Chapter Thirteen
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I PUSHED A FIST against closed lips to stop the song. Pressure continued to build. Salt and ochre coated my mouth. Higashi-yama woke at the singer’s call, but I was in the way. The mountain would squash me. My lungs begged for air. I had to do something.
A crash like a wagon overturning in the street startled me out of the heavy stupor of Higashi-yama’s kami presence. The outside corridor encircling the residence had all its windows open to the evening breeze. Men rushed past the windows, all headed in the same direction.
Another crash, and then the clang of metal on metal. I ran to the nearest window and heaved myself up over the side. I tumbled onto a polished wood floor, empty for the moment. Lights blazed from a room down the corridor, flickering with the crisscrossing of shadows. Men shouted. A pair of guardsmen in Ashikaga livery—but which?—shoved me aside as they ran past. I hit the wall face first. Tears welled, but the pain focused me again, helping to push back Higashi-yama’s suffocating presence.
I drew another ragged breath and righted myself. Following the song’s tug, I crept closer to the open room. A trio of guardsmen blocked the entry, facing inside the room. To their left, half-hidden in the deepening corridor shadows was Lord Hosokawa, mouth open in song.
Higashi-yama forbids all but the dead. . . .
He sang Higashi-yama into us. I pressed palms into my belly against the feeling that my insides would burst. None of the guards gave the slightest sign they knew I was there, but Lord Hosokawa’s eyes widened in surprise. The song faltered.
Shamaness.
I lowered my shoulder and ran straight for Lord Hosokawa.
“Oof!” We connected with an impact that brought my teeth down hard onto my tongue. Lord Hosokawa rocked back against the wall, stopping his song. The building pressure eased.
“What are you doing?” Blood made a bitter taste in my mouth, but I grabbed Lord Hosokawa’s sleeve with both hands. Two guards stopped gawking long enough to start towards us.
“Lily?” Hosokawa waved a limp hand at the guards. They turned back to the room. Just then, a high, ragged cry split the air—a sound of mortal terror from inside the room. The guards crowded into the room, leaving the two of us momentarily alone in the corridor.
“What did you do?”
Lord Hosokawa folded his hands together on his chest. “I tried to save him.” When you’re back with your lordling, remember that. I didn’t know Lord Motofuji’s plan.
I shook my head against the slick feel of his words appearing in my mind like my own thoughts. What did he mean? Lord Motofuji’s plan?
I turned away from him and crept closer to the room. Guardsmen milled around inside. The lantern-light cast a flickering, yellow glow on a scene right out of a geezer’s night-tale. Two male attendants knelt, arms restrained behind their backs, faces bloodied. A row of trays lay overturned on the tatami, contents of bowls and cups making dark stains on brocaded zabuton cushions. On a raised platform set against the far wall, a thick-set man in high-court robe and linen cap tied under the chin knelt over the prone body of another man.
“He’s gone,” said the man. Then in harsh, male inflections he barked. “Clean up the mess. Fetch Lily.”
I took a step back before I realized he couldn’t possibly have meant me. No one knew I was here.
“You,” said a voice. A guardsman stood in front of me. “What are you doing?”
I froze.
“No more of that nonsense,” said the guard. “You’ll anger Lord Motofuji. It’s only a dead shell. Superstitious girlie. Go on in, then, and take charge of the body.”
Take charge? He wanted me to go into the room? He wasn’t dragging me to his captain? Was the guard blind? With my tousled hair and dirt-streaked robe he thought I was a handmaiden of this house?
“I said get going!” The guard grabbed my collar and dragged me up. He pushed me towards the open doorway. Blind. He had to be blind. Hosokawa followed behind me, like a child’s boat tugged along on a string, strangely quiet and fuzzy-eyed.
A handmaiden was pushing the trays to the side. The two attendants with the bloody faces had slipped away. The handmaiden knelt by the man on the platform. I fell to my knees by the man’s out-turned feet. I had to look, to see if I had been too late.
The limp man’s robe had parted, revealing pale, bony knees covered in coarse hair. I recoiled.
“Who are you?” said the handmaiden. She’d been wiping the man’s face with a rag, but now she jerked her hand away, hiding the rag in a voluminous sleeve. This must be Lord Motofuji’s Lily.
