"Hearn,.Lian.-.Otori.02.-.Grass.For.His.Pillow.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hearn Lian)

whole of the Three Countries into confusion. Arai is saying he will
wipe out the Tribe. We don’t know yet if he is serious or if he will
come to his senses and work with us. In the meantime my uncle,
Kenji, who admires Lady Shirakawa greatly, wants to be kept
informed of her welfare and her intentions.”

And of my child, Kaede thought, but did not speak it. Instead she
asked, “My intentions?”

“You are heir to one of the richest and most powerful domains in
the West, Maruyama, as well as to your own estate of Shirakawa.
Whoever you marry will become a key player in the future of the
Three Countries. At the moment everyone assumes you will
maintain the alliance with Arai, strengthening his position in the
West while he settles the Otori question; your destiny is closely
linked with the Otori clan and with the Middle Country too.”

“I may marry no one,” Kaede said, half to herself. And in that case,
she was thinking, why should I not become a key player myself?

he sounds of the temple at Terayama, the midnight bell, the
chanting of the monks, faded from my hearing as I followed the
two masters, Kikuta Ko-taro and Muto Kenji, down a lonely path,
steep and overgrown, alongside the stream. We went swiftly, the
noise of the tumbling water hiding our footsteps. We said little and
we saw no one.

By the time we came to Yamagata, it was nearly dawn and the first
cocks were crowing. The streets of the town were deserted,
though the curfew was lifted and the Tohan no longer there to
patrol them. We came to a merchant’s house in the middle of the
town, not far from the inn where we had stayed during the Festival
of the Dead. I already knew the street from when I had explored
the town at night. It seemed a lifetime ago.

Kenji’s daughter, Yuki, opened the gate as though she had been
waiting for us all night, even though we came so silently that not a
dog barked. She said nothing, but I caught the intensity in the look
she gave me. Her face, her vivid eyes, her graceful, muscular
body, brought back all too clearly the terrible events at Inuyama the
night Shigeru died. I had half-expected to see her atTerayama, for
it was she who had traveled day and night to take Shigeru’s head to
the temple and break the news of his death. There were many
things I would have liked to have questioned her about: her
journey, the uprising at Yamagata, the overthrow of the Tohan. As
her father and the Kikuta master went ahead into the house, I
lingered a little so that she and I stepped up on to the veranda
together. A low light was burning by the doorway.

She said, “I did not expect to see you alive again.”