will and body of another. A chrysanthemum in full petal, as these were, face-on, was the anus. The male anus. The anus of a beautiful boy, eager to be stretched, entered, filled.
Wa ate only a little of the cold course, feeling embarrassed, aroused. He wondered how Kaemon felt, on display. Was he embarrassed by his arousal? Was he enjoying, or enduring? Ieyasu traced the curve behind Kaemon's ear, and Wa saw the single hitch in Kaemon's breath, felt the catch of his own. Enjoying and enduring, Wa supposed. Just as Wa was.
The hot course was served, and the little ritual repeated. Kaemon was not to eat. His hakama were requested, removed, passed around. The symbolism of irises set as the discussion subject.
Kaemon knelt again, the long kimono smooth over his knees, gapping, ever so slightly, between his thighs. Ieyasu's hand explored Kaemon's ears, his hairline. Kaemon's cheeks grew ever so slightly pinker, and the rise and fall of his steady breath went just a little faster.
The obvious similarity of the leaves to a long blade, a sword, was brought up, and immediately considered too trite, too obvious.
It was the other blade that was meant, the little sword, the one men were born with. Were not all the words for penis, thick or thin, short or long, penetrating words? Prick, cock, spear, rod, tool. The leaves were male potency, the full lower petal the testes, the stamens another prick, of course. It even smelled like a man smelled, when he was hot and eager and ready to burst. And didn't irises push up from the ground, from bulbs that looked like a man's sac, and grow swiftly, long and thick?
Wa concentrated on the food. The very good food. There was nothing he could add to the conversation, even if he wanted to.
The sake came in, both warm and cold, exquisite pairs of bottles and tiny cups, each suited to the recipient.
Again, Kaemon's portion was considered by Ieyasu, approved, and waved away, "For later, perhaps."
Again, Ieyasu invited Kaemon to remove a garment that the artistry of the weave, of the pattern, of the dye be able to be more closely examined and appreciated by the company. "No, no, my dear boy. An obi is not a garment, a mere accessory! Though admire it we shall, and put it to good use in time. Give it to Azumi-san. The kimono, Kae-chan. A masterwork of Izuichi's school. Is it not, Toroji-sensei?"
"Indeed, I have never seen the mallow pattern worked so finely, both in the weave and the dyeing."
Ieyasu's hand returned to Kaemon's shoulder as Kaemon returned to his kneeling position. Holding, not caressing, though thin grey silk clung to the curve and swell of muscle, revealing strength as well as breadth. The under-kimono was hardly long enough to be tucked under Kaemon's knees and Wa could see a shadow through the silk covering his thigh, the furrow of the arrow-scar.
"Ah, but I have enough of discussion of mallow, and mallow blossoms, and mallow leaves. Let us have a different subject than that. What do you gentleman believe to be the meaning of the phrase 'the cat's mouth'?"
Kaemon went white. Ieyasu's hand gripped. Wa would not have thought a face so still could show so much pain.
Kaemon knew. Which meant, could only mean, that Kaemon had been the messenger who carried the note. That he had taken an unsanctioned detour from his duty-prescribed road to check in on Wa's family, in what was now, if not enemy, certainly questionable territory. Had Kaemon held his tiny name-sake, small as a kitten, in his great hands, wishing her his strength? Had he held Aya, letting her rage and wail and finally weep against his broad chest, a stand-in for Wa? (Would he let Wa rage and wail and finally weep against that broad chest, no stand-in at all, as Wa now realized was what he had wanted from the moment he had understood the message?)
Kaemon knew what the note said. What the note meant. Ieyasu knew what the note said, but could not simply trust Kaemon's interpretation. Kaemon had gone out of his way, without leave, into the lands of one whom Ieyasu did not trust. For the sake of a blacksmith. Apparently.
If Nagamaru could think the message was about a kitten, might not his father, the most subtle and clever political mind of the age, think it might be a code? Think his student a possible traitor, Wa himself an enemy?
Bleakly, Wa knew the answer. Yes, Ieyasu did think it a possibility. But, here he was, in the Tokugawa's private tent, eating and drinking (well, nibbling and sipping) the products of the Tokugawa's undeniably excellent kitchens. An invited guest at what had all the earmarks of one of those lord's parties that gave lord's parties their decadent reputation. Ieyasu did not *believe* any of those things.
Kaemon had once told him that Tokugawa Ieyasu did nothing, not even piss in the morning and shit in the afternoon, without reason. The very crudeness of the statement, coming from Kaemon, had set it firmly in Wa's memory. Kaemon had also told him, more than once, that Ieyasu was the pattern of a man of honor.
This was a test. This party, these people, the 'philosophical questions', even the clothes they wore and the increasingly obvious fondling that Kaemon was less and less able to hide his response to.
The two masters were batting about all kinds of explanations of what a cat's mouth might mean, most of them sexual, none of them near what he knew to be the truth. Wa had not contributed much to the conversation, more than happy to let the men of culture carry it. This time, Ieyasu intended Wa to speak.
To speak about mallows while talking about cat's mouths. Politics made his head hurt.
Wa gathered his courage. Cleared his throat. Opened his mouth. Nothing emerged. Cleared his throat again with an embarrassed cough. The room was suddenly quiet, all eyes on him. Except Kaemon's, downcast, studying his hands. Still, but no longer centered. Wa could not bear to give him more pain, knew it was unavoidable.
"The cat's mouth is when a child is born with a mouth like a cat's." Wa's voice wobbled. He didn't care. "The lip has a gap, and runs into the nose. Sometimes the mouth is not shaped right, and the child cannot suck." The room was still silent, and Wa knew his face was red. Let them see his feelings. He was not held to a code of stoic endurance. "One of my brothers had it, and lived hardly a year. My daughter just born has it, my Kaeko-chan, born too soon, too small."
Kaemon raised his head, met Wa's eyes. Wa was given to know he was not alone in his sorrow, Kaemon was with him.
Wa sat back on his heels, abruptly light-headed, a single tear making a damp course down his cheeks. Tokugawa-dono nodded, once, twice.
Azumi, uncomfortable, announced, "The Iron-master has the right of it. I accept his interpretation of the phrase as definitive." Toroji-sensei drained his cup, and one of the decorative boys leaned across the small space and offered Wa a handkerchief. He took it, unexpectedly touched.
Ieyasu leaned forward, gathering the attention of all. He held out his sake-cup, tipped it, and let a single drop fall to the matting. He spoke to Wa, father to father, his voice sympathetic. "Watanabe Kenji-san, I honor your tears." It was not an apology. It was an acknowledgment. Ieyasu straightened. "Children are our future and our hope. To know one suffers lessens all. I am satisfied. This subject is closed."
Wa had passed the test. No more would be said. The conversation became general, and Wa was grateful for the politeness of the others, their averted attention allowing him to pull himself together in peace. He took a deep breath, another. Picked up his flask of hot sake and poured it as carefully as if it were a crucible of molten metal. His hands did not shake. That was good. Drank the cupful. Poured again. Sipped. The spirit warmed his belly, lay smooth and clean on his tongue. He poured some of the cold sake into the little square cup and sipped that too. Interesting, different, more complex. He eased his shoulders and lifted his eyes to the low dais. Kaemon was watching him, concern plain on his face. Whatever he saw when Wa looked up reassured him, and his expression eased, smoothed.
Overhead, Wa heard a faint patter begin, hesitant, then steady. It had begun to rain. Wa smiled. He was in the finest tent in the camp. No need for drip-catchers in here. Though, come to think of it, that under-kimono Kaemon had on was almost like a layer of rain, a fine grey mist that hinted but did not show, a shadow of cloud glowing with the moon behind it.
Sweet rice cakes, and more sake, and the fine, translucent silk of the silver-grey under-kimono was requested, removed, discussed. The specific questions had ceased after the intrusion of reality in Wa's uncomfortably true answer, and now the tone of the conversation grew rapidly more ribald as the festive mood re-asserted itself.
