The Miko - 02 (21 page)

On a pedestal not far from the generous
futon
bed was a sculpture of Ankoku Doji, scowling fiercely, one leg up in the classic sitting position. He was an aide to the kings of hell and, putting brush to a paper-covered plank, it was his responsibility to annotate the sins of each penitent who entered that unholy court to be tried for his misdeeds on earth.

This particular Ankoku Doji was carved from camphorwood, dated to the thirteenth century.

Akiko hated him. His sculpted eyes seemed to follow her, seemed to know what she planned to do to his owner. As soon as she was well ensconced here she was determined to move him to another place, preferably one she did not visit often.

Sato welcomed her to his
futon.
They drank hot sakē and he made several jokes. She made sure she laughed although she barely heard them.

Was she terrified or revolted at the prospect of being penetrated by her sworn enemy? She used all her prodigious skills to push down the black tide that threatened to engulf her mind. She did not want to think about what Sun Hsiung had said to her, but she had no choice.

Sato touched her and she jumped. Her eyes flew open and she realized they had been squeezed shut as if that physical act could blot out the reverberations filling her mind.

“You are an empty vessel which I will now proceed to fill,” Sun Hsiung had said to her. “You came to me of your own volition. You must remember that in the days and weeks and months to come. Your time will be long here. It is not inconceivable that you will feel a desire to leave. I will tell you now that you cannot. That if you harbor any suspicion that you cannot tolerate hardship, pain, arduous labor, then you must leave immediately. Now is the time, the only time. Do I make myself clear?”

And with terror filling her heart like a rush of water, she had nodded, said, “I do,” just as if these were marriage vows she was taking.

And, oh, they were, she thought now. They were.

The silk of her kimono was sliding with a whisper across the pale expanse of her shoulder, guided by his deft hand. This close to him, surrounded only by the silence of the empty house—for all servants had been dismissed for the night, to stay free of charge at the city’s most plush hotel, Sato’s wedding present to them—she felt his male presence much the way a female fox is aware of her mate. There was no more than the acknowledgement of lust, of one brief moment stolen out of the net of time.

What she was about to begin had no more to do with love than a pair of microorganisms coming together. What true feelings she had for him she could not express until the moment of her vengeance was at hand. Her nostrils dilated sharply, scenting his odor.

Her kimono had slipped off both her shoulders and now she pressed her hands across herself as a schoolgirl might, embarrassed by her newly budding breasts.

Sato leaned forward and brushed his lips against her throat. Akiko closed off that private part of her which was most dear to her, accepting what might come.

She felt his hands sliding over her shoulders, and she willed herself out of her stupor, parting his own kimono, the bright red angular pattern breaking up into shards as the folds began to appear.

He was naked long before she was, his flesh warm beneath her probing fingers. He was virtually hairless, his skin smooth and unblemished. She put her cheek against his belly, felt the pulse of his life beating in her ear like the surf along the far shore. This meant nothing to her. It was as if she had put her ear to the bole of a tree.

He lifted her upward and now they lay, body against body. Her legs were closed, his were spread apart. There seemed a second heart down there, pulsing in a rhythm all its own. She felt its insistent push as it grew, insinuating itself between her thighs, another kind of serpent.

She reached her hand down and cupped his scrotum. He groaned and she thought it gave an answering throb. She touched the base of his shaft.

Gently, he began to roll over, to move her onto her back. She had never been so aware of one part of her anatomy before. The insides of her thighs burned as if she had pressed herself against an oven and her flesh there rippled as if in terror.

If he saw too soon, if his love was not enough to dissuade him, he would surely reject her. She saw him throwing her out into the street, saw herself banished from the city as it had been done centuries before when the Shōgun held sway and her kind would not be permitted into the bed of a
samurai,
let alone be his bride.

She understood that at this moment there was absolutely no difference between her and her mother. This terrified her beyond all measure, and she commenced to shake like a leaf. Her husband mistook her fear for passion, and groaned aloud.

