Ice congealed along Reiko's nerves as she recalled the bloodstains on the floor.
"But the past doesn't concern us, Anemone," said the Dragon King. "That chance has reunited us is all that matters."
Again, he behaved as if they knew each other, although Reiko was more sure than ever that they'd never met. What part did he think chance had played in his abduction of her? And why insist on calling her Anemone? What significance did the name hold for him?
"I shouldn't have expected you to recognize me," he said in a rueful tone. "When we were last together, I was a mere boy. But I recognized you at once. You are as young and beautiful as ever." Reverence hushed his voice and misted his eyes as he gazed at Reiko. "You are just as you've appeared in my dreams ever since the night I lost you."
Reiko deduced that she resembled someone he'd known. Could it be the reason he'd kidnapped her? The idea that mistaken identity had occasioned the murder of a hundred people horrified Reiko. But when they'd met after her escape attempt, he'd seemed surprised to see her. And why kidnap the other women if she was the one he wanted?
An injured expression altered the Dragon King's aspect. "Why do you not speak?" he asked. "Have you nothing to say to me after all this time apart?"
Reiko blurted, "Are you going to kill me?"
The Dragon King cocked his big head, clasped one fist inside the other, and regarded her for a long, suspenseful moment, while emotions she couldn't interpret flitted across his face. "Hopefully not," he said at last.
Her puzzlement outlived her relief, because the Dragon King thrust out both hands as if to seize her. Reiko cried out and instinctively flung up her arms to strike back, then recalled that her friends' safety depended on her good behavior. The Dragon King withdrew his hands and held them palms up, assuring her that he meant no harm. An anxious, propitiating smile rendered his countenance all the more disturbing.
"Come, we shall celebrate our reunion with a banquet," he said.
He moved to her side. His hand touching her sleeve urged her across the room, up onto the dais. Near the mural lay a cloth set with a sake decanter, two cups, two pairs of chopsticks, and dishes that contained cold rice, roasted fish, boiled greens, and preserved fruits. Reiko unwillingly knelt where the Dragon King indicated. He knelt too close beside her, poured the sake, and handed her a cup.
"A toast to a new beginning," he said, raising his cup while his gaze devoured her.
He drank, and Reiko decided he was playing some private, bizarre game. The need to protect her friends compelled her to play along and drain her cup. The liquor burned her insides like corrosive poison.
"Please eat, Anemone," he said.
Reiko picked up the chopsticks and obeyed. Despite her hunger, every bite stuck in her throat. She didn't want to encourage his weird fancies. What bearing might they have upon his crimes?
The Dragon King poured more sake and drank again. He didn't eat; he just watched her. "You're awfully quiet, my dearest. What are you thinking?"
Summoning her nerve, Reiko said, "Why did you do it?"
The Dragon King started and blinked, as if he'd just awakened from a dream. He seemed not to know what she was talking about.
"What I want to know is why you kidnapped us," Reiko said, and saw comprehension creep into his gaze. She said, "If it's money you want, my family will pay you whatever you ask. So will Midori's and Lady Yanagisawa's families. The shogun will give away the whole Tokugawa treasury to get his mother back."
"I don't want money." The Dragon King dismissed the notion with an adamant shake of his head. "The purpose of my scheme is justice, not wealth. Justice and vengeance. Both require blood sacrifice of the innocent as well as the guilty."
"You wanted revenge? For what?" Reiko said, more perplexed than enlightened. "What did those people your men killed ever do to you?"
"Nothing." His callous dismissal said he harbored no regrets about the massacre. "They were just in the way."
"In the way of kidnapping Lady Keisho-in, Lady Yanagisawa, Midori, and me?" When the Dragon King nodded, Reiko said, "But we've never hurt you. You've no cause to hold us prisoners and mistreat us."
"Haven't I?" Sudden rage flamed in his eyes. "Didn't you entice me into immoral degradation?" He leaned closer to Reiko, and his words sprayed hot liquor fumes into her face.
Disconcerted by his abrupt change of mood, she lurched upward in an attempt to rise. She saw the men on the veranda aiming bows and arrows at her through the cracked doors. She thought of her helpless friends and sank to her knees.
"Didn't you make me your devoted slave, and all the while you bestowed your favors elsewhere?" he demanded. "Didn't I suffer agonizing heartbreak because of you? Didn't you break my spirit, then abandon me?" He shouted, "Whore! She-devil!"
He slapped her cheek so hard that her head snapped and her vision blurred. Reiko screamed in pain and shock as she fell on her side with a bone-jarring crash. Then the Dragon King was bending over her, murmuring tender consolations.
"Forgive me for hurting you," he said. "How can I make amends?"
Comfort from him scared Reiko as much as his violence did. She felt the tingling soreness in her cheek; she tasted blood in her mouth. As she gazed up at him, tears flooded her eyes. "You can let us go."
His brows bunched together. "Why do you want to leave me? Do you find me so repulsive?"
