Lotus Petals - The Books of Blood and Fire 1

Lotus Petals - Chapter One

The envoy was late.

Daimyo Gohachiro Takeo studied the white lotus blossoms floating gaily on the surface of his koi ponds. Rain fell over the gardens of his temple, and the hour grew early—near dawn. The escorts he had sent to meet the emissaries of the Councilwoman's court should have returned long before now. The daimyo tapped his fingers in a pensive rhythm along the bannister of the terrace.

"Do you know," he muttered aloud. "I would never have expected the prospect of marriage would actually make me anxious."

Beside him stood Aijyn, one of his thirteen temple courtesans. She glanced up at him, curious, but the daimyo said no more. He returned to his study of the lotus flowers. Even in his most brooding contemplation, they always managed to ease his mind. Indeed, after a time his thoughts grew encouraged and a wry smile came to his face. He had little cause to be out of sorts, even if the contingent from abroad had yet to appear. They would come. She would come.

"Do you think she will like the Blood Lotus, Aijyn?" he mused. He didn't expect an answer, however, and if his courtesan gave one, he didn't hear it. He had no doubt: no matter the circumstance of their calling, the delicate beauty of these gardens and his temple would captivate even the hardest of men.

Or—if he were lucky—the fiercest of women.

A ravenous typhoon had struck offshore of the provinces some time the day before. It explained why the envoy had not made their appointed arrival when they should have. Now, its violent passion satisfied, the storm stretched its languid feline muscles across the land before finally meandering away for good. The lingering shower made the flowers on the dappled surface of the ponds bob like little paper boats, and the sound of the rain, always familiar, always a comfortable acquaintance, played a soothing rhythm through the tall pines of the forests surrounding the Blood Lotus Temple. Gohachiro kept his watch from under the eaves of the doorway, listening for the drumming of hooves on the woodland path.

He was the most powerful vampire daimyo in Osaka: he had fought alongside Tokugawa Ieyasu two and a half centuries ago, uniting the region under the strict control of the shogun and receiving the land on which the Blood Lotus now stood as his reward. Though Ieyasu had died, Gohachiro Takeo had remained as generation after generation of the Tokugawa shoguns rose and fell. Osaka had grown, and its people followed the rule of their human masters—but Gohachiro still held his place as the true lord of this realm, and of all the Kansai region.

He found it fitting the Councilwoman of the vampire race, Lady Helena Donovan, would favor him with this visit from her Court. There had been talk of such a meeting between their two houses for decades. Now, finally, the night had arrived. Finally, Gohachiro would have his chance.

For any other man in Japan, welcoming outsiders into his home would be unthinkable. The country remained firmly in the grip of isolationism, and other than Dutch merchants, they would accept no foreigners into their cities. It rested in human custom, however, and human laws. The five nations of the Blood Circle, the demon nations, had no reason at all to halt their own business for ill-motivated mortal pride. Gohachiro might have rejected the Councilwoman's offering, were he still the man he had been three hundred years ago, decidedly loyal to the emperor and to the motherland of Japan. Since his ascension into the world of the Fourth Blood, however, such petty things had ceased to matter to him. He was a vampire, and Donovan's proposal profited him far more than any promises made by his mother country.

Aijyn, as always, remained quiet beside him, her eyes steadily on her own small feet, her slender hands tucked into the folds of her pale pink suzohiki kimono. She had always been an attentive girl, one of his oiran, his personal concubines, a creature as beautiful and graceful as the petals floating on the surface of his ponds. She was a very pleasing companion, and he thought he'd chosen well to pick her as his helper this night.