I was still wondering about Saiko the next morning, when I was called to Madame’s room. I’d given the new girl half my millet porridge at breakfast, although she hadn’t asked for it. I’d just slapped the bowl down in front of her without a word. It was my way to even the score between us, to show her that I no longer considered myself beholden to her.
The trouble was, I thought, as I slid open the door to Madame’s room, that I did not know what Saiko might consider me to be.
“You performed well yesterday,” Madame said after I’d entered and knelt to bow humbly and deeply. The mats beneath me were thicker and softer than those in the rest of the house, cushioning my knees.
Praise from Madame? The hairs on the back of my neck stirred uneasily, as if warning me that an attack must be coming. With her face as wrinkled as a rotten pear, her hair more white than black, Madame was no taller than Kazuko. Masako towered over her and even I topped her by the breadth of a hand. But she was like a twisted silk cord that could fray to its heart without breaking. Every girl in the school had felt the strength of her hand on the bamboo rod. And she never offered words of approval.
“You have spent twelve years here,” she went on in her thin voice, looking at me steadily as I knelt on the mat. “Time for you to prove you are worth all of your training.”
In a flash, I jumped to my feet. I’d been right. Yesterday’s assignment had been a test—and I’d passed.
“Oh, Madame—I will—I promise—thank you! I know I’m ready—”
She held up a hand.
Keep your face a mask. Betray your thoughts to no one.
I’d forgotten that rule entirely.
“Do you think I need you to tell me that you are ready? Do you think it is up to you to decide?”
Shamed, I gulped down the words in my throat and sank meekly back to my knees. I could only hope she would not decide I was no more than a child after all, and take the mission from my grasp.
“No, Madame,” I murmured.
There was a tiny dish of pickled plums on the low table next to her. She picked up a slice delicately with her chopsticks and dropped it into her mouth. I waited while she chewed.
I was still hungry, having given away half my breakfast. I’d tasted a plum like that once. The smell of it, sharp and sour and still sweet, teased at my nose.
“There is a castle less than a day’s journey from here,” Madame said at last. “You’ll enter it at night and make your way to a particular room. The person sleeping there is never to wake.”
My throat tightened. My gut felt cold and heavy. Madame lifted another plum to her mouth.
I’d never heard of a girl whose first mission had been an assassination.
“It should not be difficult. You will have a confederate inside the castle. It will be her task to make sure the way to the room is clear for you to follow.”
A confederate. I nodded dumbly, all the while wondering how I would complete the task. A blade? A tight cord across the windpipe? Poison? I knew so many ways …
Another plum.
“Your assistant will be Saiko.”
“Saiko!” I blurted.
I would be going on my first mission with that weakling hanging around my neck? What did Saiko know of climbing a wall, wielding a sword, using a knife? What kind of mission could this be if Saiko were a part of it?
Madame’s hand moved so quickly I could hardly see it. My head was snapped sideways by the force of her blow.
“You have some objection?” she asked, with perfect courtesy.
My left eye was watering, and the tears spilled down my burning cheek. I did not dare lift a hand to wipe them away.
“Speak, girl.”
Madame never forgot the rules a ninja lived by. Her face was like the surface of a well; no one could guess what thoughts were hidden in the depths. I could not tell what she wanted now. A meek apology, or my true reasons for speaking as I had?
I took the risk, tightening my neck for the next blow, if it were coming.
“She’s—she knows nothing, Madame,” I said as steadily as I could. “She barely knows which end of a sword to hold! She could never—”
Her hand moved again. The blow was hard and fell in the same place as before.
“Are you proud of yourself, then?” Madame asked softly, her black eyes bright and merciless in their soft nests of wrinkled skin. “Do you think you know everything a ninja must know? Pah!” She nearly spat, as if her last slice of plum had been rotten. “You can scale a wall or swim a moat. No more than any foot soldier can do. Do you know the right moment to peer out from behind a fan? Can you catch a man’s attention with one glance? Could you keep his eyes on your smile and off your hands?”
This time I knew she did not want me to reply. I kept my eyes on my knees.
“You sneer at Saiko? If I’d had her ten years ago, I could have turned her into a deadly flower every warlord in this land would fear. But that’s not your concern. She has learned enough by now to do the task that is required of her. So have you. Get out. One of your instructors will give you all the details that you need.”
I bowed again before I left the room, my cheek still stinging.
Now I knew what Saiko was doing here—learning just enough to help Madame’s latest client dispose of someone he found inconvenient. And Madame, of course, had found a way to turn her temporary ninja to a bit of use in the few days she had spent at the school. It made sense.
But the satisfaction of having solved the puzzle of Saiko, and the thrill of my first mission, were soured by my humiliation.
