Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn Read Free Book Online

ignored him and started up
the stairs, he shouted after her, “They say you're really a boy! Come here and
show me you're not a boy!”
    “Fool!” she muttered, her legs
aching as she began the second flight of stairs.
    The guards on the top floor were
playing some kind of gambling game with a knife. Arai got to his feet as soon
as he saw her and greeted her by name.
    “Lady Shirakawa.” He was a big man,
with an impressive presence and intelligent eyes. She gave him the message. He
thanked her, looking for a moment as though he would say something more to her,
but seemed to change his mind. He went hastily down the stairs.
    She lingered, gazing out of the
windows. The wind from the mountains blew in, raw and damp. The view was almost
completely blotted out by clouds, but below her was the Noguchi residence,
where, she thought resentfully, she should by rights be living, not running
around in the rain at everyone's beck and call.
    “If you're going to dawdle, Lady
Shirakawa, come and sit down with us,” one of the guards said, coming up behind
her and patting her on the backside.
    “Get your hands off me!” she said
angrily.
    The men laughed. She feared their
mood: They were bored and tense, fed up with the rain, the constant watching
and waiting, the lack of action.
    “Ah, the captain forgot his knife,”
one of them said. “Kaede, run down after him.”
    She took the knife, feeling its
weight and balance in her left hand.
    “She looks dangerous!” the men
joked. “Don't cut yourself, little sister!”
    She ran down the stairs, but Arai
had already left the keep. She heard his voice in the yard and was about to
call to him, but before she could get outside, the man who had spoken to her
earlier stepped out of the guardroom. She stopped dead, hiding the knife behind
her back. He stood right in front of her, too close, blocking the dim gray
light from outside.
    “Come on, Kaede, show me you're not
a boy!”
    He grabbed her by the right hand
and pulled her close to him, pushing one leg between hers, forcing her thighs
apart. She felt the hard bulge of his sex against her, and with her left hand,
almost without thinking, she jabbed the knife into his neck.
    He cried out instantly and let go
of her, clasping his hands to his neck and staring at her with amazed eyes. He
was not badly hurt, but the wound was bleeding freely. She could not believe
what she had done. I am dead, she thought. As the man began to shout for help,
Arai came back through the doorway. He took in the scene at a glance, grabbed
the knife from Kaede, and without hesitation slit the guard's throat. The man
fell, gurgling, to the ground.
    Arai pulled Kaede outside. The rain
sluiced over them. He whispered, “He tried to rape you. I came back and killed
him. Anything else and we are both dead.”
    She nodded. He had left his weapon
behind, she had stabbed a guard: both unforgivable offences. Arai's swift
action had removed the only witness. She thought she would be shocked at the
man's death and at her part in it, but she found she was only glad. So may they
all die, she thought, the Noguchi, the Tohan, the whole clan.
    “I will speak to his lordship on
your behalf, Lady Shirakawa,” Arai said, making her start with surprise. “He
should not leave you unprotected.” He added, almost to himself, “A man of honor
would not do that.”
    He gave a great shout up the
stairwell for the guards, then said to Kaede, “Don't forget, I saved your life.
More than your life!”
    She looked at him directly. “Don't
forget, it was your knife,” she returned.
    He gave a wry smile of forced
respect. “We are in each other's hands, then.”
    “What about them?” she said,
hearing the thud of steps on the stairs. “They know I left with the knife.”
    “They will not betray me,” he
replied. “I can trust them.”
    “I trust no one,” she whispered.
    “You must trust me,” he said.
    Later that day Kaede was told she
was to move to the Noguchi