Wa was enjoying the sake, the warmth, and he had always had a fondness for mochi, sweet rice cakes. These had all kinds of interesting fillings, red bean and lychee, other fruits he wasn't sure he knew he names of. He was starting to enjoy the scenery too: the angular elegance of the two young men, the almost theatrical grace of the Ink-master, the increasingly riveting landscape that was Kaemon. Kaemon in nothing but a double-length fundoshi, worn as for under armor, white linen spiraling snugly down his torso, covering breast and ribcage, belly and waist. Only one narrow band confined his heavy sex, supported his testes before disappearing between his legs.
Ieyasu grew less restrained in his touches, his caresses more overt. Collarbones were traced, the sensitive skin of under arm and inner thigh. Buttocks were cupped, and nails drawn lightly over the soft skin at Kaemon's inner wrists, the bend of his elbows, the hollows of his throat. Wa could see the faint sheen of perspiration at Kaemon's temples, on his shoulders, that outlined the muscles of his thighs. That curled the black hairs that arrowed under the narrow cloth.
Wa felt his own arousal in his belly, growing from the warmth kindled by the sake, stoked and fed by the slow, delicate eroticism of Ieyasu's caresses, fanned by Kaemon's restrained but increasingly apparent responses.
The two older men adjusted themselves frequently, without shame. The two young men tried not to squirm, cheeks as pink as the chrysanthemums on Kaemon's discarded stola. Ieyasu, collected, never let his hand cease its careful, effective touches to Kaemon's ivory skin.
Kaemon's erection, apparent after the hakama were gone, and obvious with the outer kimono's removal, had softened and stiffened several times, but never flagged completely. Under the scant covering of the cloth, Wa could see that there was no cincture to keep him hard. Ieyasu must have managed it some other way.
Fully dressed, Wa shivered. Wa's own sex ached in sympathy. It hurt to keep it up that long.
Plum wine in delicate cups, tea and tiny savory-sweet wafers. The end of the feast. Not the end of the festivities. Ieyasu fed Kaemon a sip of wine, and Wa watched, transfixed, as Kaemon swallowed. Shuddered. Tried to still.
Ieyasu had stood, untucked the top end of the fundoshi and was unwinding it, slowly walking around and around his so-proclaimed student. The torso revealed by the falling away of white linen was not that of a boy, unmarked, untried. The muscles were too defined, the dark nipples too prominent, the black thatch of hair at the root of his sex too thick for dewy youth. The livid arrow-scar marked one shoulder, more than one white line scored his ribs.
With disturbing gentleness, Ieyasu peeled the damp linen from Kaemon's sex, reached between his spread knees to free the end that went between Kaemon's legs and was gripped by his buttocks. "There is nothing remarkable or symbolic about a length of underwear, we shall not consider it." Ieyasu spoke conversationally, moving behind Kaemon. Kaemon's sex was the same purple as the arrow-scar on his thigh, a thick rod reaching high up his belly. Then Ieyasu, still gently, pressed between Kaemon's shoulder-blades, pressed Kaemon down, a naked obeisance. Buttocks rose, opened.
Ieyasu slowly drew forth a dark object. Almost imperceptibly, Kaemon trembled. Did not rise when Ieyasu stepped around him, the object in his hands covered in the linen folds.
"Iron-master."
Wa tore his gaze from the black hair, the bent, exposed neck of the strongest man he knew, and looked up at Ieyasu standing directly before him. Wa's heart thudded in his breast.
"Your opinion, Kajiya-san, on the workmanship of this piece."
White linen unfurled, Wa reached, caught. His wrists jarred at the weight. The thing was an iron phallus, smooth and slick and bulbous, warm with the heat of Kaemon's body, wet with Kaemon's sweat. Very heavy. Solid metal. Forged then, not cast. Long, half a shaku perhaps - the full span of his hand - and more than a sun thick at the widest bulge. The surface of the harikata had been worked in patterns, leaves and flowers. The wide end sported an oval ring, three fingers broad, the narrower end was shaped like an iris, just opening.
He was cold and hot at once, his ears rang and the floor seemed to sway under his knees. The workmanship, Wa. Think about the workmanship, the techniques, the methods, the materials. Precise, impersonal, technical terms. Nothing more.
There was no odor, no stink. It smelled like oiled iron, and like Kaemon, blood-warm in his hand.
Wa's voice stuttered, caught, proceeded to give an assessment of the object without his paying any attention to what he said. Ink and Rope wouldn't understand anyway; Kaemon and Ieyasu understood all too well.
Wa's own sex was iron-hard. Burned to be where iron had been.
Ieyasu smiled, stretched, and returned to his seat. "We have discussed artistry, let us now have art demonstrated. My student shall be the canvas." Ieyasu's hand traced a gentle line down Kaemon's still-bent back. Wa saw him shiver under Ieyasu's delicate touch. "Azumi, if you will create the structure, perhaps Toroji-sensei will consent to provide the embellishment."
The servants reappeared, cleared away the table-trays, brought in a trunk, a table, and a small chest with many drawers. The trunk was placed beside Rope, the table and chest near Ink. The tools of their arts, Wa thought. One of the young men had gone crimson, the other just looked puzzled. Wa sympathized.
Rope busied himself with his trunk, putting aside the lid and lifting out hank after hank of rope. Some of the hanks were hemp, rough and undyed. A few were spun and twisted cotton. Most were beautiful examples of the art of kumihimo, braided strands of many colors, supple, strong, and as thick as a man's finger.
Ieyasu encouraged Kaemon to rise to his feet, steadied him as they stepped off the low dais, and led him to the space in the center, where Master Rope would have plenty of room, and everyone would have an excellent view.
Azumi contemplated the tree of a man before him. After a moment, he spoke. "A splendid canvas indeed, my lord. Certainly the largest I have had the pleasure of in quite some time." He walked around Kaemon, measuring him with his eyes. "Oh, yes, my lord, very fine. I have just the thing." His forehead creased into a frown. "But it will take time. Perhaps with assistance...?"
"Certainly, Azumi-san. Will two be sufficient?" Ieyasu signaled, and sent the resultant servant out to the antechamber. "Tomi and Tanu have seconded you before, I believe."
"Indeed, indeed, most excellent."
The two big guards entered the room, now clad only in their fundoshi, after the manner of wrestlers. Somehow, they looked even bigger that way, and Wa thought they might be twins. Without a word, they moved to do Azumi's bidding. Kaemon was serene, standing calmly, naked and fully erect, cloaked in a dignity that Wa found deeply erotic.
Azumi was indeed a master of rope. He began with a little bow to his audience and an introduction. He was a master of the midori school of shibari, that taught to make rope serve for more than mere restraint. The blood could be directed to sensitive areas with careful placement, the right tension. Gold and grey rope flew, spanned and cinched and knotted. Kaemon's chest was bound with a deceptively simple set of turns, his nipples darkening and peaking.
Not quite so serene, Kaemon's breath quickened, his lips parted.
Restraint could also be erotic, of course, when properly managed. Arms, for example, when bound so allowed the one restrained to experience interesting effects both relaxed within and straining against the rope, heightening the response of other sensitive areas. More rope, a deep green this time, and Kaemon's hands were secured behind his back, wrists crossed, the muscled strength of his upper arms confined by cords, collarbones standing out in high relief.
Kaemon's head fell back a little, and his sex purpled. Wa's groin was tight, tingling, and the master of Ink was frankly stroking himself, one hand inside his hakama.
This is but the beginning, the cold-course as it were. Proceeding to the hot course, it is well to attend to the genital area next, while it is still relatively ... uncluttered. A loop around the waist with a long red rope, a cinch and a doubled strand punctuated with carefully placed knots. One just above the pubic bone, sufficient length, another a little behind the sac, pressing gently on the tender skin there. A third and fourth, bracketing the anus, a fifth for the lower back. Cinch to the waist, and bring all back again, looping through the strands, making diamonds to tension, decorate, open to display.
