Across the Nightingale Floor (32 page)

We took two each. They died in four
strokes, before they could look down again. Shigeru had been right. The sword
leaped in my hand as if it had a will of its own, or as if his own hand wielded
it. No compassion or softness of mine hindered it.

The window above us was still open,
and the lamp still burned faintly. The palace seemed quiet, wrapped in the
sleep of the Hour of the Ox. As we climbed inside we fell over the bodies of
the guards Yuki had killed earlier. Kenji gave a faint approving sound. I went
to the door between the corridor and the guardroom. I knew four such small
rooms lay along the corridor. The first one was open and led into the
antechamber where I had waited with Shigeru and we had looked at the paintings
of the cranes. The other three were hidden behind the walls of Iida's
apartments.

The nightingale floor ran around
the whole residence and through the middle, dividing the men's apartments from
the women's. It lay before me, gleaming slightly in the lamplight, silent.

I crouched in the shadows. From far
away, almost at the end of the building, I could hear voices: two men at least,
and a woman.

Shizuka.

After a few moments I realized the
men were Abe and Ando; as for guards, I wasn't sure how many: perhaps two with
the lords and ten or so others hidden in the secret compartments. I placed the
voices in the end room, Iida's own. Presumably the lords were waiting for him
there—but where was he and why was Shizuka with them?

Her voice was light, almost
flirtatious, theirs tired, yawning, a little drunk.

“I'll fetch more wine,” I heard her
say.

“Yes, it looks like it's going to
be a long night,” Abe replied.

“One's last night on earth is
always too short,” Shizuka replied, a catch in her voice.

“It needn't be your last night, if
you make the right move,” Abe said, a heavy note of admiration creeping into
his voice. “You're an attractive woman, and you know your way around. I'll make
sure you're looked after.”

“Lord Abe!” Shizuka laughed quietly.
“Can I trust you?”

“Get some more wine and I'll show
you how much.”

I heard the floor sing as she
stepped out of the room onto it. Heavier steps followed her, and Ando said,
“I'm going to watch Shigeru dance again. I've waited a year for this.”

As they moved through the middle of
the residence I ran along the floor around the side and crouched by the door of
the antechamber. The floor had stayed silent beneath my feet. Shizuka went past
me, and Kenji gave his cricket chirp. She melted into the shadows.

Ando stepped into the antechamber
and went to the guardroom. He called angrily to them to wake up, and then Kenji
had him in a grip of iron. I went in, pulling off my hood, holding the lamp up
so that he could see my face.

“Do you see me?” I whispered. “Do
you know me? I am the boy from Mino. This is for my people. And for Lord
Otori.”

His eyes were filled with disbelief
and fury. I would not use Jato on him. I took the garrote and killed him with
that, while Kenji held him and Shizuka watched.

I whispered to her, “Where is
Iida?”

She said, “With Kaede. In the
farthest room on the women's side. I'll keep Abe quiet while you go around. He
is alone with her. If there's any trouble here, I'll deal with it with Kenji.”

I hardly took in her words. I'd
thought my blood was cold, but now it turned to ice. I breathed deeply, let the
Kikuta blackness rise in me and take me over completely, and ran out onto the
nightingale floor.

Rain hissed gently in the garden
beyond. Frogs croaked from the pools and the marshland. The women breathed
deeply in sleep. I smelled the scent of flowers, the cypress wood of the
bathhouse, the acrid stench from the privies. I floated across the floor as
weightless as a ghost. Behind me the castle loomed, in front of me flowed the
river. Iida was waiting for me.

In the last small room at the end
of the residence, a lamp burned. The wooden shutters were open but the paper
ones closed, and against the orange glow of the lamp I could see the shadow of
a woman sitting motionless, her hair falling around her.

With Jato ready, I pulled the
screen open and leaped into the room.

Kaede, sword in hand, was on her
feet in a moment. She was covered in blood.

Iida lay slumped on the mattress,
facedown. Kaede said, “It's best to kill a man and take his sword. That's what
Shizuka said.”

