Deadly Wish: A Ninja’s Journey

by Sarah L. Thomson

  It was one of the poorer quarters of the city, that was easy to see, with row upon row of houses huddled shoulder to shoulder, their thatched roofs nearly touching. I saw no familiar landmarks, but there was one thing that was easy about this town—going downhill would unfailingly lead you to the sea.

  So I made my awkward way past mostly naked brats playing in muddy ditches and their older sisters chasing them, beggars limping even slower than I was, shops selling watered wine and withered plums, a blind man plucking the strings of a biwa and chanting a story to an audience of two. Perhaps he couldn’t tell what kind of a neighborhood he’d wandered into, and was vainly hoping for a coin to fall at his feet.

  With my halting gait, I was slower than usual, and the afternoon light was beginning to mellow and turn shades of gold and peach before I reached the harbor.

  It was tempting to straighten up and walk briskly, but I did not hurry. Past the merchants’ warehouses filled with rice and wine, silk and indigo, millet and oranges and melons, there was a strand of stony beach, littered with driftwood and fish guts and twists of rope made of wisteria vine. Wharves bristled into the murky water, and a wide wooden jetty stretched out into the deep. Alongside both were what I’d come looking for—the ships.

  Small fishing boats clustered around the wharves to unload their catch, piling fish and eel and abalone and urchins onto the bare wooden planks. They were like tiny darting sandpipers beside the hulk of the warships, anchored farther out, most with a wooden tower for archers and the Takeda chrysanthemum marked on their sails.

  Neither warships nor fishing boats would serve my purpose, however, and nor did the brightly lacquered pleasure craft for the warlord’s family nor the bulky vessels that toted bags and bundles of tax rice up and down the coast. Nor did the bathship permanently anchored at one wharf, smoke puffing from the cabin on deck where water was heated.

  But moored at the far end of the jetty was a larger ship. No pleasure craft, this; its planks were weather-beaten, its two sails worn. Nor was it a small thing built to hug the bays and inlets of the coast. This one looked like the kind of vessel that would bring back teapots from Choson, learned scrolls and strings of coins and rolls of silk from the Ming Empire, spices from the far islands.

  In other words, it was the kind of vessel that could take me and the pearl far beyond Madame’s grasp and Saiko’s revenge. Far beyond anything I had ever known.

  NINE

  I hunkered down into a gap between two barrels that smelled as if they were full of eels and studied the ship as carefully as a hunter studies his prey.

  Barefoot men were rolling barrels up a ramp onto the deck. Others followed them with sacks over their shoulders. A man stood on the jetty, hands behind his back, supervising.

  I was no sailor, but this looked to me like a boat readying to cast off.

  How many ways would there be to get on board? Hidden inside a sack or a barrel might be a possibility, but a remarkably uncomfortable one. And there would be no way to ensure that I wouldn’t end up in the center of a pile belowdecks, to starve or suffocate before I could struggle free.

  The sailors were dressed more or less as I was, and there was a chance I might pull my hat low over my face and simply walk on board as one of them. But I hesitated. My time at Madame Chiyome’s had taught me many things, and my years with Master Ishikawa had added a few more. How to trim a sail or tie a sailor’s knot was not among them. If one of the crew tossed an order my way, I’d be found out in a moment.

  Better to wait, then. Wait until the sun was down and I could rely on my old ally the night to do her part. The ramp, no doubt, would be put away once the sailors had finished their work, but there were still the thick ropes that held the ship to the jetty, and they’d be as easy as tree limbs to climb. After that it would simply be a matter of finding somewhere to hide.

  I stayed where I was as the afternoon wore away, cupping my hands together and mouthing words of gratitude at the few passersby who tossed a copper coin at me. I must have made quite the piteous spectacle, for someone even dropped a fishtail in my lap, with a few shreds of white flesh still clinging to the bones.

  The sun was beginning to settle into a smoky scarlet haze along the horizon when another copper coin fell into my field of vision. I reached up to snatch it as it spun in midair, catching the low sunlight in flashes of ruddy gold, and I saw the sandaled feet of the person who’d thrown it stop in their stride and turn toward me.