Kaemon's breath grew ragged, and a pearl of fluid grew on the exposed head of his sex, glistening in the lamplight. Between his buttocks, the flower of his body was fully open to display, framed in red rope.
Now, an accessible position is wanted, accessible both front and back. Some care must be taken with the legs, not too much constriction, but nothing to allow movement either. A bamboo rod and blue-green rope now, a thick elaborate cord, bending and binding knees, spreading ankles, opening him further.
Tomi and Tanu arranged Kaemon on the tatami so he was stable, with thin cushions under his knees, and one of them considerately and with surprising delicacy brushed an errant lock of hair out of Kaemon's face with big, blunt hands, quite different from the impersonal cleverness of the master's smooth fingers, and tucked it back where it belonged.
Kaemon shuddered, once, twice, gulping for breath, and then his body seemed to find an equilibrium within the network that held him, and he stilled. The color flamed high in his cheeks, and Wa could see the quick beat of his blood in the hollow of his throat, the pulse of the vein standing out on his sex.
Tomi and Tanu took up stations in the corners on either side of the dais, kneeling and returning to the invisibility of servants and guards everywhere. Rope stepped back and resumed his place. Ieyasu considered his student for a long moment. "Very fine, Azumi-san. Effective, lovely, and informative. An excellent demonstration." Azumi sat, and Ink unfolded himself, coming forward with a divided tray of colored pigments.
As the lord and the artist discussed pattern and placement, Wa tried to catch his breath, still his whirling thoughts, snatch at a measure of composure. This was so far out of his experience that he had no framework in which to settle his feelings into any kind of order. The only constant seemed to be his arousal.
The calm, quiet concentration with which the Master of Ink applied his pigments to Kaemon's constrained flesh was a respite from the intensity of the previous demonstration, and a hush held the company as an iris, proud and stiff, grew on Kaemon's belly, the bush of hair at the base of his sex the grass from which it sprang. Chrysanthemums tossed their heads against muscular clouds on one shoulder, and mallow and indigo blossoms were scattered here and there, in the hollows of his shoulders, the hollows of his hips, at the cleft of his buttocks, between his shoulderblades, softening the scar-furrow on his thigh.
The flowers were the same as had graced Kaemon's formal garments, so thoroughly examined and discussed. Toroji-sensei captured each nuance of style, and set the ink precisely, lovingly, on skin that flushed and paled, adding movement and life to the formal shapes.
When the Master of Ink had finished, and Ieyasu approved, and all admired the designs, Ieyasu waved everyone back to their places. He paced slowly around Kaemon, coming to a stop before him, looking down into Kaemon's face, somber. He held the narrow red and gold cord that had served Kaemon as a obi, dismissed from consideration as a mere accessory, coiled in one hand.
"You have been my student since you came to me these many years past, a hostage-child, as I myself have been. You have been an obedient learner, quick and eager in your studies, mindful of your duties to house and clan and master. You have gained skill, even reputation, as a warrior. " Ieyasu paced, and Kaemon's eyes followed him. "A child grows, and becomes a boy. A boy becomes a youth; a youth, a man. An apprentice becomes a guildsman, a master himself. Childhood ends. Apprenticeship ends." He stopped before Kaemon and cupped his chin, tilting up his face until their eyes met. "Yet you have never petitioned for an end to your tutelage, never asked leave to claim place or wife or other adult obligation beside my service. Why is this, Kaemon?"
Plainly, it was not a question that Ieyasu expected Kaemon to answer, for he released Kaemon's chin, and went on, voice deepening. "When the student hesitates at a necessary thing, the master must act to see the fault overcome. Kaemon, this dependence is become a fault in you. A fault in me, for allowing it continuance." There was emotion, strong emotion, in Ieyasu's voice.
Kaemon's face was a study, first with a tight look of reflexive rejection of the idea, then shifting by degrees through shame and loss until the only word Wa could think of was stricken.
Ieyasu squatted down, looking Kaemon full in the face. "The cord must be cut. If the student will not act, the master must. Hasegawa Kaemon, as of the dawn-bell coming, no longer will you be my student." Ieyasu's hand moved, and the slender line of red and gold was looped around Kaemon's neck
Kaemon flinched, his shoulders trying to hunch against his bonds, as if the words had been a blow, the cord a sudden weight. Ieyasu's voice gentled. "A father's joy is to see his child with a child of his own. A master's joy is to see his student strong and confident and making his own way. So. This night shall see the end of your apprenticeship. To you I give the choice of the mark and manner of that ending, and the shape of what the day shall herald in."
Ieyasu straightened, stood. "I have decided that you require a mark, a permanent mark, a mark of who you are, and whose. You may chose which, but I shall set the choices."
Not even breath was audible, only the distant sough of rain, the sigh of wind stirring the canvas. Ieyasu continued, "But choices have consequences, and require knowledge before they can be made. Attend me, Kaemon. Listen well.
"You may choose the iris, here, above your sex." Ieyasu stroked the glossy swaths of blade-shaped leaves. His voice was stern. "You will see it daily. It will remind you of your duty in this."
Wa felt his own groin pulse at the sight of Kaemon's sex hardening again beneath Ieyasu's hand, but he had no idea what Ieyasu meant by duty in connection with it.
"With that path comes this: you will take the smith, proving the worth of your sword in his body."
Wa felt his jaw drop, and tried to shut it, swallowing hard. His buttocks clenched reflexively. For all his younger years, that was not a thing that had entered even his dreams, much less waking thought. He fought down the spike of panic. If it came to pass, well, he would cope. They would cope. It couldn't be too horrible, might even be pleasant. And Kaemon would be considerate, he was sure.
Ieyasu wasn't done. "You will take one, or the other, or both, of these boys, as it may please me to witness."
A glance at the young men in question showed their startlement to be very similar to Wa's own, only less controlled. Both gulped, and young Yamada blushed and shivered.
"In consequence, you will go to Obihiro in Hokkaido as lord. You will have 7000 koku per year. You will marry at my direction. You may have one, or both, of the boys as students. You will, by your word, never again act the chrysanthemum. You will put off the mallow, and wear only the indigo. You will be as any other lord in my regard."
Kaemon's erection had wilted, and his face showed discomfort, concentration, the line between his brows marked.
"You may choose the mallow, here, and here, and here." Ieyasu touched both the circles on Kaemon's chest, the one on his thigh, the hollow of his hip, lower back and between his shoulder blades, an almost ritual gesture, causing Kaemon to shiver again, a long, whole-body movement. "With that choice you will be marked mine, only mine, only ever Kae-chan, my student." There was a deep note of sorrow in Ieyasu's voice, and there was the slightest hesitation in the words, as if he did not really want to speak them. "I will take you as it please you to bear and me to perform this night. But before the day-bell rings, I will give you the mercy of Shirobocho, and Hasegawa Kaemon will be mourned and remembered as a loved student, and a loyal child of my house."
This time it was Wa's heart that clenched. Kaemon looked almost painfully thoughtful.
Shirobocho was Ieyasu's personal sword, 'the White Knife', a blade of formidable renown. Even Wa knew that the only mercy such a blade could have would be that of a swift and clean death. The under-note of sorrow in Ieyasu's voice made sense now. It was a path that Ieyasu felt honorably compelled to offer, and would follow through with, but it was not a path a master would desire a student to take.
There was a shadow in Kaemon's eyes, a tightness around his mouth, that told Wa that Kaemon was giving the idea thorough consideration. It was definitely not the choice Wa wanted Kaemon to pick. Kaemon exiled to Hokkaido would be preferable. Being fucked by that iron harikata would be preferable. Live, dammit. I want you alive.
Ieyasu's tone lightened, and his expression eased back into its usual impassivity. "Or, finally, you may choose the chrysanthemum, here, on your shoulder." Ieyasu's hand traced the tossing heads of the flowers. "Toroji-sensei has caught the spirit of the symbol very well with this. It is placed so you may see it if you look, and others will also see it.
