A voice in the dark outside his cell. Was he still asleep?
“Masaru-sama.” Urgent. Muffled. A girl’s voice.
“Yukiko?”
“A friend.”
He could make out eyes in the dark, a thin strip of flesh between folds of a
dark cowl, skin painted black. Silhouette of a kusarigama’s hooked, sickle blade at her belt, a sword on her back—a tsurugi by the look—straight blade and square hilt-guard. A weapon that long in the hands of a commoner was a death sentence.
“You’re no samurai. Who are you?”
“I told you. A friend.”
“My friends don’t carry swords.”
“Perhaps that is something they ought to think about.”
“What do you want?” He rubbed his eyes, blinked in the dark. “For you to be ready.”
She slipped a package between the bars, wrapped in hessian, tied with
twine.
“Ready for what?”
“Freedom.”
The headache had been sent by Lady Izanami herself. Yoritomo-no-miya closed his eyes and tried to relax, let the hands just drift over his skin. Deft fingers pressed at the anxiety knotting his shoulders, crouched among the muscles of his neck. Gentle hands cupped his cheeks, forced his head sharply to the right. A loud crack in his ears, as of last winter’s firewood burning in the hearth, and the fist of tension at the base of his skull dissolved. The constriction of his veins mercifully eased, flooding his head with endorphins.
The Shōgun breathed deep, letting the gentle notes of the shamisen pick him up on a wave and carry him far from his cares. The geisha kneeling by his shoulders stepped lithely up onto his back, walking up and down his spine with small, surefooted steps. Little pops among his vertebrae accompanied her on her journey across his irezumi, her weight pushing the breath from his lungs as her toes wriggled into his aching flesh.
He heard the sound of the nightingale floor, wooden boards squeaking across a nail fretboard, the whisper of the rice-paper door sliding aside. He frowned.
“I told you I did not wish to be disturbed, Hideo-san.”
“I beg your forgiveness, great Lord, equal of Heaven,” the minister replied. Without looking up, Yoritomo could tell he was bowing as low as his old back could afford. “The Lady Aisha wishes to speak with you.”
A sigh.
“Send her in.”
Shuffling footsteps, muffled voices, geta across the floorboards and the smell of jasmine perfume. Yoritomo could feel his sister staring at him. He did not look up.
“Seii Taishōgun.” Her voice hung in the air alongside the incense.
“Lady Aisha.” He winced as the geisha ground her heel into a knot beneath his shoulder-blade. “All right, get off, get off,” he waved.
The girl flinched and stepped off his back immediately, shrinking a few steps away, hands drawn up to her face. Fear in her eyes. Bruise on her wrist.
“Leave us,” said Aisha, and the music stopped as if someone had choked it, the sound of instruments being set aside and scurrying feet filling the silence. Aisha slipped off her geta and walked to her brother’s side, her split-toed socks only a whisper across the floor. She knelt beside him on the matting, began slapping his back with the heels of her hands, up and down his spine, air filled with the wet sound of flesh on flesh. Yoritomo twisted his head, felt his neck pop again.
“You are upset,” said Aisha.
“You are perceptive.”
“The arashitora?”
“I should have killed it. And that insolent Kitsune bitch.”
“But your dream, brother,” Aisha said, kneading his flesh. “Hachiman has sent you this gift. You were right not to squander it.”
“Gift or no, that little whore belongs in prison with her bastard father. We will see how much of her spirit remains after a few months in the hole.”
“And what do you think the arashitora will do without her to speak to it? How will you manage the beast without the girl keeping it in check?”
“It knows me well enough by now. I hold the key to both their fates. It would not dare raise a talon to me, not when I can have her killed with a snap of my fingers. I want that Kitsune trash under lock and key. Breathing the stink of her failure, and slowly going blind in the dark.”
“She will die in that prison, brother. She would be food for corpse-rats, you and I both know it.” She shook her head, kneaded the tension in his flesh. “No, your punishment was just. Harsh enough to leave no ambiguity about who rules their fate. Yet merciful enough to leave no permanent scars. You were wise, Shōgun. The beast knows the hand of its master now.”
“One would hope. I have never had to teach that lesson twice.”
A long silence, broken by the rasp of a crippled swallow. Her hands fell still on his skin.