Chapter 4

For an eternity the blade pressed against my skin, and for that eternity I held my breath waiting for the moment that it would slice me. But then she unhanded me, then a long quiet fell between us, our eyes unable to part. That is important to note, that our eyes did not part. It was that I could not do anything else but accept her gaze. I felt a touch in her eyes. Not a physical touch, but something different, deeper. It was both a harsh touch, like the touch of dagger against skin, but also, soft, like the touch of sun on soft snow. Like a lifting wind. And more that I cannot begin to explain, only feel, and it moved me tremendously, and made me feel alive.

“You want to kill me?” My voice crackled with vivacity. I moved closer to her. I stretched out my neck. “I’m right here. Kill me.”

My heart pounded like a drum in my chest. My breathing was heavy and fast. I could not believe what I had just said, but I felt it in my bones that should she slice my throat with my dagger, I would not fault her for it. In fact, I found that I yearned for it.

She smirked. She flipped the dagger to point the handle towards me.

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“Because… I will get nothing from it. And because… well, you are a good woman.”

I breathed as if I had just woken from a nightmare, and I fixed my eyes on hers because I desperately desired the eyes of my would-be killer like I desired a fire on a cold winter night.

“What if you have me all wrong?”

I hadn’t taken the dagger from her. So, she let it fall to the floor. It stuck into the mat.

“I doubt I do,” she said.

Her shoulders slumped. She pulled her blanket over her shoulders and hugged it tightly to her and looked away from me.

“Leave me be,” she said.

“Fine. But tomorrow, we continue where we left off.”

I turned to depart, but just as I started to step away, she stopped me with broken voice. “Revenge…,” she started, and wavered.

I turned back to her and saw that her eyes were wet with tears.

“Revenge is my master,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Very well… for whom do you seek revenge?” I asked.

“My father… my mother… my brothers and sisters,” she choked, her voice trembling as though each word were a knife twisting into her heart. “And for my village, burned to ashes by your husband’s men. My life, my home, the people I love… your husband took it all away from me simply because he was unhappy with our horses.”

She swallowed, then looked up at me with eyes that contained more hurt than I could ever possibly know and repeated, “revenge is my master.”

I could not help but let my heart break like a summer cloudburst for her and in that break, I saw before me not a cold-hearted demon assassin, but a soul broken by deep tragedy. I felt a strong desire to hug her and comfort her for her loss and her despair and all the things that were never given to me when I grieved. Yet I could not do it. I could not comfort her. Not the enemy of my clan. I stopped myself. Instead, holding myself tall, I said in a chiding way, “I do not believe you,” and then I departed.

Those words that came out as an expression of my anger, but even as I said them, I did not believe them. It was obvious to me that she spoke only truth. I saw it in her eyes that she spoke truth. But I was angry.

Where did the anger come from? On some level, I suppose the anger was rightly directed at her, for having brought discord in my life, but mostly the anger was directed at myself. I was angry for being so naive, so entrenched in myself, coddling myself on the cold, stark moroseness of my life that I could not see the wildfires, set by my husband, raging all around me. I was angry that I could only see it now and it took my would-be killer, this wretched creature named Kiyo to make me see it.

Kiyo occupied my every waking moment, haunting me. Her dangerous eyes, their powerful allure; the feel of her hands on my wrist and against my mouth; the utter and effortless control she had over me with my own knife against my throat.

What haunted me most was that my fixation wasn’t just a fleeting response to danger. No, rather the contrary was true: Kiyo who could have brought me death, instead saw what my life had become, a hollow echo, and chose to drown it out. She awakened me once more, and for that, I needed more of her. I needed to sit beside her in her cold oubliette and be ignited by her. I suppose that is to say I could not simply allow her to wither away because she had become, ironically, my singular hold on life. I needed her to live and to do that, she needed food.

I told no one about my newfound resolve. Not even her.

My husband had always been a keenly suspicious man. He always had a way of sniffing out plots. He could always tell when deception was afoot. Such was how he managed to stay alive despite his many enemies. So, beside the distaste of disloyalty for contravening his intention to execute Kiyo by immurement, I was beset with fear that he would discover my conspiracy. That fear was not enough to stop me carrying it out.

That evening, following dinner, I thought to sneak into the kitchen’s courtyard, because hanging from the eaves there, were the seasons’ persimmons being cured into hoshigaki. Golden-orange and plump, the persimmons were far from ripening into the sugary treats they were destined to become, they were nonetheless packed full of much needed sustenance. Enough at least to borrow some time for my dear prisoner. What a treat a persimmon would be to have with green tea in the morning. How delighted she would be. And how gratifying it would be for me to watch her eat it. But my excitement got the better of me. I did not pay enough attention to my surroundings as I snuck into the courtyard to steal the persimmons — as soon as I had my hand on a string of the sumptuous jewels, Renshō barked from inside the kitchen then came rushing at me with a butcher’s knife.

As he stepped out of the kitchen and his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw that it was not some common thief, but the lady of the house with her sneaky paws on his precious persimmons. He gasped, then bowed deeply.

“M-my Lady!” he rasped.

His eyes went to the persimmon my hands were wrapped around. “But… what is the meaning of this?”

I spent a moment searching for reasonable words and settled on a flat, “I am hungry.”

