The Nicholas Linnear Novels (142 page)

“But you aspire to be.”

“Hai.”

“Then you spurn the fan.”

“As a woman I—”

She watched, openmouthed, as the fan hummed through the air, embedding itself in the exact center of a camphorwood chest across the expanse of the room.

“Not as a woman,” Kyōki said, “but as a warrior.” Unconcernedly, he sipped more tea. “Please retrieve my weapon,” he said when he had put down his porcelain cup.

Akiko rose and went across the room. She reached up and as she touched the thing, spread like the hand of Buddha, spearing the wood, he said, “This is no
ōgi,
no mere fan, you pull from my chest, Akiko-san. It is
gunsen
, a weapon of battle.”

As she brought it back to him, he said, “All ten ribs are of hand-forged steel, the fan itself a membrane of steel mesh that can slice through skin, flesh, viscera…even bone, with the proper strike.”

In his hands again the
gunsen
fluttered back and forth at his cheek, the docile butterfly returned to its chrysalis.

“Your room is on the second floor,” he said. “Directly below mine.”

“I have no parents; I make the heavens and the earth my parents. I have no home; I make
saika tanden
my home. I have no body; I make stoicism my body. I have no eyes; I make the flash of lightning my eyes. I have no strategy; I make
sakkatsu jizai*
my strategy. I have no designs; I make
kisan**
my designs. I have no principles; I make
rinkiohen***
my principles.”

Akiko, alone in the Room of All Shadows, knelt before the double line of joss sticks and long white tapers. Both were lit and the resulting scents pervaded the chamber. The atmosphere seemed to absorb her prayers as if it were listening.

Kyōki’s castle lay nestled in a glen shaggy with white birch and larch, acres of bright, blooming giant azaleas and stands of peach trees, one thousand meters above sea level in Asama
kogen.
These were the highlands—cool in summer, frosted in winter—just over 130 kilometers from Tokyo, northeast of the sprawling, jammed supertropolis, almost squarely in the center of Honshu, Japan’s main island.

The
kogen
were dominated by 2,500-meter Asama-yama, an active volcano whose upper slopes were kept sere and utterly barren by frequent eruptions.

On the opposite side of the highlands from where Kyōki’s castle stood, sweeping northeast off Asama-yama’s skirt, was Onioshidashi, a black, blasted lavascape aptly named after the monstrous outpouring of the earth’s depths in 1783; “The Devil’s Discharge.”

Parkland and villas of the rich were strewn all about here but none within seeing distance of the castle, named
Yami Doko
—Kite in the Darkness—by Kyōki soon after he came to live here.

Akiko had as little an idea when that was as she had about anything else in the
sensei
’s background. With her eyes alone she could tell that he was at least part Mongol: the slant to his eyes, the width and flatness of his cheekbones, as well as the hue of his skin. She could envision his ancestors, wrapped in wolf skins and beaten metal corselets, descending on horseback from the Chinese steppes, snowy wind at their backs, to raid the villages of the plains.

They worked within a rigidly formulaic framework that was without even the most minute deviation. This was in direct counterpart to her two years at the
ryu
in Kumamoto. Every moment of Akiko’s time in Asama was mapped out and had to be assiduously accounted for. A blank spot was cause for punishment. Excuses of any kind were not tolerated. Neither was illness, which was treated by Kyōki with various natural poultices and herbal combinations. He was a gifted
yogen
—chemist—and Akiko, who was rarely sick in any case, inevitably found herself recovered within ten hours. Meanwhile her studies—even the most taxing physical exercises—were performed uninterrupted.

For weeks at a time they lived in the wilderness, leaving the castle far behind. Often this occurred during inclement weather—in the dead of winter or during late summer and early autumn when successions of typhoons lashed the island’s southern coast, sending dark, whipping squalls into the interior like a dragon’s raking claws.

