by T. Cook
He laughed aloud. “This will be the first time I have ever been mistaken for a princess.” He folded his hands behind his neck in a bold display of the obvious distinctions.
“I should go. There was a misunderstanding. Her Highness will be waiting for me,” I moved to the edge of the pool, but he was already wading into the pool.
“By now the Princess and her party are half way down the mountainside.”
“But she can’t—I have to…” I stumbled as I spoke.
“She’s royalty. She can do whatever she wants, but I will confess to you now: we had an agreement.”
“What was your agreement?” I asked, scarcely daring the question.
“It concerned you.”
“Please explain. No one has bothered to tell me the details of this arrangement.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Was it only a verbal agreement? Who gave it to you?”
He grinned. “Agreements between Emperors and The Ruling House always are always binding. You are mine now. We are wed.”
I shivered. “What?”
“You don’t know?” The surprise in his expression couldn’t have been feigned. He lifted his chin. “I am Yasuhiro Whitegrain. First born of Akihiro Whitegrain.”
I had imagined myself a weapon in the hands of revolutionaries, and accordingly, believed there would be some kind of a struggle with this very man. But Whitegrain looked at me as his prize. Held me out as a possession harmless to him. He wouldn’t know to defend himself. He would never have a chance!
I stammered, “You married a wife only recently.”
He nodded. “And you have the blessing of being my concubine.”
I ought to have bowed, but I could not. Reigi demanded it. I didn’t move. But my mind calculated. Could I save him? I was not even sure I wanted to. Save him to become his concubine?
Whitegrain sensed my fear, but misunderstood it. He thought I was only timid. I was more than timid. He was so much younger than I had imagined—almost boyish. I could hardly imagine him at the head of his father’s army.
“I see you are surprised, but you’ll be very happy at Western Capital. I will deny you nothing.”
It might be true. For the first time I tasted the heady conviction that the highest in the land really would give me almost anything.
“You don’t understand, Your Highness,” I bit my lip, unsure how to act and reluctant to murder him. “I’m unworthy of this honor.”
He frowned. “Do you still fail to comprehend? I know you are the daughter of Orihime. I will raise you to your rightful throne on earth. No one will question your paternity when you arrive at Court.” Then he reached for me with arms already stained red by the water’s heat.
This was the beginning of a long drawn out assassination.
50
I awoke as in times past, with a vivid recollection of what had happened up until a point, and then nothing. But that wasn’t quite true. One or two additional details had pressed into my memory.
I remembered heavy tears streaming from my eyes while Yasuhiro had kissed me with his open mouth; his voice at my ear, whispering Orihime. Your tears taste like salted wine. Then blackness, and the intermittent hacking of breathlessness and fear. Perhaps he had died as the others had. Was he also poisoned? Then all at once, I understood the source of my mysterious poison. It had come from my tears!
I sat up and held my head. Perhaps more of my memory would return, but I recoiled with the thought of reliving the event.
Instead, I closed my mind and glanced around the tiny room where I had slept. A tatami floor. A sulfuric odor. The roar of rushing water. Could I really still be at the mountain inn?
I should be in prison. I would be exposed to the nation as an assassin. They would torture me to death—if they could. They would at least try to punish me.
The shoji door scraped along its track. I glanced up. A small servant girl carried tea in on a tray, set it on a kotatsu table then disappeared.
I tasted the tea. It was tart with fermented cherry. When I lifted it again to my lips, I raised my eyes and caught a glimpse of a spider, a long-legged orb weaver delicately decorated in black and white, crouching within the seam of the ceiling and the wall. I gave an involuntary start. Spiders rarely startled me, but something was different about this one. I spoke to it, as if in apology, “You are welcome to any insects here.”
It spun a hasty thread and traveled to its end, hovering very close to my face. I stared at its mask of eyes for several seconds and never flinched until it spoke—not in words, but in language that seemed to translate directly into thought within my mind.
Accept the knowledge of your nature.
My jaw slackened. “What do you mean?” I asked, though at once I knew:
I had a kinship with this creature. And as I stared, stunned, the spider disappeared, and in her place stood a beautiful woman. Her willowy figure stood before me, naked but for a long coil of thick black hair—her countenance radiant. I stared in stricken awe, and strangely, recognition.
She was the woman Shin had sketched in his book and the same who had haunted my dreams!
Finally, she spoke, “Furi, you have a shadow of the Earth Kumo in your history. You carry our venom in your tears, our artistry in your fingers, our industry in your ethic. Be glad, for yours is a high purpose and a great calling. Keep your path. You have much to learn and to prepare for.”
I exhaled sharply but I kept my nerve, even while my chest pounded and my lungs heaved. I had so much to ask her and would have begged her to explain, but in another instant, the woman disappeared, leaving nothing but her wisp of spider thread.
The puzzle of my past expanded in my mind and folded tightly closed with this single revelatory piece. At last I knew the source of my poison. And a sensation of strange relief flooded my whole being. I began to shake, and then to cry.
I don’t know how long I cried, but my pillow was soaked with the toxic flood when I came again to full self-possession.
