She was flying. Flying over glimmering dolphins, flying beside alabaster albatrosses across the sea, its liquid abalone hue expending beyond her sight. Up the mountains to their peaks, past mountain goats and brown bears, the pure white of the snow blinding under the sun; down the mountains, past rustling cedars and birches, to the verdant valley of liquid evergreen where she kept company with deer and tigers for a time, before the sky broke asunder, and the thunderous boots of thousands of soldiers marching invaded the grounds in orderly ranks.

Kaoru.

A gentle voice, calling to her, even as she rejoiced in her freedom, mourned the burning of once lush field below her. Calling, insistent. Luring her down inexorably. The air was muggy and heavy, and her head tipsy with the heady scent of musk. A hand reached to her, brought her back to earth.

"Kaoru," Shinta said with a radiant smile, standing on the edge of a rice field terrace. She landed softly in his arms, her hands clasping his neck. "Kaoru," he said again, with such love in his tone to make her heart melt, her wings flutter. "Kaoru." He kissed her.

Such glory, the divine touch of his mouth over hers. His tongue teased her lips, parting them, then insinuated itself in, daring explorer. She hugged him tight, leaned hard against him.

He fell back. Into the room.

He looked at her, lying there on a tatami of chameleon purple, and for a moment neither of them spoke. Then, with the suppleness of a cheetah, he twisted, turning her with him. The world turned upside down, and suddenly she was lying on the ground, his face hovering over hers, invading her whole vision.

She stared at him, inspired deeply, her lips parted. He took her them, hard, demanding. She responded despite her, or maybe of her own accord, wiggling against him, wilder and wilder. She was lacking air, and her lungs burned with urgency unknown. She was falling, falling. Falling.

His lips left hers, soon finding her skin again, tasting the underside of her jaw, then drifting down the skin of her neck, the hollow of her breasts….

"Samurai-san!" a voice yelled. They both glanced up. Soujiro leapt inside the room from the window. Outside the sky was a pale yellow. "Prepare yourself," he said.

Shinta's weight lifted from her body. Kaoru saw him dash to Soujiro, a sword suddenly in his hand, thrusting. Soujiro smirked, stepsided him with ease, and grabbed Shinta by his armpit with one hand. Gave a short crackle. Threw Shinta out the door with a flick of his wrist.

"Sayonara," Soujiro said.

Kaoru watched paralyzed as Shinta fell down the cliff, his silhouette fading before her eyes, becoming smaller and smaller, more and more insubstantial….

"Shinta!" she shouted. She sat up, an arm extended, vainly reaching for him. "Shinta!"

"My lady!"

Kaoru blinked. She was gazing into Shinta's face, right beside hers, his brow creased in worry. He was there. He was there.

"Are you all right, my lady?"

"I'm… fine." Kaoru blinked again. She heard a persistent sound, somewhere outside. The streets' mumble. "I'm fine. Just a dream. I think." She brushed his cheek with her hand. He startled a little. "Just checking," she said smiling. "You are real."

Shinta frowned. "Of course I'm real." He looked puzzled.

She took in the room. It was rather modest, with grayish stains on the otherwise beige walls. The daylight poured dimly through the windows, basking Shinta's face in tides of shadows. Her gaze stopped on his mouth. The dream was still with her, although already fading. She remembered his lips devouring her, confident, assured of conquering her bastion. Only a pale illusion without substance, yet… thrilling even so. She wondered what the reality would be like. She leaned slightly forward.

"Something wrong on my face, my lady?"

Kaoru jolted back, her heart missing a beat. She hadn't been aware of what she was doing, what she was about to do. Not realized she'd been fixing his lips with the hunger of a starved prisoner. "No, nothing." She felt her cheek burn, and hoped that he wouldn't notice it. She fussed with her sheets, searching for a distraction.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"An inn," Shinta said.

"Oh." The flowery blanket was warm and downy in her hands, and even if drab blue splotched it in its corners, it still felt strangely out of place on the plain futon. She played with it. The kimono she had on the night before had been discarded. A quick glance told her it was beside her bed, neatly folded.

