Shinju

satiny folds of discarded kimonos scattered on the floor. He was in the women’s quarters. On tiptoe, he crept sideways down the corridor, his back pressed against the wall, in search of a way into the rest of the house.

Darkness magnified sound; each faint creak of the floorboards under Sano’s feet exploded in his hypersensitive ears. Other noises-the house settling, a shout from somewhere on the estate-made him flinch.

Then he froze. A wavery smear of light was moving toward him down the corridor. An oil lamp, carried by a girl who walked soundlessly on stockinged feet. As she drew nearer, Sano could see her face glowing above the flame. At any moment she would come upon him.

Sano turned to retreat. Then he heard a door slide open somewhere behind him, and footsteps approaching. His mouth went dry; his stomach tensed. Lady Niu? One of the other women? Or a guard investigating the broken window? The footsteps grew louder. He could hear the girl, too, humming a breathy tune as she neared him. His escape cut off from both directions, he slid open the door of the nearest room. He would hide there until the girl and the other unseen person left, and then resume his search for Lord Niu’s quarters. To his disappointment, he found not a room but a large closet crammed full of chests and boxes, with no space left for him. He had to run- one way or the other. Rather than face an unknown and possibly greater threat, he hurtled down the corridor toward the girl.

She gave a startled cry as he tore past her. Then she began to scream in earnest:

“A thief! Help!”

Sano burst through the nearest door in the outside wall. Instead of an outer corridor with access to the grounds, he saw a long, narrow passage ahead of him. The girl kept screaming. He raced down the passage. The door at the end led into an adjoining section of the house. He fled along its maze of corridors. Walls streaked past him in long expanses of wood broken only by mullioned paper windows. The interior windows were dark. Through the outside ones, he could see faint light coming from the garden, but the shadows of heavy bars striped the panes. Where was the door? Much as he hated to leave before he could find the scroll, he had to get out. Now. Before the guards came.

He turned a corner. To his horror, the floor began to emit loud, chirpy creaks every time he stepped on it. He’d hit a nightingale walk, a specially constructed floor that compelled intruders to give audible warning of their approach. Monks, nobles, and warrior lords had made use of this alarm system throughout history; he should have expected the Nius to have it. He tried to run lightly, staying close to the wall. Still the nightingales sang.

The corridor angled into another. A cold draft hit Sano. It came from an open door that led to a patch of lantern-lit garden. But as he raced toward the door, a horizontal oblong of brightness appeared ahead of him in the paper wall as someone lit a lamp in one of the rooms. A door slid open. Light spilled into the corridor. A tall figure stepped into his path.

Sano didn’t wait for the person to speak. He pushed past it and lunged for the door. His feet hit the garden running.

“Eii-chan!” From the corridor, a woman’s voice spoke.

Too late Sano saw the dark shape emerge from the shadows on his right. He sidestepped, but not quickly enough. The full force of the man’s weight knocked him to the ground. The impact jarred his bones. His mask flew off his face; he dropped his sword. Pain burst in his left hip, which took the brunt of his fall. He fought and struggled, grabbing for his sword. But his assailant’s strong hands were turning him onto his stomach, pressing his face into the dirt. Heavy knees came down on the small of his back. Steel arms caught his chest and shoulders in a fierce hug. Slowly, relentlessly, they bent his back upward. Sano gave an involuntary cry as pain shot through his spine. The man was going to break it! Jaws clenched, sweat running down his face, he resisted the pressure. It continued. Back, back his spine arched. He could almost feel the snap…

“No!” The woman’s voice rapped out the order.

To Sano’s immense relief, his assailant let go of him. The weight lifted from his body. Weakly he flopped over onto his back-sore, but unbroken-to face his captors.

Lady Niu stood over him. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, and her grim face, with its layer of white makeup, looked ghostly in the flickering lantern light. The shimmering folds of her dark, sashless kimono enhanced her eerie appearance. With both hands she held a wicked-looking spear poised over his chest.

Then she smiled, lips parting to reveal her gleaming black teeth. She withdrew the spear.

“Bring him into the house, Eii-chan,” she said to the hulking manservant who stood beside her. “We will not kill him… yet.”

Chapter 27

The cruel triumph Sano saw in Lady Niu’s eyes obliterated the slight relief he’d felt at being caught by her instead of her son. Hope died within him. Then Lady Niu turned and walked away. Her dark garments rustled against the ground and trailed up the steps of the veranda after her as she entered the house.

Eii-chan was leaning over him, reaching for him. Sano fumbled for his long sword. He dug his heels into the ground, pushing himself backward in a frantic attempt to evade the manservant. But his sword was tangled in the folds of his cloak, and the worsening pain in his wounds made his movements clumsy. Finally he kicked out at Eii-chan. His feet hit legs as solid as wood and just as unyielding. Eii-chan grabbed him and yanked him to his feet so hard that his arm nearly left its socket. A brutal shove sent him reeling toward the house. His foot struck the bottom step, and he gave a yelp of pain as he crashed against the veranda. Then Eii-chan lifted him by the collar, almost off his feet. One strong hand pinioned both of his behind his back; an arm locked across his chest. Sano struggled, then went rigid when the cold edge of a steel blade touched his neck.

As Eii-chan propelled him up the steps and through the door, Sano tasted his own death. A wild, animal terror surged through him. He fought it by forcing himself to concentrate on the minute details of his surroundings. Wind-bells tinkling from the eaves.

The corridor, no longer dark, but brightened by lamplight from the translucent windowed walls of the room where Lady Niu waited. The manservant’s musty odor, strange but oddly familiar, that provoked in him an urge to sneeze. A faint memory swam just beyond Sano’s grasp. He lost it when Eii-chan thrust him into Lady Niu’s room and pushed him onto his knees.

He formed a quick impression of the room: spacious, with a wall of painted murals and another of built-in cabinets; several lacquer chests; a vase of flowers in the alcove. Then he focused his attention on its occupant.

“Tie him,” Lady Niu ordered. She knelt upon a silk cushion, with more cushions supporting her back and arms. In spite of the heat that rose from the sunken braziers, she had wrapped a thick quilt around her shoulders.

Sano hid his discomfort as Eii-chan bound his wrists and ankles, although the cords dug into his skin and almost immediately began to numb his hands and feet. He suppressed a cry of protest when the manservant took his long sword-symbol of his class and honor-and tossed it on the floor like a piece of trash. All the while he never took his eyes off Lady Niu. He saw that her face was white not with makeup, as he’d thought at first, but with the pallor of illness. Beside her was a steaming cup of liquid that smelled like the sour herb broth Sano’s father took for headaches. How unlucky for him that Lady Niu should happen to be sick at home tonight instead of out celebrating Setsubun! His senses sharpened by fear, he studied her, seeking clues that would tell him how to convince her to release him unharmed.

Her face revealed nothing except the same impassive control she’d displayed during their first meeting. The only words he could think of sounded too much like begging, which would only humiliate him further. He tried to take courage from the fact that she’d brought him inside instead of having him killed at once. Was she open to negotiation? Or did she want to enjoy seeing him tortured?

“Eii-chan,” Lady Niu said, lifting her chin.

After one last tug on Sano’s bindings, the manservant stepped back. He crossed the room to stand at a point halfway between and to one side of Sano and Lady Niu. He shot Sano a brief but eloquent glance that warned of the punishment he would administer should Sano try to escape or harm his mistress. Then his face hardened to its usual stony blankness, as though he didn’t care that he’d just almost killed a man, or that he soon would. Raising one hand to his chest, he lifted a small pouch that hung on a cord around his neck and held it briefly to his nose.