Keikos Charity 1

This story is a historical romance thriller set in the dark and turbulent Sengoku-period Japan infused with bits of magical realism, grimdark fantasy, and, of course, sapphic erotica. This is a rewrite of a story I had published on this site a few years ago that I wasn't very fond of. I'm quite happy with how this redux turned out. I hope you enjoy it!

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Keiko's Charity

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I awoke to the sound of muffled yelling and hurried footsteps coming from the corridor outside my bedchamber.

My first instinct was to crawl deeper into my blanket, but my curiosity and the sensation of danger got the better of me. The sounds were of danger, and I wanted to see it for myself, so I rose to my feet and tiptoed over to the sliding door, anxiously observing the shadows of people play on the torchlight illuminated rice-paper shoji. I slid the shoji door open and peeked out into the hallway. The floor glistened with streaks of blood.

"Damn kunoichi!"

The voice was a snarl from the rabble of guardsmen that did not notice my head poking out my bedroom chamber door. I followed the blood trail to a limp body held up by the arms between the four men. The trailing guard noticed me, pivoted and bowed. "Lady Keiko. Apologies for the disturbance! But we just discovered an assassin attempting to enter your bed chamber."

My eyes were drawn to the person they apprehended -- a body as pale as pearl with delicate, and flowing hair as black as a moonless night.

"A woman," I remarked needlessly.

"...Yes, my lady. Fortunately, the nightingale floor alerted us to her presence long before she could reach you, and we acted swiftly."

The guard reached into his kimono and pulled out a dagger, insinuating that with this instrument she intended to murder me. I ought to have gasped in horror at the news. Instead, I caught my merely mesmerized. I cleared my throat awkwardly and said, "What will you do with her?"

"The Daimyo will have his way with her in the morning. Apologies my lady, but we must deliver her to the prison at once."

My curiosity of the kunoichi still unsatisfied, I gave the guardsmen a gracious bow with a mutter of, "I thank you for your vigilance. I'll ensure my husband is notified of your bravery."

They bowed deeply and whisked the unconscious woman down the dark hallway and into the dark bowels of the cold castle.

I slipped back into my covers, but did not sleep. My mind was full of what the face of my would-be killer might look like - if it were that of a ghastly kijo or something beautiful, and where she could have come from and which of my husband's many enemies had sent her to kill me.

When finally, I drifted into the realm of sleep, I dreamed of a malevolent demoness crouched over me, her dagger to my throat, her divine beauty piercing my heart.

❀❀❀

A rooster rudely roused me from sleep with its incessant crowing before I could get a satisfactory amount of sleep, then warmth of a pale beam of early autumn sunlight, and the strong, smoky smell of kitchen charcoal burning kept me from lingering in bed. That, as well as the memory that there was an assassin that I yearned to learn more of in the castle's oubliette.

It was early enough that my handmaidens would not come to ready me for the day before me, so I dressed myself and went unaccompanied to the oubliette deep in the castle's bowels.

A sentry stooped in half-sleep at the bottom of the narrow stairs. The stairs creaked as I walked down them, breaking his stupor. When he saw me, he stood to crisp attention, straightening his tall naginata until the sharp tip of it stuck into the ceiling above him. He gave me a bow with his polearm stuck, before yanking it free.

"Your grace!" he greeted with a young and trembling voice. As I arrived at his front I could see a baby-face untouched by battle. A sort of face that always pained me with their innocent eagerness.

"How is the prisoner?" I asked. The prison, just one cell, was behind the heavy door he guarded. The young sentry cleared his throat and, still standing with an exaggerated tautness, as if to make up for the slacking I caught him in earlier, answered, "I, um, well I don't know, to be completely honest, my lady. I was instructed to not open the door." He leaned in, swallowed nervously, and added, "they say she's a demon, and just one look into her eyes is all it takes for a curse to be upon you!"

I scoffed at him, replying, "she is a clever enough kunoichi to have infiltrated a castle deemed impenetrable, yet you had not laid eyes on her, who's to say she's still in there and not, say, half-way back to finishing her task?"

The sentry's eyes widened.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"K-kazuo."

"Kazuo. Please open the door for me."

He glanced uncertainly at the door, then back to me and huffed, flustered. "I-I-I'm not sure that's wise, my lady... the curse..."

