Across the Nightingale Floor (19 page)

“Tell the servants to bring
lights,” Shigeru said, and I went to the door to call the maids. They came and
removed the trays, brought tea, and lit the lamps in the stands. When they had
left once more, we drank the tea in silence. The bowls were a dark blue glaze.
Shigeru turned his in his hand and then upended it to read the potter's name.
“It's not as pleasing to my mind as the earth colors of Hagi,” he said, “but
beautiful nonetheless.”

“May I ask you a question?” I said,
and then fell silent again, not sure if I wanted to know the answer.

“Go on,” he prompted.

“You have allowed people to believe
we met by accident, but I felt you knew where to find me. You were looking for
me.”

He nodded. “Yes, I knew who you
were as soon as I saw you on the path. I had come to Mino with the express
purpose of finding you.”

“Because my father was an
assassin?”

“That was the main reason, but not
the only one.”

I felt as if there were not enough
air in the room for me to draw the breath I needed. I did not bother with
whatever other reasons Lord Shigeru might have had. I needed to concentrate on
the main one.

“But how did you know, when I
myself did not know—when the Tribe did not know?”

He said, his voice lower than ever,
“Since Yaegahara, I have had time to learn many things. I was just a boy then,
a typical warrior's son, with no ideas beyond the sword and my family's honor.
I met Muto Kenji there, and in the months afterwards he opened my eyes to the
power that lay beneath the warrior class's rule. I discovered something about
the networks of the Tribe, and I saw how they controlled the warlords and the
clans. Kenji became a friend, and through him I met many other Tribe members.
They interested me. I probably know more about them than any other outsider.
But I've kept this knowledge to myself, never telling anyone else. Ichiro knows
a little, and now you do too.”

I thought of the heron's beak
plunging down into the water.

“Kenji was wrong, the first night
he came to Hagi. I knew very well who I was bringing into my household. I had
not realized, though, that your talents would be so great.” He smiled at me,
the openhearted smile that transformed his face. “That was an unexpected
reward.”

Now I seemed to have lost the power
of speech again. I knew we had to broach the subject of Shigeru's purpose in
seeking me out and saving my life, but I could not bring myself to speak so
baldly of such things. I felt the darkness of my Tribe nature rise within me. I
said nothing and waited.

Shigeru said, “I knew I would have
no rest under Heaven while my brother's murderers lived. I held their lord
responsible for their actions. And in the meantime, circumstances had changed.
Arai's falling out with Noguchi meant the Seishuu were again interested in an
alliance with the Otori against Iida. Everything seemed to point to one
conclusion: that the time had come to assassinate him.”

Once I heard the words, a slow
excitement began to burn within me. I remembered the moment in my village when
I decided I was not going to die but live and seek revenge—the night in Hagi,
under the winter moon, when I had known I had the ability and the will to kill
Iida. I felt the stirrings of deep pride that Lord Shigeru had sought me out
for this purpose. All the threads of my life seemed to lead towards it.

“My life is yours,” I said. “I will
do whatever you want.”

“I'm asking you to do something
extremely dangerous, almost impossible. If you choose not to do it, you may
leave with Kenji tomorrow. All debts between us are canceled. No one will think
the less of you.”

“Please don't insult me,” I said,
and made him laugh.

I heard steps in the yard and a
voice on the veranda. “Kenji is back.”

A few moments later he came into
the room, followed by a maid bringing fresh tea. He looked us over while she
poured it and, once she had left, said, “You look like conspirators. What have
you been plotting?”

“Our visit to Inuyama,” Shigeru
replied. “I have told Takeo my intentions. He is coming with me of his own free
will.”

Kenji's expression changed. “To his
death,” he muttered.

“Maybe not,” I said lightly. “I am
not boasting, but if anyone can get near Lord Iida, it will be me.”

“You're just a boy,” my teacher
snorted. “I've told Lord Shigeru this already. He knows all my objections to
this rash plan. Now I'll tell you. Do you really think you'll be able to kill
Iida? He's survived more assassination attempts than I've had girls. You are
yet to kill anyone! Added to which, there's every chance that you'll be
recognized either in the capital or along the way. I believe your peddler did
talk about you to someone. It was no accident that Ando turned up in Hagi. He
came to check out the rumor and saw you with Shigeru. It's my guess Iida
already knows who and where you are. You're likely to be arrested as soon as
you enter Tohan territory.”

