“ ‘You do it,” I begged her.“ Lady Mori pantomimed pressing the dagger on Ukon.
“I said, ”He hurt your son, he’s your problem, you should be the one to punish him,“ ” Ukon continued.
The dagger passed back to Lady Mori, while tides of sleep wafted Reiko in and out of darkness.
“She made me,” Lady Mori said.
A flurry of motion; cries; a scuffle. Ukon pushed Lady Mori to her knees he-side Lord Mori. “I’ll help you.”
“She put her hands over mine on the dagger. We raised it up over him.” Lady Mori placed her fists one atop the other and lifted them above her head. “And then…” She closed her eyes, turned her face, and winced.
The two women plunged the dagger into Lord Mori’s stomach. Blood spurted. Reiko watched, dazed and numb.
“I thought one stab would be enough.” Lady Mori’s voice penetrated Reiko’s memory. “I thought he would die right away.”
A howl burst from Lord Mori as pain roused him. His arms and legs thrashed.
“He wasn’t supposed to wake up. I guess he didn’t drink all his wine,” Ukon said. “He gave us quite a fright.”
As the two women fell backward, they pulled the dagger out of him. Ukon’s shout mingled with Lady Mori’s shrill, hysterical laughter. Reiko gasped as past and present collided.
“He tried to get away from us,” Ukon said.
Lord Mori was on his knees, his face a picture of terror and bewilderment. Dripping blood onto the floor, he crawled away from the women, from Reiko. He fell, then dragged himself across the room while Lady Mori screamed and screamed.
“We needed to finish him off, but she was a useless wreck.” Ukon flicked a disgusted glance at Lady Mori, whose eyes stared with the panic she’d felt that night, her hands clapped over her mouth as if to stifle the screams. “So I went after him.”
Lord Mori cried, “No! I beg you! Stop!” Reiko had mistakenly thought he was talking to her, that she’d stabbed him. Ukon brandished the dagger. Her mouth twisted with murderous intent, she slashed at Lord Mori. The blade cut his torso as he rolled on the floor and sobbed.
“Have mercy!”
His hands, knees, and feet scrabbled in the blood that spilled from him as he struggled to escape, as his wife doubled over in the corner and vomited.
Lady Mori retched, spewing vomit onto the floor, sickened by what she’d seen that night. Reiko thought how fallible memory was, how the gaps in hers had led her to think herself guilty of murder.
“Finally he died,” Ukon said.
But how to explain the other memories, in which Reiko had coupled with Lord Mori then stabbed him?
“No more!” Lady Mori frantically waved one hand to silence Ukon while the other clasped her stomach and her body heaved. Bile dripped from her mouth. “Please…”
“Please, let’s get out of here!”
“Not yet,” Ukon said. “We’ve still got work to do.”
The chamber revolved around Reiko; the lanterns blurred above her. Ukon appeared in her field of view, her face ugly with hatred as she stared down at Reiko. “It’s not enough that you’ll be blamed for killing him. Execution is too good for you.” She turned to Lady Mori, who was moaning in the background. “Come here. Help me lift her.”
“I want her to hear,” Ukon insisted.
As her consciousness waxed and waned, Reiko heard Lady Mori say, “No, I don’t want to,” and Ukon snap, “You have to. I helped you. Now it’s your turn to help me. It’s only fair.”
“We dragged you onto the bed,” Ukon said, “then we put Lord Mori on top of you.”
His face was above hers, so close that she could smell the sour breath from his open, drooling mouth. Reiko had only thought it was breath; it had been the reek of decay. His eyes were half-closed, his expression blank. Because he was dead.
“We wrapped your arms and legs around him,” Ukon said. “I sat on his back and bounced up and down.”
His body humped against hers with repeated thuds. Reiko felt herself gasping, the slickness of their sweat. But she’d only thought it was sweat, when it was really blood from his wounds.
“It was hilarious.” Ukon clapped her hands and chortled. She rode Lord Mori like a horse, laughing gleefully. “How does it feel to know you made love with a dead man?”
“It was disgraceful,” Lady Mori moaned. “You are so vulgar, so filthy, so disgusting!”
Lieutenant Asukai, who’d listened in shocked silence until now, said, “You should be ashamed of yourself for treating Lady Reiko that way!
Reiko sank to her knees in relief that she hadn’t been Lord Mori’s mistress. Yet she gasped in horror at the image of Ukon playing with them as if they were puppets made of flesh.
“It was no more than you deserved.” Ukon’s malicious cheer was undiminished by her audience’s reaction. “I decided that as long as you were going to die for Lord Mori’s murder, you should share in the fun.”
Enlightenment flashed through Reiko. “You sat me up. You tied my hands around the dagger. Then you threw us at each other,” she said, appalled.
Lord Mori emerged from a blur of light and motion before her. His mouth was open as if in a wordless plea, his arms flung wide. A mighty lunge propelled her toward him. Reiko revised the scene in her mind. Lady Mori held her upright. Ukon shoved Lord Mori toward her. The blade of her dagger sank deep into his stomach. He howled. No, not him, but Ukon. She bayed in triumph as she danced around Reiko and Lord Mori, whooping like a madwoman.
Her laughter rang out harsh, maniacal, and chilling now. “That was the best part,” she said. “Afterward, we laid you beside Lord Mori’s body and we cleaned up the room. We left you there. We took away the chrysanthemums and the painted screen and burned them in the woods. Then we went back to the women’s quarters to wait for the news that Lord Mori was dead and you’d murdered him.”
Reiko’s satisfaction at knowing the truth at last mixed with fury at the two women. But she also had a question.
“Just one thing,” Reiko said. “There was a big step from you wanting to get even with me, Lady Mori wanting to get even with her husband, and what you did about it. Whose idea was it to kill Lord Mori and frame me?”
Ever since Captain Torai had dragged him and Sano out of the palanquin, Hirata had been directing his spiritual energy at their captors. All the while he’d knelt by the pit and listened to Sano argue with Police Commissioner Hoshina, he’d tried to attack his enemies’ shields, the auras of mental and bodily energy they radiated. But they didn’t seem to feel a thing. Hirata felt like a child shooting make-believe arrows while his last moments slipped away.
Now Torai strode up to Hirata, grinning because it was finally time for action. He made a mock bow to Sano, who looked on in helpless horror while straining at his ropes. Hoshina stayed beside Sano, watching with an anticipation almost carnal. Hirata felt Torai’s shield throb with confident power, while despair weakened his own. Torai posed near Hirata and swung up his sword. Hirata’s neck prickled in anticipation of the cut that would extinguish his life. He hurled one last, parting shot of energy toward Torai…
… and felt something flex inside him, some strange combination of muscles and will he’d never known he had. His perceptions altered. The rendering factory, the other people in it, and the entire world seemed shockingly immediate, the colors so intense and details so intricate they dazzled his eyes. He could hear his companions breathing and the noise from the distant city. Through the tannery stink he smelled the ocean far away. The energy exploded out from a deep place at his very core, like steam from a geyser.