I kept us to back roads and hunters’ trails, judging our direction by the angle of the sun and the shadows when I found myself in unfamiliar territory. It took longer, but it kept us out of sight. Mounted men might be pursuing us on the roads, but they were unlikely to track us on winding paths so narrow that we walked in single file.
Kiku was on watch when we arrived, at last, at the school. She was there to pull the gate open and let us stumble in, our shadows stretching out long before us in the late afternoon light.
“What are you doing here?” she gasped, wide-eyed as she took in the sight of us. The gate clanged shut and Saiko slid into a graceful heap on the ground.
We’d been so slow. I could have covered the distance in half the time, and even Ichiro could probably have moved quicker. But the best pace Saiko could manage seemed like a crawl to me. So many times I’d been tempted to leave her by the path, but the truth was, I needed her. This daughter of the Kashiharas could help explain to Madame how my assassination had turned into a kidnapping.
Girls who had been sparring all over the yard turned to stare at the three of us. Fuku aimed one last blow at Masako’s head that could have knocked her senseless, but Masako parried it without a glance—frankly, a better move than I had thought her capable of. She left Fuku standing and scowling as she ran across the yard to us.
“Where’s Madame?” I demanded, swaying a little on my feet. I wanted to face her now. To learn my fate this instant would be better than to wait, and wonder, and dread.
Besides, as Madame decided what to do to me, she could also decide what to do about Ichiro and Saiko. I felt like I’d been dragging my two boulders uphill for miles. At last I was going to heave the burden onto someone else’s shoulders.
“She’s not here,” Masako answered.
“Not here?”
I could not believe it. All this long day, I’d been rehearsing my explanation to Madame, picturing her face, anticipating her wrath. And now she wasn’t here?
“A samurai came at the hour of the hare. He wore the dragonfly.” Masako’s gaze was shifting from me to Ichiro to Saiko. “She left with him.”
Of course. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Madame had left with a warrior bearing the Kashihara dragonfly. Her client’s midnight peace had been broken by explosions in his garden, and where he’d been expecting a corpse, he’d found an empty futon and an open window. Naturally he’d come seeking an explanation. Madame must have gone with him to the castle to see what she could discover.
“She took one of the instructors with her,” Masako went on.
“Willow or The Boulder?” I asked.
Quick amusement flickered in Masako’s eyes. “Willow. That’s what I call her too. But I call him—”
The main door of the house slid open.
“Huge,” Masako whispered, and all the girls fell silent as The Boulder stepped down into the yard, slid on his sandals, and walked toward us.
I could almost feel his gaze as it landed on me, the way a hot puff of wind pushes against your face. Then he looked briefly at Saiko, sitting on the ground, and Ichiro bending solicitously over her. And back again at me.
“Who’s the boy?” he asked.
I stepped away from the brother and sister, keeping my eyes on The Boulder, and lowered my voice.
“He’s ransom,” I said.
I’d been supposed to kill Ichiro. I’d failed. Still, he might be of use to Madame another way. Someone wanted him dead. But he was a Kashihara, so surely he had allies or protectors who would be glad to have him back.
Glad and generous.
I hoped so, anyway. Madame would be receiving no fee for an assassination that had not happened, but a ransom might make up for that.
If I were very, very lucky.
Do not rely on luck. Rely on training and strength. Rely on skill.
My skill had failed me. I’d failed my training. Luck was all I had left.
“Then get him inside and keep him there,” was all The Boulder said, before he turned his back on us and headed for the house.
Masako let out her breath. I raised my voice.
“Inside,” I said to Ichiro, who looked up from his sister. “Saiko, go with him. Oh, somebody help her, then, if she’s so weak,” I spat furiously, as Saiko moaned at the thought of getting to her feet. “Or sit in the yard. I don’t care. But you,” I growled at Ichiro. “In!”
“Fuku, Tomiko, get the chamber under the stairs ready,” Masako said briskly. “Okiko, take Saiko inside as well. No, Ozu, don’t you know better than to ask Kata questions about a mission? Anyway, she’s exhausted. Kata, do you want a meal or a bath or a bed first?”
Oh, a bath. Hot water and steam. I’d forgotten there was anything so marvelous in the world, and I was so grateful to Masako for suggesting it that I could have kissed her, or burst into tears.
I didn’t, of course. Either one would have been ridiculous. But for that moment, despite everything, I did feel that I’d come home.
I scrubbed my skin clean with handfuls of rice bran, sloshed water over myself to rinse mud and sweat down the drain, and climbed into the wooden tub. We were lucky to have a hot spring near the school; steaming water dripped through bamboo pipes, and I could feel the aches of the last day and night starting to melt away.
I was up to my chin in hot water when Saiko came into the bathhouse, shutting the door behind her.
