Risuko

by David Kudler

  I stopped. The voices couldn’t have come from outside of the compound, could they?

  “You know, there are a hundred and eight ways that I could kill you.” The voice was colder than the air that bit at my face and hands, and so clear that I stumbled and nearly fell off of the wall.

  “You killed me five years ago,” said another, sadder voice. “I don’t think any of the other hundred and seven could have been any more effective.”

  I looked to my right: the Retreat’s stone chimney with its wooden cover stood within touching distance; the voices were floating up like smoke from inside the small building. My heart stopped racing.

  “Please,” said the first voice, and now it sounded as if the voice, which had been as keen as a knife’s blade, had crumbled like shattered ice. “Please. I had no wish—”

  It was Mieko. And I knew, before hearing the other speaker answer, that it was Masugu.

  “Of course you didn’t. You did what you had to do. Your duty. As you do in all things. As do I.”

  I listened intently, but the chimney conveyed nothing more but silence.

  —

  When I stumbled, shivering, back into the kitchen, Kee Sun was in the midst of pulling on his winter coat. “Where were yeh, idiot-girl! I was thinking yeh’d turned into an icicle out in that storm!”

  “G-got t-turned around out in the s-s-snow.” I put the empty basket down. Emi and Toumi were both gone—cleaning out the baths, no doubt. I should have left immediately to help them, but the kitchen fire was warm and I was wet and chilled to the bone; I couldn’t move.

  “Going out without yehr robes. Fah!” The cook frowned at me, and grunted. “They’re already well on their way to draining the tubs. If I count it right... Well, it’d probably be a good night to give Smiley-girlie a pot ‘o that mint-and-poppy tea. Why don’t yeh stay here and brew her up a pot.” He tossed me a huge towel, which I wrapped gratefully around me as I stumbled over to the area where the herbs were stored.

  I blinked up at the shelf beneath the Buddha shrine on which the oils were stored; where the small clay bottle had been that Kee Sun had shown us the morning when he started teaching us about herbs, there was an empty space. There were bottles on either side of the space, but they were clearly marked in his blocky hand: oil of chrysanthemum, oil of mint, oil of clove, oil of pine... “Kee Sun-s-san,” I asked, teeth still chattering. “D-do you want me c-cut up some of the dried poppies to make the t-tea? The b-bottle of p-poppy juice is g-gone.”

  “WHAT?” he bellowed, stomping over to where I was standing and rifling through the bottles and jars. He spat a torrent of what I was fairly certain was Korean and assumed to be quite profane; he searched on the shelf again, and then on the floor below. Finally, he glowered at me. “Yeh didn’t take that too, did yeh, Bright-eyes?”

  27—Killing Dance

  We had to brew Emi’s sleeping tea with corydalis root instead of poppy; the poppy had gone missing. Kee Sun snarled in frustration. It wouldn’t work as well.

  By the time I arrived to deliver the tea, Emi and Toumi had in fact finished draining the baths and were back in our room getting ready for sleep. The others were, as usual, already snoring in their bedrolls. Fuyudori, of course, had her own chamber, which I had never resented more than that night.

  “Here is your tea,” I said, holding the small pot out to Emi.

  She shook her head. “No, thank you. I’m so tired, to be honest, I really don’t think I need it.”

  Biting back my frustration at having wasted my labor, I turned to bring the pot back to the kitchen. Toumi stood in my way, her arms folded. “Where have you been, Mouse-chan? Peeking at the Lieutenant so you could sigh some more?”

  No, I kept myself from saying, I was eavesdropping on him having an argument with Mieko-sensei, you vulture. Instead, I repeated the lie that I had told Kee Sun: “I got lost in the snow after I dumped the rubbish. The wind turned me around and I couldn’t find the door. And then I had to chop up corydalis for this tea, because someone took the poppy juice. Did you decide to have some poppy with the sake, Toumi?”

  I’d hoped to get some kind of a reaction out of her, but she gawked at me in confusion. “Why would I want a bunch of poppy juice? I sleep fine.”

  “Who knows? Excuse me: I need to return this pot.”

