Risuko

by David Kudler

  I shrugged and pressed a foot into the bark of the tree.

  “No,” whispered Fuyudori, grabbing my shoulder. “Not the tree—the hemlock. It’s too far, you won’t be able to hear.”

  We both looked over to the great hall’s icy wall. I gulped.

  “Well,” Fuyudori sighed in her kindest, cruelest voice, “perhaps it is too difficult....”

  Before she finished the sentence I had stridden over to the wall and begun my ascent.

  It was, perhaps, wrong of me to enjoy doing something so dangerous and so obviously likely to anger my patron. But digging my fingers into the narrow, icy half-timbered beams provided enough of a challenge that my breath began to pull. When I reached the first horizontal beam, I looked down to see Fuyudori staring up at me, her mouth and eyes perfect circles of astonishment. I allowed myself to grin as I continued on up.

  The last section of the climb was extremely difficult. The only handholds were two beams that ran straight up to either side of the small window. I had to press with all of my strength against either side with my toes and thumbs, scooting up slowly. The wood was cold and I had to move carefully so as not to slip, and the plaster rubbed roughly against my cheek and stomach. It was the hardest climbing I had ever done. The muscles on the outsides of my legs and arms, my shoulders and my hips ached and began to quiver from the strain.

  Just as I was sure that my strength would give out, dropping me to a certain broken bone or three, my forehead hit something.

  It was the window ledge. I had made it.

  Looping one set of fingers and then the other over the outer sides of the ledge—I didn’t want my fingers to be visible from inside—I could at last use my fingers and the insides of my arms to hold me up, allowing the thumbs and outsides a well-earned rest.

  As my heartbeat stopped racing and I caught my breath, I could hear Lieutenant Masugu’s low voice rumbling from the room. “I will stake my honor on it, lady, it wasn’t her.”

  Lady Chiyome’s voice managed to be even colder than usual. “You’ll risk so much on such a little creature? One whose family honor is hardly equal to yours?”

  There was silence in the room, and my heart sped right back up again as I suddenly realized that the family she was insulting was mine.

  When it came, Masugu-san’s voice was quiet but as sharp as a falcon’s cry. “It wasn’t Murasaki. She saved our lives.”

  “Hmmm.” Unfazed, she clucked her tongue. “Well, unless you think the spirits have been playing games, then someone was in your chamber, Masugu.”

  He grunted. “I think the spirits must have better things to do than to move my papers around. The Little Brothers tells me there are signs of the raiders still being in the valley.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Even so, do not let your affection for the girl blind you to what she is,” the old woman said, her voice as cold as her ledge.

  Masugu muttered something that I could not hear.

  My shoulders were beginning to quake with the effort of keeping myself in place, and yet I could hardly move. I needed to know what it was that they suspected me of. Looking down, I saw Fuyudori skulking at the base of the tree, her white hair like snow, gleaming in the starlight; she looked even more ghost-like than ever.

  “In any case, Chiyome-sama,” Masugu-san said, “it wasn’t found. It’s still safely hidden away in the chimney.”

  “Good,” Lady Chiyome grumbled. “Lord Takeda’s plans depend upon it being delivered, Lieutenant. Don’t forget that. As tedious as this service may be, my young friend, stuck among all of these young ladies, it is nonetheless essential, yes?”

  “Yes, lady,” Masugu answered, though he didn’t sound terribly happy.

  “Now get back to your room, Masugu, and let an old woman get her sleep.”

  “Yes, lady,” he said, and I heard his steady footsteps going down the stairs.

  Before I was able to begin my descent, however, I heard Chiyome-sama speak once more. “Come in, Risuko. You’ll catch your death hanging outside of windows like that.”

  19—In the Web

  My shaking arms suddenly went still, as if instantly turned to ice. Looking down, I saw that Fuyudori had disappeared. I was trapped and alone.

  “Do hurry, Risuko-chan,” said Lady Chiyome in that quiet voice that still managed to sound quite piercing. “I don’t want to have to call Kee Sun to haul you in. He might slip and drop you, and that would be the most awful mess.”

