Sano closed his eyes to blot out what was surely a bizarre hallucination. His mind foundered in the black waves that washed over his consciousness. Time passed, but how much he didn’t know. Gradually he became aware that the noise and activity around him had ceased. He forced his heavy eyelids open. Above him, the moon’s image swelled and shrank in rhythm with the pulsing agony in every part of his body. Had his tormenters left him for dead? Then he heard footsteps, almost soundless, but magnified by his painfully acute senses.
They were coming back.
Panic restored Sano’s fading lucidity. Groaning, he tried to stand, but couldn’t move. A dark figure loomed over him, head turned and lifted, listening and watching in perfect stillness. For a moment, Sano saw moonlight silvering the curving line of a three-quarter profile. Then the figure bent. Firm hands grasped Sano’s arms.
“No,” he whispered, but lacked the strength to resist.
He felt himself hoisted across a strong back. The ground tilted sickeningly, then sank as the figure lifted him. With his last conscious thought, Sano wondered if this was his imaginary rescuer turned real, or one of his attackers bearing him off to a worse punishment than he’d already suffered.
Then another black wave absorbed all thought and external sensation. Sano tumbled into oblivion.
Chapter 26
Warmth, gentle and enveloping.
The soft splash of water.
Pain, at first muted and remote, then gradually more intense and immediate.
Sano floated up from unconsciousness like a swimmer breaking the surface of a viscous ocean. His eyelids cracked open. A light, piercingly bright, formed a blazing sun in his field of vision. Sano groaned in fear and confusion. He couldn’t remember what had happened; he didn’t know where he was, except flat on his back and in danger. He must escape. His efforts to move caused excruciating pain that roused him further, and he sensed someone beside him, felt a soft touch against his chin. Panic focused his eyes. He gasped.
In the lantern’s golden glow, Aoi’s serene face hovered above him as she dabbed his face with a wet white cloth. The sleeves of her green and white kimono were rolled above her elbows. Meeting his gaze, she smiled faintly: a ripple of light across her somber features.
“You’re awake. Good.”
Sano sat up, wincing as his sore muscles strained and his head spun. When the world settled again, he recognized his own bed-chamber, with its coffered ceiling, painted screen, lacquer chests and cabinets, and burning charcoal braziers. He looked down at himself and recoiled in horror.
He was naked, except for his loincloth. His body had been cleansed of dirt, sweat, and blood, but dark red and purple bruises stained his arms, legs, and chest. Raw scrapes marked his knees and palms. Memories came rushing back: the wild chase through the castle, the beating. Now he recalled that he’d been on his way to see Aoi.
Placing a hand on his chest, Aoi gently but firmly pushed him back down onto the futon on which he sat. “Lie still now, while I treat your wounds,” she murmured.
Her husky voice soothed Sano’s senses; her beauty stirred his desire despite the pain. But now he remembered why he had wanted to see her.
“How did I get home?” he demanded, sitting up again. “What are you doing here?”
“The guard patrol found you lying unconscious in the Fukiage and carried you home.” Aoi’s eyes met his with perfect candor. “Your servants called me because I have healing skills.”
She gestured at the floor beside her, where Sano saw three trays holding assorted items: a stone mortar and pestle; ceramic cups and spoons; a steaming teapot; lacquer bowls filled with pungent, cooked green onions for placing on wounds to ease pain; saffron threads to be steeped in tea and used to treat shock; yellow turmeric powder for inflammation. The teapot gave off the spicy scent of ginseng-that venerated root, both tonic and sedative, that strengthened the body’s resistance to illness and injury. All these Sano recognized as common herbal remedies. Others, however, were strange to him. His suspicions about Aoi grew.
“What’s that?” He pointed to a bowl of slimy brown strips that stank like rotten fish.
Aoi’s forehead puckered in a frown of apparently genuine bewilderment at his hostility. “Skin of the mudfish,” she said. “To prevent festering. It won’t hurt you. Please, rest now.”
She extended the cloth to his face again, but Sano slapped it away. “And what’s that?” He looked toward a cup of mashed leaves from which rose an acrid smell.
“Hellodindron leaves and vinegar. To heal bruises.” Aoi folded her arms. In a tone of determined patience, she said, “I can’t help you if you won’t cooperate.”
As she turned and bent to rinse her cloth in a wooden bucket beside the bed, her upper body moved between Sano and the lantern. Against its glow, her pale garments turned dark. Light edged her averted face, stimulating Sano’s still hazy memory.
A dark figure. A moonlit profile…
Sano grabbed Aoi’s wrist. He heard her sharp gasp as he yanked her around to face him.
“The guards didn’t bring me home. They’re the ones who beat me. And you weren’t summoned by my servants, were you? What really happened? How did you come to be here?”
With an air of conceding, Aoi answered, “All right. I was walking in the Fukiage. I found you in the clearing. I called your servants to carry you home, and stayed to treat your wounds. I was afraid to tell you because you might think me too presumptuous. Now, please let me go so I can heal you.”
Anger opened a yawning cavity inside Sano’s chest, sucking his breath into its vacuum. Flinging Aoi’s hand aside, he scattered the medicines with a wild swipe, ignoring her cry of protest.
“No more lies!” he shouted. “I remember everything now. You-a woman, alone-defeated five men. Then you carried me home, all by yourself. To poison me with your magic potions, as if you haven’t done me enough harm already!”
Upon her he unleashed all his rage toward the men who’d beaten him; Magistrate Ueda for rejecting his proposal; Chūgo and Matsui for thwarting him tonight; Chamberlain Yanagisawa for his scheming; Tokugawa Tsunayoshi for his weakness. And himself, for his powerlessness to control his destiny.
“You tricked me with your rituals and your visions.” And made me want you, he would not admit to her. “You sent me and my assistant chasing after a man who doesn’t exist. All so that I would fail in my investigation!”
Loath to sit before his enemy like a helpless invalid, Sano struggled to his feet. He gasped at the pain in his legs, wobbled under a wave of dizziness. Sweat gushed from his pores. Still, his mind registered that his injuries weren’t as serious as he’d feared, or as bad as they might have been, if not for Aoi’s intervention. But reason didn’t diminish his fury. Her combat skills, strength, and medical knowledge only confirmed what her lies, her origin in Iga Province, and her mystical powers had led him to suspect.
“Ninja!” he hurled at her. “Dirty saboteur! Who are you working for, you agent of evil and darkness?”
Aoi rose to face him, her eyes glinting with a fury that matched his. “Who are you to call me dirty?” she spat back. “I serve the same masters as you-the Tokugawa. They command my duty as they do yours. Yes, I sabotaged you. If they told you to do what I’ve done, you’d do it, too. Then call it honor, and blame your sins on your filthy Bushido.”
She flung her cloth into the bucket with a force that splashed water onto the floor. “Ignorant, arrogant samurai!”
That a peasant should address him thus further enraged Sano. His classless affinity for her vanished. “How dare you insult me!”
Raised to believe that a decent, manly samurai should be above striking a woman, Sano nevertheless refused to let Aoi go unpunished. He grabbed for her shoulders, intending to shake fear and respect into her.