The Straw Doll Cries at Midnight (A Tiger Lily Novel Book 2)

by K. Bird Lincoln

  “It was only a slim hope at best. I’ll go check the storage rooms to make sure nothing was overlooked.” Ashikaga left.

  The closet panel next to the tokonoma stood slightly ajar. It didn’t protest at all when I pushed it open. Dust billowed, and I sneezed. Tucked into a far corner was a small chest, a kodansu such as Lady Hisako or Lady Kiku might have used to store writing supplies. Somebody had been careless when they’d cleaned out the room. The edge of the shelf bit deeply into my middle as I leaned into the closet, but my fingertips brushed the edge of the kodansu.

  I set the chest on the tatami and knelt beside it. The wood was too bleached by age to identify. Scraps of gold or silver foil still clung to the surface enough for me to tell the original pattern had been maple-leaves, but it was in sad shape. Surely any ink or paper had long been scavenged. Even if there were a letter confessing murder or suicide still in a drawer, it wouldn’t help me. I couldn’t read.

  As I finished the thought, my fingers had already taken hold of the metal ring on the little door of the kodansu. I pulled it open, revealing two drawers striped with inlaid wood. The first drawer stuck badly. I gripped the whole chest with one hand and jerked it open with the other. Nothing. The second drawer slid opened smoothly. At first glance, it too held nothing of interest. But something was stuck in the left hand corner. The joint had loosened, the wood pulling away to form a small space. A gray, river-polished stone was wedged into the space. When I reached for it, my fingers brushed something hard and prickly. Startled, I withdrew my hand too quickly, banging into the inside of the drawer and causing it to fall all the way out of its housing.

  The empty husk of a min-min locust, only out of its burrow during the hottest month of summer, clung to the top of the drawer. I couldn’t imagine a locust creeping into the kodansu unnoticed, even if it had lain here empty for six months. Someone had put it in the drawer. Lady Ashikaga? I set the husk and stone on my palm. This was everything in the room—worthless trash, only important to the person who had secreted them away here. Little Brother would have hidden exactly such “treasures,” but Lady Ashikaga was a grown court lady. Maybe I was just imagining too much meaning?

  “What have you got there?” Ashikaga had returned. A streak of dust decorated one cheek.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Ashikaga caught my wrist. “You found these in that kodansu?”

  I nodded. My lordling jerked the first drawer open. Running fingers over its surface as if, through sheer force of will, the silent wood could be forced to spill its secrets.

  “What is it?”

  “I gave that pebble and husk to my mother,” Ashikaga said. “I used to write her letters. When I was younger. I’d send her presents. I never,” my lordling’s voice cracked a little. “I never imagined she kept them. When I saw you holding them I thought, maybe, she’d left something for me to find.”

  “For you to find? Why? Because she knew she was close to death?”

  Ashikaga shoved the first drawer back inside the casing. “She used forbidden Jindo magic in the depths of night to make a blood curse. If Zeami is right, then the curse was directed at Lord Motofuji. If things had gotten bad, if she would risk a curse . . . It had to be a last resort. Lord Motofuji, her lover,” Ashikaga spat the word like it tasted of wasabi root, “planned great harm to one of us.” Ashikaga tugged on the second drawer, pulling it free. A folded piece of paper fluttered out.

  A rectangle of thin, fine paper Lady Hisako had once told me monks had brought from the Middle Kingdom. My lordling’s hand hovered over the top of it, as if fearing that whatever it contained could slice like a knife. “Mother,” my lordling whispered, slowly unfolding the paper with the reverence of Abbot Ennin handling a sutra scroll.

  “Is it from Lady Ashikaga?”

  “Yes,” said Ashikaga. “It’s a thank you letter—for the locust husk. She wrote it years ago.” My lordling crumpled the paper and threw it to the tatami.

  Oh. Absent mothers were no easy thing. During bad times, thinking of my mother, Dawn, made my teeth ache. If Dawn had not disappeared that long-ago day in Whispering Brook’s forest, maybe Norinaga’s fox soldiers would never have shot Ashikaga. Maybe I would have never had to fight the fox magic with Jindo songs or open myself to the indwelling of a kami. I would never have come to the Capital at all.