In the gloom and the steam, with just a white under-robe around her shoulders, she looked like a ghost. She slipped off her sandals before stepping up from the bare earth onto the wooden floor. Then she knelt by the tub where I was soaking, so that her face was on a level with mine.
“Please, Kata. I would like to explain.”
Her voice was as perfect as the rest of her, every word as delicate as a chime from a silver bell.
“You don’t need to explain to me,” I answered, and in my own ears my words sounded as harsh as a crow’s spring call. I hadn’t half finished my soak, but I got out of the tub and snatched up a cotton cloth to rub myself dry.
“It’s Madame you will have to explain to,” I said coldly, twisting my hair to wring the water out of it. “You nearly got me killed. You ruined my mission.” And it had been my first. My first.
There was a stinging, hot pressure behind my eyes, and that made me angrier than ever. Was I going to cry now? Because of her?
No. I was not.
Saiko did not get up. She knelt at my feet, and her face, elegant and beautiful and hauntingly sad, looked up pleadingly at me through wisps of steam.
“When Madame comes back, you can talk to her,” I said as viciously as I could. “Until then, don’t speak a word to me.”
I threw on my jacket and trousers. They were filthy and I was clean, but I was too angry to care. Snatching up my sandals, I stalked outside, leaving the bathhouse to Saiko. I paused in the yard before heading for the main house. The Boulder had the rest of the girls drilling with wooden swords. He glanced at me and looked away.
Should I find a practice blade? But I wasn’t a student any longer.
I wasn’t a ninja either.
And clearly The Boulder wasn’t going to tell me what to do. He didn’t even turn his head to look at me a second time. He was going to leave me to Madame. Me and the boy I’d brought with me.
It felt as if I stood there for hours, though it could only have been a few heartbeats, before I stirred myself into motion again and walked into the house. No one stopped me. No one spoke to me. I made my way upstairs, took a mat from a cupboard, unrolled it, and lay down. All at once I was too tired even to undress. I kicked off my sandals and closed my eyes. Catching up on some of the rest I’d been denied the night before was all I could think of to do.
But for the first time in years, my sleep was not restful. In my dreams, I was alone, and I was running.
Slow. I was so slow! It was a huge effort of will to lift each of my feet. And now I had to turn and fight, but my sword was gone.
I threw kicks and punches in vain. The thing chasing me was never there to be hit. It was behind me, hissing in my ear. It was far away, howling. It vanished under my feet like a snake in tall grass.
It was nowhere. Everywhere. It was about to capture me. It already had.
I was good. I was the best. There was not a girl in the school who could put a blade to my throat in the practice yard. I had not felt the sting of the bamboo rod in two years.
But I could not fight this.
I wrenched myself awake, breathing hard. How long had I slept? I’d only meant to nap. Now the room was dark around me. The other girls were asleep on their mats, and the quiet sound of their breathing made waves in the dark air. The rhythm of it should have soothed me back to sleep.
It didn’t. I’d slept too long. I was awake, even sharply alert. That dream had left me ready to fight, and there was no one to attack.
And I was hungry.
It was not the first time I’d been awake and hungry, of course. Hunger had lain down beside me most of my nights at the school. I’d never done anything about it. The kitchen was kept locked.
Of course, I knew how to pick a lock.
If Madame found out …
Madame was not home.
One of the girls would betray me.
Only if one of them heard me. I’d just slipped in and out of a warlord’s mansion. Couldn’t I manage a kitchen?
I felt possessed by a little of that giddy recklessness that had taken hold of me last night. As if I were floating, I drifted up. Barefoot, picking my way carefully over and around sleeping girls, I slipped into the hallway.
There was a black thread stretched across the top of the stairs, with tiny bells, lacquered black as well, attached. It was invisible in the dark, unless you knew just where to look. I ducked under it and padded softly down, skipping the sixth step, which had been built to creak.
At the foot of the stairs, I paused and listened. The Boulder would have laid his mat out here. I heard no breathing—he must be a quiet sleeper—but I glimpsed a bulky outline against the orange and black coals that glowed in the square fire pit, and I watched it for long enough to be sure he would not stir. At last I felt safe, turned left, and let my bare feet carry me three steps to the kitchen door.
My lockpicks, well greased and wrapped in soft, quilted silk to keep them from jangling, were still in my pocket. The lock was not difficult. Maybe Madame never dreamed that any of her girls would have the audacity to attempt it.
The door slid open, and I stepped down onto the cool, smooth dirt of the kitchen floor, closing the door behind me.
No cook or maid slept in the house, of course. Madame was not foolish enough to keep servants here overnight. They might be bribed or threatened into opening a door or leaving a shutter unlatched, clearing the way for a thief or an enemy.
All the better for my mission.
