“You don’t have to do this.” Emily didn’t quite know what this troubled woman wanted from her, and tried to forestall her, before things became too uncomfortable.
“It’s not that, Tenno-san, and I apologize for imposing on you like this. But I didn’t have a chance to prepare myself, and those men downstairs are useless to me.” She paused to take a breath, her face looking flushed.
“What is it you wish me to do?” Emily tried to brace herself for the worst, that Gyoshin wanted her to decapitate her at the end of the ritual. She’d done such things before – had Gyoshin recognized that about her? – and dreaded having to do it again.
“It’s about my clothes. I don’t have suitable undergarments.” She undid the top few buttons on her blouse to reveal a lacy brassiere, and Emily breathed a sigh of relief. “This is not how I want to be found, wearing this. I’m afraid the police will shame my body.”
“Don’t you have anything else here, in the house?”
“No, I’m afraid not… and the housekeeper’s clothes wouldn’t fit me. I’m embarrassed to ask, and I apologize for the imposition, but we’re about the same size, I think… and I just have this feeling about you…”
“About me?”
“That you might wear something less… intimate?”
How strange, the feeling that washed over Emily. She was used to worrying that people could see inside her, that they could weigh her sins just by looking at her face. Yet, here was this poor woman, struggling to prepare herself for something dreadful, and all she saw was a tomboy standing in front of her.
“Oh my god,” Emily said, already undoing the top button on her uniform blouse. “Why didn’t you just say so? You really had me worried for a second there.” Without further ado, and wincing a bit, she pulled the shirt over her head, leaving most of the buttons still fastened. “I think this will do.” She gestured to the sports bra she had on.
Gyoshin nodded, and blushed, then turned away to remove hers while Emily did the same. Once the exchange was complete, she watched as Emily pulled her shirt back on, and reached out to touch one of her scars.
“I’m sorry about these, if I caused them. I didn’t want to…”
Emily placed a finger to her mouth, and looked at her sternly. “Don’t apologize for what you did. It was terrible, and you are seeing the consequences. But you were hardly the worst villain.”
“My grandfather pressed me… and I went along. I tried to persuade myself that it was better for my people, but I always new how wrong it was… so many times since, I tried to convince myself that I would enjoy the power, that I would be able to protect Haru-chan, that events would persuade people to forgive me.” She paused to consider Emily’s face, and the disapproval she couldn’t help reading there, no matter what false smile might cover it. “I admire you, Tenno-san, for your resolve, your clarity. Once I’d involved myself with Soga Jin, there was no turning back. I knew she would have me assassinated within the year, sooner if she realized my grandfather was already dead. From then on, I mainly thought of how to keep Haru-chan safe.”
“But you were willing to have Princess Toshi killed. Was her life not worth as much as Haru-chan’s?”
Gyoshin’s face fell at these words. Whatever glimmer of noble pride she still possessed flickered out. “I am ashamed of nothing so much as that, and I am grateful to Captain Kano and his men for rescuing her, and saving me from the guilt of the deed. I am content to pay this penalty, and even worse things… if only Haru-chan is not also destroyed by my folly.”
“What about Kiku-san… I mean Lieutenant Otani? She was yours, wasn’t she, assigned to shadow me, and ultimately to betray me? Was her suicide part of the plan?” When Gyoshin was unable to answer, Emily continued her interrogation. “Am I right to assume that you also intended to kill me, and to use my dead body to deflect responsibility for the attack on the Imperial Family?”
“That was indeed part of the plan, Tenno-san.” Her voice had shed its apologetic tone, now sounding almost elegiac. “I deeply regret underestimating you. I should have recognized what you are sooner.”
“What I am?”
“When we met the first time, that day outside Chiba City, at Camp Narashino… you defeated Kano with his favorite weapon… I should have recognized you then.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are followed by ghosts, that is easy to see, but you are no yokai. You are much more. When we met at Sasebo… do you remember?... I saw it in your eyes. If only I’d acted then, and sought your blessing instead of a curse.”
