Risuko

by David Kudler

  Seasons of the Sword #1

  リス子

  Risuko

  A Kunoichi Tale

  by

  David Kudler

  Stillpoint/Atalanta

  Stillpoint Digital Press

  Mill Valley, California, USA

  Copyright © 2016 by David Kudler

  Published on Smashwords

  All right reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, or other—without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. For more information, contact the publisher at

  rights@stillpointdigitalpress.com

  Cover design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  provided by Five Rainbows Services

  Kudler, David.

  Risuko : a Kunoichi tale / David Kudler.

  pages cm. - (Seasons of the sword, bk. 1)

  ISBN: 978-1-938808-32-6 (hardcover)

  ISBN: 978-1-938808-34-0 (pbk.)

  ISBN: 978-1-938808-33-3 (e-book)

  1. Japan—History—Period of civil wars, 1480–1603—Fiction. 2. Ninja—Fiction. 3. Conspiracies—Fiction. 4. Determination (Personality trait)—Fiction. 5. Young adult fiction. I. Title.

  PZ7.1.K76 Ri 2016

  [Fic]—dc23

  LCCN: 2015918899

  First edition, June 2016

  Version 1.0.0 (Smashwords)

  Also by David Kudler

  The Seven Gods of Luck

  Shlomo Travels to Warsaw

  How Raven Brought Back the Light

  Coming Soon!

  Bright-Eyes (Seasons of the Sword #2)

  Find out more on Risuko.Net

  Follow on:

  twitter.com/RisukoKunoichi • risuko-chan.tumblr.com

  facebook.com/risuko.books • instagram.com/RisukoKunoichi

  risuko.livejournal.com

  For Sashako and Juju-chan

  —

  兵士,速く立下がり

  白と緋色の戦い

  地上にブロッサム

  Contents

  Prologue—Serenity

  1—The Left-Hand Path

  2—Into the Circle

  3—Flying

  4—The Edge of the World

  5—The Mount Fuji Inn

  6—Tea and Cakes

  7—Wind

  8—The Mountain

  9—Worth

  10—Dark Letter

  11—The Full Moon

  12—Novices

  13—A Banquet

  14 —Squirrel on the Roof

  15—The Music Lesson

  16—Blades

  17—Moon Time

  18—A Fly

  19—In the Web

  20—Smelly Work

  21—Lessons in Dance

  22—Feather Soup

  23—Poppies in Winter

  24—Visitors

  25—To Roost

  26—Climbing the Walls

  27—Killing Dance

  28—Broken Dishes

  29—Proper Duty

  30—Battle of White & Scarlet

  31—Taking Up the Blade

  32—Chicken Soup

  33—Smoke and Stone

  34—Falling Fast

  Epilogue—On the Ground

  Author Note

  Sneak Preview: Bright-Eyes

  Glossary

  Characters

  Place Names

  From Serenity to the Full Moon

  Acknowledgements

  NOTE: In Japan, as in most of East Asia, a person’s family name goes before the given name. In the following story, for example, Kano Murasaki is a girl named Murasaki from the Kano family.

  Landmarks

  Cover

  Risuko

  Prologue—Serenity

  My name is Kano Murasaki, but everyone calls me Risuko. Squirrel.

  I am from Serenity Province, though I was not born there.

  My nation has been at war for a hundred years, Serenity is under attack and the Kano family is in disgrace, but some people think that I can bring victory. That I can be a very special kind of woman.

  All I want to do is climb.

  My name is Kano Murasaki, but everyone calls me Squirrel.

  Risuko.

  1—The Left-Hand Path

  Serenity Province, Land of the Rising Sun, The Month of Leaves in the First Year of the Rule of Genki

  (Totomi, Japan, late autumn, 1570 a.d.)

  Spying on the lord of the province from the old pine was a bad idea. Risky. Stupid. That’s why I didn’t see what was coming. I knew it was a bad idea, but something about being there, high up in that pine, made me feel free.

  And, of course, I was always fascinated by what happened in the castle. Can you blame me?

  I watched where Lord Imagawa stood in his castle with a samurai, pointing at a piece of paper. Paper covered with splashes of color. Green, mostly. Blue and red shapes marking the edges.

  It was a hundred paces away or more. I must have been squinting hard, trying to make out what they were pointing at. That’s the only way to explain how I didn’t notice the palanquin until it had almost reached my tree.

  Below, two hulking men carried the shiny black box by the heavy bar between them. The thing scuttled like a beetle through the slanting morning shadows that darkened the woods. It was coming from the direction of the village.

  Seeing it startled me—made my chest tight and my hands colder even than they already were.

  I scooted to the top of the pine, hands chilled and sticky.

  Half-way up the pine tree though I was, I had the urge to stomp on the dark, gleaming thing. Only nobles traveled by palanquin. And when had nobles ever done my family any favors?

  I sensed danger in the steady, silent approach. Had they seen me spying on the castle?

  “Risuko!” My sister called up to me. I could not even see the top of her head.

