The Miko - 02 Read Free Page B

her face up toward the sun. “I’m glad winter’s over; I’m happy to be out here again with everything returning to life.”
    “Justine,” he said seriously, “I just wanted to know whether there had been any—” He broke off, searching for an English equivalent to the Japanese thought. “Any echoes of the incident. After all, Saigō programmed you to kill me with my own sword. You never speak of it.”
    “Why should I?” The light turned her eyes dark, concealing all their delicate colors. “There’s nothing to say.”
    There was silence for a time, and they were engulfed by the rhythmic suck and pull of the sea along whose edge they had begun to walk again. Near the flat horizon a trawler hung as if suspended in a gulf of piercing blue.
    She was looking out there, as if the ocean’s expanse contained within it her future. “I’ve always known that life isn’t safe. But up until the time I met you, I had no reason to care one way or another. It’s no secret that I was once as self-destructive as my sister is.” Her eyes broke away from the glitter of the horizon. She stared down at her laced fingers. “I wish to God it had never happened. But, oh, it did. He got hold of me. It’s like when I had chicken pox as a kid. It was so bad I almost died; it left scars. But I survived. I’ll survive now.” Her head lifted. “I must survive, you see, because there’s us to think about.”
    Nicholas had stared into her eyes. Was she keeping something from him? He could not say, and he did not know why it should worry him.
    She laughed suddenly, her face becoming that of a college girl, innocent and carefree, the light dusting of freckles over her creamy skin catching the warming sunlight. She had a pure laugh, untainted by sarcasm or cynicism. There were no danger signs in it as there were in many people.
    “I won’t have you here beside me tomorrow,” she said, “so let’s make the most of today.” She kissed him tenderly. “Is that very Oriental?”
    He laughed. “I think it is, yes.”
    Her long artist’s fingers traced the line of his jaw, pausing at last to touch the tender flesh of his lips. “You’re more dear to me than I thought anyone could ever be.”
    “Justine—”
    “If you’d travel to the ends of the earth I’d find you again. That sounds like the unrealistic statement of a little girl, but I mean it.”
    To his astonishment, he saw that she did. And he saw in her eyes at that moment something he had never seen there before. He recognized the determination of the samurai woman that he had encountered years ago in his mother and aunt. It was a peculiar combination of fierceness and loyalty that he thought nearly impossible for the Occidental spirit to attain. He was warmed by how proud of her he felt.
    He smiled. “I’ll only be gone for a short time. Hopefully no more than a month. I’ll make sure you don’t have to come after me.”
    Her face had turned serious. “It’s no joke, Nick. Japan is at the ends of the earth, as far as I’m concerned. That country’s terribly alien. Anywhere in Europe I may be somewhat of a foreigner but still and all I can trace my roots back there. There’s at least some feeling of belonging. Japan’s as opaque as a stone. It frightens me.”
    “I’m half Oriental,” he said lightly. “Do I frighten you?”
    “I think, yes, at times you used to. But not so much now.” Her arms slid around him. “Oh, Nick, everything would be perfect if only you weren’t going.”
    He held her tightly, wordlessly. He wanted to say that he’d never let her go but that would have been a lie because in less than twenty-four hours he would do just that as he boarded the plane bound for Tokyo. Too, his Eastern side—and his training—made him a private man, inward directed, the enigma of the blank wall. Nicholas suspected that his father, the Colonel, had been much the same way though he had been fully Occidental. Both father and son had secrets even