Ren knew how to treat his men, Uetsugi reflected, as he tipped another cup of sake down his throat.

Around him, there was the smell of rich food and good wine, of costly incense burning away like tinder. Through the sweet-smelling haze, officers lounged about, unarmored and grasping and growing sloppier by the minute. The sound of tittering laughter filled the hall, headier and thicker even than the smoke. Now and then a shamisen would warble above it, or some loud boast or chuckle would grate against it. But mostly, the women cooed and preened like pretty birds, perched on laps or knees or sitting coyly just out of reach.

Uetsugi frowned against his cup. This sort of luxury didn’t suit him any more than it did the rest of this lot. Amidst all that airy silk and powdered skin, these hard dark men looked as crude as a bunch of rooting boars.

Only Ren seemed to belong here. He had an aristocrat’s blood and bearing, without the pampered softness. The fines lines of his face had been chiseled sharp by circumstance, and his light eyes were like flint. Ren misliked the color of his eyes, the shaggy brown mane of his hair. He was the vainest man Uetsugi had ever met. Proud and clever and full of scorn.

“I’m a mutt, you know,” Ren had said sneering to him once. Uetsugi didn’t know—not for certain. But if he had to guess, Ren’s surname was no more ‘Mizuno’ than his was. Whoever the real Mizuno Rennosuke was, he’d like as not been fed to the crows long ago.

Not that Uetsugi gave a damn about any of that. A man could be whoever he pleased, if he had the strength and skill to make it so.

But Ren was never pleased with anything. Not with his good looks, his smart words, or his knack with a blade. Not with his status here in Edo, that was for certain. Even the woman he dandled on his knee didn’t seem to please him much. She was a favorite of his—young and innocent-looking in her girlish kimono, and he’d had her tie back her long hair in a sleek ribboned braid.

She flushed and gasped as he gave her breast an absent squeeze, and cut his tawny eyes to Uetsugi. “Not enjoying yourself, my friend? I know you aren’t partial to whores, since they remind you of your mother. But these two are putting on such a show for us. The least you could do is wipe that ugly scowl off your face.”

Uetsugi blanched. Chuckling, Ren let his gaze return to the pair of women who lay tangled before them, kissing and stroking one another through the wrinkled, riding silk of their clothes. The bustier of the two flicked her kohl-rimmed eyes toward Uetsugi teasingly, as she thrust her tongue into the painted mouth of the other. Uneasily, he shifted on the tatami platform, his fist crushing around his empty cup.

“…I wasn’t thinking of her, Ren-heichou.”

“No? Perhaps you’re just thinking of your little newt, then,” Ren said with a smirk. “Well, that’s fair enough, I suppose. Whatever grips you.” Tossing back his own cup of sake with relish, he sent the young whore on his lap sprawling down between his knees, where she went at once to work on the ties of his hakama. “A pity Kohaku-kun declined my invitation. I had a full priestess’s garb set aside for you to wear, didn’t I, Yasue-chan?”

“Hai, my lord,” the busty, black-haired whore simpered out, breaking from her partner.

“A pity,” Ren said again, with a sharp flash of tooth. “You might’ve made a man of him yet.”

As the whores giggled like fools at this, Uetsugi shook his head. He’d never seen Ren deride anyone quite so much as that boy-captain Kohaku, with his keen dark eyes and his solemn demeanor. He was young, it was true, but as blooded a killer as they came—and Ren was wary of him. This, Uetsugi sensed.

“Somehow, heichou, I doubt he’d take kindly to it.”

“What—a whore’s attentions?” Ren tightened his fist in the hair of the girl who was hastening to service him. “Let me tell you something worth remembering, Uetsugi: All women are whores. It’s only a question of the price.”

…

Having had his fill of drink and company both, Uetsugi dismissed himself with a bow. Getting up from the silk cushion which was much too small for him, he strode off toward his quarters.