I narrowed my eyes, and he shrank and swallowed. Without needing another word, he capitulated, bowing, then, fumbling the keys tied to his sash, found the right key and unlocked the door.

Light spilled into darkness within and swept across the prisoner as the door came slowly open. Wet red circles had grown out from her wounds on her kimono. She sat in a kneeling position, forced that way by iron bindings that clasped her to a sturdy wood column in the center of the dirt-floor cell.

I studied her with a mix of awe and curiosity before turning to Kazuo to say, "Let me see her face."

He considered me awkwardly, gave a flustered huff, but obeyed. He walked over to the prisoner and lifted her slumped head by the chin. Her head lolled as if she were dead, but I could see the flickers of consciousness in her. Between the wet black strands of her hair, her eyes opened, found mine, and struck me speechless -- both by the wolfish savagery they held and their unsettling allure. Curse indeed. A demoness then, as Kazuo suggested, and perhaps the same from my dream.

She was seriously hurt. Her left eye was sickly purple, jaundiced with a bruise and swollen. Dried blood hardened like wax from a wound at the top of her skull where she had likely been struck by a blunt weapon. She was silent, breathing rapidly, a trapped feral creature too weak to struggle against its captor.

"Why are we so cruel?" I muttered.

Kazuo, believing the question was directed at him, answered, "My lady, she... tried to kill you."

I held my tongue before saying anything that could make its way back to my husband's ear regarding the care I had for my own life, and instead said, "Fetch me a pail with hot water, and a sponge. She must be cleaned."

Kazuo bowed and hurried out the cell. His obedience put me at ease.

It was a long moment the kunoichi and I spent together alone, wordless, her with her head raised intrepidly, her eyes fixed on me no doubt filled with notions of murder, and I gazing back with equal intrepidity, my chest filled with a nervous excitement that I was careful not to show.

The tense moment, an invigorating, hot blooded moment that we shared was interrupted when Kazuo arrived with the pail clutched in his clumsy hands, sloshing with steaming water. He dipped the sponge into the water when I stopped him.

"No. Thank you Kazuo. I will cleanse her."

Kazuo bowed. I grabbed the sponge from him, and took his place beside her, my heart racing by my nearness to her. The water bit me with its heat as I dipped the sponge in it. I squeezed the sponge, then, after wiping the strands of her hair from her face, wiped away the veil of crusted blood. With the blood gone, she appeared even more beautiful. Her face was smooth, pale, indicating that she came from nobility to my surprise.

As she had allowed me to touch her without much protest, I ventured further, unwrapping her blood-soaked kimono. Only Kazuo squirmed and murmured in protest, stifled by my glare.

The kunoichi watched my face intently, as I slowly and delicately unwrapped her kimono. Her skin, besides being covered in blood, was cold and clammy, and full of cuts and bruises.

My hand grazed the muscle of her arm as I dragged the wet sponge over it. She was, despite her delicate size, as taut as a steel blade. Even her small breasts, were hard, like knots on a maple tree. Beside her fresh cuts, there were scars of various shapes and lengths. She was unlike any woman I knew.

I felt Kazuo watching with awe behind me, his imagination undoubtedly filling up with stories of the kunoichi's scars.

Just as I began to remove her kimono entirely from her body to finish cleansing the rest of her body, I was interrupted by a deep, and familiarly dreadful voice.

"Are we having fun here?"

Kazuo and I both jumped. I stood and turned to face the silhouette of my husband, Lord Tanenaga, the Daimyo of Erimo, in the prison cell doorway. His retinue crowded behind him.

"So... this is the kunoichi bitch that tried to murder my dear wife in her sleep," he said flatly. I bowed.

"Good morning my love," I said, moving aside by a pitiful instinct to allow him better view of the prisoner. He ignored me.

One of his men grunted. "Tried. Without the slightest chance of success."

Tanenaga knelt in front of her, grasped her cheeks harshly and considered her with a steeled grimace on his face. He seemed offended that it was this woman that his enemies had sent. "Pathetic," he said.

Summoning more strength than I believed she had, the kunoichi spat at him. The sudden act drew a gasp from me, while my husband and his retinue erupted with laughter. Their amusement was casual, as that of men watching a wild filly bucking helplessly in a corral.

Tanenaga rose, wiping the spit from his face. "This shamefully incompetent ninja shall remain in this prison. With time and pain, she will confer information about my enemy."

