She was calculating odds, I realized. I’d seen that look on her face as she watched two girls sparring in the practice yard, quietly predicting who would win.
Could she be making up her mind which of us—Saiko or me—was likelier to leave this room alive? Was she considering who she’d prefer to have on her side once this night was over? And who would be more dangerous as an enemy?
Madame lifted her hand and let it fall. Instantly, Kazuko and Oichi lowered their bows, the strings slackening. The other ninjas sheathed their blades.
Saiko opened her mouth to protest, but Madame’s words came first.
“I fulfilled my contract with you when I brought Kata into this room,” she said, her voice dry and precise. “You failed to deal with her. That is not my concern.”
Panic overtook Saiko’s rage. Her gaze moved from her brother in his monk’s robe, to the dark-clad girls with their lowered weapons, to my face.
“If I scream, guards will be here in a moment,” Saiko threatened. “You can’t—you wouldn’t dare—”
Masako laid a gentle hand on my arm.
“We’re leaving now,” she said, to me or Saiko; I could not tell which.
But the pearl. The pearl was still in Saiko’s hand. How could I leave her with it? It was my burden, my responsibility, my mission. No one else’s. Mine.
Jinnai grabbed my other arm.
“There’s always more to steal,” he insisted. Of course this fool of a thief didn’t know—he couldn’t know—the true value, or the true power, of what he’d lifted so cleverly from my pocket.
“Always,” he said, almost impatiently, his voice so low that it reached my ears only.
Ichiro closed in behind, Yuki at his side. The four of them herded me out of the room.
Before I went, I had a last glimpse over my shoulder of Saiko. Beautiful. Furious. Her hand went up to rub her face, smearing ink from her painted eyebrows across her forehead. She looked like a ghost I had once met, forever hungry for what she could not have.
Then Jinnai pulled me away. Screens slid open and shut. There was a garden, a gate in a thick hedge, a street, and Ozu tight in Masako’s arms.
I would have dealt with Jinnai there and then, but Masako was insisting that it was too dangerous to stay where we were, Ichiro was agreeing with her, and Otani had loomed up in front of me, threatening to throw me over his shoulder if I did not move. Before I could shake off the thick fog of failure that was blinding and choking me, we were in an alley off the main avenue, cramped between two buildings, and Jinnai was backing away from the look on my face.
“You,” I said, my voice low and savage.
“Kata, listen—”
My anger was a flower blossoming inside me, its roots deep in my gut, its petals spreading inside my rib cage, enclosing my heart.
Wasn’t that what I was, what I’d been trained to be? A deadly flower?
“You took the pearl from me,” I told him, advancing step by step.
Masako moved as if to get between us, but Otani shook his head, and she was still.
“I was trying to—,” Jinnai spluttered.
“What kind of a fool was I? To trust you?” I growled.
To trust all of them? To trust any of them?
First Okiko, then Jinnai. Who next? It was like running up a staircase at full tilt, not knowing which tread would dissolve beneath my foot. And the worst of my scalding anger was for myself.
Trust no friend farther than you can see her. Trust no ally for more than you’ve paid him.
What a fool I was to have forgotten. What a fool they’d made me.
Okiko was gone. I could hardly attack myself. But Jinnai was still in range, and what he’d done was the least forgivable. Okiko had handed me over to Madame, but Jinnai had handed the pearl over to Saiko.
My weapons were inside the Takeda mansion, but that did not mean I was helpless. My anger burst into action. Jinnai stumbled farther back, his hands up to protect his face, his jumbled words of protest barely reaching my ears. Blood dripped from a cut over his eyebrow after my first blow landed. Before I could launch a second, he was gone, footsteps fading into the darkness all around.
I would have pursued him, but Ichiro gripped my shoulder. I threw his hand off.
“Revenge is like drinking vinegar when you’re dying of thirst,” he said softly.
“Oh?” I turned on him, my nerves still bristling with the urge to hit something, kick someone, attack an enemy I could actually see. “So you’d forgive your sister, then? Pour her a cup of tea? Say a prayer for her?”
