Deadly Flowers

by Sarah L. Thomson

  Thanks to Jodi Weinstein of the College of New Jersey for her time and expert review.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Sarah L. Thomson

  Ornaments copyright © 2016 by Jim Carroll

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, contact permissions@highlights.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Boyds Mills Press

  An Imprint of Highlights

  815 Church Street

  Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-62979-214-9 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-62979-563-8 (e-book)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015953496

  First edition

  Production by Sue Cole

  Design by Anahid Hamparian

  The text of this book is set in Bembo.

  10987654321

  For Annie and Liza

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Author’s Note

  An Interview with Sarah L. Thomson

  About the Author

  ONE

  I was sparring in the practice yard the day the new girl arrived.

  Weak. She looked weak, and frail, and modest, and beautiful, and shocked at what she was seeing.

  I blocked Masako’s next blow easily—she was as slow as a water buffalo and not much less clumsy—and took a moment to glance around the yard.

  Kazuko had just fallen off the pole she was trying to balance on. Aki had graduated to the tightrope and was walking serenely ten feet above our heads. Her sister, Okiko, was scaling a wall, with one of the older girls showing her how to place her feet. The little ones were leaping over bundles of hay, an instructor standing by to smack their bare toes with a bamboo rod if they touched the obstacle.

  No one’s toes were touching.

  Two of the half-grown girls were trying to find Kiku in the grove of trees by the stream. They would have very little luck there, since she had hidden herself in the well. I hoped she wouldn’t need to empty her bladder before the bell rang to mark the end of this training session.

  If she stayed hidden, each of her pursuers would have to give her a portion of rice at dinner. If they found her, she’d have to do the same. Nothing like the prospect of kneeling hungry and watching half your meal disappear into somebody else’s mouth to make you hide craftily or search inside every crack and under every stone.

  Masako kicked. I dropped to one knee, seized her heel in one hand and her calf in the other, and flipped her over.

  Then, like a fool, I glanced up to make sure the new girl was taking all of this in. If she were to stay, I wanted her to know who was the best in the practice yard.

  In the moment when my gaze shifted, Masako surged up from the ground and tackled me, her arms around my waist. It was not an elegant move, but it was effective.

  How many times had we been told? It doesn’t matter how you get your enemy down—just get her down. And be sure she stays there.

  I rolled us both in the dirt, grabbed Masako’s hair with one hand, yanked her head back, and braced my forearm across her throat. Her eyes widened as her air was cut off, and an instructor’s voice came from behind me.

  “Kata, stop.”

  At the sound of his voice, I released the pressure on Masako’s throat, and I heard her breath rush out as we both climbed to our feet. Our teacher tapped me on the shoulder, giving me the victory. Masako bowed her head, swallowed with a slight wince, and silently took her penalty for losing, a single stroke to her back from a thin, flexible strip of bamboo.

  She kept quiet. If she’d cried out, it would have been two.

  Silence is your greatest ally. Silence and darkness.

  I waited, breathing deeply and slowly. If I’d panted out loud, there might have been a stroke with the bamboo rod for me, too.

  The girl had come to a stop inside the gate, her hands to her mouth. Her kimono was as blue as the sea, embroidered with black and silver waves. Her hair, glossy with camellia oil, swung all the way down her back. Her face was horrified.

  I stood there, barefoot, my hair spilling out of its braid, in my undyed, ragged jacket and trousers, covered in dust and straw and with a bit of blood trickling from my nose, and thought, She won’t last a week.

  TWO

  Behind the girl, a man shut the gate that led to the road. He turned and strode past her. I looked him over quickly, in case I might have to serve him or fight him in the future.

  He had loose trousers on beneath a short kimono that came only to his mid-thigh. So I knew he had been riding. He also had the two swords of a samurai, one long, one short, thrust through his sash, and a blue dragonfly embroidered on one shoulder. That meant he served one of the Kashihara brothers. Of course, so did most of the warriors for miles around.

  When he paused to look back at the girl, I saw that he was missing half of his right ear. The scar ran down his neck and disappeared beneath his collar.

  She caught his glance and hurried to catch up.

  Obviously the girl was only here as long as the samurai was. It was foolish of me to have thought, even for a moment, that such a frail, frightened creature would be staying at the school. In any case, she seemed to be about my age, and fifteen was far too old to begin training. Most girls start when they are six or seven, young enough to cry for their mothers at night.

  I had been even younger. And I’d been told that I never cried.

  I watched the two of them leave their wooden sandals outside the door and enter without knocking. They were expected, then. The samurai must have had some errand with Madame Chiyome, and he’d brought the girl—his daughter, perhaps?—along. Why? Who could tell? Warlords and their warriors do not explain their reasons to the likes of us.