On the way there, he did think of his mother, as he hadn’t in quite some time. She’d been a whore, true enough. Although he’d been slow to admit it to himself. He remembered her now, in piercing clarity. She had been a small, sallow woman. Even at ten years old, he had towered over her.

“You’re big, mean, and stupid,” his mother had told him as she’d smoked on her slender pipe, “just like your father. He beat a man half to death once, just for looking at me wrong. That’s why I kept you, because of him. He was a brute, but he impressed me.”

When Uetsugi had asked her what became of him, she’d only laughed in her raspy way and said, “Who knows? Got himself killed, I suppose.”

…

One day not long after that he’d found his mother lying stiff and cold on the floor. A thin dark line of blood had stained the corner of her mouth. Another woman in the brothel had stabbed her through the heart with a hairpin. He remembered how the slender shaft of it had jutted from her chest, the glass beads at the end shivering as he’d stepped toward her.

He’d been on his own after that. Not that his mother had looked after him much, but at least he’d had a roof over his head and a meal most nights. Now he’d had to scrounge for every scrap.

It had been one of the daimyo’s men who’d caught him stealing from some merchant’s supply wagon. After cuffing him around the ears so hard they’d rung, the soldier had wrenched him to his feet and looked him shrewdly up and down.

“You’re a big, strong lad. Not the sort the gods made for skulking about pilfering from carts, that’s for certain. Where’s your mother, boy? I’d like a word with her.”

Uetsugi had glared down at the dirt, his throat working fruitlessly. He had never spoken much. It had made people think he was dimwitted. Most times when he’d tried to speak, the words had come out in a broken jumble. His mother had never had any patience for that kind of stuttering talk. She’d thrashed him enough times over it that he’d developed a habit of speaking slow and proper, or not at all.

“Are you dumb, boy? I asked you, where’s your mother?”

Uetsugi’s gaze had snapped to him then, and the words had tumbled out of him anyway. “Sh-sh-she—she’s dead.”

The soldier had frowned, scratching at his chin. “Well then…you’d better come along with me.”

…

He’d taken up with that officer’s regiment, had gone about doing odd jobs for the men in exchange for food and shelter. Uetsugi had been happy not to have to brawl and thieve—though he’d loathed having to go and fetch one soldier or other from the brothels most nights.

But then at last they’d put a sword in his hand. From that first swing he’d known he had a place in the world.

He’d gotten stronger, surer. He’d stopped stuttering so much. He’d risen through the ranks on one wave of blood after another. He’d had gold in his pocket, the daimyo’s good favor, and men who respected him and did as he said. He’d been thinking of taking a wife, even, before that fell flood had come and dashed it all to shreds.

How he’d survived he would never know. One minute he had been sleeping in the barracks, and the next he’d been slammed into the stone wall, stunned and drowning as he’d struggled to right himself, as he’d groped along and found something wooden he could kick his way through. The rest had been a blur of dark water, of clawing strokes, of surfacing and finding himself stranded alone in the tumult. Bodies of men and horses drifting past, refuse and debris and that mad, seething current sweeping it all away like chaff…

When at last he’d scrabbled his way up to some higher ground, it had taken days still for those black, churning waters to recede.

A bleak wasteland had remained in the aftermath. Men had scurried around like rats in the muck and the wreck of it. Uetsugi had wandered about, scavenging the same as all the rest. But when he’d heard that shrill, piercing cry, he’d remembered that he was a man and not a beast.

Though he’d been weary and famished, he’d charged headlong toward that sound. All the men who’d ever served with him knew he didn’t suffer rapists to live. He’d heard more than enough of women giving themselves over willingly as it was. But these two hadn’t known it—a pity for them. Though one had a sword and he had none, Uetsugi had ripped them off the girl just the same. He hadn’t even felt the slash at his chest, as he’d barreled them through the door and bashed their skulls into a mealy pulp.

Spitting blood, he’d thought feverishly of that poor girl, of her hurt and her shame at being made into a whore. He would marry her, he decided. But when he’d gone back inside the hut to collect her, he’d found her dead with a knife through her stomach.

