Shadows on the Moon (20 page)

“I live in this part of town,” I said evenly. “I only stopped for a moment. My father is expecting me home.”

“Really? Well, perhaps we should escort you back to him.”

The other guard sighed impatiently.

The first guard let out another of those low, gloating laughs. “My friend is not as softhearted as I. He would let you walk home in the dark all on your own. You don’t want that, do you?”

I clutched at the wooden rail.
Another few moments — just another minute — and I would have been beyond your reach. I would have been beyond this fear. Go away and leave me alone.

“She isn’t interested,” the second guard said, stepping away. “She smells awful anyway. Let’s go.”

“Not so fast —” The first guard moved suddenly, sliding one of his arms around my waist and up to the front of my kimono. In rage and disbelief, I felt his fingers grope at my chest.

Instinctively I fought, digging my nails into his arm and jabbing one of my elbows back. The bony point sank deep into his stomach. I felt him grunt against my ear. He shoved me away with both hands, and I went flying, crying out as I landed hard. Sobbing with pain and relief, I got my hands under myself and began to push up.
Run, run, get away. . . .

A foot slammed between my shoulder blades. I went down onto my face, still scrabbling to get away. The foot pressed down against my back, a steady pressure that kept me flat, crushing my lungs. I coughed, struggling for breath.

“That little —” I heard the first guard say.

“Stop acting like a fool for once and look at that bundle she just dropped,” said the other. It was his foot holding me down.

“What about . . . ? Well, well,” said the first guard. “Jewelry, money, and a lady’s fine kimono. We’ve caught a thief.”

Footsteps pounded up to me, and a kick to my side made my ribs explode with agony. I gasped, unable even to scream. I wanted to curl into a ball, but I was already being hauled up. My arms were bent behind me and bound with something thin and strong that bit into the skin of my wrists.

“Not so icy now, are we?” said the first guard, leaning toward me, his hot breath puffing over my face. My stomach was cramping. If there had been food inside me, I would have been sick.

“I bet you wish you’d been a bit more friendly, eh? Too late now. You’re going in a holding cell with all the other scum, and in the morning . . .” He made a crunching noise behind his teeth and then poked his tongue out as if he was dead.

I spat in his face.

He stumbled back. The guard holding my arms jerked me to the side and punched me, his fist smashing into my temple.

The blow knocked me silly. Everything swam dim and gray, as if I had jumped from the bridge after all and was slowly sinking through the water. Distantly I heard cursing and was aware that I was being lifted and heaved over someone’s shoulder. The shoulder drove into my abdomen, and I retched. I was not aware of anything more for a while.

I woke up when we stopped moving. There were voices, and then I was dropped. I slid to the ground with a bruising thump to my shoulder and hip. My head bounced off the floor. I was rolled roughly onto my stomach by someone’s foot.

“That way if she pukes she won’t choke on it.”

Something heavy slammed down inches from my head, making me wince. A gate. A rattle: keys?

Then silence. Darkness. I was alone.

Why? I had been so close to escaping this, so close to escaping everything. Why must I be brought lower than I already had been? Why had the fisherman lingered? Why hadn’t I jumped when I’d had the chance?

I would die tomorrow anyway, from what the guards had said. On the face of it, it made little difference. Yet once again the choice had been snatched away from me, just as with everything else in my life. Even my death was not to be my own.

Every bruise, cut, and scrape began to throb in time with my heartbeat. I could not even hear myself moan over that thump, thump, thump of pain. My ribs seemed to grind against one another with every breath. It was almost as bad as the memory of that man’s hands all over my chest. I could still feel them, clutching and rubbing. I retched again, gasping as my ribs protested.

Carefully I rocked and shifted until my bottom was on the floor and I could stretch my legs out. My head and ribs both sent out warning jolts of pain, and I had to hold still and breathe slowly and shallowly for a few minutes.

It was only then that I noticed I was not alone.

The room was small and square, about as wide across as twice my height. I thought that I would be able to stand upright in it, but most people would not. Three of the walls were packed dirt, and so was the floor. The fourth was made of thick, strong bamboo staffs, bound in a crisscross pattern. There were no windows. Some light — orange and flickering, as if from tapers — filtered through the gaps between the bamboo bars, confirming what my nose told me, that the room was surprisingly clean and well swept. There was no furniture, not even a blanket to lie on.

In the farthest corner of the room, a man — a very large man — was slumped against the wall, unconscious. He had at least three chins, and his mouth gaped in a silent snore. I could not smell alcohol, but something about the boneless way he drooped told me he was drunk. Was that good or bad? I watched him warily, but he did not move at all.

Still, I shuffled back, ignoring the stabbing pains from various bits of me, until my shoulder blades were pressed against the opposite wall.

I began trying to free myself from the bindings on my wrists. Moving cautiously, I squirmed and wriggled, leaning forward and then back against the wall, forward and then back, until gradually I was able to work my hands under my backside. I knew I was scraping and bruising my fingers terribly, but they were numb enough that it did not stop me. I leaned back again, using the wall for support, and lifted up as much as I could. Cold sweat was streaming down my face and back, and my legs were trembling. I yanked desperately, and my hands came up and hit the backs of my knees. I collapsed down again, still shaking, and slowly worked my hands out from under my legs.

My shoulders twinged, grateful to be in a more natural position. I rolled and shrugged them as best I could with my hands still tied together, but my ribs soon demanded that I stop.

When I brought the bindings to my mouth, I could feel that they were leather, thin and flexible. I lost track of time as I gnawed at them, working at the same tiny piece until I felt it begin to fray and finally to part. I pulled my hands from side to side and tugged at the other ties with my teeth until they loosened, just a little, just enough to drag my hands free.