  The bell rang for the end of practice. Kiku climbed triumphantly out of the well, and the girls raced inside. I lingered to let them all get ahead of me, and then followed, silently pleased. For some reason I felt satisfaction that the unknown girl had watched me win a bout, even with only clumsy Masako for an opponent. Even though the soft, pampered daughter of a rich man had nothing at all to do with me.

  So I thought, until I found her that night, in one of the two upper rooms. She was standing with her straw sleeping mat rolled up in her hand, looking as wide-eyed as if a demon had snatched her out of her easy life and dropped her abruptly into the underworld.

  “Well?” I said impatiently. “Put it down. Unroll it. You’re staying the night?”

  She nodded. Then she shook her head.

  “You’re not sleeping here? Then put the mat back. Someone else will need it.”

  She shook her head once more.

  “You’re staying for good?”

  She didn’t nod or shake her head or answer me in any way, and I threw out my hands in exasperation.

  “Sleep standing up, then!” I snapped, and left her. She watched blankly as I walked through the room, making sure the four younger girls were settled for the night, kicking their mats straight, sliding the window s
creen shut to keep out ghosts and evil spirits, telling Aki and Okiko that I’d tie their thumbs into knots behind their backs if I heard them giggling, and ignoring Oichi whining that she was hungry. She would not have been if she hadn’t wasted her time looking for Kiku in the trees. I blew out the flame of the lamp.

  When I got back to my own mat, the girl had finally rolled hers out on the floor nearby. She undressed slowly, folding that gorgeous kimono tenderly and placing it in a cupboard. Then she curled herself up into a knot with her knees tucked in and her back to me.

  At least she was quiet. Across the hall, someone wasn’t. A miserable wailing rose and fell, like a cold wind sobbing with the voice of a hungry ghost. Little Ozu, probably. Masako should’ve kept her quiet. If Madame, downstairs in her own room, heard … Well, it would be better if Madame did not hear.

  No one in my room made a sound. The girls knew I wouldn’t allow any noise once the lamp was blown out.

  I closed my eyes, blocked my ears to Ozu’s crying, told my body to relax, counted backward from ten, and was asleep.

  No dreams. I never allowed dreams to pursue me. Just rest, unbroken, until my eyes opened early in the morning, before the other girls were stirring.

  But the next morning, the new girl was awake even earlier. She sat upright on her mat, hugging her knees and staring straight ahead.

  We might have been close in age, but apart from that we could not have been more different. She was slender, with soft curves to her that were not muscle from hours and hours of sparring. Fair skin that had never sweated under the sun in the practice yard. Tender feet; she couldn’t run barefoot over gravel or scale a stone wall with her toes. Soft hands with perfect nails and not a single callus from the hilt of a sword.

  The younger girls were still sleeping, their soft breath filling the room. I sat up and winced. One of Masako’s kicks had connected yesterday, and my shoulder was aching. I looked down and saw the spectacular purple bruise blossoming across my collarbone.

  The new girl saw, too. She gasped.

  “Please …” she whispered.

  I looked over at her with an eyebrow raised as I gently rotated the shoulder to work the stiffness out.

  Never ignore pain. Listen to it. But do not let it rule you. Pain is a messenger. Your mind is the general. The messenger tells you what is happening on the battlefield, but the general chooses the strategy.

  “What is this place?” she begged.

  She was terrified; I could see it. Like a horse about to bolt.

  “Didn’t anyone tell you?” I asked.

  She shook her head. Her long hair, still sleek even after the night, spilled over her shoulders to brush the surface of her mat. I twisted my own hair, uncombed and dusty from yesterday, into a sloppy braid.

  “It’s a school,” I said. “If you’re staying, you’re here to learn.” Though surely she wouldn’t be staying. Madame didn’t take in girls like this, girls who’d never been hungry or cold or alone a day in their lives. Girls like this had other places to go. “Are you staying?” I asked.

  “My uncle said …” She drew in a breath quick enough to make her shiver. “If I did as I was told, I could come home again. Everything I was told. What kind of school?”

  But I had seen an idea begin to stir, there behind her eyes.

  Fighting. Running and leaping and balancing. Climbing walls. Hiding in trees or down wells. She’d seen us at our training. What did she think all that was for?

  I nodded.

  The killer who slips through a crack in the window screen. The ghost no lock can keep out. The knife in the back. The garrote in the dark. The shadow with teeth as sharp as a wolf’s.

  “A school for girls. For flowers,” I said as I felt a smile twist my mouth. “Deadly flowers. Ninjas.”

  And then I forgot about her.

  Or I tried to. She was nothing to me, after all. Madame and the girl’s uncle had some plan for her. Once the plan was carried out, she’d be gone. So why waste my thoughts on her?

  But she was a puzzle. And my rebellious mind did not want to leave the puzzle alone.

  I learned her name—Saiko. Did she have a family name as well? A girl like this might. She was clearly wealthy enough. But if she did, we never heard it.