Smiling and simpering and flirting behind a fan—were those skills a deadly flower needed?
Saiko, a ninja any warlord would fear? A better ninja than me?
Could Saiko do this?
It had taken me about half a day to reach my destination, and now darkness, a ninja’s dearest and closest ally, was wrapped tightly around me. The sky hid the moon behind thick clouds. My black trousers and jacket and the hood over my hair might have been made of the night.
Before me, a moat lapped gently at the shore. High above the black water, a bobbing light traveled like a spirit in the sky.
Some warlords preferred to live in the center of a town, with merchants and temples and pleasure quarters close at hand. The owner of the castle I was to infiltrate did not. His home was surrounded by farms and fields. A wooded ridge, too rocky and steep to plant, had offered me cover as I waited for the darkness to descend.
That darkness had been slow in coming. My imagination, with nothing better to do, began to wonder how many battles had been fought before those castle walls, how many soldiers had died here, and how many of their lost and hungry souls might be nearby. I whispered a quick mantra, holy words to protect me from the notice of a defeated samurai whose rage hadn’t died with his body or a common soldier whose far-off family was too poor, too forgetful, or too dead to keep his spirit at peace with prayers and offerings.
Then I forced my attention back where it belonged. Even if there were ghosts nearby, they were not the greatest threat to my mission. And the light now moving above me was not a wandering soul, but merely a paper lantern in the hand of a guard walking the castle wall.
The light disappeared around a curve. I stayed where I was, huddled under the cover of a thick-leaved bush, and I counted steadily to seven hundred before it came back and vanished once again.
I had seven hundred seconds to make my way across.
Slowly, I slid into the water. No splash betrayed me. My sandals, tied together with a length of cord, hung over my shoulder, and in my hand was a short tube of bamboo. I swam underwater for as long as I could, then slipped a plug of wax out of one end of the tube and placed it to my lips before I eased up to just under the surface. Tugging the second plug out, I carefully let that end of the tube up into the air and drew in enough breath to continue before swimming on. Two more breaths, and my fingers touched a rough block of stone.
I’d counted to five hundred, so I stayed there, underwater, my breathing tube just breaking the surface, and went on with my numbers. Above me, I knew, the guard’s lantern light was going past.
When I reached seven hundred, I tucked the tube away inside my jacket and surfaced, shaking water from my eyes.
Perhaps I’d counted a bit quickly, or perhaps the guard had moved more slowly this time. The light was just above me, spilling a slick yellow glow down the wall.
But he could not see me clinging to the stones, unless he stuck his head over to peer out. And why should he do that? I’d made no noise. He had no reason to suspect I was here.
The light moved along the wall and was gone once more.
Down here, near the water, the wall was at its broadest, narrowing toward the top. That made the climb simple, and so did the cracks between the stones, wide enough for my fingers and toes.
My first mission, and it was easy. I could have laughed, if I’d dared risk the noise.
When I got perhaps halfway up, the slope vanished. The wall now rose straight above me, and I’d run out of handholds. The stones were set closer here, and the cracks were too narrow to wedge my fingers into.
Inside a pocket of my jacket I had half a dozen iron stakes, narrow but strong. Each had one end that had been hammered flat, and one that was blunt and thick.
Working silently, I wedged the flat end of one stake between two stones. Standing on it, I balanced and placed the next at waist height.
It was slow and tedious climbing, since I had to reach down with my toes to pull each stake out as I advanced. I could have left them, to be a ladder down when I returned, but I might need to climb another wall, inside. And there was no hurry, after all. It was only the hour of the rat; the night was still my friend.
The last time the guard passed by above me, I was so close that I could have reached up and tapped his ankle. I smiled as I held my breath, balanced motionless on my stakes, a black spider on a stone wall.
Suppose I actually did it? He’d look down. He’d gasp. He’d drop the lantern and it would skid down the wall to splash in the moat, its flame drowned in an instant.
Then we’d be in darkness, and the darkness would be on my side.
Would I slide down the wall and out of his sight, leaving him to think a ghost had plagued him?
Would I scramble up and plant a kiss on his cheek before I slid down the interior wall to safety?
Would I yank his feet out from under him and send him crashing down to drown in the moat?
Would I kill him?
Kill some poor soldier whose only fault had been to walk along a wall? No reason why I should not. I was on a mission to kill. I’d been training all my life. I knew more ways than I could count to end a life.
But I had never actually done it. I’d never killed anything larger than a wriggling trout for dinner.
Of course I didn’t reach up and tap the guard’s leg as he passed above me. What ninja would imperil her mission like that? Instead I clung motionless to the wall, and his footsteps slowly faded away above me.
Then I heaved myself up and over the edge.