  The black box crept closer, into the clearing below me. Then the palanquin stopped.

  I scrambled to hide myself. The cold sap smelled sharp and raw as I pressed my nose to the bark. I gave a bird whistle—a warbler call, the one that I’d told Usako I’d use if she needed to hide.

  I had actually been looking for birds’ eggs, though it was the wrong season for it. Hunger and the desire to do something, as well as my own pleasure in climbing, had driven me up the tree. Mother had not fed us that morning. Once the weather turned cold, she could not always provide us with even a small bowl of rice a day. Also, the castle had been bustling like an ants’ nest that’s been prodded with a stick, and I had been curious....

  Someone below me began talking. An old woman, I thought, her voice high and birdlike, though, again, I couldn’t make out the words. Usako—my sister—stepped forward into view. I could see her head bowed, like a frightened rabbit. The old woman spoke again. After a pause, Usako-chan’s face, open and small, turned toward my hiding place. She pointed up at me.

  “Risuko,” the old woman said, “come down now.”

  She and her men were at the bottom of the tree. I considered leaping across to one of the other pines, but there weren’t any close enough and big enough to jump to. And I was worried that my hands were too cold to keep hold.

  Usako scurried off on the trail toward home. Thanks, sister, I thought. I’ll get you for that later. I wish that she had turned and waved. I wish that I had called out a good-bye.

  If I was going to be grabbed at the bottom, I decided
that I might as well come down with a flourish. I dropped from limb to limb, bark, needles, and sap flying from the branches as my hands and feet slapped at them, barely breaking my speed. Perhaps if I came down faster than they expected, I could make a run for it once I reached the ground.

  My bare feet had no sooner hit the needles beneath the tree, however, than a large hand came to rest on my shoulder. The two huge servants had managed to place themselves exactly where I would land.

  “What an interesting young girl you are,” the grey-haired noblewoman said.

  Somehow I didn’t want to interest her. The two men stepped back at the wave of her hand. She stood there, still in her elegant robes, her wooden sandals barely sinking into the mud. “Do you climb things other than trees?” she asked, her deeply lined face bent in an icy smile, her eyes lacquer-black against her white-painted skin.

  I nodded, testing my balance in this uncertain conversation. “That’s why my mother calls me Risuko. I’m always climbing—our house, rocks, trees....” Her eyes brightened, cold as they were, and I started to let go and brag. “There’s a cliff below the castle up there.” I pointed to where Lord Imagawa’s stone castle stood on the hill at the edge of the woods.

  “Ah?” she said, looking pleased.

  “I like to climb up the cliff.”

  “Oh?” she sniffed, “but certainly a skinny little girl like you couldn’t get terribly far.”

  That stung. “Oh, yes, I’ve climbed all the way to the top of the cliff bunches of times, and up the walls too, to look in at the windows and see the beautiful clothes....”

  I clamped my mouth shut and blushed. Noble as she clearly was, she could have had me flogged or beheaded for daring to do such a thing. I tensed.

  But this odd old woman didn’t have her enormous litter-carriers beat me with the wooden swords they carried in their belts. Instead, she truly smiled, and that terrifying smile was what let me know that my fate was sealed, that I couldn’t run. “Yes,” she said. “Very interesting. Risuko.”

  She motioned for the men to bring her palanquin. It was decorated, as were the coats of the men, with the lady’s mon, her house’s symbol: a plain, solid white circle.

  They placed the box beside her, and she eased into it, barely seeming to move. “Come, walk beside me, Risuko. I have some more questions to ask you.” Then she snapped, “Little Brother!”

  “Yes, Lady!” called the servant who stood at the front of the palanquin, the larger of the two men. He gave a quiet sort of grunt and then, in perfect unison with his partner, lifted the box and began to march forward.

  “Stay with me, girl!” the old lady ordered, and I scurried to keep up. I was surprised by the strength of the two men—they hardly seemed to notice the weight that they carried—but their speed was what took my breath away. As I scrambled to keep up, the mistress began to bark at me again. “What did I hear about your father? He taught you to write?”

  How did she know my father? “Yes, he was a scribe.” I wanted to add, but did not, And a samurai too.

  “He can’t have been much of a scribe,” she sniffed. “No apprentice, so he teaches his daughter to use a brush? What a waste. And the rags you wear?”

  “He... died. Mother has struggled...,” I panted. “He was a good scribe... But there wasn’t much... need for one here... What do farmers need with contracts or letters?”

  We moved quickly, speeding right past the path that led back to my home. Ah, well, I thought, we’ll join up with the main road and come into the village the long way.

  “Yes,” she said, looking pleased with herself, “I suppose Lord Imagawa would be about the only client worth having around here in this wilderness. Don’t fall behind, child.”

  I was beginning to sweat, in spite of the cold. The smell of approaching snow was sour in the air.

  The rear servant—the one who wasn’t quite as enormous as the one the lady had called Little Brother—pulled even with me. Without turning his head, the man gave a low bark. Imperceptibly, the two men slowed to a pace that I could match. Grateful, I looked over toward the servant in the rear. I wasn’t sure, but I could have sworn that he winked.

