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Doji Yamadori was always beautiful, but when he slept something wonderful happened. When he slept all the tension that came from being what he was drained out of him, leaving behind an uncomplicated radiance that could drive a painter to despair and a poet to frenzy.
Gisei lay quietly beside him, studying him through the soft gray darkness of predawn. He would wake soon, she knew–no matter how late Yamadori got to sleep, or what he had been doing beforehand, he always woke early enough to perform his morning kata at sunrise. The morning after they had become lovers she had studied him in much the same fashion, marveling that he was really there in her bed, but marveling even more at Kakita Unako’s treatment of him. How could she have found the strength to put such perfect beauty at risk of harm?
Gisei knew the answer, now. Necessity was the only strength one needed.
Yamadori’s breathing changed and then his eyes fluttered open. He looked at her blankly for a moment, and then awareness came and he smiled at her. “Good morning, sweetmeat,” he said, leaning over to kiss her.
“Good morning, my hero,” she replied after the kiss. “Did you sleep well?”
“I slept the sound and cleansing sleep of utter exhaustion,” Yamadori said, stretching a little. His tone turned sly. “But of course, any man who fell asleep in your arms would say that.”
“And any woman who woke up in yours would get the same nonsense,” Gisei said dryly. She wondered if today would be the day she would find her opportunity.
Yamadori laughed. “Don’t be silly–a man lies to a woman before he pillows her, not after. But since you doubt me,” his hands slid back under the quilt and started hunting for the ties of her sleeping kimono, “I’ll just have to demonstrate my sincerity to you.”
Gisei reached up and lazily drew one hand through his hair. “You’ll be late for kata.”
“I–” Yamadori paused and looked away from her, consulting his own inner sense of time, she guessed, or maybe reading it from the color of the darkness. After a moment he muttered something under his breath and started extricating himself from the bed. “You should have woken me up earlier,” he complained. “You woke up first, didn’t you?”
“Im sorry,” she said contritely. “I was thinking….” She realized, even as she spoke, that this was the opening she needed.
Yamadori paused on the edge of her bed, hearing something beneath the words. “Gisei?” He turned around to look at her. “Is there something wrong?” There was something wrong, he knew, something connected with her time in the Shadowlands. She never spoke to him about it, but he had heard it in her voice as it chased her through her dreams at night. He ached to know what troubled her, but his polite, carefully-worded entreaties were met with equally polite silence. What did it take, he wondered, to win her trust? Did she still hold his early foolishness against him?
“It’s nothing,” Gisei said firmly, and summoned a too-bright smile. She wondered if she was doing this right.
“If what you were thinking of was more important than pillowing me,” Yamadori said in a reasonable tone, “then it’s not nothing.”
“I don’t want to burden you with my troubles,” Gisei said, casually laying her hand on his arm. “You have already done so much for me.”
“If you are referring to Unako,” Yamadori said, “do not trouble yourself. She wronged me as much as you, and it was a pleasure to pay her back for it.”
Gisei tilted her head a little and pressed her lips together, trying to look indecisive. “But still, it would be a poor return of your kindness to ask a further favor of you….”
“Ask,” Yamadori said. Was this his opportunity? “Whatever you wish of me is yo–”
“No!” Gisei said, startling them both. She jerked her hand off his arm and held it towards his mouth, as if to stop the words. “You mustn’t agree until you know what I’m asking!”
Yamadori stared at her. “You act as though you don’t want me to agree.”
She was too unnerved to lie. “I don’t.”
“Then why are you asking?” he asked, confused.
Gisei looked away from him, indecisive for real this time. It was so tempting to fail here–failure would leave Yamadori safe, or at least as safe as he could be, given that for some deeply unfathomable reason he was in love with her. But–necessity. She placed her hand on the bedding between them, let some of her pain into her voice. “I must,” she said quietly. “I don’t have anyone else I can trust.”
Someone she could trust not to ask questions, that was. At some point after her memory returned Gisei had decided that she had to die in order to solve her problem. But then no one would know that Yohko existed, or that she had plans for the Crane, and that would never do. But who would recognize the name “Yohko”, and understand what it meant for the Daidoji? Daidoji Uji, of course–the lord of the Daidoji family had to know the real story of Hayaku’s journey to the Shadowlands. But how to reach him? Gisei had neither the wealth or status that could get her a meeting with someone as important as the Daidoji daimyo. Yoshitaka, her lord, could arrange it, but he would insist on knowing what she intended to tell Uji–Yoshitaka lusted after information the way other men lusted for wealth. And what if Uji disapproved of Yoshitaka knowing? Gisei had followed the trail of her thoughts until it had worn grooves in her mind, and always came to the same conclusion. Yamadori.
