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Gisei stared at the lantern, oblivious to its warm glow. She didn’t know how long she had sat in the garden after Shimekiri’s departure, but eventually the cold had roused her enough to move her into the warmth inside. She had traveled through little-used corridors, avoiding people, and when she had finally gained her rooms she had sent the servants away without letting them speak to her. She didn’t want to talk to anyone; she wanted to sit alone in the night and contemplate her damnation in peace.
The tip of the wedge, the Crab had called it. That one moment of uncertainty, the fractional loss of focus that overwhelmed and consumed you. The Crab had warned her very plainly, she could not fault them for that. But they had never said how little good that knowledge did, when the Shadowlands spread around you in its vast, unlikely glory and the loneliness ate away at you until even Taint seemed like a lesser evil.
Gisei dropped her head into her hands and tried to reason. Killing herself now would be the wise thing to do; she could think of no other way to save her soul. But being found dead in one of Doji Hanoshi’s guest suites would undo everything she had accomplished this past winter, ruining her lord’s plans. This, she thought bitterly, was what bushido gave you: your choice of failures. Perhaps Mifune had been right, after all. Perhaps it was better to simply let go.
There was a noise as the door slid partially open and Gisei froze as a graceful, white-haired man slipped into her room. Shimekiri, her fear said, but her mind quickly dismissed the notion. The man was as tall as Shimekiri, but slighter of build, and his kimono was a fashionable pattern of geometric shapes and stylized plum blossoms. He closed the door and turned around, and her fear sublimated into shock. It was Doji Yamadori.
“What are you doing here” she asked.
“I might ask the same of you,” he replied with a touch of asperity. “Utsusemi’s reading will start soon. Why aren’t you dressed”
Gisei gathered her thoughts together, her shaken mind trying to deal with this new threat. Yamadori might be a hot-house flower without two thoughts to call his own, but at the moment she felt unequal to dealing even with him. “And who put you in charge of my social calendar”
“Necessity,” Yamadori said, crossing the room and kneeling down in front of her. Gisei tensed a little at his nearness. Her single lantern cast a warm glow on his silken hair and brushed his face with enticing plays of light and shadow. “Junichiro is attending Hanoshi’s mother, Otojiro and Nikkan are arguing the Tao with each other, and Shigeyuki’s discussing flower-arranging with his latest conquest. I’m the only one who noticed that you weren’t there yet.” Gisei blinked at this list of her allies and Yamadori’s implication that he was one of them. He looked at her for a moment, puzzled, and then his expression cleared. “He hasn’t told you. That cad. And here I was thinking you were a better actress than Unako.”
“I don’t,” Gisei started, and then a fragment of memory floated up. *Your information seems very complete,* she had told Shigeyuki, trying to tease out his source. *What do you think of Yamadori*, he had replied. “You,” she said. “You are Shigeyuki’s informant.”
“Informant is such an ugly word, Gisei-san,” he said, smiling. “I prefer ‘conspirator’.”
“But how did you do it Gisei said wonderingly. “Shigeyuki seemed to be getting reports almost daily–there’s no way the two of you could have seen each other that often.”
Yamadori laughed. “Why should we need to meet when we were sending each other letters”
The letter game, Gisei thought, remembering. She, along with everyone else at court, had assumed that it was simply another facet of his rivalry with Shigeyuki; the idea it could be used to pass information between them simply hadn’t occurred to her. “But didn’t Unako ever try to read them How did you keep them from her”
Yamadori shook his hair back, preening a little. “No need for that, we coded everything into references to Kakita’s Sword. I’d let her see my letters from time to time, so that she could admire my calligraphy, and assure herself that I was still her witless little puppet.”
The last words were as smooth at the first, but Gisei caught the pain in Yamadori’s voice. He hadn’t gotten over it, she realized, hadn’t come to grips with the idea that his trust could be taken and abused so. Hadn’t finished measuring out his revenge for Unako’s betrayal. “It was a bold move,” Gisei said slowly, sensitive of his vanity, “but was it necessary If she had somehow noticed something in what you wrote…”
Yamadori dismissed her concern with an airy wave of his hand. “If Unako knows which end of a sword is sharp, it’s because she read it in a script somewhere. I’ve never before met a Kakita with such woeful ignorance of their founder’s words–Asahina Otojiro would have a better chance of unraveling our letters than she would.” Gisei reflexively stored this little piece of information away to add to her report to her lord. “But even a stupid enemy is dangerous when given an opportunity,” he went on. “You need to get dressed, quickly, so that we can get to the reading.”