“Well, I won’t be accepting any more wedding invitations from her,” Ichiro said mildly. “But I wouldn’t chase her down a dark alley, either.”
Otani coughed into his fist.
“You sound just like Tosabo,” I told Ichiro, my words snapping at the air like little whips, even while the flower of rage inside me began to wilt. “Is that what you’ve been learning in your monastery?”
Ichiro shrugged. “That, and how to kick someone through a screen.”
Otani snorted. A corner of Yuki’s mouth twitched. I sighed and let the tension in my muscles ebb. Why was I so enraged, after all? Hadn’t I always believed that Jinnai would steal what he wanted whenever he could?
“It isn’t as bad as you think, Kata,” Masako reminded me. “Saiko can’t use the pearl.”
“If I die, she can,” I pointed out.
“I don’t quite know all the details of what’s happening,” Otani said. “But it seems that our next step must be to keep you alive, Flower. The street might not be the safest place to discuss that. I think I know somewhere we might go.”
When we entered the wineshop Otani had in mind, I noticed that the ronin caught the owner’s eye. The place was so small that the entryway and the kitchen were one and the same, and the man rose from where he was kneeling before a stove, stirring the fire inside, to greet us. I saw coins slip from Otani’s fingers to his.
The owner tucked the payment into his belt and just as quickly gestured us to step up on the wooden platform to our right. Those of us who still wore our sandals left them there, alongside others, and we entered the shop’s main (and only) room.
Surely it was the hour of the tiger by now, and dawn could not be far away. A place open at this time of night was not likely to have the finest clientele. Only a few determined drinkers were still here—a group of three men throwing dice in one corner, a slumped and solitary figure dozing in another. Otani led us to the back of the room, where he used a toe to nudge a snoring cat off one of the flat and filthy cushions on the ragged mats.
Beside us was a window, several of its paper panes torn and the rest smudged with dirt. Through the ragged bits of paper, I could glimpse the river, an oily blackness uncoiling endlessly alongside the building, and a half-rotted dock that led right to the back door. Handy for loading wine barrels and perhaps unloading customers who had the poor judgment to cause trouble—or to have purses that looked too heavy.
After the briefest of glances, the three men in the corner had returned to their game, ignoring us. This wasn’t the sort of establishment where it paid to show too much interest in your neighbors.
Without being asked, the owner brought over a low table and returned to slap none-too-clean cups full of rice wine down on its surface. “Something to eat, too, Shiburo,” Otani told him. The man grunted and came back with bowls of soup. The broth was thin and greasy, but it still held the salty tang of miso. As its warmth reached my stomach, the hard knots there began to loosen.
“Shiburo knows me,” Otani said in a low voice. “And he’ll keep it quiet that we were here.”
“You trust him?” I asked, cradling my soup bowl in my hands.
Trust no friend. Trust no ally.
Otani snorted. “I’ve made it well worth his while to be trustworthy. So, Flower, what are we to do next?”
I had no answer for him.
I’d thought my old instructors, back at Mada
me’s school, had always taught me to rely on myself because no help would come. A foot soldier has his unit. A samurai has his comrades. A warlord has his retainers. A ninja has no one.
But there was more to it than that, I realized now. A ninja was alone—or should be alone—because friendship, alliance, even something as absurd as love, would take her loyalty away from her mission.
“She has to leave this city,” Masako said quickly. She had an arm around Ozu, who pressed close to her side, wide-eyed and alert but silent.
Given a choice between my mission and her sister, Okiko had chosen Aki. I could have predicted that, if I’d paused for thought.
“Not just the city,” Ichiro chimed in. “The province, too. You must protect yourself now.”
Yuki nodded.
Otani had his men, the bandits who’d sworn him loyalty when they’d been his soldiers and had not withdrawn it when he’d become an outlaw. Masako had Ozu and that husband of hers. Ichiro had so many ties now—his master, Tosabo; the abbot of his monastery; his fellow monks. And Yuki? Who could even guess what connections she had made, what unspoken loyalties might be brewing behind her silence?
