James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

“She going to spill her guts out, like a samurai?” J.B. asked.

“No. Different for women. You will see.”

Mashashige’s sister had now laid herself down, feet pointing away from the watchers, while one of the weeping servants tied her feet and legs together with a length of silken cord, knotting it carefully around the knees.

“Why that?” Jak asked.

Krysty answered him. “To maintain the propriety, I guess,” she said. “So that we don’t get to see her bare legs while she’s involved in the dying process.”

Hideyoshi nodded at her words. “You are correct,” he whispered.

Mashashige stepped forward and knelt on the unruffled white cloth by his sister. He leaned over her and said something to her in Japanese. Amazingly she smiled up at him as she pattered a fluting reply.

The shogun straightened and bowed again to his sister, handing her the naginata , moving back to join Yashimoto.

“Into thy hands” Mildred breathed.

The servants had stepped away from their mistress, standing in a line by the door.

She gripped the leather-bound hilt of the weapon and brought it up toward her face. She closed her eyes and touched herself softly on the side of the throat, below the right ear, as though she was judging the correct place.

With an audible sigh, the woman thrust the point of the weapon into her neck, where she’d been touching, drawing it swiftly and firmly from right to left.

Her eyes came wide open, as though she’d been given a massive electrical shock.

The artery was severed immediately, and blood jetted out, gushing across the room under great pressure, splattering over the edge of the cloth, dappling the white paper wall within a couple of feet of Mashashige.

Moving with great control, the dying woman carefully laid the crimsoned blade at her side, then lay back, closing her eyes again.

The only sound was the pattering of blood, like light summer rain on a conservatory roof. The pulse faded as life closed down, the blood pumping more slowly, like a fountain that had just been turned off.

Until it was barely a trickle, and still nobody in the large room moved or spoke. All three women servants were crying now, tears tumbling down their wrinkled cheeks and splashing onto the wooden floor.

At the very last, with all the neural lines going down, the body began to twitch, the tiny bound feet drumming out a staccato beat, the hands opening and closing as though the woman were trying to reach out for help.

Finally it grew still.

Mildred looked Mashashige in the eye. “I just hope you and your bloody honor are satisfied, you brain-sick son of a bitch!” She spun on her heel and almost ran from the room, barely avoiding the edge of the spreading lake of crimson, jostling the servants aside as she pulled open the door.

THE MESSAGE WAS SENT via a young manservant in immaculate crimson and white. Bowing so low his forehead almost touched his skinny knees, he pattered off the words with eyes half-closed concentrating on remembering them precisely. “Lord Mashashige begs to inform his honored guests that there will be hunting tomorrow, and he hopes all will be present.”

Ryan had just removed the patch from his left eye, sprinkling fresh filtered water in the prickling socket. The sight unnerved the young man, who took a stumbling step backward.

“Tell him we’ll be glad to join him,” Ryan said. “And tell him thanks.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“You have all this land just for hunting?” Ryan couldn’t conceal his amazement.

“It is only a few thousand acres.” Mashashige had become defensive.

“But you keep telling us how bad your problems are of overcrowding.”

“True.”

“And everything’s all crowded together. All the filthy air and pollution. Yet you have miles and miles of untouched parkland and woodland.”

The shogun nodded. “This land is my land.”

” ‘From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters,’ ” Doc quoted.

“Why not let some of the peasants who live in your slums into this territory?”

The shogun shook his head, showing surprising emotion at the pressure from his guest. “This is not our way. My family has always held this land. We had more, but bad quakes have sent much into the sea.”