Her eyes were dilated with shock,
and she was trembling. There was something almost supernatural about the scene:
the girl, so young and frail; the man, massive and powerful, even in death; the
hiss of the rain; the stillness of the night. . . .

I put Jato down. She lowered Iida's
sword and stepped towards me. “Takeo,” she said, as if awakening from a dream.
“He tried to . . . I killed him. . . .”

Then she was in my arms. I held her
until she stopped shaking.

“You're soaking wet,” she
whispered. “Aren't you cold?”

I had not been, but now I was,
shivering almost as much as she was. Iida was dead, but I had not killed him. I
felt cheated of my revenge, but I could not argue with fate, which had dealt
with him through Kaede's hands. I was both disappointed and mad with relief.
And I was holding Kaede, as I had longed to for weeks.

When I think about what happened
next, I can only plead that we were bewitched, as we had been since Tsuwano.
Kaede said, “I expected to die tonight.”

“I think we will,” I said.

“But we will be together,” she
breathed against my ear. “No one will come here before dawn.”

Her voice, her touch, set me aching
with love and desire for her.

“Do you want me?” she said.

“You know I do.” We fell to our knees,
still holding each other.

“You aren't afraid of me? Of what
happens to men because of me?”

“No. You will never be dangerous to
me. Are you afraid?”

“No,” she said, with a kind of
wonder in her voice. “I want to be with you before we die.” Her mouth found
mine. She undid her girdle and her robe fell open. I pulled my wet clothes off
and felt against me the skin I had longed for. Our bodies rushed towards each
other with the urgency and madness of youth.

I would have been happy to die
afterwards, but like the river, life dragged us forward. It seemed an eternity
had passed, but it could have been no more than fifteen minutes, for I heard
the floor sing and heard Shizuka return to Abe. In the room next to us a woman
said something in her sleep, following it with a bitter laugh that set the
hairs upright on my neck.

“What's Ando doing?” Abe said.

“He fell asleep,” Shizuka replied,
giggling. “He can't hold his wine like Lord Abe.”

The liquid gurgled from flask to
bowl. I heard Abe swallow. I touched my lips to Kaede's eyelids and hair. “I
must go back to Kenji,” I whispered. “I can't leave him and Shizuka
unprotected.”

“Why don't we just die together
now,” she said, “while we are happy?”

“He came on my account,” I replied.
“If I can save his life, I must.”

“I'll come with you.” She stood
swiftly and retied her robe, taking up the sword again. The lamp was guttering,
almost extinguished. In the distance I heard the first cock crow from the town.

“No. Stay here while I go back for
Kenji. We'll meet you here and escape through the garden. Can you swim?”

She shook her head. “I never
learned. But there are boats on the moat. Perhaps we can take one of them.”

I pulled on my wet clothes again,
shuddering at their clamminess against my skin. When I took up Jato, I felt the
ache in my wrist. One of the blows of the night must have jarred it again. I
knew I had to take Iida's head now, so I told Kaede to stretch out his neck by
his hair. She did so, flinching a little.

“This is for Shigeru,” I whispered
as Jato sliced through his neck. He had already bled profusely, so there was no
great gush of blood. I cut his robe and wrapped the head in it. It was as heavy
as Shigeru's had been when I handed it to Yuki. I could not believe it was
still the same night. I left the head on the floor, embraced Kaede one last
time, and went back the way I had come.

Kenji was still in the guardroom,
and I could hear Shizuka chuckling with Abe. He whispered, “The next patrol is
due any minute. They're going to find the bodies.”

“It's done,” I said. “Iida is
dead.”

“Then let's go.”

“I have to deal with Abe.”

“Leave him to Shizuka.”

“And we have to take Kaede with
us.”

He peered at me in the gloom. “Lady
Shirakawa? Are you mad?”

Very likely I was. I did not answer
him. Instead, I stepped heavily and deliberately onto the nightingale floor.

It cried out immediately. Abe
called, “Who's there?”