All of them were bound by loyalty, friendship, love. All of them would be useless on a mission.
Worse than useless. Dangerous.
“Kata, are you hearing us?” Ichiro insisted. “You must stay alive.”
The drunken man dozing against the wall jerked his head up, blinked, got to his feet, and wove to the tavern’s door. Shortly afterward we could hear a sound like a mighty waterfall thundering into the ditch outside.
“I can’t stay alive forever,” I said slowly, bringing my thoughts back to the conversation and the cooling bowl of soup in my hands. I swallowed half of its contents and set it down. “No. No, I can’t run. I have to get it back.”
“Get what back?” Otani eyed me quizzically.
“What she stole from me.”
“Who stole what from you, girl?”
“The Takedas’ newest daughter-in-law. And what she stole is—my own business.” I met the bandit’s gaze evenly.
Okiko had betrayed me. So had Jinnai. However, the two of them had only done so because I’d betrayed my own training.
I should never have sent black feathers to my old friends. I should never have asked for their help. And now the only question was how to get away from them and finish my mission alone.
Ichiro was shaking his head. “She won’t give it up easily, Kata.”
“I won’t give her a choice.”
“Well, it’s all fascinating.” Otani drained his wine cup and set it down hard on the table. “But as far as I can see, most of our problems would be solved by getting out of this city. It would certainly be healthier for me to be outside the walls, and it seems, Flower, that the same is true for you.”
I shook my head.
“Girl, as far as I can tell, you’ve made an enemy of the entire Takeda clan tonight,” Otani told me. “And while I do admire your efficiency—”
His words cut off midsentence.
A tall, heavyset man in a short kimono of red-brown silk had opened the wineshop’s door. He had a samurai’s mustache and topknot and menacing scowl, and he was talking over his shoulder to Shiburo in the entranceway.
“Nonsense. No other wineshops are open, and I’m parched. Don’t tell me to stay outside, you sniveling worm, you—” He broke off when his gaze landed on Otani, who was rising to his feet.
“Thief!” he bellowed, drawing the shorter of the two swords by his side. “Where’s my horse? My coins? My armor? I’ll take your head in exchange!”
As Otani stepped forward a few paces, the angry samurai charged.
The room was small enough that a charge was not the best maneuver. Otani simply stepped sideways to let his opponent crash into a wall, and had his own blade out by the time the enraged man swung around.
The samurai, however, seemed to have some friends.
There were more men crowding in at the entrance, not as grandly dressed or as well-armed as Otani’s enemy. Their kimonos were of dull blue cotton; their weapons were clubs and knives. Had the samurai hired some commoners to help apprehend the bandit who’d robbed him?
When one of these newcomers threw a knife that hummed through the air behind Otani’s back and headed straight for my left eye, I had my answer.
No, these men had not been hired to help subdue Otani. They were after me.
I dove to one side. Masako, pulling Ozu with her, rolled to the other. The knife buried itself in the wooden wall beside me, and I paused on one knee to wrench it free before leaping to my feet.
In my other hand I snagged an empty bowl and flung it hard into the face of the man who’d thrown the knife. His knees buckled as it hit, which left me free to duck away from a club, pivot, kick, and crack the wrist that held it.
Otani was trading blows with the samurai, who was half a handspan taller and thick in the shoulders as well. Clearly the extra space was taken up with muscle, not brain; the ronin was coolly parrying every furious stroke. But for the moment, his attention was fully occupied.
Yuki ducked a blow from a club and turned to seize her attacker’s arm, flinging him over her shoulder and onto our table, shattering it into pieces. Masako shoved Ozu behind her and snatched up a cushion from the floor, flinging it into the face of yet another advancing man. The cushion didn’t hurt him, but it did blind him long enough for Ichiro’s staff to sweep his feet out from under him.