  Did that mean she was alone now, like the rest of us? Would she have to learn to live without a family behind her? That, even more than missing mothers and fathers and older sisters and aunties, was what sent some of the girls into sobbing fits at night. With no family to surround you, protect you, catch you if you stumbled, you might fall—and fall—and fall. You might never hit the ground.

  You are alone. No one will come to your aid. You will survive on your own, or you will die.

  Saiko, at least, did not weep at night. I never saw her sleep, though. She’d be awake on her mat when I closed my eyes, and in the morning when I opened them she’d be sitting up, looking out over the bodies of the sleeping girls.

  “Sleep is a warrior’s first duty,” I said on her second night at the school.

  Saiko looked over at me, startled.

  “You keep your sword sharp,” I reminded her. “You keep your bowstring dry. You have to keep your body ready and your mind alert, too. Sleep is the tool for that.”

  She stared at me as if I’d started babbling in the speech of the demons. I shrugged and lay down. In the morning she moved her mat away from mine.

  Saiko spent no time in the practice yard. I never saw her with a weapon in her hand. But on the morning of her third day, I caught a glimpse of her inside the classroom, practicing with girls half her age how to walk across a bamboo floor without making a sound.

  I was startled enough to stop at the doorway and stare. Saiko was wearing a simple dark-blue kimono and she held the skirts up to her knees, biting her lip with concentration as she gingerly set the edge of her right foot down, slowly rolling her weight onto the sole. A bamboo floor can squeak underfoot like a nest full of mice, but if you do the silent walk slowly enough, not a single noise will betray your movements.

  One of our instructors was watching Saiko closely. We were never told our teachers’ names; in my mind, I called this one Instructor Willow, for her slender frame and graceful arms. She’d only been at the school a few weeks, long enough for all of us to learn that she was quick with the bamboo rod.

  Saiko learned it, too. The floor creaked, the strip of bamboo lashed down to smack the top of her foot, and tears welled up in her black eyes and spilled down her perfect, pale cheeks.

  I moved on, before Instructor Willow could glance up and find me watching. Why was Saiko learning the silent walk? What use would it be to her?

  Let nothing out of the ordinary escape your eye. Anything unusual is a warning, a clue, or a threat.

  Saiko was no threat. But she was unusual. A weakling in a school for warriors, a rich man’s daughter left with ninjas, who were lower in the minds of many than beggars or actors or the cleaners of corpses. Perhaps, if I kept an eye on her, I’d learn something about what Madame was planning. And since Madame controlled every single thing that took place in the school, down to which girl should be given the last mouthful of rice in the pot, it was always useful to know as much as possible about what was in her mind.

  THREE

  I did not see Saiko at all during that afternoon’s training session. But then, I spent a fair portion of the session locked inside a cupboard, where it was hard to see much except my own knees.

  Our other instructor, a hulk of a man I had privately named The Boulder, had tied my hands behind my back before shoving me into a cupboard that had been emptied of its bedding. He shut the door and latched it.

  The cupboard was barely big enough to hold me. I was forced to crouch, my back hunched, breathing the smell of my own sweat.

  “Get out of the school before I come back,” The Boulder said, and I heard his footsteps moving away.

  He’d given me no slack to work with. The cords around my wrists were tight. Of
course they were. Did I think an enemy—if I were ever foolish enough to be caught—would do me the favor of binding my hands loosely?

  But he had not stopped me from bunching up my hands into fists while he tied the knots. When I straightened my fingers and relaxed the muscles, there was the slightest give to the cords.

  I pulled and pulled, straining my wrists apart. The bonds cut into my skin until I had to clench my teeth, but now I had more slack to work with.

  Shoulder blades together, back arched, hands down—slowly, slowly, the loops tightening over my wrists, I pulled my bound hands past my hips and down along my thighs.

  If I had no other choice, I could dislocate my shoulders to free my hands. I’d done it before. Once. It was something I’d save until the only other choice was death. Or failure.

  Awkwardly, I wriggled myself into a sitting position, taking my weight off my feet. Then, with my hands tucked into the crooks of my knees, I stopped for a rest, trying to bend and stretch my fingers. I’d need them later. Not too long a rest, though. The Boulder would be back, and if he found me here, still bound and helpless, I would not like the consequences.

  Plus I’d feel like such a fool.

  My hands, now, must get past my feet. I’d already nudged my sandals off. The cords slid past one heel, then the arch of the foot, then the toes.

  The second foot was easier.

  There was light enough through the crack along the cupboard door that I could see the bonds around my wrists, now that my hands were in front of me. My own efforts had pulled the knots so tight that no amount of work with my teeth was going to loosen them. And the cords had sunk deep into my flesh.

  My fingers were stiff. I suspected they were turning pale, although I could not see them well enough to be sure.

  With difficulty, I tugged a wooden pin, about half the length of a chopstick, out of my hair. The enemy will take your sword, your knife, your lockpicks, but he will not bother with your hair ornaments.