"With that choice comes this: that you be the chrysanthemum to the men here present, as it may please me to witness. In consequence, you will continue under my hand, as retainer, not student. There will be a stipend, and you may establish a dwelling. You will wear the mallow while engaged on my behalf, but not otherwise. You will have my regard, as Hasegawa Kaemon, as Indigo-san, as my student-that-was. But Kae-chan will be no more. Will be as if he never was, after tonight."
Kaemon's expression had grown even more inward, but the shadow had passed, the lines of his mouth softened. His sex thickened and slowly rose again.
"In no case will this night be spoken of. It will not have happened. There will be no record but my witness, and the ink on your flesh."
Agreement on every face in the room. Almost the only coherent thought in Wa's head was who on earth would he want to tell? The other was a spike of pure sensory desire -- to be where that iron had been -- Wa could feel his testes drawing up and his sex throbbing at the idea, the possibility of that becoming reality.
Ieyasu was looking into Kaemon's face. "Do you know who you are, Hasegawa Kaemon? Whose you are?" Kaemon's eyes were nearly black, only a hint of blue. "You have leave to speak."
Kaemon swallowed, and Wa's eyes were riveted to the thin red and gold line lying loose over the hollow of Kaemon's throat.
"Yes, my lord." Kaemon spoke simply, low but clear. His voice seemed to echo in Wa's bones. "I choose," Kaemon's eyes closed and his hands gripped the ropes as if drawing strength from them. His voice fell to a whisper, the words pulled with difficulty from some deep, terribly private place, "the chrysanthemum."
Relief crashed over Wa like a wave. Not the mallow. Kaemon would live. Not the iris, no exile. (Carefully skirt the other things that would not be happening.) The chrysanthemum.
"Your choice is witnessed, Hasegawa Kaemon. I, Tokugawa Ieyasu, hear your words. As you have chosen, so let it be done." Was that satisfaction in Ieyasu's face?
When Wa glanced at Ink and Rope, the avid look of anticipation in Rope's eyes was more than clear, and Ink was smiling in an almost predatory way. For Wa's own part, he decided he wasn't going to think anything, anything at all for the moment, not with either head.
Ieyasu gestured, and one of the guards rose and brought the folding stool down from the dais, placing it close to Kaemon's head.
Ieyasu sat, spread his legs, opened his kimono. "First, shall be a demonstration, for the sake of the youths. Yamada, Ogami, come close. Observe. Kaemon knows very well what I like. Slowly, Kae-chan, for the boys' instruction."
The endearment shivered through Kaemon, and he opened his mouth, licked his lips. Ieyasu was not particularly large, but Kaemon did, indeed, know how to please him, even with only his mouth. Soon Ieyasu was breathing quickly, fully aroused. His eyes glittered, and when he spoke to the boys, his voice was a purr. "You may touch yourselves. You are permitted to enjoy this."
Kaemon's hands twitched and curled in their bonds. In moments, both boys were flushed, biting their lips, hips jerking as they came in their hands. One of the guards handed them tissues. Kaemon's hips were trying to jerk. Ieyasu stroked and caressed the long back, murmuring, "Not just yet, dear one, soon."
Ieyasu put his hands on Kaemon's head, gripping his top-knot. This was apparently a signal, for Wa saw Kaemon still his ministrations and open his mouth. He leaned back against the ropes and drew his head out of Ieyasu's lap. Ieyasu rose from the stool, his sex upstanding. He moved to Kaemon's rear, going to his knees, and entered him without preparation.
Wa's anus pulsed, and he could not seem to take a breath. Kaemon's strength, Ieyasu's power, the harmony their bodies made together was unspeakably erotic.
Ieyasu curled an arm around Kaemon's waist, reaching up to tweak Kaemon's nipples, and began to thrust, hips slapping against Kaemon's buttocks. Ieyasu's other hand reached around and cupped Kaemon's sac, then gripped his sex, thumb circling the damp, purple head. With each thrust Kaemon gave a short, sharp cry, need and ecstasy, until Kaemon's sex seemed to convulse in Ieyasu's hand, a long ribbon of white spilling to the tatami. A few more thrusts, causing moans rather than cries, and Ieyasu was finding his completion in the depths of Kaemon's body.
The scent of semen was sharp in the air.
It was the same act Wa had seen before as shadows, now unshadowed, fully lit, complete with scents and textures and Kaemon's quivering, moaning aftershocks. Ieyasu obviously knew very well what Kaemon liked.
Wa had eyes. He would remember, when it came to his turn.
Tomi and Tanu were next, oddly pleasing from a visual point of view, two men almost as tall as Kaemon, and rather broader, muscled and fit. At Ieyasu's direction they lifted short, very thick cocks from their fundoshi, and without ever looking Kaemon in the face, took turns pressing into Kaemon's rope-spread anus while the other held him wrapped in stout arms as well as stout rope. The guardsmen grunted their release with identical, compressed expressions, the only sounds they made at all, and were gentle with the tissues when they were done. Kaemon seemed distant during the experience, eyes closed, face almost as still as it had been at the beginning of the evening. Only the twitch of his hands, the spasming of his anus and the raggedness of his breath told Wa otherwise.
Ieyasu desired Azumi and Toroji to take Kaemon together, pleasuring his mouth and his anus at the same time. They could decide themselves who was to take which position.
Rope, it turned out, was interested in Kaemon's mouth, and Kaemon's skills with lips and tongue and teeth kept him more than happy. Ink was as inventive as Wa had suspected. One of the slender cotton cords, tied in a string of knots, was moistened in the dish of oil, then popped each knot one by one, slowly, almost lovingly into Kaemon's anus. Each knot caused a twitch, a shiver, a hitch. When the entire strand had disappeared but for the loop in Ink's strong fingers, he caught Rope's eye, and Rope released Kaemon's mouth. Ink pulled the knots from Kaemon's body with one steady, relentless motion. Kaemon gasped and thrashed, moving as much as the restraints would let him, kept from falling by Tomi and Tanu's strong arms.
Then Ink did it again, this time using two long fingers to push each knot deep into Kaemon's body, using a swift and erratic rhythm, and pulling more slowly, steadily, as Kaemon spasmed at the release of each knot, jerking and making tiny, moaning cries, sounds Wa would never have thought Kaemon's deep voice could produce. Kaemon's sex, limp since Ieyasu's ministrations, began to recover. Rope came in Kaemon's mouth, and had him suckle him to softness, licking and kissing. With Rope's completion, Ink abandoned the knotted strand, and picked up the harigata. Ink teased Kaemon's anus with the shaped tip, then plunged it in deeply and drew it part way out, in and out, several times before removing it again.
Ieyasu watched attentively, stroking himself.
Then Ink did the thing that had Wa squirming and swallowing and gripping the base of his own sex, so as not to come from the mere sight before him.
Ink had Tomi kneel behind Kaemon, then bent Kaemon back until his shoulders were resting on Tomi's knees, his head supported in Tomi's hands. Ink settled himself between Kaemon's knees and took himself in one hand, while first stroking the soft place behind Kaemon's sac and hardening sex, then, the tips of his long fingers together, pushed into Kaemon with all four fingers, the thumb left to caress outside what the fingers were caressing inside.
Arched backward, fondled, filled, Kaemon groaned, a sound of such need, such agonized pleasure, that Wa was hard-pressed not to come on the spot. Toroji did come, and withdrew his hand gently, enjoying the shudders, the ragged breath, the color that brightened all his paints. The truly impressive bit of rope that jutted, purple and weeping, a second iris.
As Ink stood and straightened his kimono, Tanu eased Kaemon up off of Tomi's knees, upright. Let him curl forward for a moment, a brief respite, while Tomi returned to Kaemon's other side.
Ieyasu gestured to Wa, granting him the field, but said nothing, gave no direction as he had with all the others. Letting Wa find his own way, under witness.