“Gisei-chan,” he said, and then stopped. After a moment of silence he picked up her hand and slid back closer to her. “Tell me what you need,” he said, “and I will think about it.”
She took a breath and turned to face him. “You have relatives and friends in many lords’ courts…I need to send a message to Daidoji Uji.”
“Uji? But Uji is your lord’s lord. You could just go to Yoshitaka and explain….” Yamadori’s voice trailed off as he worked out the implications of her request. For Gisei to have a concern that she didn’t want to speak with her lord about meant that she had private business that she could not share with him–a logical impossibility, according to bushido.
Gisei watched him, turning her hand slightly so that she could twine her fingers in his. Stay safe, she mentally pleaded with him. Stay out of my business. Doji-kami, save your poor foolish child. Bright Benten, gracious fortune, for once let him say no to a woman.
“How quickly do you need this done?” Yamadori asked. Messages could be read, he thought. Gisei would undoubtedly try to seal hers to prevent that, but she was a newcomer to the courtier’s life and probably wouldn’t know the better ways of discouraging snoopers. He could reseal it properly afterwards for her.
“It need not be quick,” Gisei said, “but it must be sure. No one but Uji should read it.”
Yamadori frowned. “Gisei-chan, I don’t understand how an honorable samurai could want such a thing.” Gisei felt her heart speed up with hope. “But once I would have said the same about deliberately losing a duel, and yet you advanced your lord’s interests by doing just that. So, write your message and I’ll see to it.”
Something inside of her turned cold and died. Gisei pulled Yamadori into a tight embrace and laid her head on his shoulder, where he couldn’t see her face. “Thank you, Yamadori,” she whispered. “I can’t say what this means to me.”
* * * * * *
Gisei ground at the ink stone, using more force than was really necessary. It was an undignified show of frustration but she needed the outlet and besides, there was no one else in the library to see it.
Gisei had returned home prepared to wait out the result of her message, but it had proven more difficult than she had anticipated. Then a letter for her had arrived from Shiro Daidoji–not from Uji, but from one of her old sensei, inviting her to test for the next level of training. It was an invitation she couldn’t refuse, but it had done nothing to help her impatience. Shiro Daidoji was officially the residence of the Daidoji daimyo, though she’d learned that Uji wasn’t there at present. It was maddening to be in Uji’s home, but no closer to him than she was at her own lord’s castle. She sighed and bent to work, struggling to make the words she heard in her head appear on the paper.
Half a page later Gisei looked up to find she was no longer alone. A man had come into the library and was examining a basket of scrolls in the corner. He was no one she recognized, but there was an air about him that teased at her memory. She thought for a moment and then identified it: he reminded her of some of the samurai she had worked with during the unpleasantness between Uji and Kuwanan, when she was guarding her lord’s rice–quiet men who made inconvenient magistrates disappear, and who came from no school she could ever identify.
After a moment the man looked around casually and then started walking towards her. As she watched him approach Gisei’s left hand moved down until it rested on the katana lying next to her. She couldn’t have said why.
He stopped just out of range of an iai draw and bowed politely. “Excuse me, but are you Daidoji Gisei?” he asked.
“I am,” she said warily.
He smiled, an action that brought no warmth to his eyes. “Ah, good. I am Daidoji Ichiro. I have something I would discuss with you,” he waved a hand casually, “in a more private place.”
Gisei thumbed the blade just a hair as she smiled back at him. “So sorry, Ichiro-san,” she said, “but now is not a good time. Perhaps we could arrange a later meeting.” Her right hand had dropped the brush and was now hovering over the writing desk.
“Don’t be foolish, little sister,” Ichiro said. His voice had lost none of its pleasant tone. “You are coming with us.”
Gisei spent a moment contemplating his last word and then slowly she turned her head to look over her left shoulder. There was one man standing a few feet behind and to the left of her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw a second man directly behind her. Turning her head to the right she saw a third man. She spent a moment thinking about who in Shiro Daidoji might have authority to command men like this, then she looked back at Ichiro and silently conceded. He nodded, accepting her surrender. Gisei rose to her feet and slid her swords into her obi, taking care to make her motions deliberate and non-threatening. “Which way, Ichiro-san?”
“Follow,” he said, and led her out of the library.
