by David Parkin
The white Ninja closed her eyes as her fingers stretched through the numbing snow and lit suddenly on the rope-bound handle of her sword.
As she took the buried blade in her hand, Akiko looked to Tanshi, a silhouette in the light of the moons. “I was wrong,” Akiko said.
“We were all wrong,” Tanshi offered, as softly and sorrowfully as the snowflakes landing in her hair.
The bride never saw the blade erupt from the snow; she never felt the cold steel against her neck; and she never heard the sound of the swinging sword separating her head from her shoulders.
The shock of these new revelations altered time for Akiko. When reality finally caught up, she found herself standing over the scene of the fight, looking across the red blood swirled against the white snow like a drop of die in a dish of buttermilk.
A thousand questions and concerns spun through Akiko’s mind as she looked to the blood streaking her blade. She buffed the steel with her sleeve, but no matter how hard she tried, the stain refused to lift. The Ninja pulled the cowl from her head and used it against the sword, rubbing faster and faster until she grunted from the strain.
As the thoughts raced between her father and brothers, her master, and the scene that lay at her feet, she rubbed the sword harder and grunted louder and faster until a scream erupted from her broken lips, filling the empty night.
When all fell silent again, Akiko looked back to her sword, still covered in blood, and finally she understood. The sword, like her soul, would never be clean again.
As she stared at the blade, the deafening quiet of the forest was shattered again as a tiny whisper of a scent landed on Akiko’s tongue. The Ninja’s blade snapped around instinctively and stopped short at the neck of a young boy no more than five years old.
“Mama?” his voice murmured as he looked past the assassin to the body left in the snow behind her.
Akiko’s wide eyes pleaded with the child, begging him to be a figment of her imagination or a hallucination from the shock of her injuries. But when she saw the tiny footprints leading from the carriage on the distant road, she knew why Tanshi hadn’t lied when she mentioned the word love.
Akiko’s sword quivered at the young boy’s neck as Oni’s words returned: “A Ninja never doubts. . . A Ninja kills.”
She watched, heartbroken as the boy looked across the red and white snow then back to Akiko, awaiting her next move.
To hell with Oni’s words. she thought.
Without another sound, the Ninja sheathed her sword, turned, and disappeared into the night, leaving the boy alone in the silent clearing.
AFTER THE LONG journey across Kaito and the Backbone’s southern pass, Akiko rounded the last bend of the river toward Oni’s cave. She approached the shallow pond outside the entrance, surrounded by green pines that stared down like a chorus of friendly watchmen.
The pool’s still water reflected the entrance of the cavern and the surrounding green like a mirror. Akiko had spent many hours in meditation there, drinking in the beauty in body and spirit. She sat on a gray rock surrounded on three sides by the natural spring, watching the crystal waters trickle over the polished stones on the bed of the river below.
She had spent the last ten years in the gloomy cave across the water learning to use its darkness to her advantage. She could still hear the strange guttural noises echoing from inside the underground chambers where she was forbidden to venture.
Oni stepped out from the darkness of his cave looking tired and wrinkled. It had been only a decade since they first met, but in that time he seemed to have aged twenty-five years. As Oni looked over his student’s bruised and broken visage, she saw in his eyes that he already knew the story.
“I told you to stay away from the silk man,” he said.
“Tanshi’s dead,” Akiko offered through her swollen cheeks.
“I know,” Oni sighed. “When you both failed to check in, I put it together. She told you about her mission, no doubt.”
“Slavers, Master, really?”
The heavy dark bags under his eyes shifted as Oni sat and looked the young Ninja in the eye. “No,” he continued, “when I learned of his ‘habits,’ I sent my best student to dispatch him.” Akiko dropped her brow, confused.
“Do you really think I just sent you to Kai Bur for surveillance?” Oni asked.
“If you wanted me to kill him,” Akiko said, “then why the lie?”
