Jade Palace Vendetta

CHAPTER 23

I don’t like it,” Elder Grandma said. “I should be the one to talk to Yuchan.”

“That’s difficult,” Kaze said. “You don’t even know if Yuchan is unhappy with the life she’s leading. She’s treated like a noble, living in her own palace. It’s best for you to wait hidden in the villa’s grounds until I have a chance to see if Yuchan wants to leave. After I find that out, I’ll come to you and we can plan our next action.”

Kaze was once again in the tree by the lakeside. The water of the lake was a glistening sheet in the moonlight, and the gentle lapping sound of the water on the shore was restful and soothing. Kaze was relaxed but alert, watching the Jade Palace intently. Elder Grandma, her grandson, and her servant were safely hidden in a grove of trees on the villa grounds, waiting for Kaze to report on his conversation with Yuchan.

The guard at the drum bridge seemed alert but bored, leaning against the bridge and walking about in fits and starts. Without a regular patrol schedule, the problem of getting to the island and the palace was harder. But with only one guard outside it was not impossible. Kaze had no idea how many guards were inside.

The guard sat on the steps on the island part of the drum bridge and took off a sandal, rubbing his foot with obvious satisfaction. Kaze slipped out of the tree and made his way to the far side of the palace. Taking off his kimono, he used the kimono sash to make a neat bundle, tying his sword to his clothes.

Dressed in only his fundoshi, he slipped into the cold water of the lake. The bottom dropped out quickly, and Kaze was soon swimming, holding his kimono and sword above his head to keep them dry. In military training, Kaze had learned to swim while in full armor. He had also learned to swim holding his armor and sword above his head, just as he was doing now. The light weight of the kimono was nothing compared to the weight of a full suit of armor. Kaze made his way across the lake smoothly.

When he reached the opposite shore, he crouched in the deep shadows of the veranda that encircled the palace, making sure that the guard was not on one of his unpredictable patrols of the island. Satisfied that he was unseen, Kaze put on his kimono and replaced his sword in his sash.

He stood on the veranda and walked to a corner. The back of the veranda had shoji screens opening onto it, and these shoji almost certainly opened up into a room. The room might be occupied. On one side of the palace was a door, but he would be seen by the guard if he tried to enter it.

Kaze waited, showing patience until the guard retied his straw sandal and started on one of his patrols of the island. As soon as the guard disappeared around the corner of the palace, Kaze slipped through the door.

He was in a hallway, with shoji opening into rooms on one side and what looked like a closet door on the other. Directly ahead was a wooden grate blocking entrance to the core of the palace, locked shut.

Kaze looked at the closet and decided he would take a lesson from the ninja. He opened the closet door. From the moonlight spilling through the open doorway, Kaze could make out the ceiling slats. Standing on a shelf, he reached upward and pushed one aside. As he did so, the rock that was sitting on the slat to hold it in place slipped off the slat and started falling to the ground. Instantly, Kaze reached out and caught the rock in midair. In the silent palace, the sound of a falling rock could wake the inhabitants. He carefully put the rock on a shelf.

Satisfied that the opening was large enough to allow him to fit into the attic, he closed the closet door and used the shelf as a ladder to enter into the space above the ceiling.

He waited for several minutes, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom of the attic. Like that of the villa, the palace’s roof had lattice openings that allowed some of the moonlight to bathe the interior. Moving carefully from rafter to rafter, Kaze made his way to the center of the palace.

There, using his fingers, he felt the ceiling slats, searching out the bamboo pegs that kept them in place. Taking the ko-gatana knife from the sword scabbard, Kaze removed the pegs, using his sense of touch as a guide.

As he removed the pegs, warm yellow light from lanterns started peeking past the edge of the slat. Silently, carefully, Kaze pried up the slat and looked down into the room below.

The room was dark and had a closed, fetid odor that assaulted Kaze’s nose. One corner of the room was occupied by a large metal cage. Sitting on a table before the cage was a tray of sumptuous food, expertly prepared and displayed. There was gomoku rice, fresh sea bream, a light soup, and a tiny sweet in the shape of a chrysanthemum.