  As I left the dormitory, I saw through the thickening snowfall a shadow moving toward the front gate. Not wanting to run into Masugu-san or Mieko-sensei, I fairly ran to the kitchen. By the time I had gotten back to our dormitory, Toumi had joined the others in snoring. I assumed that Emi too was asleep, since she could fall asleep as quickly as a drop of water freezing on an icicle.

  I hung my clothes on the rail by the tiny stove that kept our room more or less warm. Shivering, without even the meager heat of a tepid bath to cut the deep chill, I crawled into my bedroll, prepared to lie there, teeth chattering, no one’s company but my own until the darkness took me.

  As I pulled the bedding up to my nose, I heard Emi’s voice. “Murasaki?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you really get lost? On the way to the trash pit?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it isn’t that far. And you always seem to know where you are.”

  “Not always,” I muttered. And a part of me wanted to leave it there. “But... not exactly. I kind of overheard something, and so I kind of had to stay out.”

  “Stay out?” I could hear her shifting in her bedding, turning toward me. “There was someone outside of the Full Moon? On a night like this?”

  “Um, no, not exactly. More like I heard them and I climbed up, and...”

  “Oh. That makes sense.” We lay there, silent for a moment. “Who was it?”

  “I... It was kind of private. I think.” I was feeling very uncomfortable; on the one hand, I really wanted to talk with Emi about what I had overheard. I needed help understanding just what it was that they’d been talking about. “I...”

  “Well,” Emi said, very slowly, “you don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s not that. I...”

  We lay there in silence for a while longer.

  “I suppose,” Emi mused, “that it must have been the lieutenant and Mieko.”

  I turned toward her, gawking into the darkness. “How did you know that?”

  On Emi’s far side, Toumi muttered, “Honest, officer, I didn’t take the radish!”

  Emi and I giggled as we hadn’t done in days. She moved her bedding onto my mat. “You’re shivering,” she whispered.

  “I didn’t get to take a bath. And it is cold outside.”

  “True.” She moved closer to me, pulling me close with one arm; even through our bedding, her warmth washed over me.

  “Thanks.”

  “Welcome,” Emi sighed. “So, it was Masugu-san and Mieko-san?”

  “Yes. I think they were having a fight.”

  “They’ve been having a fight since before we got here.”

  That was true enough. “But I think he said she’d tried to kill him.” And I told her what I had overheard.

  “And then they just stopped talking?” Emi asked, when I was finished.

  “Yes. I thought it was strange. And I was worried that they would come out and see me, so I hid for a while, but they didn’t. They stayed in the Retreat.”

  “The Retreat?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a funny place for them to fight. Funny place for him to be at all.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said, though I hadn’t thought it in so many words.

  “Hmm,” Emi said, and then she began to snore.

  —

  I dreamed that night: a vivid dream, a dream that felt as if it had been sneaking up on me for days.

  Father was standing out in the snow, his swor
d in his hands, doing the exercises that he used to do every morning: a swift, flowing dance of space and steel. “Do no harm, Murasaki,” he said, slicing the air as he moved from foot to foot.

  “But Otō-san...!” I cried.

  “No harm,” he said as he danced on, cutting at the air. Only now, the snowflakes began to bleed as he cut them. Battle of white and scarlet...

  “Otō-san, what can I do?” I wept in the dream, my tears freezing to my cheeks.

  “Dance,” he said, his face still and calm, his blade whistling through the air. Blood flew from the tip of the sword, painting characters of death and disaster across the white ground.

  Dancing.

  Mieko, wiping the blood from her knife, the two dead Imagawa soldiers dead on the tatami before her.

  Father dancing, just like Mieko, the steps and moves that my body knew as if it had taken them before. With a blade in his hands, however, Father moved with a predator’s speed rather than Mieko’s dreamlike grace, and it seemed as if the dance was whole. Its hidden purpose was clear. It was a killing dance.

  “A kunoichi is a very special kind of woman indeed,” Father growled as he moved; the voice was not his but Lady Chiyome’s.