  I could see the bulk of Lord Imagawa’s castle though the open shutters of the palanquin. Banners flew from the roof that I’d never seen there before—blue and red. The old lady followed my gaze up the hill. “Yes, depressing old pile of rock, isn’t it?”

  I couldn’t think of any way to answer that. I wasn’t sure that she expected me too answer.

  “You really climbed all the way up to the windows?” She was looking at me closely. I nodded. “Yes, very interesting.” She clicked her tongue. “And today? I don’t suppose you could have seen anything of interest today.”

  “Lord Imagawa,” I panted. “Soldier. Pointing at... drawing.”

  Now her eyes widened. “You could see that from such a distance? Could you see what the drawing looked like?”

  Green squares, surrounded by smaller squares of red and blue. What looked like little pine trees sticking out of the squares. I nodded.

  The lady smiled again, looking like an old mother pig when it’s found a nice puddle to wallow in. Somehow the smile was even more frightening.

  At that moment, we met up with the main road. I was certain that we would turn right, back toward the village, to my house, my mother, and that some explanation for this peculiar line of questions would present itself.

  Instead, the palanquin turned smoothly left.

  Confused, I stopped in my tracks.

  “Stop!” the lady yelled. Little Brother and the winking one came to a halt. “Come along, girl!”

  “But...?”

  “I told you to keep up with me, child.” She wasn’t even looking at me.

  “But... the village is...?” I pointed back down the road I had been walking most of my life, to the bridge I could see just behind the spur of trees that led to my house.

  “Silly Risuko. Down!” The two men lowered her to the crossroad. Now she looked at me. “You are not going back there. Your mother sold you to me this morning.” She leaned out the window and barked at the carriers, “Go!”

  2—Into the Circle

  I began to back away. I was thinking—if I was thinking—that I could get underneath the bridge, in among the tangled beams where I had hidden so often before. No one had ever been able to find me there. Except, of course, my father.

  Before I had managed even to stagger back to the small road leading to the bridge and to my home, a hand as big as a melon closed around my wrist. The giant called Little Brother’s expression was hardly threatening, but far from friendly. With his free hand he untied the belt at his waist, which turned out to be a thick length of smooth cord. He let his polished wooden sword fall to the road. Turning back to the palanquin, he grunted. “Wrists?”

  “That depends,” said the old woman. She smirked at me. “We can do this any one of a number of ways, Risuko. You may come as my guest, in which case he will simply tie the rope around your waist so that you don’t... get lost. You may come as my prisoner, in which case he will bind your hands to keep you from escaping too easily. Or you may come as my possession, in which case he will hog-tie you and carry you on the bar to my palanquin here. Now. Which shall it be?” Her face seemed almost kindly despite the obvious threat, and yet I felt her eyes boring into me. “Well?”

  I looked up at the two men, whose faces were stone, and glanced desperately down the path to the village. Little Brother’s hand remained on my wrist, and I knew that I could not possibly have escaped his grasp. My throat was thick, but a kind of awful, resigned relief settled on me. I looked to the lady again, whose made-up face seemed hardly to have moved, and then, finally back up into the warm, boulder-like face of Little Brother. I slumped. “Guest.”

  “Excellent,” said the lady, as Little Brother tied one end of the long c
ord around my waist, picked up his sword, and handed the other end of the leash to his fellow, who favored me with a grimace that may have been another smile. “Enough of these delays,” barked the noblewoman. “We have a delivery to make. Go!”

  Down the path to Pineshore and away from my home they went, and I stumbled along behind them, down into the valley, watching the clouds thickening the sky above us, blotting out the thin midday sun.

  —

  I couldn’t feel my feet, and it was not because of the cold—or not only because of the cold. Mother had sold me. I would never see her or Usako again. As I stumbled beside the palanquin, my shock began to turn to cold rage, and then to fear. Who was this lady who now owned me?

  An Imagawa rider galloped by us in the opposite direction, splattering slushy mud onto my already cold, already filthy legs.

  My stomach rumbled against the rope bound around my waist. Between climbing and walking I was tired and even hungrier than I had been.

  We walked along the main street in Pineshore some time later, I saw some boys a little older than me carrying baskets of dried fish up the road. They stopped and bowed as we walked past them, and the look in their eyes was one of pure awe. For a moment I woke to myself, and thought what a remarkable picture we made: the two enormous servants carrying the elegant lady in the box, with the ragged, skinny girl shuffling along behind them at the end of a rope like a goat.

  A gang of anxious-looking soldiers paid us no notice at all.

  We approached an inn near the center of town. Two young women with the emblem of a white disk on their winter robes stepped out into the street and escorted us into the courtyard.

  “Lady Chiyome,” said the finer-featured of the two maids. “Welcome back. I see you have hunted well.”

  “Yes,” said the lady, as Little Brother helped her out of the box, “I’ve managed to bag myself a squirrel.”