  A little sigh escaped my lips. Foolish thoughts. Maybe Ashikaga had similar fantasies about what life would be like if Lady Ashikaga still lived.

  I scooped the wadded paper up and tried to uncrease the wrinkled mass. My lordling would regret damaging the note, even if it contained no clue to Lady Ashikaga’s death.

  The paper was almost translucent, like rice-wrappers for Little Brother’s favorite sweet. I held the paper taut between my hands over the lantern’s opening. Heat touched my fingers through the paper. The ink-strokes were in women’s kana writing, like smashed beetles on the page. Some of the kodansu’s wood must have stained the paper; there were streaks of brown under and around the ink. No, wait. I held the paper closer to the lantern’s flame. Not stains.

  “My Lord.”

  Ashikaga moved to stand next to me. “Go ahead and burn it, it’s useless.”

  “There’s something here,” I said. “Watch.” I moved the paper section by section across the heat of the lantern flame. More squashed beetles appeared, in light brown. It was writing.

  “Vinegar,” said Ashikaga. “I’d forgotten.”

  “Vinegar?”

  “Mother used to paint vinegar kana on the letters to father. They would dry invisibly, but when held to a flame, the letters would appear wherever vinegar touched the paper. Secret writing.”

  “What does it say?”

  Ashikaga swallowed, gently tugging the paper from my fingers. Dark eyes flickered over faint characters, going dark and narrow. A harsh exhalation broke the taut silence. Ashikaga’s chest rose and fell as if struggling to breathe the rarified air atop a mountain.

  “Her lover betrayed her. Lord Motofuji plotted against my brother. She writes that if I am reading this note, it means she is dead. She begs my forgiveness for the wara ningyo curse’s failure, and orders me to save Lord Yoshikazu—even if it means killing my father,” said Ashikaga, voice as tight as if it were my lordling stretched taut over the candle flame.

  “But . . . I don’t understand. Kill the Lord Daimyo?”

  Ashikaga stood, tall and straight as the paulownia tree of the Ashikaga crest. Hands fisted at sides, face gone pale and translucent as the notepaper. “She wrote that Lord Motofuji is my father.”

  A chill wave swept me from head to toe. Lord Motofuji? My lordling was not the Daimyo’s true child? The words made no sense. I couldn’t force the meaning to sink in. Mouth half-open to say something, anything, I did nothing as my lordling shuttered those dark eyes against the world, trembling.

  “Lily.” Ashikaga reached for my sleeve, but faltered midair, letting the hand drop, empty. “Bring the letter.”

  The world thought Ashikaga Yoshinori the son of the most powerful Daimyo of the North. The face turned to me now held nothing of the Ashikaga hawk—pale and empty as if becoming the lie the letter made of my lordling. I tucked the letter into my obi and reached for the hand that couldn’t quite bridge the gap between us. My lordling jerked away. “Don’t.”

  “My Lord,” I said.

  “Your pity makes it unbearable.”

  Ashikaga strode out of the room, dust rippling around hurried footsteps.

  I followed with the lantern, emerging into the gray, gathering shadows of early evening. In the eastern part of the sky, three bright stars, the cord tightly wound around the middle of the tsuzumi drum star-picture, faintly shone. Ashikaga halted to bark orders over one shoulder. “Get Uesugi-san. Tell him to gather
my guard and dress for battle.”

  “My Lord?”

  Ashikaga whirled, hand on a tanto hilt sticking out of the brocaded obi. “Lord Motofuji wants Ujimitsu to become the Ashikaga heir. My fath—the Lord Daimyo didn’t approve, but Lord Hosokawa and Hojo are close to talking him into it.”

  “Lord Hosokawa?” Who was Norinaga. Who had reasons of his own to wish the Daimyo’s heir ill, no matter what he promised. Ashikaga was right to be worried. “Let me come with you.”

  A shrill laugh. “No.”

  “If Lord Hosokawa, Norinaga, is there then you will need me.”

  Ashikaga gripped my upper arms, holding me still. My mind flashed back to the coiled anger and frustration that Ashikaga had lashed me with after the Sarugaku performance. Zeami’s revelation wound my lordling tighter than a fisherman’s knot. My face must have let slip some of my fearful thoughts. Ashikaga gave a strangled cry. I flinched.