This was purposeful. He taught her how to use the elements and even, in many cases, to tame them. With them they took only
rokugu
, the ninja’s “six tools for traveling.” Five were all contained within the sixth,
uchitake
, a three-meter length of hollowed-out bamboo. Inside was stored medicine, a stone pencil, towel, hat, and
musubinawa
, an eight-meter coil of rope made out of women’s hair, lighter than regular rope and stronger.

They lived in trees and in the bush, by low-lying alpine streams, on rock outcroppings along Shiraito Falls, a staggeringly beautiful network of narrow water chutes climbing up a sheer, foliage-encrusted cliff face.

Tsuchigumo
was a technique that Kyōki claimed had been passed down to him through his father from Jinnai Ukifune, an assassin in the service of Nobunaga Oda, powerful feudal
daimyō
, unique among all ninja because he was a dwarf.

Tsuchigumo
was, as Kyōki put it, “bat in the rafters.” He taught her to cling to the tops of rooms where crossbeams and such could be employed with the aid of
nekode
, cat’s claws of forged steel. Hour after hour they hung in the darkness of the night, using arcane breath-control techniques to slow their metabolisms and therefore remain motionless until just before dawn.

At that time they would drop lithely and silently down onto the stone flooring, free of muscle knots and cramps, ready—if this were a real situation—to deliver a lethal blow to an unsuspecting enemy.

One evening, perhaps a year and a half after she had first entered the castle, Kyōki summoned her to a room which she had never seen before. It was large and had an arching ceiling so high its upper reaches were lost in gloom. It was divided by an odd-looking doorway that had the aspect of a Chinese moon gate, almost circular in nature.

There were
tatami
, the first she had seen at
Yami Doko.
Kyōki knelt on one of these just beyond the arc of the moon gate. Before him was a lacquer tea service, a small plate piled with rice cakes.

Akiko bowed low and, doffing her boots, knelt opposite him. The moon gate rose above them and between them, the demarcation between
sensei
and pupil.

All was quiet in the room, all was serene. Akiko, questing as he had taught her to do, felt only the harmony of his
wa.
She watched him prepare the green tea; she had not known that he had these skills. She was mesmerized by the movements. She felt languid and calm. Almost at peace.

Kyōki put aside the whisk and, turning the porcelain cup one half a revolution, presented her with the steaming tea. He bowed low to her and she followed suit, extending her torso forward. Her forehead touched the
tatami
on the other side of the moon gate.

Whisper, as of silk against flesh or…

Galvanized, her adrenals pumping furiously, she tucked her head under and launched herself forward, rolling, ball-like, forward across the
tatami.

Behind her the metal blade hurtled downward from the apex of the moon gate arc, slicing through the reed mat at the precise spot where the exposed back of her neck had been a split second before, burying itself in the floor beneath.

Akiko bounded to her knees and stared wide-eyed at her
sensei
, who was calmly sipping at his tea.

“How?” she said wonderingly. “I felt not even the tiniest ripple in your
wa.
There was nothing…nothing at all.”

“This is why you are here,” Kyōki said simply. “
Jahō
masks my
wa.
”

“
Jahō
,” Akiko echoed. “Magic?”

The
sensei
shrugged. “Call it what you will. It goes by many names. Which one you use is unimportant.”

“It exists.”

“Were you aware of my intentions?”

“I might have died. Would you really have allowed that?”

“Once the blade is released I can no longer control it,” he said. “As always, you were the master of your own fate. And I am pleased to see you here beside me. You are not the first woman who has ever come here seeking that which was meant for man. Women, traditionally, seek to
control
power and in that way possess it. It is an oblique strategy; a
female
stratagem. In this way in our society a mother controls her son, a wife controls her husband. It is rare indeed for the woman to seek a more
direct
means; to possess absolute dominion over men through her own strength.

“As I have indicated, several have tried. All have failed. Perhaps, now, you will be the first
miko.
” He rose, held out his hand palm up. “Come. It is time we begin your true education.”

He was a face in the rain. She saw him and did not see him. He was there beside her and he was not. Quick as a
kami
, he flickered, a blazing light, and then was gone.

Though she had spent years with him, though he had held the key to her world, and had passed it on to her, there came a time when she began to doubt that she had ever been to
Yami Doko.