A member of his retinue protested. "Tanenaga-dono, your wisdom is, as always, beyond question. Yet, I must raise a concern. Our food stores for the winter are already strained. Even one more mouth to feed may be too much to bear." He paused, bowing slightly. "Surely the bladesmith has need to test a new blade?"

My husband brushed off the man's protest. "No. I will not dignify her with a swift execution."

His eyes wandered over to me. A smirk appeared, and he furled his brows in confusion, as if to just now realize I had been here all along. "My love, what are you doing here?"

I smiled coyly and bowed. "Merely to look into the eyes of such a wretched creature that would dare enter your castle... if only to better understand her malice."

I cringed, the lie twisting a painful knot in my chest, but my husband was none the wiser of my spontaneous dishonesty. He seemed rather pleased with my answer.

"Kunoichi do not do it out of malice, nor do they do it out of loyalty or honor. They do so for a price as easily as they would whore themselves in a soldier's brothel. Look at her. A petty and disgraceful thing. A wretched creature, as you so aptly pointed out. If not for the knowledge she contains inside her skull about my enemy, she is no better than a flee-ridden street dog."

I glanced quickly at the limp, knelt woman and just as quickly as my glance, came the uneasy thought in my head that she was none of those things.

"Of course, my dear."

His smirk broadened, by which I knew meant a notion came to him.

"Ever the curious mind is my dear lovely Keiko, my loyal companion."

He caressed my face. I gave him a tepid smile.

"Just as my food stock is strained, so to are my men to look after this prisoner. So, why don't I put the prisoner under your watchful eye, my dear? That way, you may satiate your curiosity to your heart's content, and, after all, perhaps a woman's tender care might more easily bend the kunoichi to our need."

I bowed in obeisance.

"Tea and water only for the prisoner. You may tell her that food will come as a reward for confession, but only I shall be the one to decide if her confessions are worthy."

"Yes, my lord," I replied.

He put his rough-hewn hand on my cheek again, then departed with his retinue.

When he left, the momentary relishing that came with my new task was quickly overshadowed by the unsavory knowledge that no matter what the kunoichi confessed, Tanenaga did not mean to feed her; he meant to starve her to death. I reached into my kimono and touched my kaiken, my dagger that I always carried. One gentle push of the blade into the back of the neck was all that would be needed to end the unfortunate woman's misery. But that was not to be her fate.

"It's us two now," I muttered as I looked upon the ragged heap that I had referred to as a wretched creature.

"I'm still here," came a voice from behind me, causing me to jump. I turned to angrily face a grinning Kazuo.

"Why don't you return to your post," I snapped.

He flinched; the smile disappeared from his face. He bowed apologetically and scurried off like a punished pup. But remembering how unquestionably he had assisted me earlier, I figured he might be of use to me, so I stopped him.

"Kazuo."

"Y-yes, my lady?"

"Tell me your schedule. Which hours are you posted here?"

"I've been assigned the night guard for the prisoner, my lady. The hour of the rat until the hare. My relief comes after breakfast."

He was boyishly amiable, eager, unlike the other guards who are brutish and say crude things of me when I am not within earshot, and more importantly, he was naively obedient.

"Good. I intend to visit the prisoner while you are on duty. I will fetch her tea for now. When I come back, I would like to see that her bindings are loosened so that she may rest easy, and she is given a tatami to sit on and a fresh winter kimono. If our goal is to extract information of my husband's enemies from her, then at the very least we must treat her with some dignity."

Kazuo nodded. "Oh. Yes. Of course, my lady. At once."

With those orders, I departed to fetch my prisoner tea.

