The Miko - 02 (65 page)

Let the Haunted One, as Saigō was known privately by a number of the
sennin
, drive the unwanted female out; let it be her choice. That way face was saved all around. The
sennin
could take no blame from Sun Hsiung and the female could return with honor to the areas for which she was best suited: the tea ceremony and, perhaps, flower arranging.

The moment Akiko came up to him in the
dōjō
, and told him of his assignment, Saigō knew the low regard in which he must be held by the
sennin.
This was an outcast’s work, he thought darkly, holding the hand of a
female
student. He glared at her as anger and resentment welled up in him.

For her part, Akiko sensed immediately that she had been directed into the tiger’s den. Her
wa
contracted at the icy contact with Saigō’s hostile emanations and she knew that in order for her to survive here she must first win him over and then, one by one, do the same with every individual at the
ryu.

Akiko spent more of her time that afternoon observing him as he took her on a tour of the
ryu
, which was in effect a world within a world, a secret
dōjō
in the middle of a basically industrial town, wrapped in the trappings of a drab and windowless warehouse.

There were no other students or
sennin
about when they completed their rounds.

“I want you to stay here,” he told her, “while I go out on an errand.” She nodded in acquiescence. “Make no sound while I am gone and, especially, when I return.”

“What is happening?”

Without warning he hit her a heavy blow on the side of the face. Akiko staggered backward and fell on one hip. Saigō stood over her, his feet apart, his body totally relaxed.

“Do you wish to ask a question?” His voice was mocking, possessing an edge to it that caused Akiko to shudder inwardly. She made no sound or movement.

Grunting in some satisfaction, Saigō turned and departed.

When she was alone Akiko sank immediately into
shinki.
This involved keeping her
tanden
, that part of her called the second brain by some
sensei
, the reflex control center, immobile. In this way she detached a part of herself from the area where she burned. After a moment of intense concentration, she felt no more pain. Slowly she rose, staring at the door through which he had departed.

Of course she had felt the spit of his spirit microseconds before that vicious emanation had been transmogrified into physical action. She could have easily dodged the blow. But what good would that have done? Saigō’s anger would have been further fueled and he would have come after her with more serious intent.

Besides, she sensed that he was a man so unsure of his own masculinity that he needed to physically dominate those people around him, men and women alike. If she was ever to find an accommodation with him, she must first allow his natural tendencies to be made manifest to her. Only then could she choose her own strategy, and then could she tame him.

Saigō was gone several hours. During that time all light left the sky; the day burned out like the dregs of a Roman candle. It was dinnertime and Akiko found herself hungry. Since there was no food here she padded silently into the
dōjō
and, opening her bag, dressed in her all-black
gi.
She did forty minutes of centristic meditation leading ultimately to
shinki kiitsu
, the unity of soul, mind, and body that is so essential to reaching the very apex of all martial arts. She felt the weight of the universe collecting in her lower abdomen.
Shitahara.

She breathed. In:
jitsu
: fullness. Out:
kyo
: emptiness.
Strike at the precise moment you feel
kyo
in your enemy,
Sun Hsiung had said.
Strike at the precise moment you feel
jitsu
in yourself. Thus will victory be assured.

Yet,
he had told her over and over,
if you are so foolish and full of ego that you allow yourself to think of victory then you are undone. Attach your awareness on
saika tanden,
the breath of the Void. From that central nothingness all strategies may be observed and formulated.

She did ninety minutes of formal exercise, increasing in difficulty until she was sweating profusely, working on her quickness and her timing, coordinating the two: alternating them and then combining them in sets of three, then six, then nine rapid-fire attacks and defenses.

Then, because she was still a student, still learning, because some essentials still had to be thought about consciously rather than accomplished as second nature without any volition at all, she returned to
saika tanden.

