My dreams were troubled, and I woke up several times during the night. All I remembered of the dreams was flames.
Again? How long will I have to endure this? How long can I endure this? The nightmares were getting so much better before Akiko died.
I sat on my sleeping mat and stared out at the garden. I needed to sleep, but I didn’t want to face the flames again. I lay back down and tried some of Benkon’s meditation techniques.
Along towards dawn, I fell into a deep sleep. Unfortunately, shortly after I drifted off, I heard the children being roused. Sachiko was treated to much complaining from Aoi-chan and Yoshi-kun at having to get up so early.
“I want to sleep. I’m tired,” Aoi-chan whined, but Sachiko reminded her she was the one who wanted to be a shirabyoushi.
“If you want to sleep in, I’ll just tell Hyacinth-sama you have changed your mind.”
“No, I want to go. I was just kidding.” After that, there was no complaining from her. I smiled, then went back to sleep.
Or tried to. Almost immediately, Sachiko was in my room, getting me up. “You need to go teach your class this morning. Hyacinth-sama reminded me to make sure you got up.”
I pulled the sleeping robe over my head. “No! I need to sleep.”
She pulled the robe off of me and scolded me, “You are as bad as the children. Get up like you are supposed to.”
For few moments, I felt irrational anger at Surei for forcing me to get up this early, but I soon realized that was unfair. She wanted to be as well-prepared as possible for the upcoming troubles, and that required everyone to pitch in.
That morning, I worked with the women. Professor and I agreed they needed some work on real-life situations, so I spent much of the morning ambushing them from behind and dragging them across the practice field. Their surprised shrieks were amusing at first but became annoying since some of them kept screaming instead of defending themselves. No matter how much we practiced the correct moves, they simply did not respond aggressively.
In the afternoon, I worked with the prospective squad leaders. I told them that starting the next morning, they would be the ones teaching the women more aggressive responses to attacks.
Let them listen to the feminine shrieking for a while.
Some of the young men were almost as worrisome as the women. There was one that I dubbed “Knucklehead.” His favorite tactic was to charge his opponent while screaming a war cry. Controlled fighting, he seemed to think, was for cowards.
He was one of the worst, but most of our recruits had similar problems. I worried how many of the men and women I was training would die if we faced a real attack.
That evening, before they went to bed, Yoshi-kun and Aoi-chan were talking about all the work they had to do. “I don’t understand it,” Aoi-chan complained. “First, we had to scrub floors like a servant, then we read more books in Chinese than mama ever had us read. I don’t know what that has to do with being a shirabyoushi. It’s no fun at all.”
“You had it easy!” Yoshi-kun declared. “We had to clean out the stables. Ugh! Horses stink, and their poop stinks worse. Then we had to carry dishes back to the kitchen from the Winter Hall. I don’t know what that has to do with being a bushi and a yojimbo.”
Still grumbling, they collapsed into bed. I smiled. Surei had delivered beyond my expectations. The children would be wildly happy to go with Governor Abé by the time he got there.
The next three days were a grueling round of drills and training. In the mornings, the children and I would perform the daily memorial observances for Akiko, then I would work with the women. Although the squad leaders helped with some of the training, none of them could handle every aspect of the training course, so I had to continue as the primary instructor.
In the morning, Professor trained the men. In the afternoons, I oversaw construction of the new defenses while Professor pulled duty in the saké house. At night, I dreamt of fire and woke up more exhausted than when I went to sleep.
Aoi-chan and Yoshi-kun weren’t having it any easier, to hear them tell it.
My lack of sleep was beginning to affect my behavior. There were times when I was speaking, and I would lose track of what I was saying mid-sentence. Sometimes it was because I forgot what I was trying to say, but at least twice, I suffered sudden hallucinations. These were incredibly detailed and realistic. I had a long conversation with my father about the best tactics to use for an impromptu defense of a lightly fortified compound like the Spring Palace. After I came to myself, I could have related the entire conversation word for word. Another time, I swapped stories and dirty jokes with an old bushi friend who had been killed seven years previously in a small conflict in Echizen province. I could have told you every off-color story he passed along. Including several I had never heard before. These incidents worried me.
One afternoon, I was training with the male recruits. Professor felt they weren’t progressing fast enough and hoped I could help them. Knucklehead was especially trying, since he thought he was the world’s greatest expert on the use of the tachi, and he was prepared to say so to anyone who would listen. I alternated between being terrified about what would happen to him in a real fight and having to hold my frustration in check so I didn’t strangle him myself.