They wound through Shiro Daidoji, taking lesser-used hallways. Eventually they came to a stairway and started to climb. Gisei felt a feathery touch of dread. She had never been in the area of the castle they were heading towards, but she knew what it was: the suite reserved for the use of the Daidoji daimyo. Uji’s territory.
There were guards in the hall where they exited the stairwell. “What do you have, brother?” one of them asked.
“The delivery for the lord,” Ichiro said. The guard nodded and slid open a door. Ichiro motioned for Gisei to follow and walked in. The door slid closed behind her, leaving her with a trapped feeling. Calm, she told herself. This is what you wanted.
Without further word Ichiro walked across the room to a door opposite the one they came in and gently scratched at the frame. “Send her in,” a man’s voice said. Ichiro glanced back at Gisei. “Enter,” he said, and slid back the door.
Gisei hesitated for a moment, then she walked into the room. The door behind her slid shut quietly.
* * * * *
Gisei sat in the silence of her room and stared blankly at the teacup in her hands. She wanted to die. She needed to die. Death was safety, a place where the Changing Lands could not reach her. She had lived through each day since her conversation with Shimekiri secure in the knowledge that once she had told Uji what she had done he would order her death. Seppuku, preferably, but Gisei would not have objected to execution. Death was all that mattered.
She could not die. Uji forbade it. She values you, he had said. As long as I control you, I control her. Absently Gisei drank the tea and discovered that it had gone cold. Uji had commanded her to tell him everything, and she had not told him about Shimekiri. How long will you control me, Uji? she wondered. The thought rang strangely in her mind. Since the day of her gempuku she had wanted nothing but to serve her lord and clan–it was the only path she knew of. But now there was a second path, one that led into beckoning mountains and beauty no Crane could admit to seeing.
She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. She needed Yamadori here, she thought. He was vain and foolish, but she dreamed no dreams when he slept beside her. But no, she would have to live without him now. Yamadori had defeated the seals she had used on her letter and had read it before passing it on to his kin for delivery. So said Uji, and Gisei could not doubt him. He probably thinks it a code, Uji had said, and so is safe for now. Should he ever suspect it to be truth, we shall have to take action. Gisei felt the tears leak out and didn’t try to stop them. She had feared this from the beginning, and had involved Yamadori anyway–she had had no choice but to find a way to contact Uji. It was honorable to put one’s family before one’s own interests. One could not be honorable without destroying those you loved. Mifune had taught her that.
A step on the verandah outside her room brought her out of her thoughts and on to her feet. Gisei started to shake the knife out of her sleeve and then hesitated. It had not, after all, aided her in the past. Before she could walk to the daisho rack a low-pitched voice came through the wall. “Little sister?” Gisei recognized Daidoji Ichiro’s voice and quickly crossed to the door. It opened slightly before she reached it and Ichiro slid into the room, bearing a silk-wrapped bundle in his arms.
“Good evening, little sister,” he said.
“Cousin,” Gisei replied, deliberately cool. Ichiro belonged to Uji, and Uji would not let her die. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“A delivery from the lord,” Ichiro said. Before she could reply he passed the bundle over to her. Gisei felt what was in the bundle and started to speak but he shook his head, silencing her. “The lord says, you are to carry them until he says otherwise.”
“Yes,” Gisei said, reflexively obedient but intensely curious. Before she could ask a question Ichiro reached out and gently laid a hand on her right arm, over where she kept the knife sheath.
“You are not very good with that knife,” he said.
Gisei blushed. She wanted to deny it, but she suspected that Ichiro was very good with a knife. “No,” she said, and waited to be lectured about carrying a weapon that she could not use well.
“There is a private training room at the end of the hall on the sunrise side of the dojo. You know it? Be there tomorrow evening. I will teach you.”
“You are too kind,” Gisei said. “I couldn’t–”
“You brought the souls of many Crane samurai out of the darkness,” Ichiro said. “Never think that this has been forgotten.” Without waiting for a reply he turned around and let himself out. Gisei watched him leave, startled by his words. As far as she was concerned, her clan had forgotten about it. Wandering out of the Shadowlands with no comrades and no memory left too many loose ends in her story, and the Crane preferred tidy endings. No one doubted the Kuni’s judgment of her, but no one wanted to discuss why the Kuni’s judgment had been needed, either.
It must be ignorance, Gisei decided. There was no reason for Uji to have told Ichiro anything, and he might have taken Uji’s action as a sign that Gisei stood in her family’s favor. Or–maybe not. It was the duty of all Daidoji to do what they must to protect their kin; perhaps Ichiro knew all and considered her deal a fair trade for the swords she had brought back. Gisei shook herself free of that thought. The tip of the wedge, the Crab had said.