He had placed her on her back. She could feel the soft silk of her open kimono on her flesh like a sensuous caress. Sato loomed over her, his muscular body throwing her breasts and belly into shadow.

She raised her arms, her fingers and palms tracing the ridges and bulges of his muscles. She used the pads of her thumbs to press inward.

“You like my arms?” he whispered.

Her eyes, black jade, stared up at him, unblinking, delivering the answer he wished for.

“Ah, yes,” he breathed. “Ah, yes.”

His head came down and his open lips encompassed a nipple. He moved from one breast to another, nuzzling and licking. Akiko felt nothing. His fingertips rolled one nipple while he sucked on another and now she gasped at the contrast between the warm softness of his mouth and the rough-calloused rubbing of his fingers. She did not know whether to scream or to cry. She did neither, merely bit her lower lip, exhaling sharply. She put her fingers in her mouth, transferred saliva to the spot between her thighs.

Then she felt herself being turned on her side, Sato’s heated body behind her. His hand gently lifted her upper leg and centered in on the core of her. She gasped as she felt him between her thighs in the tangled forest of her pubic hair.

His fingers pressed open her lips, and she thought briefly again of all his gifts, the movements of his lovemaking. Then she was opening herself to him, feeling the thick hotness of him like a bar of iron between her legs.

She began to weep. His breath hissed in her ear and she could feel the tightening of his powerful arms about her. Her buttocks were hard against him as he moved around and around at the entrance to her vagina until he could stand it no longer.

With a great groan and a violent heave, he pushed himself all the way into her. Akiko’s eyes opened so wide the whites showed all around. An engine of fire started up in her chest so that she could not breathe. She felt a fearful tearing in her loins, a great filling up, a pressure on her entrails as if she had stuffed herself with food.

She was overcome by sensation and she cried out wildly. Sato, misinterpreting her, lunged in even deeper, trying to establish an erotic rhythm.

Akiko’s mind was filled with black visions. All the myriad demons of hell seemed to be rising out of their moldy beds to dance in the firelight in her mind’s eye. Nights bound in the highland castle paraded in lurid detail before her like a shameless whore. Her head whipped back and forth, her long unbound hair slapping against Sato, enflaming him all the more.

Kyōki. The
sensei
of darkness.

His name made her moan and bite her lip against the unfurling memories like shrouds for the dead. For that was how she thought of herself now. Dead.

Like ships in the night on a storm-tossed tumultuous sea, they rocked to and fro, Akiko locked inside his embrace, allowing him this cruel dominance. There was foam on her lips, hatred in her heart. She had never before offered up her body unwillingly; she never wanted to again, though she knew that she must to preserve this marriage until its bloody end.

Yet she knew what to do; she could give pleasure without ever receiving it. This too was part of the role she had assigned herself. Weeping still, she reached back between her thighs, grasping his swinging sac. At the same time she clenched her inner muscles, working on the engorged head buried inside her slick channel. Her hips revolved in a rapid corkscrew motion. She squeezed lightly with her hand.

She heard his deep groan, felt his muscles trembling all around her, and knew that his orgasm was imminent. I cannot allow him to do it, she thought wildly. Tomorrow or the night after. But not now.

With a little cry, she pulled herself away from him, turning to slide her open lips over his moist, vibrating shaft, teasing him with the faintest of feathery touches until he grabbed at her flung hair and begged her for sweet release.

It was only then that she began to suck, hollowing her cheeks, urging him onward to completion with her fingers. Her other hand covered her pubic mound as if staunching a wound, her thighs close together.

She held herself all the firmer at the instant of his sexual convulsions, as a child caresses a deep hurt to ease the pain. And then she willed her new husband to sleep, watching him drift off, staring blindly down the lightless corridor of her own past at what she might have been.

Akiko rolled carefully over and silently rose from her nuptial bed. For a moment she stood naked, in utter quietude, staring down at the form of Seiichi Sato, slumbering and sated.

