Linnear 03 - White Ninja by Eric Van Lustbader

guilt.
    ' "Anyway, enough about me,"' Justine continued reading. ' "What's with you two? I trust you've gotten over your rough time." ' Justine stopped, unable for a moment to continue. She became aware that Nicholas was looking at her, and she made herself smile as naturally as she could.
    She cleared her throat, dropped her gaze to the letter. ' "I can't believe it's been months since I last wrote. Can't believe that we haven't seen each other in years. Any chance you can take time out for a vacation? I know a great boat you can stay on, and Alix would love to see you. How about it? Best, Lew."
    'You know,' she said tentatively, 'this sounds like a great idea.'
    'What?'
    'Taking Lew up cm his offer. I think it would be terrific to get back to the States for a little while.' She had said nothing to him about her own increasing desire to return to America. 'We could fish, swim, relax. Just laugh and have fun. And we'd be with good friends.' She poked at the letter with her finger. 'I don't know about you, but I'd like to see for myself why Alix is calling him Captain Sumo.'
    It had been meant as a bit of levity, something to break his morbid mood, but she knew as soon as she said it that it was a mistake to refer to Croaker's new hand. Nicholas flinched as if she had struck him, and he got up and went into the house.
    For a moment, Justine sat staring straight ahead at the shadows of the huge cryptomeria that had for so long entranced Nicholas, Then, very carefully, she folded Croaker's letter and slid it back into its envelope.
    Inside the house, Nicholas stood in front of the open fusuma, the sliding doors leading to his workout room.
    He was a formidable, almost intimidating figure: wide, powerful shoulders above the narrow hips of a dancer and the long sinewy-muscled legs of the serious athlete. His face was rugged, angular, handsome and magnetic without being in any way classically beautiful. His eyes were long and upswept, testament to his Oriental blood. His cheekbones were high, his chin was solid and as Western as his English father's had been. His thick black hair now had traces of silver through it which Justine loved. He had about him both a sense of quiet and of danger.
    He almost passed by the doorway, then Lew Croaker's words came back to him. One-handed Lew. Stop it! he told himself irritably. You have more than enough on your mind without playing guilt games with yourself. In the back of his mind was the thought that this form of guilt was peculiarly Western, and he despised that in himself. He wondered whether his father, the Colonel, had ever felt this Western.
    In a way, Justine was right. What had happened to Croaker was his karma. But she was also wrong. Because Nicholas knew that somehow he and Lew Croaker had been born under the same sign. Their karma were inextricably entwined. Like Siamese twins, what happened to the one seemed to affect the other. He did not think it a coincidence that Croaker's letter should arrive at just this moment.
    Reluctantly, Nicholas went into the workout room, and put on his black cotton gi. It seemed a lifetime since he had had it on, and it felt oddly uncomfortable. As if that were some kind of omen, he shivered. What was the matter with him? Nothing felt right.
    The workout room smelled of straw and slightly of stale sweat. Nicholas saw the padded pole, the hanging rings, the wooden floor-to-ceiling trellis he had made himself, bolted to one wall, and the rough-hewn crisscrossing
    wooden beams above his head through which he used to climb, swing and hang by his crossed ankles.
    He closed his eyes, trying to conjure up the numerous times he had been in here, practising the complicated exercises associated with his martial arts specialties, aikido and ninjutsu. He could quite clearly remember being hi here, working up a sweat, but he could not, could not for the life of him, recall what it was he had practised. Christ, he thought, abruptly exhausted, it's not possible.