Lian Hearn - Tales of the Otori 01 by Across the Nightingale Floor

Author:Across the Nightingale Floor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-06-04T13:18:37+00:00

Chapter 8

We followed the women slowly back to the town, and then went to our separate lodging houses. Somewhere on the way the Tohan guards caught up with us, and we had their escort to the inn door. They stayed outside and one of our own Otori men kept watch in the passageway.

“Tomorrow we will ride to Terayama,” Shigeru said as we prepared for bed. “I must visit Takeshi’s grave and pay my respects to the abbot, who was an old friend of my father’s. I have some gifts for him from Hagi.”

We had brought with us many gifts. The packhorses had been laden with them, along with our own baggage, clothes for the wedding, food for the journey. I did not think anything more of the wooden box that we would carry to Terayama, or what it might contain. I was restless with other longings, other concerns.

The room was as stuffy as I’d feared. I could not sleep. I heard the temple bells toll at midnight, and then all sounds faded away under the curfew, apart from the pitiful groans of the dying from the castle walls.

In the end I got up. I had no real plan in my head. I was just driven into action by sleeplessness. Both Kenji and Shigeru were asleep, and I could tell that the guard outside was dozing. I took the watertight box in which Kenji kept capsules of poison, and tied it inside my undergarment. I dressed in dark traveling clothes and took the short sword, thin garrotes, a pair of grapples, and a rope from their hiding place within the wooden chests. Each of these movements took a long time, as I had to execute them in complete silence, but time is different for the Tribe, slowing down or speeding up as we will it to. I was in no hurry, and I knew the two men in the room would not wake.

The guard stirred as I stepped past him. I went to the privy to relieve myself, and sent my second self back past him into the room. I waited in the shadows until he dozed again, then went invisible, scaled the roof from the inner courtyard, and dropped down into the street.

I could hear the Tohan guards at the gate of the inn, and I knew there would be patrols in the streets. With one part of my mind I was aware that what I was doing was dangerous to the point of madness, but I could not help myself. Partly I wanted to test the skills Kenji had taught me before we got to Inuyama, but mostly I just wanted to silence the groans from the castle so that I could go to sleep.

I worked my way through the narrow streets, zigzagging towards the castle. A few houses still had lights behind the shutters, but most were already in darkness. I caught snatches of conversation as I went past: a man comforting a weeping woman, a child babbling as if in fever, a lullaby, a drunken argument.

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