Gisei returned to her seat and slowly unwrapped the silk fabric to reveal a katana and a wakizashi. The sheath of both were lacquered the same shade of sky blue, but the silk wrappings were mismatched: the katana hilt was wrapped in sky blue and white, while the wakizashi had evening blue and silvery gray. Gisei frowned in perplexity. The sheaths said that the two were a pair, but then why didn’t they have the same wrappings? If there had been time to fit them out with matching sheaths there was time to rewrap the hilts.
Gisei picked up the katana and drew it. It was beautiful, with a tsuba showing a soaring crane and a blade made in the ancient style, straighter than the one she currently carried. She ran an appraising eye over the temper line, wondering who still forged such blades, and felt her stomach turn over.
It wasn’t in the ancient style. It was ancient.
Gisei held the blade closer to the lamp, hoping to have been mistaken, but the grain of the steel remained true. It was old, older even than Faithful Guardian. Gisei slammed the blade back into the sheath and let it drop to the floor, shuddering for no reason she could name. The air in the room felt hot and close, like an afternoon before a summer storm. She had never seen the katana before, but she had a crawling certainty that if she picked it up she could wield it as if she’d carried it her entire life.
Against her will her eyes went to the wakizashi, and slowly she picked it up. The tsuba had a bare and twisted tree. She had expected that. Why had she expected that? For a moment Gisei wanted to find Ichiro and give the swords back, but she choked the impulse down. Uji’s orders were clear, and she was still under his control. Slowly she drew it and checked the grain. As she expected, it was as old as the katana. She turned it over and saw words engraved on the blade near the hilt.
With blood and steel
You rescued me, with them
I’ll rescue you
Gisei doubled over from the emotion that swept through her and she felt tears stream out of her eyes as she gasped for breath. She put up a hand and watched the tears drop into it as she tried to understand what was happening. It was sorrow that she felt, deep and sharp, but it was unconnected from her, as if she was feeling someone else’s pain.
Suddenly she recognized it. “Grandmother!”
…child….
Gisei staggered to her feet. “Grandmother! Why did Uji give me these blades? What am I supposed to do?”
…an honorable death….
Gisei stood rooted to the floor, wakizashi still clenched in her hand. “Death? But Uji commanded me–” But Uji had disobeyed his lord to carry out his ancestor’s commands. Was she to follow his example, and not his words?
…wait….
The sorrow receded, and with it the feeling of her ancestor’s presence. “Grandmother!” Gisei cried out. “Don’t leave me alone!” The last word came out as a shriek.
…you have never been alone….
Gisei slumped to her knees. Never alone. In her mind the bleak beauty of the Shadowlands spread out around her, and she felt again the despair that had made Taint look attractive. Why had Grandmother not spoken to her then? Would she have acted to save her, if she had made a move to surrender to the darkness? And if that was so, why didn’t she stop Gisei from dealing with Yohko?
She sheathed the wakizashi and held it to her like child clutching a promise. I’ll rescue you… Grandmother, help me, she prayed. I dont want to fall. I don’t want to follow Yohko. Dont leave me. For a moment she felt a pressure on her shoulders, as if someone had rested their hands on her, and then nothing.
* * * * *
“I am so pleased that you could be here,” Yamadori said. “Since we said goodbye my life has been empty and unfulfilling.”
“Empty?” Gisei said. “Am I to believe that you haven’t had a different woman in your bed every night?”
“Well, I do have a reputation to maintain.” Yamadori shrugged airily, then grinned at her. “But none of them could take your place! Your piercing wit, the shining brilliance of your eyes, the way you tear off my kimono–”
Gisei snapped open her fan with an angry gesture and glared at him over the top of it. “Are you trying to ruin my honor?”
“How so? Akodo-kami himself said that a samurai must be sincere.”
Gisei laughed in spite of herself. “I want to be there, watching, when you explain that to a Matsu woman.”
“That could never happen,” Yamadori said. He reached out and gently touched the pair of mandarin ducks painted on her fan. “If you were present, no other woman would have my attentions.”
Silence descended between them for a moment, and then Gisei stood up. “It is getting dark,” she said. “Perhaps we should go in.” Yamadori rose and offered her his arm, and together they strolled back to their rooms.