Surei came out to watch. She motioned me aside and said, “When do you think that the women will be ready to start training with the men? If we are going to use them as auxiliaries, then they need to train together.”
“They’re not ready yet,” I said, curtly. I thought it was premature to be talking about combined training, and I was a little annoyed that I had to halt my instruction to explain something so obvious.
“Are you sure?” Surei asked. “I don’t know how much time we are going to have, and I would rather start training them together a little early than wait until it is too late and lose the chance to do it at all.”
I finally had had enough. It was bad enough Surei had me training all day—now she refused to listen to me when I gave her my professional opinion on an area where I was supposedly the resident expert.
I threw my bokken to the ground and snarled at her, “Well, if you don’t want to listen to me, then you can do your own damned training. Apparently, you know more about the subject than I do, so feel free to take over.”
Surei stood frozen, a shocked look on her face. My anger drained out of me as quickly as it had come. I was deeply ashamed I had lost control so badly. I said, “Hyacinth-sama, I am … I am sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I haven’t been sleeping well, and I think it is affecting me.”
She looked me in the eye, then abruptly said, “Come with me.”
Once we were alone in her office, she said, “What was that all about?”
I closed my eyes and wearily ran my hand over my face. “I am worried about some of the younger men and the women. Many of them will die if it comes to a real battle.”
Surei nodded. “Professor mentioned something about that. We’re doing all we can. At least they will have more of a chance than they would if we didn’t prepare them at all. But that can’t be all of it. I’ve never seen you like this. Why haven’t you been able to sleep?”
“I wake up several times a night. My nightmares make it difficult to rest,” I explained.
Surei looked concerned. “What kinds of dreams are you having?”
“Fire, smoke, burning skin, screams,” I told her.
She sat back in surprise. “Has Akiko’s death affected you this strongly?”
I hesitated before answering. “I don’t think so. Don’t mistake me, I was devastated by her death, but I have seen death before, and it shouldn’t bother me so badly that my dreams don’t let me sleep. I have had bad dreams about the slaughter of my father and brothers for years, but they were never so bad I couldn’t sleep at all.”
“Hmmmm.” Surei seemed to consider what I said. She stood up. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
If I weren’t so exhausted, I would have felt terrible about snapping at Surei. As it was, I felt only a distant regret. While I was waiting for her to return, I nodded off.
Surei woke me when she returned with Benkon. “Tell him what you told me,” she ordered.
The tale went faster the second time around. Benkon looked thoughtful and turned to Surei. “I see what you mean.” To me, he said, “I think I have something that might help. It is similar to what I gave you for the pain when you were wounded. It is a drink made from poppy seed paste. It will provide you a dreamless sleep.”
Astonished, I asked, “Why haven’t I heard of this before? Something like that on the night before a battle would be invaluable.”
“If the paste is not prepared correctly or too much is put in the drink, it can kill the subject,” Benkon said drily. “The alchemist needs to be experienced in the procedure.”
“Oh. Well, never mind, then.” A horrible thought occurred to me. “Wait, you’re experienced in the procedure, right?”
“I am,” Benkon assured me. “I will have it for you tonight. However, I can only give you five days’ worth. Any more and its effect lessens. Worse, you will begin to crave it, like a sickness.” He got up and left.
I stood up to leave, but Surei reached over and touched my hand. “Sit down, Yoshi, we have some more things to talk about.”
“What?”
“You may have noticed that nothing has happened with Ikeda Minbukyou. This despite the fact people are reporting new sightings of the ghost daily, and every night there are new fires attributed to her malice. He seems content to sit and wait things out, even though the rumors and public judgment are both against him. I think it is time to give another push.”
“What more can we do, if people already believe Akiko is behind all the fires being reported?”
“We are going to haunt the Minbushou.”
The idea was so outrageous I couldn’t speak for a few moments. Then, I burst out, “You can’t be serious. You want us to sneak into the Ministry of Public Affairs, located in the middle of the imperial compound, and then set up another haunting?”
Surei replied firmly, “That is exactly what we are going to do. We have to demonstrate the spirit is dangerous. If she is seen close to the emperor’s residence, then no one will be able to ignore her. The government will have to take note of what is going on and investigate Ikeda Minbukyou.”