  Arms trembling, my back screaming with the effort and the cold, I pulled myself up, one elbow at a time, peeking over the sill into Chiyome-sama’s chamber.

  It was smaller than I would have expected. Most of the space was dominated by a large, black bed that amounted to a small room of its own—a tall box almost like a huge palanquin, self-contained as Chiyome-sama herself, and almost enclosed, with a chair and a desk built into the entry. The space remaining was taken up by tatami mats, in the middle of which stood a small kneeling desk; she was seated cross-legged behind it. Before her on the desk stood a number of small, brightly colored shapes.

  “Good evening, my little squirrel,” said Lady Chiyome, smirking sourly. “It is so lovely of you to join me. And by such an unusual route. Extraordinary. Not even Mieko in her prime could have undertaken such a climb unaided. I am most impressed.”

  I collapsed to my knees, staring down at the tatami, utterly bewildered. “Thank you, Chiyome-sama.”

  “Hmm. You were unaided, I suppose? No mechanical assistance? No one helping you?”

  I thought of Fuyudori, who had urged me to climb, and then disappeared. “Nobody helping me,” I said.

  She rested a finger to her nose, and then grunted. “Yes,” she said. “Most impressive.” Squaring her shoulders, she peered at me. “Tell me, Risuko, what did you hear?”

  “N-nothing, lady,” I spluttered.

  “Do not lie to me, girl. You were beneath the window ledge well before Masugu left.”

  I knew better, but I could not help staring at the old woman. “How—?”

  She favored me with a wicked grin. “Little girls shouldn’t be too curious. Now tell me, Risuko, what did you hear?”

  My stomach, which had been clenched tight, suddenly felt as though Kee Sun had force-fed me lead. “I...”

  She waited, unblinking.

  I took a deep breath. “You were speaking with Masugu-san about me. About whether I could be trusted. About whether I’d done... something. I couldn’t figure out what though. He said something about spirits in his rooms?”

  She grunted again. “And were you playing the fox spirit earlier tonight, Risuko-chan?”

  I blinked in confusion.

  “Where you the kitsune haunting Masugu-san’s chamber? Someone has been playing games there.”

  “No, Chiyome-sama!” I said, shocked. “Absolutely not!”

  We sat there, staring at each other, until I thought I might choke or that my beating heart might explode out of my chest. Finally, the old woman gave a half nod and said, “Perhaps not. Perhaps not.” She twirled one of the colored shapes on her desk between her fingers—I saw that they were pebbles of various sizes, painted in bright colors and distributed over a large, creased piece of paper that had been webbed with squiggly lines and cramped calligraphy. At the top was written Land of the Rising Sun. The wicked smile reappeared. “Do you know what this is, my little squirrel?”

  I was about to shake my head, when the lines and shapes that marked the paper suddenly seemed to come unclouded and I recognized them. “It’s a map. Of Japan?”

  My patron clapped her hands together, clearly pleased. “Ah, well, done, my dear. Your father didn’t waste your childhood entirely. Can you find our location upon the map?”

  Scowling with concentration, I looked down and found my family’s home province, Serenity—toward the eastern edge at the top.
It had many red stones to the northern, left-hand edge, as many of blue at the southern edge and one large green stone in the middle, just where I knew my family’s home to be. I touched the pebble briefly, and then followed the blue line that marked the Weatherbank River’s flow down to Pineshore, and the heavy dashed line that showed the Eastern Sea Road, the great coastal highway up which we had marched—had it been only weeks before? It felt as if that journey had belonged to another lifetime.

  Tracing our path through Quick River and Worth Provinces (a sea of red stones, small and large) and into the mountains, I found the southern end of Dark Letter Province; here there were more red pebbles, one at what looked like the Rice Paddy Pass garrison, and one very small one over the tiny mark of a full moon. Clustered around the stone were a number of sharp, metal spikes—pins, such as my mother had sometimes used to use when she was mending our clothes. The top of each was painted red and white. “Here,” I said, pointing.