  I didn’t lift my gaze; it would be presumptuous to look someone of higher rank in the face, and everyone was of higher rank than a beggarly cripple like me. But I let the coin fall to my lap in order to free my hands.

  The owner of the feet squatted down on his haunches.

  “I don’t think a feeble beggar would be quite so deft with a coin,” Jinnai said. The sun was at his back, casting his face in shadow, but he made no threatening movements and kept his tone friendly and his hands in plain sight. “Other than that, the disguise is very convincing.”

  I stayed hunched over my pitiful heap of coppers, only narrowing my eyes at him. “What,” I said between my teeth, “are you doing here? Otani was supposed to keep you from interfering.”

  “I’ve belonged to Master Ishikawa since I was six years old, Kata.” I saw his teeth flash in his shadowy face. “There’s nothing I can’t steal. And there isn’t a lock I can’t pick or a knot I can’t untie. Do you really think some ronin could keep me where I didn’t want to be?”

  “I kept you tied to a tree all night,” I growled.

  “Because I let you. Because I wanted to show you that I’m no threat.”

  “Then go away and leave me alone.” I lowered my voice still further, glancing from side to side without moving my head. “You’re no threat to me? You’re putting me in danger with every word. People are already starting to look at us.” I wanted to kick him across the wharf. But I didn’t dare. What I’d said was true; people were beginning to glance our way, curious why a handsome young man would stop to chat with a waterside beggar.

  “You’re not the only one in danger, Kata.” He leaned closer, almost as if he meant to kiss me. I tensed. He whispered his next words.

  “Your friend Masako? They’re going to kill her.”

  My attention snapped to his face so quickly I saw that he had to keep himself from flinching. I had not thought him capable of easy cruelty, no matter what game he was playing. Had I misread him so badly? Was he actually threatening my friend?

  But his face held no menace. And someone else was running along the wharf now—a slight figure in a simple kimono patterned with blue and white diamonds, her sandals slapping the worn wooden boards. She threw herself at me, knocking my hat off. I deliberately turned my muscles to lead to keep my hands from snatching at my knife. The girl knew better than to do that! But she was frantic with worry, and as she clung to me, I put one arm awkwardly around her.

  “Kata, you’ve got to help,” she said without taking her face out of my shoulder, her hands gripping fistfuls of my jacket. “They took her. They took her!”

  “Who, Ozu?” I got my hands on her shoulders and peeled her away from me so that I could see her face.

  “The girls. Fuku. Kazuko. Some others I don’t know. They came to the house. She’d just gotten back home.”

  “They didn’t try to take you as well?”

  She shook her head, her eyes and cheeks shiny with tears. “They told me to find you. To tell you they’d—they’d kill her—” The pitch of her voice climbed higher and broke. “And the others, too. All of them.”

  I felt as I had back in the practice yard at the school, when I’d been careless or overconfident and an unexpected blow had gotten under my guard—short of breath, shocked, furious. “All of them?” I repeated.

  Aki and Okiko? Yuki? Masako? Every friend I’d asked to help me was now in Madame’s clutches?

  Ozu plastered her face back against my shoulder and nodded. “If you don’t go back to Madame,�
�� she said into my jacket. “I told them I didn’t know where you were. I told them! But they didn’t listen. They just—took her. And Saburro was in the bakery, so he didn’t know. It was so quick. But I followed them!”

  “You did?” I looked down at her dark head. Ozu had been only seven when I’d bought her and Masako from Madame, bought them both because Masako would not have left without her. So she’d only had the most basic of training. And she’d still managed to follow armed shadow warriors through the streets without getting caught herself? I was impressed. “Where did they take her?”

  She sat up straighter and pointed uphill. “To the Takeda mansion.”

  My heart sank, heavy as the stone anchor that held the ship close to the shore.

  “Only I couldn’t get in.” Ozu wiped her nose on her sleeve. “There’s a hedge, and a gate. So I ran back home, because I didn’t know where you were, and then—”

  “Then I came to the door,” Jinnai put in. “The little one remembered me, since I’m a friend of yours.” I didn’t contradict him, because, as far as Ozu knew, he was a friend—she must have met him six days ago when he came to tell Masako that something had happened to me. “And I thought we’d better search for you down by the water,” he went on. “Why else would you come back here, after all, if you weren’t looking for a boat? So here we all are.”

