The knot came out with an almost inaudible scrape that nevertheless sent Sano hurtling back under the house. Had Lord Niu heard? Sano lay still, clutching his dagger and expecting shouts and chaos. But nothing happened. He waited for what seemed like forever. The villa remained steeped in silence. He crept out again. Still holding his dagger, he looked around, then put his eye to the knothole.
A ring of candles lit the naked body stretched out on the floor. It was not a man after all, but an adolescent samurai with a shaved crown and the long forelock that signified he’d not yet had his manhood ceremony. He lay motionless, eyes closed. An unnatural redness, perhaps from the drug, colored his slack face. Lord Niu stood over him, also naked, his manhood erect. Sweat sheened his muscles. The scarred and withered right leg was a monstrous deformity grafted onto the perfection of the rest of his body. His feverish eyes shone; his parted lips glistened wetly. Chest heaving with rapid, shallow breaths, he dropped to his knees beside the boy. One hand grasped his own organ and began to stroke it.
Sano, clued by Cherry Eater’s parting remark, had half expected something of the sort. Now both disgust and disappointment rose inside him. Child prostitution, even in a grotesque form like this, was legal, common, and socially acceptable. Lord Niu was guilty of nothing but indulging himself outside the Yoshiwara licensed quarter. Even a refined young lady like Yukiko would have known this. And Lord Niu would neither have paid Noriyoshi nor killed him to keep such a secret.
Then Lord Niu reached behind him with his free hand and picked up a knife. He held it aloft, pointed upward, so that the blade sparkled in the candlelight. He stared at it as if mesmerized. His tongue passed once over his lips. The hand on his organ moved faster. With a slow, deliberate motion, he lowered the knife. He held it to the sleeping boy’s neck. Just as slowly, he drew it across the rosy flesh. A thin line of blood welled against the blade.
Rooted to the spot in awestruck horror, Sano realized too late that someone had come up behind him.
Chapter 21
There stood a woman, her eyes wide with fear. She opened her mouth to scream.
Instinct took over. In a flash, Sano seized her and dragged her away from the house and into the woods. He pressed her against him with one hand clamped over her mouth, the other holding his dagger before her face. She squealed and kicked. Locked together, they struggled. He could feel her heart beating as she tried to twist free.
“I won’t hurt you,” Sano whispered urgently against her ear. “Please don’t scream.”
Merciful Buddha, he didn’t want to kill her! But he couldn’t let her raise the alarm. Belatedly he recognized her: the Nius’ maid.
“O-hisa. You remember me-Sano Ichirō. I came to the yashiki and to Miss Yukiko’s funeral. Will you be quiet if I let you go?”
A nod and a whimper. O-hisa stopped struggling. Sano released her cautiously, ready to grab her again, or to run.
O-hisa turned to face him. Hugging herself, she nodded toward the house.
“He’s doing it again, isn’t he?” she whispered. Her face bunched, as if she might cry.
“Again? He does this often, kills children for his own pleasure?” Sano experienced anew the shock of seeing Lord Niu cut the boy’s throat. He had to save the boy-if it wasn’t already too late. He took two steps toward the house, remembered the guards, and stopped. They would kill him before he got near Lord Niu. But he had to intervene, even if he died in the attempt. Clutching his dagger, he offered a silent prayer for courage and strength. Then, before he went to his confrontation with Lord Niu, he turned to O-hisa. There was one thing he must know before he faced death.
“Did Yukiko know about this?” He assumed that Noriyoshi, in league with Cherry Eater, had known.
“No, no!” O-hisa’s hands fluttered in vehement denial, and at first Sano thought she meant Yukiko hadn’t known. Then she said, “He never killed them before. He just cuts them a little, then sends them home.”
Sano didn’t believe her. He’d seen the blood, and Lord Niu’s desire for it. He ran back to the house and looked through the hole.
Lord Niu knelt in the center of the room, his back to Sano, a white under-kimono draped over his body. Beside him, two guards were wrapping the boy in a blanket. The boy’s eyes remained shut, but he groaned softly. The superficial cut, cleansed of blood, encircled his throat like a red thread.
Relief forced a long, shaky breath out of Sano. Neither he nor that boy would die tonight. Sheathing his dagger, he returned to O-hisa.
“I didn’t understand, either,” she babbled, her voice rising. “It’s my fault Miss Yukiko is dead!”
“Shhhh!” Sano took O-hisa’s arm and pulled her deeper into the woods. “What do you mean? You didn’t kill her-did you?” He could not believe that this frail, weepy woman was a murderer.
O-hisa responded in characteristic fashion: she burst into tears. Sano wanted to comfort her, but they couldn’t stand there indefinitely. The patrol might arrive at any moment. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard.
“Tell me what you mean,” he ordered.
Halted in mid-sob, O-hisa glared at him in bewildered outrage. Then she blurted out, “Miss Yukiko died because I thought the young master was killing boys.” With pathetic bravado, she drew herself up, head high. “Honor demands that I take my own life as payment, but I am a coward. So arrest me, please.”
Sano let go of O-hisa and cast a nervous glance at the house. “Why don’t you tell me why you think you’re responsible for Miss Yukiko’s death,” he whispered. Here, finally, was the person who could tell him why Lord Niu had killed Yukiko and Noriyoshi. But if she didn’t start making sense soon, he would have to leave.
O-hisa let loose a torrent of words, as if eager to share the secrets she’d kept for too long. “I came to work for Lady Niu last autumn,” she said. “After three weeks at the yashiki, the housekeeper sent me here to serve the young master, who comes when his health requires that he leave the city. The weather was warm. The young master’s window was open, and I happened to look inside as I was passing by. I saw… what you saw.
“And two nights later, the same thing, with a different boy! I thought he’d killed them. All the blood, and they lay so still. Later, the young master’s men would come and carry them away. At first I told no one. It’s not my place to inform on my master. But after the third time, I couldn’t let him kill more boys. So… so I told Miss Yukiko, who was always kind when she spoke to me.” O-hisa’s voice broke.
“What did she do?” Sano asked, hiding his impatience while she got herself under control.
“She didn’t believe me. She loved her brother and could think no evil of him. But she must have wanted to see for herself. The next time the young master came here, she followed him. I was there”-she pointed to the window-“watching, when she arrived. She opened the door without knocking and came into the room.” O-hisa gulped. Her hand went to her mouth.
Sano remembered Midori saying that Yukiko had gone out by herself one night. That fact had seemed unimportant at the time.
Now he knew she’d come here. He admired Yukiko’s courage and her faith in Lord Niu, even as he regretted the dangerous innocence that made her breach her brother’s privacy.
“Lord Niu was with a boy,” he prompted.
A vigorous nod. “The boy had cuts on his throat and chest. The young master was dressing. When he saw Miss Yukiko, he was very angry. He scolded her for coming into his room without permission and slapped her face. Miss Yukiko began to cry. She asked him how he could kill innocent boys and begged him to stop. I cried too, I was so afraid. The young master shouted that the boys were drugged, not dead, and that he hadn’t harmed them. Then the boy groaned and sat up. He saw Miss Yukiko and the young master, and saw the cuts on his body. He screamed, ‘What have you done to me? Who are you? Where am I?’