Deadly Wish: A Ninja’s Journey

by Sarah L. Thomson

  Moving as slowly as a drop of ink soaking into soft paper, I eased myself sideways on the rustling thatch so that my mouth was next to Jinnai’s ear. “Plan?” I breathed.

  He slowly inched an arm up so that he could tap a finger on his cheek, near one eye. That finger then moved to point at the yard below us, and I understood his meaning. Watch. Wait.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but there was nothing better to do.

  We lay on the roof while the night settled into the hour of the boar and the horses below us ate and conversed in soft whickers and whinnies. As the animals dined on their hay, insects dined on us. All of the tiny creatures dwelling in the thatch had never enjoyed such a banquet as the two of us offered them.

  I set my teeth and did not slap or scratch. Once, Yuki had shown me how the broad, flat leaf of the vanilla plant, crushed and rubbed over the face and hands, kept the worst of the bloodthirsty little beasts at bay. I wished I had some now.

  The vanilla plant was not the only one Yuki understood. She knew which leaves, blended into tea, would be the last cup a victim ever drank. Or which roots, dried to powder, would bring an instant slumber, or choke a barking dog, or clot blood in a wound. She’d whisper to her growing things long after she’d stopped talking to Madame, or to the instructors, or to us.

  She’d become something like her beloved plants herself, I thought. Silent as a root curling into the soil. Tenacious as a weed.

  And hopefully not as dead as hay cut for the threshing, if I could reach her and my other friends in time.

  At last a short, stumpy man I assumed must be the cook shut the door of the kitchen for the night. The lights behind the screens in the mansion began to vanish. Then I tensed, and beside me felt Jinnai do the same.

  Four men had opened the gate to the garden and were sauntering from the mansion across the yard, their path lit by the paper lantern one carried in his hand. These were not honored guests. I didn’t need the rough weave of their jackets and trousers to tell me that. But they were not servants, either. The two swords each wore at his side announced that they were samurais, as did the topknots in their hair and the swagger of each one’s gait.

  An honor guard, most likely, come with the master to the city to ensure that he and the lady entertaining him were well protected from miscreants like those now on the roof of the stable.

  Men responsible for the safety of the household might well look to the rooftops. But if these particular ones were doing so, they were fools to carry a lantern—their vision effectively met a wall where the light failed and the dark began.

  Even so, I lay motionless, drawing in only the shallowest of breaths. Something multi-legged explored my hair, and something else bit hard just under my left ear. I thought of ancient stones, fathomless pools, the night sky between the stars, and tried to draw that stillness into my muscles and bones.

  The four warriors headed for the barracks. The one with the lantern raised his voice in a song extolling the virtues of the rice wine he’d evidently been drinking, and another shoved at his shoulder and sent him staggering.

  It might have turned into a fight, but they seemed too friendly or perhaps too sleepy to take true offense. They entered the building. Doors slid shut. With tears of relief springing to my eyes, I scratched below my ear.

  The last light in the mansion vanished. Jinnai stirred. I grabbed his wrist and gripped tightly to keep him still, feeling the pulse under his skin beat against my fingers.

  He froze, almost as if frightened. I let go as though his warm skin were scalding hot.

  We waited.

  Sounds from the city drifted faintly over the hedges and walls of the estate—a late cart thumping along the rutted road, laughter, an angry bellow, running footsteps, and in the distance, the faint and never-ending rhythm of waves washing the shore and easing back into the depths.

  Then a closer sound reached my ear—footsteps.

  In a moment I smiled at our good fortune.

  The guard patrolling the Takeda estate came wandering by the kitchen, and amazingly, this man was also fool enough to carry his own paper lantern. I heard the faintest whiff of breath leave Jinnai’s nose, and I knew he was relieved and amused as well.

  The man was lazy, too. He glanced briefly inside the formal gardens, shut the gate again, wandered the length of the stables (humming under his breath as he did so), leaned on the well for several long minutes, strolled past the kitchen again, and disappeared around a corner of the house.

  He didn’t come back.