From her bag she unfurled a length of strong cotton—it was Sun Hsiung’s only gift to her—which she folded twice and wrapped with deft economical movements about her abdomen so that the upper edge just touched the bottom ribs on either side. It was very tight; it was a cincture, a constraint. She worked on inhaling as deeply as she could down into her bowels. She sat cross-legged, her body soft and pliable, her shoulders curved and relaxed, her torso bent well forward so that the tip of her nose hung approximately over her navel.
Saika tanden.
Every breath she takes.

And breathing was what consumed her still when her keen hearing detected soft padding outside the metal door. In a moment the grate of the padlock could be heard.

Jitsu; kyo.
Fullness; emptiness. In and out.

She heard Saigō in the
dōjō
and her head came up. She focused fully on him.

“Get up,” he whispered. “Come here.” He stood just inside the closed door.

She did just as she was told, rising and unwrapping the cloth she treasured though it was quite plain and could be bought at any neighborhood store. Folding it reverently, she place it inside her loose black cotton blouse and moved to stand beside Saigō.

“Listen,” he said. His voice was as indistinct as the buzz of a mosquito in the distance. They both stood quite still. She would have known not to utter a sound even had he not cautioned her against doing so hours before.

There was nothing but the slight tickle of sawdust, a remnant of the original use to which this old building had been put. No sounds from the streets three stories below made it through the thick walls and massive floorboards. It was as silent as a tomb.

Someone coughed. And again. Akiko heard soft footfalls from behind the door. She glanced at Saigō, whose entire being was focused at the closed door and what lay beyond.

Who was there? Akiko wondered. She listened.

“What is it? Where are we?” A female voice, whispered.

“Come on.” Male voice. Then more insistently though no more loudly,
“Come on!”
Presence faded but Akiko had at least a semblance of the two spirits. Male and female. Yin and Yang.

Hate burned itself across Saigō’s face, turning him into a gargoyle. So much hate twisting him, she thought. Eating him up inside. Hate was an emotion that she could understand.

Perhaps it was at this moment that she saw them as soulmates: Akiko and Saigō. They were meant for each other, weren’t they?

After a while the chalkiness flushed from his face and he was about to speak again. But strangely, he said nothing further of the incident.

“You waited,” he said.

“Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?” She watched his eyes, which were like dead stones at the bottom of a silkskinned lake. If it were true that the eyes were windows to the soul then Saigō had surely been born without one. She saw no anima there, only the gyring of emotions, dead weight like a corpse at the gibbet.

He nodded and she saw that he was pleased. He felt, wrongly, that his physical strike had caused her to acquiesce. Someone else of his personality type would have relaxed then, but he did not. Akiko noted that.

“It’s late,” he said. “Time to leave. Get dressed.”

He did not turn away as she got out of her
gi.
She felt his stony gaze on her at every moment, as she peeled down. She had never felt the intense sense of embarrassment about her naked body that most Japanese apparently did. Yet she was acutely conscious of Saigō’s presence, his scrutiny.

It was not prurience she felt from him, exactly, at least not in the sense of simple lust. That she would have had no trouble understanding. On the other hand, there was no sense of a cold, calculating inventory of all her parts being made. That too would have made some sense to her. He was of another type entirely, one with which she had had no prior experience.

When she was fully undressed and toweling herself off, she confronted him, turning to him face to face. “What is it here that fascinates you so?” As she said this she twisted the towel back over her shoulder so there was nothing for him to miss.

“If it’s sex you’re talking about,” he said, “I’ve had my share of it.” He seemed to be staring at a point below her navel. Perhaps at the spot where her curling glossy pubic hair began.

“I don’t give it that freely,” she said simply. “What makes you think I’d give it to you.”

“You’re naked, aren’t you? You barely know me.”

“If I was like this and I did know you well,” she observed, “there’d be far more of a chance.”

“You mean this isn’t an invitation?”

“If you want me, that’s your problem,” she said beginning to pull on her clothes. “It was you who did not allow me the privacy to undress.”

