Three days later, an old woman, stumping along with a stick, came between the statues of the dogs, climbed over the fallen gate, and began to mount the stairs. She did it fairly briskly, despite the years that showed in her hunched shoulders and the gray strands of hair that straggled out from beneath her round straw hat.
Once at the top, the crone laid her stick aside and dipped her hands briefly in the basin. I eyed those hands—unwrinkled and strong—and whistled softly between my teeth.
The newcomer pulled off her round straw hat and looked up to the branch above her head where I was lying, facedown, so that I could see everything that went on below me.
“You should wear longer sleeves,” I told her.
She spread her hands out to look at them critically, nodded, and settled herself among the knobby roots of my tree, adjusting the skirts of her worn and patched kimono.
“They’re coming,” Masako called softly from her perch above me in a crook of the tree. “Along the river. At least I think so. The mist makes it hard to see.”
Mist clung to this shrine as though it were a steamy bathhouse, as we’d found in the last few days. It kept things damp and made it hard to coax a fire into life, but it was also useful for concealment. Perhaps the mists were what had hidden us from Madame and her girls, who must be searching for us. Or perhaps it was some old power in this place, which was why the fox had led us here. I didn’t know, which made me anxious and restless to be gone. I didn’t like relying on luck, or vanished gods, or mists. But we could not leave before our companions joined us.
A few moments later, I saw that Masako was right. I could catch bright glimpses of yellow and scarlet through the trees, like a fan flashing open and shut with a flick of the wrist. Before long two new arrivals were mounting the steps, slender figures in gaudy kimonos, hand in hand. One held a traveler’s staff over her shoulder.
“Yuki?” the one holding the staff called when they reached the shrine compound. “You got one, too?”
The traveler resting beneath my tree reached into her belt and pulled out a black feather. Aki, who’d spoken, had one behind her ear, nearly invisible against her sleek dark hair.
“Are we early?” Okiko asked as she dipped her hands into the basin, raised the water to her mouth, and nudged her twin to do the same.
Yuki shook her head, and I jumped down. Okiko flicked her knife out before I landed, and Aki had her staff braced in both hands.
“Kata.” Okiko shook her head and tucked the knife back in her sleeve. Aki lowered one tip of the staff—weighted with lead, I noticed—back to the ground. “It’s not enough to call us away from a very profitable market town?”
“You have to stop our hearts as well?” Aki added. Masako climbed down more sedately. Yuki smiled a quick, quiet smile.
Back on solid ground, Masako beamed at Yuki and pulled each twin into an embrace. “You’re doing well, then?” she asked warmly. “When are you coming back to the coast? Ozu would love to see you perform.”
I took a careful look along what could be seen of the trail to the shrine, making sure no one had followed the two newcomers.
“Quite well. Watch this!” Okiko pulled her obi loose from around her waist and shrugged off her kimono. Under it she wore loose trousers and a short jacket similar to mine. “Our newest trick.”
She dropped to one knee and Aki stepped lightly up onto her cupped hands. When Okiko surged to her feet, her sister was thrown into the air, where she tucked her body into a somersault and then flung her arms wide, the skirts and sleeves of her kimono rippling out in a red and gold sunburst. She very nearly looked as if she’d take flight, but instead she landed neatly on her feet, and the two bowed as Masako grinned and Yuki softly applauded.
“The crowds love it!” Aki said.
“It’s worth more coins than the rest of the act put together,” Okiko said.
“And people are still coming to buy your herbs?” Masako asked Yuki after giving her a hug of her own.
Yuki nodded.
“And your husband?” Aki asked Masako. “Does he still make—”
“—those steamed cakes? From sweet bean paste and rice flour, with the hydrangea juice?” Okiko finished the question.
“The best in the province!” Masako’s smile spread even wider.