“I . . .” My voice broke on the word. Bitter acid came up my throat. Dead. This man had descended to the World of Darkness, and left his shell. There was no blood, but I could feel the taint of death anyway. I wanted to escape to Kamo River, and let running water wash away this feeling of ash and death and cold.
“Never mind,” said the girl. I fixated on her face to keep myself from glancing down. Her eyebrows were painted high on her brow. The hair at the apex of her forehead was plucked into a sharp widow’s peak. “You will say nothing of this,” she said. “Do you understand? Lord Motofuji will be greatly displeased.”
I shook my head. My hands trembled like dry leaves rustling. How could she sit there so unmoved?
“Don’t just stare like a cow! Arrange his robe.”
A hand came down on my shoulder. Hosokawa still looked oddly shaken, but the handmaiden didn’t look at him at all. He must be so common-place a fixture here in Motofuji’s Residence that his presence was completely unremarkable. “I didn’t know,” he said quietly.
The silk of the man’s robe was cool under my stiff fingers. I tugged and pulled it together, jostling the lolling head. It turned, ever so slightly, my direction
Lord Yoshikazu.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt.
And Hosokawa had called a kami. No wound, no blood, but the Ashikaga heir was definitely gone.
A familiar, folded paper peeked out from the wrinkled obi.
Commotion from down the corridor drew our attention. Like three puppets guided by a master’s hand, we faced the doorway. Hastily, I plucked Lady Ashikaga’s letter from his obi and concealed it in my own robe’s sleeve.
A wrestling, seething clump of men forced themselves through the open fusuma with a screech of protesting wood.
The girl scooted back from the body.
The tangle fell apart into separate knots of men. In the center Lord Hojo and Uesugi-san gripped my lordling’s arms, holding back an attack on the thick-set man who’d pronounced Yoshikazu gone just a few moments ago.
The man’s hair was pulled tightly back from his temples and oiled in place, not quite disguising the gray streaks. Bushy eyebrows sat like caterpillars, arching their backs in anger, over a crooked nose—evidence of a wrongly set break.
“Show me my brother.” My lordling surged forward, setting the men, all wearing Ashikaga paulownia on their kataginu vests, abuzz like a nest of wasps.
“The Lord Chamberlain of the Court and your father will hear of this invasion,” said the thick-set man. He had to be Lord Motofuji.
“Oh yes, they will.” My lordling arched toward Lord Motofuji like a raptor wanting to tear through flesh. Ashikaga was lit with anger, flushed from more than just lantern-light. The only other time I’d seen my lordling like this—all sharp planes, limbs moving in quick, energetic bursts—was fighting Norinaga’s fox soldiers.
Lord Motofuji was a solid, boar of a man. He stood in a wide-legged warrior stance, but flinched when Ashikaga jerked free of Uesugi-san’s hold. He gave way, angling himself to the side. Ashikaga’s fierce gaze slid past Motofuji to find me kneeling with Hosokawa. A burning sensation spread acr
oss my cheeks. I lifted my chin, trying not to feel ashamed. Then that gaze slid to the body lying before me.
All the fire drained out of Ashikaga. My lordling sagged into Uesugi-san and Hojo’s arms.
“Tread warily,” said Lord Hojo. “This is no small thing.”
Ashikaga staggered to the platform, kneeling next to the dead man as if the warning, Lord Motofuji, the room, and everything in it had dropped away. My lordling cupped Lord Yoshikazu’s cheek, and then with an indrawn breath pressed an ear to the corpse’s chest.
The two siblings had grown up apart for so long, and Ashikaga rarely talked of Lord Yoshikazu. But my lordling never felt anything shallowly. Inside that quick, lithe form was a slow-moving river as deep as the Kamo, and as prone to flooding.
Ashikaga straightened, allowing Lord Motofuji and the others to perceive only arrogant lordling, all high-tilted nose and condescending tone. “Explain why the Ashikaga Daimyo’s heir lies dead in your palace.”
Lord Motofuji bristled, face turning a ruddy red. My lordling had the right to use that superior tone as a member of the main Ashikaga branch, but it was rude.
Hosokawa stepped in front of me. “We were drinking, my Lord,” he said, saving Motofuji from the indignity of answering. “He collapsed suddenly.”