Next to the table was a beautiful silk robe, elaborately embroidered with peonies, and a mirror with silver mountings and a tortoiseshell comb. Except for the cage, the sparse furnishings in the room, a tansu chest and two lanterns with black lacquer frames, were elegant, tasteful, and expensive.

Kaze was puzzled as to what kind of animal would be kept in Yuchan’s apartment. He carefully let himself down from the ceiling, dropping lightly to his feet on the tatami below.

Once in the room, he went up to the cage to see its contents. Inside, he was repulsed to see a plate containing the carcasses of two boiled rats. They had been gnawed on, and the pink flesh of the rats lay open like some disgusting flower bursting from a gray skin sheath. In a corner of the cage was a shapeless bundle of hair and rags. It took him a few moments to realize he was looking at a human being curled into the fetal position. His brows creased into a V, and Kaze could not make sense of what he was seeing. Was Yuchan some kind of monster, keeping some miserable human as a kind of bizarre pet?

The creature in the cage looked up at him. Kaze wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman because it had an emaciated face, with the skin stretched parchment-thin across the bones of the skull. Its frightened eyes looked out at him from a tangle of matted and filthy hair.

“Why are you in this cage?” Kaze asked softly.

“To break my spirit,” the creature croaked back at him.

“Who wants to break your spirit?”

“Hishigawa. And Ando. They have done this together.”

“But why hasn’t Yuchan stopped them from committing this cruelty?”

“I am Yuchan.”

Kaze was stunned. This pathetic collection of rags and bones was the creature of ethereal beauty that Hishigawa rhapsodized about. For the first time, Kaze understood that Hishigawa’s obsession with the woman had slipped over to madness.

“How did you know my name?” the creature continued eagerly.

“Because I’m a friend. Your grandmother has sent me to see if we can get you out of here.”

“Elder Grandma?”

“The same.”

Tears formed in the dull eyes of Yuchan. “I knew she would help me. I prayed constantly to the Buddha to have pity on me and to send Elder Grandma and the whole Noguchi clan to punish these monsters.”

“The whole clan isn’t here, but Elder Grandma, Nagatoki, Sadakatsu, and I, Matsuyama Kaze, are here to help you. But I don’t understand this. Hishigawa claims he loves you. Why would he do this to you?”

“Because I don’t love him. He could abduct me and violate me, but he couldn’t get me to love him or even to say I love him. Ando thought of this punishment. She has confined me in this cage for many months. Every day they bring the most sumptuous meals they can devise and leave them just outside my reach. Then they give me disgusting things like those boiled rats to eat. They say if I just tell Hishigawa I love him, they will release me, dress me in the robe you see there, groom me, and feed me this elegant food. But I won’t tell him I love him. I’ll never tell him I love him. I’ll die before I tell him I love him!”

Kaze saw a spark of fire in the dull eyes of Yuchan, and he could tell that she was of the same strong stock as Elder Grandma. He well believed that she would die before bending her will to Hishigawa’s desires, because she was near death now and had obviously not been broken.

Kaze came across the room and inspected the lock on the cage. It was one he could not force. “Who has the key to this cage?” he asked.

“Ando. She always carries it with her. Every night she and Hishigawa come to argue with me, trying to get me to say I love the disgusting merchant. Hishigawa seems quite oblivious to my state and acts like I’m still the maiden he first met. He is touched by some evil spirit and crazed. Ando is not touched, but she is a monster, an ogre! I hate her more than Hishigawa. She knows what she’s doing, and I think she quite enjoys it.”

Kaze digested this declaration and found that he tended to agree that a sane person committing evil was more guilty than someone touched by some evil spirit. Since he could not force the lock, Kaze said, “All right, I’ll have to-”

Kaze was interrupted by the door to the room sliding open. There were Hishigawa and Ando. Hishigawa seemed shocked at the sight of Kaze. If Ando had shown a similar hesitation, Kaze might have been able to cross the room and eliminate them with two sword strokes. But Ando was too quick and started screaming, “Guards! Guards!” as soon as she saw Kaze.

There was a scramble of running feet, and Ando and Hishigawa disappeared from the doorway.