I had lived with these girls, knelt beside them at meals, faced them in the practice yard as we’d wielded bamboo swords and then blunt blades and finally weapons with true edges. I could remember Yuki, perhaps eight years old, grinding dried roots to powder in a mortar no larger than her hand. Aki and Okiko sleeping on the same mat, breathing the same air, probably dreaming the same dreams. Masako combing the younger girls’ hair, tying their obis, bandaging their wounds, wiping their tears.
I had despised them. Masako’s kindness had seemed only a weakness. Yuki’s silent fascination with poisons and potions could never make up for her slowness with a blade. Aki and Okiko needed each other, and I’d believed the instructors who told us a deadly flower should never need anybody.
They had not been my friends. I’d had no friends. I’d had opponents whom I’d left in the dust of the practice yard. I’d had rivals—until the day, at last, when I had none.
But on the first night when I’d begun to understand what it would mean to be the guardian of the pearl, these girls had fought for me. Without them, I’d have been food for a demon before I’d even discovered what the treasure in my pocket truly was, or what it could do.
“And what does that husband of yours say when you go off for a few days?” Okiko teased Masako. “Do you tell him you’re going to visit riverbank people?”
“Riffraff like us?” Aki chimed in. “Acrobats and a wandering herbalist and—”
“—a deadly flower?” Both twins laughed.
“I told him I had to see an old friend,” Masako answered. She was not laughing with them now. “One whose debt I’m in.”
All four girls turned their eyes toward me. Aki drew the black feather from behind her ear. Yuki stroked hers through her fingers.
When the gods had granted me my freedom, or when I had snatched it away from Madame Chiyome and the warlord she’d sold me to—I was still not quite sure which of those things had happened—I had not been able to forget the faces of the girls who’d fought for me. And so I’d bought them.
Ninjas were not cheap, but neither was I. Master Ishikawa had paid me well (better, in fact, than he had known) for the work I’d done. I would have been rich by now, if I’d saved it all. And so I was, even though I’d spent everything I’d taken.
Rich in favors owed.
“What do you need, Kata?” Aki asked.
Again, I restrained my hands from touching the jewel inside my pocket—the one I’d never traded or sold.
“I want you to help me save the pearl,” I said. “I’m going to take it over the sea.”
It took Masako and me a little time to convince the other girls that I could, indeed, reach the lands that lay beyond the horizon. And then the two of us unpacked the supplies we’d gathered in the small marketplaces of the nearby towns.
We’d ventured out cautiously, Masako doing the purchasing while I stayed out of sight, keeping watch in case one of the shopkeepers or travelers or farmers selling rice or mushrooms or melons was actually a shadow warrior in disguise. But everyone seemed to be just what they appeared to be. And if the back of my neck prickled constantly, or my hands twitched again and again toward the knife in my sleeve, well, perhaps I was only on edge, knowing who was looking for me and why.
Now our purchases were spread out on the ground: three pairs of loose trousers and three short jackets, all made of cotton dyed with indigo, all well-worn already. One straw hat, such as a peasant might wear in the fields, and two hoods. Yuki combed the rice flour out of her hair, the twins stowed their bright clothing in a corner of the shrine, and before long I was looking at three copies of myself.
Masako was half a hand too tall, Yuki’s skin w
as a shade too fair, and Okiko had her sister for a companion, now dressed in Masako’s plain cotton kimono. Still, someone searching the roads and tracks and riverways of this province for a girl in men’s clothing with a pearl in her pocket might well mistake any of the other three for me.
Especially because each had a pearl in her pocket.
They were actually glossy white beads, wound with golden wire, that I’d pried loose from a hair ornament Masako had purchased. They might pass for pearls on a quick inspection—and if it came to more than a quick inspection, we were in greater trouble than a jewel could solve.
Yuki, we decided, would set off toward a monastery in the mountains. There, a monk named Tosabo had been teaching a novice for the past few years. That novice was Saiko’s brother, and it would be easy for her to believe that I’d seek his help to keep the pearl safe.