He rushed out of the room, his robe
loose, sword in his hand. Behind him came two guards, one of them holding a
torch. In its light Abe saw me, and recognized me. His expression was first
astonished, then scornful. He strode towards me, making the floor sing loudly.
Behind him Shizuka leaped at one of the guards and cut his throat. The other
turned in amazement, dropping the torch as he drew his sword.

Abe was shouting for help. He came
towards me like a madman, the great sword in his hand. He cut at me and I
parried it, but his strength was huge, and my arm weakened by pain. I ducked
under his second blow and went invisible briefly. I was taken aback by his ferocity
and skill.

Kenji was alongside me, but now the
rest of the guards came pouring from their hiding places. Shizuka dealt with
two of them; Kenji left his second self below the sword of one, and then knifed
him in the back. My attention was totally taken up with Abe, who was driving me
down the nightingale floor towards the end of the building. The women had woken
and ran out screaming, distracting Abe as they fled past him and giving me a
moment to recover my breath. I knew we could deal with the guards, once I had
got Abe out of the way. But at the same time I knew he was vastly more skillful
and experienced than I was.

He was driving me into the corner
of the building, where there was no room to evade him. I went invisible again,
but he knew there was nowhere for me to go. Whether I was invisible or not, his
sword could still cut me in two.

Then, when it seemed he had me, he
faltered and his mouth fell open. He gazed over my shoulder, a look of horror
on his face.

I did not follow his look, but in
that moment of inattention drove Jato downwards. The sword fell from my hands
as my right arm gave. Abe lurched forward, his brains bursting from the great
split in his skull. I ducked out of the way and turned to see Kaede standing in
the doorway, the lamp behind her. In one hand she held Iida's sword, in the
other his head.

Side by side we fought our way back
across the nightingale floor. Every stroke made me wince in pain. Without Kaede
at my right side, I would have died then.

Everything was turning blurred and
indistinct before my eyes. I thought the mist from the river had penetrated the
residence, but then I heard crackling and smelled smoke. The torch the guard
had dropped had set the wooden screens on fire.

There were cries of fear and shock.
The women and servants were running from the fire, out of the residence and
into the castle, while guards from the castle were trying to get through the
narrow gate into the residence. In the confusion and the smoke, the four of us
fought our way into the garden.

By now the residence was fully
ablaze. No one knew where Iida was or if he was alive or dead. No one knew who
had made this attack on the supposedly impregnable castle. Was it men or
demons? Shigeru had been spirited away. Was it by men or angels?

The rain had eased, but the mist
grew thicker as dawn approached. Shizuka led us through the garden to the gate
and the steps down to the moat. The guards here had already started on their
way up towards the residence. Distracted and confused as they were, they hardly
put up a fight. We unbarred the gate easily from the inside and stepped into
one of the boats, casting off the rope.

The moat was connected to the river
through the marshland we had crossed earlier. Behind us the castle stood out
stark against the flames. Ash floated towards us, falling on our hair. The
river was surging, and the waves rocked the wooden pleasure boat as the current
carried us into it. It was hardly more than a punt, and I feared if the water
grew any wilder it would capsize. Ahead of us the piles of the bridge suddenly
appeared. For a moment I thought we would be flung against them, but the boat
dived through, nose-first, and the river carried us on, past the town.

None of us said much. We were all
breathing hard, charged with the near confrontation with death, subdued maybe
by the memory of those we had sent on into the next world, but deeply, achingly
glad we were not among them. At least, that was how I felt.

I went to the stern of the boat and
took the oar, but the current was too strong to make any headway. We had to go
where it took us. The mist turned white as dawn came, but we could see no more
through it than when it had been dark. Apart from the glow of the flames from
the castle, everything else had disappeared.

I was aware of a strange noise,
however, above the song of the river. It was like a great humming, as though a
huge swarm of insects were descending on the city.

“Can you hear that?” I said to
Shizuka.

She was frowning. “What is it?”

“I don't know.”

The sun brightened, burning off the
haze. The hum and throb from the bank increased, until the sound resolved
itself into something I suddenly recognized: the tramp of feet of thousands of
men and horses, the jingle of harness, the clash of steel. Colors flashed at us
through the torn shreds of mist; the crests and banners of the Western clans.