Wa's turn. He had only ever had sex with one person, Aya, and with her it had always been love. And females were different from males, though perhaps not as different as he had previously thought. He knew nothing other than what he had seen tonight of the elaborate sexual games, the inventive permutations on the act that were possible. He did know he loved Kaemon, that attraction, desire, need had flowered between them in the little house in the mountains, on the road to Edo.
He did know how to make love. So. He would make love. To Kaemon. Under Ieyasu's eye. Under the boys' eyes. If this is what they were being taught, then perhaps he could show them honest feeling, caring, love for the person and not just the body. The others' eyes, somehow, didn't count. Tomi and Tanu's eyes were the same as Ieyasu's eyes. They were his, breath and blood and bone. Ink and Rope, well, he'd learned some things from them that he would remember, but they were not men he would welcome in his forge, not from what he had seen and heard from them this night.
Ieyasu was waiting. Kaemon was waiting, and had no way of knowing what was going to happen next.
If Wa was going to make love to Kaemon, he wasn't going to do it unwashed. He plucked up his courage and made the signal he had seen the others use to summon one of the frighteningly efficient and self-effacing servants. He materialized, and Wa asked for warm water, clean cloths, oh, and a little soap, too, please. Rope had not said please to the servants. Ink, to his credit, had. Wa knew no other way than to say both please and thank you.
The water, cloths, soap and towels appeared, with gratifying rapidity. Wa thanked the servants. Ieyasu looked on, approvingly.
Wa stood, stripped rapidly to the skin, and washed, just as if he was in the public bath house, and not in the war-leader's own personal tent, with the war-leader's own personal house-boy handing him soap. Toweled himself dry. Took the water and a cloth and the soap over to Kaemon. The boy followed with the towels.
Kaemon was trembling, almost shuddering with over-stimulation. His eyes were shut tight, and Wa could see the effort he was making to bring his gasping, too-quick breath under control.
At the first touch of the warm wet cloth, Kaemon started, and Wa began to murmer, as he did to Aya, and she to him when they made love. Wa realized that no-one else had spoken to Kaemon, except Ieyasu. Made all kinds of noises, but not spoken. Well, no-one had told him not to talk, though apparently Kaemon was only to speak when given specific permission. So Wa kept up a low, running monologue, while he washed Kaemon as best he could, nothing teasing or even particularly erotic, though Wa's arousal was plain for all to see. It would keep. Kaemon's had kept.
Under Wa's ministrations the the worst of Kaemon's trembling eased, stilled.
Ink had brought Kaemon to an almost unbearable pitch of sensitivity, but had not given him any release. Even the time Wa took to wash before coming to Kaemon had not allowed Kaemon relief. That wouldn't do. Over-heated iron couldn't be quenched. It had to be brought out of the fire with care, set gently aside to cool slowly. Even then it might crack. If you wanted to harden it, you reheated it, not so hot, and quenched it then.
Wa took the towels from the boy, thanked him, and let him disappear.
Wa knelt before Kaemon, facing him. Gently, he cupped the back of Kaemon's head, and with the warm towel in his other hand he covered and held Kaemon's straining testes and over-stimulated sex with a careful, firm grip. Then he kissed him.
Kaemon's lips were different from Aya's, thinner, dryer, not so soft, but the heat of the mouth that flowered open to the touch of Wa's lips was as welcoming, with a spice and a sweetness that was all Kaemon, essential to the man he loved.
Kaemon's sex, snug in the towel under his hand, pulsed, spilled, softened into mere interest. Kaemon's breath sobbed, and the tiny, mewling cry he made into Wa's mouth went straight to Wa's heart. And thence to his groin.
Wa liked kissing, and he quickly discovered that Kaemon was a very good kisser. Wa liked touching, and Kaemon liked to be touched. Wa gave his hands free rein, and soon Kaemon was sighing and making breathless little moans. Not even Ieyasu had gotten those particular moans. Wa set about discovering some of the perhaps less obvious places that might give Kaemon pleasure. The back of Kaemon's neck, under arms, elbows Wa acknowledged and then moved on. The lovely soft place at the base of Kaemon's spine came in for a thorough exploration, lips and tongue and fingertips, and Wa was rewarded with entirely different trembles and tiny wiggles. Collarbones, feet, face.
When Wa kissed his eyelids, and the bump of his broken nose, Kaemon opened his eyes again. He looked dazed, aroused, startled into happiness, even joy. His lips shaped Wa's name in silence, and smiled, giving himself into Wa's hands. Wa's heart.
A thought tiptoed into Wa's head. Aya liked Wa's tongue on her most sensitive parts. Kaemon's anus was surely one of his most sensitive parts ... Wa stopped thinking and started doing instead.
An anus did look remarkably like a chrysanthemum, especially close up. Kaemon's was darkly red, and opened as sweetly to Wa's tongue as his mouth had. Oh, yes, no doubt at all that Kaemon liked this. The breathless, helpless moans became almost continuous, and now every one tingled on Wa's skin, vibrated in Wa's sex. Wa was pretty sure that he could bring Kaemon to orgasm just with this kind of kissing, but that wasn't quite what Wa wanted for him.
Ieyasu had said that Wa was to take Kaemon, to fuck him, and while this worshipping his anus with his mouth might count, Wa didn't think it was what Ieyasu meant. And his very bones ached with desire to be in the place where the iron harikata had been. But he had to work out the mechanics first. This *wasn't* like it was with Aya. And women came with natural lubrication. Men didn't. Where was that oil. There.
Wa slathered oil on himself, on Kaemon. Started to wriggle himself between Kaemon's legs. He wanted to be facing him. Wanted to see his face. Tomi got the idea, and quickly Wa and Kaemon were arranged as Wa wanted them. The bamboo spreader was unfastened and withdrawn. Wa lay down on his back, Kaemon kneeling over him, legs free, arms and chest and crotch still bound, Tomi and Tanu providing steady support, holding Kaemon upright. For a moment, Wa just looked up into Kaemon's face, then, still focussed on Kaemon's eyes, Wa positioned his aching, oh so ready sex at the opening to Kaemon's body, gripped Kaemon's buttocks with his strong workman's hands, and pulled Kaemon down until they were fully joined.
Kaemon's head fell back, eyes closed, mouth open. Kaemon's sex pulsed and throbbed between their bellies. Wa's sex reveled in the tight slick heat of Kaemon's body. Not long now, for either of them. Kaemon was riding Wa, rising and falling, driving Wa's sex deeply into his body as Wa flexed his hips.
Then Wa was coming, an orgasm that came from his toes, rushed through him with a roar and spilled into Kaemon. And Kaemon was coming, keening, a sound like the one Ieyasu had drawn from him, only deeper, wilder, freer.
Kaemon collapsed down on top of Wa, and for a long moment nothing existed but the two of them, and the shattering pleasure they had shared. The love. Wa's mouth sought Kaemon's and again they kissed, holding the moment.
Until Tomi and Tanu separated them, gently but inexorably. One of them led Wa back to his place, assisted him back into his clothes. The other undid the rest of the ropes that had bound Kaemon.
Wa's arms ached for the embrace cut short. Making love wasn't finished just because the sex act was. Kaemon's cry of completion still echoed in his ears. Ringing. No. It was the Dawn Bell that was ringing. Signaling the end of the night.
Wa tried to pull himself together, suddenly feeling hollow, attenuated. What had he done? (Fucked Kaemon, replied his abruptly careening mind. Made love to Kaemon. Put your steel where that great rod of iron had been, and made him come from the pleasure of it.) Later. Think about it later. Ieyasu isn't quite done yet.
The gold lamplight was beginning to look pallid. Rope and Ink both looked small and unimportant. The beautiful boys, Yamada and Ogami, had faint shadows under their eyes, and while no less beautiful, were somehow no longer boys. Wa knew the sense of lightheadedness was from a night too long, too full.
Ieyasu sat on his stool on the dais fully clothed. Kaemon knelt before him on the floor, utterly naked, decorated with flowers and the marks where the ropes had been, only the thin red and gold cord still loosely knotted about his neck. He knelt serenely, as though his thighs were not wet with sweat and Wa's semen, his belly not streaked with his own seed.
