Time of Attack (13 page)

“No!” she spat, a heartbeat before something heavy struck the back of her head and her world went black.

 

F
or a time the only sound in Miyagi’s bath was the tick of expanding metal on the woodstove. Quinn didn’t speak. Revelations like this called for silent support, not talk. The longer he looked at the tattoo, the more scars he noticed on Miyagi’s body. And the more he listened to her story, the more he realized there were some scars that went much deeper than her skin.

“I knew I could not save Kenichi.” Miyagi’s reflection rippled on the surface as she continued her story. Her tattoo seemed to dance and sway, visible in the clear water. “But I had to kill Sagara as my last act of defiance. As it happened, unbeknownst to the fat yakuza boss, that was the test that Oda had planned all along. When I awoke a few hours later, I found myself as if transported back in time. I lay covered with luxurious silk quilts with my head on a pillow filled with buckwheat chaff. Oda knelt beside me, mopping my forehead tenderly with a cool cloth. He told me he was sorry Kenichi had died but said I had done the right thing, which is to say the thing he would have done. I was to stay with him and become his student. I told him I did not want to be his student, but he explained that the choice was not mine to make. When I asked him what he would do if I told him no as I had told the fool Sagara, he merely laughed and said he fully expected me to try to kill him many times before I understood the value of my training with the
Kuroi Kiri
—the Black Mist.”

Miyagi rolled her lips, gathering her arms to her chest in sudden embarrassment. “The stories of an old woman are certainly a bore,” she said. “I am sorry to burden you with them, Quinn-san, but I do have my reasons.”

“First of all,” Jericho said, “I have never considered you anything close to old.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “And this conversation is far from boring.”

“The bath is hot,” she said. “Perhaps you need to get out of the tub for a time.” She swished the water so it disrupted the multihued reflection that lapped at her chest. Quinn found it incredible that he and Thibodaux had spent so many days wondering about the mysterious tattoo that was now displayed so openly before him. It was something he’d likely never be able to mention to the big Cajun—something too sacred to speak of outside the confines of the bath.

“I’m fine,” he said. “But I understand if you need to get out.”

She shook her head, apparently happy he was able to stay for a time.

Quinn nodded. “Please go on.”

“Very well.” She took a long breath, her chest rising in the water. “At first, Oda was a marvelous teacher. The Garden, as I came to call the compound in which I was being held, was much like stepping back to feudal Japan. Entire families seemed to live within the walls—gardeners, tailors, teachers, sword smiths, and artists. All sorts to keep a society running smoothly, or at least it seemed that way to a teenage girl, snatched out of the real world. Apart from the tradesmen, there were the fighters, those of us in training. We all dressed in traditional clothing—kimono, pantaloons, and woven grass slippers—and were never to be caught without our weapons. Oda sensei assured us that we were a samurai class and he was our firm but patient lord. I began to grow into a healthier weight and gained social confidence under his guiding hand. When I first arrived, Oda spent his time in the company of several different girls. His favorite, it seemed, was Takako. She was much older than I was and very beautiful. Since she was the oldest, she saw it as her duty to take care of all the girls like a kind auntie—several times causing her much sorrow and pain at the hand of Oda. The fact that he spent time with each of us did not appear to bother her, but when he began to pay particular attention to me alone Takako began to bully me during practice. She was much taller and at first had no trouble beating me. Worse than the beatings, I felt that I had lost a friend. Oda ordered her to leave me alone, and I believe she came to forgive me in her own way.

