Grass for His Pillow (5 page)

There was something in the way he said it that made the color rise in my face. We had done nothing, had not even touched each other, but something existed between us, and Kenji was aware of it.

Both masters were grinning as they stood up and embraced me. Kenji gave me a cuff round the head. “Do as you're told,” he said. “And learn to juggle.”

I wished Kenji and I could have spoken alone. There was so much still unresolved between us. Yet, maybe it was better that he should bid me farewell as though he truly were an affectionate teacher whom I had outgrown. Besides, as I was to learn, the Tribe do not waste time on the past and do not like to be confronted with it.

After they'd left, the room seemed gloomier than ever, airless and stuffy. I could hear through the house the sounds of their departure. The elaborate preparations, the long good-byes of most
travelers, were not for them. Kenji and Kotaro just walked out the door, carrying everything they needed for the road in their hands: light bundles in wrapping cloths, a spare pair of sandals, some rice cakes flavored with salted plums. I thought about them and the roads they must have walked, tracing and retracing their way across the Three Countries and beyond, for all I knew, following the vast web the Tribe spun from village to village, town to town. Wherever they went they would find relatives; they would never be without shelter or protection.

I heard Yuki say she would walk with them to the bridge, and heard the woman who'd been angry with the soldiers reply.

“Take care of yourselves,” the woman called after them. The footsteps faded down the street.

The room seemed even more depressing and lonely. I couldn't imagine being confined in it for a week. Almost without realizing what I was doing, I was already planning to get out. Not to escape: I was quite resigned to staying with the Tribe. Just to get out. Partly to look at Yamagata again by night, partly to see if I could.

Not long after, I heard someone approaching. The door slid back and a woman stepped in. She was carrying a tray of food: rice, pickles, a small piece of dried fish, a bowl of soup. She knelt, placing the tray on the floor.

“Here, eat, you must be hungry.”

I was famished. The smell of the food made me dizzy. I fell on it like a wolf. She sat and watched me while I ate.

“So you're the one who's been causing my poor old husband so much trouble,” she remarked as I was polishing the bowl for the last grains of rice.

Kenji's wife. I shot a look at her and met her gaze. Her face was
smooth, as pale as his, with the similarity that many long-married couples attain. Her hair was still thick and black, with just a few white hairs appearing at the center of her scalp. She was thickset and solid, a true townswoman with square, short-fingered, capable hands. The only thing I could remember Kenji saying about her was that she was a good cook, and indeed the food was delicious.

I told her so, and as the smile moved from her lips to her eyes I saw in an instant that she was Yuki's mother. Their eyes were the same shape, and when she smiled, the expression was the same.

“Who'd have thought that you'd have turned up after all these years,” she went on, sounding garrulous and motherly. “I knew Isamu, your father, well. And no one knew anything about you until that incident with Shintaro. Imagine you hearing and outwitting the most dangerous assassin in the Three Countries! The Kikuta family were delighted to discover Isamu had left a son. We all were. And one with such talents too!”

I didn't reply. She seemed a harmless old woman—but then, Kenji had appeared a harmless old man. I felt in myself a faint echo of the mistrust I'd had when I first saw Kenji in the street in Hagi. I tried to study her without appearing to, and she stared openly at me. I felt she was challenging me in some way, but I had no intention of responding until I'd found out more about her and her skills.

“Who killed my father?” I said instead.

“No one's ever found out. It was years before we even knew for certain that he was dead. He'd found an isolated place to hide himself in.”

“Was it someone from the Tribe?”

That made her laugh, which angered me. “Kenji said you trusted no one. It's good, but you can trust me.”

“Like I could trust him,” I muttered.

“Shigeru's scheme would have killed you,” she said mildly. “It's important for the Kikuta, for the whole Tribe, to keep you alive. It's so rare these days to find such a wealth of talent.”

I grunted at that, trying to discern some hidden meaning beneath her flattery. She poured tea, and I drank it at a gulp. My head ached from the stuffy room.

“You're tense,” she said, taking the bowl from my hands, and placing it on the tray. She moved the tray to one side and came closer to me. Kneeling behind me, she began to massage my neck and shoulders. Her fingers were strong, pliant, and sensitive, all at the same time. She worked over my back and then, saying, “Close your eyes,” began on my head. The sensation was exquisite. I almost groaned aloud. Her hands seemed to have a life of their own. I gave my head to them, feeling as though it were floating off my neck.

Then I heard the door slide. My eyes snapped open. I could still feel her fingers in my scalp, but I was alone in the room. A shiver ran down my spine. Kenji's wife might look harmless but her powers were probably as great as her husband's or her daughter's.

She'd also taken away my knife.

I
WAS GIVEN
the name of Minoru, but hardly anyone called me by it. When we were alone Yuki occasionally called me Takeo, letting the word form in her mouth as if she were granting herself a gift. Akio only said “you,” and always in the form used when addressing inferiors. He was entitled to. He was my senior in years, training, and knowledge, and I'd been ordered to submit to him. It rankled,
though: I hadn't realized how much I had become accustomed to being treated with respect as an Otori warrior and Shigeru's heir.

My training began that afternoon. I had not known that the muscles in my hands could ache so much. My right wrist was still weak from my first fight with Akio. By the end of the day it was throbbing again. We started with exercises to make the fingers deft and supple. Even with his damaged hand Akio was far faster and far more dexterous than me. We sat opposite each other and time and again he rapped my hands before I could move them.

