Fifty Words for Rain(50)

She snorted. “Rather too much.”

He looked at her, and she could see the dark shadows under his eyes. “I’ll have to find a way to deal with our grandmother. She’s a vile old bitch, but she’s not stupid. She knows she has to win me over if she wants her precious name to live on.”

“I won’t have you selling your soul to her on my account,” Nori blazed. She started to stand up, but the pain in her leg was still too much. “It’s not right.”

Akira sighed as if to say that he was disappointed that, after thirteen years and a life hard enough to break her, she was still a fool.

“It’s the only way forward for us.”

Nori racked her brains for a rebuttal. “Can’t we stay here?”

“I have no doubt that her spies already know we’re here. Or if they don’t, they will very soon. There’s only one person here loyal to me. Otherwise these aren’t my servants, I didn’t grow up with them. I can trust them only as far as I can pay them, and she can pay them more.”

“Well, can’t we go somewhere else, then? Can’t we live in the country and hide?”

Akira looked at her blankly. “And do what? Raise pigs like peasants? Farm rice?”

She let out a frustrated cry. “You can’t just let her win!”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Winning means staying alive. Staying somewhere safe and warm, where we are kept and fed. That’s what winning is. Our victory will be in outliving them. We will dance to their tune now, but they are old and soon—in five years or ten—they will be dead and we can dance to whatever tune we play.”

“But—”

“I’ve thought about this. You don’t think I want to go to Europe? I’ve wanted to go there for years, to study music . . . I had planned to in a few years anyway, I’d hoped . . .” He looked away, and she could see that he had harbored hopes of his own, hopes that had been dashed by the reality of being saddled with her. He shrugged them away. “Anyway, this is the only way. Without my inheritance, we have nothing.”

She bowed her head beneath his relentless logic. “I hate her.”

Akira came over and sat beside her, wrapping one long arm around her frail shoulders.

“I know. I don’t have a choice,” he said wearily. “I’m sorry. I can’t keep you safe from her if I don’t offer her something. I swear to you, we’ll never go back to Kyoto as long she lives. But . . . I don’t have a choice.”

Nori clenched her fists. She hated this bed. She hated this room. She hated how powerless she was, how powerless she always was, and the weight of it was excruciating. She could do nothing. Again.

“What are you going to give her?”

There was only one answer. There was only one thing that was worth more than gold to Yuko and Kohei Kamiza. Only one thing that was worth more than the slight to their pride, more than their burning hatred for their bastard granddaughter.

Akira shut his eyes. “Me,” he said simply.

Nori felt a powerful urge to vomit. “You’re making a deal with the devil.”

“Actually,” Akira said wryly, “the devil might give me better terms.”

She heaved a racking sigh and reached out her arms to him. Wordlessly, he lifted her, scooping her up as if she weighed nothing. He got to his feet, and she let her legs dangle, uselessly, clinging to him like she would die if he let her go.

“I had really hoped you’d grow out of the crying.”

She tried to laugh, but all she got was another sob. “I can’t lose you again.”

He flushed, the color pinking up his pale cheeks. Even now, he was uncomfortable with deep displays of emotion or proclamations of loyalty. That was simply not Akira’s way.

“I’ll carry you outside so you can sit in the sun. So stop crying.”

She reached for her determination, buried somewhere deep beneath her impotent rage and her fear. It was much easier for her to find the courage to die than for her to find the courage to live under her grandmother’s vengeful shadow. It stretched across Japan like a dark, glossy mourning veil. Somewhere in this country, her mother was hiding too, safe in the knowledge that she had sacrificed her children for freedom from this poisonous name. Miyuki was sleeping in a cold room without enough to eat. Kiyomi was coming to terms with the destruction of her soul. And now Akira was steeling himself to fight her battle.

She knew, without a single shadow of doubt, that she was cursed, as her grandmother had always told her: a cursed bastard, born under a hateful star.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


    FEAR NO EVIL




Tokyo, Japan

November 1953

Unbelievably, the days leading up to Akira’s planned meeting with their grandparents, skillfully arranged by letter and set to take place in the great dining room, were perfectly calm.

The clocks did not stop. The sun did not refuse to rise. Everything trudged slowly on.

Akira was in and out of the house, running between this estate and his childhood home just a few blocks away. He always took two servants with him and went in broad daylight, but Nori was sick with fear every time he passed through the electronic gate.

Nori had been strictly forbidden to leave the property for now, which made her smile. This, at least, was not new.