Dropping to his knees, Uetsugi had clasped her little cold feet to his lips and wept like a child.

…

He had only just finished burying her when Ren had drawn up before him, with a pair of horses and that dark wicked blade at his hip. His tawny eyes had flicked over the pulverized bodies of those two dead men, who Uetsugi had left out to rot. The hilt of the katana that had slashed him he’d now taken up in his hand.

“Not a bad sword that wretch had on him.” Smiling sharply, Ren had offered Uetsugi a set of reins. “Care to join up with me, brother?”

…

As Ren’s second-in-command, Uetstugi had his own choice suite in the barracks. Along the way, petty soldiers bowed to him, drunk and well-fed on Ren’s generosity. That they all loved him was clear and well enough.

Ren was a man to be admired. To say that Uetstugi revered him would be an understatement—he felt he owed his captain everything. But still his lips turned down at the corners as he slid back the door to his rooms.

He was and wasn’t surprised to find Kanako kneeling there within them. Her big silvery eyes peered up at him in the dim light, as she turned from the window, her wide mouth set in its habitual frown.

His ‘little newt’ Ren called her—though the men had other names, of course. ‘Uetsugi’s woman’ or the ‘the boss’s girl’ were the ones he heard. Whatever else they might call her, they knew damn well to keep to themselves.

…

How many times he’d glimpsed her, slinking about the fortress on her own. She wasn’t a beauty, this servant of Kagome-sama’s, but what did that matter? It was only a question of how long before the other men would start to take notice of her. There was a suggestion of something sensual about her, which didn’t help things. Something in the largeness of her mouth and eyes, in the way she wore her yukata high and her breasts unbound. In the way she looked a man, dead in the eyes, as though daring him to touch her.

Uetsugi had been disturbed by Kanako for weeks before he’d drawn her aside. “What are you doing here, girl? This is no place for you to hang about. Run along now, and don’t come back.”

For a long while she had gazed up at him, until Uetsugi had begun to feel disconcerted. Then she had turned and walked into the storehouse behind them. Bewildered, he had followed after her, as she’d shucked her thin yukata from her shoulders, slipped her hand beneath his armor, and gripped him soundly by the cock.

…

Now, Kanako stood and stepped toward him. Her strange pale eyes bore into his just as they had that day, and he felt as out of sorts as he’d ever been. Before even the most violent of men, he knew how to conduct himself with assurance. But this slip of a girl unsettled him in a way he couldn’t explain.

Her soft dark hair was loose from its wispy braid. In the cold and the damp it ran in long, twisting rivulets over her back and shoulders. Taking up one tendril, Uetsugi fingered it for a moment, frowning.

“Are you staying the night then?” he asked her.

When Kanako nodded, he let go of her hair and bent down to rummage through one of the chests along the wall. Extracting a wrapped parcel, he turned toward her.

“I bought this for you,” he said.

Kanako accepted it silently. When she pulled loose the strings and lifted the shimmering fabric from within, he breathed out, “Put it on.”

He glanced away as she stripped down and clothed herself in the kimono he’d given her. It was a dark teal shade, embroidered with waves of white and silver. The obi was a bright orange-red. As she turned her back to him, he tied it for her and then stood staring at her for some time in his slow, even way.

“It suits you,” he said at last.

“Uetsugi-dono has good taste,” she replied, lowering her gaze.

Uetsugi liked this response. It was respectful, but not overly so. Not some simpering “my lord” like those whores went chirping about. He was no lord—nor did he ever wish to be. That was Ren’s lot, not his.

“Come here,” he said, and she came padding toward him.

He touched the silk collar where it met her throat. Through the sleek fabric he could feel her pulse, light and thready. The softest fluttering. It would be nothing for him to end it. It would be as easy for him as snapping the neck of a dove. He had never been more aware of this fact, more conscious of his strength and her fragility. And as he touched her, he had never felt more powerless to make it so. The realization left him humbled, aching even before she raised her eyes to him again.

