'I insist,' the ronin snarled, slowly drawing his sword. Since he took his time, he'd clearly assumed that he was dealing with an unarmed, easy target.
Groundspider's sword flashed from the pack, its tip flying for the ronin's cheek. Taken by surprise, the ronin flinched to one side, then released his half-drawn sword and clutched the side of his head with both hands, letting out a howl of pain.
Groundspider grinned. Then a stern voice made him freeze.
'What outrage is this? An unauthorised duel?' Sandals crunched the grit of the road behind him as Groundspider quickly repacked his sword.
'You, merchant, turn! Face me.' The inspector drew his own weapon.
SIXTEEN
The hunted
At the foot of the sake brewery's hill lay the town's poorest street.
It stood on low ground which flooded often. Half its homes and businesses had been abandoned, and those still occupied were in urgent need of repair. The whole street showed signs of recent water damage from heavy spring rains.
Its smallest building, a badly run-down stable, stood rotting near the edge of town, a stone's throw from the bright red shrine that welcomed travellers entering Fushimi.
Other than rats, the near-ruined stable had only two occupants now. An ancient, retired packhorse, and Moonshadow.
Moon lay in a wide, deep bed of half-rotten straw, one hand on the plans around his neck, his cowl off but night suit and leg armour still in place. He lapsed in and out of sleep. The old, weary looking grey horse stood chewing, watching him.
Beside the stable's door, half-planks had rotted away, creating a thin window just wide enough for the horse to use. Every so often, growing bored with watching the boy in the straw, the horse would swing around, poke his head outside and stare off down the street, chewing contentedly.
Now the animal gave a loud snort. Moonshadow sat up. He tried again to shrug off the urge to sleep. Under his armour, his legs were covered in bruises and blood-welts. His back, left shoulder and every limb ached. Last night had taken far more energy than expected. Moon rubbed his eyes and listened to the traffic passing on the street outside. The horse returned his sleepy stare then turned and put its head out through the window.
The stable had only one door. Like the horse's spy-hole, it faced the street. The only way in or out. Moon scratched his cheek thoughtfully. If he had to leave fast, it would be no use counting on that excuse of a window. The horse might be using it at the time. The boards around it were rotten, also a hazard. He'd staggered in here, desperate to rest, but now regretted his choice of hideout: it was never a good tactic to box oneself in.
He'd assailed the castle on his first day in Fushimi, and the out-of-town rendezvous was scheduled for tomorrow, not today. He couldn't imagine, in this condition, waiting in some forest near the meeting place, at the mercy of rain and overnight cold. He had been told there were chalk caves in the area, but what if he couldn't find one?
Perhaps he should have held off until the second night before striking.
Moon wondered about the other spy who had assailed him just before he'd encountered the guards. How exactly had he vanished after being flipped from the roof? And to where? Moon's battle with castle security must have been a fine diversion, enabling the spy's smooth escape. He found himself smiling. Whoever that spy was, his skills were intriguing. His sheer energy and slight build suggested youth. He nodded. So he wasn't the only young shinobi in the field. Was that agent's world as solitary as his, or did he, like some adult spies, also have a daytime identity, a life that included unsuspecting friends? Moonshadow sighed. He'd like such a life.
He rotated his shoulder. It clicked painfully. He could not afford to be cornered while so utterly spent. If forced to fight now, a mere castle samurai would probably be able to wound him. He needed a full day's rest for his strength to return. This stable's layout was a problem, too. It left him blind and vulnerable. His pursuers could approach the building, unseen, any time. He stared at the rattly wooden door. If that fellow in the black robe, that Akira, burst through it while he lay in some fitful sleep . . . a desperate fight, no doubt to the death, would follow.
Moon thought of his duel with Akira on the suspended walkway, how Mantis's advice had guided him to snatch the advantage. He had wounded the man in black, but how would he feel today, if instead he had killed him outright with that cut?