  “Kata?” Ozu wiped at her nose again. “You can get Masako back, can’t you?”

  I looked over her shoulder, at the ship I’d marked out as my likeliest prospect. My old training was tugging at me. I knew what every instructor I’d ever had would have told me, what Madame herself would have told me.

  You serve the mission. No one else.

  I had a mission, and it was still within my grasp. I was supposed to keep the pearl with me, to keep it unused, and to keep it out of the hands of someone like Kashihara Saiko.

  Masako, Aki and Okiko, Yuki—they’d all taken roles in this mission of mine. And if they’d played their roles as they’d been meant to do, no one would have ended up a prisoner. Maybe their skills had been dulled by months or years without a mission. Maybe I’d been wrong to recruit them in the first place.

  Regardless, each of them knew that a ninja did not expect help. She did not await rescue.

  But were we all still ninjas?

  Aki and Okiko were acrobats. Yuki sold her herbs and potions. Masako had married a baker, of all things, and it would not be long, probably, before she’d add her own children to be raised alongside Ozu.

  And me? What was I? A thief?

  A deadly flower?

  If only I could fling the pearl into the ocean, or drop it off a mountainside, and leave it to its fate. But I did not dare. The pearl would not stay lost forever. It was my burden; I could not simply cast it aside. I had to keep it safe. And carrying it into the heart of the Takeda mansion was hardly the way to do that.

  If I were faithful to my old training, I should run for that ship and leave my friends to make their own way out of their troubles. If they were faithful to their old training, they’d expect me to do nothing else.

  But I’d broken faith with that training two years ago, when Madame had sent me to sink my knife into a boy even younger than I’d been. With frustration tying my guts into knots, I let my gaze fall from the ship to Ozu, sniffling in my arms.

  “Go home,” I said, and put her back on her feet. I got up myself, pulled my hat low over my face, and started back along the wharf, kicking the pebble out of my sandal and rubbing the bit of gum off of my lip. A filthy waterfront beggar could hardly hope to gain admission to the mansion of the most powerful family of the province.

  Ozu was trotting anxiously at my elbow; Jinnai was right behind her. “Kata! Kata, wait! Don’t just charge off by yourself,” he insisted. “Why won’t you listen?”

  I spun on him, my impatience steaming over into rage. “Because I already put four friends into danger,” I hissed like an angry snake. Then I turned and broke into a run. He might know the waterfront alleys like the lines on his own palm, but give me half a minute’s start and we would see if he could keep up with me.

  Unfortunately, he could. “Kata, wait! Listen!” I dodged and weaved between sailors and sail menders, laborers hoisting sacks of rice, fishermen toting baskets of fish. I left the wharf and turned along the muddy road that ran parallel to the water, but I could not seem to leave his voice behind. “Kata, listen. You don’t—”

  And then Jinnai’s voice cut off with a startled squawk. I turned just in time to see that a powerful hand had seized the collar of his jacket. It jerked him into a reeking alley between a tavern and a fishmonger’s.

  I should have kept running. But Ozu had been at Jinnai’s heels, and she dove into the alley as well, fierce as a little badger. I groaned and followed. I didn’t care much if Jinnai got himself robbed, but if Masako was in a cage somewhere, that made Ozu something like my responsibility.

  As it turned out, it wasn’t another thief who had tackled Jinnai. From the mouth of the alley, I saw that Otani had one arm tight around Jinnai’s neck from behind, and had hoisted him off the ground. His other arm was trying to fend off Ozu, who had apparently appointed herself Jinnai’s protector. I snagged the back of the girl’s obi before she could launch another kick at the ronin, and held her firmly by the cloth belt for as long as it took for my voice to reach her ears.

  “Ozu, stop. He’s a friend. Otani, let him breathe.” The bandit lowered his captive enough to let the boy’s feet touch the ground. All three of them looked at me.