  Without the distraction of his lantern, my night vision sharpened. I couldn’t see details, but the shapes of buildings steadied and took on a more distinct edge. All was darkness, but the darkness of walls and roofs was deeper and more solid than that of grass or dirt or sky. I could move where I needed to now, within the compound, and I would not put a foot wrong or walk into a building or fall into the well.

  Jinnai evidently felt the same, for he rose cautiously to his hands and knees. The thatch rustled under his weight, and under mine as I did the same. To my oversensitive ears, we sounded like badgers crashing through a thicket, but nothing and no one in the compound stirred.

  Jinnai crawled to the edge of the stable roof, where he crouched. Then he jumped.

  He landed neatly and accurately on the roof of the samurais’ barracks. He froze. Could they have missed the sound? The rooftop was still safer than the ground; if that guard came back on his rounds, we’d only have to drop facedown to be invisible once again. Even so, the noise made me wince. Now Jinnai was a bear, not a badger.

  I shifted my weight and flexed my knees and shoulders and back, stiff from lying still for so long. Then I followed Jinnai to the edge and jumped as well.

  I tried to land softly, letting feet, knees, and hands all take some weight, but still … noise was unavoidable. Only thick straw and rafters and a few feet of space separated us from sleeping men with weapons close at hand. At least I hoped they were still sleeping.

  I ached to ask Jinnai where he was leading me—to trail behind him like a child holding her mother’s kimono irritated every one of my instincts. But I didn’t dare add words to the noise of our passage. Barefoot, his sandals slung across his shoulder, Jinnai walked the length of the barracks. I kept a few feet behind, to distribute our weight more widely. All we needed was for a foot to poke through the thatch right over the nose of a sleeping samurai.

  At the end of the barracks, as far as possible from the stable, Jinnai paused and crouched, waiting for me to catch up. When I did, he pointed down.

  I crawled beside him. “They’re here?”

  He nodded.

  “Door?”

  “Inside.”

  So the barracks had a cell for keeping prisoners, and the door to that cell was located inside the building. No chance that one of us could simply pick the lock to let Masako and the others out.

  The walls were cedar and sturdy. Jinnai’s little saw would be no use here. That left the roof—with thatch a foot thick and solid rafters beneath—or the floor.

  “Watch for the guard,” I said, shaping each word carefully so it was barely louder than a breath. “If you see him, be an owl.”

  I felt his nod more than I saw it.

  Then I crawled to the roof’s edge, lowered myself to hang by my hands, and dropped lightly down.

  A narrow veranda ran along one edge of the barracks, and from it thin slats of wood extended to the ground. They were for show, not support, and broke easily under my hand.

  I’d cleared a space as wide as my shoulders when Jinnai’s soft owl call came from above. I could have vaulted back up on the roof, but that might have been noisy. Instead I wormed as quickly and quietly as I could through the hole I had made and burrowed into the cool space beneath the barracks’ floor.

  The gap between the bamboo floor above me and the damp earth below was, perhaps, two feet—not enough to sit up, but fairly roomy as long as I lay flat. The darkness all around me now was not
friendly, as it had been outside. It was thick and humid and stifling, like a wet cloth over the face, and offered no texture to the eye.

  There was light outside, though. Through the broken slats, I saw the guard’s lantern glimmer and advance. The wood of the veranda creaked and the floor above my head gave slightly as the man settled down for a rest.

  He was sitting directly above me. How long would he stay there?

  I counted. By the time I’d reached five hundred, he’d started to hum a tune.

  I began counting at one again and had only reached twenty when the guard’s music cut off. His breath whooshed out and the wood of the veranda creaked again as if its load had lightened.

  Something limp and heavy fell to the grass outside, and a moment later, Jinnai squirmed through the gap I’d made with the guard’s glowing lantern in his hand.

  Blinking and dazzled, my night vision vanished like a dream upon waking, I clenched my teeth to keep the curse that exploded in my mind from bursting out of my mouth. He’d killed the guard? Or knocked him out? We could have waited. We should have waited. The man could not have sat there forever, and now we had a body lying in the dirt—an obvious sign to anyone who happened to look that something was wrong.

