The chorus of insects rose to a shrill cacophony.
Wolves bayed.
A chill wind rippled the pond.
Sano stepped through the door.
32
You can’t kill me,” Reiko said even as she recoiled from the blade against her neck and saw the destructive intent in Yugao’s eyes. “You need me to protect you.” Although she realized that Yugao was mad enough to kill her anyway, Reiko tried to dissuade her: “Troops will be here any moment. Without me alive, you’re dead.”
Yugao laughed, reckless and exhilarated. “I don’t hear them coming, do you? He’s winning. We don’t need you.”
Reiko heard men running away from the house: The army was deserting. And what of Sano? Even if he wasn’t dead, even if Hirata told him she was in here, could he fight his way past the Ghost and rescue her? Despair overwhelmed Reiko. She said, “You’ll need me to get out of Edo. There’s a big hunt going on for you both. If I’m with you, my husband and my father will want to save me. You can bargain with them: Your freedom in exchange for my life.”
Yugao shook her head. “He can move like the wind. When we’re together it’s as if we’re invisible.” Her gaze darted as she tried to follow the action outside. Nervous tremors from her body jittered the knife against Reiko’s skin. “We’ll slip right through the army’s fingers. You would only slow us down.”
Reiko saw her own death fast approaching. Her neck muscles convulsed under the knife. But at least maybe she could tie up a loose end in her investigation. “If I’m to die, then answer one question for me first. Why did you kill your family?”
She saw admiration mixed with scorn in Yugao’s eyes. “You never give up, do you?”
“After all the work I’ve done on your behalf, the least you can do in return is satisfy my curiosity.” And the longer they talked, the more chance Reiko had to save herself.
Yugao considered, then shrugged. “All right.” Reiko sensed that she wanted the satisfaction of showing how wrong Reiko had been about her reasons. “I don’t suppose it would hurt to tell you now.”
The moonlight penetrated the interior of the house barely enough to show Sano a passage that extended into a black void. He pressed his back to a wall, his left hand groping along it, his right hand clutching his sword. As the darkness swallowed him up, his eyesight deserted him, but his other senses grew more acute. He heard each tiny creak of the floor under his weight; his feet felt the thin gaps between its boards. His fingers traced the pattern of a lattice partition. He smelled a tinge of male human sweat in the musty odor of closed, unaired space.
Kobori had passed this way during the last few moments. He’d left his spoor.
Sano projected his mind outward, searching for his foe as he inched along. He sensed empty rooms behind the partition and across the passage, felt the Ghost waiting for him not far away. If he could smell Kobori, then Kobori could smell him. His heart pounded so loudly that Kobori must hear it. And Kobori had probably memorized every part of the house so well he could navigate it in pitch-darkness. Sano’s muscles flinched in anticipation of a strike coming out of nowhere. It wasn’t too late to turn back. But valor overrode common sense. Sano kept moving.
He glanced backward at the faint, blurry shape of the doorway lit from outside. It seemed a world away even though he’d walked only thirty paces. When he slid his foot forward, the floor dropped off beneath it. He probed with his toe, which touched the riser and next step of a staircase leading to the lower level of the house. He clung to a railing as he slowly, carefully descended the stairs. At the bottom he forged ahead, down another passage. Its absolute darkness was like a living tissue that breathed mildew and dust into his lungs. He had the eerie feeling that the boundary between himself and the space around him was dissolving. He had an urge to touch his body and make sure he still existed.
“Keep going, Honorable Chamberlain,” whispered the Ghost. “You’re almost here.”
The wall under Sano’s groping hand ended: He’d reached a corner. Sano edged around it. Several paces farther, he encountered a doorway, beyond which yawned a room. The corridor led him past more rooms, around more corners. Sano pictured himself wandering through a maze while Kobori stood at the center, ready to pounce. His heightened perception verged on the supernatural. The smell of the Ghost’s spoor was so strong he could taste it. He sensed weight shifting somewhere on the floor: Kobori was on the same level of the house with him.
The floor creaked once, then twice more.
Sano hadn’t made those sounds. He stood paralyzed, listening to the Ghost’s footfalls steal up on him, trying to sense from which direction.
“Here I come,” whispered Kobori.
Sano turned toward the voice. He held his sword raised in both hands. As he waited, he felt at once invisible and exposed, terrified of the confrontation yet ravenous for it.
Footsteps approached from all directions, as if the Ghost had multiplied himself into an army. Had Kobori created this illusion, or had Sano’s own mind? Sano had never felt so alone, confused, or vulnerable. His high rank and his legions of subordinates couldn’t protect him. That he had power over virtually every citizen in Japan didn’t matter here. The Ghost had reduced him to the masterless samurai, struggling to survive by his own devices, that he’d once been. His wife, his son, and his accomplishments seemed as remote from him as if he’d dreamed them. All Sano had now, as then, were his swords.
Even though he knew that his enemy intended him to feel this way in order to break his confidence, Sano’s sense of vulnerability and isolation intensified against his will. The Ghost’s footsteps quickened and closed in on him. In blind haste Sano stumbled through a door. Abruptly the footsteps ceased. Sano felt a warm current of air behind him.
It was the Ghost’s body heat..
Panic jolted Sano. Before he could react, he felt a tap on his back, below his right shoulder. Fierce pain sped down his arm. His muscles stiffened in a spasm. His fingers let go his sword, which dropped to the floor. As he doubled over, his teeth clenched in agony, he was seized from behind. Hands groped over his body. He struck out with his uninjured left hand, but it swished through empty air. His right arm dangled useless and aching. He felt a yank at his waist, then heard rapid, retreating footfalls.
Kobori had come and gone.
Alone in the darkness, Sano fell to his knees, shaken and panting from the sudden, violent attack. The pain in his arm ebbed into heavy numbness, as if the blood circulation had been cut off. Sano moved his fingers, but he couldn’t feel them. Kobori had struck some vital point that had disabled his arm. He felt around on the floor, desperately trying to find his sword before Kobori attacked again. But his hand swept vacant floor. He felt for his short sword at his waist, but it too was gone. Kobori had taken both his weapons. He heard Kobori’s laughter, which crackled like flames.
“Let’s see how well you can fight me without your swords,” Kobori whispered.
“My father was an executioner,” Yugao said.
She eased the knife’s pressure against Reiko’s throat. Reiko cautiously let out her breath and relaxed her muscles.
“He would come home and talk about how many people he’d killed and what they’d done to get in trouble,” Yugao went on. “He told us how they acted when they were brought to the execution ground. He talked about how it felt to cut their heads off.”