“Not if he is with me, one of the
Otori coming to make a friendly alliance,” the lord said. “Anyway, I've told
him that he's free to go away with you. It's by his own choice that he comes
with me.”

I thought I detected a note of
pride in his voice. I said to Kenji, “There is no question of me leaving. I
must go to Inuyama. And anyway, I have scores of my own to settle.”

He sighed sharply. “Then I suppose
I'll have to go with you.”

“The weather has cleared. We can
move on tomorrow,” Shigeru said.

“There's one other thing I must
tell you, Shigeru. You astonished me by keeping your affair with Lady Maruyama
hidden for so long. I heard something in the bathhouse, a joke, that makes me
believe it is no longer a secret.”

“What did you hear?”

“One man, having his back scrubbed,
remarked to the girl that Lord Otori was in town with his future wife, and she
replied, 'His current wife as well.' Many laughed as if they got her meaning,
and went on to speak of Lady Maruyama, and Iida's desire for her. Of course, we
are still in Otori country; they have nothing but admiration for you, and they
like this rumor. It enhances the Otori reputation and is like a knife in the
ribs for the Tohan. All the more reason for it to be repeated until it reaches
Iida's ears.”

I could see Shigeru's face in the
lamplight. There was a curious expression on it. I thought I could read pride
there as well as regret.

“Iida may kill me,” he said, “but
he cannot change the fact that she prefers me over him.”

“You are in love with death, like
all your class,” Kenji said, a depth of anger in his voice that I had never
heard before.

“I have no fear of death,” Shigeru
replied. “But it is wrong to say I am in love with it. Quite the opposite: I
think I've proved how much I love life. But it is better to die than to live
with shame, and that is the point I have come to now.”

I could hear footsteps approaching.
I turned my head like a dog, and both men fell silent. There was a tap on the
door and it slid open. Sachie knelt in the entrance. Shigeru immediately rose
and went to her. She whispered something and went quietly away. He turned to us
and said, “Lady Maruyama wishes to discuss tomorrow's travel arrangements. I will
go to her room for a while.”

Kenji said nothing, bur bowed his
head slightly.

“It may be our last time together,”
Shigeru said softly, and stepped into the passage, sliding the door closed
behind him.

“I should have got to you first,
Takeo,” Kenji grumbled. “Then you would never have become a lord, never been
tied to Shigeru by bonds of loyalty. You would be Tribe through and through.
You wouldn't think twice about taking off with me now, tonight.”

“If Lord Otori had not got to me
first, I would be dead!” I replied fiercely. “Where was the Tribe when the
Tohan were murdering my people and burning my home? He saved my life then.
That's why I cannot leave him. I never will. Never ask me again!”

Kenji's eyes went opaque. “Lord
Takeo,” he said ironically.

The maids came to spread the beds,
and we did not speak again.

———«»———«»———«»———

The following morning the roads out
of Tsuwano were crowded. Many travelers were taking advantage of the finer
weather to resume their journey. The sky was a clear deep blue and the sun drew
moisture from the earth until it steamed. The stone bridge across the river was
undamaged, but the water ran wild and high, throwing tree branches, planks of
wood, dead animals and other corpses, possibly, against the piers. I was
thinking fleetingly of the first time I'd crossed the bridge at Hagi when I saw
a drowned heron floating in the water, its gray-and-white feathers waterlogged,
all its gracefulness crumpled and broken. The sight of it chilled me. I thought
it a terrible omen.

The horses were rested and stepped
out eagerly. If Shigeru was less eager, if he shared my forebodings, he gave no
sign of it. His face was calm, his eyes bright. He seemed to glow with energy
and life. It made my heart twist to look at him—made me feel his life and his
future all lay in my assassin hands. I looked at my hands as they lay against
Raku's pale gray neck and black mane and wondered if they would let me down.

I saw Kaede only briefly, as she
stepped into the palanquin outside the inn. She did not look at me. Lady
Maruyama acknowledged our presence with a slight bow but did not speak. Her
face was pale, her eyes dark-ringed, but she was composed and calm.

