Across the Nightingale Floor (28 page)

“Shut him up,” Kenji whispered to
the girl as he struggled to hold me still, and under her hands the world went
sickening and black again.

The next time I came around I truly
believed I was dead and in the underworld. I could not see or hear. It was
pitch-dark and everything had gone completely silent. Then feeling began to
return. I hurt too much all over to be dead. My throat was raw, one hand
throbbed, the other wrist ached where it had been bent backwards. I tried to
sit up, but I was tied up in some way, loosely with soft bindings, just enough
to restrain me. I turned my head, shaking it. There was a blindfold across my
eyes, but it was being deafened that seemed the worst thing. After a few
moments I realized that my ears had been plugged with something. I felt a surge
of relief that I had not lost my hearing.

A hand against my face made me
jump. The blindfold was removed and I saw Kenji kneeling beside me. An oil lamp
burned on the floor next to him, lighting his face. I thought fleetingly how
dangerous he was. Once he had sworn to protect me with his life. The last thing
I wanted now was his protection.

His mouth moved as he spoke.

“I can't hear anything,” I said.
“Take the plugs out.”

He did so, and my world returned to
me. I stayed without speaking for a few moments, placing myself in it again. I
could hear the river in the distance: So I was still in Inuyama. The house I
was in was silent, everyone sleeping except guards. I could hear them
whispering inside the gate. I guessed it was late at night, and at that moment
heard the midnight bell from a distant temple.

I should have been inside the
castle now.

“I'm sorry we hurt you,” Kenji
said. “You didn't need to struggle so much.”

I could feel the bitter rage about
to erupt inside me again. I tried to control it. “Where am I?”

“In one of the Tribe houses. We'll
move you out of the capital in a day or two.”

His calm, matter-of-fact voice
infuriated me further. “You said you would never betray him, the night of my
adoption. Do you remember?”

Kenji sighed. “We both spoke that
night of conflicting obligations. Shigeru knows I serve the Tribe first. I
warned him then, and often since, that the Tribe has a prior claim to you, and
that sooner or later it would make it.”

“Why now?” I said bitterly. “You
could have left me for one more night.”

“Maybe I personally would have
given you that chance. But the incident at Yamagata pushed things beyond my
control. Anyway, you would be dead by now, and no use to anyone.”

“I could have killed Iida first,” I
muttered.

“That outcome was considered,”
Kenji said, “and judged not to be in the best interests of the Tribe.”

“I suppose most of you work for
him?”

“We work for whoever pays us best.
We like a stable society. Open warfare makes it hard to operate. Iida's rule is
harsh but stable. It suits us.”

“You were deceiving Shigeru all the
time, then?”

“As no doubt he has often deceived
me.” Kenji was silent for a good minute, and then went on, “Shigeru was doomed
from the start. Too many powerful people want to get rid of him. He has played
well to survive this far.”

A chill came over me. “He must not
die,” I whispered.

“Iida will certainly seize on some
pretext to kill him,” Kenji said mildly. “He has become far too dangerous to be
allowed to live. Quite apart from the fact that he offended Iida personally—the
affair with Lady Maruyama, your adoption—the scenes at Yamagata alarmed the
Tohan profoundly.” The lamp flickered and smoked. Kenji added quietly, “The
problem with Shigeru is, people love him.”

“We can't abandon him! Let me go
back to him.”

“It's not my decision,” Kenji
replied. “Even if it were, I could not do it now. Iida knows you are from the
Hidden. He would hand you over to Ando as he promised. Shigeru, no doubt, will
have a warrior's death, swift, honorable. You would be tortured: You know what
they do.”

I was silent. My head ached, and an
unbearable sense of failure was creeping over me. Everything in me had been
aimed like a spear at one target. Now the hand that had held me had been
removed and I had fallen, useless, to the earth.

“Give up, Takeo,” Kenji said,
watching my face. “It's over.”

I nodded slowly. I might as well
pretend to agree. “I'm terribly thirsty.”

“I'll make some tea. It will help
you sleep. Do you want anything to eat?”

