Confident now they were still undetected, he jumped up and went to the door, used his knife, sliding the bar back. Inside quickly. Akimoto stayed on guard in the sentry's uniform. The others followed Hiraga noiselessly up the stairs towards the women's quarters, the route already given to him. Everything was lavish, best woods, finest tatamis, purest oiled paper for shoji and most fragrant oils for lamps and candles. Turning a corner. The unsuspecting guard stared at him blankly. His mouth opened but no sound came out. Hiraga's knife had stopped it.
He stepped over the body, went to the end of this corridor, hesitated a moment to get his bearings. Now a cul-de-sac. Either side were walls of sliding shoji, rooms behind them. At the end just one, bigger and more ornate than all the others. An oil lamp burned within, also in some of the other rooms. A few snores and heavy breathing. Silently he motioned for Todo and Joun to follow and the others to guard, then went forward again like a night-hunting beast. The sound of heavy breathing increased.
A nod to Joun. At once the youth slipped past him, crouched at the far door then, at another sign from Hiraga, slid the shoji open.
Hiraga leapt into the room, then Todo.
Two men were prone on the exquisite silk quilts and futons, naked and joined, the youth spread, the older over him, clutching him and thrusting, panting and oblivious. Hiraga stood over them, reared his sword on high and with two hands gripping the hilt drove the point through the back of both bodies just above the heart, burying it into the tatami floor, impaling them.
The old man gasped and died instantly, his limbs quivering beyond death. The youth clawed impotently, unable to turn, unable to move his trunk, only his arms and legs and head but, even so, he still could not twist enough to see what had happened nor could he understand what had happened, only that his life was somehow seeping away as all his body opened. A howl of terror gathered in his throat as Todo leapt forward and twined the garrote to choke it back--just too late. Part of the cry hung in the now fetid air.
Instantly he with Hiraga whirled for the door, all senses frenzied. Hiraga with knife poised. Todo, Joun and those in the corridor swords raised, hearts pounding, all ready to charge, flee, fight, rush, die, but battle and die proudly. Behind Hiraga the delicate hands of the youth tore at his neck, his long, perfect and painted nails gouging the flesh around the wire. The fingers shuddered and stopped and fluttered and stopped and fluttered. And were still.
Silence. Somewhere a sleeper stirred noisily, then returned to sleep. Still no alarms or warning shouts. Gradually the raiders wrenched themselves from the brink, numbed and sweat-stained. Hiraga signalled the retreat.
At once they obeyed except for Joun who ran back into the room to recover Hiraga's sword. He straddled the bodies but with all his strength he could not pull the sword out or ease it out. Hiraga waved him away, tried himself and failed. On a low lacquered sword stand were the weapons of the dead men. He picked one up. At the door he looked back.
In the clean, steady light of the oil lamp the two bodies seemed like a single monstrous, multilegged human-headed dragonfly, the crumpled quilts its gorgeous wings, his sword a giant silver pin. Now he could see the face of the youth--it was quite beautiful.
Yoshi was strolling on the battlements, Koiko beside him, easily a head taller than her. A chill was on the small wind and smell of the sea at low tide. He did not notice it.
Again his eyes flicked from the city below to the moon and he watched it, brooding. Koiko waited patiently. Her kimono was the finest Shan-tung with a scarlet under-kimono and her hair, loosed informally, fell to her waist. His kimono was ordinary, silk but ordinary and swords ordinary, ordinary but sharp.
"What are you thinking about, Sire?" she asked, judging it time to dispel his gloom. Though they were quite alone she kept her voice down, well aware that nowhere within the castle walls was really secure.
"Kyoto," he said simply. As quietly.
"Will you accompany Shogun Nobusada?"
He shook his head though he had already decided to go to Kyoto before the formal party--the deception habitual.
Somehow I must stop that young fool and become the sole channel between Emperor and Shogunate, he had been thinking, his mind assaulted with the difficulties surrounding him: the madness of this state visit, Anjo whose hold over the Council had forced approval, Anjo with his hatred and plotting, the trap I'm in here in the castle, the multitude of enemies throughout the land, the chief of them Sanjiro of Satsuma, Hiro of Tosa and Ogama of Choshu who now holds the Gates that are our birthright. And added to all of those and waiting to pounce like salivating wolves are the gai-jin.
They have to be dealt with, permanently. The boy Nobusada and the Princess have to be neutralized, permanently.
The permanent solution for the gai-jin is clear: in any way we can devise, whatever the sacrifice, we must become richer than them, and better armed. This must be secret national policy, now and forever. How to achieve this? I do not know yet. But as policy we must flatter them to sleep, keep them off balance, using their foolish attitudes against them--and employ our superior abilities to cocoon them.
Nobusada? Equally clear. But he's not the real threat. It's her. I don't have to worry about him but her, Princess Yazu, she's the real power behind him, and in front.
The sudden, mental picture of her with a penis and Nobusada the receiver made him smile. It would make a wonderful shunga, he thought, amused. Shunga were erotic, many-colored woodcuts so popular and prized amongst Yedo's traders and shopkeepers that had been proscribed by the Shogunate for a century or more as too licentious for them, the lowest class, and too easy to be used as lampoons against their betters.
In Nippon's immutable hierarchy, instituted by the tairo, Dictator Nakamura, then made permanent by Shogun Toranaga, first were samurai, second farmers, third artisans of every kind, and last, despised by all, merchants: "leeches on all other labor," the Legacy called them. Despised because all others needed their skills and wealth--most of all their wealth. Particularly samurai.
So rules, certain rules, could be eased.
Thus in Yedo, Osaka and Nagasaki where the really rich merchants lived, shunga, though officially outlawed, were painted, carved and merrily produced by the best artists and printmakers in the land. In every epoch, artists vied with each other for fame and fortune, selling them by the thousands.
Exotic, explicit but always with gargantuan genitalia, hilariously out of all proportion, the best in perfect, moist, and mobile detail.
Equally prized, were ukiyo-every portraits of leading actors, the constant meat of gossip, scandal, and license--actresses were not permitted by law, so specially trained men, onnagata, played female roles--and, above all, prints of the most famous courtesans. "I would like someone to paint you. It's a pity Hiroshige and Hokusai are dead."
She laughed. "How should I pose, Sire?"
"Not in bed," he said, laughing with her, unusual for him to laugh, and she was pleased with the victory. "Just walking along a street, with a sunshade, green and pink, and wearing your pink and green kimono with the carp of woven gold."
"Perhaps, Sire, instead of a street, perhaps in a garden at dusk catching fireflies?"
"Ah, much better!" He smiled, remembering the rare days of his youth on summer evenings when he was released from studies. Then he and his brothers and sisters and friends would go out into the fields and hunt fireflies with gossamer nets and put the tiny insects into tiny cages and watch the light miraculously pulse on and off, composing poems, laughing and larking with no responsibilities, and young. "Like I feel with you now," he muttered.