Now more of these armed commoners were crowding in at the door, pushing back the three dice players, who were struggling to get out. I ducked another club, jabbed my elbow into its owner’s stomach as I straightened up, caught a clenched fist and yanked the man attached to it off balance. Unfortunately, I also shoved him into Ichiro, who took a step forward at just the wrong moment. The novice monk fell on top of my attacker, and I had to leap aside from the tangle of their limbs.
This was no place for a fight. It was too close, too cramped, too crowded. I was as likely to get brained from Ichiro’s staff as from one of my enemies’ cudgels.
The samurai shoved Otani back and lunged after him, bellowing like an enraged bull. Hadn’t the fool learned not to charge? He knocked over two of the dice players, who’d retreated from the door. Then he tripped over one of the prone men’s legs. Otani raised his sword, ready to finish the man off, but staggered as someone landed a kick on one knee, and his blow missed the target.
Between struggling bodies I caught a glimpse of a familiar figure by the door—the drunk who had gone outside a few minutes ago. I should have seen him as a threat earlier, when he staggered out on first hearing my name. I would have noticed if I hadn’t been distracted by a tableful of friends and their concern and their plans and their burdensome presence in the middle of my mission.
Now the man stood steadily and walked soberly. And from behind him stepped a tall, elegant figure in black silk, unmoved by the chaos around. He lowered his head in a quick but courteous bow as his eyes met mine.
Master Ishikawa.
I stamped on the largest remaining piece of the table near my feet, flipped it up, and grabbed it in my left hand, using it to parry a knife that came at me. I swung the chunk of wood at its owner’s face and spun to slash with my own knife at an enemy who’d tried to grab me from behind.
Too many. There were too many. One would get in a lucky blow soon, and there was little I could do to prevent it. The only way to win this fight was not to be in it.
I swung the table piece as hard as I could at two men less than a foot away, knocking one into the other so that they both fell sprawling. I could not reach the front door, but there was a window at my back, and on the other side of that window was a river.
I whirled, dropping the chunk of splintered wood from my hand. Here was my chance to leave my friends behind, and it would probably be for their own good as well. I’d have to hope that Master Ishikawa’s employees would follow me.
; However, the window was blocked. A lithe figure gripped the top of the frame and swung in to land, perfectly balanced, on his feet.
For half a second Jinnai and I were face-to-face, both equally astonished.
Then an arm went around my neck and I was hauled off my feet.
I did not try to get my feet back down; instead, I used the momentum my attacker had given me to swing my knees up, ready to kick Jinnai back through the window and into the river, while at the same time I brought the knife in my hand sharply down, past my hip, and into something soft. The man holding me screamed and the arm around my throat slackened, but my kick went awry and missed the thief as my attacker and I both fell heavily to the floor.
I rolled free and hit the knees of the samurai, who was on his feet once more, attempting to bat aside Otani’s sword. The warrior fell on top of me, and I thought my ribs would crack with his weight. Otani heaved the man up and went down himself to a club, which had been aimed for the back of his head but connected with his shoulder blade. On my hands and knees, trying hard to suck air into my lungs, I felt a heavy hand seize hold of my hair just next to the scalp.
“Is she a thief like you?” the samurai roared, and shook me like a dog would shake a rat.
The next moment, a wine cup, thrown by Ozu with all the strength in her wiry little body, cracked him on the bridge of his nose, and he dropped my hair to clutch at the red waterfall pouring down his face and drenching his mustache. I stood upright, my ribs aching, my head spinning, to stare at Jinnai once more.
He was still in front of the broken window, as if too astounded to move. He held something small in one upraised hand.
Something small and round, white and gold.
The pearl.
FOURTEEN
As I struggled to draw in a full breath, as the room wobbled in and out of focus, as crashes and thumps and clangs and yells of warning and cries of pain spun in an eddy around my ears, that tiny bright sphere in Jinnai’s hand seemed to center all of my senses.
Deadly Wish: A Ninja’s Journey Page 11
