His legs wobbled from disuse when Kenshin stood. He offered the girl a halfhearted bow. “Please convey my regret to your mistress. My behavior was inexcusable. It shall not happen again.”
The maidservant tilted her head in amused disbelief. “I’ve heard that before.” With a snicker, Kirin left his freshly cleaned garments in a pile by his feet.
As Kenshin dressed, he considered how best to confront Yumi. The welt on his shoulder had turned the shade of an eggplant. Though Kenshin did not want to admit it, it frightened him to know that he might have done something else he could not recall. That he could still be acting beyond his own control.
When Kenshin slid open the silk-screened doors, he found Kirin waiting outside with his weapons. She led him to the main gate, making sure never once to leave him alone. With a curt bow, she passed him his swords and led him onto a side street of Hanami, bolting the gate behind him once he’d left.
Kenshin stood outside the stacked stone wall. Considered his next course of action. It was still early in the afternoon. Hanami’s tree-lined lanes would not be filled with patrons for many hours.
He made a decision.
If Yumi did not want to see him in her home ever again, he would just have to wait until she came outside.
The sun had just begun its descent when Yumi finally ventured past the gate of her okiya. Kenshin watched her from behind the branches of a gingko tree, like an unsavory outlaw picking his next mark. He made no moves as the maiko gazed about her, her grey eyes vigilant. The kimono she’d chosen for the outing was simple, her hair styled in a plain fashion. Though she took pains to draw a length of pale silk over her head to conceal her features, her beauty could not be missed. She moved from the side street onto a larger thoroughfare nearby, her zori clacking in an easy rhythm.
Kenshin followed her at a distance, pausing now and then to ensure Yumi would not suspect anyone of trailing her. The crowds Kenshin had hoped would aid him in this endeavor were much thinner than he’d expected, as though a spate of bad weather had descended on the city. But the sky above was clear, the setting sun glorious, a balmy wind wafting through the cherry trees. Earlier today, Kirin had warned him of riots in the farthest reaches of the city. Perhaps this was why there were so few people milling about the streets of Hanami. From Kenshin’s perspective, he did not sense any signs of a threat close by.
Perhaps the cheeky maidservant had been lying.
Yumi continued moving swiftly toward the main thoroughfare of Hanami. Again Kenshin was surprised by how few people loitered along the route. Many of the little shops were closed. Some had been boarded shut. It struck him as highly unusual, as did the strange air hovering about the space. It felt akin to fear.
This troubling sentiment did not stop men from looking at Yumi with covetous glances. A part of Kenshin disliked the way their eyes followed her every motion. As though her beauty were a thing to be consumed.
Strings of papered lanterns were being lit in front of the most stalwart vendors, the ones determined to go about their business, despite the tinge of malice in the air. Hanami was meant to be a place of excess. On normal afternoons, the wares sold along these lanes offered evidence of this: delicate candy of spun sugar, stalls of vibrant dyes imported from the east, porcelain jars of nightingale cream and finely milled pearl powder.
But many of these vendors had chosen not to open their stalls today.
When Yumi paused at a merchant selling stacks of fine paper, Kenshin ducked into a small shop across the way, specializing in scented oils. One of only three shops welcoming customers along this particular street, out of more than twenty. He’d not been there but a moment when a strange wailing began emanating from outside. Followed by the splintering of wood and the shattering of porcelain. Several lanterns hanging in front of the oil shop started to sway. Kenshin watched two patrons along the road turn around, their eyes going wide, their features gathering with confusion.
Then the wailing turned to screams.
Yumi stepped outside the paper shop just as Kenshin made his way into the street.
Their eyes met.
She did not seem surprised to see him there.
But now was not the time for them to react. Less than a quarter league from where they stood, chaos had begun to take shape. People fled as items were tossed through the air, smashing the wooden stalls on contact. The shapes of those responsible for the destruction were indistinct. Silhouetted by the setting sun. When Kenshin squinted, it looked as though a group of lurching figures was set on destroying everything in sight.
If these were the looters Kirin had mentioned earlier, it was clear they’d managed to break the barriers protecting the innermost portion of the imperial city. But still he did not feel immediate cause for concern. These looters moved about as though they were drunk. And there did not seem to be that many of them.
Why had the imperial troops failed to cut them down where they stood? It did not make sense. A single battalion should have been enough to quash the efforts of these ravagers.
When an elderly man tried to prevent one of the looters from decimating an abandoned stall, a lurching figure whipped out a sword and silenced him without warning or explanation. Angered by the looter’s inexplicable cruelty, Kenshin stepped before the man, the setting sun momentarily blinding him, though his right hand grasped the hilt of his katana.
“Stand down,” Kenshin demanded.
The lurching figure shifted into focus.
What Kenshin saw next caused the blood to drain from his face. The man’s features were filthy. Distorted. He looked as though he were caught in a perpetual scream. The outline of a crest was visible on the front of the man’s armor, but it was too covered in blood and dirt to discern which noble family he served.
The man—this looter—was a samurai.
And he was obviously not of his right mind.
The crazed warrior barreled toward Kenshin, his eyes filled with terror and his sword angled above his head. When Kenshin moved to disarm him, another mute creature flung herself closer, her bloodied fingers scratching through the air. Kenshin shoved her into a wooden wall, which splintered from the impact. The stench of her fetid breath washed over him, nearly causing him to be sick. Behind her followed a pack of barely human … things. Maniacal demons. They said nothing while they destroyed everything in sight. The wizened vendor of the oil stall shoved a rusted blade into the samurai’s gut. The creature screamed, blood flowing from his stomach as he writhed on the ground, his strength starting to fade as the light fled his eyes.
So the demons could bleed. They could be injured, which meant some part of them still lived. But they were not whole. Something was fiercely wrong with their minds.
Kenshin had never witnessed mayhem before. He’d only heard of it in passing. This kind of mayhem wasn’t like battle. In battle you knew who to fight. You knew how to win, where to go. What to do. In a battle of honor—a battle between true samurai—there were no innocent bystanders. Bushidō did not permit it.
Up until this point, the chaos had unfurled slowly. Now it spiked to a feverish pitch. People ran every which way, their screams rending through the air as the lurching creatures—these poor souls bereft of their own minds—continued obliterating everything in their path. Kenshin flung shattered objects aside and unsheathed his blades. A part of him did not wish to cut down a creature in the throes of madness. He, too, had been guilty of losing his mind more than once in recent memory.
From the corner of his eye, Kenshin saw Yumi struggle with one of them—a man wearing mud-caked armor emblazoned with the crest of the Sugiura clan. The maiko ducked the fallen samurai’s attempts to silence her, but he appeared to possess inhuman strength. The only weapon she brandished was a small dagger. Against folded steel.
Kenshin dodged a wooden sign as it flew through the air. He came up to Yumi’s side just in time to parry a downward blow.
“Get out of here,” he demanded to Yumi.
“I don’t need your help, Hattori Kenshin.”
Kenshin kicked the crazed warrior square in the chest, sending him careening backward into the stall of fine paper. Colorful pages flew everywhere, like leaves caught in a storm. Taking advantage of this distraction, Kenshin grabbed Yumi by the wrist and ran. They flew around one corner, then two, and still Kenshin did not stop. He kept the point of his sword angled downward, ready to engage in combat at any moment.