Risuko

by David Kudler

  The low rumble of his voice seemed to wash over the hall like an enormous ocean wave. All of the women leapt to their feet. “Masugu!” shouted Fuyudori and started to run toward the door.

  “STOP!” yelled Lady Chiyome. It hardly mattered whether the order was aimed at Fuyudori, who was poised to sprint to the door, or at the smaller of the Little Brothers, who had begun to move to intercept her, his sword raised high: all motion in the hall stopped.

  Chiyome-sama stood, her arms extended, her face a mirror of the dismay that had clutched me.

  Mieko stood as still as a snake before it strikes. Her face was a neutral, lovely mask as always, but there was a fierce concentration in her eyes that I had seen once before: at the Mount Fuji Inn.

  Lady Chiyome lowered her arms, which I noticed were shaking. “How do you know he was poisoned?”

  The Little Brother before her turned again and knelt, even as the other took up a position just inside of the door. “He is unconscious. His pulse is very slow. There was a jar of rice wine by his bed, and it smelled of poppy juice.”

  “Poppy juice?” snapped Mieko-san, and Lady Chiyome turned toward her, her face twisted both with shock and annoyance that her usually deferential maid was suddenly so outspoken. “He hates it. He won’t allow his soldiers to use it, even in the greatest pain. He would never touch it knowingly.”

  Lady Chiyome held up a shaking hand once more to reestablish the proper order of things. “Is this so?”

  “Yes, my lady,” both Little Brothers answered.

  A sob broke out at the far end of the room. Fuyudori was standing, her fist shoved into her mouth, tears flowing down her face.

  “Stop it, girl!” Chiyome-sama snarled. “I think the meal is over. Shino. Take this worthless, white-haired idiot off to the Retreat. If it isn’t her moon time or yours, it will be soon enough.”

  “But—!” Fuyudori sobbed.

  Lady Chiyome had had enough. “GO! NOW!”

  Fuyudori’s mouth snapped shut and her eyes flew open. She followed a fuming Shino out of the hall.

  “And the rest of you stay where you are. All of you!”

  Everyone in the hall was absolutely still.

  “AND WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?” roared Chiyome-sama.

  I flushed with fear, thinking perhaps that I was the one at whom she was yelling. I hadn’t moved a muscle, of course. I was terrified that someone could have tried to poison Masugu-san—someone from our own community.

  Mieko however was standing with her hand ready to open the door. I was standing right next to where she had been seated and yet I hadn’t seen her rise or move. It was as if she had simply appeared on the other side of the hall. I saw the Little Brothers both flinch, telling me that she’d managed to move without their noticing either.

  Mieko gave a simple, almost military bow. “This humble servant was anticipating her mistress’s always-wise command.”

  Lady Chiyome’s rheumy eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything.

  The maid, looking anything but humble, straightened. “I know more about poison than anyone at the Full Moon. I am the person best suited to treating Takeda-sama’s representative.”

  Without looking away from Mieko, Chiyome muttered to the Little Brother still kneeling before her, “Is the boy there?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Go with my humble servant there. Send the boy back. Make sure nothing happens.”

  The Little Brother touched his head to the floor of the hall.

  Grunting, Chiyome-sama leaned forward onto her elbows, glaring at Mieko. “Don’t do anything stupid, girl.”

  Mieko bowed again, less stiffly, and fairly ran through the door as soon as the Little Brother reached her.

  I know more about poisons....

  “Risuko!” shouted Lady Chiyome.

  I found that my own feet had begun to lead me to the door. I knew that I couldn’t let Mieko alone with Masugu-san, not when she’d already threatened to kill him. For a samurai to die by poison was a dreadful waste. For Masugu-san to die...

  Blinking, I turned back toward the mistress of the Full Moon, knelt and bowed deeply, my forehead touching the tray full of dirty bowls.

  “Go tell Kee Sun what has happened to the lieutenant. Tell him to... assist that presumptuous chit in treating Masugu. Tell him that you may assist him, if he needs.”

  Leaping to my feet, I started to run to the kitchen, stopped and tried to turn, bow and start running again, and tripped, sending the tray and bowls flying. Several of them shattered.

  When I started to try to pick them up, Chiyome-sama roared. “Forget the dishes, idiot. GO!” As I flew through the door, I heard her growl, “The rest of us are going to stay right here.”