It was a slow, laborious journey.
Tsuwano had been protected from the worst of the storm behind its mountain
barriers, but as we descended into the valley the full extent of the damage
became clear. Houses and bridges had been washed away, trees uprooted, fields
flooded. The village people watched us, sullen or with open anger, as we rode
through the midst of their suffering, and added to it by commandeering their
hay to feed our horses, their boats to carry us across the swollen rivers. We
were already days overdue and had to press on at whatever cost.

It took us three days to reach the
fief border, twice as long as expected. An escort had been sent to meet us
here: one of Iida's chief retainers, Abe, with a group of thirty Tohan men,
outnumbering the twenty Otori Lord Shigeru rode with. Sugita and the other
Maruyama men had returned to their own domain after our meeting in Tsuwano.

Abe and his men had been waiting a
week and were impatient and irritable. They did not want to spend the time that
the Festival of the Dead required in Yamagata. There was little love lost
between the two clans; the atmosphere became tense and strained. The Tohan men
were arrogant and swaggering. We Otori were made to feel that we were inferior,
coming as supplicants, not equals. My blood boiled on Shigeru's behalf, but he
seemed unmoved, remaining as courteous as usual, and only slightly less
cheerful.

I was as silent as in the days when
I could not speak. I listened for snatches of conversation that would reveal,
like straws, the direction of the wind. But in Tohan country, people were
taciturn and close. They knew spies were everywhere and walls had ears. Even
when the Tohan men got drunk at night, they did so silently, unlike the noisy,
cheerful fashion of the Otori.

I had not been so close to the
triple oak leaf since the day of the massacre at Mino. I kept my eyes down and
my face averted, afraid I would see or be recognized by one of the men who had
burned my village and murdered my family. I used my disguise as an artist,
frequently taking out my brushes and ink stone. I went away from my true
nature, becoming a gentle, sensitive, shy person who hardly spoke and who faded
into the background. The only person I addressed was my teacher. Kenji had
become as diffident and unobtrusive as I had. Occasionally we conversed in
hushed tones about calligraphy or the mainland style of painting. The Tohan men
despised and discounted us.

Our stay in Tsuwano became like the
memory of a dream to me. Had the sword fight really taken place? Had Kaede and
I been caught and scorched by love? I hardly saw her for the next few days. The
ladies lodged in separate houses and took their meals apart. It was not hard to
act, as I told myself I must, as if she did not exist, but if I heard her voice
my heart raced, and at night her image burned behind my eyes. Had I been
bewitched?

The first night Abe ignored me, but
on the second, after the evening meal, when wine had made him belligerent, he
stared at me for a long time before remarking to Shigeru, “This boy—some
relative, I suppose?”

“The son of a distant cousin of my
mother,” Shigeru replied. “He's the second oldest of a large family, all
orphans now. My mother had always wanted to adopt him, and after her death I
carried out her intention.”

“And landed yourself with a
milksop,” Abe laughed.

“Well, sadly, maybe,” Shigeru
agreed. “But he has other talents that are useful. He is quick at calculating,
and writing, and has some skill as an artist.” His tone was patient,
disappointed, as though I were an unwelcome burden to him, but I knew each
comment like this served only to build up my character. I sat with eyes cast
down, saying nothing.

Abe poured himself more wine and
drank, eyeing me over the bowl's rim. His eyes were small and deep-set in a
pockmarked, heavy-featured face. “Not much use in these times!”

“Surely we can expect peace, now
that our two clans are moving towards alliance,” Shigeru said quietly. “There
may be a new flowering of the arts.”

“Peace with the Otori maybe.
They'll cave in without a fight. But now the Seishuu are causing trouble,
stirred up by that traitor, Arai.”

“Arai?” Shigeru questioned.

“A former vassal of Noguchi. From
Kumamoto. His lands lie alongside your bride's family's. He's been raising
fighting men all year. He'll have to be crushed before winter.” Abe drank
again. An expression of malicious humor crept into his face, making the mouth
curve more cruelly. “Arai killed the man who allegedly tried to violate Lady
Shirakawa, then took offence when Noguchi exiled him.” His head swung towards
me with the drunk's second sight. “I'll bet you've never killed a man, have you,
boy?”