There was something slippery about Surei’s reasoning, but I couldn’t put my finger on it right then. My fogged brain left me barely able to form a sentence. Seeing how bone-weary I was, Surei ordered, “Get some sleep, Yoshi. You aren’t going to be any good to either of us in this state. You can sleep in one of the bunkhouses. I’ll have them hold off cleaning them until we leave later this afternoon. Now get out of here and get some rest.”
Stolen novel; please report.
The next thing I knew, Surei was shaking me awake at dusk. I felt much better. I decided I could thank total exhaustion for my dreamless slumber.
A bit later, when it was almost dark, Surei and I entered the Daidairi grounds through the south gate. We wore peasant clothing and pushed a cart filled with vegetables. If someone stopped us, we would claim the food was for the imperial kitchens.
Surei had planned to bring Mouse until I asked her how he could plant smoke-pots with guards, messengers, and nobles wandering all over the palace grounds.
No one paid us the slightest attention as we shuffled our way into the Daidairi. Once inside the wall and well out of anyone’s view, we stashed the cart behind some dense shrubbery. We quickly stripped out of our peasant garb. I put on my night suit and Surei dressed in her funeral robes and ghost makeup.
We had made one modification to Surei’s outfit. Before, she had worn a piece of black silk over her head that draped over her entire body to hide her funeral robes and makeup. Unfortunately, the cloth made it impossible for her to see. This time, we cut small holes in the hood for her to peer out of so she could at least get around without walking into trees. We couldn’t have her stumbling around while we were dodging back and forth in the palace.
When we arrived at the Minbushou, the sun had completely set and it was full night. Finding a nook of the building in shadow and out of the line of sight of any of the imperial guards’ posts, Surei finished preparing for her act. We wanted to create terror, but we had to be careful. There were people everywhere. We needed to be seen, but not caught. It was going to be a challenge.
I lit the lantern but kept the shutters closed, so it didn’t cast any light. We walked around until we reached a position in sight of two guard posts and several other people on various errands.
“All right,” Surei said. “Let’s go.”
With the shutter open, I pulled off the black cloth and the lantern lit Surei like a beacon. She lifted her head and yelled, “Justice!” But her cry wasn’t the voice of a woman shouting, it was the supernatural howl of a betrayed spirit crying for retribution. My hackles rose at the sound.
I almost dropped the lantern in shock. “What was that?” I gasped.
“Illusion,” Surei said. “I have been reading Abé no Seimei’s writings on magic. Illusions are some of the simplest spells to learn. Since sound is an integral part of any scene, the spells can create or modify sound. I have always had a knack for them, so I have been practicing with these new spells. I cast a spell to change my voice.”
“Well, it certainly scared me.”
I wasn’t the only one frightened. I heard shouts, shrieks and the sound of running footsteps.
“It’s the ghost! It’s come after us!”
“Run!”
“Kamo-san, this way. Quickly!”
Kamo-san? Oh no, it can’t be. That’s why I thought haunting the Minbushou was a bad idea! The Bureau of Yin-Yang Magic is right next door!
I extinguished the lantern and risked a look. Unfortunately, it was the white-haired onmyouji.
I grabbed Surei by the arm. “We have to go. He’ll discover us if we stay here.”
Surei looked at me, her eyes wide. We moved to a new position.
The group reached our previous location, and Kamo said, “What is this? A long black cloth? Why would a ghost need that?”
Inside, I cursed him for his sharp eyes. If we weren’t careful, he would find us out.
Surei started dragging me along. “Here’s a good spot. We can do a quick manifestation, then move again.”
We set up and repeated our performance. This time, I was prepared for the sound, so Surei’s haunting cry didn’t unnerve me quite as much. I felt sorry for the people listening, though. I noticed that when Surei cried out, I felt an odd vibration running up and down my spine.
There was a flurry of activity around the Minbushou now. People were running in all directions. “We might get one more appearance in,” I told Surei. “It’s going to be hard to avoid people soon.”
We found a suitable spot. I lit the lamp and Surei made one last appearance, complete with her horrifying wails.
Just then, that cursed voice started yelling just around the corner from us. “Get the men into groups. I want to find this ‘ghost.’ It has to be around here somewhere. Cover all the routes away from the building. I don’t want it getting away!”
Apparently, Kamo had taken charge of the imperial guards and was directing the search for the ghost personally.
