Reiko focused her gaze on Yugao’s face, in the hope of keeping Yugao’s attention on hers instead of on her hands.
“After the war, there were many samurai from the Yanagisawa army who were executed. They were his comrades.” Fury on her lover’s account kindled in Yugao’s eyes. “My father killed lots of them. He bragged about it because they’d been important men and he was a hinin, but they were dead and he was alive. Every time he killed one, he cut a notch on the wall.”
Reiko remembered seeing the notches in the hovel. She inched her right hand to her side, toward the knife behind her.
“I couldn’t let him keep killing them,” Yugao said. “That night I couldn’t stand to listen to him bragging anymore. So I stabbed him. It was the most I could do for my beloved.”
Finally Reiko understood why Yugao had kept her motive secret-to avoid mentioning Kobori and exposing his crimes. But Reiko also sensed that past and present grievances had combined to push Yugao over the edge. Yugao had long been nursing a bitter hatred toward her father for violating and then rejecting her. She might have endured it forever, or stabbed him at any other time, but his offenses against Kobori’s comrades had finally tipped her unstable mind into killing her father.
“Why did you kill you mother and sister?” Reiko asked.
A contemptuous smile twisted Yugao’s lips. “While I was stabbing him, they just huddled in the corner and cried.” Her manner turned argumentative. “They could have stopped me. If they’d cared about him, they would have. The miserable cowards deserved to die.”
Perhaps Yugao had wanted them to stop her, Reiko speculated. Perhaps she’d still loved her father despite everything. If so, then she’d punished them for their failure to save him from her as well as for past injustices toward her. Now there remained only one more issue to resolve.
“Why did you confess?” Reiko asked.
“I did it for him,” Yugao said. “And I wanted him to know. I didn’t expect to ever see him again, but he would hear what I’d done. He would understand why. He would know I’d died for him and be grateful.”
The magnitude of her delusion astounded Reiko. “Then why did you run away from jail instead?” Reiko had her arm bent behind her, fingers on the hilt of the knife.
“The fire was an omen. It said I was meant to reunite with him instead of die for him.” Yugao frowned in sudden suspicion at Reiko. “What are you doing?”
“Just scratching my back,” Reiko lied.
“Put your hands where I can see them.”
As Reiko obeyed, she gave up hope of striking at Yugao before Yugao could strike her. She thought up a new tactic. “You killed for Kobori. You were ready to sacrifice your life for him. What did he ever do for you?”
Yugao looked at Reiko as if she was stupid to ask. “He loves me.”
“Did he say so?”
“He doesn’t have to. I know.”
“How do you know?”
“He makes love to me,” Yugao said.
“You mean he takes his pleasure from you,” Reiko said. “That doesn’t mean he cares anything for you except physically.”
“He came to me after the war. It didn’t matter to him that I was a hinin.” For the first time Yugao sounded eager to prove that she meant as much to Kobori as he did to her. “He wanted to be with me.”
Reiko thought of the beating taken by Yanagisawa’s faction during the war, and she spoke on a hunch: “Was he injured?”
“Yes. What of it?”
“So he was hurt and he didn’t have anywhere else to go. And I bet that as soon as he was well, he left. Didn’t he?”
The distress on Yugao’s face told Reiko she’d guessed right. “He had to go. He had important things to do.”
“More important than you,” Reiko said. “Tell me, when you escaped from jail, was he glad to see you?”
Yugao snapped, “He has problems on his mind.”
“And you became one of them,” Reiko deduced. “He knew you could be his downfall. And he was right. You brought the law to him. He’ll dump you as soon as he can.”
“I don’t care,” Yugao said, but her eyes glistened with tears and misery; her voice shook as her bravado deserted her. “He’s all I have.”
At last Reiko saw through Yugao, to the spirit inside her hard shell. Loss and deprivation had charted the path of Yugao’s life. Yugao had lost her innocence, as well as her mother’s love, because of her father’s depravity. She’d lost her home, her affluent life as a merchant’s daughter, and her place in society. She’d lost her father’s affection to her sister. After she’d murdered her family, she’d lost her kin and her freedom. Now she clung desperately to the one thing she hadn’t yet lost.
“I won’t let you take me away from him!” she cried.
Even as Reiko pitied her, Yugao blinked away her tears. The familiar shield of hostility hardened her gaze. “I’m sick of listening to you.” Her voice was raw but tough. Her eyes blazed with hatred that had worsened because Reiko had forced her to expose herself. “It’s time to shut you up for good.”
Disarmed, blind, and helpless, Sano realized that if things continued like this, he didn’t have a chance. He must gain control over the situation. The first thing was to get himself out of the Ghost’s trap. Sano crawled along the floor until he found a wall made of wooden panels. He groped across and up it until his hand met a groove. He inserted his fingers and pulled. The panel slid.
“What are you doing?” Kobori’s tone said that he knew Sano was changing the rules of the game and he didn’t like it.
Behind the panel was another, made of paper framed by mullions. Light glowed in streaks through it, just bright enough that when Sano glanced around he could see that he was alone in an unfurnished room. He slid open the panel. On the other side were rough planks, fastened over a doorway. The moonlight shone through the cracks between them: The house had been boarded up to keep thieves out. Sano pried at the planks with his left hand; his right hand and whole arm were still numb and useless. When the planks didn’t yield, he thumped on them.
“You can’t escape me,” Kobori whispered.
His voice moved closer, accompanied by legions of footsteps that echoed through the house. As Sano looked around in desperation, he saw a flimsy staircase built of wooden slats and poles rising from a corner. He lunged up it.
“Where are you going?” Kobori’s voice sharpened.
Sano reached the top of the staircase, which ended at a platform near the ceiling. He pushed up on the ceiling, and a trapdoor lifted. Either Kobori had forgotten to seal this exit or had thought Sano wouldn’t find it. Sano thrust his head through the opening, into moonlight and fresh, pure wind.
“Stop!” Kobori ordered, his whisper rising to a harsh volume. “Come back!”
With an awkward, muscle-wrenching effort, Sano pulled himself onto the roof. He stood on its rough, slanted thatch surface, massaging his right arm and hand back to life. The roof spread some two hundred paces long and half as wide, with humps over its gables. Above Sano loomed the top level of the house, its balcony, and the high, forested slope. Below him lay the roof of the bottom level, the valley, and the hills that fell away toward the dim, few lights of Edo. The moon rode low on its arc through the stars, but still shone bright. It wasn’t the best battlefield in the world, but at least here he could see the Ghost coming.
“You wanted me badly enough to break into my house,” Sano called down through the trapdoor to Kobori. “If you still want me, you’ll have to come up here.”
“If you want me, you’ll have to come back inside,” Kobori retorted.
A stalemate slowed time to a virtual halt. Sano flexed his arm and hand. They tingled as the numbness faded. He realized a fundamental truth about why the Ghost killed on the sly. It wasn’t just because he was good at dim-mak.