Aki and Okiko would head away from the coast, deeper into the wilderness, where it would become impossible to track them. And Masako would make her way back toward the harbor town where we’d both been living.
“And you, Kata?” Okiko asked. “Where will you go?”
Two friends can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.
I trusted these girls as far as I trusted anyone. But they had no need to know where I’d be heading.
“My own way,” I answered.
Masako laughed. “Don’t you always?”
At the shrine, I watched them all leave. Then I laid three flasks of rice wine on the steps. A vigorous fluttering in the pine needles overhead told me that the payment had been noticed and would be collected.
The other four girls would spend at least some of their time on the open roads, buying provisions from farms and asking their way at roadside inns. They’d need to be careful but not too careful, offering a trail that a watcher might pick up, but not enough of a trail that they’d be caught.
I, on the other hand, spent the rest of that day as far from any road as I could get, following thread-thin and winding hunters’ paths, forcing my way through shrubs, wading calf-deep through swamps, and earning a night’s rest that I did not get. Instead of sleeping as darkness fell, I lay curled up by the ashes of my fire, chilled by the light drizzle that was starting to drift down from the clouds, listening to something in the bushes that should not have been there.
Leaves rubbed on leaves. A twig scraped against a branch. All innocent sounds, the sort that might have been made by a small bird hopping from twig to twig—except that no bird had alighted on that bush in the time it had taken for my fire to burn down.
Had she found me, then?
Had it all been for nothing, summoning my friends and sending them out across the province? Had Madame laughed at our feeble efforts to evade her search and focused on me like a cat selecting the plumpest mouse?
Time to find out.
In one movement, I surged up to a crouch, kicking the fire as I went, startling the sleepy coals into a blaze. My back was to the flames, so they could not dazzle my eyes, but hopefully the watcher in the undergrowth could see nothing but glare for the moment.
A moment would be long enough.
SEVEN
I launched myself at the rustling bush, colliding with a soft yet solid mass. There was a dark, prickly struggle. Twigs snapped. Branches bent, then slapped back at anything in their way. I jabbed my elbow into something and heard a painful whoosh of breath. Fastening my hand in a mass of short hair, I wrestled my watcher out of the greenery and threw her full length on the ground by the fire.
“How many more?” I dropped to my knees to seize the hair again, yanking my opponent’s head back, drawing my blade and setting it to her throat—
—except that it was his throat. Wide eyes blinked up at me from a familiar face, blackened with dirt for better concealment. A voice I knew croaked out, “Kata—stop! Please! It’s me!”
I was startled, but not enough to drop the knife or let him go. Jinnai? Jinnai, spying on me from the bushes? Spying on me for Ishikawa? For Madame?
Under the surprise came a jolt of disappointment. We’d worked together, and worked well. Master Sakuma had not been the only merchant the two of us had robbed. Over time, I’d come to trust that he would at least keep his end of a bargain.
Our bargain had merely called for him to get word to Masako if anything should happen to me. It had not included stalking me through the wilderness.
“How many more?” I repeated, pinning his head more firmly to the ground.
“Just me,” he whispered hoarsely. “Truth. On my honor.”
“On your honor as a thief?”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “As the best thief Master Ishikawa owns. Come, Kata. Let me go.”
“Why should I?” I demanded, my back prickling with vulnerability. Was anyone going to come to his aid? Or would his companions let me cut his throat as penance for being fool enough to be caught?
Now one of Jinnai’s eyebrows quirked along with his lips. “Because if you kill me, I can’t tell you why I’m here.”
Curiosity is a good servant, but a bad master.
I knew better than to let a desire for information rule me. Was Jinnai more of a risk alive or dead? That was all that should be in my mind.
“You can always kill me later,” Jinnai pointed out. “But if I’m dead, I can’t answer any questions. Not one.”
I let my breath out slowly between my teeth. If Jinnai had confederates hidden in the woods, they did not seem inclined to leap to his defense. So perhaps it would be safe to hear whatever he had to say.