“We all knew Oda was insatiable in his lust. But the moment he had any girl alone, he had a way of making us believe there would never be anyone else.” Miyagi’s shoulders rolled forward, as if to protect her heart. She sighed. “Still, there was always a favorite, a number one, so to speak. That position had belonged to Takako until I arrived. At first, he took me. I pretended it was against my will, but I did not fight back. By the time I had been in the Garden for three months, I sought him out in the soft grass behind the shrine and gave myself to him completely. Though I knew firsthand how to kill a man and by then had done so many times, I was still young and uneducated about sex and the attendant consequences of such things.” Miyagi blushed, something Quinn had never before seen her do. “Eventually, I became pregnant. Two months before I turned sixteen, I bore him a daughter.” She shivered in spite of the steaming water, wrapping her arms around her bare chest as if suddenly aware that she had exposed more than just her physical body to Quinn. “At the time, our relationship seemed completely natural, though looking back, what he did to me could only be defined as a rape. Oda was almost thirty and I was but fourteen when he first took me. In a way, I suppose, it was just another aspect of the brutal training I received at the hand of the Black Mist.

“There were other children born in the Garden, but I wanted my daughter to be the favorite. I redoubled my efforts, working day and night to make the father of my baby proud of me. I entertained no more thoughts of leaving, and only wanted to please this man who had such a mental and physical hold over me. It was about this time that he suggested I begin my
irezumi
.”

She stood to display the tattoo, holding an open hand over her groin. It made Quinn smile inside that for all her toughness and martial skill, Emiko Miyagi retained a certain degree of modesty.

She used the other hand to give him a tour of the brilliantly inked tattoo, letting her fingers glide over her skin. She turned slowly, careful not to splash, displaying the dark coat of ink that covered her delicate skin like black and green armor scales. Even the backs of her knees, which must have been excruciatingly painful, were completely covered, the ink stopping just above midthigh. “I was special, he said, and should mark myself as such. He helped me pick the design. The koi fish swimming upstream signifies struggle in life. Kwannon is the goddess of mercy. The woman is a concubine from our ancient stories, transformed by an encounter with a Zen monk. It took nearly five years to get this far. Five years of agony while the
tebori
master stabbed me over and over again with tiny needles. Oda sensei insisted that the act of getting the tattoo in the traditional way was more important than the tattoo itself. When someone from the outside world saw it, they would know without a doubt that I was capable of enduring endless suffering.” She ran a fingertip up the curve of her left hip. The concubine was a beautiful woman. Clutching a dagger, she was dressed in the flowing gowns of a courtesan. But work on the tattoo had ceased, leaving only the concubine’s face completed. Her other features and kimono were empty black outlines, like a child’s unfinished coloring book. “It remains undone,” Emiko said, detached as if looking at a museum painting and not the brilliant ink covering her own body. “A constant reminder that my struggles are not over, and, unlike the courtesan, I am not yet myself transformed into enlightenment.”

She sank into the water with a weary sigh. “The training in the Garden was brutal—fighting at least once and sometimes three times a day. There was hardly any time for rest, but I did not care. I was as happy as I had ever been.”

Emiko looked up at Quinn and smoothed a lock of hair out of her face. Beads of sweat poised on her quivering upper lip. Tears welled in her eyes. Quinn had seen this woman endure all manner of pain, watched her reset her own dislocated finger, but he’d never before seen her cry.

“As I said, the training was intense, so my daughter spent much of her day with her father. She was an incredibly intelligent child but, as I came to learn, also extremely cruel. One evening as I returned from the dojo I saw her attack the little boy of our cleaning woman because he had broken her favorite mirror. When I moved to stop her, Oda sensei held me back, saying the training would benefit both children. Our daughter beat the poor boy until he lay senseless on our floor. Then, before I could stop her, she took a piece of the broken mirror and sliced his face. She was five years old . .
.
”

Emiko swallowed. Tendons knotted along her neck. Other than that, she maintained complete composure. “I watched as she treated the other children in the Garden with utter cruelty and disdain. But I was weak, and even that I overlooked because Oda sensei said she would soon grow to control herself. Then, one night, I returned from the bath earlier than usual. I heard Oda’s voice as I approached and, for some reason, stopped to listen. ‘You are a special girl,’ he told our daughter. ‘You have your mother’s gifts but none of her flaws.’ I heard her tell him she wanted a tattoo like his someday. She said I was weak and had to be destroyed. I stood outside our home, stunned to hear Oda tell our daughter that I would soon be out of the way. ‘Your mother is not like you and your papa,’ he told her, ‘she is imperfect. I assure you, her death will be quick and merciful. ’ And then, my little girl clapped her hands as if her papa had just given her a present.”