“I’m not going,” Gisei said.
“Not going” Yamadori stared at her. “What do you mean, not going You must go! Unako will–”
“To Jigoku with Unako!” Gisei snapped.
“You can only hope,” Yamadori shot back. “She is here, and she will destroy your reputation if you give her the chance.”
“And I am to believe that you care about my reputation” Gisei said acidly. “You despise me, despise all Daidoji because we supported Uji against Kuwanan!”
Yamadori looked away from her, silent. “You had no choice,” he said finally. “Uji is the lord of the Daidoji; you had to obey him.”
“You don’t believe that!”
He looked back at her, and she caught her breath in surprise at the passion she saw in his eyes. “I believe it,” he whispered. “I hate it. I hate that a samurai can be forced to choose between family and clan, between living lord and blessed ancestor. I hate that honorable souls can be made to choose between dishonor and dishonor.”
Gisei feared for him, remembering Mifune’s fall into banditry. “I once knew a boy who thought that honor was easy, because all things had come to him easily.” She hesitated a moment. “And when he discovered it was not, the knowledge destroyed him.”
The silence stretched out between them and Gisei wondered if she had reached him, and why it mattered to her. He wasn’t her friend, he was Unako’s enemy, and she had bigger concerns than the fate of a vain and foolish young man…but she could not bring herself not to care.
“The willow upholds the sky,” Yamadori said finally. “The bright edge of the katana is spined with softer steel. If I must bow to embrace heaven,” his voice went hard, “then I will bend, and rise up again.”
Gisei paused, tantalized by the thought of redemption. To rise again…she pushed the hope away. She was as lost now as when the Hiruma had found her, and this time there was no one to come looking for her. Still, it was oddly comforting to know that he had found some thread of sense in honor’s painful choices, some way to live with the confusion of bushido and heart.
“So you see,” Yamadori continued, “you must get dressed.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Gisei–”
“I can’t! I can’t! I’ve remembered!” Gisei heard her voice climb in pitch and hated herself for showing such weakness.
“Remembered Remembered what”
Gisei breathed deeply and regained some calm. “The Shadowlands. After Oblivion’s Gate, the Crab found me walking…” South, she almost said, stopping herself just in time, “…aimlessly, lost. I couldn’t remember what had happened to me, or the rest of my unit. This afternoon, in the garden…,” Shimekiri came to me, “…I remembered,” what I had done to live, “what had happened, what I had seen.” Gisei paused for a moment, willing back the tears that threatened to wash away the last of her control. “I can’t leave,” it followed me, “here and act as if nothing had happened. So you might as well leave now, because I’m not going.”
Yamadori made as if to start speaking, then paused to study her with troubled eyes. “Very well, you aren’t going,” he said finally. “We’ll need an explanation to placate Utsusemi with, or she’ll feel snubbed.”
Gisei rubbed her eyes wearily and tried to think. “I’m sick. That should satisfy her.”
“Not unless you summon one of Hanoshi-sama’s healers it won’t. Besides, it won’t explain why I’m not there, either.”
“Where will you be” Gisei asked.
“I’m staying here. With you.”
Gisei had to run the words through her mind twice before she could make sense of them. “I don’t want you here,” she said.
“Yes, you do,” Yamadori said easily.
Gisei’s mouth shut with an audible click and she gave him a cool stare. “Doji-san, I think you just called me a liar.”
He met her eyes without flinching. “You just finished telling me that your memories of the Shadowlands were so horrible that you hid them away from yourself for months. And now I am to believe that you want to be left alone with them”
Gisei’s gaze broke and she found herself staring at the floor between them. “That isn’t the point,” she protested.
“And what is the point”
The point was that she was on the edge of damnation and had no intention of pulling anyone else down with her. “The point is,” she said instead, “is that you don’t know what you are getting into. You have no idea of the consequences!”
“Did you know what you were getting into, when you marched south to the Shadowlands”
Gisei shuddered. “No, of course not.”
“Well then.” Yamadori sounded smug.
“It’s not the same!”
“Indeed,” he agreed. “The food is much better here, and one is assured of regular baths.”
His flippancy angered her, and Gisei looked up intending to berate him for it. The words died on her lips when she saw the fear in his sapphire eyes. He had been listening, she realized, very carefully. He understood, as well as anyone who hadn’t been on the Wall could, what she was trying to tell him. He knew this was serious. And he was staying.