Ieyasu reached out and untied the slim cord, unwound it. Folded it into his hand and tucked it into his kimono. "Hasegawa Kaemon, you are my student no longer. Rise and greet this day your own man, Indigo Warrior, of your own choice.
"It is dawn, and by my own word, I hold no authority over your body, no more than any lord over a man in fealty. The marks you bear are paint, and can be washed away, leaving only the marks on your spirit. I ask you now, unbound: will you wear the mark you chose where men may see, or only in your heart?"
Kaemon's voice was firm, certain. "I will wear the mark in truth, in my flesh. As a symbol of the lesson it teaches, a mark of the trial passed, and a reminder of the love that bestowed it. My lord, let the mark be made permanent."
"So let it be done."
Oh, Kaemon, you can't have thought it through. And when you realize what happened, what I did ... there will be no bearing that mark. That shame.
Tomi and Tanu were bringing out a futon for Kaemon to lie on. Ink was preparing his tools. Rope was snoring, Ogami and Yamada being led out of the chamber, other servants tidying all signs of the evening's activities neatly away. Wa could leave. He pushed himself to his feet.
Ieyasu was watching him. As Wa met his eyes, Ieyasu smiled, and smiling, inclined his head, in recognition, acknowledgment, understanding. Something complex that somehow he, a mere smith, had been essential to. Then the moment was over, and the Tokugawa was marshaling his servants and beginning his day.
But he could not leave without letting Kaemon know he was going. Wa's feet took him to where Kaemon lay prone, naked, unstrung. The house-boy was cleaning him, wiping off all the ink but that at Kaemon's shoulder, removing all the other stains from his skin. Wa crouched down near Kaemon's head, and found his hand reaching out to smooth the disordered swath of Kaemon's hair out of his face. Kaemon's eyes fluttered but did not open, his hands stirred. One hand rose, wavering, to brush Wa's, palm kissing palm in a fleeting touch. Wa heard Kaemon's voice, shaping words, not ... sounds.
Slow, rough with exhaustion, almost inaudible, Kaemon spoke. "I will come. To the forge. When. I can."
It was the end of the evening for him. Wa stumbled to the door, out into the wet, grey dawn. He was not required to observe the Master of Ink wielding the needle that made permanent his art, and he could not bear the thought of seeing shame in Kaemon's eyes.
Judging the temper: Whispers of wind and wave
The blade did not break, but grew: the edge stretched, the spine arched, a perfect curve. As the metal cooled by degrees the clay fell away, dissolved into streamers of sand, powder, mud.
The temper-line glimmered in the water, achingly beautiful, the mark that showed the blade a live thing, a creation of spirit as well as steel.
***
The entire evening had been a test, Wa thought, as his shaking knees and uncertain feet took him to his encampment and the cool solitude of his own tent. A test of Kaemon, as well as of himself. a brutal, unforgiving test, a trial of soundness, like when a bridge was built, and waggons weighted with stones were used to see what load the span would hold.
(Do you know who you are, Hasegawa Kaemon? Whose you are?)
Wa had heard true feeling in Ieyasu's voice several times that night, the trial hard on the master no less than the student. But Wa had little sympathy for Tokugawa-dono. It was Kaemon Wa cared about. Kaemon the person, the spirit, the self, and, admit it, the flesh.
Wa poked at the coals in the fire-pit with hands that still trembled. Added wood. Knocked old leaves out of the tea-basket, filled the iron teapot with clean, cold water from the covered barrel. Set it on the new, small flames. The damp used leaves smoldered on the coals, sending up a ghost of incense.
He was alive to smell it, to anticipate the bite of fresh tea on his tongue, to recall the smoothness of Ieyasu's sake. To remember the musk and heat, the hardness of Kaemon's body, gripping his sex, so different from Aya's softness. Alive. And Kaemon was alive. That alone was something.
Steam was creeping from the spout. Wa added new leaves to the tea-basket, covered the pot. Levered himself up and went into his tent to change clothes while the tea steeped.
Kaemon had chosen life. Chosen the path that offered life to both spirit and flesh, not flesh only, body only. Wa understood now why Kaemon's brow had creased so, refusing to take on the iris. Ambition and luxury, indulgence, had never been among Kaemon's faults. That path would have killed Kaemon's spirit in no time at all. Spirit mattered to Kaemon.
And the mallow-path. Wa shivered, thinking about it again. Ultimate fealty, that choice, the pattern of tragedy, with all the power of legend, romance, high and noble feeling, even tradition, behind it. One perfect night of love, sealed by death. The spirit freed to enter the next life.
It terrified Wa that Kaemon had even had to think about that choice; that Kaemon had given serious consideration to it. That the bonds between Kaemon and Ieyasu might be that strong.
Still shivering, Wa pulled a loose coat over his clean kimono, and returned to the fire, hoping the flames could warm the chill that had nothing to do with flesh.
But Kaemon had chosen the third path, the path of submission with strength. The only path that offered life, for the man, the samurai, the person who was Hasegawa Kaemon.
Even if that meant being held down and fucked by two immense guardsmen, under the eye of his lord. Having Rope fuck his mouth while Ink fucked his ass with fingers and knots and that appalling harikata, as his master looked on, pleasuring himself. Being fucked by a younger man, brought to orgasm by a commoner, not only once, but twice, while his lover-and-teacher watched, sated, pleased, proud.
To take pleasure in being fucked by Ieyasu, his master, was one thing. To take pleasure, witnessed by men, observed by youths, while being fucked by Wa, a mere smith, was quite another.
Kaemon had been pushed not only into enjoyment, but into showing that enjoyment. Displaying to eyes and ears and heated flesh how much pleasure he had in being fucked. In being fucked by Wa.
This morning, Wa felt shame in the pleasure he had taken at the expense of Kaemon's dignity. Did Kaemon, now, feel shamed as well? Like an untested bridge, Wa could not allow himself to place any weight on the fleeting touch of palm to palm, the all but inaudible words: "I will come. To the forge. When I can."
The tea had undoubtedly steeped by now, if not positively stewed. Wa reached for his cup, strove for the normal routine of a normal morning. How did a single span bear the weight?
When Wa next saw Kaemon, the next day, it was from a distance. Kaemon was working with young Hideyasu, showing him something, some fighting technique, probably to do with that unwieldy hilt the boy had picked up. (Where Hideyasu had come by a tsuba-siegen, a sword-tester's hilt, was another mystery.) Kaemon was wearing kimono and hakama, workaday shades of his signature blue. He moved with grace, strength, surety.
Kaemon's face was still his face: clear, composed, expressive. If anything, he seemed more himself now, certainly not less.
Wa turned away from the sight, pushed away his feelings, concentrated on the work in his hand, the hammer and the twisted buckle.
Perhaps, if he had stayed to watch the tattooing, it would not have been shame he saw on Kaemon's face, in Kaemon's eyes, but peace, acceptance. Perhaps by the end of the evening, Hasegawa Kaemon, the Indigo Warrior, sometime student to Tokugawa Ieyasu, had known very well who he was, and that the person he truly belonged to was himself.
When Wa looked up, Kaemon was ducking his head under the beam of the forge-roof, smiling at Wa. His eyes were very blue, as clear as the sunlit sky.
Testing: Edge Hard, spine strong
Once quenched, annealed and tempered, the blade needed to be tested, put to the type of stress and use that it would be under in battle or duel. Any hidden flaw in the material or making needed to be revealed before it could fail in actual use.
Under the lowering moon, in the cold stillness of his forge-yard, Wa stood with the clay and water and fire-stained sword awkwardly in his hand. He had wrapped a leather scrap around some kindling as a temporary hilt, and was casting about for what would be suitable to test the sword on. He realized he had hardly thought beyond the quenching in making his preparations, and hadn't gotten a pig or even a fish. There was nothing left of the chicken he had bought for the mid-winter festival meal; even the bones had been buried for the ancestors and kami. Well, perhaps those spirits would show their gratitude and give him an idea.