The master looked to his student with the same fatherly concern she had seen on his face a hundred times before. “I wasn’t sure if it was true,” he continued. “I knew you would verify it and take the matter into your own hands. You always do.” Oni cleared his throat. “Did she tell you my plans for him?”
“That’s not all she told me,” Akiko said accusingly.
“I did you a favor, Turtle,” Oni responded. “What better way to make Sato regret pushing us away than to show up on his door wearing the shozoko?”
“. . . And restarting the war!” Akiko cried.
“I’m saving Bushan,” Oni said, “something the samurai will never do! I lived at Pylo. I saw it with my own eyes. To the Kaitians, Bushan is nothing more than a pack of dogs at their feet, fighting for the scraps from their table. I want peace more than anyone, but your father is too blind to see that what he has is nothing more than slavery. I’m going to break the yolk of silk that has strangled our world since the end of the war, and if that means starting it over, then at least I’ve brought balance back to the two worlds.”
Oni gestured to his cave. “But you have nothing to worry about,” he assured her. “I have a plan that will end the war before it has a chance to begin.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” Akiko whispered as her eyes met the bubbling water beyond the stone.
“We are a clan of assassins and thieves,” Oni offered softly. “By definition, we can’t be trusted. For the sake of the ancestors, look what happened when you two finally met.”
By definition, we can’t be trusted, Akiko echoed in her mind. She had smelled lies on Oni’s breath since the day they met and today was no exception.
As the Ninja listened to Oni’s deceptions unravel like a spool of thread, she felt alone for the first time in years. It was then when she finally realized that if there would ever be a place in these worlds in which she belonged, Akiko would have to build it herself.
“Now,” Oni continued as he took the posture of a leader, “I ordered your fallen sister to infiltrate the silk man’s family and supply me with his worms, but now we must acquire them the old fashioned way.”
Without need of another word, Akiko understood. She got to her feet and moved toward the canyon.
“Did you kill the boy?” Oni asked.
The question forced Akiko to halt in her tracks. “No,” she answered, keeping her eyes on the green ahead.
“Next time,” Oni said, “kill the boy.”
“Yes, Master,” Akiko responded with a nod, careful to hide the tears in her eyes as she made her way toward the silk farms of Bushan.
CHAPTER SIX
The sun pressed on Akiko like an iron as she shifted into the bruises across her back and shoulders. The hundreds of arrows fired by the surrounding soldiers had buried her along with her brothers and friends like a pile of makado sticks across a fortuneteller’s table. As her head emerged from the pile, hundreds of bowmen came into view standing across the horizon in all directions, black against the robin’s egg blue sky.
The familiar scent of the leader of the guards had danced on the wind since they had emerged from the Broken Mountain. Akiko assumed her brothers would have sensed the guardsman, but the longer they remained ignorant, the closer the captain and his men drew. She decided to keep quiet as his inevitable ambush would bring a chance to escape, but she never imagined the captain would be so innovative when it came to his attack.
If I don’t make it, she thought to herself, scanning the hundreds of shadows drawing arrows anew, Oni will kill Father. B
ut at least the presence of the Royal Guard might prevent his ultimate plan from coming to fruition.
To the west, five horsemen approached at a slow gallop, throwing breaths of sand down the slope of the golden dune. As Akiko expected, her old friend, the captain of one of the most honorable bands of men she had ever faced, rode at the head of the party.
“Hmmrrr,” Patrick moaned as he broke the silence of the desert and rolled onto his back beside Sendai, both covered in red and blue welts. “Now that we have the skin of a cheetah, we can easily hide in the tall grass and hunt for brown stag,” Patrick said.
“It’s always the bright side with you, Wolfen,” Sendai commented as he rubbed the swelling lumps on the back of his neck.
“I haven’t even mentioned all the free arrows,” he continued.
Beyond Patrick’s wild orange hair, Ichi’s head suddenly erupted from the mound of quarrels, flipping a few of them into the air as he moved. He caught his breath when he spotted the archers on the horizon and the approaching riders.