  What should I say? How had it happened that the little girl, the ronin, and the thief all seemed to expect me to tell them what to do?

  I’d been taught to work alone. My failure to keep that simple rule had left Masako, Aki, Okiko, and Yuki in peril. And here were Ozu, Otani, and Jinnai all waiting for my next word. It was as if I’d acquired a tail that I could not shake off, however much I wanted to.

  “I offer my most humble apologies,” Otani said into the silence between us. He twisted aside as Jinnai tried to jerk an elbow into his ribs. “Hold still. He’s much more slippery than he looks. I’ll have him out of the city for you momentarily.”

  “You can’t,” Jinnai wheezed, his face gone a dusky red; Otani was letting him breathe, but not much. “Don’t give me to him, Kata. You need me. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

  I needed him? Ridiculous. “Why?” I asked coldly.

  “Because,” he gasped, “I know where they’re keeping your friends.”

  Ozu shifted in my grasp, ready to launch herself at Otani again. I hesitated, longing for some simple task—a castle wall to climb, a lock to pick, a demon to fight. All of these people, these complications, these uncertainties—it was maddening. How could I know what to choose? How could I know who to trust, if I didn’t have the simplest option of trusting no one?

  “Let him go,” I said wearily to Otani.

  The bandit lifted his eyebrows, but loosed his arm and let Jinnai slither to the ground. The thief groaned and staggered to one side to lean against a wall of the tavern, both hands at his throat.

  “Say what you know,” I told him. “And Ozu, be still. Be calm. Listen.” I looked sternly at her and let go of her obi. “Don’t fight unless you can win. You should know that.”

  “I’ve been in that mansion,” Jinnai said hoarsely, rubbing his throat tenderly and swallowing with a wince. “There was an emerald pendant once, a very attractive design, I must say, and a dagger with a jade handle. There were some scrolls another time, which, I heard, Lord Takeda was very unhappy to have misplaced. I can get you in. If you want your friends back, you’re going to have to trust me.”

  He grinned. I clenched my fists at my side.

  I did not trust him. That was out of the question. But did I need him?

  Maybe I did.

  I could make a plan to get Masako and the others out of a dungeon by myself, I had no doubt of it. If I had a month to do it, and if they had
a month to live.

  But I didn’t have the time, and neither did they.

  If Jinnai was right—if he knew the layout of the mansion, knew where prisoners were kept, knew how many guards there would be—then perhaps I could rescue my friends and still get to sea with the pearl on the morning’s tide.

  My doubt of him was suffocating, but my desire for speed was crushing. Ozu’s small, eager face turned up to me, hope flickering behind her eyes like the flame of a lamp in the breeze.

  “If you’re lying …,” I said softly to Jinnai.

  His grin faded.

  “I’ve never lied to you once, Kata.”

  But of course he had—he’d claimed to love me. And that could be nothing but a lie.

  I’d heard the songs and listened to the stories that said love was the beauty that burned. A glance over a fan, a whisper behind a screen, a poem dashed across a spotless sheet of rice paper with the flick of a brush.

  I’d also seen Masako’s husband slap rice flour from his clothes and hair, settle on a mat with a weary grunt, and smile as she knelt to hand him a cup of tea. I’d watched him swing Ozu up into the air until she shrieked with laughter.

  Maybe love was one of these things. Maybe something else. But whatever love was, it was not for me.

  I was a tool forged for secret battle. The garrote from behind, the poison in the cup, the black blade in the darkness.

  A craftsman looked after his tools. A warrior respected his weapons.

  But he did not love them.

  Jinnai had worked at my side long enough to know the truth about me. So why claim love now? He must have known I would not believe him. It could only be some feint in whatever game he was playing, a step toward whatever he hoped to steal from me.

  “Not once,” he insisted, lying yet again. But it seemed I’d have to trust him anyway, at least long enough to save my oldest friends.

  TEN

  Otani and I, in another alley between two earthen walls, studied the mansion across the street, or at least what could be seen above the thick hedge that surrounded it. Mostly we were gazing at red roof tiles, glowing in the last of the sunset.