From the enigmatic look on her beautiful face it was impossible to tell what she was feeling. Perhaps it was true what Sun Hsiung had once told her, “You do not fully understand anything that you feel.” But if that were so, she told herself, I could never have learned what I have. I could never have gone beyond the
Kuji-kiri
and the
Kōbudera,
the arcane disciplines that Saigō had mastered. And, she thought triumphantly, I never could have killed that clever fox, Masashigi Kusunoki. She had used
jahō
and it had worked, masking the nature of her intent from even such an adept as he.

But her delight was short-lived. Shaking her head, her long unbound hair a blue-black cascade across her shoulder, down her back, she bent and retrieved her multicolored kimono. It was the one she had worn at the wedding reception earlier today.

She drew it about her as a child will wrap a bathrobe warm from the radiator around herself in order to ward off more than the chill of night. She had numbed herself in order to ward off what she thought of as an attack. It had been a time when, she told herself repeatedly, she had to retreat now in order to have her revenge. But there was a vile taste in her mouth, salty-sweet like blood. Her own blood.

Never before had she detested so intensely her
karma.
Her training should have protected her from these feelings, and it surprised and disconcerted her that she should feel so violated by one simple act. That it had been a necessary one did not seem to matter at all. She was weeping again in silent agony.

Barefoot, she left the bedroom, making her way through the dark house until she found the
futuma
that opened out onto the Zen garden.

It was always peaceful there. Above the one ancient cryptomeria the stars glittered hard and twinkling like the many teeth of some grinning nocturnal predator. For one long moment, she allowed the barriers to fall away from her. Thoughts of Nicholas entered her consciousness, seeping through her like woodsmoke. For just an instant an unfamiliar powerful emotion gyred, filling her up to the bursting point, and, her neck arched, her face turned heavenward, she allowed herself to yearn for surcease. Up there, a million miles from anything known, she could be free. Striding through the utter blackness of space, she might at last rest from the turmoil that beset her.

But the feeling only lasted a moment, then she was earthbound again. Her head came down and her dark eyes contemplated the precise grandeur of the garden. Less was more here, a uniquely Japanese esthetic.

The pebbles which covered the ground were hand picked for their size, shape, and color. They were carefully raked twice a day in order to maintain the precise symmetry the garden’s designer had labored so hard to create.

Three black, angular rocks jutted up from different parts of the garden. In contrast to the pebbles, each one was unique unto itself, its ridges and rills affecting the onlooker in varying ways, triggers for the evocation of disparate moods.

The place was tranquil and invigorating at the same time.

Akiko turned her head and sat on the cold stone bench, her legs tucked neatly under her. Her hands were folded in her lap, the fingers relaxed and slightly curved. The attitude was so wholly feminine that it was quite impossible to tell what unimaginable bursts of coordinated energy this body was capable of.

She was acutely aware of the arc of a shadow inside her, a demarcation between light and dark whose edge was as finely honed as the most masterfully forged
katana
blade. From this place of shade she felt the rippling of her hatred, her longing to wreak a horrendous vengeance. Her body trembled in anticipation, there was a low rumbling shaking her brain apart, making her moan as if she were in exquisite pain.

Then she felt a veil of wind caress her cheek, cooling her. Sweat dried along her hairline, the precise symmetry of the garden seized her, and she was altogether calm again. She sighed in the aftermath of a great storm and closed her eyes. Her head felt heavy, and as her pulsebeat slowed, she reviewed the events of the evening.

In the stillness of the Zen pebble garden, Akiko was thankful that she did not have to contend with a mother-in-law. For Sato’s mother, like all Japanese mothers, would rule this house. Wasn’t that why the central living section was called
omoya
by tradition: mother house. Akiko shuddered inwardly. How would she possibly be able to endure the orders of the
heramochi
, the one with the right to hold the spoon used to serve rice, the head of the household. No. Far better that she was dead and buried along with Sato’s war-hero brother.

Alone with only the cryptomeria, blacker even than the surrounding night, with the shadows of the Zen stones striking her in odd rippling patterns, Akiko stood up and, under the scrutiny of the pinpoint uncaring stars, threw off her kimono in one convulsive gesture.