“Ping?” he whispered, confused.
Of course, Akiko thought, the captain of the guard. No doubt he was the man who hired the Sons of Sato to find her in the first place.
“If we’re not dead, that’s a good sign,” Ozo remarked as he and Toji emerged from the thicket beside their brother.
“Not yet,” Ichi warned, scanning the archers. “They’re notching steel-tips on their bowstrings.”
“The thumpers were a warning,” Ping announced as he and his men approached. “And I only give one warning.” The head of the Royal Guard dismounted and the four riders flanking him formed a circle around the warriors, aiming razor-tipped arrows.
Akiko locked eyes with Ping for a long while. She sensed relief, anticipation, and heartbreak in his musk. His thoughts were of his men, but the archers across the horizon were not his men.
Ping bent to pick up Patrick’s supply bag and search it. After a moment, he threw it back to the sand and picked up Sato’s red sword.
“Please,” Akiko whispered.
“Stay quiet,” Ping ordered.
“I don’t understand,” Ichi interrupted. “We did what you asked, Captain. We were on our way to Pylo.”
“With your sister as your prisoner?” Ping asked.
Ichi, Toji, and Ozo deflated at the accusation. “You have to understand,” Toji said, “we didn’t know it was her until—”
“Oni forced her hand,” Ozo added. “He has our father!”
“You really are a master of deception, aren’t you?” Ping said, looking back at Akiko.
“Please,” she begged once again, but once again, she was ignored. Why would Ping listen? She had sensed his hatred from all the way up the dune.
“My General, Shoc-Ti, who you remember, I’m sure.” Ping signaled to a soldier on horseback ahead of him that Akiko recalled silencing early in her mission. “After reporting back at Pylo,” Ping continued, “he was smart enough to ask questions on the streets of Paoyang. There he discovered that a Bushanese cook named Akiko had been confronted at her restaurant twenty-five prior. The cook’s tormentor was a woman matching the description of a witch currently terrorizing the Backbone.”
Akiko sensed a flutter in Ping’s emotions. He had met Kubaba, and his hate for her was rich and deep. “During the witch’s visit,” he continued as he looked to the Sons of Sato, “she accused Akiko of being a Ninja. That same evening, mere hours before I first met your sister, a concerned mother visited the cook with a sick child. On her way home, she heard a commotion and returned to see that old woman give Akiko the Red Sword of Sato and tell her to ‘Finish what she started.’”
The Ninja closed her eyes as all three of her brothers turned toward her. She knew they had suspected her involvement in their father’s kidnapping but with evidence like this, even Ozo, her strongest proponent, looked to her with sadness in his eyes.
“Incidentally,” Ping continued, as he paced and the arrows cracked like bones beneath his feet, “the woman with the sick child mentioned that she believed this Akiko had identified the boy’s illness purely by smell.”
Ping’s tone made Akiko sound like a criminal. “Why do we work in the shadows?” she remembered Oni’s teaching from years ago. “Because honor is quick to blame and slow to see the gray.”
The captain dropped to one knee beside her and spoke softly, “I went over our meeting and the story of the soldier who carried your note in my mind so many times,” he said. “The one piece that never made sense was when he told me you had sniffed him.”
“He was the one among you with the courage to stay his sword,” Akiko offered, remembering the young soldier.
“Shilo,” Ping continued. “He’s dead, along with my entire regiment thanks to your witch.”
Akiko’s heart caved as she sensed the feelings of love and loss course through Ping’s mind. The captain knew the Ninja didn’t kill his men but he blamed her for their death nonetheless.
“You see,” he continued, “your father is an old friend of mine. Just days after we first met, he sent word that his young daughter had disappeared. He asked for the guard to keep an ear out for any word of a young girl with a gift similar to his sons’.”
Father knew about my gift? she thought. Of course he didn’t tell me. It would have only added fuel to the fire.