“No. Can you untie me?”

“Not tonight,” Kenji replied.

I thought about that while I was
drifting in and out of sleep, trying to find a comfortable position to lie in
with my hands and feet tied. I decided it meant Kenji thought I could escape,
once I was untied, and if my teacher thought I could, then it was probably
true. It was the only comforting thought I had, and it did not console me for
long.

Towards dawn it began raining. I
listened to the gutters filling, the eaves dripping. Then the cocks began to
crow and the town woke. I heard the servants stirring in the house, smelled
smoke as fires were lit in the kitchen. I listened to the voices and the
footsteps, and counted them, mapping the layout of the house, where it stood in
the street, what was on either side. From the smells and the sounds as work
began I guessed I was hidden within a brewery, one of the big merchant houses
on the edge of the castle town. The room I was in had no exterior windows. It was
as narrow as an eel's bed and remained dark even long after sunrise.

The wedding was to be held the day
after tomorrow. Would Shigeru survive till then? And if he was murdered before,
what would happen to Kaede? My thoughts tormented me. How would Shigeru spend
these next two days? What was he doing now? What was he thinking of me? The
idea that he might imagine I had run away of my own free will was agony to me.
And what would be the opinion of the Otori men? They would despise me.

I called to Kenji that I needed to
use the privy. He untied my feet and took me there. We stepped out of the small
room into a larger one, and then downstairs into the rear courtyard. A maid
came with a bowl of water and helped me wash my hands. There was a lot of blood
on me, more than seemed likely from the one cut from the nail.

I must have done some damage with
my knife to someone. I wondered where the knife was now.

When we went back into the secret
room Kenji left my feet untied. “What happens next?” I asked.

“Try and sleep longer. Nothing will
happen today.”

“Sleep! I feel as if I will never
sleep again!”

Kenji studied me for a moment and
then said briefly, “It will all pass.”

If my hands had been free, I would
have killed him. I leaped at him as I was, swinging my bound hands to catch him
in the side. I took him by surprise, and we both went flying, but he turned
beneath me as quick as a snake and pinioned me to the ground. If I was enraged,
so now was he. I'd seen him exasperated with me before, but now he was furious.
He struck me twice across the face, real blows that shook my teeth and left me
dizzy.

“Give up!” he shouted. “I'll beat
you into it if I have to. Is that what you want?”

“Yes!” I shouted back. “Go ahead
and kill me. It's the only way you'll keep me here!”

I arched my back and rolled
sideways, getting rid of his weight, trying to kick and bite. He struck me
again, but I got away from him and, swearing at him in rage, flung myself
against him.

I heard rapid steps outside, and
the doors slid open. The girl from Yamagata and one of the young men ran into
the room. The three of them subdued me eventually, but I was more than half-mad
with fury, and it took a while before they could tie my feet again.

Kenji was seething with anger. The
girl and the young man looked from me to him and back again. “Master,” the girl
said, “leave him with us. We'll watch him for a while. You need some rest.”
Clearly they were astonished and shocked by his loss of control.

We had been together for months as
master and pupil. He had taught me almost everything I knew. I had obeyed him
without question, had put up with his nagging, his sarcasm, and his
chastisements. I had put aside my initial suspicions and had come to trust him.
All that was shattered as far as I was concerned, and would never be restored.

Now he knelt in front of me, seized
my head, and forced me to look at him. “I'm trying to save your life!” he
shouted. “Can't you get that into your thick skull?”

I spat at him and braced myself for
another blow, but the young man restrained him.

“Go, master,” he urged him.

Kenji let go of me and stood up.
“What stubborn, crazy blood did you get from your mother?” he demanded. When he
reached the door he turned and said, “Watch him all the time. Don't untie him.”

When he had gone I wanted to scream
and sob like a child in a tantrum. Tears of rage and despair pricked my
eyelids. I lay back on the mattress, face turned towards the wall.

The girl left the room shortly
after and came back with cold water and a cloth. She made me sit up and wiped
my face. My lip was split and I could feel the bruising around one eye and
across the cheekbone. Her gentleness made me feel she had a certain sympathy
towards me, though she said nothing.