He was so quick, I could not believe that I could not even see the movement. At first the rap was no more than a light tap, but as the afternoon turned to evening and we both grew tired and frustrated by my clumsiness, he began to hit me in earnest.

Yuki, who had come into the room to join us, said quietly, “If you bruise his hands, it will take longer.”

“Maybe I should bruise his head,” Akio muttered, and the next time, before I could move my hands away, he seized both in his right hand and, with the left, hit me on the cheek. It was a real blow, strong enough to make my eyes water.

“Not so bold without a knife,” he said, releasing my hands and holding his own ready again.

Yuki said nothing. I could feel anger simmering inside me. It was outrageous to me that he should hit an Otori lord. The confined room, the deliberate teasing, Yuki's indifference—all combined to drive me toward loss of control. The next time Akio made the same move with opposite hands. The blow was even harder, making my neck snap back. My sight went black, then red. I felt the rage erupt just as it had with Kenji. I hurled myself at him.

It's been many years since I was seventeen, since the fury seized
me and threw me beyond self-control. But I still recall the way the release felt, as though my animal self had been unleashed, and then I'd have no memory of what happened after that, just the blind feeling of not caring if I lived or died, of refusing to be forced or bullied any longer.

After the first moment of surprise, when I had my hands round Akio's throat, the two of them restrained me easily. Yuki did her trick of pressing into my neck, and as I began to black out, she hit me harder than I would have thought possible in the stomach. I doubled over, retching. Akio slid out from beneath me and pinioned my arms behind my back.

We sat on the matting, as close as lovers, breathing heavily. The whole episode had lasted no more than a minute. I couldn't believe Yuki had hit me so hard. I'd thought she would have been on my side. I stared at her with rancor in my heart.

“That's what you have to learn to control,” she said calmly.

Akio released my arms and knelt in readiness. “Let's start again.”

“Don't hit me in the face,” I said.

“Yuki's right, it's best not to bruise your hands,” he replied. “So be quicker.”

I vowed inwardly I would not let him hit me again. The next time, though, I did not get close to rapping him; I moved head and hands away before he could touch me. Watching him, I began to sense the slightest intimation of movement. I finally managed to graze the surface of his knuckles. He said nothing, nodded as if satisfied, but barely, and we moved on to working with juggling balls.

So the hours went: passing the ball from one palm to the other,
from palm to mat to palm. By the end of the second day I could juggle three balls in the ancient style; by the end of the third day, four. Akio still sometimes managed to catch me off guard and slap me, but mostly I learned to avoid it, in an elaborate dance of balls and hands.

By the end of the fourth day I was seeing balls behind my eyelids, and I was bored and restless beyond words. Some people, and I guessed Akio was one, work persistently at these skills because they are obsessed by them and by their desire to master them. I quickly realized I was not among them. I couldn't see the point to juggling. It didn't interest me. I was learning in the hardest of ways and for the worst of reasons: because I would be beaten if I did not. I submitted to Akio's harsh teaching because I had to, but I hated it, and I hated him. Twice more his goading led to the same outburst of fury, but just as I was learning to anticipate him, so he and Yuki came to know the signs, and were ready to restrain me before anyone got hurt.

That fourth night, once the house was silent and everyone slept, I decided to go exploring. I was bored, I could not sleep, I was longing to breathe some fresh air, but above all I wanted to see if I could. For obedience to the Tribe to make sense, I had to find out if I could be disobedient. Forced obedience seemed to have as little point as juggling. They might as well tie me up day and night like a dog, and I would growl and bite on command.

I knew the layout of the house. I had mapped it when I had nothing else to do but listen. I knew where everyone slept at night. Yuki and her mother were in a room at the back of the building, with two other women whom I had not seen, though I had heard them. One served in the shop, joking loudly with the customers in
the local accent. Yuki addressed her as “Auntie.” The other was more of a servant. She did the cleaning and most of the food preparation, always first up in the morning and the last to lie down at night. She spoke very little, in a low voice with a northern accent. Her name was Sadako. Everyone in the household bullied her cheerfully and took advantage of her; her replies were always quiet and deferential. I felt I knew these women, though I'd never set eyes on either of them.

Akio and the other men, three of them, slept in a loft in the roof space above the shop. Every night they took turns joining the guards at the back of the house. Akio had done it the night before, and I'd suffered for it, as sleeplessness added an extra edge to his teasing. Before the maid went to bed, while the lamps were still lit, I would hear one or other of the men help her close the doors and the outer shutters, the wooden panels sliding into place with a series of dull thumps that invariably set the dogs barking.

There were three dogs, each with its own distinctive voice. The same man fed them every night, whistling to them through his teeth in a particular way that I practiced when I was alone, thankful that no one else had the Kikuta gift of hearing.

The front doors of the house were barred at night, and the rear gates guarded, but one smaller door was left unbarred. It led into a narrow space between the house and the outer wall, at the end of which was the privy. I was escorted there three or four times a day. I'd been out in the yard after dark a couple of times, to bathe in the small bathhouse that stood in the backyard, between the end of the house and the gates. Though I was kept hidden, it was, as Yuki said, for my own safety. As far as I could tell, no one seriously expected me to try and escape: I was not under guard.