The moon struck a spark of light off the pillar of ice that grew from the lowest corner of the workshop roof and down the wooden rain-chain to the solidly frozen rain-barrel. It was a magnificent icicle, clear and cloudy both, thicker than his hands could span together.
Wa saluted the The Face of Tsukiyomi, the moon, giving him thanks, not only for the idea, but for many nights' company. If this blade could be said to have a patron, it would have to be the Moon. It was right he witness the testing.
Wa took a deep breath and set his feet. He knew that swords were not wielded like axes, but that was the stance and motion he knew best, and if this blade could not stand to chop at ice, then it was not the blade he had intended to make. He hefted the steel and swung.
Wwwhhhhshhhhh! Shikk!
The blade went through the pillar as if it were smoke, not ice. In the silver light both pillar and blade looked untouched. Then, slowly, the ice creaked, cracked, and splintered, shards slipping down the diagonal of the cut to lie glittering on the snow, winking in the moonlight.
Wa knew he could never have done that on purpose. The sword was sound.
***
Tokugawa Ieyasu kept the Indigo Warrior busy, and the struggle of lords went on. Wa saw Kaemon often, but while ease grew swiftly between them, there was no opportunity for intimacy for nearly a month.
It had been a loud, long, irritating day, full of noise and impatient movement. New troops were arriving, supplies were late, and a colony of stinging midges had taken over the low area behind the castle-hill. Wa did not put down his hammer and bank the forge until the round moon was in the second quarter of the sky. He was restless, too unsettled by the day to think of sleep. He walked instead, thinking he might go down to the water, or up to the watchtower, and look at the moon.
His way took him past the bath-house, and suddenly Wa could feel every sticky, gritty spot on his skin, every crease in his kimono. Even his fundoshi chafed. He would bathe. It was late, there would be no attendants, but the bath-house staff had accommodated to the needs of a camp of fighting men, and was always open, lamps lit, towels and soap and sponges available. All Wa wanted was the uncomplicated embrace of clean, hot water. Wa turned his steps from the path and went in.
The night-lamps glimmered, warm yellow points in the dim interior. The moon was not yet high enough to illuminate the courtyards and the public pools, but cast clear shadows on the shoji, silvered the water of the upper waterfall, the men's cold-pool. Tendrils of mist rose from the hot-pool, ghost shapes wavering in the air.
As Wa stripped and folded his clothes, laying them in a small pile on the shelf, he realized that not all the shadows and forms were steam-phantoms. There was another neat pile of clothes, another person in the men's section. Despite the late hour another sought the water.
Naked, Wa padded to the side of the hot pool, dipped in a foot to test the temperature. A quiet voice floated to his ear, and his belly fluttered, his sex jumped. "A pleasant night for the baths, no? There is a very nice view of the Celestial River from this side, Kenji-san." It was Kaemon.
(An image rushed into Wa's mind: Kaemon, naked, rising from the bath, coming to him...) Wa tried to suppress the thought. "Kaemon! How did you know it was me?"
Kaemon laughed, a clear, happy sound. "You talk to yourself, you know. And I know your walk."
Of course Kaemon did. Irritating samurai thing, that.
"Come, Wa, share the view with me." There was the faintest hint of loneliness in Kaemon's voice. It stirred Wa's blood.
Kaemon would not have spoken so if anyone else was there. They had the pool and probably the entire place to themselves. Wa stepped into the water, and made his way across the pool. Kaemon was sitting relaxed on the submerged bench, face tilted up to the sky and the myriad of stars. He was limned in starlight, and Wa found him shockingly beautiful. The water suddenly seemed as light as the rising wisps of steam, buoyant, not at all the element he used daily. This water was the opposite of quenching.
That thought was only encouraging his eager flesh. Wa sat on the bench beside Kaemon, breathing a little hard. The stars were beautiful. But when he looked over at Kaemon after a moment, Kaemon's eyes were on him, not the stars.
Kaemon's long hair hung loose, streaks of ink on pale skin. There was a shadow of stubble, of almost-beard, on Kaemon's cheeks. Wa found the idea of Kaemon with a beard to be unexpectedly interesting, startlingly erotic. On his shoulder, the new tattoo was like an ink-picture, colorless in the dim light. Clouds and chrysanthemums. Beauty, power and receptivity. Kaemon turned his face back to the sky. Wa joined him.
When the moon peeped over the edge of the roof and dimmed the stars with his bright beams, Wa sighed and looked over again at Kaemon.
"I've missed you, you know," Wa heard himself say. "Even when you are in camp, and I see you, it isn't what I want." Wa found himself blushing. What mad spirit had taken over his voice, and was speaking his inner thoughts aloud?
But Kaemon was answering, "I have missed you, too. But I didn't know, after ... " Kaemon waved vaguely at the now faintly discernible color on his shoulder, "what you would want, and no chance to ... be properly alone, together either."
"You want ..." "You would ..." Nearly the same words at nearly the same time. Suddenly they were both laughing, and in each others' arms. Mouths met, opened, explored. Bodies kissed and rubbed. Kaemon's hands were all over Wa, touching, learning, enfolding. Wa kept finding his hands in Kaemon's hair, brushing the short bristle of new beard, tracing the planes and angles of Kaemon's face. Wa's heart pounded like a hammer on hot iron, and he was hard, hard, deliciously, achingly hard.
When Kaemon's exploring hands found Wa's eager, ready sex, he chuckled, another sound Wa felt in his belly, his chest, his anus. When Wa gasped and started at the light touch, Kaemon chuckled again, and wrapped his long legs around Wa's thighs, pulling him closer still.
Wa had never felt anything like the touch of sex to sex, held close in Kaemon's hand. The frisson of thin, hot skin sliding against skin and fire, the friction of another's hand, hard and large and knowing. Wa's hips jerked, and he felt the answering pulse in the flesh pressed close to his. Both of Kaemon's hands were gripping, sliding up and down their two erections. Wa flailed for balance, caught himself holding Kaemon's shoulders, remembered the fresh tattoo, swept his own hands down Kaemon's back until his palms were full of Kaemon's buttocks, tight and round.
"Yes, yes, touch me there." A need Wa recognized, now wrapped in words. He sought between Kaemon's cheeks, finding, petting and stroking the yielding anus. Kaemon gasped, and groaned and speeded his hands. Wa knew that he was making noises too, and the muscular, soft grip of Kaemon's opening around Wa's fingertip spasmed in time with the rapid movement of Kaemon's hand. Kaemon's head fell back with a breathless, ragged cry, and he shuddered as he came. Wa was only a moment after him, mixing his seed with Kaemon's in the water between them. Kaemon's anus clenched around Wa's finger, and Wa could feel the deep pulses that shook him, left Kaemon trembling in Wa's arms. Wa's own knees felt weak with the speed and strength of his orgasm.
Their swords softened together, cradled in Kaemon's big, blunt fingers, and gradually their breath evened and hearts slowed. Kaemon's head bent forward and came to rest on Wa's shoulder. Long legs unfolded and arranged themselves until Kaemon was more or less sprawled in Wa's lap on the wide bench, sex still kissing sex. Their mouths met in a kiss of surpassing sweetness.
"Well, that certainly worked nicely," said the impertinent person who had taken over Wa's voice after a moment of comfortable silence.
"I agree," rumbled Kaemon, unsprawling to enfold Wa in a comprehensive embrace, stroking up and down Wa's back, hands finally settling at Wa's waist. "We could do it again if you like. Or something else."
Suddenly shy, Wa realized that there was something he wanted, if Kaemon wanted it, chose to give it. Unable to find either breath or words to express himself, Wa took hold of Kaemon's hands, moved them from their pleasant place on Wa's back, lowered them to his buttocks, nudged them into Wa's own cleft, to the flower there. Wa nuzzled the short stiff bristles on Kaemon's jaw, the new beard, and tried to make his body say what his voice would not. Hoped that Kaemon could hear what Wa couldn't say.