  29—Proper Duty

  “Mugwort!” growled Kee Sun, pulling out a bag full of tiny herb pellets. “Mogusa! The old folks burn these on your back every year, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. My hands were shaking. I only hoped that the Little Brothers were watching Mieko closely. “On New Year’s Day. One pellet—”

  “—for every year, yes, yes.” He took a deep breath. “Light these and hold them against the bottoms of his feet, hear? Till he wakes up. Raise blisters if yeh have to. Don’t stop till he wakes.”

  “Yes, Kee Sun.”

  He grabbed a pot of pickled ginger. “And wave this under her nose.”

  “Her nose?”

  “His nose! His nose.” He looked as if he were about to throw the clay pot at me. “Don’t sass me, girlie.”

  “No, Kee Sun-san.” I took the ginger and held both herbs to my belly.

  “Go.” He turned back to the stove, where he had a pot of water starting to boil. “I’ll be there as soon as the tonic is ready.”

  “Yes, Kee Sun-san.”

  “Go!”

  I went. My mind was full with the previous night’s dream—about my father’s sword exercises, which were the same as Mieko’s slow dance—and with the argument that I had overheard, and with sound of the bodies of the two Imagawa soldiers thumping to the tatami—and I knew in my heart that Mieko was a killer. As lovely and graceful as she might seem, and as kind to me as she had been, she was trained to take life; I could not let her take Masugu-san’s.

  The snow had stopped and the clouds broken; the morning was clear and still and very cold. I ran across the snow-covered courtyard holding the ginger and the mugwort as gently as I could in my trembling fingers.

  The older of the Little Brothers stood at the entrance to the guesthouse like one of the statues of the thunder-hurlers at the entrance to the temple of the Buddha at Pineshore. His feet were set wide and his hand was on his sword hilt. Though his face was impassive, he was watching me fiercely.

  “I b-brought the herbs for M-masugu-san.” When he didn’t move aside, I added, “From Kee Sun-san.”

  Though his expression didn’t soften in the slightest, he stepped aside and slid the door open for me.

  Inside, the guesthouse was a mess. Screens had been tipped over, tatami mats rolled up and replaced carelessly, and a vase lay in the middle of the floor. I began to pick it up, but realized that my hands were already full, and that I had more urgent work than to neaten the lieutenant’s rooms.

  The other Little Brother stood at the entrance to the bedchamber, a scowl of distaste on his usually warm face. I heard a groan from the other room and then a quiet, high-pitched curse. “Hiding things! I told you,” snarled a hard-edged voice that I had to convince myself could possibly be Mieko’s. “Play games with the kunoichi and you’re going to get hurt. I told you!”

  I wanted to rush forward, to try to help Masugu, but fear rooted my feet in the floor.

  The lieutenant gave another wordless groan, and Mieko shouted, “You had to drink it all! Idiot!” And a missile—a sake bottle—flew through the do
orway and shattered against the wall by the Little Brother’s head. For the first time since I met him, he actually flinched.

  Now my feet tore themselves free; I ran into the room, the medicines still clutched to my belly, ready to defend Masugu.

  The lieutenant lay on his side on his bedroll, his eyes open but unfocused, his face slack and shiny with sweat. Mieko too was sweaty, but where his face was pale, hers was unusually flushed. Her hair, which was usually so neatly arranged, flew wildly around her head. She looked like a bear. An angry mother bear.

  She punched his shoulder with a force that surprised me and he groaned. She growled and shook him, muttering, “Idiot! Nothing to throw up. You had to drink it all last night, didn’t you? Baka-yarō!” Mieko gave Masugu another shake and then slapped his back.

  I must have gasped, because she looked up, and when she saw me, her face hardened. “You.”

  “I won’t let him die,” I squeaked.

  Slowly her eyes widened. “What have you got there?”

  I walked and knelt opposite her, in front of Masugu, trying to let her know that I was going to protect him. “Ginger. And mugwort.”

  “From Kee Sun?”

  I nodded.

  “No tonic?”

  “He’s making it now. He said the ginseng needed to be fresh.”

  Now her eyes narrowed. “Give me the ginger.”

  In spite of my mistrust, I gave it to her. As she opened the lid, I looked down at Masugu’s face. His eyes looked warm yet somehow inhuman; it took me a moment to realize that it was because the pupils had all but disappeared.