The young man watched without
speaking, either.

Later she brought tea and some
food. I drank the tea but refused to eat anything.

“Where's my knife?” I said.

“We have it,” she replied.

“Did I cut you?”

“No, that was Keiko. Both she and
Akio were wounded on the hand, but not too badly.”

“I wish I had killed you all.”

“I know,” she replied. “No one can
say that you didn't fight. But you had five members of the Tribe against you.
There is no shame.”

Shame, however, was what I felt
seeping through me as though it stained my white bones black.

The long day passed, oppressive and
slow. The evening bell had just rung from the temple at the end of the street
when Keiko came to the door and spoke in a whisper to my two guards. I could
hear what she said perfectly well, though out of habit I pretended not to.
Someone had come to see me, someone called Kikuta.

A few minutes later a lean man of
medium height stepped into the room, followed by Kenji. There was a similarity
between them, the same shifting look that made them unremarkable. This man's
skin was darker, closer to my own in color. His hair was still black, although
he must have been nearly forty years old.

He stood and looked at me for a few
moments, then crossed the room, knelt beside me, and, as Kenji had the first
time he met me, took my hands and turned them palms-up.

“Why is he tied up?” he said. His
voice was unremarkable, too, though the intonation was northern.

“He tries to escape, master,” the
girl said. “He is calmer now, but he has been very wild.”

“Why do you want to escape?” he
asked me. “You are finally where you belong.”

“I don't belong here,” I replied.
“Before I had even heard of the Tribe, I swore allegiance to Lord Otori. I am
legally adopted into the Otori clan.”

“Unnh,” he grunted. “The Otori call
you Takeo, I hear. What is your real name?”

I did not reply.

“He was raised among the Hidden,”
Kenji said quietly. “The name he was given at birth was Tomasu.”

Kikuta hissed through his teeth.
“That's best forgotten,” he said. “Takeo will do for the time being, though
it's never been a Tribe name. Do you know who I am?”

“No,” I said, though I had a very
good idea.

“No, master.” The young guard
couldn't help the whispered reproof.

Kikuta smiled. “Did you not teach
him manners, Kenji?”

“Courtesy is for those who deserve
it,” I said.

“You will learn that I do deserve
it. I am the head of your family, Kikuta Kotaro, first cousin to your father.”

“I never knew my father, and I have
never used his name.”

“But you are stamped with Kikuta
traits: the sharpness of hearing, artistic ability, all the other talents we
know you have in abundance, as well as the line on your palms. These are things
you can't deny.”

From away in the distance came a
faint sound, a tap at the front door of the shop below. I heard someone slide
the door open and speak, an unimportant conversation about wine. Kikuta's head
had also turned slightly. I felt something: the beginnings of recognition.

“Do you hear everything?” I said.

“Not as much as you. It fades with
age. But pretty well everything.”

“At Terayama, the young man there,
the monk, said, 'Like a dog'.” A bitter note crept into my voice. “'Useful to
your masters,' he said. Is that why you kidnapped me, because I will be useful
to you?”

“It's not a question of being
useful,” he said. “It's a matter of being born into the Tribe. This is where
you belong. You would still belong if you had no talents at all, and if you had
all the talents in the world, but were not born into the Tribe, you could never
belong and we would have no interest in you. As it is, your father was Kikuta:
You are Kikuta.”

“I have no choice?”

He smiled again. “It's not
something you choose, any more than you chose to have sharp hearing.”

This man was calming me in some way
as I had calmed horses: by understanding my nature. I had never met anyone
before who knew what it was like to be Kikuta. I could feel it exerting an
attraction on me.

“Suppose I accept that; what will
you do with me?”

“Find you somewhere safe, in
another province, away from the Tohan, while you finish your training.”

“I don't want any more training. I
am done with teachers!”

“Muto Kenji was sent to Hagi
because of his long-standing friendship with Shigeru. He has taught you a lot,
but Kikuta should be taught by Kikuta.”