“I’ll be back,” Kaze told Yuchan.

She reached out and grabbed his arm in a surprisingly fierce grip.

“Don’t leave me!” she said.

“I have to for now. The guards will be here in moments, and their companions from the villa will be right behind. I won’t abandon you, I promise. I will be back for you soon!” Kaze gently pried loose the fingers of Yuchan’s hand, afraid he might break the bony appendages if he yanked his arm away violently.

He ducked out of the doorway and found himself in a dark passageway. He didn’t know the direction in which Ando and Hishigawa had disappeared, so he chose one at random and started running. He guessed wrong.

He came to a doorway and opened it. It was some kind of store-room, with merchandise piled high. He was at a dead end. Kaze turned and looked down the passage, hearing the clatter of running feet and seeing five guards rushing toward him. He stood and prepared to cut his way out of the trap he found himself in.

Seeing the intruder calmly standing in the door of the storeroom, his sword in the point-at-the-eye position and apparently ready for a fight, the guards slowed down. They looked at each other, unsure about how to rush the ronin when only one at a time could enter the door to the storeroom. Finally, the bravest of the guards rushed into the storeroom with a yell.

Kaze caught the attacker’s blade and, in one smooth motion, went from the defense to the offense, slashing the man’s side and letting the dying man’s momentum carry him through the doorway. The man landed on the wooden floor of the storeroom, which did not have tatami mats, and lay there groaning, his lifeblood rapidly leaking out of the large cut in his side. Kaze looked at the remaining four calmly.

“Get out of the way,” Ando ordered.

The four guards were eager to obey any order that would delay an attack on the samurai. They parted cleanly, moving to the walls of the passageway.

Ando advanced toward the door. In front of her, she held Yuchan by the hair. She had taken her out of the cage. Yuchan was struggling, but her emaciated state and weakness made it easy for Ando to control her. In Ando’s other hand she had a dagger. She stopped and held the dagger to Yuchan’s throat. “Surrender,” she said, “or I’ll cut her throat.”

“If you kill Yuchan, Hishigawa will be angry,” Kaze pointed out.

“I’ll tell him you killed her,” Ando said. “He’s already mad with jealousy. He thinks you wanted to steal Yuchan from him for yourself. He’ll believe you killed Yuchan out of jealousy when you couldn’t have her. This insolent girl has been enough of a bother as it is. It will be good to be rid of her so quickly.”

Kaze looked in Yuchan’s eyes, and he thought he saw in them a look of defiance, encouraging Kaze to fight on, even if it meant her death. But Kaze could not bring himself to cause the death of this pitiful creature. He threw his sword down.

The guards rushed him and roughly dragged him out of the store-room. They quickly bound him with rope as Ando looked on in triumph, a crying Yuchan still in her grasp. Kaze noted with approval that Yuchan didn’t start crying until the crisis was over. He couldn’t say if she was crying for him or for herself-perhaps a bit of both.

When Kaze was securely bound, Ando approached him and slapped him across the cheek. Touching a samurai’s face was the ultimate insult, but Kaze simply winced at the slap and gave no other indication that he felt Ando’s blow.

“Beat him,” Ando said. “Do it thoroughly, but don’t kill him. I’m sure Hishigawa-san will want to deal personally with the man he thinks tried to steal Yuchan from him.”

The men rushed Kaze and started kicking the bound ronin. They wore straw sandals, causing bruising but not broken bones. Kaze simply ducked his head to try to protect his face and gave no other indication that the four men were beating him.

One of the men left and returned with a spear. He brought the butt of the spear down into Kaze’s side, bringing a grunt of pain from him. He pointed to the dead body in the storeroom, the first guard that Kaze had killed. “This is for Ichiro!” the guard with the spear said. He brought the spear butt down on Kaze’s head, making him see blackness for a brief moment. Kaze fought to keep consciousness, telling himself it was foolish to do so because it wasn’t likely that there would be a chance to escape and kill his tormentors in his current circumstances. Eventually, as the fist, feet, and spear butt fell on him, Kaze’s effort to remain conscious proved futile.