The aroma of food called me to awareness of life outside of my own thoughts. I was very hungry. A different servant woman brought a tray and wordlessly set it again on the table. I arose from the futon and knelt at the table.
I could hardly believe they would serve an assassin so well. The tray bore a breakfast of salt fish and miso soup. I ate it all without ceremony, licking my fingers of the salty traces.
The door slid again on its tracks.
The woman who brought the breakfast spoke. “I’ve come to change your bed clothes.”
I lunged for the pillow possessively. “Please not this,” I said. “Don’t even touch it!”
“If that is your preference, My Lady.”
‘My Lady?’ Had she addressed me so politely? Could it be Yasuhiro had survived? And suppose he had survived the venom in my tears. But how could he survive long, wed to an Earth Kumo? If I had escaped suspicion thus far, how long could it last?
Time passed, and I grew anxious of information. Who was seeing to my care? Why did they stay hidden from me? Dared I go out to discover them? I wore nothing but the thin cotton bathing robe I had taken to the bath the morning prior. For all I knew, the Princess had packed my kimono off with my other belongings, and not knowing whether I was under military guard or whether my husband was simply resting, I didn’t want to go out to confront my guards in only a thin robe.
I waited until the moon had risen halfway up the sky before I heard the shoji door withdraw once more.
I blinked, and then snapped upright and rigid. “Shin!”
51
My breath caught and for several moments failed while I met Shin’s steady, remorseless gaze.
“Furi. Come here.”
I planted my feet on the tatami, but he closed the distance between us, a slight lilt in his head and a single raised eyebrow hinting his confusion. And well he might wonder at the difference between this and his former reception at the Nobu castle. He examined me from head to f
oot with tender, if clinical interest. Then attempted an embrace, but I stiffened and he stepped back. At last his clear eyes betrayed something. Regret?
“You are angry with me. Why?” His look was wondering.
How many reasons did Shin need? I had many. He had given me up bodily to Whitegrain’s heir only hours ago. He had delayed his coming almost beyond my endurance. Perhaps he still nursed a flame for his princess lover. And still, I considered the risk I posed to him, and retreated another step.
But I confessed none of this. “I am now Whitegrain’s concubine, if he is surviving,” I said, my gaze resting on Shin’s bare feet.
His eyes veiled some kind of emotion. Anger? Fear? “He survives. I have examined him myself. But he is sleeping under the influence of an,” he paused to find words, “unrecognized poison.”
“What does that mean—unrecognized?”
“We will speak of it later. Right now, you should rest and recover your strength. When you are well… if you are you willing…” he paused again. “We will talk more about his illness.”
“Not later. Now,” I said, surprising myself with the command in my voice. “Tell me. Am I your prisoner?”
His breath came sharp. “No. Why would you think that?”
“How could I not be a prisoner? I have poisoned the very heir to the Ruling House throne. And you are no gardener, but a samurai, I would guess. It’s your duty to arrest and execute me at once or betray your Ruler.”
Shin sighed deeply, anguish plain upon his face. “You are not a prisoner. I would protect you with my army and my own life, if necessary.”
“That necessity is not inconceivable,” I said, voice stiff.
His eyes washed again with pain. “It won’t come to that.”
I lifted my chin? “Who are you to make that prediction?”
“I’m a ranking officer within a revolutionary army. A former conscript and traitor to the Ruling House, but this is not this betrayal you are holding against me. It’s more personal than that. Am I right?”
I opened my mouth to speak and my voice broke. “How could you do it? How could you marry me to Yasuhiro Whitegrain?”
Shin started. “Did you ever consent to marriage?”
“The Sovereign said it was done!”
“The sovereign is about to die. And he was well ahead of himself. You aren’t married. And I beg your forgiveness for allowing him so close to you, but we were armed and ready to strike him ourselves. We would not have let him hurt you.”
I shuddered. “But you would make me your weapon?”
His face, already grim creased and turned morose. “I told you years ago that I could not give you your freedom, but nothing could stop you from taking it yourself. And now I ask you: will you take it?”
“To be Whitegrain’s concubine?” I gasped in disbelief.
“Can’t you see? I’m talking about a new Otoppon—free from cruelty and the oppression of slavery. A rightful and honest position in a world you will help build yourself. Don’t you yearn for that?”
“I don’t think I understand what it is.”
Shin withdrew a clean handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to me. “I once promised to tell you all of my secrets.” He drew a quick breath. “Are you ready to hear them now?”
New revelations had shaken me so far already, and yet none of them could have prepared me for the story Shin would relate.
* * *
“I am Shin Nagaishi of the Eastern Nagaishi Clan—the Spider Clan. For generations we resisted imperial control. The Nagaishi were the last to sign the Whitegrain unification treaty when the Emperor fell.”
“We are known to our enemies as the Spider People for our former alliance with the Earth Kumo—the shape-shifting spider she-warriors who still occupy the peaks of the Yamato Mountain. With our allies, we preserved our domain from imperial armies and invasion from rival clans for nearly four hundred years, but our alliance failed. Our chieftains honored a long-standing treaty, always remembering the shape-shifters’ deadly threat to mankind and never trespassing into their cave dwelling realm.”
