Now Aoi’s legs circled his waist in a crushing embrace. Sano released her hair, her breast. He carried her over to the futon and flung her down upon it, landing on top of her with a floor-shaking thud.
Without pausing to recover, Aoi seized his erection and brought it to her naked crotch. Sano moaned as he plunged into wet, silken heat. The exquisite sensation nearly brought him to climax. Resisting, he hammered his pelvis against hers, wanting to have, wanting to hurt. Aoi only arched her back, meeting his thrusts. Emitting harsh, breathy cries, she clamped her hands down on his buttocks, forcing him deeper. Sano let loose his control. He thrust harder. He felt her inner muscles tighten around him, saw her eyes close. His own shout joined her scream as his pleasure crested. Time stopped while his body shuddered with violent ecstasy; the world disappeared. Then, satiated and exhausted, he collapsed onto his elbows. He opened his eyes.
Beneath him, Aoi lay motionless. All the tension had gone from her body, all anger and hatred from her eyes, leaving only a wistful sadness. Even as he resisted her, Sano felt again that affinity for Aoi, the desire for ishin-denshin, the rare, heart-to-heart communion they’d shared, a connection that went deeper than the need for sexual possession. He saw that he’d achieved no revenge by taking Aoi. Aided by his traitorous heart, she had defeated him. He could no longer deny that he was in love with her.
Sano let the breath gust from him in a long, sorrowful sigh, then rolled off Aoi to lie on his back. A vast mental and physical exhaustion overwhelmed him. The pain in his spirit echoed that of his wounds. He hadn’t realized how much warmth and promise Aoi’s presence had lent his lonely existence. Now the promise was gone, destroyed by her treachery. Flinging an arm across his eyes, Sano succumbed to desolation.
“Just tell me something,” he said wearily.
He heard a rustle; in his mind’s eye, he saw Aoi rise and don her fallen kimono. The floor creaked as she knelt a few paces- an unbridgeable distance-from him.
“When we last met, you wanted me as much as I wanted you.” Never having spoken his feelings so frankly to anyone, he forced the words past the barrier of his natural reticence. “And not just with your body, but… ”
The phrase “with your soul” seemed embarrassingly sentimental and refused to leave his tongue. “Didn’t you?”
No answer. Letting his arm drop, Sano turned his face and saw Aoi kneeling with her back toward him, saw her bow her head in silent, defeated assent.
“So then how could you try to ruin me?” Sano heard the hardness in his own voice.
Still Aoi didn’t speak, but her shoulders trembled.
Sano sat up and put on his own kimono, which he found lying beside the bed; with the spurious intimacy of their coupling gone, the room seemed cold and nakedness shameful. Then, too sore to walk, he dragged himself across the floor to sit before her.
Her expressionless features had a rigidity that revealed an immense effort to maintain her composure. The tendons stood out in her throat; her eyelids quivered. Sano realized that she was weeping-soundlessly, tearlessly. Even after the bitter disappointment of her betrayal, he couldn’t remain unmoved by this brave denial of grief that would do any samurai proud. He touched her cheek, his hand clumsy with unpracticed tenderness.
“What’s wrong?”
Aoi’s trembling ended in a violent spasm. Then she grew still, gazing into the distance.
“Sometimes, while I sleep in my hut outside the Momijiyama, I have dreams of running away,” she said in a low, unsteady voice. “In them, I shave my head and dress in nun’s robes. I leave the castle at daybreak and begin walking. Over the highways by day, begging alms from fellow travelers. By night, crossing fields and sleeping in caves and forests. Eating plants, nuts, and small game. For however long it takes to reach my home and family.”
Sano imagined her moving across the countryside like a slim, anonymous shadow. His sympathy stirred in spite of himself. Once a fugitive, he’d known the same homesick yearning he saw in her.
“But then I wake up, and the dream ends,” Aoi said dully. “I know I can never leave. The Tokugawa would send troops to kill me and my clan and burn our village. Just as samurai have always done to get cooperation from the ninja.”
Now her eyes focused on Sano, and a hint of anger reappeared in them. “We’ve fought your wars. We’ve assassinated your enemies, infiltrated their camps, risked our lives to bring you victory. And now that there’s no war, still you won’t leave us in peace.
“You forced my father to send me, as a young girl of fourteen, to spy on and ruin your rivals. You force me to spend my life in enslavement. For me to abandon this duty, which you so despise, would bring death to my people. And for my effort to protect my family-as you would yours-you call me dirty. Dishonorable.”
Sano shook his head as his perception shifted. Never before had he considered what his class and hers had in common. The Tokugawa had subjugated them both. The ninja served less willingly, because at greater personal cost for fewer rewards. They reaped no glory for their deeds. But there was honor in Aoi’s courage, her devotion to her family, her stoic acceptance of suffering. And there was good in her character: She’d saved his life.
“I’m sorry,” Sano said, meaning the apology as an expression of forgiveness and understanding as well.
When he took her hand, her fingers stiffened, then curled around his for a moment before withdrawing. Her gaze dropped, but his gesture and her acceptance of it affirmed a love that knew no class barriers, observed no conventions, withheld no intimacy. This, Sano thought with a passionate, joyful certainty, was what he wanted with a woman.
Bitter irony tinged Aoi’s husky laugh. “What would Chamberlain Yanagisawa say if he could see us together now-his agent, and the man he seeks to destroy?”
Leaden dismay settled in Sano’s stomach. “So it was the chamberlain who ordered you to ruin my investigation. More evidence of his guilt.”
“Chamberlain Yanagisawa is a murder suspect?”
Aoi’s sharp query startled Sano out of his gloom. “Yes,” he admitted, explaining how he’d reached that conclusion. Though he still didn’t trust her, it couldn’t hurt to tell her what Yanagisawa already knew.
When he finished, Aoi sat perfectly still, but with an intensity to her gaze that belied her calm demeanor.
“Then… if the chamberlain is guilty… he’ll be executed?” Dawning hope hushed her voice.
Sano knew what she was thinking: If Yanagisawa died, she would be free to go home, without threat of punishment from a government too busy reorganizing itself to care what happened to the dead chamberlain’s spies. His heart contracted as he sensed the vast difference in understanding that separated them. She didn’t know what Yanagisawa’s guilt would mean he must do. And, knowing the hold Yanagisawa had on her, he couldn’t tell her and risk the news of his plan reaching the chamberlain.
“Yes,” Sano said finally. “If Chamberlain Yanagisawa is guilty, he will die.”
Aoi’s luminous eyes shone as she leaned forward and grasped his hands. “I can help you prove his guilt. So that neither of us, nor my people, need suffer his cruelty any longer.”
Sano inwardly shrank from her eagerness to incriminate Yanagisawa. The embers of his anger began to smolder again when he remembered how she’d “helped” him before.
“What can you do?” Suddenly suspicious, he extricated his hands from hers. Her visions had revealed truths, but also lies. This woman he loved was by birth and profession a trickster, no matter how noble her basic character.
She frowned, hurt by his rejection, but drew herself proudly upright, palms against her knees. “Yes, I tricked you, the way my people have always tricked yours,” she said, again demonstrating her uncanny ability to read his mind. “I can’t foretell the future or communicate directly with the dead. But I can sometimes hear the thoughts of the living, as I heard yours. And the dead do speak- through the possessions they leave behind. Objects speak of the people who’ve owned them. And I can understand their language.”