Across the Nightingale Floor (30 page)

“Did she reveal anything about me?”

Kenji sighed, “She knew nothing,
except that you were from the Hidden and rescued by Shigeru, which Iida knew
already. He and Ando think Shigeru adopted you purely to insult them, and that
you fled when you were recognized. They do not suspect your Tribe identity, and
they do not know of your skills.”

That was one advantage. Another was
the weather and the night. The rain lessened to a drizzling mist; the cloud
cover was dense and low, completely obscuring moon and stars. And the third was
the change that had come over me. Something inside me that had been half-formed
before had set into its intended shape. My outburst of mad rage, followed by
the profound Kikuta sleep, had burned away the dross from my nature and left a
core of steel. I recognized in my self the glimpses I'd had of Kenji's true self,
as if Jato had come to life.

The three of us went through the
equipment and clothing. After that I spent an hour exercising. My muscles were
still stiff, though less sore. My right wrist bothered me the most. When I'd
raised Jato before, the pain had shot back to the elbow. In the end Yuki
strapped it up for me with a leather wrist guard.

Towards the second half of the hour
of the Dog, we ate lightly and then sat in silence, slowing breathing and
heartbeat. We darkened the room to improve our night vision. An early curfew
had been imposed, and after the horsemen had patrolled the streets, driving
people inside, the streets were quiet. Around us the house sang its evening
song: dishes being cleared away, dogs fed, guards settling down for the night watch.
I could hear the tread of maids as they went to spread out the bedding, the
click of the abacus from the front room as someone did the day's accounts.
Gradually the song dwindled to a few constant notes: the deep breathing of the
sleeping, occasional snores, once the cry of a man at the moment of physical
passion. These mundane human sounds touched my soul. I found myself thinking of
my father, of his longing to live an ordinary human life. Had he cried out like
that when I was conceived?

After a while Kenji told Yuki to
leave us alone for a few minutes and came to sit beside me. He said in a low
voice, “The accusation of being connected with the Hidden—how far does that
go?”

“He never mentioned it to me, other
than to change my name from Tomasu and warn me against praying.”

“The rumor is that he would not
deny it; he refused to defile the images.” Kenji's voice was puzzled, almost
irritated.

“The first time I met Lady
Maruyama, she traced the sign of the Hidden on my hand,” I said slowly.

“He kept so much concealed from
me,” Kenji said. “I thought I knew him!”

“Did he know of the lady's death?”

“Apparently Iida told him with
delight.”

I thought about this for a few
moments. I knew Shigeru would have refused to deny the beliefs Lady Maruyama
held so deeply. Whether he believed them or not, he would never submit to
Iida's bullying. And now he was keeping the promise he had made to her in
Chigawa. He would marry no other woman and he would not live without her.

“I couldn't know Iida would treat
him like this,” Kenji said. I felt he was trying to excuse himself in some way,
but the betrayal was too great for me to forgive. I was glad he was coming with
me, and thankful for his skills, but after this night I never wanted to see him
again.

“Let's go and bring him down,” I
said. I got up and called quietly to Yuki. She came back into the room and the
three of us put on the dark night attire of the Tribe, covering our faces and
hands so no inch of skin showed. We took garrotes, ropes and grapples, long and
short knives, and poison capsules that would give us a swift death.

I took up Jato. Kenji said, “Leave
it here. You can't climb with a long sword.” I ignored him. I knew what I would
need it for.

The house I'd been hidden in was
well to the west of the castle town, among the merchants' houses south of the
river. The area was crisscrossed with many narrow alleys and laneways, making
it easy to move through unseen. At the end of the street we passed the temple,
where lights still burned as the priests prepared for the midnight rituals. A
cat sat beside a stone lantern. It did not stir as we slipped by.

We were approaching the river when
I heard the chink of steel and the tramp of feet. Kenji went invisible in a
gateway. Yuki and I leaped silently onto the roof of the wall and merged into
the tiles.

The patrol consisted of a man on
horseback and six foot soldiers. Two of them carried flaming torches. They
progressed along the road that ran beside the river, lighting each alleyway and
peering down it. They made a great deal of noise, and so did not alarm me at
all.