  I wept in the dream, and I have no doubt that I was weeping in my bed, but Father danced on, and the smell of blood filled my nostrils, sharp and metallic as the smell of the falling snow.

  28—Broken Dishes

  The next morning I woke with the scent of blood still fresh in my nose. It made me want to throw up.

  As I sat up, trying to calm my stomach, I noticed that Emi was gone, her bedding too. I scrambled over to Toumi, who was still sound asleep, her thumb lodged in her mouth.

  “Where’s Emi?” I growled. “What have you done with her?”

  Toumi coughed and pushed back at me, but I didn’t let go. “Wha?”

  “Where is Emi?” I found my fingers knotted in her shirt.

  She blinked blankly.

  “Emi. What did you do?”

  “Do?” She pushed back at me again, but I held tight. “Do? Retreat. Went to the damn Retreat.”

  I tumbled backward. “The... Retreat?”

  Toumi wiped the heel of her hand across her face. “Moon time. Her ’n’ Mai. Middle of the damn night. Cleared her bedding and off t’the damn Retreat.”

  “The Retreat?” I sat back on my heels.

  She pushed back at me once more, harder this time, and I let go. “Retreat. Retreat. Yes! Now, let’s go.”

  —

  I was anxious that Toumi would take advantage of Emi’s absence to torture me even more than she normally did. I needn’t have worried. She was just as surly as ever—if not more so—but since there were only two of us and just as much work to be done, she seemed mostly intent on getting the baths ready so that we could get to the kitchens.

  We began piling the previous night’s snow into the tubs. I felt as if I could indeed smell blood in the metallic snow-scent.

  As we worked—filling the tubs, lighting the fires—I could hear Toumi grumbling about bean curd, but even so, she seemed in a hurry to eat some of the previous night’s leftover rice—and, if Kee Sun wasn’t watching, some of the chicken that he would never let her have.

  I couldn’t imagine eating chicken—or any flesh—ever again.

  And of course, Kee Sun was watching. He always was. “Get that out of yehr beak, yeh!” he snapped when Toumi tried to sneak a piece of the meat that he was warming on a skewer over the fire. He slapped the back of her head with his fingers and she opened her mouth in surprise, sending the stolen bit of chicken flying into the flames. “Bean curd is what yeh need, and yeh know it. Chicken’s too hot for yehr liver. That there is for Bright-eyes here.”

  Toumi glared at me. I suppose it might have affected me more if I had slept somewhat better and if I hadn’t already been certain that she hated me.

  As we prepared the morning meal, it was Kee Sun’s eyes I felt on me, not Toumi’s. As we waiting for that morning’s rice to finish, he said, “Yeh’re both awful quiet without yehr smiley friend. What yeh eat, Bright-eyes, that’s got yeh looking like yeh swallowed yehr tongue?”

  “Nothing, Kee Sun-san,” I answered. “I had... a bad dream.”

  “Oh?” He peered at me, eyes dark.

  I would have loved to talk to him—to someone—about the nightmare that had haunted me, but I did not feel ready somehow. I merely nodded.

  “Hmm. And yeh, Falcon-girlie? Yeh been sneaking kimchee?”

  “Like I’d want that stuff.” Toumi’s face twisted in disgust. Then she turned away and muttered, “Like I’d get away with it.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt yehr capable, Falcon-girlie. That’s why I’m watchin’ yeh so close, see?” Kee Sun chuckled, though I couldn’t tell what the joke might be. “You have bad dreams too?”

  “No,” said Toumi through tight lips. “Stomach ache.”

  “Ay!” groaned Kee Sun and slapped his palm against his forehead. “Just do me and Bright-eyes here a favor, will yeh, and wait till after the evening meal?”

  “Wait?” asked Toumi. “Wait for what?”

  But Kee Sun just waved a hand at us both dismissively and banged the gong to let all of the Full Moon’s inhabitants know that the morning meal was ready to be served.

  —

  As everyone filed in to the hall, I could see that many of the women were already absent; clearly, they had gone to join Mai and Emi in the Retreat.