"No, not at all," Reiko hastened to say. Cautiously she sat up, aware that she must not enrage him again, lest he do her greater injury. "I think you're very. handsome. But the tower is unfit for people to live in. Lady Keisho-in is old and sick. Midori is going to have a baby soon, Lady Yanagisawa is the mother of a little daughter who needs her."
Ennui shaded the Dragon King's countenance: His interest in Reiko didn't extend to the other women.
"I have a child, too." Reiko's voice trembled as she thought of Masahiro. "We all want to go home!"
The Dragon King folded his arms and straightened his posture. "That's impossible." Coldness edged his gruff voice.
"Have you any children of your own? Don't you miss your own family?" Reiko said, trying to draw him onto common ground and thereby win his sympathy. "Wouldn't you rather be with them instead of in this miserable place?"
"I have no children. I have no family." He spoke in an accusatory tone that said his lack was somehow her fault.
Reiko despaired of reasoning with him, for she comprehended that he was irrational. "Who is it that you want revenge against?" she asked. "What did they do to you that you would kill and kidnap innocent people?"
His superior smile mocked her. "The truth will soon become known to everyone in Japan."
Thwarted, Reiko tried another tack: "How can you serve justice by keeping us imprisoned?"
"You will see," he said, replete with private satisfaction.
"Kidnapping the shogun's mother and slaughtering her entourage is treason against the Tokugawa regime. You'll never get away with it." In her growing anxiety, Reiko resorted to threats: "The army will hunt you down. You'll die in disgrace, while your enemy goes free."
"The army won't touch me." The Dragon King lifted his receding chin and rested a hand on his swords. "I've warned the shogun that if he sends the army after me, I'll kill you all. He must grant my wish, or lose his beloved mother."
Reiko couldn't fathom what wish had spurred this man to such extreme behavior. "What did you ask the shogun to do?" she said, her curiosity almost equaling her fear.
"Be patient," the Dragon King said with an air of condescension. "Time will tell."
Although Reiko had learned the futility of expecting the answers she wanted from him, she said, "What will happen to us?"
"That depends on the shogun. For now, you will stay here with me. We might as well enjoy this time we have together."
He crept close behind her. His feverish warmth and odor of incense engulfed Reiko; his breaths rasped loudly. An urge to flee almost launched Reiko to her feet, but she saw Ota hovering in the do
orway and the men on the veranda, all watching. The Dragon King's fingers tangled in her hair, fumbling and stroking. Reiko felt her skin ripple with revulsion.
No man except her husband had ever touched her in such an intimate manner. She wanted no man except Sano. She would have turned on the Dragon King, grabbed for his sword, and fought him off, but if she did, Keisho-in, Lady Yanagisawa, and Midori would pay.
The Dragon King brushed her hair to one side. His hot, moist breath fanned the back of her neck, that erotic, intimate zone of the female body. His fingertips grazed her nape. Reiko went rigid with terror of ravishment-the worst injury, short of death, that a man could inflict upon a woman.
"The dragon lifts his spiny tail," he whispered. "His majestic body swells and pulsates. Steam bursts from between his glittering scales. His flaming breath ignites passion."
Reiko shuddered at this obscene parody of a love poem. She gagged on bile as she anticipated the agonizing ravishment, and the terrible disgrace.
"An ocean of desire envelops the princess in the underwater palace. Her ivory skin flushes scarlet. She parts her rosy coral lips. Her will drowns in his power. She must surrender."
His moving lips touched Reiko's ear. His hand quivered while he stroked her neck. "Surrender to me now, Anemone, my beautiful drowned princess," he muttered. "Reward me for the justice I will bring you."
Now Reiko comprehended with horror that he wasn't just playing a game. He had such a tenuous grip on reality that he kept forgetting who she was and actually believing she was the woman he called Anemone. He wasn't merely eccentric and irrational-he was insane. What sense could she hope to make of a madman's purpose?
Indecision paralyzed Reiko. If she resisted him, her friends might lose their lives, but enduring his advances might not guarantee their survival. Must she submit to him? Should she fight instead? If she fought, would he or his men kill her?
"You're trembling," the Dragon King said. "You recoil from my touch. Why do you seem not to want me?"
Hurt and confusion echoed in his words. Reiko dared not move or speak. His hand continued stroking her. Then he said, "Ah," in a glad tone of enlightenment. "My haste has offended your feminine sensibility. You would prefer that we delay our lovemaking until we become reacquainted. And your wish is my privilege to honor. Waiting will enhance our pleasure."
The Dragon King's hand dropped from her neck. He stood and called to his men: "Take her back to the keep."
Such overwhelming relief swept through Reiko that her muscles went weak and a sigh gushed from her. Yet even as she silently thanked the gods, she knew the reprieve was only temporary.
The men entered the room and surrounded Reiko. The Dragon King gazed upon her, his eyes burning and face dark with lust. "Good-bye until next time, my dearest Anemone," he said.
As the men led her away, Reiko prayed for a miracle to save her before the next time came.