The Swiss Alps rose all about the vast chalet in which she lay swathed in pure white bandages. She could not see and most of the time there was nothing of interest to hear. She fed off her memories.

Kyōki became a dream, as insubstantial as smoke rising from a forest floor. But not what she had absorbed from him.

Every day white-suited nurses wheeled her outside into the thin sunshine for exactly forty minutes. The Swiss were as precise as the Japanese about some things. Schedules were one of them.

She remembered the moment the wild boar came crashing out of the underbrush to confront them. She stood her ground as the snorting creature bore down upon her. She was aware of the boar’s tusks, rough textured and oily looking, curving outward from that lowered jaw, set to impale her.

She made no move, however. Her spirit was like an untroubled lake. She opened her mouth. From it emanated a
kiai
known as
toate-no-ate
, the distant strike.

The boar spun in the air, emitting a high-pitched squeal, quickly cut off as if a powerful grip had been put on its throat. It fell heavily on its side and was still until, as Kyōki had taught her, she chose to end her shout.

She remembered the touch of Kyōki’s kimono against the back of her hand. The passage of his presence during long afternoons of sleep, when he seemed to stalk her dreams, as if even her sleep at
Yami Doko
was part of her training.

She longed for his lessons the way a young man longs for sex, aches for it, dreams about it, becomes, at length, obsessed with it.

There was a chasteness to their relationship which she could never remember having with a man before. He was not saintly; but she did not desire him. Because she lusted after what he possessed more. He had
jahō
, and she longed for that until it became her lover.

She remembered their parting. She had been with him seven years, which was a significant number to both of them; a magic number. It was time to return to the world and claim her revenge.

A face in the rain, flickering.

Behind her, she half suspected the castle to fall into ruin, disappearing amid new foliage magically springing up. Rain beat down on her shoulders in rhythm with the
komuso
’s melody. Before her, rabbits skittered out of her way and a lone hawk flew over the treetops, searching while it rode the inconstant currents.

Coming down off the frosty Asama
kogen
, mingling with tourists and Tokyo residents alike in the rolling parklands, it occurred to her that the person she missed most was Saigō, that Kyōki’s lessons had been her lover for seven years because Saigō could not be. She had deliberately put the thought of him aside so as not to torture herself.

He was no longer in Kumamoto, she was told by telephone, so she traveled to the outskirts of Tokyo, where he had told her his family lived.

She had had no contact with him in seven years, yet as the gleaming railroad took her toward her destination, it seemed to her no more than seven minutes. One inhalation of time. There was no space between them, no sense of change or alienation.

Occasionally, Saigō had spoken of his parents—and of course she had seen the devastation written across his face when he spoke of his father’s death—but nothing he had said prepared her for the splendor of that house.

For one thing it was large—a rare quality in Japanese homes; for another, it was surrounded by the most beautiful gardens and orchards. Space was so highly prized that Akiko was slightly stunned to see so much in the hands of one family.

Deeper was her surprise when she found that the “family” now consisted of Saigō’s mother and a dozen servants. No brothers or sisters, no other family members.

She was a diminutive woman with delicate bones and the beautiful commanding face of a
samurai
lady. Tradition meant a great deal to her.

As a welcomed traveler, Akiko was met at the door by a servant and escorted to a room where another servant unpacked her bags while a third led her to the bath. Afterward, she was fed broiled fluke fin in soy sauce, a superb cold seaweed salad, chicken
yakitori
, rice, and a pale gold tea the taste of which was unfamiliar to her.

By this time it was late in the evening. A fourth servant appeared when she was finished, led her back to her room, where her
futon
had been prepared for sleep. Thus she spent her first sixteen hours in the house without ever meeting her hostess.

The next morning Akiko arose and dressed in her best kimono, which, she observed sadly as she saw herself in the mirror, was not very fine at all. Her life up until now had left precious little room for her to be concerned with the niceties of being a woman.

The hems of both sleeves were threadbare, and the silk of which it was made was hardly of the finest quality.