  I felt twin tremors of curiosity and concern about my friend wash through me as Toumi and I served out the meal.

  Fuyudori was sitting silently, which was a relief, since her flirtations with the Lieutenant had begun to annoy everyone. Thankfully, Masugu himself wasn’t present. Perhaps he was taking his horse out for a morning ride, as he had said he would. The Little Brothers and Aimaru were gone as well—most likely engaged in morning meditation and exercise, as they often were.

  Like Fuyudori, most of the remaining handful of women still left were glum and silent.

  Mieko-san certainly seemed pleased, smiling as I had not seen her do since we had arrived at the Full Moon. Whether it was Fuyudori’s silence or Masugu’s absence that had cheered her up or whether her good mood was due to something else entirely I couldn’t tell, but Lady Chiyome noticed as well.

  “Stop grinning, Mieko,” the old lady snapped. “You’re ruining my appetite.”

  “This humble servant apologizes, lady,” said Mieko, bowing her head demurely. The smile disappeared from her face, but somehow she managed to look just as pleased.

  As I began to bring several empty platters back to the kitchen, Toumi squawked, and the tray that she was carrying clattered to the ground. She stood, knees bent and pressed together, looking as if she were trying hard not to make water.

  The table closest to her burst into laughter—the first that I had heard in the hall in days. “Come on,” brayed Sachi, who had returned from what she’d called a hunting trip the night before. “Let’s get you to the Retreat.”

  “Retreat?” Toumi said the word with the same bewildered tone that I had that morning. Still bent over, covering her lap with her hands, she didn’t move; her eyes were perfect circles of shock, and her ears burned red.

  “Yes, the Retreat. It looks as if all of that bean curd that Kee Sun’s been feeding you has actually done you some good. Come on, I might as well go too. You’ll have lots of company there. No. Not through the kitchen. Kee Sun would have to wash the whole place down,” Sachi giggled, grabbing Toumi’s elbow and leading her through the main doors.

  Moon time, I realized. Toumi too had reached her first moon time. I was going to be alone.

  “Pick up the girl’s tray,” barked Lady Chiyome to the girls nearest to her. “Help the squirrel here bring our food before you disappear too.”

  It was a m
ark of the authority and fear in which all of the women held Chiyome-sama that they didn’t even hesitate in following her order.

  As I started back toward the kitchen to refill the serving platters, the door to the hall opened again. Aimaru poked his snow-covered head in and peered around.

  As he began to leave again, Lady Chiyome snapped, “Well, boy? What is it? Why have you let a draft in and turned our tea to ice?”

  “Pardon, my lady,” Aimaru said, eyes downcast. “I was looking for the lieutenant. I saddled his horse as he asked last night for us to do—usually he’s up before we are, so I thought he must be in here.”

  “Probably sleeping in,” the lady growled, and for some reason flashed an angry glance at Mieko, who was sipping her tea, the very portrait of studied innocence. “Go wake him!”

  “Yes, my lady,” Aimaru said, bowing through the barely-open door.

  “And shut the door!” Chiyome-sama yelled. “It’s freezing in here!”

  Wisely, Aimaru closed the door rather than answer again.

  Kee Sun, whom I had almost never seen outside of his kitchen, met me outside of its entrance and exchanged my empty platters for a steaming metal tea pot. “For the lady,” he whispered, and disappeared back into his domain.

  I scurried up to the head table and refilled Chiyome-sama’s cup. She put both hands around the cup and grunted, “Leave the pot.” It seemed as if that were the best response I could hope for.

  As I turned to Mieko-san, who seemed to have finished the rather large helping that I had given her, the door flew open again.

  Lady Chiyome took a deep breath, ready to shout at whoever had, once again, let in the cold, but the two Little Brothers had entered at a dead run, closing the door behind them. Their swords were drawn.

  Even Lady Chiyome didn’t seem to have anything to say about that.

  The smaller of the pair ran to take up a place behind her, looming menacingly there with his sword. I instinctively scampered out of the way to give the larger one room as he moved directly in front of her and knelt.

  “Lieutenant Masugu has been poisoned,” he said.