He made an exasperated sound, the sort of sound one would make when someone of greater status misbehaves in their presence, in this case the misbehavior being that the lady of the castle would eat anything outside her mealtimes. But the exasperation turned into a sort of prickled excitement. His face tightened up from a flustered confusion to elation and before he spoke, I already knew what his mind had already set itself on as the rationalization for my severe transgression of household rules.

He removed his cloth headband from his head and stuffed it into his apron pocket and bowed deeply to me again. “Gozen-sama, you are with a child! And… and…. I have not fed you properly today. I am ashamed! Please forgive me!”

I straightened up and I placed my hand on my belly to provide him confirmation of his rather convenient supposition. With a haughty and impatient tone, I replied, “you’re forgiven. Now your lady would like something to eat. A few of these persimmons ought to do the trick…”

I reached up to pluck one of the sumptuous fruits from its string, but Renshō stopped me.

“My lady, please! The persimmon is not yet fully cured.”

He glanced over his shoulder, then craned his neck cautiously closer to whisper, “I know I am not supposed to, given the food scarcity and all, but please allow me to make you a hearty miso soup.”

I protested, but he wouldn’t have it. He beckoned me to sit in the tatami room adjacent to the kitchen, where the chef and his staff normally took their food and tea, and a moment later, came out carefully cradling a steaming bowl of miso. He set it down in front of me. In the cloud of miso floated a boiled egg, a dark ribbon of nori, and generous chunks of mackerel. I gave him a polite smile to hide my consternation to be offered food that I could not easily sneak away with. I considered pocketing the boiled egg as soon as Renshō looked away, but I was soon met with the disappointing realization that he was going to watch very intently until I finished every drop of the damn soup. Though I was not hungry, I ate it all, and thanked him for his generousness, made sure he promised me that he would keep my “pregnancy” a secret between us, and stomped back to my chamber, fretting with a tantrum that I have failed to take any food for Kiyo.

My husband’s chief retainer, Hirotomo, found me at the tea house with my handmaidens to watch the full moon’s rise while I digested the heavy miso soup. Hirotomo bowed curtly. “Lady Keiko, my lord beckons you.”

I followed the Hirotomo to the bed chamber and he left me standing there. Behind the shoji, I heard the muffled giggles of women, and I saw the shadowed shapes of a romp. “Go get that,” I heard Tanenaga say. Footsteps approached, and the door slid open.

Mitsuyo stood there, naked, her hair disheveled, her lips curled into a teasing smirk. She shook hair from her face, leaned against the door frame and looked me up and down.

“What do we have here? Princess Keiko, finally coming down from up high for a romp with us degenerates?”

She reached for my hand, but I pulled away from her, causing her to huff indignantly. “Well, if not that, then why are you here? I’m cold, you know.”

“The effects of the weather on my husband’s playthings are currently the least of my concerns,” I snapped. “Bring my husband to the door.”

Mitsuyo glared at me, but it was fleeting. She laughed and shrugged in an infuriatingly light way. “Fine. Boring always suited you anyway.”

She turned towards the room. “Tanenaga,” she sung. “Guess who it is?”

Only Mitsuyo could dare speak this way, flaunting her irreverence unchecked because Tanenaga encouraged it. He encouraged it for the same reason he had her come to the door now — to remind me how easily I could be replaced by another woman. A needless act, of course. I have always behaved myself. I’ve always given him my utmost loyalty. Nevertheless, it was in his nature to act in such a manner, as it was the alpha wolf’s nature to gnash at his pack-mates to remind them of their places.

Tanenaga rose, came to the door. “Good evening, love.”

I bowed and gave him a smile. “You’ve called for me, danna-sama?”

“Yes, it occurred to me just now that you have yet to provide me any information about the prisoner.”

My throat went tight. I hesitated to say anything at first but decided I ought to anyway. I needed to tell him everything she had told me and hope that he would show her compassion. As uncharacteristic as that might be, there was always a chance.

“Kiyo is from Iwate. Her family are the ones that provided you the horse for your stable. She… she told me a lie that you had killed her family, and had her village razed…”

Tanenaga thought for a moment, then barked a laugh.

“Ah, I see. Yes. I remember. My Iwate horses. They performed poorly in the last campaign. Cowardly horses that faltered when they were needed most, and so they brought me shame. They humiliated me in front of the shogun. It is true, what she said. How could I not punish the breeders of such cowardly horses for having humiliated me so?”

He tilted his head slightly at me. “You should remember the battle of which I speak. Your own father rode on the back of one of those Iwate horses, and it cost him his life. Hah! To think that they would send a kunoichi to murder the daughter of the very general slain by their incompetence assures me that they are no better than cravenly dogs and deserved no better treatment than what I had delivered. How dare they.”

I was shaken to the core by the revelation. My mind resounded like a deep bell. My heart stopped, and I was suddenly cold. All of what Kiyo spoke was true then, and in that moment, seeing the amusement on my husband’s face, I felt that she was right to seek her vengeance.

I smiled and stuporously responded, “Indeed… but, danna-sama, she has seen the errors of her ways. She sees now that her family had been duly punished. If I may humbly offer my counsel, perhaps giving her mercy may bring balance to your justice. Compassion, when paired with stern judgment, reflects wisdom that will not go unnoticed.”