The Miko - 02 (2 page)

Kusunoki nodded. “It is as I suspected. There are few one can trust even in this day and age. When I ask for your opinions now, when I ask for you to take action, both of these must be given willingly and faithfully.”

Tsutsumu could barely contain his euphoria; outwardly he showed nothing. “You have but to ask me,” he said.

“
Muhon-nin
,” Kusunoki said, leaning forward, “this is all I ask.”

The word
traitor
had only begun to register on Tsutsumu’s brain when he felt the incredible pain engulf him and, looking down, saw the
sensei
’s hand gripping him just below the collarbone. It was not a strike he had yet mastered and, staring bewilderedly at it, trying to fathom its secrets, he died, a froth of pink saliva bubbling between his trembling lips.

Kusunoki, watching life escape like a puff of invisible smoke, took his hand away from the corpse. Without his support, it swayed and fell to one side, the pink drool staining the
tatami
on which Tsutsumu knelt.

Behind the
sensei
a shadow appeared to move behind the
shōji
and then a figure emerged. Hearing the pad of bare feet, the
sensei
said, “You heard it all?”

“Yes. You were correct all along. He was the traitor.” The voice was light, pleasingly modulated. Female.

She wore a dark brown kimono, designed with gray plovers within circles of black. Her gleaming black hair was drawn tightly back from her face.

Kusunoki did not turn around at her silent approach. Instead, he was staring at the rice-paper scroll hung in a niche along one bare wall. Just below it was an earthenware bud vase in which he had placed one perfect day lily. At dawn this morning, as he did every morning of his adult life, he had gone walking in the wilderness, strolling the slopes, through glades still dark and misty with remnants of the night, past rushing streams etched with the last silvered thorns of moonlight, in search of this one flower that would reflect its mood of peace and contemplation all through the day. Plucking it carefully, he had made his way back to the precincts of his
dōjō.

On the rice-paper scroll a Zen master of the eighteenth century had written in flowing characters: “
Rock and wind / only they remain / through generations.
”

“But you allowed him to get so close to you.”

Kusunoki smiled up at her and said, “I allowed him the luxury of cutting his own throat. That is all.” He watched her as she sank down on her knees. He was conscious of the fact that she chose a spot near his right hand and not directly in front of him. “Often, times dictate that one becomes more intimate with one’s enemies than with friends. This is a necessary lesson of life; I urge you to listen well. Friends engender obligations and obligations entangle life. Always remember: complication breeds desperation.”

“But what is life without obligation?”

Kusunoki smiled. “That is an enigma even
sensei
may not unravel.” He nodded toward the fallen form. “Now we must find the source from which this
muhon-nin
sprang.”

“Is that so important?” Her head turned slightly so that the flat curve of her cheek was outlined in the soft light filtered by the
shōji.
“He has been neutralized. We should return to our work.”

“You are not yet privileged to all that goes on here,” Kusunoki said seriously. “The martial and the military arts are but two. It is
essential
that we discover the source of the infiltration.”

“You should not have destroyed him so quickly then.”

The
sensei
closed his eyes. “Ah, rash youth!” The voice was soft, almost gentle, but when the eyes snapped open the female felt her insides fluttering involuntarily, drilled by that basilisk gaze. “He was professional. You will learn someday not to waste valuable time on men like him. They must be dispatched as quickly and as efficiently as possible. They are dangerous—highly volatile. And they will not talk.

“Therefore we go onward.” His hands folded into his lap. “You must return to the source…
his
source. The people who sent him, who trained him, represent a very great threat to Japan.” He paused, his nostrils quivering as if he sensed some telltale vibration. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its hard edge; his eyelids drooped. “There is more hot water. Tea is waiting.”

Obediently she went past him, grasping the tea pot and pouring while the light went out of the sky and purple clouds obscured the terraced mountains.

Carefully she brought the tiny cups toward him on a black lacquered tray; a small flock of golden herons lifting off from racing water painted there. Delicately, she set the tray down, began to use the whisk with practiced strokes. Her
wa
—her harmony—was very strong, and this was what Kusunoki felt engulfing him. At that moment he was very proud of what he had helped to create.

Six, seven, eight, the female turned the whisk, creating the pale green froth. On the tenth stroke her delicate fingers dropped the whisk and in the same motion were inside the wide sleeve of her kimono. Reversing the motion the short, perfectly honed steel blade flashed upward, biting into the back of Kusunoki’s neck. Either her strength was at such a level or the blade was so superb that, seemingly without effort, the steel bit through flesh and bone, severing the spinal column. In a grotesque gesture, the head came forward and down, hanging only by the thin length of skin at the neck, as if the
sensei
was deep in meditational prayer.

Then crimson blood spurted upward from the severed arteries, fountaining the room, spattering the
tatami
where they both knelt. The
sensei
’s torso jerked spasmodically, its legs tangling beneath it as it tried to leap forward like a frog.

The female knelt rooted to the spot. Her eyes never left the body of her teacher. Once, when he lay on his side and one leg spasmed a last time, she felt something inside herself trembling like a leaf before a rising wind and she felt one tear lying hotly along the arch of her cheek. Then she hardened her heart, strengthened her will, and dammed up her emotions.

With that, elation filled her. It works, she thought, feeling her heart thundering within her rib cage.
Jahō.
Without it, she would never have been able to mask her intent from him, she understood that quite clearly.

As she stared down at her handiwork, she thought, It’s nothing personal; nothing like what that bastard
muhon-nin
Tsutsumu had in mind. I am no traitor.