  Jinnai was not soaring on the thrill of a mission now; he was coasting on luck. And luck is a dreadful, deceitful ally.

  I could not scream this truth into the reckless boy’s ear, not with sleeping samurai a few feet over our heads. But oh, if I ever took anyone along on a mission again …

  When at last I’d tamed my frustration to a whisper, I let it out. “Are you mad? Someone will see!”

  “No one to see,” Jinnai muttered. All the same, he pulled his wide cloth belt loose and wrapped it around the lantern, dimming its light. I added my own obi, and between the two of us, we muffled the lantern until only a sliver of light fell onto the bamboo slats of the floor above us.

  I still didn’t like it. Even with the light controlled, it might draw attention. It had already ruined our eyes for the dark outside. If we needed to react to a threat, we’d be at a disadvantage.

  But it would make things quicker.

  Speed is essential. Hurry is perilous.

  A lantern was hurry, not speed. But perhaps we needed it. The hour of the rat was probably upon us, and we still had to crack open this prison, get the girls out, and find our way once more over the mansion’s walls.

  On my back, I squirmed deeper beneath the building and set the tip of my knife to a knot I’d found in the floorboards. As I’d hoped, they were made of bamboo and fairly thin; Jinnai’s little saw would serve. I pried at the knot and it popped neatly out, leaving a hole about the size of my eye.

  I wriggled aside, and Jinnai applied his miniature saw to the opening.

  We took turns holding the lantern and wielding the saw. It was slow, awkward work. Soon my hands ached and a small, vicious spot of pain danced between my shoulder blades. Sawdust drifted down into our eyes and up our noses. When I nicked my thumb, blood began a slow trickle along my arm.

  And the light did draw attention, just as I had feared. Moths came fluttering beneath the veranda, like tiny, clinging scraps of grayish-brown silk, brushing their powdery wings across our faces. Worms squirmed in the dirt beneath us; beetles scuttled out of our way. Once a centipede crawled up my sleeve as I was steadily sawing, tiny claws clinging to the cloth. I didn’t notice it until it nearly reached my wrist, and then I left the saw sticking in the floorboards so that I could flail my arm and send the vile thing flying.

  I hate centipedes.

  Ignoring Jinnai’s incredulous stare, I settled back down to the work. We had the hole about a handspan wide when a voice, low and hoarse, came from above. “Kata?”

  I paused in the sawing, feeling warm relief lick along my bones. Jinnai had been a guide worth following. The voice was Masako’s.

  “It’s me,” I answered, my voice low as well. There was no way to explain Jinnai’s presence to her now; that would have to come later. “Are the others there?”

  Masako had stretched herself flat on the floor beside the hole; I could feel her weight on the boards above me. After a brief pause, during which I could nearly sense her astonishment soaking through the bamboo slats, she spoke again.

  “We’re all here. Pass the saw up. It will be easier.”

  I did so. Jinnai directed the light, and we saw the small, toothed blade flash steadily in and out of the wood. One floorboard after another cracked and broke, and at last, Masako slid feetfirst through the opening we had created.

  She looked at me and shook her head, blinking, her eyes bright with tears. I frowned. Emotion had no place on a mission; she knew that. Gratitude, relief, astonishment—those were for later.

  Lithe as lizards, Aki and Okiko eased through the opening, and we squirmed aside to make room for them. Yuki was last, and once she had joined us, Jinnai pulled our cloth belts from the paper lantern, tossed mine back to me, and blew out the flame.

  Darkness swooped in around us. All I could rely on to guide me was touch and the faint hint of fresher air from the opening I’d made under the veranda.

  There was a confused moment or two. Someone’s elbow hit my ear; a knee pushed into my back. Then we seemed to have sorted out which way to move. There was more space around me, and I heard a grunt of effort as cloth rubbed on wood. Someone had made it through our gap under the veranda—Jinnai, probably, since he knew where it was.