  “Well done, my little navigator. And what would you guess these are?” She touched a dry finger to one of a large number of white stones that stood near the Imperial City.

  The painted pebbles were scattered around the map in clusters; the largest number where white, red and blue, with a number of other colors sprinkled here and there. The red-and-white pins were distributed in ones and twos across the provinces, seemingly at random, always near a pebble.

  The stones weren’t towns—those were painted directly onto the map, their names labeled in a cramped, neat hand. They could represent rice or gold, but it seemed odd that so many of the stones were gathered around the center of Honshu Island, the main island of our nation; I knew that other parts of the country produced food and wealth.

  Knowing that Lady Chiyome hated it when I stuck my tongue out, I bit it as I continued to scowl down at the map. “Are they... ?” I did not want to appear to be stupid. “Are they armies, Chiyome-sama?”

  A look of pleased surprise rushed over her face, and I felt relief rush through me. “What makes you say that, my squirrel?”

  “Well,” I said, “It looks like a multicolored game of Go, like Otō-san used to play with old Ichihiro from the castle.” Peering back up at her, I asked, “Is this a game?”

  The old woman loosed her wheezing, mirthless laugh. “Yes! Yes, indeed, it is a game—a very complicated and deadly one.” She touched the one green pebble where it stood near our home. “Do you see this green marker?”

  I nodded.

  “Does it look familiar, child?”

  I blinked. The large green stone surrounded by smaller stones of blue and red. “The picture I drew for you. That I saw Lord Imagawa and the soldier looking at.”

  “Indeed. That told me that a large battle was coming, though Masugu and his friends brought it to us rather more quickly than I expected. This green piece represents the remaining force of the Imagawa—a considerable army, but a shadow of the power that they used to wield.”

  “Then the red... The red are the forces of the Takeda?” I reasoned.

  “Well done,” the old woman said, though the praise was fainter in her tone than in the words. Pointing just north of the tiny stone that marked our own little army, she said, “This stone represents the garrison at Highfield, where Masugu’s riders are serving, guarding our territories from the forces of the Uesugi.” A group of yellow stones stood further to the northwest.

  Pointing down the river from the red and yellow markers around Highfield, she said very quietly, “And there is Midriver Island.”

  Her hand swept southeast, toward the provinces directly below Serenity Province. A group of blue stones sprawled throughout this region. “These are the forces of the Matsudaira; they used to be loyal to the Imagawa, but the arrogance of that old clan drove them to ally themselves elsewhere. Currently they are loosely allied both with Lord Takeda and with the current shogun, Lord Oda. These are his armies.” Her hand passed over the sea of white in the center of the map. “What do you think each of these armies wishes to do?”

  Again I frowned—there were a number of ways of answering that question, depending on how you looked at it. “Um, to defend their provinces?”

  She waved a dismissive hand, “Of course, of course. But do you think it is good for Japan, this sea of warring colors?”

  Trusting that I knew how she wished me to respond, I shook my head.

  “No, it is not!” she barked, as forcibly as I had ever heard her. “Our nation has been at war with itself for almost a hundred years. Since the Kamakura shoguns were overthrown, warlords up and down the nation have strived to unite all of Japan under one banner, to become shogun, and to bring law and peace back to our blessed islands. Yet no one lord has been strong enough to defeat the others, and so there has been a constant game of changing allegiances, of treachery, and bloodshed, each lord aiming to protect his own clan’s best interests. It must end.”

  “And Lord Takeda can stop it?”

  She grunted and gave a grim nod. “He is the greatest general of the major powers—noble and strong of mind, unbeatable on the battlefield, lacking Lord Oda’s inconstancy, his fascination with gimmicks and foreign oddities. Once the Imagawa are gone, Lord Takeda will be the strongest force left, save for Lord Oda and his armies. When the other lords unite beneath the four-diamond Takeda banner, the Oda will have to relinquish the capital city to us, and Takeda Shingen will rule a united Japan as the emperor’s shōgun.”