But I had to prove myself. I had to know. And therefore I had to take on the best. She got up and, moving like a wraith across the
tatami
, avoiding the spattered stains that had already begun to seep away across the floor onto other
tatami
, went to him.

You
were
the best, she thought, staring down at her mentor. Now I am. She bent and wiped the blood—
his
blood—from her weapon. It left a long scar on the fabric of his kimono.

The last thing she did there was to strip him and reverently fold the precious garment as if it were the national flag. Soon it disappeared into an inner pocket.

Then she was gone; and with her absence came the rain.

[Force, influence, authority, energy]

D
ROWSING, JUSTINE TOMKIN BECAME
aware of the nightblack shadow that slowly pierced the sunlight like the blade of a sword.

Her mouth opened wide and she tried to scream as she saw the face and recognized Saigō: the images of blood and carnage, a deathhunt too frightening to contemplate. The odor of the grave had pervaded this once peaceful room in her father’s house on Long Island so full of childhood memories: of a Teddy bear with one eye missing and a plaid gingham giraffe.

Her powerful scream was muffled by the thick wind of Saigō’s passage, as if he could control all God’s elements with a wave of his hand. His torso expanded, extending through the light streaming down through the great glass dome in the ceiling, an opalescent mist rising about him as if his connection to the earth was not meant for her eyes.

He bent over her prostrate form and while her mind screamed, Wake up!
Wake up!
he slowly began to work his magic on her, the icy menace in his eyes as dead as stones somehow transferring itself into her heart.

She felt the horror squirming there like a palmful of live worms. An unholy bond was forming which she was powerless to deflect. Now she was part of him, she would do his bidding like a servant, take up his fallen
katana
and slay his enemy for him.

She felt the cool haft of the heavy
katana
beneath her curling fingers as she drew it upward off the floor. She wielded it just as Saigō would have had he not been dead.

And before her stood Nicholas, his vulnerable back to her. She raised the
katana
, its shadow already beginning to slice through the sunlight striking his spine.
Nicholas, my one and only love.
Her mind whirled in a sick fury and her last thought before she began the lethal downward strike was not her own:
Ninja, betrayer, this is your death!…

Justine jerked awake. She was in a sweat. Her heart was thumping uncomfortably, as loudly as a blacksmith strikes his anvil. Slowly, she ran a shaking hand through her damp hair, pulling it back, away from her eyes. Then, with a great indrawn breath that halfway through turned into a wracking shudder, she clamped both arms about her body and began to rock back and forth as she had when she had been a child, frightened by dreams welling up from the pitch blackness of the night.

Blindly she reached out to the empty spot beside her in the large double bed, and fear touched her heart anew. It was not the terror of her own private nightmare which reared up at her. This was a new fright and she twisted, grabbing up a pillow from beside her where normally Nicholas would have been and, holding it tightly to her breast, squeezed it as if this gesture might bring him back to her arms, and the safety of America.

For Nicholas was on the other side of the Pacific and Justine was quite certain now: the fear she now felt was for him. What was happening in Japan? What was he doing at this moment? And what danger was amassing itself against him?

In a moment she lunged for the phone, a little cry filling the silence of the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are beginning our descent into Narita Airport. Please make sure your seat back is in the upright position and that your tray table is closed and secured. All hand luggage must be stowed under the seat in front of you. Welcome to Tokyo, Japan.”

While the unseen flight attendant repeated her short speech in Japanese, Nicholas Linnear opened his eyes. He had been dreaming of Justine, thinking of yesterday, when they had driven out of the city to get away, as they often did, from the pressurized life they led within the steel and smoked glass canyons of Manhattan. Outside their house in West Bay Bridge they had doffed shoes and socks and despite the early spring chill loped across the white sand.

Running down to the sea after her, the cerulean waves cutting off her feet and ankles in violent foam. Catching up with her, long, dark hair in his face as he turned her around, linking them, a softly feathered wing coming down at the close of night. His hard burnished arm around her, pulling her to him, the feel of her like liquid against flesh heated by the sun and more.

Whisper of the salt wind, “Oh, Nick, I don’t think I’ve ever been happy before; not ever. Because of you I have no more sadness in me.”

She was voicing the knowledge that he had saved her from the many demons that life held in its fisted claw, not the least of which was her own masochistic self; an ego robbed—so she said—by the domineering specter of her father.

She put her head on his shoulder, kissing the side of his neck. “I wish you didn’t have to go. I wish we could be here in the surf together forever.”

“We’d turn blue.” He laughed, not wanting to catch her abruptly melancholy mood. He felt his love for her like a gently purling river in the night, hidden from sight yet present nonetheless. “Anyway, don’t you think it’s better that we’re both so busy before the wedding? No time to get cold feet and back out.” He was joking again but she lifted her head and he stared into her extraordinary eyes, highly intelligent yet possessing an odd kind of naiveté he had found so alluring when he had first met her. He still did. He watched the several crimson motes floating like a hint of her soul in the midst of her left iris. Her eyes were hazel, that day more green than brown, and he found himself feeling grateful that the harrowing events of the past year had not altered the essence of her. For through those eyes he could still see her heart.

“Do you ever dream of it?” he asked. “Do you ever find yourself back in the house with the
dai-katana
in your hands; with Saigō in your mind?”

“You took all that he did—the strange kind of hypnosis—away,” she said. “That’s what you told me.”

He nodded. “That’s what I did.”