“Hiro,” she breathed. He looked over his shoulder, covered his fist and bowed at his fellow Elite. And with the only hint of compassion they had shown in three days, the men turned away without a word and closed the door behind him.
She was across the room and in his embrace before he could speak, pressing hard against his chest, arms wrapped around him so tight she feared his ribs might break. And as his lips met hers, as he put his hands on her body, for a brief, intoxicating moment, any thought of crawlspaces and nightingale floors and maple trees fled from her mind, and all she was left with was the smell of his fresh sweat, the faint taste of saké on his lips, the ache his touch left between her thighs. The silk around her body fell away beneath his hands, and as her skin pressed against his, she closed her eyes and sighed his name and forgot the sound of her own.
Afterward in the sweat-stained dark, she laid her head against his chest and remembered. Guilt raised its head, subtle poison seeping into a cool mountain stream and turning it black as the rivers that flowed through Kigen’s heart. She thought of her father and Buruu in their prisons. Kin slaving over his workbench. Even Hiro lying here beside her, oblivious to the plan unfolding under his nose. And there, wrapped in the warmth of his arms, she felt completely and utterly alone.
“I can’t wait to get out of this place,” she whispered.
“Am I that awful?” Hiro raised an eyebrow.
“No.” She smiled and kissed his skin. “But everything else around me
feels . . . polluted. There are so many wheels and lies within lies here.” She shook her head. “I feel like it’s rubbing off on me. Turning me into something I’m not. This place is poisonous.”
“You will be here for some time. Try to make the best of it. When the Shōgun has calmed down, I will petition him for permission to court you. I have sent a letter to my father—”
“Court me? What the hells for?”
“So I can be with you.” He frowned, leaning up on one elbow. “Hiro, you’re here with me right now,” she laughed, kissing him again. “In public.” He searched her eyes. “I risked my life coming here without
permission, Yukiko. And if it were only me, I would gladly risk more to feel you in my arms. But my comrades who guard your door? The servants who turned a blind eye to my passing? We risk their lives also, meeting this way.” He took her hand, ran his thumb across her knuckles. “But more than that, I want people to know you are mine. This hiding, this skulking about like a thief, it dishonors us both.”
“Gods, who cares what anyone else thinks? All that matters is the two of us.” “That is not true. We must think of our families. Of our names. I am sworn toYoritomo-no-miya.”
“I know that, Hiro.”
“Then you know that, first and foremost, I am his servant. I live and die by the Code of Bushido. I must honor my oath.”
“An oath to a liar is no oath at all,” she muttered.
“What did you say?”
A sigh. She sat up and threw a thin kimono over her shoulders, slipped out of the bed. Padding barefoot across the polished boards, she stopped at the tiny window, staring out into the dark Kigen night. Summer’s edge was growing dull; autumn would soon be here, and from there the world would slip into the cold depths of winter. Would he understand when he stood by this window alone? Should she tell him she’d be long gone before the first snows began to fall?
She looked at him, folded her arms about herself.
“You’re a good man,” she said. “But there are things about your master you don’t know. Things that might make you rethink your obedience.”
“Without his oath, without his Lord, a samurai is nothing. Honesty. Respect. Loyalty. Honor. This is the code of the warrior. I am samurai before all, Yukiko. To wield the long and the short sword and to die. This is my purpose.”
“Someone once told me ‘To be a servant can be a noble thing, but only as noble as the master served.’ ”
“Your father?”
“A friend.” A quiet sigh. “I wish you could meet him.”
She stared out into the dark, heard the wind whispering through the stunted gardens below.
The tantō was in her hand, the thin river of blood spilling down Daichi’s chest. She could hear the knife as it clattered to the floorboards, hear Daichi asking her why.
She had been reborn that night. Become something more. Something better.
“Why are you speaking this way?” There was anger in Hiro’s voice, bewilderment in his eyes. “You talk as if you wish me to question my Lord. But without my oath, I am nothing. Bushido is my purpose, my heart. It is the Way. Yoritomo-no-miya is Lord of this Empire. All his people owe him fealty. Including you, Yukiko.”