“The other night he was in perfect health.” Ashikaga peered closely at the dead man’s neck and mouth. Extending the heart-finger on one hand to shift aside the collar I’d just finished tidying. I’d seen men collapsed from heat exhaustion or heart troubles during the long days of seedling planting under the hot sun. But there were no such signs of illness on Yoshikazu. Not a mark was on him. The collar flopped back limply. It was damp with something. Ashikaga’s eyes narrowed.
I had a quick flash of the other handmaiden wiping at Yoshikazu’s face and then hiding the soiled rag in her sleeve. There had been something. Not sweat. Maybe Yoshikazu had vomited? Where had the handmaiden slipped off to?
“My Lord Yoshinori,” said Lord Hojo. “These are extenuating circumstances. I’m sure you do not intend any dishonorable implications.” Uesugi-san scowled as darkly as his master, but stood frozen, unable to voice his anger.
“Only guilty ears would read dishonorable thoughts into plain speaking,” said Ashikaga, standing up. “Lord Motofuji should consider the implications of his empty phrases.”
“Now, now,” said Lord Hojo. He advanced to the platform, waving his arms like Auntie Jay with her chickens. Attendants scattered, forming lines along the walls. “None of us know what to make of this sudden, shocking turn of events. Do not forget your duty to the Daimyo. You must go, now, and tell him the terrible news.”
Ashikaga glared like Hojo was a paper target on a hay bale. Lord Hojo did not blanch. He fluffed himself out to full Rooster demeanor and struck a courtier’s elegant pose. “I will inform the court, myself.”
There was some undercurrent in Hojo’s words. I couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but the man I’d first met in the teahouse back in Ashikaga Domain, who’d been confident of his control of Ashikaga and a victory over the Pretender Emperor, had changed. Still a Rooster down to his finely clipped fingernails, this Hojo had a brittleness to his posturing. He was worried about something. Before, when he’d been worried, he’d secretly called me to him and threatened my life if I went against his plans. That was back up North. Being in Kyoto had shifted things. He was unsure of his ability to handle my lordling?
“I will take my brother home.” Ashikaga’s other hand rested lightly near my knee on the tatami, opening and closing as if kneading mochi.
Lord Motofuji gave a short nod. He barked orders and half the buzzing attendants filed out of the room. “It will give me the most profound pleasure to help your family quit my house.”
Ashikaga’s upper lip rose into a sneer “Pleasure equaled only by my own.” Then to Uesugi-san, “Go hire a sedan chair.”
“It isn’t wise for you to stay here.” Uesugi-san flicked a glance at Lord Motofuji.
“I will not leave Yoshikazu alone.”
Lord Hosokawa gave a courtly bow. “I will remain here with your brother and with your handmaiden, my lord. It might be best for all involved if you saw to the sedan chair yourself.” The fuzzy, wilted look was gone, replaced by as showy a courtier pose as Hojo’s.
Ashikaga arched an eyebrow.
“Surely you can trust your handmaiden,” Hosokawa said, flipping a hand in my direction.
Ashikaga’s shoulders tensed underneath the stiff vest. Slowly, my lordling’s head turned my direction. I could hear the questions unasked in this room full of enemies. Can I? Can I trust Lily?
Head bowed, I slowly traced the triple-leaf paulownia crest onto the palm of the hand resting near my knee.
A shuddering exhale was Ashikaga’s only acknowledgement. My lordling turned back to Lord Motofuji. “Lord Hosokawa and my handmaiden shall remain here. When I return, I expect no more surprises.”
Lord Motofuji shot me a startled glance. I’d been invisible until Ashikaga called me “mine.” The other Lily had concealed something, I was sure. But the lord couldn’t be sure I hadn’t seen anything. Did he know of the letter? Had the dead man confronted him with Lady Ashikaga’s secrets?
Lord Motofuji set his mouth into a grim, determined line. Suddenly it didn’t seem safe at all to be left alone in this house. With a shallow bow in Ashikaga’s direction, Lord Motofuji said, “Of course.”
Ashikaga strode from the room with Uesugi-san following, low murmurs sprouting in their wake. Lord Hojo exchanged a heavily laden look with Motofuji and followed after. Two Ashikaga attendants stepped into the corridor and slid the fusuma closed. Hosokawa and I were achingly conspicuous now that the room was cleared of male bodies. Lord Motofuji approached. “How did you get in here? What did you witness?”