Slowly, silently, I eased open the iron door to the oven so that the dim coals inside would give me just enough light to find my way. On the other side of the room there was a bamboo pipe in one wall, with a dipper hanging from it. I filled the dipper with water, took a long, cool drink, and felt the last traces of my nightmare wash away as I swallowed.
Returning to the stone oven, I lifted a lid on a clay pot and smiled. Perfect. Soup, keeping warm for tomorrow. If the level in the pot was a finger’s width lower in the morning, who would notice? With the water dipper, I scooped myself a salty, savory meal. It had mushrooms in it, and chewy seaweed. I slurped.
Something echoed the sound.
I whirled. Soup splashed across the dirt floor at my feet.
Darkness. Silence.
No, not silence. Something.
Something … moving.
It was a sound between a rasp and a slither. With two quick steps I moved sideways, away from the stove. I would be outlined against the glow of the fire in its innards, easy game for anyone.
Easy game for who? For what?
I held myself motionless. I would find out.
Movement betrays. Stillness conceals. Everyone’s eye is on the fluttering bird. No one notices the stone.
Whatever was making that sound would be moving. That meant I could find it.
I tried to open my ears as far as I could. I poured my whole self into my listening.
I could hear my breath easing down my throat. I could hear the coals in the oven shift and sigh, hear their heat hissing into the cool air. I could hear the blood in my veins.
When the sound came again, my head turned easily toward it. I knew just where it was.
On the wall to my right was a wooden sink. Beneath it was a stone-lined drain that led to a wide bamboo pipe, so that wastewater could run out into the vegetable garden.
Something was coming up through that drain.
The pipe was much too small for a man or a woman. Even a child Ozu’s size would be hard-pressed to squeeze through.
An animal, perhaps? A rat. A snake. A clever, curious badger, nosing its way toward the smell of rice.
But it did not sound exactly like any of those.
That slurping sound came again, a vile, eager little gulp. And then a strange, soft clack-clack-clack.
The skin on my back crawled, a chilly ripple that worked its way up my spine and into my scalp.
Whatever it was, it sounded hungry.
I’d put my sword back in the armory. I’d left my knives upstairs. There was nothing but a water dipper in my hand.
A sword is a tool, not a crutch. Use it; do not lean on it. Anything can be a weapon. A stick, a stone. A comb, a needle.
Or, of course, a cooking pot.
I laid the dipper down on the stovetop and seized the pot of soup with both hands. Then I waited, the length of one breath, until from the shadows across the room I heard small, sharp claws scrabbling against bamboo, and then the softer sound of those claws on the dirt floor.
Whatever it was, it had reached the kitchen. I threw the pot hard and heard it thud as it hit the ground, the bamboo pipe, and—something else.
It would have been better if the soup had been boiling rather than lukewarm. Curtains of broth and showers of noodles flew everywhere. There was a squeak and more of that clacking.
This time it didn’t sound hungry. It sounded angry.
I snatched up the dipper before I leaped, planning a dash across the kitchen to the door of the main room. On the second step, I slipped. A nest of noodles under my feet sent me sprawling in a slick of soupy mud.
I gasped breath back into my lungs, rolled—
—too late.
There came a quick scuttling sound that might have been made by dozens of legs all working at once, and it was on me. A snakelike weight, a long, writhing body, and those legs, too many, all grasping and pinching and scrabbling at me, while giant pincers clacked shut an inch from my face.
A centipede? But huge. Longer than I was tall, thick enough that my two hands could not quite close around it. A crawling, filthy thing that fed on mold and graves and death—only this one was trying to feed on me.
With one hand I grabbed its neck, or where its neck should have been—it was all neck, this thing, and trying to coil around me. I shoved the horrible head away from my face. It squealed, furious, ravenous. The mandibles snapped and sticky-soft feelers groped for my eyes. Angry claws raked the skin of my stomach and legs.
With my other hand, I gripped the water dipper tightly and brought it down as hard as I could across the creature’s head.
It squealed again, and writhed, and we were both flung about in the mud I’d made of the dirt floor. My shoulder and hip cracked hard against the platform where the cook sat to work.
I could have screamed, and ten highly trained girls, not to mention one instructor, one useless rich man’s daughter, and one kidnapped boy who didn’t know he’d been kidnapped, would have poured into the kitchen.
But it didn’t occur to me to yell.
No ally will defend you. No army will come to your aid. No lord will protect you. Protect yourself. Be your own ally. Be your own army.
No one ever said, Be your own lord. But we all knew it was meant.
A ninja was for hire. A ninja served any lord. Therefore, a ninja served none.
Protect yourself.
The platform where the cook worked was just above me. He knelt there to chop and grate and mince and pound and slice and hum and whistle.
That meant there were knives, and cleavers, and mallets, laid out neatly in a row, just above my head. All I needed was to get my hands on one.