Chapter 7

I could not drift into sleep. My mind raced too fretfully with unanswered questions. If Tanenaga suspected me, then should he have not said something? Was I not afforded that respect? Of course not. That does not become his character. It was in his nature to suspect everyone around him, and in this case, if I am right to say that he suspected me, then he was, to my distress, right to do so. This was his mind game to draw the confession of my betrayal out of me. A part of my punishment.

Anger trickled into me to think that he found pleasure in all of this. This was a game to him. He was wont to play so cruelly with the lives of his subjects and his enemies alike.

My mind went to what Tanenaga said earlier about my being with another child, and the thought made me nauseous. I could not bear the idea, but he was not right. I was not pregnant. I did not feel it.

I thought of Kiyo again. I thought of her sitting alone in the cold, dark dungeon, shivering beneath the sparse blanket wrapped around her, with only the moonlight for company. Starving. Needing me.

My eyes fell upon Tanenaga’s rumpled kimono, and I noticed in there the shape of a long kimono. His katana, and then, as if I had just fit together a fine puzzle, I realized what then I must do: take Tanenaga’s katana and force the guard to let Kiyo free. My heart resounded with this answer, and I was compelled to action.

I shifted out from beneath Tanenaga, slipped quickly into my kimono, freezing when he shifted in his sleep, continuing when he did not wake.

I crept over to his clothes pile, and as gingerly as I could, pulled his katana from its sheathe. When I had it in hand, I made for the door. As I slid the door opened, a deep voice froze me and sent a shock of fear spidering down my body.

“And where do you think you’re going, my love?”

I spun around to find Tanenaga propped up on his elbows. He watched me with his coal fire eyes, his jaws clenched, his nostrils flaring.

When I said nothing in return, he laughed, then said, “Do you not think I know what you’ve been doing all this time, Keiko? I know that you’ve been visiting that bitch every night. I know you’ve been feeding her. It took me a while to figure it out. You weren’t stealing food from the kitchen. You weren’t giving her your own food. How were you doing it? I thought on this puzzle for several days, but it was only after Renshō let loose that you were pregnant that I noticed that, indeed, your breasts have changed shaped, and so it must be that you were producing milk and that this was how you were feeding her. But you are not pregnant, are you?”

I did not answer his question. I did not know how to. In fact, I felt it to my core that he was right, that I was not pregnant, and if I were, I would not be producing milk so early in the pregnancy anyways.

He laughed again, and said, “so it must be true. That kunoichi is a demon and she has cast a spell on you. How very clever of her.”

There was a nastiness in the way the laugh came out. I clutched his katana tightly and raised it.

“Drop it, Keiko,” he said.

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. He rose to his feet and walked over to me. His muscled body rippled in the like an ox. My grip on the sword shook. I held it outstretched, threatening him with the blade to keep distance between us, but he did not take the threat seriously. A smile grew on his face as he approached me. He relished this sort of confrontation, after all.

“I wondered if I should just throw you in the cell with the kunoichi,” he said. Then she can suckle on your teat all day long. But that would make you happy, wouldn’t it? Would I want that?”

He pushed aside the blade, then wrapped his hand around my neck, pressing his thumb hard against my windpipe.

I released my grip on the sword. It clattered on the floor. I tried pleading for Tanenaga to stop, but his grip on my throat was so hard, I could not let words out. My vision went blurry with tears he squeezed from my eyes. The world began to fade. It began to spin. The only clear thing in my mind was this: I was to die at the hands of my husband, Lord Tanenaga.

Then something boiled up inside me. A newfound strength. A supernatural strength. It could have been a result of desperation, or resolve, or perhaps wrath, and the shape it took was that of my dear Kiyo. It screamed at me to reach into my kimono to grab my dagger. And I felt her hand guide mine to take my dagger and swipe it viciously at my husband. The sharp blade found purchase. It struck Tanenaga down to the bone of his thigh. He howled in pain.

Eyes wide with shock, he reached down to touch the blood on his thigh. He shook with rage. “You whore!” he roared, then threw me to the ground.

He picked up his sword and charged at me. I grabbed the only large object that I could find in my vicinity — the charcoal brazier and threw it at him. The glowing red charcoal spewed out of it like the flames of a dragon’s breath, covering his entire body.

He screamed, swatting at himself madly as if attacked by a swarm of bees. I took that moment of opportunity, and lunged at him, and again I felt a hand guiding my hand to plunge my kaiken in his gut. I twisted it in. I twisted deeply. His eyes widened into vicious globes like the eyes on the most horrifying oni mask, and his mouth moved open and shut in a motion resembling that of a carp, not to yell, or to speak, or even breathe, but simply out of shock. He stumbled back away from me, and raised his katana to deliver a blow, but he missed widely and stumbled to the floor. He tried rising but faltered, and then collapsed into a heap, his blood spreading quickly to soak the tatami. In the final flickering moments of his life, he turned his head to look up at me and said, “you… demon… bitch…”

Then his head fell, and his last breath, a gurgling death rattle, escaped him.

For what had just transpired, I did not react in a way that I considered I would have. I was calm. Collected. The clouds of chaos blew clear from my mind as if a kami blew them away…

The charcoal that was now scattered upon the tatami floor began to ignite into small flames, but I did not waste time to put them out. I needed urgently to go to Kiyo, and so, I collected Tanenaga’s katana and ran.