18
The route to Izu branched southwest off the Tokaido and wound through mountainous, sparsely populated landscape. While Hirata and the detectives galloped along the road, the clouds dispersed, revealing brilliant blue sky, and the afternoon grew warm. Sunlight and shadow painted the cypress forests in vivid shades of green. Steam issued from cracks in the cliffs; hot springs bubbled across the rocky terrain; volcanoes breathed wisps of smoke. Tiny villages, clinging to hillsides, flashed past Hirata as his horse's hooves thrummed under him. The wind roaring in his ears, the tumultuous speed, and the certainty that he was following the path to Midori, elated his spirit. Now he and Marume and Fukida brought their horses to a skittering halt at the junction between the main road and a narrower track that extended west and east into wilderness.
In the sudden quiet stillness, Hirata heard birds singing. He saw, on the west side of the road, a niche carved into a cliff. The niche held a little stone statue of Jizo, the Shinto patron god of travelers.
"There's the shrine Goro mentioned," said Fukida.
"The kidnappers sent away the porters because they didn't want anyone to see where they went from here," Marume deduced. "They carried the chests themselves, down that crossroad. Which way do you think they went?"
Eerie vibrations in the clear, bright air aroused Hirata's instincts. He peered along the crossroad in one direction, then the other. An internal compass pointed him toward Midori. "This way," he said, and rode ahead of his comrades down the westbound track.
The track climbed a slope, then gradually descended and leveled. Cypress, pine, and oak forest narrowed the track and darkened the sunlight. Leading his comrades in single file, Hirata spied dung and trampled leaves on the ground ahead.
"Someone recently brought horses this way," he said. Moments later he glimpsed deep footprints in a stretch of bare, damp earth. "And someone carried a heavy object through here." His heart beat fast with the increasing conviction that this road would take him to Midori and the other women, and that he would fulfill his duty to Sano and the shogun.
After perhaps an hour's ride, a blaze of sunshine through the trees heralded a clearing in the forest. Hirata, Fukida, and Marume dismounted and walked from cool shadow into warm daylight, blinking as their eyes adjusted. The track extended down a short incline, where tree roots protruded through grass and soil, and ended at a dock built of planks. Beyond this spread a marsh-rimmed lake. A breeze rippled the water, which gleamed like an alloy of gold, copper, and quicksilver. In the middle of the lake, some hundred paces distant from where Hirata and his men stood at the forest's edge, was an island. From its shore jutted another dock surrounded by three small boats. Nearby rose what appeared to be a fortress comprised of white buildings with curved tile roofs, a stone wall, and guard towers, amid woods.
Hirata, Marume, and Fukida gazed across the lake, their mouths agape and hands shading their eyes from the sun.
"A castle on an island in the middle of nowhere?" Fukida said in a tone that expressed their disbelief.
"It must be left over from the civil wars," Marume said. "The forest and lake would protect the castle from attack."
"And it's perfect for a prison," Hirata said. A smile cracked the rigid mask of misery that had overlain his face since he'd heard the news of Midori's abduction. New strength infused him, and his cold even seemed to abate, because his search had finally paid off. "This must be where the kidnappers took Midori, Reiko, Lady Keisho-in, and Lady Yanagisawa."
As he and his men beheld the castle, they saw no sign of the women, but a thin smoke plume drifted up from the rooftops. "The place is inhabited," Marume said.
Out the castle gate strode four samurai, armed with swords, bows, and quivers. Hirata, Marume, and Fukida quickly hid in the forest. They watched from behind trees as the samurai divided in pairs that marched in opposite directions along the island's shore.
"They're patrolling," Fukida said.
"Maybe they don't know that the wars are over," Marume said, "but I bet they're guarding the castle because they've got the shogun's mother in there and they don't want anybody trespassing."
Hirata, Fukida, and Marume looked at one another. They whooped with jubilation, threw playful punches, and danced in a circle-quietly, so the kidnappers wouldn't hear them. Hirata rejoiced that Midori was so near.
"We have to tell the sosakan-sama that we've found the kidnappers' hideout," said Marume. "Shall we head for home?"
The idea collided against a barrier of resistance within Hirata. He turned away from the detectives and gazed through the trees, toward the island. He sensed Midori's spirit calling to him from that mysterious castle. The irresistible summons, and his overwhelming desire to stay near his wife, rooted him where he stood.
"We're not leaving," he said, facing Marume and Fukida.
They regarded him with surprise. Marume said, "But the sosakan-sama ordered us to report our discoveries to him."
Concern sharpened Fukida's expression as he looked toward the castle, then back at Hirata. "You're not thinking of going over there. are you?"
"We aren't supposed to approach the kidnappers," Fukida minded him.
"I know." Hirata also knew that their duty to their master superseded all other considerations.
"You wouldn't go against his orders?" Marume said, clearly shocked that Hirata could even think of such heresy.
A terrible, sick shame coursed through Hirata. Disobedience was the worst sin against Bushido. And defying Sano would not only compromise Hirata's honor but also betray the trust of the man who was his closest friend as well as his master.
Laura Joh Rowland - Sano Ichiro 08 - Dragon King's Palace Page 19