He remembered Mantis telling him a duelling anecdote, one that he often remembered when he looked into his teacher's solemn eyes. Nanashi, as he was then, had – somewhat thoughtlessly – raised Brother Eagle's disclosure that Mantis had been a professional duellist, as Eagle had said, 'in the wildness of his youth'.
Mantis had almost scowled at the obvious hero-worship in his student's eyes. After thinking awhile, he had spoken of once wandering into a town where, as it turned out, a great sword contest was being held – one offering the winner a large cash prize.
'On the dusty street outside the training hall sponsoring the event,' Mantis had said, 'I was bailed up by a tall, skinny samurai who carried two swords, and also wore a curious, colourful head-binding, so all that showed was his eyes. He told me my single-sword school was inferior, the very spit of cockroaches, as I recall. At first, I just insulted him back. Go hit your head, I snarled, on a wet piece of tofu, and die!'
The impatient young Nanashi had barely been able to contain his enthusiasm. 'But you did fight him, right there and then, for the insult, neh?'
'I considered it, sure, because back then I was as hot-headed as you are now,' Mantis had said ruefully, 'but I chose to wait until the official matches later that day. I wanted that prize money, you see.' He groaned mildly. 'My pride, like my honour, had a price in those days. Anyway, the rules stated that the contestants had to duel until one surrendered or blood was drawn. But this lanky rooster, just as we were about to fight each other, suddenly demanded a death match, which could only be held with the consent of both swordsmen. Since he went on insulting me, I agreed. Of course, the bloodthirsty crowd who were watching loved it, and were roused to bet wildly on the outcome. I told my antagonist to take off his head-wrap and reveal himself, but instead he just shouted a final taunt, saying that he showed his face only to real men.' Mantis sighed. 'That did it. I was furious. We fought. He was good, surprisingly good. But I was better. I killed him.'
'Aw, he asked for it!' Nanashi had folded his arms with a lofty sneer.
Mantis had closed his eyes before saying more. 'When he fell, I stepped back, and the competition's doctors removed his head-wrap. The crowd gasped. He was not much older than you are now. Freakishly tall, but in truth, just a silly boy.'
'But he could really handle a sword, two in fact!' Nanashi had protested. 'Doesn't that make it fair?'
'A thing can be fair,' Mantis said quietly, 'yet still be wrong.'
He'd then fixed Nanashi with a disturbing, unfamiliar stare. 'I see them, you know, some nights, when I dream . . . all the men I've killed. I see that mouthy kid, too, he's with them. They all wait for me . . . in a tavern, in the land of the dead.'
'Do they hate you?' Nanashi had quickly asked. 'Do they want vengeance?'
'No.' Mantis had flashed a strange smile. 'They hold up their sake cups and say: "Come on, drink with us, there's no hard feelings. We were all just young fools!" That is my recurring dream, but in truth, I think it is actually my heart's constant prayer – forgiveness .'
Mantis's face and words faded, and Moonshadow stared at the door. No! He couldn't be trapped in here. The pressure of being cornered would almost certainly guarantee that someone would die, and it seemed his teacher's example had been etched into his soul.
But how to avoid being surprised without actually going outside? He needed rest! Moon briefly considered sight-joining with the horse and using the animal as a lookout, since it was so intent on watching the street anyway. But quickly he realised that his life force was too depleted for a sight-joining, even the basic kind.
He recal
led the last time he had overdone it with 'the eye of the beast', and the humiliation it had cost him. During his training, when he'd first started enjoying success with the science, Eagle had warned him to pace himself. To rest up between experiments with his new skill, lest exhaustion take him by surprise. Swept along by the heady joy of mastering something new, he had ignored the warning. Three days in a row he'd enthusiastically linked himself to different creatures. First a dog, then a pigeon and finally, at sunset on the third day, a bat.
When he had been missed at the evening meal, Groundspider had searched for him. Finding him under a tree in a death-like sleep, the big oaf had been unable to resist the temptation to play a prank. With a stick of charcoal, Groundspider had carefully written 'turnip skull' and 'maker of foul gas' on Nanashi's forehead before carrying him to the dinner table where he had finally woken up. All through the meal Nanashi had felt uneasy at the wry smiles and crafty gleams in almost everyone's eyes. Badger alone had kept a straight face throughout. But that was him.