  “I feel like a spinning top,” said Ashikaga. “You are the only thing still constant. Don’t ask me to risk my anchor.” Cupping my face with firm fingers, the hands went gentle, thumb stroking down the side of my face.

  “You ask me to risk you,” I said, softly.

  “What can you do against Lord Motofuji or his men?”

  “What can you do against fox magic?”

  Ashikaga’s hands dropped away. “Even if Lord Hosokawa is General Norinaga, somehow shape-changed, living under the Emperor’s very nose, he is one man. Without his fox soldiers. Even you must agree Uesugi-san and my men are more than a match for courtiers.”

  I’d seen Ashikaga fight on Hell Mountain, outsmarting the fox soldiers and crossing swords with Norinaga himself. When Norinaga slipped away, Ashikaga had been winning the fight. Lord Hojo talked of how the court compared Ashikaga’s warrior skills to the Lord Daimyo, but this fight was different. A terrible certainty sparked inside my belly. It was a trap. Ashikaga couldn’t confront Lord Motofuji without me.

  “He means you ill—”

  “Promise me, Lily-of-the-Valley,” Ashikaga said, invoking my real name.

  I shuddered.

  “Promise you will not follow me to Lord Motofuji’s house.”

  A direct order. Tightlipped against all the protests roiling on my tongue, I nodded.

  “Go, then,” said Ashikaga, spinning away in the direction of the Residence’s side entrance.

  My heart beat a rapid tattoo. I couldn’t defy a direct order, nor could I wait here while Ashikaga stormed off to that viper’s nest. My heart would beat itself out of my ribcage. My lordling had forced me to promise not to follow.

  Oh.

  There was a way to obey that order and my heart’s urgency at the same time, but I needed Uesugi-san, now. My hasty feet made messy, bare patches in the carefully raked gravel of the yard, but I made it to the guard hall just as Ashikaga disappeared inside the Residence.

  “Uesugi-san?” I asked the startled guard kneeling in the entryway.

  “Of what service may I be?” said Uesugi-san himself, stepping around the open fusuma. He did not invite me to step up onto the tatami. No time to play tug-of-war. Uesugi-san was my only chance to get to Lord Motofuji’s residence before my lordling.

  I planted both hands on my hips and blurted out what Ashikaga had found in Lady Ashikaga’s kodansu, minus the wara ningyo curse. Uesugi-san grimaced, but ordered the guard to saddle horses. When the guard had brushed past me, Uesugi-san stepped down off the tatami into his boots. “You’re going to let him walk into the fox’s trap?”

  “He made me promise not to follow you. Just get me into the Ashikaga Cadet Branch Residence. Tell them I have a message for Lord Yoshikazu, anything.”

  Uesugi-san cursed. “Block-headed strip of a lordling. He has no idea. . . . We have to leave now.”

  My dust-streaked robe was not suitable for the narrow streets of Kyoto, let alone an audience with the attendants of a courtier like Lord Motofuji. But for the first time, I didn’t care. The uneasiness I’d felt had blossomed into tingles cascading down my shoulders: danger, somehow tied up with fox magic.

  I followed Uesugi-san across the courtyard to the stable. He lifted me onto his horse sideways, and though my nerves shrilled at balancing up so high, I felt more myself than I had in ages. Uesugi-san mounted the horse, enclosing me in a semi-circle of armor. The horse trotted forward, and I was too busy trying to hold on while keeping the chafing metal knots and toughened leather scales of Uesugi-san’s mail away from my back to think any more about my appearance.

  Shopkeepers and maids scattered before Uesugi-san’s hectic pace. Attendants boasting gold-thread embroidered crests on their overlays gave us haughty and incredulous stares. Uesugi-san barreled through the narrow streets with little regard for anyone else. The tingles intensified as we left Higashiyama district. Lord Motofuji’s residence felt leagues away. Just after passing the endless, low wall of the Emperor’s outer compound, Uesugi-san pulled up in front of an ornate, double roofed gate emblazoned with the Ashikaga paulownia.

  Uesugi-san slipped off the horse and lifted me down, grunting with effort. He remounted just as two guards stepped forward from their places on either side of the gate.

  “Messenger for Lord Yoshikazu,” barked Uesugi-san.