Instead she was simply in a white juban undergarment. It was too large for her, and it hung loosely on her shoulders. She wondered if Shinta had helped her out of her kimono. She flushed at the thought.

"Megumi," she recalled suddenly. How could she have forgotten her maid? "Do you where Megumi is? Do you know how she is doing? Did the doctor say anything? Will she—"

"Her condition is stable, or so the doctor said. She'd lost much blood, and needs rest."

Kaoru gripped her blanket. "But she will live, won't she?"

"Probably," Shinta said. "Her wound looks ugly, but it's a superficial one. She's been lucky."

Kaoru sighed, so relieved she thought she might cry. "I'm so glad. Where is she? I need to visit her." She wanted to see Megumi, to verify with her own eyes that her maid was out of danger. Not that she didn't trust Shinta, but she'd been frightened the night before. She wanted to set at Megumi's bedside, keeping her company.

Shinta shrugged, as if it was not of great importance, that Megumi's life had never been truly in danger, but by now Kaoru knew him enough to know that he wasn't really cold and unconcerned. He just held tight on his expressionless mask, she judged. Maybe she could help him get rid of this pesky habit, if she had time.

"She's unconscious, and won't be able to leave her bed for a few days, at the very least," he said. "The doctor doesn't recommend visits, else she may grow agitated."

Kaoru pouted in disappointment. "What does the doctor know," she said, aware of sounding foolish. "Oh well. Megumi can rest as long as she needs to. We're not going anywhere in any case."

"I wanted to talk to you about that," Shinta said.

She shot him a curious glance. What did he mean? But he simply waved his hand. "It will wait for later," he said. "First you need to refresh yourself. I will ask the innkeeper to draw water for you, if you wish."

She nodded.

A little while later, she made her way back into the room, feeling clean and relaxed after a long hot bath. Shinta was already eating his breakfast, and she joined him, kneeling by the table. She grabbed a pair of chopsticks, and began to attack the steamed rice heartily. The firm grain's perfumed flavor tasted nice in her mouth. She wasn't aware she was so hungry.

"My lady—" began Shinta.

"Kaoru," she said. Her mouth stretched into a smile on its own. "I thought we agreed on that last night." She remembered that part, and others, too. She had been bold last night, very much so, but she didn't feel any remorse. In truth she felt rather proud of herself. Maybe she should act a little wild more often, she thought. Not too much, though. She was a lady still.

Shinta opened his mouth, as if to say something, but held back whatever he had in mind. "Very well, Kaoru," he said instead. She beamed at him.

He didn't seem to see it. "I think you should leave Kyoto as soon as possible," he continued.

Kaoru looked at him, her uplifted mood subduing. "Excuse me? Didn't you say earlier that Megumi needs to rest for at least several days?"

"She is not the one who's in danger." Shinta frowned. "At least, not nearly in as much danger as you, my lady."

"How so?" Kaoru realized the stupidity of her remark as soon as it left her mouth. Of course she was in danger, she'd been targeted by the Himura's killers. There were four dead bodies near a mountain house to attest to that.

"Weren't you just attacked last night?" Shinta said, agreeing with her own thoughts. "They were specifically after you, I dare say. They all followed you outside. They cared nothing for the lady Megumi, which means that you were their specific target."

"I understand that." She nodded. "But we are in Kyoto now, aren't we?" Shinta nodded. "There's no much risk in the city I think," she said. "Besides, I have you to protect me." She smiled at him again, and he seemed to be embarrassed. "I will act, of course. I need to talk to my uncle as soon as possible. He'll—he'll know what to do about this. We need to present the fact to the imperial court, to denounce lord Himura before the emperor. Such crime needs to be punished. The Himura's villainy must be exposed." And, she added silently to herself, she would turn this to her advantage, and break her marriage for good this way.

Shinta smiled derisively. "You are a strange woman. Confronting a lord? Denounce him to the emperor? You are certainly brave," he said. A small pause. "But how would you even reach the imperial court, let alone the emperor's ear?"

Kaoru realized how presumptuous she must have sounded, for a supposed commoner. "My uncle had dealings with some influent lords in the past," she said quickly. "He may have some… influence with them." Maybe she really should tell him all the truth. But she held back, not daring. For one thing, she was sure that he would be more deferential if he learned her station, more distant. She didn't want the slow friendship—more than friendship, really—that was building between them ruined. But then again, Shinta seemed so impertinent he might not be fazed it.

Shinta sighed. "Even so, my lady—"

"Kaoru."

He gave a sharp shake of his head, as if to say that this was a trivial matter. "Even so, Kaoru, even if you could be heard inside the palace, then what?"

"Then what?" She looked at him, incredulous, her arm hanging in mid-air "Then I will present the proof of the assassination attempt, and unmask Himura for what he really is."

"You seem to have a grudge against lord Himura," Shinta said lightly. He continued without waiting for a reply. Not that she would have replied in any case. "What proofs do you have," he asked, "apart from dragons stitched into some clothes?"

"And is this not proof enough?" she said, her tone more acid than she would have liked. She didn't see where he wanted to go with this. She tried to calm herself down. "It clearly marks house Himura as the culprit, doesn't it?"

"A simple symbol? Any seamstress can sew a nine-headed dragon insignia. This is no proof at all, I fear."

"But—"

"What kind of assassin would bear the mark of his house on his garments anyway?" he continued relentlessly. "Why would display their allegiance so clearly? It would be stupid to do so."

"The Himuras aren't known for their transcendental intellect," she snickered, aware that she was acting childish. She thought she saw Shinta flinch. Maybe she was being too flippant for a mere commoner?

"One doesn't need great intelligence to realize it," Shinta said sternly. It was Kaoru's turn to flinch. Had she been just insulted? "If I were to look at it objectively," he continued, softening, "it looks more like someone tried to frame lord Himura."

What a ridiculous idea. Kaoru became aware that she was gaping at him. She closed her mouth with an audible snap, put down her bowl of rice. "Why—how would someone… framing lord Himura?" Good lord, she wasn't sounding coherent at all.

But at least Shinta seemed to have understood her perplexity. "I can't know the why," he said. "As to the how, maybe they'd intended to leave lady Megumi alive from the start, so she would spread the news. I don't know." He shrugged again, not overly troubled. Did he know something? For a common samurai, he seemed awfully defensive of the Himuras. A thought snaked to her. What if he was one of Himura's men, sent to spy on her? That would explain why he was sticking with her, why he'd clung to her despite her attempts to get rid of him on the road. But she discarded the idea as fast as it came. No, no, her imagination was playing tricks with her mind. Shinta wouldn't be that sort of men, she was sure. He was just worried about her.

Kaoru shook her head hard. "This… theory is just that. A theory. It is too twisted to be true."

Shinta pondered for a moment. Then he sighed. "Kaoru, I have something… unpleasant I must tell you."

His tone sent a nasty feeling in her stomach. He'd alluded to it earlier already, but she hadn't paid attention. She clenched her hands.

"The uncle you were speaking of, would he be named Houji by any chance?"

She couldn't stop the gasp that escaped her lips. "How—how did you know that?"

Shinta averted his gaze. He seemed almost timid, hesitant to continue. "Shinta, tell me," she whispered urgently. "How do you know my uncle's name? What does this means?"

"My lady…. I suspect the assassins were sent not by lord Himura, but by your uncle," he said.

"What?" her shout resonated over the huddled walls, its echo faint yet overbearing. Her chopsticks clattered on the tatami. Her hands clenched into fists, her nails stabbing into her palms. "How dare you accuse my uncle?"

"My lady, Soujiro… Soujiro isn't just a mere bandit," he said, his gaze still fleeing hers. "He… he was waiting for you. Your uncle ordered him to kill you, my lady."