Just before bedtime, Heron, smiling behind her hand, had brought him a wet cloth and told him – in a tone of playful guilt – what had happened.
He had taken his revenge on Groundspider a month later, furtively smearing the ravenous one's rice bowl with an oil that brought on hours of diarrhoea.
Moonshadow closed his eyes, wishing he was home.
No, he could risk no sight-joining today, it was too soon, and more than a brotherly prank would await him if his enemies found him in a deep sleep.
Moon decided he would keep watch the hard way for a while. He crawled to the largest knothole in the door and began watching the street through it with one eye. Later, he would dig up the sack he had already buried at the back of the stable. In it lay the trappings of his next identity: the jacket, belt and wadded pants of a young merchant's clerk. He even had an abacus. Wrung out as he was, Moon smiled. The clothes-drying poles and laundries of Fushimi had served him well. Tomorrow, dressed as a clerk, he would proceed to the rendezvous point, where Grey Light Order agents would meet him. Whoever turned up would bring his last disguise, the one that would see him back to Edo. To safety, and to home.
A family of peasant farmers carrying baskets of vegetables drifted by. Further along the street, a wandering priest in a huge woven hat was trying to sell good luck charms to a pair of excitable teenage girls. Moonshadow looked the other way and gasped. A familiar, big-boned man carrying a long staff waddled towards the stable. Private Investigator Katsu! Still dressed as a town businessman, the snoop was going house to house alone, quietly checking the whole derelict street.
As Moon watched, Katsu flushed out a homeless outcast, a ragged older man wearing a faded red sash. Moon felt sad for the frail-looking fellow who bowed low to Katsu then scurried away between the buildings. The red sash, which he could never take off, meant he had been convicted of a serious crime, most likely a robbery. That sash was an order to anyone he met, an order to ignore him and offer no food, work or shelter. It was a living death sentence. Moon hung his head with a grim smile. At least that would never happen to him. Spies were always executed, the good old-fashioned way.
He watched on in horror. Katsu was striding for the stable door now, calling cheerfully, 'Hello, old horse!'
Moonshadow leapt to his feet. He made himself pant, summoning up his resolve, pooling all his remaining strength. Then he vaulted up into a corner of the stable facing the street. On the opposite side of the door to the horse's window, where the leaky ceiling met the rotting wall, he gripped the rafters, splayed out like a huge insect.
The door creaked open. Katsu peered around the doorframe first before stepping inside. He amiably patted the horse's flank, his eyes sweeping around the stable. The horse pulled its head inside and, with a friendly sputter, turned to watch the visitor. Moon, already struggling to maintain his grip, looked down on Katsu from behind.
Unlike a shinobi, this man did not begin searching a room by looking high and turning a circle. Detective or not, he was like most people: he barely looked up at all. Moon grinned. This fellow was not accustomed to dealing with spy-kind.
School time, Katsu!
Then his neck abruptly went weak. His last two sight-joinings, the carp and the cat, falling so close together, had already pushed him too far. Suddenly Moon could feel his vital ki energy, his life force, ebbing away. Hurry up, Detective, he thought tersely. Either give up and go, or look up and make me kill you. Either way, do it fast, please, before I faint and land at your feet.
Katsu took one end of his staff in both hands and started carefully probing the deep layer of scattered straw. Moonshadow's eyelids flickered. A dark wave rolled over him. He forced his eyes wide open. His left shoulder was throbbing hard now.
During every year of his training, he had worked with a bean-shaped straw dummy exactly matching his own weight at the time. He had lifted it fifty times a day and now could hold his body against most ceilings for over an hour.
But not this morning. A chill went through Moon as he realised it. In about thirty seconds, whether clinging up here or lying down there, he was going to black out.
Snowhawk crouched low in the thin alley across the road from the stable.
The big man swung the stable door shut with his staff as he exited. A tired-looking old horse poked its head out through a gap in the wall and the fellow turned around and patted its muzzle, saying goodbye.