  Dust covered me from head to foot, sweat darkened the linen at my armpits, and my legs could barely hold me upright, they were so numb from sitting astride. The two guards put hands to sword hilts. The taller one dismissed me with a sniff and addressed Uesugi-san. “This is a private party.”

  “She’s from the Ashikaga Daimyo, himself,” said Uesugi-san. I bit my lower lip. Trouble would definitely come on the heels of this lie. Not that it made me any less sure this was the only way to stop something terrible. I rounded my shoulders and kept my eyes on the guard’s boots.

  “No one enters,” said the tall guard. Uesugi-san put a hand on his sword hilt. This was taking too long. In a few moments it would be too late to get back before my lordling realized what we’d done.

  “Please,” I said, trying to make my voice sound like May’s lovely, low tone. “I just have a message for Lord Yoshikazu. I can be very quick. No one else will know I’m here.”

  The tall guard laughed. “No one is going to overlook you, girlie. My orders are to allow no one in. You will leave, now,” he said. A hand’s span of sword now showed above his sheath.

  “We’ll see,” said Uesugi-san. He turned his horse around, hooves stepping very close to the tall guard. The startled man hopped back. “You’ll think of something,” said Uesugi-san, and then he took off down the street.

  The taller guard barked orders to the other one, who disappeared inside. Uesugi-san and I were certainly a bit coarse-looking, but this refusal to let us in was odd. The other guard went inside to consult about the appearance of one disheveled handmaiden? Or maybe it was the way Uesugi-san took off?

  “You, move along.”

  If I had more time to prepare, I would have had Uesugi-san write a note to Lord Yoshikazu, or at least prepare some kind of message. I had nothing. How could I convince this guard to let me in?

  “The Ashikaga Daimyo is gravely ill,” I said. “He sent me to fetch Lord Yoshikazu.”

  The guard frowned. “No one is to enter,” he repeated, but with less confidence this time.

  I folded my hands together and pressed them against my chest like I was overcome. Something crackled inside my obi. The letter! I’d forgotten I had kept her confession letter back at Lady Ashikaga’s house. Could I risk sending that to Lord Yoshikazu? What if Lord Motofuji saw it?

  “Here,” I said, taking the folded letter from my obi. “Take this to Lord Yoshikazu, then.”

  The guard, relieved by this compromise, took the letter from my hand.
He ducked inside the gate. The street was strangely empty. No handmaidens or attendants, despite the central location of Lord Motofuji’s Residence. It was early evening. There should have been plenty of people making their way towards the Muromachi district just east of here. From up the street, two guardsmen rounded a corner. They walked abreast down the middle of the road in an unhurried, purposeful stride. Definitely headed my way.

  I put a foot on the raised step of the gate and peeked around the massive, half-closed door. Untied horses skittered around a swept-dirt yard. Not a soul appeared to corral them. I slipped through the gate, staying well away from the horses.

  The tingling along my back became a stinging heat. The sensation was like numb skin returning to life after being plunged into snow—a feeling I dreaded and longed for.

  Somewhere inside the compound someone sang to a kami, inviting in their presence and magic. Only one person here could do that—Lord Hosokawa. Time to stop cowering in the courtyard as if I really were a handmaiden messenger. I slipped through carefully clipped pine trees around the eastern side of the residence. The stinging intensified, burrowing down into my bones, pooling in my belly. A tug in my abdomen like someone opening a drawstring purse made me gasp.

  Jindo song. I could hear the sure, high tone above the harsh tattoo of booted feet and the low rumble of raised voices.

  The drawstring purse widened further, tearing me open. Frail, human skin and bones barely able to contain an aching emptiness. Yearning for warmth, for something to appease an unbearable longing—for the indwelling of a kami—made me shake and tremble. I cried out. The unknown singer’s voice deepened and became words.

  Timeless stone compresses air, sky, clouds

  reaching to the stars, rooted to the bones of earth

  Higashi-yama forbids all but the dead. . . .

  My own voice burst from my throat, singing this Jindo song that was not mine or my mother’s. Otherness, tasting of grit and earth and immutable pressure, flowed through invisible streams of air all around me, heading directly to the rear of Lord Motofuji’s Residence. A kami was waking—Higashi-yama itself. The hollow place in my belly began to swell outward with pressure like an overfull bladder.