I flung the hated ties at the bamboo door and began rubbing the feeling back into my hands, gritting my teeth against the tingling agony of the blood returning to the cold flesh.

I was free from my bindings. There was no way to be free of this cell, or my fate.

I had only this last night to live.

For the first time I began to wonder why the Moon had been so swift in her punishment. It was not that I did not deserve it. I knew I did. But others had committed crimes as terrible as mine and had suffered no immediate downfall. Terayama-san had murdered his best friend and a defenseless girl and had gone on just as before.

The one punishment that Terayama-san had suffered had been the one I had inflicted. I had — I forced myself to think it — stolen his wife from him. He loved her in his way. He would mourn her. Yet he would still be Terayama-san, golden and proud, feared and admired. He had not lost all he held dear, been exiled from home, been brought lower than dirt.

My mother had died, but Terayama-san lived. He had not been punished nearly enough.

On these bitter thoughts, I drifted into an uneasy sleep.

A noise woke me. A low groan. It took me a moment to realize that the noise had not come from me.

I tensed as I looked up, expecting to see a fat drunken man.

There was no fat man in the cell with me. There was a woman, lying on her side near the back wall. I stared at her in astonishment. It was not just the fact that she had somehow entered the cell and changed places with the fat man without ever disturbing me.

Everything about her was wrong. Such a woman should never have been in a prison cell.

She wore a
kurotomesode,
the most formal style of kimono for married women. It was black with a stunning design of butterflies and dragonflies in red, gold, and amber. Even in the gloom its colors seemed to glow. Her hair was long, as long as mine had been once, and just as glossy, even in disarray and cascading from a series of golden pins and combs.

Then she moaned again — no, whimpered — a sound of profound suffering, and all other thoughts left my head. She was clearly in pain. I was the only one there to help. Cautiously I shuffled closer to her.

“Onee-sama,” I whispered, using the most respectful term for “older sister.” “Onee-sama, what is wrong?”

The woman murmured and stirred; her sleeve fell away from her face. It was too dark for me to make her out perfectly, but the shadows could not hide such beauty.

Enormous, catlike eyes blinked dazedly out of a heart-shaped face. Those eyes — both the shape and the color, an unusual pale amber — were so astonishingly lovely that for a moment I did not even notice the perfection of her cheekbones or the delicacy of her mouth. All I knew was that even to me, who had grown up with Hoshima Yukiko and Hoshima Aimi, two acknowledged beauties, this woman was overwhelming.

“My side,” she whispered. She was struggling to focus on me, her slender brows drawing together. “Please . . .”

“Your side is hurt?” I asked, still dizzy with the strangeness of finding such a person as this in the cramped little cell.

She panted through her teeth, as if bracing herself, and then rolled onto her back. Her right arm fell away from her side and I saw a wet, spreading stain just below the golden fabric of her obi, where her ribs ended.

Alarmed, I reached out, and then drew back again. I was not a doctor. I would be more likely to harm than help. And yet I desperately wanted to help. The intensity of that desire surprised me.

“There is — a lot of blood,” I said, my hands hovering over her. “I must call the guards.” They would not let a woman like this die. It must have been a mistake that she was here in the first place.

“No!” Alarm seemed to rouse her a little, and she shook her head. “It is only a graze, but . . . I have enemies. There is a price on my life. If those guards know of it and find me here, defenseless —” She made a jerky gesture toward the stain.

Which meant that it was up to me to do something. I did not think I could bear to watch anyone else die. She might be a stranger to me, but I was all that she had, and I knew I had to help her. I swallowed dryly, trying to remember any snippets of information that Aya had let fall about treating wounds.

“We must stop the bleeding by applying pressure. I am sorry: it is likely to cause you pain.”

“Thank you.” The words came out as a cough, and she jerked, then tried again. “Thank you for helping me.”

I bit my lip. What was the best way to get at the wound? Moving to sit behind her on the floor, I stretched my legs out on either side of her body.

“I am going to lift you now,” I said, trying to sound confident. “Try to help me as much as you can.”

“You speak
keigo . . .
” she said idly.

I stiffened as I realized my mistake. Drudges did not speak
keigo.
It was one of the reasons Rin had spoken so little. Why had I let my guard down so easily? But it was not important now. She was surely in too much pain to care, and was just trying to distract herself.

“Yes,” I replied shortly, and slid my hands beneath her, grasping her torso under the arms. She pushed up on her hands, adding her strength to mine, then made a muffled sound and went limp.

I cursed, wrestling with her weight, using every muscle I had gained while working in the kitchen. Finally I had her in place, and braced her on both sides with my knees to keep her there.

“Apply pressure,” I muttered to myself. Her obi was the obvious choice — it would have layers of fabric, including two padded
obimakura
to give it volume. I pushed my hands down between us and fumbled with the complex folds of fabric, unknotting the
obi-jime
belt and then pulling away the obi and
tare
— the outer wrapping cloth — and the first
obimakura.
They gave me plenty of fabric to use on the wound.

The fat, padded center of the
obimakura
went over the wet stain on her side. I pressed it down, hard, and kept it in place with my knee as I pulled the long ties around her body and knotted them, making the wrapping as tight as I could. I checked her face for signs that I was hurting her. Her head was lolling on my shoulder, and her eyelashes did not flicker.

I put the thin, fine cloth of the
tare
on top of the first makeshift bandage, wrapped it around her body twice, and knotted it again. The outer obi cloth went last. It was long enough to wrap around her body twice and still have a lot of material left over, but it was too stiff to knot. I made a simple obi fold on top of the wound, hoping that the extra layer would create more pressure.