Gisei had arrived home from Shiro Daidoji to a letter from Yamadori and the realization that if she were to cut him off without notice he might become angry–or worse, curious. She had written back with an agreement to meet him, suggesting a small, luxurious inn that happened to be owned by her lord. Eventually word of her tryst would get back to Yoshitaka, and if he ordered her to break off the affair she’d have an excuse too commonplace for Yamadori to question. It was better this way, Gisei thought. Without her lord’s command to strengthen her, she wasn’t sure she could resist seeing Yamadori.
“Shall we play shogi?” Gisei asked after the servant had poured their tea and withdrawn. “Or shall we further discuss your theory of sincerity?”
“I am always ready to discuss a virtue of bushido,” Yamadori said. He gave a pointed look at the daisho she had set on the rack and then looked back at her. “Unless there is some other topic you would be interested in.”
“Actually, there is something.” Gisei went to her travel pack and pulled out a sheaf of paper bound in a blue ribbon. She had known that Yamadori would be curious about her new daisho, and since she couldn’t answer his questions she had decided to give him something else to think about.
Yamadori accepted the papers in silence, pulled the ribbon and read the first page. “Miso soup recipes?”
“Wrong side,” Gisei said.
“Ah,” Yamadori said, “used paper.” He flipped the stack over and read for a moment. “The story of the first Asahina,” he said. “This is your version, the story you told at Hanoshi’s Winter Court.” He looked up with a smile. “You are writing your stories down?”
“I must,” Gisei said. “Master Otojiro suggested it, and he’s visiting my lord later this summer. I have to have something to show him then.”
“Wonderful,” Yamadori said. “With Otojiro’s support you will certainly be able to convince your lord to allow you more time to pursue your art. And,” he paused in thought, “my father is already planning to send me to Kyuden Kakita next winter. We need only to convince Yoshitaka that you need to study with the storytellers there, and we can spend another season together.”
Gisei started to smile at him and then remembered that she no longer had a future to plan. “A splendid idea,” she said, looking away.
“You don’t like it,” Yamadori said.
“I do like it!” Gisei protested. She looked back at him. “It is–it is just that when I was a child I dreamed of being a storyteller, like my mother. But before my parents died of plague my father ordered that I be trained as a bushi. To spend a winter court in Kyuden Kakita–it is a dream. An impossible one, I have always thought.”
Yamadori laid his hand on hers. “It will happen. I will make it happen.”
“I don’t doubt you,” Gisei said. She freed her hand of his and reached up to pull the ribbon out of his hair. “You are always sincere.”
* * * * *
A woman never lies in her sleep. It was a simple rule that Yamadori had learned from one of the senior students at the Dueling Academy, and had since thought that if he had kept it in mind he could have saved himself from Unako. Now he leaned on his elbow and studied the woman next to him.
Gisei’s face was written over in pain and grief. It had not worried him their first night together; the shock of returning memory was more than enough to explain such a thing. But it had not gone away as the nights wore on, and now it seemed to have grown more severe. What caused it? Something that had been done to her, or something she had done? The first possibility made him angry. The second frightened him. He never knew what to think about her.
Yamadori laid back down and stared up at the ceiling. A capable ally by day, an enthusiastic amusement by night–that was all he wanted from most women. Apparently, it was all Gisei wanted from him. She used him and told him nothing. Understandable, perhaps, in her message to Uji–if she wasn’t going to tell her lord, she certainly wasn’t going to tell her lover. But where did she get those swords? And why had she said nothing to explain them? How could any Crane get a new daisho and not want to show it off?
Once upon a time, a girl who knew too much about death fell in love with a Doji boy.
That was the message Gisei had sent to Uji, and Yamadori’s heart had leaped with joy when he read it–she loved him! Then reason had set in. No one sent uncoded messages to a family daimyo, so the message’s real content had to be about something else entirely. There was nothing, then, to make him think that she loved him. Yamadori shut his eyes and went through his breathing exercises, the ones that cleared his mind and settled his spirit before a duel. He needed to face the truth. Gisei didn’t love him, and never would. From now on, he’d pillow her when he could and exchange favors with her when it was in his interest to do so. Nothing more. No more foolishness about love.
Beside him Gisei started to stir and mumble, the way she always did when the nightmares came. Yamadori put out a hand in reflex and touched her arm. “It’s all right, Gisei,” he said softly. “You are home now.” She quieted for a moment and then in one sudden move she rolled over, snuggling herself up next to him as she flung one arm across his chest. A deep breath, a long sigh, and she slid back into the deep, slow breathing of untroubled sleep.
Yamadori stared at the ceiling for a long moment, stunned. Maybe, he finally thought, he was being too hasty.