At the bottom of the dungeon stairs, I found the portly guard staring at me, puzzled. His eyes went wide, and he cried out in panic when he realized the significance of my being soaked in fresh blood, carrying my husband’s katana. But he didn’t have enough time to react any more than that. I did not afford him the opportunity. I plunged the katana into his chest, sinking it in until it hit the wooden column behind him. He gurgled and his limbs shook violently; his eyes wide in horror. Pink spittle frothed out from between his teeth.

After his body went limp and he had wheezed his last breath, I attempted removing the blade from his chest, but it was lodged so deeply in the wood behind him, I could not pull it out. I left it and scrounged his pockets for the keys to Kiyo’s iron clasps. When I found them, I unlocked and opened the prison door.

“What’s going on?” Kiyo exclaimed as she shielded her eyes from the light that burst into her cell. When her eyes grew accustomed to the brightness, they widened in shock at the sight of my blood-stained kimono.

“No time to explain. Show me your wrists. I’m breaking you out of here,” I said.

I unlocked her wrist clasps, and her ankle clasps. When Kiyo was free, I lifted her to her feet and embraced her, and she squeezed back tightly.

“We should go,” I said.

Kiyo nodded. We sprinted out the prison cell.

Kiyo paused at the dead guard.

“Did you do this?” she asked in awe. She dislodged the katana from the body and wiped the blood on the blade off on his kimono.

I moaned. “I don’t know what came over me! I had to do it…” In a dull, dazed voice, I added, “It’s done. Tanenaga is dead.”

Kiyo sheathed the katana and tied it to her belt. She put her hands on my shoulders, then embraced me, then, not smiling, not with a look of satisfaction or pleasure at the news, gave me a look that said our only prerogative now was to escape. I understood this clearly, and without wasting a moment led Kiyo up the stairs.

The castle was dark and fast asleep when we made our escape, the quiet halls illuminated only by the cold, pale light of the full moon, which was, fortunately, not much, as the moon was veiled by a layer of clouds. We scurried in the shadows as quietly as dormice.

I led Kiyo to the castle stable. The large war horses stirred, whinnied and clomped their hooves, eyeing us anxiously.

Kiyo spotted a large black mare in one of the stalls and it snorted at her as if to recognize her.

“Oh!” she cried. “This is one of my father’s horses.” She went to the horse, and nuzzled it, grinning widely.

“How wonderful,” I said, paying no interest to the fact. I was too busy peering out the entrance of the stable down the main avenue of Erimo town, eyeing Kiyo’s only possibility of escape, which was the gate at the far end, the only way in and out of the town.

“The gate’s shut,” I told her. “But I have an idea. I’m going to go open it. You get that horse ready and as soon as the gate comes open, you ride swiftly.”

“I’m not leaving without you,” Kiyo replied.

“Fine. I’ll wait for you at the gate.”

I walked hurriedly down the wide dirt road until I came to the guard tower where I knew to be the lever that would drop the counterweights to let the gate open. I entered and walked up the stairs to the top of the tower and found four sentries there, huddled around a brazier for warmth.

“What the-?” one shouted. They all jumped to their feet and grabbed their swords. In feigned distress, I cried out, “my husband is under attack! Assassins in the castle. He needs your help!”

The guards stood frozen, looking at each other with confusion. I grew distressed that they did nothing, that my plan was beginning to fall apart as soon as it was hatched, until one of the guards shouted, “What are you waiting for? Go help the Daimyo! I’ll man the tower.”

The other three guards grunted and jumped into action, scurrying down the stairs, leaving the one that goaded them behind. It was Kazuo.

Overcome with relief at the serendipity of having my dear, trustworthy Kazuo in my moment of need, I breathed a sigh of relief.

He stared at me in horror.

“You’re bleeding,” he cried, running over to help me.

I held out a hand to stop him. “No. I’m fine. It’s… not my blood.”

Kazuo looked at me completely nonplus.

“Tanenaga is dead. I killed him. And I am helping Kiyo escape,” I said flatly.

Kazuo fell into a shock and did not respond, which was just as well, as I did not have the time to explain much more. The gate needed to come open, and time was of the essence.

I searched around for the lever that would open the gate and found it in the far corner. The lever was attached to a ratchet mechanism wound with the chains that held the counterweights raised, and thus the gate shut. Freeing the lever from the ratchet would cause the gate counterweights to fall. I pushed my whole weight onto the lever, but it did not budge a hair.

“I beg of you, move!” I cried, but my small body was just not enough.

I glanced back at Kazuo beckoning him to help with my eyes.

“Kazuo, please help!”

He looked at me in a daze, unsure of what to do. I had just challenged his loyalty to his Daimyo. He was paralyzed with what to do. I did not blame him. He was conditioned, as with all loyal subjects, as with I, to be above all else, loyal to the lord of the castle. He knew nothing else but loyalty.

I quickly abandoned hope that Kazuo would help me once more. After all, he had not been bewitched by a demon as I had been. I could not expect him to continuing being disloyal to his Daimyo after what I had just revealed to him. If anything, I expected that he might even stop me and apprehend me. As long as the lever came free of the ratchet, I did not care. But that seemed more and more to be a fruitless endeavor. My arms burned with strain. I cried out in frustration. I yanked as hard as I could to no avail. Then I felt Kazuo behind me. He reached around my shoulders, grabbing the lever with me and together we pulled to break the lever free of the ratchet, causing a loud commotion from the spinning chains and the falling heavy counterweights, and the gates swinging open.