  Why was she telling me all of this? I certainly couldn’t have told you at the time. I think in part it was a test—to see if I could follow what she was talking about. In part, too, I think that it was a subject close to whatever served the old woman for a heart. It was a topic about which she had clearly thought long and deeply.

  Eventually, she took and released a deep breath. Indicating the white pebbles with one elegant, wrinkled hand, she asked, “And what do you know about Oda-sama, young Kano?”

  I thought of the conversations that I’d had with Masugu-san on the long ride to the Full Moon. I couldn’t tell her everything—both because I couldn’t stand to admit how little I knew, and because I wasn’t sure that the lieutenant was supposed to tell me and I didn’t want to get him into trouble. “I... I know that my father served for a time as a samurai beneath him.”

  Chiyome-sama narrowed her eyes. “And do you know why your father left his service? Not everyone does, you know.”

  “I...” I looked up into her shrewd face. “I know that my father, Emi’s and Toumi’s were sent on a mission that they refused. That is all I know.”

  “Then you know more than I thought you did. Do you know anything about this mission?” When I shook my head, she daintily straightened up the stones around the capital. She quietly waited until I was once again feeling on the edge of bursting. “Ask yourself, Risuko-chan, what your father valued more than anything. More even than his own honor.”

  “I...” She was asking such an impossible question, yet I did not know how to refuse or to avoid her gaze. “Family,” I whispered.

  “Yes,” she said. “Then ask yourself what mission Lord Oda could have given to so honorable a man as your father that he would have refused.”

  My eyes must have given some sense of the horror that swept over me at that moment, because Lady Chiyome laughed. “No, silly girl, he wasn’t ordered to kill you. Why would Oda-sama have bothered?”

  “Then...?”

  A wry smile twisted her still-powdered face. “Such a bright girl as yourself, you should be able to work it out.”

  “I... I can’t imagine, Chiyome-sama.” I stared down at the board. “Lady? What are these, these red and white pins?”

  Her smile broadened. “I expect you to work that out on your own as well, Risuko. Now I’m tired of idle prattle. Leave me, girl.”

  Uncertain, I stood and began to stumble back toward the window.

  Her rough, dry laugh
burst forth again, stopping me. “No, no! The stairs, stupid child! Once you’ve been caught, you might as well take advantage of the easiest route of escape.” Her face still bore all of the signs of amusement, though her eyes were mirthless. “Do shutter the window, however. It is getting chilly.”

  With a nod of my head, I pulled the shutters closed.

  “And, my squirrel?” the old woman muttered as I began to withdraw toward the stairs. I froze, afraid of what she might have to add. She smirked at me thoughtfully. “When next you decide to listen at windows on a frosty night, do remember that the steam from your breath rises. Place yourself to the side.”

  Stunned again, I mumbled a quick, “Yes, Chiyome-sama,” and tiptoed down the stairs and back to my quarters as quickly as my wobbly legs could carry me.

  20—Smelly Work

  When I arrived back at our cabin, Fuyudori was standing just inside of the door looking pinched and pale in the dim light of the entryway. “What took you so long?”

  “I could ask you the same thing. Where did you disappear to?” I snapped, much to my own surprise.

  She seemed as shocked as I was at my outburst. “I... Lieutenant Masugu came out and walked right toward where I was standing. I gave the signal, but then I had to hide behind the Retreat. When I came back, you were gone. I assumed that, since he had already left, you must have climbed back down, but you’ve been gone so long, I was beginning to be worried.”

  I looked up into her face and realized suddenly that she was lying to me. Not in a large way, but for some reason she wasn’t telling me the entire truth. I decided to return the favor. “I reached the top, but it was quiet. I listened to see if anything was going on, but when I didn’t hear anything, I went up to the roof and climbed down from there. It’s not easy climbing down a slick wall in the middle of winter, you know.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded and said, “Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t fall. Sleep well, Risuko-chan.”