“We have to get out of here,” I hissed at Surei. “The onmyouji isn’t afraid of the ghost. We must leave now.”
I shuttered the lamp. We ran in the opposite direction of the Kamo’s voice but almost collided with a squad of the imperial guards. We had only moments before we were seen. I pulled Surei behind a small tree and pushed her up against the wall of the building.
“Don’t move and don’t make a sound,” I whispered. Then, I flattened myself on top of her, hoping my dark clothes and the branches of the tree would keep anyone from seeing us if they passed by.
“I am sure I saw a flash of something over here,” a voice said just behind me. “Should we look around?”
A different voice answered him drily. “Do you really want to be the heroes who first confront the vengeful spirit haunting the palace, with the onmyouji nowhere around?”
The first voice replied, “Good point. Let’s go find the onmyouji and tell him we think we saw something.”
The sound of the squad grew fainter as they moved away. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. I suddenly became keenly aware of the feel of Surei’s body pressed into mine, her soft breasts crushed against my chest, our pelvises resting against each other. I could feel her heat, smell her sweat. The sound of her breathing seemed to fill my ears. We hadn’t been this close in ages. It triggered intense recollections of our times together when we were young.
Neither one of us were in any hurry to move. I felt Surei shift position slightly, as she looked up into my face. Suddenly, as clear as if it were in my ear, I heard Akiko’s voice in my head.
“What am I to you, just a stand-in for Surei?”
Startled, I jumped back. “Akiko?” I said softly. Overcome with guilt, I stepped away from Surei, muttering something like, “Sorry, I forgot myself for a moment there.”
Surei seemed shaken. Apparently, the close call was a bit much for her.
I saw another group of men coming, led by a figure with white hair. “Over this way!” Kamo shouted.
Grabbing Surei by the hand, I pulled her away from the group. “The building’s surrounded, we need to go inside,” I told Surei. “Look for an open door.”
Unfortunately, the only nearby entrance was locked. I spotted a window with a shutter slightly ajar. I pulled the shutter open, boosted Surei over the sill, then clambered after her like a monkey climbing a tree. Softly, I pulled the shutter mostly closed, but left it open a crack so we could hear what was going on outside.
They had been right on our heels. Immediately after I closed the window, I could hear footsteps passing by.
A bright light shone through the crack in the shutter. Someone was holding a lamp up to the window. “Wait,” Kamo said. “What’s this?” Surei and I ducked our heads. The shutter creaked as someone outside pulled it open. In an excited voice, the onmyouji said, “Hurry! Get the keys to the building. There might be someone hiding inside. This is no ghost. A ghost wouldn’t need an open window to go inside the building. They could just go through the wall. You!” he yelled at someone in his group. “Stay here and make sure no one comes out. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
Keeping our heads down, Surei and I scurried out of the room into the depths of the Minbushou.
In the next room, I opened the shutter of the lamp just enough to give us some light. We looked around. I was completely lost. “We need to move around and hope we arrive someplace I recognize,” I said.
We wandered through the building, a labyrinthine mess of desks, bureaus, and document cabinets. I finally spotted something familiar. Going up to one of the cabinets, I pulled it open and a bunch of scrolls fell out. I opened one up, and immediately recognized the colored illustrations of an erotic fable. “All right, I know where we are now. We are close behind the front counter.” I pointed towards the lobby. “It’s in that direction.”
Surei looked over my shoulder and said, “What is that?”
I stammered a little in embarrassment as I said, “Nothing. I just recognized these scrolls. They were looking at them when I was here before.”
“Let me see that.” She yanked the scroll out of my hand, held it near the lantern, and unrolled it further to get a better look. Her eyes widened as she saw the nature of the illustrations. “This is pure genius,” she said admiringly. “I could use something like this at the Spring Palace.”
She opened the cabinet and began rummaging through the scrolls inside. I was getting nervous about time. I was afraid Kamo would catch us while Surei wasted time with the scrolls. She finally finished going through the scrolls, stuffing several she had set aside into her robes. “I want to keep these. The rest, I think, we’ll burn.”
“Burn?” I said, stupidly.
“Yes,” she said, waving around the room. “We can start the rest of these scrolls on fire, and they will burn with a lot of smoke, but they aren’t likely to set anything else important on fire. It will provide a diversion to allow us to escape.”