What she said sounded absurd, or at least it should have. But Emily had felt the ghosts often enough, and maybe this woman who’d already consigned herself to death had a sharper sense of such things. Should she deny it, or would that be false to something that mattered so much to herself?
“People have mistaken me for a demon before.”
Gyoshin pulled a white kimono over her shoulders and tied a cloth belt around the waist, her eyes locked on Emily the whole time. She retained the dark pants of her business suit even though it didn’t quite fit the ceremonial attire, another concession to modesty. “We may not be pretty, you and I, but we are acquainted with death… and we know not to fear it.”
Emily searched Gyoshin’s face, after this cryptic remark, hoping to find some clue to the mystery of death in this woman who had already consigned herself to it. What could Gyoshin know that she didn’t, even after risking herself so often, and having stripped the life from so many others?
“I suspect there is at least one person downstairs who wishes you were less concerned with the demands of honor… and perhaps takes a different view of your looks.”
* * *
“You looked out for him, didn’t you?” Gyoshin whispered halfway down the stairs, with a gesture towards Tsukino, as he waited with the others in the front room. “It had to be you. None of the Jietai would have taken the trouble, and Kano would not oppose you, not after…”
“I get it,” Emily said, more than a little irritated by the direction Gyoshin’s remark seemed to be taking.
“Thank you for not letting him suffer the consequences of my sins.”
For his part, Tsukino had gone quiet, as if he no longer knew how to process the events swirling around him. Gyoshin stood at the edge of the cloth she’d spread out on the floor, and hesitated for an instant before she sunk to her knees. With her forehead pressed to the floor, she muttered some sort of prayer and her shoulders trembled.
“Forgive me, Hiroki-san.”
Tsukino turned his face away. “There is nothing…”
“I should have been brave, like Takako. I should have been more like her. I didn’t have to listen to Grandfather.”
She grasped the tanto, a long knife with a handle wrapped in silk, and reached for a sheet of parchment paper.
“No,” Tsukino cried. “That’s too much.” He knelt opposite her and touched her face. “Dignity does not require that much of you.”
Standing behind her, Kano let the katana slip from his fingers and clatter on the wooden floor. Emily had hoped to be less involved in this gruesome ceremony, but the expression on his face suggested otherwise.
“I cannot be a party to this.” He stared at Emily as he said this, as if he held her responsible for the situation. She grabbed his hand and stared into his face.
“You must. Tsukino does not possess the requisite skill.”
“It would bring dishonor on the Imperial Family, if it were known that I participated…”
“You are mistaken.” Emily fixed him again with her eyes when he tried to look away. “I understand the Crown Princess better than you, Takeshi-san, and I know she will approve of whatever you do to assist a noble lady in paying her debts.”
Kano still did not respond, but she spotted the slight clenching and unclenching of his jaw muscles, and glanced down at Gyoshin’s imploring face. Whatever her feelings might be about this woman, Emily was not prepared to s
tand by and do nothing.
“Fine,” she muttered, and picked up the katana. Gyoshin nodded at her and nudged Tsukino’s head off her shoulder.
Emily hefted the sword, felt its balance, and something more coursing through the blade and into her fingers. “Of course it would,” she thought. After all, it was probably a family heirloom, handed down through Gyoshin’s family for centuries. Where else would she find a katana, if not among her grandfather’s treasures? This was not a warrior’s sword, she felt that much about it, but how many rituals like this one had it seen? Was this blade merely the last refuge of damned souls, and if she wielded it now, would she somehow link herself to them, too?
Events moved quickly now, though Emily couldn’t tell if it was just her perception or something in the nature of the situation. The sound of tires crunching along the gravel drive reached their ears, probably still more than a quarter mile away. Other voices slipped in through the windows and the doors, the sounds a crowd makes when it is trying to respect some ancient dignity. Gyoshin slipped her arms from the robe and shrugged it off her shoulders. Tsukino gestured helplessly at her as she picked up the tanto and placed the point against her abdomen. Her courage seemed to waver for an instant, but the approaching vehicles brought a new resolve.