The tiles against my face were damp
and slippery. The mild drizzle continued, muffling sound.

The rain would be falling on
Shigeru's face. . . .

I dropped from the wall, and we
went on towards the river.

A small canal ran alongside the
alley. Yuki led us into it where it disappeared into a drain beneath the road.
We crawled through it, disturbing the sleeping fish, and emerged where it
flowed into the river, the water masking our footsteps. The dark bulk of the castle
loomed in front of us. The cloud cover was so low that I could barely make out
the highest towers. Between us and the fortification wall lay first the river,
then the moat.

“Where is he?” I whispered to
Kenji.

“On the east side, below Iida's
palace. Where we saw the iron rings.”

Bile rose in my throat. Fighting it
back, I said, “Guards?”

“In the corridor immediately above,
stationary. On the ground below, patrols.”

As I had done at Yamagata, I sat
and looked at the castle for a long time. None of us spoke. I could feel the
dark Kikuta self rising, flowing into vein and muscle. So would I flow into the
castle, and force it to give up what it held.

I took Jato from my belt and laid
it on the bank, hiding it in the long grass. “Wait there,” I said silently. “I
will bring your master to you.”

We slipped one by one into the
river and swam beneath the surface to the far bank. I could hear the first
patrol in the gardens beyond the moat. We lay in the reeds until it had passed,
then ran over the narrow strip of marshland and swam in the same way across the
moat.

The first fortification wall rose
straight from the moat. At the top was a small tiled wall that ran all the way
round the garden in front of the residence and the narrow strip of land behind,
between the residence walls and the fortification wall. Kenji dropped onto the
ground to watch for patrols while Yuki and I crept along the tiled roof to the
southeast corner. Twice we heard Kenji's warning cricket's chirp and went
invisible on top of the wall while the patrols passed below us.

I knelt and looked upwards. Above
me was the row of windows of the corridor at the back of the residence. They
were all closed and barred, save one, closest to the iron rings from which
Shigeru was suspended, a rope around each wrist. His head hung forward on his
chest, and I thought he was already dead, but then I saw that his feet were
braced slightly against the wall, taking some of the weight from his arms. I
could hear the slow rasp of his breath. He was still alive. The nightingale
floor sang. I flattened myself back onto the tiles. I heard someone lean from
the window above, and then a cry of pain from Shigeru as the rope was jerked
and his feet slipped.

“Dance, Shigeru, it's your wedding
day!” the guard jeered.

I could feel the slow burn of rage.
Yuki laid one hand on my arm, but I was not going to erupt. My rage was cold
now, and all the more powerful.

We waited there for a long time. No
more patrols passed below. Had Kenji silenced them all? The lamp in the window
flickered and smoked. Someone came there every ten minutes or so. Each time the
suffering man at the end of the ropes found a foothold, one of the guards came
and shook him loose. Each time the cry of pain was weaker, and it took him
longer to recover.

The window remained open. I
whispered to Yuki. “We must climb up. If you can kill them as they come back,
I'll take the rope. Cut the wrist ropes when you hear the deer bark. I'll lower
him down.”

“I'll meet you at the canal,” she
mouthed.

Immediately after the next visit
from the torturers, we dropped to the ground, crossed the narrow strip of land,
and began to scale the residence wall. Yuki climbed in through the window while
I, clinging to the ledge beneath it, took the rope from my waist and lashed it to
one of the iron rings.

The nightingales sang. Invisible, I
froze against the wall. I heard someone lean out above me, heard the slightest
gasp, the thud of feet kicking helplessly against the garrote, then silence.

Yuki whispered, “Go!”

I began to climb down the wall
towards Shigeru, the rope paying out as I went. I had nearly reached him when I
heard the cricket chirp. Again I went invisible, praying the mist would hide
the extra rope. I heard the patrol pass below me. There was a sound from the
moat, a sudden splash. Their attention was distracted by it. One of the men
went towards the edge of the wall, holding his torch out over the water. The
light shone dully off a white wall of mist.

