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.
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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.