I thought she was being rather optimistic, but I didn’t have a better idea, so I shrugged and did as she directed. We piled the scrolls in the middle of the floor and set fire to them. They burned nicely.
“I have another idea that might buy us some time,” Surei said. “We need to get to where we can see the lobby. We are going to show them a ghost when they come in the building.”
“How are we going to—” But Surei was already gone, heading towards the front doors.
My eyes watered from the smoke beginning to fill the building. I could hear cries of “Fire!” outside, and then a banging noise from the front doors as someone tried to force them open.
Surei gave another spine-tingling cry of “Justice!” when we reached the front of the building. We positioned ourselves out of sight of the front entrance, but where we could see the counters in the entryway. “The counters are in view as someone enters the front doors,” she said. “We’re going to give them something to take their minds off us. I have a small illusion prepared.”
Outside, Kamo was exhorting the men at the doors to greater efforts.
With a crash, the door gave way, and I could hear people pouring into the building. Surei knelt on the floor and concentrated, her eyes closed and her face set in determination. I felt that strange tingling again, but much stronger this time. Surei began to glow and I could clearly see the connection between us. It reminded me of when she cured me of my fever. Near the counter, a glowing white form began to appear. At first, it was simply a white blob with a vaguely human shape and black eyes. Cries of alarm came from the lobby.
“It’s the ghost!”
Surei gasped and staggered back. A shock ran through me. The form abruptly took on greater definition. It strongly resembled the onryou I had encountered at Lake Awaumi. A wave of anger and longing radiated from the false specter. It howled “Justice!” its voice more frightening and terrible than any of Surei’s previous efforts. Still shrieking, it charged forward. I heard screams of terror and the sound of running feet. I snuck forward and peered around the corner at the front door. The lobby was empty.
“Stand back, I’ll protect you,” came a familiar voice from outside.
I grabbed Surei by the arm. “We have to leave. Now.” I hissed at her. “Kamo is right there and he can probably sense your spell.”
Surei stared at me.
“Come on!” I told her. “We have to go.”
She shuddered as if clearing her head and started stripping off her funeral robes. “Let’s try to sneak out and join the crowd.”
Surei and I started wiping the coloring off our faces, but a group came in the door before we could finish.
Surei rushed back to the fire and pretended to start beating it out with her shroud. “It’s on fire in here, in the back,” she shouted. “Help us! We have to put it out quickly. If all this catches, we’ll never get it under control.”
The men rushed in and Surei and I faded back as they struggled with the flames.
We finished wiping our faces as we headed back to the front. “I think I saw something burning in the back,” I yelled as more people rushed past us.
I heard blood-curdling shrieks from the outside as Surei’s illusion continued to distract most of the people. We slipped out to see several other buildings afire, the flames leaping into the sky, turning the night an angry orange.
Huge crowds stood around, watching the buildings burn. I said, “Well, that certainly got their attention. That ghost was great. They have to believe in the vengeful spirit, now.”
Surei looked around, her face pale, and not from makeup. “I lost it. I lost control. I didn’t do the ghost.”
“What?”
“I didn’t do the ghost,” she repeated. “Oh, I did the first little bit, the rough thing with the black eyes. It was just meant to be something that, seen quickly, would fool someone into thinking it was a spirit.” She stopped and licked her lips. “But something took it from me. That is the only way I can describe. It was like having an article of clothing or an object torn out of your grasp. I could feel it pulling away from me, then I lost control of it. Something else commandeered it for its own purposes.”
I stared at her. “Do you have any idea what it was?” I asked.
“No, but it is very powerful. Illusions shouldn’t be able to start fires. How can it do that?”
She took a deep breath. “I need to get rid of it. We can’t have this thing running loose. It would be as bad as an actual haunting.”
We hurried after the sounds of the ghost. As we got near, Surei closed her eyes, her face screwed up in concentration. I felt the vibration again, but much stronger than before. Surei opened her eyes in surprise. “He just made it go away,” she said.
“What?” I answered.
“Kamo, he just banished the illusion. It seemed an almost off-handed effort for him.” She looked worried. “He is much more skilled than I am.”
I pushed her along. “Fine, he took care of it for you. All is well, let’s get out of here.”
We reached the cart and threw on our peasant disguises. As we hurried away, Surei kept looking back at the fires still burning in the palace compound. “We can’t risk another haunting like this. We need to move to the next stage of the plan.”