Kaemon's sex was firming against Wa's belly, warmer than the water. He left one hand where Wa had put it, touching gently, little circling caresses, opening the chrysanthemum petals. Wa had never felt such a touch, and it was wonderful. Kaemon brought his other hand up to cup the back of Wa's head, fingers sifting through the short strands of Wa's hair. Wa's scalp tingled, and he shivered in the warm water, leaning into both hands. Yes.
"You want this?" Kaemon asked softly, a note of wonder coloring his voice. "You would give this to me?" One of Kaemon's blunt fingertips was pressing, opening, entering. The sensation was astonishing.
"Yes," Wa gulped. "You enjoyed it so much. Gave me so much, enjoying it. I ..." His voice trailed off into incoherence, as Kaemon's finger slipped deeper in, touched ... something ... that made fireworks go off in his groin, up his spine. Kaemon smiled, grinned even, and did it again. Wa found himself wriggling, his anus spasming, as Kaemon held him tightly, gently, and opened him further with another finger.
"I think you like this too," said Kaemon, almost startled, as Wa moaned and gasped, wanting more, wanting it all, wanting Kaemon's iron in the fire that was his deepest private place. Wa wondered fleetingly if this was how Aya felt, when she wanted him hard and hot and now, dammit!
"Yes! And I want it." Wa flexed his hips against Kaemon's hand, driving Kaemon's big fingers deeper, feeling his anus stretch around Kaemon's knuckles, wanting it, wanting it to be Kaemon. " I want you, dammit," he was fucking himself on Kaemon's fingers now, "to test your sword," Kaemon had stilled, but his sex was hard against Wa's groin, pulsing, "on me."
"All right, all right, I believe you!" Kaemon's hand in Wa's hair gentled him. "Now slow down. I do not want to hurt you." The fingers in Wa's anus slid out until Kaemon was again just caressing the opening. "I want you too." He rocked against Wa, grinding their sexes together, and the flame that had threatened to consume Wa subsided a little. Kaemon continued, "I've wanted you almost from the moment I saw you, though it took me quite a while to realize how," Kaemon's finger darting in and out of Wa's opening, Wa swallowing a yelp, "thoroughly I wanted you. I even wanted to be jealous of Aya, for having you."
Wa murmured, "We have her leave. For this."
"I know." There was love in Kaemon's voice, love as well as desire. With love, they could do anything, anything at all, under the Moon's eye.
Kaemon turned Wa to face the wall of the pool. "Brace your arms on the ledge, and spread your knees. It will be easier that way, and neither of us will need to think about a ducking." Wa did as he was told, and wiggled his buttocks for good measure. Kaemon snorted, and stilled him by pressing his hips firmly against Wa's buttocks, his sex hot against Wa's crease. Kaemon breathed on the back of Wa's neck, and Wa shivered, hot and cold and fiercely aroused. "Ready?" Kaemon's voice was not quite steady.
Again speechless, Wa nodded. A hard, hot, bluntness nosed at his opening, began to press. Wa's whole body seemed to tingle.
"Breathe, Relax. Let me do the work. Breathe." Kaemon's hands were gripping Wa's hips, bracing them both.
Wa felt as though he was a peach, and Kaemon's sex a thumb, prizing him open. He grunted, and Kaemon slowed.
"Push, Wa, as if I was a turd. Breathe and push."
It was such a ludicrous idea that Wa did it, and suddenly, astonishingly, he felt himself flower open, and Kaemon enter in. Kaemon groaned and shuddered against Wa's back, his breath ragged and harsh. For a long moment neither of them moved. The sensation of being filled nearly overwhelmed Wa, and he could only guess at Kaemon's feelings. (That night, Wa had found the hot grip of Kaemon's body amazing. Yet Kaemon had been already stretched for him, open and wet with Ieyasu's seed, with Ink's oils. Wa's body had to be gripping Kaemon so much tighter now.)
Soon Wa's anus grew accustomed to Kaemon's girth, and Kaemon's breath evened a little. Wa rocked his hips a little, and Kaemon responded by flexing his. That something fired again, and Wa found himself making noises and Kaemon was moving in him, in and out, in and out, more and more confident, harder and faster and the sounds coming from Kaemon's throat were as broken and needy and beautiful as anything Wa had ever heard.
Wa's sex pulsed under the pounding, and his sac tightened, and he was roaring his completion, only silently, for he had no air, no breath. Kaemon's rhythm stuttered, broke, and moments after Wa, Kaemon's hips were jerking against Wa's buttocks, and Kaemon was coming with a long, surprised whimper.
They clung to the wall, gasping, bodies trembling together. Then Kaemon's sex slipped from Wa's body, and Wa turned in Kaemon's arms, that they might hold each other, nothing more.
The moon slipped a little down the sky, the water chattered over the stones of the outflow stream.
Eventually, they moved. Washed. Dried each other. Helped each other dress. Words were unnecessary: their bodies spoke with touch and nearness and warmth.
They left the bath-house together, and as they walked out into the crisp air of the autumn night, Kaemon spoke: "I will come to the forge, when I can."
Now Wa had a response for him. "I will be there for you."
Final assembly: Iron and Indigo
Wa considered the naked blade lying before him, water and wind in the moonlight. A blade of spirit made for a man who might no longer be in the flesh. The edge was a shadow, the temper-line a slender curl of fire. The point glittered. Only the tang was dull, unpolished, not caressed a hundred-hundred times with stone and steel and cloth. He had the chisel in his hand, and had gotten the village scribe to draw the characters for him on a scrap of paper, only two, and all ones Wa could read, if not write. (The scribe was the son of the man who had penned that note, so many years ago now. Kaeko had lived to be named, to be held by her father, but not much longer than that.)
Wa held his finest, sharpest chisel, the light-mallet. He would not sign the blade, nor name it. But dedicate? Yes, and mark the date.
Tik. Tik, Tik tik tik. Tiktik. Tap.
The characters sank into the tang, bright against black.
Ai and jin. Indigo, and love.
Then the tsuba-siegen, gift from Hideyasu to Kaemon, and from Kaemon to Wa, many years gone. A hilt as grey as the blade, closely wrapped in wire, to provide grip, and bound with three iron bands. A hilt that would allow of no guard, no protection. No ornamentation. A beautiful, ancient thing.
Wa had prepared three pins, that the hilt and the blade together would tell him when the match was right. Tapered hardwood, as long as the hilt was thick. He weighed all three in his palm, and let two fall away. This one.
The tang slid home into the hilt. The pin snicked into place with a wistful, hopeful finality.
Wood-brown cloth to wrap it in, and the beam took the blade to its embrace for a final time. The floor-board made a hollow sound, closing fast.
There, it was done. Wa stood, and stretched, and walked out under the starlight, paling toward day.
Kaemon would come to the forge, when he could. Wa would wait for him.
----------------------
Notes and Sources
This story would not have been finished - would hardly even been started! - without input, encouragement, long conversations and useful research, not to mention hours of eagle-eye beta-ing on the part of Gloriana. She pointed out places that needed tying up, and helped me find the right word in many cases.
Thanks also go to Tem-ve, for wanting a Wa-fic, and letting me run over her deadline, not merely once, but twice. I so owe you.
Tom McLane, Blacksmith and Japanese sword expert, instructor of the blacksmithing class I took, is due thanks for the fact that the sword-making bits even begin to approach accuracy. Having held a hammer and hit hot metal personally made this story possible.
There are four books that contributed substantially to this work:
Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, published in the US by Dark Horse Comics
Samurai Executioner by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, published in the US by Dark Horse Comics
The Seductive Art of Japanese Rope Bondage by Midori, photos by Craig Morey, Greenery Press
Japanese Erotic Prints: shunga by Harunobu & Koryu^sai, text by Inge Klompmakers, English editor Mark Poysden
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