I angled my face in Hosokawa’s direction, trying to remember the flowery language Beautiful had browbeaten into me. “I humbly suggest that this man will have the answers you seek.”
Lord Motofuji drew himself up to his full height, looming larger than his short stature. “She is one of yours? You are a sly one to place her so deeply in the Daimyo’s household.”
Now I would see if Hosokawa’s seeming change of heart about me was true. How strong was our Jindo bond? Would he truly protect me even from his patron?
Lord Hosokawa gave a slow nod. “Lord Yoshinori shouldn’t return to witness this cozy chat. We haven’t much time to prepare Lord Ujimitsu to present condolences to the court along with Lord Hojo. Shall we go attend him?”
“Excellent plan,” said Motofuji, evidently his curiosity about me satisfied. Did he think me one of Hosokawa’s foxes? Or maybe he knew nothing of Jindo at all. The powerful frame and aristocratic swagger made it clear how he could be considered a handsome man. Lady Ashikaga must have thought so. If Zeami were to be trusted, this was the man Ashikaga’s mother had sought for condolence all those long years separated from the Daimyo. Muscles tightened in my neck at the thought of Lady Ashikaga with this brutish man. But that swagger was all-too-familiar—in the court airs of my own lordling.
Lord Hosokawa stepped down from the platform, herding Motofuji out the door. His cutting look pierced right through the vestiges of fear and confusion roiling in my belly, to the kami-place.
The yurei is a grave danger to the Daimyo’s house now that Lord Yoshikazu is dead. Meet me tomorrow as we planned. Only you can save them now.
Chapter Fourteen
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AS SOON AS MY tired feet got me back to the Ashikaga Residence that night, I was pounced upon by Beautiful and Little Turtle. They quizzed me mercilessly about the lordling, Lord Motofuji’s Residence, and the body of Ashikaga’s brother borne on a makeshift pallet into the dragon room.
With the
Ashikagas closeted in mourning, needing no attendants, I made up a story about Uesugi-san and a message, but couldn’t satisfy them. Little Turtle’s frown haunted me until finally I pleaded exhaustion and escaped into my bedroll. Sleep came, fitful and shallow, drawing me into vivid dreams where I rushed around frantically looking for a misplaced treasure.
I awoke with a start into darkness. The room was filled with Beautiful’s light snoring and the soft rustle of bodies moving on cotton. My heart pounded in my chest like a festival drum. Hosokawa had told me to meet him in the hour of the rabbit. If I were to go meet him, I would have to leave just before dawn. Very soon.
Was I going to meet him?
He’d saved me from the kami at the temple, shielded me from Lord Motofuji, and promised to teach me how to banish the yurei. But he’d been there when Lord Yoshikazu died, and he’d been singing Higashi-yama’s spirit into the room. Could I believe him? Could I trust him?
No. Not trust. But I did need him. The death of Lord Yoshikazu was a rock thrown into the murky pond of Kyoto politics. If the yurei managed some kind of harm to the Daimyo, the ripples might be enough to bring down my lordling as well. I needed Hosokawa, but I certainly didn’t need to trust him.
I had to go. I sat up slowly.
Girls didn’t walk unaccompanied past the boundaries of the Muromachi neighborhood’s splendid residences. Groups of handmaidens on errands for nobles, chatting couples, strutting warriors taking up too much space, and bent laborers keeping out of everyone’s way were unremarkable. A single girl in silk kimono would stand out, a gold koi in a pond of brown and orange.
On the top shelf of the closet was the trunk I’d brought from the village. When we’d first arrived, I’d endured snide comments from the local girls for two days. Then Little Turtle had scavenged some castoff robes and remade them to fit me. My old linen robe, hakama, and straw sandals nestled safe in that trunk, still waiting. Far more inconspicuous than my current clothes. The trick was getting everything out while the others slept. I held my breath, picking my way to the closet through the sleeping bodies. When I opened the trunk and the lid bumped against the wall, Kazue turned over in her sleep. No one awoke.
The Straw Doll Cries at Midnight (A Tiger Lily Novel Book 2) Page 16