  Masako was beside me. I tugged her in the right direction and then patted her to tell her to stay still. I wormed out of the hole myself before reaching back in to pull at Masako’s sleeve, letting her know it was her turn.

  My night vision began to trickle back. Overhead, a half-moon gave enough light to turn packed earth a paler shade of gray than grass, to distinguish between the prickly denseness of a hedge and smooth wooden walls, and to show me where the guard’s body lay, unmoving but still breathing, beside the veranda. I reached out a hand to touch Jinnai on my left, the soft cotton of his sleeve, the firm arm beneath it.

  Something squirmed onto my feet, and I leaned down to help Masako up. The other girls came after her.

  I was helping Yuki rise when I heard Jinnai draw in a quick breath.

  Figures stepped away from the hedge, from beneath the stable’s overhanging roof. One straightened up from crouching behind the well. Another dropped from the barracks’ roof to land as lightly as a tengu on the ground.

  It was as if they’d sculpted themselves out of the night, and for half a moment I thought we were facing ghosts. No, that couldn’t be—I heard footfalls on the earth, as soft as a brush, heavy with ink, stroking paper. And ghosts, as everyone knows, have no feet.

  I heard a familiar sound, metal against metal, and light sprang out of a dark lantern that one figure held in her hand. She turned the lantern’s cover to direct the light where she wanted it to go.

  My knife was in my hand, and I threw it as hard as I could straight at the source of the light that lanced across the yard, pinning the six of us with its brilliance. In darkness, we could scatter, try to find cover. Perhaps some of us could make it over the wall. In darkness, we still had a sliver of a chance.

  A second thrown knife whirled out of the night, hitting mine perfectly, knocking both weapons harmlessly to the ground.

  The hand holding the lantern never wavered.

  “I knew you would make it this far,” Madame Chiyome said, the faintest expression of satisfaction on her face as she looked over the lantern at me. “I knew I trained you well enough for that.”

  Around Madame Chiyome, in the edge of the light, I saw Kazuko and Oichi with their bows at full draw, and three girls I did not know with blades at their sides and throwing knives at the ready. Madame herself seemed to be unarmed, but that was not to be trusted. Besides, she had five fully trained ninjas at her command—they were her blades, her shield, her arrows. Tempered to a fierce strength, honed to a deadly sharpness.

  With
out a word, Madame turned and gestured with a graceful arm toward the mansion. The sleeve of her kimono, a blue as deep as the sea at dusk, rippled through the air.

  I started toward the house, my friends close behind, the ring of armed girls alert to our every move.

  TWELVE

  Kazuko slid open one of the wooden shutters and the paper screen behind it. Madame stepped inside, leaving her sandals on the ground. I did the same. I might be filthy, covered with mud and slime from a bath drain, bug-bitten, disheveled, and defeated, but I was not a barbarian, to wear my shoes indoors.

  A question nagged at me as I followed my captors through an empty room. Where was Fuku? She’d been in charge of the first mission to apprehend me. Had Madame dismissed her in disgrace for her failure? Punished her? Or was she here, somewhere that I could not see?

  The thought made my skin twitch. A scorpion in the middle of an otherwise empty mat is much less deadly than one hiding in your sock.

  The second question swirling inside my brain was: Had Jinnai planned what had just happened?

  Perhaps not. Perhaps he had been as surprised as I was when several shadow warriors stepped out of the night. Yet I could not avoid the thought. I’d followed him right to the place where Madame had sprung her trap. And the thought had a companion: If Jinnai had not tracked me through the woods, I would not be here now.

  He was behind me, silent, so I could not scan his face for shock or guilt or triumph. Still, doubt wormed into my mind. To trust a thief had been a weak and foolish error.

  To come back for Masako and the others had been a worse one.

  I might have been hidden on a ship right now. I and the pearl in my pocket could be out to sea, vanished from this city like smoke from a lamp, like a ghost in sunlight.

  If I’d followed my training, kicked Jinnai into the harbor, ignored Ozu’s tears, left my friends to their fate, then I’d be safe.