She stayed in shadow, watching as the snoop stretched before plodding off down the street. It seemed his search of Fushimi's poor district was finished. If so, there was a mystery here. This searcher had obviously left empty-handed, yet Snowhawk could sense the boy spy in that stable. Surely he was the one hunted. So what was going on here?
Crossing the street, she furtively checked the big-boned figure ambling into the distance. Disguised now as a young weaver's apprentice in a drab hemp work kimono – a stolen one, of course – Snowhawk knew she could walk the streets unnoticed, at least by ordinary citizens. It was Silver Wolf's specialists, professionals like herself, that she had to be wary of. They too altered their appearance all the time. Her eyes flicked around. That hunchbacked farmer, one or all of those fit young brewery workers, anyone could be a shinobi in the service of Fushimi's lord. She stopped in front of the stable door. But her exceptional senses told her that only one like herself was nearby right now. Him.
He was in there, she could feel it. A clear, strong impression. If only she could avoid combat with him . . . get close enough to use her special talent. This boy was good, in fact, he was brilliant. Snowhawk smiled. But so were the last three warriors she had used her unique gift on. Before this day ended, those plans would be hers after all.
As she gripped the rattly door, a dull whump came from the other side of it. She knew that sound, she had made it herself more than once. A body landing in straw. Snowhawk frowned. It hadn't sounded like a very controlled landing, though. Too loud.
Maybe he was injured. Not too badly, she hoped! Snowhawk bit her lip. Why did she care? This was confusing. She would take the plans from him. She had to. But also, undeniably, she wanted to see him again. She had so many questions.
Why, what was the point? This hadn't happened to her before!
Snowhawk opened the creaky door slowly. There he was, stretched out in the straw, his face slightly ashen. Was he dying or critically exhausted? She slipped into the stable and closed the door. He was in the deep sleep of one utterly spent. She leaned over him. A strong face! Her eyes glided over his night suit to the leg armour.
He sat up sharply, one hand moving for his sword. Snowhawk leapt back into a defensive posture. His eyes focused then darted up and down as he studied her build and the crisp lines of her stance. Recognition flickered in his face.
'The ambush on the rain roof!' he whispered. 'It was you!'
For a moment his eyes were hard with alarm and wariness. Then they softened as he took in her face. The advantage was hers again: she'd be able to get
close. Which meant victory!
She held up her hands and smiled. 'Don't kill me yet. First let me thank you properly for what you did back on the road.'
His tired eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'You didn't really need my help with those bandits.'
'Maybe not, but what you did was both brave and kind. Thank you.' Snowhawk bowed, keeping her gaze on him.
'Thank you,' he said coolly, 'for not killing me last night.'
Snowhawk raised her eyebrows. 'You're welcome.'
'Why didn't you kill me then?' The boy shook his head. 'You had the upper hand, yet chose not to use your sword. If you had, I'd be dead now and you'd have the plans. So tell me . . . why?'
She shrugged. 'I don't know.' But Snowhawk knew the curiosity burning in her eyes gave a more honest answer. She caught herself at it: wondering about him, about his life, who he served.
The mission! She had to take herself in hand and put the mission first. She dropped to her knees at the edge of the straw. He flinched, but let her stay there. Good! Despite any questions she might have, there was a job to do, an important, urgent job. Right now, only he stood in the way of its completion.
Snowhawk studied him. So now this boy knew she was his rival for the plans. It wasn't the first time her distinctive poise had betrayed her to another spy. Despite their rivalry, that other look in his eyes said he too would like to be friends. But would he let her get close enough? If he did, she had him!
'Can there be a truce between us?' he asked hopefully with a shy grin.
'On one condition.' She flashed her loveliest smile and saw it work on him. 'That you tell me your name. I'll give you mine too, of course. Then we can be . . .' Snowhawk creased her nose playfully, '. . . friends.'
The boy leaned forward. She sensed him weighing carefully what he would say next. 'My name is Nanashi.'
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