Miyagi’s chest heaved in the water as if she’d arrested a violent sob. “I was completely undone. Everything after that has melted into blurs and shadows in my memory.

“Later that night, I swallowed my disgust and made love to Oda, for I knew that he slept deepest after such things. I tried to take our daughter with me, to get her away from this horrible man before he poisoned her against me completely and turned her into a monster. She awoke when we were outside. I will never forget her face when she looked at me in the darkness of the woods beyond our home. It was as if she’d seen something that sickened her. She screamed for the guards to stop me before I could take her, then tore at my flesh with her little teeth like a wild animal. I am certain she hoped to kill me.”

Miyagi pulled back the hair from her neck and leaned forward to reveal the faint white outline of a half-moon scar below her right ear.

“I pushed the child away and she ran, screaming for her papa. For six years I had known nothing but constant battle, allowing me to hack my way through the guards and escape with little trouble—but I was already so wounded inside there was nothing worse they could have done to me with bullet or blade. I had left in my nightgown, thinking to change after we got away so as not to awaken Oda. My clothes were lost during the escape and the gown was torn away during my flight over the wall. I wondered aimlessly through the countryside, naked and covered with blood of the guards I’d killed. Lacking the will to even end my own misery, I sat down and waited to die from exposure.

“I had no idea I was even near a road. When I heard an approaching car, I got up, thinking I would run. Weakened and lost in sorrow, I could do nothing but stand there.” She laughed softly. “My hair was ratted and I was bathed in blood. Certainly, I must have looked like some mountain she-demon as the headlights of the passing car threw me into a blinding light. As it turned out, a young U.S. Army officer named Winfield Palmer was driving the car. Of all the people that could have driven by, I was blessed to have the one man at that time who would be so foolish as to pick up a naked, blood-covered, and crazed Japanese woman and put her in his car.”

She shrugged. “And the rest, as they say, is history. Eventually, Palmer-san thought he would woo me. He was young and full of virility and goodness, so I tried, I really did. But in the end, I knew such a relationship was impossible. He had seen me completely undone, emotionally exposed. There must be some intrigue in every relationship, and after he rescued me I held nothing that he did not already know. There is no possibility of mystery between the two of us. I swore never to marry anyone, especially him, who had seen beneath my skin.”

“But your name?” Quinn said, prodding her for the rest of the story she seemed to want to tell.

“Palmer-san made it possible for me to come to the U.S. He moved up in the military and in political position. I was able to use my martial skills working for him. He allowed me to take the family name of my murdered boyfriend—Kenichi Miyagi—so that everyone would assume that I was married and I would have that memory.”

“You said there was something I needed to hear in all this,” Quinn said, still trying to make the connection.

“Oda-san surely relocated his Garden to some new location after I escaped. Still, I believe the answers to your questions are in Japan,” Miyagi said. “Palmer-san may not condone it, but I will secure you a passport under a cover identity. It will be ready tomorrow along with a credit card and Virginia driver’s license. I have already arranged a contact for you once you arrive.”

“So,” Quinn said as he nodded, working through her logic, “you believe the man who trained you is behind all this?”

“Our daughter—my daughter . . . her name is
Ran
,” Miyagi said, rhyming it with the American name Ron, but with a hard R so it sounded closer to
Lon
. She used the tip of her index finger to trace the lines of a Chinese character on her opposite hand. A drop of bathwater ran down her palm like a tear. “It means orchid.”

“That’s a beautiful name,” Quinn said, still baffled as to where all this was going.

“I wanted her only to have a good and peaceful life, but many times, even as a tiny girl, she told me she wished to have a tattoo identical to that of her father—a
komainu
.”

Miyagi reached for a small towel on the wooden shelf and covered herself as she rose from the bath. Rivulets of water traced silver lines against the rippling blacks and vibrant greens and pinks on the otherworldly designs of her tattoo.