Chapter 14: Not a Guest

She kissed him until the candle guttered, and then she took a small brass key from her apron pocket.

It hung on a loop of blue cord.

She put it in his right hand and closed his fingers over it.

"What is this?" Jiro asked.

"The key to my room, under the kitchen stairs."

"The lock sticks. You lift the door a little when you turn it."

"I have never had a key to anyone's room."

"Now you do," said Hanae. "A guest uses the door I open. You use whichever door you like."

He looked at the key in his palm for a long while.

Then he put the cord over his head, and the brass lay against his shirt over his heart.

"Not tonight," she said. "Tonight I want the roof."

"The roof."

"You fixed it. I haven't seen it from the top."

He gave her the dry look she had come to love.

"There are forty soldiers in your yard."

"They're asleep. And I know a window."

They climbed out through the window of Room Three, the one that faced the fork.

She went first with a folded quilt over her shoulder.

He followed with his good hand on the sill and his bad arm tucked against his side.

The new tiles were pale in the dark, laid in neat rows.

He had set every one.

Behind the chimney there was a flat place the width of a futon.

She spread the quilt there.

Above them the sky was clear for the first time in a week.

There were so many stars.

"Come here," she said.

He lay down beside her on his back, and she turned on her side and put her hand flat on his chest.

His heart was going hard.

"Twenty-four years I lived near this roof," Hanae said, "and I never once came up to look."

"It is a good view."

"It's the best view in the kingdom, and it's mine." She propped her chin on his shoulder. "So are you, so stop being polite."

A breath of laughter went through him.

She undid the ties of his shirt one at a time.

He let her.