She stepped away from him. With a graceful gesture, she slipped the knot of her sash. Her kimono opened, then fell away from her body. Naked, she stood before him. Her breasts were small and round. Her arms and legs were slender, her skin a flawless golden ivory. At her shaven pubis, trademark of all yūjo, the delicate cleft of her womanhood showed. Beneath her perfume, Sano could smell her natural scent, pungent and intoxicating. She took his hands and lifted them to her breasts.
A moan escaped Sano when his fingers touched her nipples. Then he recoiled as she closed her mouth over his. Like other samurai, he’d experienced the pleasures of sex often enough- with his neighbors’ maids, or with girls he met in the entertainment districts of Nihonbashi. But he’d never tried seppun, the exotic practice of touching mouths that had been introduced to Japan by the banished foreign barbarians.
“It won’t hurt you,” she murmured, her breath warm against his lips. Amusement shimmered in her voice.
At first the slippery wetness of her lips repelled him. Then his desire flared, and he opened his mouth to admit her probing tongue. Who would have thought that this outrageous exchange of breath and saliva could be so arousing? He pulled away just long enough to cast off his garments, hating to take his mouth from hers, his hands from their exploration of her breasts and buttocks.
They sank onto the futon together, and she pressed her body to his with an ardor that surprised Sano. He’d heard many stories about yūjo: their expertise, the elaborate games they played with costumes, toys, pillow talk, and aphrodisiacs, their false but flattering cries of ecstasy. But unless he was much mistaken, her sighs and arching back were not mere theatrics. He saw no cold mechanical technique in the way she caressed his chest and loins and grasped his erection-just a woman’s simple and ancient desire for a man. And she couldn’t have simulated the ardor that his hands read in her hard nipples, in the wetness between her legs. For a moment he wondered why she differed from other yūjo. Was this her special talent, her ability to want the men she bedded? Maybe she was trying to bury her sorrow over Noriyoshi’s death in physical pleasure with someone whom she had no obligation to entertain. The reason didn’t matter. Her apparently real lust for him brought Sano to the brink of climax. Almost swooning with pleasure, he entered her.
And stopped thinking altogether.
Sano had slipped so easily from wakefulness into sleep that he’d hardly been aware of the transition. Now he awoke with a jolt to the sound of quiet sobbing. He sat upright, throwing off the quilts. He looked toward the corner, where candle flame made a hollow of light.
Wrapped in a white robe, Wisteria knelt, her profile toward him, before a low table. On it she had arranged among the fruit, flowers, and guttering candles a collection of small objects. She bowed her head over them, lips moving as tears ran down her face. Sano crawled off the futon and moved to her side. He saw a cotton headband on the table, with a tobacco pipe and a hand of playing cards. The cards, each with a miniature shunga on the back, seemed hardly suitable for a Buddhist altar. Then he understood. Noriyoshi had painted the cards; the headband and pipe were his. Wisteria, in her white mourning clothes, was praying for Noriyoshi’s spirit.
Both moved and embarrassed, Sano tried to think of something to say. He wasn’t used to seeing such an open display of grief; most people kept their feelings hidden, even at funerals. Maybe he should let her mourn in privacy. But he couldn’t leave without somehow acknowledging what had happened between them. He laid a tentative hand on her shoulder.
“Go to your new home in peace, Noriyoshi,” Wisteria murmured. “We will meet again someday.” She turned to Sano. Her round eyes were wells of misery, her nose and mouth swollen from weeping.
Sano felt her pain echo inside his own chest. “I’m sorry,” he said inadequately. He tried to take her in his arms, but she shrank from his touch.
“My only real friend is dead!” she cried, sudden anger sparkling through her tears. “And how have I honored him? By bedding a yoriki!” A choked sob burst from deep within her. “You, who care nothing for other people’s pain!
“You come here asking questions and acting so concerned. But there is no justice for lowly peasants, who cannot pay or influence our rulers to provide it. You’ll go back to your desk and write up a pretty little official version of what happened to Noriyoshi. Shinjū. Nice and neat and easy. No inquiry to make more work for you or your superiors, or to trouble the family of that girl, whoever she was. You’ll stamp Noriyoshi’s disgrace with your seal and your silence. While the one who killed him goes free!”
Although Sano knew that grief and self-disgust had prompted her attack on him, the words hurt. He knew how close he’d come-how close he still was-to doing exactly as she predicted.
“I do care,” he said. “And I don’t intend to let Noriyoshi’s killer go free.” As he spoke, the thought of Magistrate Ogyu, Katsuragawa Shundai, and his father made him wince inwardly.
Wisteria covered her face with both hands. “Leave me,” she whispered.
Sano dressed quietly and let himself out the door. In the salon of the Palace of the Heavenly Garden, he found the party still in progress; outside, Naka-no-cho still pulsed with life, its crowds and gaiety undiminished beneath the night sky. But the main gate was closed. Sano, on his way to the public stables where he’d left his horse, gazed at it in dismay. He’d stayed with Wisteria much longer than he’d planned, and now he, along with everyone else in Yoshiwara, was locked in for the night.
He trudged toward the poorer section of the quarter and a modest inn that he remembered from his student days. There, for an exorbitant price that would use up all the money he’d brought, he could catch a few hours’ rest while he waited for dawn and the opening of the gates.
Later, as he lay on a straw pallet listening to the boozy snores of nine other men who shared the room with him, he experienced a new uneasiness. He recognized it as guilt for having taken his pleasure from a lonely and bereaved woman. The memory of her grief made him wish he’d had the strength to refuse her. Their coupling hadn’t brought her comfort. Now he felt as if he owed her compensation for the extra pain he’d caused.
That compensation could cost him his family’s honor. But what had he to offer her except his best effort to bring Noriyoshi’s killer to justice?
Chapter 8
This time Sano’s interview with Magistrate Ogyu took place not in the Court of Justice, but in Ogyu’s private office. The morning sun streamed through the translucent windows, dispelling any resemblance to the courtroom’s dim gloominess. No doshin, defendants, or witnesses were present, only Ogyu’s elderly manservant, who shuffled about serving tea. Sano didn’t have to face Ogyu across the white sand of truth like a condemned man awaiting his sentence. They knelt on silk cushions like any two officials engaged in a civilized meeting. But Sano still felt as if he were on trial.
“Honorable Magistrate, I respectfully request your permission to continue the investigation into the deaths of Niu Yukiko and Noriyoshi,” he said.
He’d debated whether to approach Ogyu today, or wait until he had more facts to support his case. Guilt had finally prompted him to speak now: candor was the least he owed his superior.
Ogyu said nothing. Instead he cradled his tea bowl in both withered hands, sniffing the steam that rose from it. Today he wore his ceremonial clothes-a black haori with broad padded shoulders over a black kimono stamped with circular gold family crests. The stark garments made his skin seem especially pallid and desiccated. Against the wall mural’s colorful landscape, he looked like an ancient pen-and-ink ancestor portrait.