Summer Wind

Chapter 35: Strange Bedfellows

In which Tomoe tells some, but not quite all.

The voice slithered over her shoulder and into her ear, and ice trickled down her spine at its slimy menace. She recognized it.

When they weren't on the training grounds or out on a mission, the soldiers kept to the barracks or the mess hall. There were a few dalliances here and there with this or that girl, but both Katsura and Ōkami frowned on fraternization. Katsura kept the men busy, and Ōkami both rewarded those who outed others, and told tales herself of the tears that lay along that path, so most of the girls looked on the troops with at least suspicion, if not outright disdain. There was one, however…

Iizuka was tall, with dark good looks, and an energetic, free-swinging walk. He knew how to talk to a woman, and more than one of the girls had succumbed to his charms. He had no favorite, however, and it was rare that he returned to plowed ground. When his reputation began to sour his success in this small community, he fell back on simple harassment. He seemed to think he was amusing them as he blocked one's path and feinted back and forth, or suave as he slid an arm around another's waist from behind, whispering unintelligible lecheries in an unwelcoming ear. In these practices, he exhibited no favoritism, but would try it on with anyone who crossed his path.

Anyone that is, until she arrived at the Kohagi-ya. After that day, Iizuka left everyone else alone, and concentrated on Tomoe. She was horrified by his behavior, and even more so when she realized he had focused all his attentions on her. What could have made her stand out from the others? She did find, however, that when Himura was around, Iizuka was not. This was convenient: In addition to her designs on Himura, she now used him as a shield.

One night, however, she was alone, as usual, in the kitchen, as she prepared the meal she always had ready for his return. Himura was still out and not due back for a couple of hours, and the entire inn had long since bedded down. She heard drunken footsteps stumbling down the hallway that passed the kitchen. Someone trying to sneak back in. Why did they keep trying? It never worked. Katsura chose only the most reliable of his men to guard the interior of the inn. The footsteps did not continue toward the men's rooms, but stopped just outside the door to the kitchen, and the door slid jerkily open.

"There you are." His speech was clear, but alcohol infused it with a dark note that sent a chill down her spine. "I've been looking for you, my little flower."

She had been standing to one side of the massive table in the center of the kitchen's open space, and keeping her eyes on his, she slid around to put it between them. He didn't seem to notice, still bracing himself against the door jamb.

"It is late. You should be in bed."

"That," he said, as he launched himself off the door and into the room, "is exactly where I want to be." His feet kept going a little too long, and his body thudded against the edge of the table. In spite of the table's solid build, she felt the shock on the other side. He began to climb his way around it toward her. "Come with me, pretty thing. You can't hide behind your shield now. He's away, isn't he?" They had switched places by this time. "Maybe he won't come back this time. Then you'll have to let me…" He leered across the table. "…protect you."

He started to make a dash around one end, and she scampered away, but then he switched directions, and his long arm reached across the corner and caught her wrist. He pulled her toward him and trapped her in his arms, but he had misjudged her. He didn't notice that she had slipped her forearms up between them and, as he tightened his grip around her, he was stopped cold, first, by the look in her eyes, and then by the unmistakable pinch of a blade against his neck.

"Please release me." Her voice, low and controlled, had steel in it that he'd never guessed at. His eyes flashed with anger, but even in his drunken state, he could fear the fallout from pursuing this particular situation. She meant business. Katsura would also mean business, and he didn't even want to think about Ōkami's response.

Slowly he spread his arms away from her and managed two steps back before he stumbled and fell on his rear in a tangled heap. She advanced a step toward him, her kaiken held in both hands, high and to the side, the point aimed at his throat and positively drooling for his blood.

"Now. You will leave me alone."

He nodded, seething inside, but unable to tear his eyes away from that blade flashing in the candlelight, still uncomfortably close to his person.

"And you will not come into our area again."

She could actually see him capitulate. She'd not expected it to be quite this easy. What a paper tiger!

"No."

Still she did not lower her blade.

Keeping his eyes on her blade's tip, he rose with his hands spread, palms out, and backed out into the corridor. "No, I will not come back here again."

"Close the door, please."

He obeyed.

"I have waited here for you many days, hoping to get a chance to talk with you."