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Erimo Castle sat in a valley between two wild, steep mountains beside a river that raged in the summer and covered in ice in the winter. In the autumn, the mountains were as red as the rising sun. They were as red as can be now, which meant that in a month's time the mountains would be blanketed in a snow becoming untraversable to all except the most foolhardy. I often fantasized about traversing the mountain, if only to see the other side of it, once more. It was a useless fantasy. I had been more or less confined to the castle grounds since I had been brought as a bride for my husband and will be confined here for a time far longer than the kunoichi would ever be. I was a prisoner, my beauty my crime. This wasn't always the case, of course. When I came to Erimo to take the Daimyo's hand in marriage, I came with my father, who would become a notable samurai who gained prominence in the castle for winning the Daimyo's battles shortly becoming his best and most loyal general. He was well respected by all, and because of that, I had a voice in this castle. One that was listened to and obeyed by all. I felt that this was a place I could be happy. It was not until my father perished in battle, that I began to see that his presence was my only currency. With him gone, my voice at once diminished. Then came the death of my son, not a year from the womb, at which point I realized that I was very much alone. I had no allies here. I had since been unable to produce another heir, and so more and more, my husband preferred the company of his concubines, and I was left to become a listless phantom that wandered the castle halls, a hollow echo of bygone happiness.

It was the loneliness, the uselessness, the suffocation and worst of all, the hope of reprieve flickering away like the dying flame of a candle that made me suffer. All the endearing and endless love that I still showed my husband in public, was just that... a show, which made the suffering all the more difficult.

From the castle pantry, I fetched a Gyokuro tea that came from a tea plantation in Uji renown for growing the most invigorating tea. My husband would have been furious to learn that I would serve this tea, his favorite, to the wretched creature.

When I returned, I caught Kazuo standing, once again, slack-jawed beside the cell door, his polearm ready to fall from his precarious grip. I cleared my throat, startling him awake from his hypnosis, to give him a snide, but lighthearted, "Tsk-tsk. Ninjas blowing on flutes could make their way past you without notice."

His face reddened.

"I won't tell my husband," I assured him. "Now, please allow me to serve the prisoner some tea."

Kazuo obliged, unlocking and pushing the heavy door open for me. I was pleased to find the prisoner dressed in a fresh winter kimono, laying atop a clean tatami, as I have asked for. She was in a deep sleep, breathing calmly, silver sunlight from the high window bathing the woman, lending her an otherworldly glow. I watched her for a moment, drawn to her inordinate serenity.

I knelt beside her and proceeded to prepare her tea. I was close enough now that she could easily strike at me upon waking, but I did not fear it.

Beside her was the quilt I had asked for, folded neatly. It was frigid in the cell, so I took the quilt and covered the prisoner's body with it. She shifted, craned her neck to get a look at me. I put the teacup to her mouth, and she took a long sip, her eyes watching me, then when she finished the sip, she sighed and spoke with a voice that came hoarsely. "You truly are as flawless in your beauty as they say."

I responded with a curt laugh, then, "Is that what they say?"

"Mm-hm. Well, what they really say is that the Lady Keiko's beauty is the very embodiment of the grace of a red-crowned crane in flight."

"Why don't you fully enjoy your tea before you start with the flattery. It'll give you the energy to realize that such flattery gets you nowhere."

"I only speak my mind. You'd like that I speak my mind, do you not?" she said, a sly smile drawn upon her severely chapped lips. I ignored her, instead putting the teacup to her lips again. She took another long sip. When the tea was finished, she sat up, stretched as best she could with the clasps on her wrists and ankles, moving with the grace of a cat all things considering, then after a prodigious yawn, said, "thank you."

"Tea is a basic courtesy around here."

"I meant for the blanket. The heavy kimono. And the soft. Kazuo was prompt, polite, and very persistent."

"You've talked to Kazuo?"

"No."

"Then how do you know his name?"

"I have ears, Lady Keiko."

I smirked at the quip. Even in the face of the direst of circumstances, she kept an easy calm, and a placid comportment that Buddhist monks would envy, and of which I felt an envy. How I might react in a similar circumstance, I hope I would never have to know, but I do know that I would not have been so collected as she.

I noticed, observing her more carefully, the way small wrinkles formed at the edge of her eyes as she smiled. She was somewhat older than I had originally thought. Still with the round attractiveness of youth in her eyes, and in her cheeks, she had the etchings of wisdom about her.

Her hair kept falling across her face, which she constantly shook away, so I took a lacquer kanzashi pin from my own head and went to pin her hair back with it, but she flinched and backed away.

"Relax," I chided. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to fix your hair."

She eyed me cautiously but subsequently allowed me to touch her hair. So, I put her hair up and took a good look at her face now that I could see it fully. Behind the jaundiced injuries, I could see a dauntless beauty begotten not only by nobility, which I had noticed before, but also by a hard life. She was not a courtly samurai but of true bushidō pedigree.