The dagger barely drew blood, at least initially, and seemed to require no force, and no pain registered on her face at first. But when she yelped, and then tried to choke it back, Emily raised the katana.
“No,” Gyoshin shrieked through clenched teeth, tears streaming down her face. “Not yet.”
Tsukino fell to his knees and pressed his face to the floor, trying not to see what he was unable to prevent. She pulled the blade across her belly, whimpering until she couldn’t keep from screaming. Voices whispered in Emily’s heart, familiar voices – “Honor your priest,” they said – as she looked down on Gyoshin’s final agony, and she could wait no longer.
The blade whistled through the still air of the room and slipped between the vertebrae at the back of the neck. She’d swung too broadly and severed Gyoshin’s head completely – it hit the floor a moment before the body collapsed next to it, oozing into the cloth. After the initial spray, there was remarkably little blood. Emily shook the blade clean and laid it next to Gyoshin’s body, and when the car doors slammed outside, she stepped into the kitchen to wash the blood off her face.
“Don’t let them defile her body,” she said over her shoulder.
Uniformed officers burst through the entryway a moment later. Emily listened to the ensuing argument from the safety of the kitchen, though not all of it was audible. What she mainly heard was Kano’s warning: “The Imperial Family will take a dim view of any disrespect to Heiji-san’s remains.”
When she returned to the front room, Kano was engaged in some quiet negotiations with a plainclothes officer who seemed to be in charge. Ordinarily, the Emperor had little influence in such matters, but given the recent turmoil, local officials were more solicitous of a distant authority, perhaps in the hope of finding a promise of stability in it.
“It would be easier to justify protecting the deceased, if we learned of the whereabouts of Heiji Nobutada,” the officer said. “The credit for his arrest would go a long way to calming angry spirits among my men.”
“I can help you with that.” Emily spoke from the doorway, holding the dishtowel she’d used to dry her face, blood spatter still visible on her blouse. The plainclothes officer stared at her, as if she were some sort of apparition – this nissei in an American military uniform – until her patience was exhausted. “If you want to find Heiji-san, follow me.”
They found Perry and Okamoto-san just outside the front entrance, and made a special effort not to let Haru-chan see inside. Behind them, a large crowd stood quietly on the lawn, and they also wished to know what had transpired inside the main house of the Heiji estate.
“Who are these people?” Emily posed this question to Kano, who stood nearby, though he had no answer. This was not his home, and these were not his neighbors. But the plainclothes officer understood this crowd, and offered an explanation.
“The Heiji clan has ruled Tottori, Shimane and Okayama for a thousand years. These people, their parents and grandparents… their livelihoods have depended on the Heiji for as long.”
Okamoto-san confirmed this account. “We will mourn the fall of the Heiji, no matter what they may have done. That is how commoners experience the destruction of the great.”
Emily whispered to Perry. “Did she show you where they buried her dragon?” She stayed behind to occupy Haru-chan, while Perry and Okamoto-san led the police to a spot where the earth still bore the marks of recent digging, and the crowd followed along, bearing silent witness to the end of an era… or perhaps a millennium.
Chapter 31
The Lady Vanishes
“Are you sure?” The watery sheen in Andie’s eyes showed how much she wanted to come along. “I won’t be in the way?”
“Of course not,” Yuki said, and Emily couldn’t completely suppress a laugh, listening from the bathroom of their hotel suite.
“We’re just going to visit Kano’s mom,” she said. “You’ll be more than welcome.”
“Weren’t you the one who said the wife of a spymaster wouldn’t be allowed…”
“She’s not a head of state, Andie,” Yuki said.