"You!" She dispensed with any hint of an honorific. "What are you—?"

Iizuka sat astride the bench next to her, leaning close, his hot, garlicky breath misting her ear and neck. He ran a finger along her arm, and her skin shrank from it.

"Yes, it's me." He picked a straw out of the communal vase in the middle of the table, then leaned back a little and rested his elbow on the table, picking his teeth with the straw. She noticed with distaste that his fingers were rough and cracked. He looked like—smelled like—he hadn't bathed in a month. "Happy to see me? It's been a long time." He looked at her with those narrowed eyes that made him look like he was about to either pounce or crawl under a rock.

"Why are you here?" she hissed, although there was no need to keep their voices down, here in this din. "Aren't you in hiding? With the rest of…" Even lower. "…with the others?" It was confusing, his sitting here, next to her, in Ōtsu, talking with her in public. She pushed down the dread that crept up her spine.

"I, my dear, am here to gather your… what shall we call it, your intelligence." He smiled, and her skin crawled. "You know. For Tatsumi."

Her head swam with the dissonance. "But you are… You belong to the—" She broke off and looked around warily. "You belong to Katsura," she hissed. "How can you—" She was having trouble organizing her thoughts. "Aren't you—?" Nothing made sense!

He took the straw out of his mouth and drew a deep breath, blowing it out through his nose. He eyed the damp reed narrowly. "What I am is a man trying to survive. That's all." He sneered at her. "Just like you, no?" He leaned back on one elbow and gestured with the straw, watching it flop back and forth. "I sniff out which way the wind is blowing and set my sail for survival." He crushed the straw in his fist and looked at her with dark meaning. "I do not think Katsura is that wind."

She swallowed hard, surprised that the cold fear at the pit of her stomach was more for Himura than for herself. She held no allegiance to any side or faction, but he… She had never thought beyond her own intentions and plans, never considered how many courses of action, and in how many quarters, were hanging on her words. The wrong one, into the wrong ear, and not only she, but he, as well, could be destroyed.

Composing herself, she asked, "Very well, then. What do you want to hear?"

Iizuka watched her silently for a long time—she could feel her face burning under his foul gaze—before speaking. "How is he these days?"

This puzzled her. Is he asking after Himura's health? She inclined her head slightly toward him. " 'How is he?' Do you mean… is he well?"

"What are you talking about? 'Is he well'?" He snorted. "I couldn't care less how he feels!" He shrugged one arm out of his kimono and brought his hand up to scratch his unshaven chin. "I mean, is he breaking down? What does he talk to you about?"

This she could handle. These would be easy lies. "He rarely speaks to me at all. He spends most of his time in the garden—" Better not mention the patrolling. Nor their recent… intimacy. "—or—" Or what? Think, Yukishiro! "—or in kata."

"The garden?" Now it was Iizuka's turn to be puzzled. "What do you mean by 'garden'? What garden?"

Relieved that he'd taken the bait, she launched into a description of how she had suggested growing some of their own vegetables and how he had latched on to that idea and how it now took up so much of their time and…

Iizuka raised his hand to stop her, his face pinched with boredom and disgust. "Gardening?" He barked a short, contemptuous laugh and leaned forward to retrieve another straw. "What foolishness! Good. That will soften him up." He went back to picking his teeth and glancing lazily around at the crowd.

She could tell he was losing interest. He wasn't even a decent spy. "Is that all you want from me? I should be getting back before he misses me." True, Himura had been absent for days, but he could be back even now, and this snake didn't need to know any of that.

He sighed as he rose from the bench, squirming his arm back into its sleeve. "Yes, that's all. It's not much, but I suppose it shows that things are headed in the right direction." He bent down to place his face near hers and took her chin in his fingers. "Goodbye, Yukishiro-san. Take very good care of yourself." He grimaced in what she supposed he thought was a knowing grin, turned his back, and disappeared into the crowd.

She sagged against the table with the sudden release of a tension she hadn't realized she'd been holding, exhausted as though she'd been hiking all day. Perspiration clung to her upper lip and soaked her undergarments. She looked at her uneaten food, and, repulsed, pushed it away from her. The saké, however, she gulped gratefully, even though it was now tepid. Even though it tasted bitter.