Previously published in The Green Muse, October 2007
It was their last meal together before Takamoto set off for war, and Ayumi presented a porcelain plate on the low table between them; a pomegranate and two gold chrysanthemums so pale they were nearly green.
As she drank he watched her fingers curled around the cup, the sharp angle of her wrists, but again and again his gaze was drawn to the plate. She had told some story of her own in the arrangement, some mystery he couldn't solve.
"You hope for our victory," he said. It was a guess, but she was a faithful wife; now that he was called to war, surely that was her concern.
Her cup trembled, and she set it down, brushed a hand against her temple. Her handmaid had pierced the knot with ornamented sticks, and when she touched her hair the pearls trembled.
"We shall see if they listen," she said.
*****
The walls of his house shook as the samurai outside broke open his gates, and she stood holding out his own sword to him hilt-first, clutching the blade, the bright blood pooling through her white fingers.
*****
The leaves settled in his cup, autumn in miniature. "Your silk ties my scabbard. It means a great deal to me."
"Your sword meant a great deal to me, also."
When she called for dinner he saw that she held out her right hand in the sword grip.
*****
He hadn't known she was beautiful; she had worn the student's hood so low on her face that until he had revealed her, he only knew that her eyes glittered when she had struck the blow.
*****
When the handmaid brought out fish soup, he spooned some into his own dish, laid the bowl in front of Ayumi.
"You never take food from my hand, I know," he said, and tried to smile.
She paused, a clump of rice between her chopsticks. The light had shifted, and he saw that the darkness favored her; the sun faced him as it set. It was a good angle for attack.
"My lord," she said, "you never offered the one thing I would have taken from your hand."
When he looked at the pomegranate he saw that she had cut its underside, so it would bleed slowly onto the plate. He did not turn it over; he knew the cut would be in the center, thin and deep. The wound of the ritual suicide. The honorable death of a samurai.
*****
Blood dripped between her fingers as she gripped the blade. He had almost taken it from her, but her hood had fallen away from her face, and he had seen her beauty, and the clang of armor echoed from the walls of his house, and in moments all would have been lost.
In such a time, a warrior protects his fellow as best he knows, and to be alone with your woman in a garden is no treason.
He had saved her life.
*****
He stared at the plate, overcome with dread.
"What have you done? The gods will see this."
"Oh," she said lightly, reaching for the bowl, "let them see."
She ladled herself some of the stew, and the sound of the fish hitting the bed of rice made Takamoto dizzy.
"You should have been a ninja," he said. "I am no match for your cruelty."
She smiled into her soup. "My lord, sleep soundly. I am only your wife, and no match for you in anything."
Her words were sharper than the blade would have been.
"You were only a student," he said, louder than he meant. "You had no right to ask such a thing of me."
The bird cried again, farther away.
"You were my teacher," she murmured. "Who else should do it? Now I'm nothing but a woman."
The pomegranate juice was staining the petals of the chrysanthemums, the petals curling red one by one.
"The blooms were not cut," she said, "but they bleed."
He couldn't look any more, and glanced at the sky. The little grey bird was in the tree above their pavilion, calling the night, each cry more distant, the sky above it darkening.
But there were hours left until twilight, he remembered; wondered why there was such a weight in his chest. Was he so overcome by sadness?
No, he realized. He looked at her untouched meal, and at his empty one, knew that her lack of appetite was deliberate.
"Poison is a woman's weapon," she said smiling, "but I pray my lord will forgive his wife."
Just before his vision faded, he marveled how her eyes glittered in the dark.
Genevieve Valentine is a writer in New York; her recent work has been published in Strange Horizons, Byzarium, Fantasy, and Quarter After Eight. She has terrible taste in movies, a tragedy she tracks on her blog: http://glvalentine.livejournal.com.