He slipped his fingers under the collar then. His calluses chafed against her cool, dewy skin. He felt the delicate bones beneath, the tender slope of a breast. It was a small breast, but Uetsugi didn’t mind. He thought he might prefer it, even. He liked that she was so slight, almost to the point of frailness. It reminded him that she needed looking after.

That she needed him.

He felt an answering need to this. It stirred in him, made him grasp her a little rougher. That spare softness of hers felt so nice and yielding in his hand. When her nipple perked and pebbled between his fingers, he pulled her flush to him and let her feel how desperate for her he was. Gods, but she was small in his arms. A growl smothered in his throat as he tugged loose the knot at her back and ground his cock into her flinching stomach.

Kanako whimpered, her hands flying to his chest. “Uetsugi-dono…”

Screwing his eyes shut, he breathed out through gritted teeth. He wasn’t a gentle man. If ever he had been, the path the gods had set before him had beaten it out of him long ago. But he forced himself to relax his crushing hold. He didn’t want to frighten the girl.

Not that Kanako seemed frightened to him, even if her pulse was hammering in her throat. Those big, silvery eyes of hers looked a little wild as he scooped her up and carried her over to the bed. As he lowered her to the sheets, the folds of her kimono slid apart, and he swallowed another growl at the pale, loose-limbed sprawl of her body—the tiny buds of her breasts peaking up from her ribs, the wispy little furrow nestled between the jut of her hips.

Disrobing partway, he fell upon her, his mouth fastening to her nipple as he thought unbidden of his mother again.

…

When he was but a small child, he’d glimpsed a man latched to her breast once. The image had confounded him. That dry empty teat, with not a drop for baby Uetsugi, and yet that man had suckled and suckled. How his mother had moaned! How her flesh had reddened and pulled, her nipple so wet and swollen as it had popped from the man’s mouth that Uetsugi had sat up from his mat of reeds in the corner and stared for so long at her breast, willing a drop of milk to pearl from it so all he’d seen would make sense to him…

Until his mother had snapped at him to turn over and go back to bed, and reluctantly he had, though the slick, slurping sounds that had followed after had left him sleepless and feverish with need.

…

Nothing came from suckling Kanako, either. But sliding his big hand down her belly, he sought between the spread of her thighs, caressed those thin hot lips, and the parched little dip between them. As wide and wet as her eyes and mouth were, her cunt was as dry as a bone. Uetsugi was disappointed, but not surprised, to find her so.

Slicking his fingers past his own lips, he pressed them to her, eased them into her though she winced and groaned. She didn’t like this sort of thing, Uetsugi knew. He had to coax it out of her, to tap into her like a well.

Gods knew what had happened to her, but something. She hadn’t been a virgin the first time they’d fucked. Not that it mattered to him—he supposed something similar must have happened to his mother to make her so—but it did cause him to wonder. Sometimes her eyes would grow flat and cold when she spoke of the past.

…

“I had an older brother,” Kanako had told him once, when he’d pressed her about her family. “He was very demanding of me.”

“What happened to him?” Uetsugi had asked her.

Kanako’s gaze had been as cool and reflective as a mirror’s gleam. “Someone killed him in his sleep.”

…

But now she was squeezing her eyes closed with a shudder as he stopped prying into her like he wanted and took to stroking her instead. When he leaned over to kiss her, she turned her face away. Too much sake on his breath, Uetsugi figured.

He brought his cock to her entrance, and the head of it was more than damp enough. Still when he pushed into her she keened like she was dying, the poor girl. Uetsugi raised himself up. He watched that big thick cock of his driving into her spare little frame, and the sight of it—the sight of those slim hips struggling to swallow him down—inflamed him. It was all he could do not to pound into her like the brute he was—

Until her eyes flared open and her nails bit into his muscled forearms, and then he was ramming into her unchecked. He pressed his hand to the dip of her belly and swore he could feel his cock distending it as he fucked her raw. Her back arched as she screamed out. She cursed him then. She called him a bastard, a devil. Uetsugi fucked her harder still, his fist wrapping around her soft, slender throat.