I moved my knife an inch away from his skin.
“Can I sit up?” he asked.
I moved the knife farther away, though I kept the tip pointed in his direction. He eyed it warily as he maneuvered himself slowly into a sitting position and winced.
“I knew you were fast, Kata, but I didn’t know you could move like a hungry snake. Next time I’ll stay farther back.”
Next time? Did he imagine he’d get any opportunity to do this again? “Why are you here?” I asked impatiently. Maybe if I cut off one of his ears he’d get to the point faster.
In our scuffle, a branch had caught him across the face, leaving a swollen weal that was beginning to trickle blood. He patted it gingerly with his fingertips. “I was worried about you.”
I could feel my face stiffen in astonishment.
“I wanted to help you at Master Ishikawa’s, but there was nothing I could do. So I got word to your friend. As you asked.”
“That was all I asked,” I reminded him.
“And then I followed her.”
Masako must have been out of practice, letting this oaf of a thief creep along a road behind her.
“The river gave me a little trouble, it’s true, but luckily I caught sight of you and your friend in a market town nearby. And earlier today, I was under an old bridge when
I spotted three Katas heading off in different directions. None of them looked quite right, though. So I waited until you came along. I’ve been behind you ever since.”
I scowled at him. “You did all that because you were worried about me?” Skepticism dripped off each word.
“Well.” He looked a little sheepish, as if I’d caught him in a lie he’d never expected to work. “And I wondered why you were worth so much. I saw the jewels on Master Ishikawa’s table.”
Now that sounded more plausible.
“Did you steal something?” He leaned forward. “Something you weren’t supposed to, I mean. And Master Ishikawa found out? That’s why he sold you to—whoever took you?”
“No,” I said coldly, which was true, at least in part. I had stolen from our master—and he must know it, since Fuku had knocked that jewel out of my mouth like a loose tooth—but that was not why he’d sold me.
The eager interest in Jinnai’s face made me think he might be speaking the truth. If he had honestly wanted to know why I was so valuable, he might well be here in the woods alone. He wouldn’t have want
ed to share his find.
I sat back a little farther, creating more space between my blade and his heart.
To my considerable surprise, he smiled at me, a wide grin that lit his narrow, dirty, clever face. “And, of course, I’m in love with you,” he said cheerfully.
A few hours later, in the gray light of dawn, I had a decision to make.
“Kata?” Jinnai asked plaintively from the other side of the clearing. “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”
Early on, Master Ishikawa had assigned Jinnai to work with me. I had not, at first, been pleased. A risk shared is a risk doubled. I’d been taught that working alone was safest.
But I’d quickly come to see how well Jinnai’s skills meshed with my own.
I could leave him on his back after the quickest of sparring matches, but he could pick a lock faster than me. I’d mastered every weapon; he’d memorized every winding lane and wandering alley of the Takedas’ city. I knew how to make myself all but invisible; he knew how to make himself popular.
No one knew me. Everybody knew Jinnai.
A smile here, a nod there. A favor done, a gift given. The beggars greeted him. The fishermen waved to him. Their wives giggled at him from behind their hands. Even those as despicable as butchers and tanners dared to speak to him; outcasts hauling filth from latrines to the river didn’t scuttle aside too far as he passed them. The very guard dogs wagged their tails at him.
And no one thought of him when screens were slit, when locks were picked, when coins were missing. Because everyone liked him.
I’d never thought of charm as a weapon before I met Jinnai.
Last night, after his ridiculous declaration, I’d tied his hands (in front of him, so he would not be in pain), attached the end of the cord to a sapling to keep him in one place, and returned to my fire, alone.
Around me, the forest had settled back into peace. The soft rasping, trilling, fluting calls of insects and birds drifted through the trees, the flutter of wings and the patter of small feet echoing so that they seemed as if they were made by beasts much larger than mice or voles or frogs or nightingales.
Deadly Wish: A Ninja’s Journey Page 5