“You have to believe us,” Ichi interrupted. “We are in no way affiliated with—”
“Save your breath, Samurai,” Ping cut him off. “I do believe you. Unfortunately, it isn’t important, what I believe. You’ll never convince the people of Kaito you weren’t collaborators. After all, nobody’s heartless enough to turn on their own sister.”
“Yeah,” Patrick bellowed, giving Ichi an accusatory look, “nobody’s that heartless.”
Ping examined Akiko’s sword, still in his hand. “It’s too bad,” he said, “I put my reputation and the reputation of Kaito’s Royal Guard on the line vouching for you three. This will hurt relations between our lands for a long time to come.”
“That’s what I’m trying to prevent,” Akiko plead once again.
“The promises of thieves . . .” Ping said simply and truly before turning to Patrick, Sendai, and the others. “Each of you will stand before the emperor to receive a sentence of death for crimes against Kaito.”
A silence as hopeless as each of their fates answered Ping as his finger found the lever in the red scabbard and the secret compartment opened inside.
Instinctively, Akiko moved toward the priceless larvae but she paused as each of the hundreds of archers surrounding them extended the pull of their strings.
The captain was an honorable man, untainted by greed or sibling rivalry. He was impartial and Akiko had, for a moment, hoped that he might see the good in her and the balance in her quest. It appeared the devastation had fogged the Ninja’s senses. Ping took the dozens of worms from their hiding place and squished them between his fingers.
“Hope,” Oni used to say, “is a curse. It’s the job of a Ninja to lift it from his enemies.”
The curse of hope had followed Akiko all the way from that silk farm, across the Backbone, and to the desert where she now lay. As Ping dropped the dead worms in the sand beside her, he pulled that curse violently from her chest and left nothing in its place but darkness.
Ping turned to the Sons of Sato. “I’m sure you three were so distraught when you discovered your sister’s identity that you didn’t think to ask how she knew where to find Oni’s hideout in the first place?”
“No,” Ichi moaned as the truth coalesced in his mind.
Akiko didn’t dare look back. She hadn’t mentioned Oni’s true identity, as she knew it would have been the catalyst forcing Ichi’s hand to pass a sentence of execution rather than imprisonment. Now as the harsh contrast between the azure sky and the golden sand faded together through her welling tears, Akiko had no more secrets left.
“Men,” Ping ordered his riders, “take Sendai’s sword a
nd burry it somewhere in the dunes. I’ve heard too many stories to risk bringing it with us.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Akiko let the warm wind of the desert take her tears as she marched through the next day in silence. Her brothers kept quiet as well with their heads held low. Patrick and Sendai walked ahead, leading the parade of prisoners.
Each were chained together with their hands fastened and locked against a “finger vice,” a flat piece of birch fitted with five clasps that pulled and stretched the digits of the hand into a painfully stressed position. The vice was implemented as a both an agonizing bind and a way to weaken the hands of a prisoner, impeding their skill with a sword temporarily in the event of an attempted escape.
Not that holding a sword would do me any good, Akiko thought. Ping had sent all of their weapons ahead with a supply train. No doubt the Red Sword of Sato was in the hands of the emperor by now.
As they began their trek toward their inevitable doom, Akiko quickly noticed the band of troops were leading them back toward the Broken Mountain, the opposite direction of Kaito and Pylo Palace.
“I thought we were going to Paoyang?” she asked Ping who rode beside her.
“Your fate doesn’t lie in Pylo, Ninja,” he said. “But back at the Shattered Palace. The emperor will be arriving there with his armies about now.”
“He’s declaring war?” Akiko asked coldly.
“Once he learns his precious worms are no longer compromised,” Ping said, “he’ll no longer have reason to attack.”
“If he’s preparing for battle,” Akiko asked, “why aren’t you with him?” Ping’s emotions changed at her question. She sensed a twinge of concern for an old friend and doubt as to how he would be received once they got to the palace.
“No more talking,” Ping responded, choosing silence over a lie.