“Just a water rat,” he called. The
men disappeared and I heard their footsteps fade slowly away.

Now time speeded up. I knew another
guard would soon appear above me. How much longer could Yuki kill them off one
by one? The walls were slippery, the rope even more so. I slithered down the
last few feet until I was level with Shigeru.

His eyes were closed, but he either
heard or felt my presence. He opened them, whispered my name without surprise,
and gave the ghost of his openhearted smile, breaking my heart again.

I said, “This will hurt. Don't make
a sound.”

He closed his eyes again and braced
his feet against the wall.

I tied him to me as firmly as I
could and barked like a deer to Yuki. She slashed the ropes that held Shigeru.
He gasped despite himself as his arms were freed. The extra weight dislodged me
from the slippery surface of the wall, and we both fell towards the ground as I
prayed that my rope would hold. It brought us up short but with a terrible
jolt, with about four feet to spare.

Kenji stepped out of the darkness
and together we untied Shigeru and carried him to the wall.

Kenji threw the grapples up and we
managed to drag him over. Then we tied the rope to him again and Kenji lowered
him down the wall while I climbed down alongside, trying to ease him a little.

We could not stop at the bottom,
but had to swim him straightaway across the moat, covering his face with a
black hood. Without the mist we would have been immediately discovered, for we
could not take him underwater. Then we carried him across the last strip of
castle land to the riverbank. By this time he was barely conscious, sweating
from pain, his lips raw where he had bitten them to prevent himself from crying
out. Both shoulders were dislocated, as I had expected, and he was coughing up
blood from some internal injury.

It was raining more heavily. A real
deer barked as we startled it, and it bounded away, but there was no sound from
the castle. We took Shigeru into the river and swam gently and slowly to the
opposite bank. I was blessing the rain, for it masked us, muffling every sound,
but it also meant that when I looked back at the castle, I could see no sign of
Yuki.

When we reached the bank we laid
him down in the long summer grass. Kenji knelt beside him and took off the
hood, wiping the water from his face.

“Forgive me, Shigeru,” he said.

Shigeru smiled but did not speak.
Summoning up his strength, he whispered my name.

“I'm here.”

“Do you have Jato?”

“Yes, Lord Shigeru.”

“Use it now. Take my head to
Terayama and bury me next to Takeshi.” He paused as a fresh spasm of pain swept
over him and then said, “And bring Iida's head to me there.”

As Kenji helped him to kneel he
said quietly, “Takeo has never failed me.” I drew Jato from the scabbard.
Shigeru stretched out his neck and murmured a few words: the prayers the Hidden
use at the moment of death, followed by the name of the Enlightened One. I
prayed, too, that I would not fail him now. It was darker than when Jato in his
hand had saved my life.

I lifted the sword, felt the dull
ache in my wrist, and asked Shigeru's forgiveness. The snake sword leaped and
bit and, in its last act of service to its master, released him into the next
world.

The silence of the night was utter.
The gushing blood seemed monstrously loud. We took the head, bathed it in the
river, and wrapped it in the hood, both dry-eyed, beyond grief or remorse.

There was a movement below the
surface of the water, and seconds later Yuki surfaced like an otter. With her
acute night vision she took in the scene, knelt by the body, and prayed
briefly. I lifted the head—how heavy it was!—and put it in her hands.

“Take it to Terayama,” I said. “I
will meet you there.”

She nodded, and I saw the slight
flash of her teeth as she smiled.

“We must all leave now,” Kenji
hissed. “It was well done, but it's finished.”

“First I must give his body to the
river.” I could not bear to leave it unburied on the bank. I took stones from
the mouth of the canal and tied them into the loincloth that was his only
garment. The others helped me carry him into the water.

I swam out to the deepest part of
the river and let go, feeling the tug and drift as the body sank. Blood rose to
the surface, dark against the white mist, but the river carried it away.

I thought of the house in Hagi
where the river was always at the door and of the heron that came to the garden
every evening. Now Otori Shigeru was dead. My tears flowed, and the river
carried them away as well.