“But isn’t she like a childhood friend of the Crown Princess, or something?”
“She’s no different than you or I. Remember, the Princess was a commoner before she married into the Imperial Family.”
“If you say so. But she played a crucial role. Without her help, you know, contacting the Crown Princess... anyway, Michael will be disappointed to miss out on meeting her, I suppose.”
The mention of Michael’s name reminded Emily of a conversation from the night before. “Do something for him,” she remembered saying, and then regretting the urgency of her tone.
“There’s very little I can do,” Michael had replied, in his official voice. “Why does he matter so much?”
“Because he helped me.” She was still thinking of the moment when their eyes met in the jungle after her Phrog crashed. Yan had gestured to the beach, pointing her away from the search his men were conducting… a search for her.
“According to Perry, he bruised you up in some sort of sparring match onboard ship.”
“Perry doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“I guess I don’t either.”
This had been one of those moments when her natural reserve didn’t serve her well, and looking back on it now, Emily found much to regret. She decided to focus on getting ready to visit Kano’s mother again, and was relieved to be able to expect a rather more cheerful occasion than their previous meeting. Yan would have to wait for a more auspicious moment.
It still hurt to pull even a loose-fitting shirt over her head, so she definitely didn’t want to mess with anything more fitted. Yuki must have noticed, because she reached up and pulled the knit waistband out so that it would clear her shoulders. Then she lifted it up again, once Emily had finished wriggling it straight.
“Your scars are almost gone, and it’s barely been a week.”
“They still hurt,” Emily said.
“That’s what worries me, sweetheart. They’re healing much too fast.”
“I am what I am, Mom. There’s no point fretting over it now.” Emily no longer harbored any resentment toward her mother, or even her grandfather, for the peculiar shape of her existence. What would be the point? Her own choices were as responsible for her destiny now as any genetic inheritance they might have given her. Every single person born into this world has only one task: to take whatever they’re born with and make something of it. Whatever sympathy others might experience, or friendship, she must ultimately looked inside herself for the true measure of the things she’d done or felt.
She wrapped her mother into a hug, and held on long enough to kiss the top
of her head. When Emily guided her back out into the little sitting room, they found Andie standing by the window, where she had let her attention wander in the general direction of the US Embassy buildings across the street. Michael had called in a favor to get them one of the rooms usually reserved for visiting dignitaries, in one of the poshest hotels in Roppongi.
“You look so… I don’t know, bohemian in that get up,” Andie said, when she turned her attention to the goings-on behind her. “It’s a good look for you.”
“What do you mean ‘bohemian’? It’s just jeans and a leather jacket.”
“We’re just not used to seeing you out of uniform anymore,” her mother said.
“Well, she lives over in the Tabata neighborhood, and they’re not so formal over there…”
“…and maybe a US Navy uniform won’t play so well.”
“I’d rather not draw too much attention,” Emily said, hoping to divert them from this line of inquiry. “Which is also why I think we should take public transportation.”
“Do you know her stop?” Yuki asked.
“Yeah, it’s Komagome, and we can catch the train two blocks from here.”
Traffic on the Nanboku line was heavy on a weekday morning, now that business had returned to some degree of normalcy. The three women squeezed into a car just before the doors closed, standing room only.
“Thank goodness the air conditioning’s working,” Andie whispered, eyeing a row of young men in seats, who hadn’t taken any notice of three potential objects of their generosity.
“That’s not the way it works here,” Yuki said with a snort of amused disapproval.
“Whatever,” Emily said. “We’re not gonna be on here long enough for it to matter.”
The walk from Komagome Station took a little more than fifteen minutes, mainly because Yuki and Andie insisted on exploring the shops. Turning one corner, Emily was disheartened to find an open-air market had taken over several blocks of a street in Kita-ku, near the Kitatabata Post Office. But eventually, she managed to pry Andie loose from a particularly entrancing clothing store.
Girl Rides the Wind Page 33