Her eyes bulged somehow further, tearing up at the seams. She was holding herself back from him out of spite, this was his enraged suspicion. So he brought his large rough hand to the junction of their bodies. He pawed at that little pink nub thrusting itself out toward him. She cried in earnest then, huge shining tears as her sex convulsed. Savoring the ripples of it, Uetsugi stilled, letting those faint contractions milk him dry.

…

If only his mother had chanced upon a man like him, Uetsugi had thought often, with regret.

…

But here now was Kanako who had chanced upon him, wayward creature that she was. Pulling out of her, Uetsugi collapsed onto his back and pulled her to him. For a long while she lay against him, breathing her fraught, raspy breaths. The slight feel of her clinging to him, her hand feather-light and so close to his cock, soon had him aroused again.

Then he felt her little palms pushing against him. Sitting upright, she let her shiny new kimono hang open as she peered down at him, her lips spread into a thin broad line.

“Uetsugi-dono,” she said, holding herself out of reach now, “it was good of you to tell me of your captain’s intentions, but you must dissuade him from pursuing Kagome-sama. Such a match cannot be. Kagome-sama must remain free, and he is not one to allow it for long.”

Uetsugi frowned, unnerved by this appraisal. “You ask too much of me, Kanako-chan. Ren-heichou will do as he pleases.”

“He will listen to you,” Kanako insisted, her voice falling to a murmur as she slipped her fingers into the crease of his thigh. The teasing whisper of her knuckles against his balls made him bite back a groan. “Or does what pleases me count as nothing to you?”

“…I-I will try,” Uetsugi panted, as Kanako smiled slightly. “I do want to please you, Kanako. I want you to be my wife; I want to buy a house for you—”

“I don’t want a house,” the girl said flatly, withdrawing her hand. “If I wanted to stay by a house all day, I would have married already.”

Uetsugi was exasperated, but he knew well enough from his mother’s roaming that he couldn’t very well hold her to him, even if that was exactly what he wished. “What do you want, then?”

Kanako pursed her lips, eyeing him shrewdly. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Straddling his hips, she traced her bony fingers along the stout, clenched line of his jaw. When she bent to kiss him he responded sullenly, though his cock twitched at the graze of her cunt.

“I have told you before, but you ought to ally yourself with Kohaku-dono.”

Uetsugi’s gaze hardened as he gripped her by the narrow span of her hips. “What sort of man would I be, if I betrayed my captain-in-arms?”

“You’re comfortable with him, that is all,” Kanako accused. “But know this—Kohaku-dono will not remain long in Edo. Already he talks of moving further from its walls.” How she came by this knowledge Uetsugi wondered darkly, before shoving the thought aside. “He will leave this place, and so too will Kagome-sama. She looks to the west but that is folly. Madness. I will have her see reason. I am her devoted servant, and she depends upon me. Wherever she goes, so too will I go.”

Uetsugi misliked the threat in her tone. When she was his wife, she would go wherever he went, regardless of her attachment to Kagome-sama. But Uetsugi wasn’t a fool—he could feel her moistening even as she spoke of the woman. But what was love between two women but something to be smiled upon?

“Kohaku-dono is a fine commander—I respect him. But how can you ask me to call him lord?”

“You’re an honorable man, Uetsugi-dono—surely you can see that Kohaku-dono is worthier than your captain.”

“Is this what you would have of me, then?” Uetsugi said wrathfully as he pulled her down by the shoulders and shook her. “My honor at your will, girl?”

Kanako pressed her open mouth hungrily to his, slicked her tongue against his own as she lowered herself upon his standing cock. “Yes, Uetsugi-dono—your honor, your sword, your everything…”

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi