TARO STOOD, SPEECHLESS, looking into the smiling face of Yukiko. Pain throbbed in his stomach and his ankle, and blood dripped from his dagger wound to the ground.
Yukiko wiped Kenji Kira’s blood from the blade of her sword on the sleeve of her kimono. She put one foot on the dead man’s throat, then spat on his corpse.
‘When I met him, I thought that I would kill him straightaway,’ she said. ‘But then I reminded myself that pleasures can be increased by patience.’ She moved lightly towards Taro. ‘What better than to use him to get to you? Then I could kill him, and destroy you.’
Taro gripped his sword, holding his ground. ‘You’d really kill me?’
‘I didn’t say I was going to kill you,’ said Yukiko. ‘I said I was going to destroy you.’
‘Your sister was my friend. I didn’t mean for her to die.’
‘No. But you let it happen. And you conspired with Oda’s daughter. You are a traitor through and through!’
‘No!’ said Taro, shocked. ‘It’s you who’s the traitor.’
Yukiko laughed, a delicate sound like a small prayer bell. ‘I am a traitor, yes. But I know it at least. That makes me less dangerous than you.’
Taro trembled. Deep down he had always feared that although he might not wish it, his actions, even his mere existence, seemed to lead to the deaths of others. Ever since Shusaku had rescued him, that night that seemed so long ago, he had done nothing but sow seeds of murder around him, and the deaths that had grown from those seeds had threatened to overwhelm him, cutting off his light. The fortune-teller who had raised Yukiko and her sister Heiko, then Heiko herself, then Shusaku. . .
‘See?’ said Yukiko. ‘You know I’m right. You’re a poison, Taro.’ She came at him then, and as she brought her sword round in an arc, she whipped a smaller wakizashi from her kimono with her other hand, and then she was attacking furiously, with both blades – no longer a girl but an infernal device, whirling sharp and fast.
Taro raised his sword and darted towards her, working to hold off the girl’s attacks. He had never seen anyone fight with two swords before, had been completely unprepared for it. Yukiko was grinning. ‘I had this idea from Miyamoto Musashi,’ she said, not even out of breath. She danced away from him for a moment, holding his eyes with hers. ‘A sword saint defeated long ago by Lord Oda. But he wrote a book, and in that book he said something very interesting.’
‘What was that?’ said Taro, concentrating on centring his breathing, gathering his qi. His movements were still slowed by the wound in his stomach, though it was healing already. He could feel the muscle knitting back together, hot needles clicking in his flesh.
‘He said that a man could spend his life mastering the blade, but he’d never be as good as the man who spent one day mastering two blades.’
She pounced, striking high with the wakizashi. Taro didn’t know if it was a feint or not, but it didn’t matter. The whole system of feints and strikes was obliterated by the simple, horrific addition of a second sword. What possible difference did it make whether she intended the strike or not, when she had another blade, which could come at him from anywhere?
His wrist snapped up, without conscious thought on his part, blocking the short-sword. He saw a gleam from the corner of her eye, and his hand came round, but it was too slow – pain seared into the back of his leg, causing the world in front of him to brighten for a moment, and then he went down heavily on one knee.
He tried to stand but hammered down again on the knee, and could only raise his sword to try to fend off the strikes that came faster than ever, and then, suddenly, his hand was twisted painfully, and the sword dropped from it to the grass.
Wearily he opened his robe, exposing his chest. He touched the skin above his heart. ‘Make it quick,’ he said.
‘All right then,’ said Yukiko, and she tossed her short-sword into the same hand that held the katana, and advanced towards him, her index and pinky fingers out in the mudra for banishing evil. She’s going to kill me with her bare hands, thought Taro. She bent down, smiled at him, and then struck his neck, hard, with the extended fingertips. Agony exploded at the front of his mind, a constellation bursting into being before his eyes, and he thought, This is it, now I die. He knew she had aimed for a pressure point of some kind, imagined that the blood to his head would cease in an instant to flow.
He waited. The stars faded, and the tree and the grass came slowly back into focus. Yukiko still stood in front of him, smiling. She slid her wakizashi into her kimono. Taro didn’t understand. He wasn’t dead. What was she doing? He held his hand out to push himself up from the ground, only his hand wouldn’t move.
His legs wouldn’t move. Yukiko stepped to the side, and he tried to turn his head to follow her. He couldn’t move it.
She’s paralysed me.
Yukiko disappeared from view, and Taro strained against the numbness in his nerves, trying to see where she had gone. What seemed an eternity passed, as the blossoms gently fell from the plum tree above.
Finally Yukiko stepped daintily into his field of vision. She made a beckoning motion to her side, where Taro couldn’t see.
Two samurai approached, and between them, supported or dragged by them, was Taro’s mother.
Yukiko laughed that delicate laugh. ‘Do you remember,’ she said, ‘what you said after my sister died? How you were paralysed, and could do nothing to help?’
Taro couldn’t speak, couldn’t nod.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ said Yukiko. ‘I never believed you, of course. But I thought this would be fitting.’
She weighed her sword in her hand, letting it slash the air. Then she gave a signal to the samurai and they stepped away, leaving Taro’s mother lying below the gnarled bough of the tree. Tears were running down her cheeks, but when she turned to Taro, what he saw in her face was not fear so much as urgency.
‘Taro, my love,’ she said quickly. ‘If you live. . . That thing we were talking about before. It’s not—’
Yukiko sighed, stepped forward, and plunged her sword into Taro’s mother’s heart. She let go of the hilt, and the blade hung there a moment, so perfectly still, before the body holding it horizontal fell backward, and the blade stood shining then from the chest, as if marking the spot where the worst thing of all had happened.
Taro wanted to scream, to cry, to run to her side, but could do nothing.
Yukiko turned to him with a businesslike air. ‘Best to just get it over with, I thought. I can’t stand all that emotional goodbye stuff.’