He watched her for a moment, then abruptly swung away. Striding to the metal door he unlocked it and busied himself with unfastening the square symbol of the
ryu
from the door. He put it aside and began to work on the crimson lacquer so that no marks of its presence remained.

Akiko was curious but knew better than to ask him why he was going to the trouble of erasing all evidence of the
ryu
’s presence in the warehouse. Since this third-floor door was the only one that led out to a landing and the outside, it was the only one that concerned him.

Dressed, Akiko picked up her bag and went out past him. She watched him carefully padlock the door.

“I have no place to stay,” she said.

He gave her a key out of his pocket. “There’s a spare bedroom,” he said. “Don’t touch anything else in the house.” He wrote a street address down for her. “Wait for me,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Three weeks later they were in the countryside, surrounded by Mandarin orange groves. Much of the southern island was still rural, retaining a high degree of the old ways. Saigō said he liked that.

Even this far south the snow lay heavily banked, glossy on its surface, crackling underfoot with the thinnest crust of ice, as delicate as Ming porcelain. In the moonlight it was luminescent, pushing back the spectral darkness.

Their breath hung in the air, their words made visible in albescent puffs, as connected as an island chain.

Much had changed in Akiko’s life in this time, and she wondered if the same could be so for him. With almost any other person she would have known the answer.

It had begun three weeks ago when he had come back deep into the night, opening the house door with absolute silence. Akiko had been dreaming, but even so his spirit obtruded into the beta level in which her mind drifted while her consciousness slept.

She opened her eyes and was fully awake. This had never surprised her because she had been born with the ability but it confounded others.

Saigō, standing in the shadows just inside the doorway, said, “Were you asleep?”

If he were any good at all, he would know the answer to that, so she said, “No. You wanted me to wait for you. I did.”

He came into the room on the balls of his feet and she felt the spitting of his spirit again, the anarchic emanations of a spiteful child. She did not flinch from him or give any sign, no matter how remote, that she knew of his intent. To do so would remove her greatest power over him. Also, it would frighten him and she could not afford that.

After he had hit her and assuaged his own weaknesses, he said, “There is a package outside. Go and fetch it.” His voice was absolutely normal.

Akiko got up and went past him. As she did so she felt the dullness of his spirit like a sated serpent, dozing. On the stoop she found, to her surprise, a young girl of her own age. She was leaning against the doorframe and she was shivering. Putting one arm around her, Akiko took her inside.

The young girl stumbled over the doorjamb and fell heavily against Akiko, who was obliged to support her entirely for three or four steps. The young girl was late in recovering, and in the warm lamplight inside Akiko looked at her.

Her face was beautiful but as dulled as Saigō’s spirit. The pupils of her large eyes were heavily dilated and there was a subtle musk emanating from between her half open lips.

“She is drugged,” Akiko said.

“Indeed.” His reaction was no more than if she had said, She’s Japanese. “Put her to bed,” he said a trifle wearily. “She will share your room.”

Without another word, Akiko did as he ordered her. When she had put the young girl to sleep on the one cotton
futon
, wrapping her carefully in wool blankets, she returned to the living room. She watched Saigō. He had sunk onto the
tatami
, his snow-covered coat crumpled around him like a frozen lily. His chin was on his chest and his head was nodding. His eyes were not quite closed.

For a moment Akiko wondered what would happen if she took him now; she knew that she could do it and if that were to be her strategy she would find no better time. He was at full
kyo.

But at that moment his head snapped up and he glared at her like a viper poised to strike. Immediately, sensing the acute danger, she washed her mind of taking the offensive, and sinking down, knelt before him, her hands open and in her lap.

His eyes became hooded and at last he had fallen asleep. Akiko dozed as well. But once she awoke just before dawn, her attention focused. Across from her Saigō still slept, his breathing deep and regular and slow. Still she could not rid herself of the feeling that he continued to watch her.