“But in the final year of the Warring Clan Period, a beautiful Earth Kumo lured Chieftain Toyo Nagaishi into her lair and poisoned him with her venom, destroying the Nagaishi’s hope of defending their domain. On the eve of the Whitegrain Clan’s advancement inside our borders, my uncle dispatched a messenger, and conceded defeat.”
“It was the end of an era, and also the beginning—” he paused to exhale a breath, but his gaze held mine. “I was the product of the Earth Kumo and the chieftain’s cave liaison. I am half Earth Kumo, half mortal.”
I gasped with the sudden realization that the beautiful she-spider who had appeared to me earlier was Shin’s mother!
Shin continued, “All my life, the Nagaishi Clan has been carrying out an underground resistance to the Whitegrain family. The time has finally come to carry out our plans.”
“Revolution,” I repeated, and it fell heavily from my lips.
“It will be a bloodless revolution, and we have many powerful allies, including the Emperor and his family. If our plans succeed, the cost in lives will be very low, but the burden for this massive feat falls heavily upon a few shoulders.” Shin cast his gaze down at the floor, then raised it to meet mine. “You are the very center of our revolutionary offensive. Everything depends upon you.”
I blinked confusion. “You’ve already used me to incapacitate your target. What more can you ask?”
“Do you remember when we spoke that night on Madame Ozawa’s veranda? And I said someday I would make a request of you so great, I would have no right to expect you to honor it?”
“I can never forget it. I was so naïve that I thought I could answer you anything. I understand now the weight of what you then implied.”
“You know a fraction.”
Something inside of me recoiled. “What else is there?”
Shin met my gaze. “Will you give the new Otoppon an heir?”
52
“You want me to have Whitegrain’s child?” I asked, my voice breaking.
“Not Whitegrain’s.” Shin paused, and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again as though lifting a veil. “Mine.”
The breath caught in my lungs, freezing with the mental image of myself holding Shin’s baby.
“Our child will be the heir as long as Whitegrain survives. And Yasuhiro will believe the babe his own,” Shin said.
“But our child I wouldn’t be in the line of succession. He has a first wife.”
“His wife is barren. He will have to depend upon you for an heir and he knows it.”
I trembled and my head reeled. Shin closed his hands around my trembling fingers. “You are free to choose.”
“Yasuhiro said I was already his.”
“You are as free as the revolution would make you, to choose your own husband, a woman with every right and legal privilege.”
“How would our child succeed then, if my union to him is only his presumption?”
I had so many questions, but Shin answered slowly, patiently as ever. “He will have no interest in contesting his paternity of our child. Producing an heir is his most urgent business.”
“Am I to live as his wife?”
“But briefly. In his illness, I don’t believe he will long outlive the birth of the child.”
I bit my lip. “How can you possibly be sure he will die?”
“Before I followed you to the Ozawa mill, I was a warrior at Western Capital…at court…I also studied with the Emperor’s private physician. I’m trained in clinical and theoretical medicine. He will die.”
I stared, but didn’t doubt him. At last he had disarmed me, question by question. And yet it wouldn’t be enough. Shin might answer everything else, but there remained one problem he could not resolve, and that was this: if Shin were half mortal and half Earth Kumo, making love to me—to anyone—would be lethal.
We were silent, but for the rush of th
e river and our patient, deliberate breathing in and out. I had not forgotten Shin’s honesty with me. I would have been his at his asking months ago, and he could have had an heir, but he would not deceive me so far. He would give me a choice. And yet what choice was it really? Could I truly walk away from here and be free? I could hardly breathe through this thought. And yet I asked it, “You would let me go if I chose it?”
Shin’s mouth hardened. “On my honor, I would let you go, though it would frustrate a decade of planning and the underpinnings of the entire revolution…and,” he paused here to swallow. “And wound me more than I can say.”
I scoffed at this.
But he stared at me with a gaze so probing my skin began to burn. “I can’t answer that question in a few words. Not well. An impassioned declaration of love would not impress you. No doubt you have had that from Whitegrain already.” His voice betrayed a hint of contempt when he repeated that name. “But I can tell you a story I think you may be interested to hear—it is about your father and mother.”
I would listen to any family story though it went on through the night.
“It’s not long, but I must preface it with this, and I’m sorry.”
“I am listening,” I said, sitting down to the kotatsu.
He knelt across from me and began, “You were raised by cynical, low people. They despised themselves and taught you to do the same.”
A shadow fell over my thoughts. “I suppose they did. What bearing does that have?”
“I’m telling you why you won’t believe what I’m about to say.”
I stifled a bitter laugh. “What will you say? My mother is the moon? I have heard that before.”
“It is not far from the truth. Remember the Princess’s nickname for you?”
“What? Orihime?”
“Orihime is your mother. The Weaver of the Gods.”
I closed my eyes in disappointment. How could Shin flatter me this way? I turned from him to hide the bitterness I could not prevent from creeping into my expression.