She closed her eyes as something hard and painful moved through her heart. “Yamadori,” she whispered hoarsely, “you have to go. The reading…There’s no sense in both of us offending Utsusemi.”
“True, true,” Yamadori said, and Gisei don’t know whether to rejoice or weep at her victory. “Fortunately, I’ve thought of the perfect excuse for our absence. You weren’t at the reading because you were pillowing me.”
Even under the best of circumstances, the idea of pillowing Yamadori didn’t inspire calm. Gisei’s eyes flew open in shock, and she started to blush. He grinned at her, clearly enjoying the reaction he’d caused, then got up and walked back towards the daisho rack by the door.
After a few attempts Gisei managed to find her voice. “You are assuming that Utsusemi will agree that pillowing you is more important than listening to her poetry.”
He paused in putting his katana on the rack and looked back at her with a radiant smile. “Oh, she will.”
Yes, she will, Gisei thought, and damn you for knowing it. She watched him finish putting his swords away and then walk back to her, thinking of what it would be like to undo the ribbon that tied back his hair and run her fingers through its silky lushness, to…she shook herself free abruptly. It wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t going to let him endanger himself by staying with her, and that was that.
Yamadori sat back down in front of her and gave her another smile. Gisei wanted badly to move back, and widen the distance between them, but she knew better than to display that kind of weakness. “You don’t have to pillow me if you don’t want to,” he said, his tone indicating how unlikely he thought that was. “No one will think to doubt our story. But we have to pass the time somehow. I’m quite bad at shogi, and you are in no condition to tell stories, so….” He shrugged.
Iron Crane, Gisei thought, and pulled up her last remnant of strength. “You’ll have to find some other woman to entertain you tonight,” she said. “You aren’t staying here.”
He folded this arms across his chest and gave her a steady look. “Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not! I’ll throw you out myself if I have to–and don’t think I’m not strong enough, Doji!”
“Oh, I have no doubts that you could pick me up and carry me off.” His smile widened slightly, just enough to give the words a double meaning. “But at that close a distance my irresistible charm would simply overwhelm you and you would quickly find yourself holding me tightly and kissing me.”
“I would be more likely,” she ground out, “to hold you down and beat you with a blunt object.”
Yamadori cocked an eyebrow, unfazed. “Indeed Is that what you learned from the Hida I had no idea that Crab foreplay was so vigorous.”
Gisei snickered. Then she imagined what her Crab friends would say about it and she began to laugh. It wasn’t the delicate twitter she used in court but her real laugh, loud and rough. She laughed until tears came her eyes and she could see Yamadori staring at her in delighted amazement. And then she started to cry.
Gisei put her hands to her face and tried to stifle her sobs, horrified at her display, but nothing she did could stop them. The tears poured out of her like the long rains of spring, washing away the last of her resistance and leaving her with nothing but her grief. She wept for her kinsmen who had died in the Shadowlands, and for Mifune, who had died long before she cut him down. She wept for poor, lost Yohko, who still thought she could bring light out of darkness, and for Shimekiri, who no longer cared. She wept for the Hiruma scout who had regarded her coldly, sword in hand, as he tried to decide whether to give her a drink of water or cut off her head, and who had chosen wrong. And most of all she wept for herself, and all the choices that had led her story into shadow. She wept for a long, long time.
When her tears finally ended, Gisei found her arms wrapped around Yamadori and her head pillowed on his shoulder. She had, she realized, lost the argument over his staying. Her thoughts drifted while she tried to figure out what to do next. She could just sit here all night, just the way she was. Yamadori didn’t seem to object, and his shoulder was quite comfortable. But that probably wasn’t a good idea. At the moment she was too exhausted to care that she was being held by the most beautiful man she had ever met, but it was unwise to rely on that.
What she should do, Gisei thought, was gather herself up and get her shogi set out. Shogi would be a safe, nuetral way to pass the night with Yamadori. Relatively safe, she amended–her connections to the Changing Lands put him in horrible danger just sitting in the room with her. That, she realized abruptly, was the true value of his proposition–not the comfort of companionship, or the promise of distraction, but the simple faith that he wasn’t going to wake up in the middle of the night to find her feeding on his entrails.
Gisei stared off into the darkness for a long moment. Then she reached up and pulled the ribbon out of his hair.