  She sniffed at the pickled ginger, and then pulled out a slice and nibbled at the smallest portion. She nodded, her face settling back into the calm, focused mask that I was used to. “Give me the ginger,” she said. “You can burn the pellets—against his feet, I think.”

  “I...” I pulled both herbs back to my chest. I don’t know what I envisioned—that she was somehow going to use the ginger to finish poisoning him? “I... don’t know how to burn the mogusa. I might hurt him.”

  “You could hardly hurt him any more than he already has been.” When I remained frozen with the herbs held tight to me, she huffed, but held out her hand again. “Then give me the mugwort.”

  I did. I could think of no excuse not to.

  She yanked a long straw from the tatami and lit it from the small brazier that warmed the room. “If you’re going to be helpful, crush some of the ginger under his nose.”

  I did this too, squeezing a slice between my thumb and finger. His nostrils twitched at the fragrant scent, though the rest of his face continued to sag.

  The bitter odor of burning mugwort clashed with the sweet heat of the ginger. I looked down to Masugu’s feet, where Mieko knelt, that fierce concentration still on her face: a she-wolf, now, rather than a bruin. In her long, elegant fingers, she held one of the smoldering pellets against the lieutenant’s bare instep. Her eyes flicked up. “Don’t cram it into his nose. He needs to breathe.”

  Glancing down, I realized that I had in fact pushed the ginger into his nostril while my attention had strayed. “Oh. Sorry. Sorry, lieutenant.” I cleared the airway and got a fresh piece of ginger from the pot.

  She grunted, lit another pellet of mogusa, and held it against Masugu’s foot. This time, he actually gave a small wince. “So,” she said, “did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Find—?” I began, but at that moment, the lieutenant groaned, and his eyes, which had been open but misty, focused up at my face.

  “’ko?” he murmured, and then his face, which had been as lax as that of a dead man’s, twisted into a flabby grin.

  “Ko?” I asked. I couldn’t think why he would call me by my nickname; he was always so careful to call me Murasaki.

  “’ko-ko,” he burbled, and his fingers reached up to stroke my cheek. They were cool. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mieko stiffen. “Ma’me?”

  “What?” I blinked down at him in confusion; on the one hand, he was awake, which was good, but on the other, he as behaving so...

  “Ma’me!” he repeated, and his face twisted in a babyish pout. His fingers closed on my chin. Mieko’s eyes widened. Big, round tears rolled across Masugu’s nose. “Ma’r’me! Mar’me, ‘ko-ko!”

  “Ma—?” I sat there, unable to move. “Marry you?”

  “He doesn’t mean you,” whispered Mieko, her voice deathly low. “He thinks he’s talking to me.”

  “Kill me ‘gain,” sobbed Masugu. Then his eyes rolled back into his head, his hand fell limp from my chin and he drifted back into the open-eyed sleep that I’d first seen him in.

  Kill me again. What did he mean?

  “Don’t let him fall unconscious again!” barked Mieko, but she was crying—tears of guilt no doubt, at his accusation.

  “You!” I snarled, the ginger forgotten in my hands. “He wouldn’t want to marry you! He knows you tried to kill him!”

  Mieko sat back on her heels, apparently surprised by the vehemence of my attack. “What are you talking about?”

  “He knows you’re the one who poisoned him, who... destroyed his rooms, and—!”

  “Me!” Mieko let out an angry growl of a laugh. She dropped the pellet—it had apparently burned her fingers in her inattention—and had to smother it with the sleeve of her robes to keep the straw tatami from catching light. “He knows that I would never hurt him. You were the one—”

  “I heard him!” I was suddenly standing, my feet wide. “Last night! In the Retreat! He said that you’d tried to kill him five years ago. I heard him.”

  She stared up at me. “You heard—?” I expected her to become angry again, but her expression bowed downward into sadness. She shook her head, lighting another pellet and applying it to the lieutenant’s feet. “Oh, Risuko. I thought that I had heard someone moving about outside. This idiot told me that I was imagining things, but I knew.... You are one of us after all, aren’t you? You gave him too much of the poppy, and you made a mess out his rooms, but you are a kunoichi after all.”

  “NO!” I howled, rage coursing through my body. If I had had a sword then.... Well, I would have used it, in spite of everything. No harm. “No! I’m not a killer like you! Lady Chiyome talks about kunoichi being ‘a special kind of woman,’ but that’s all you are, all of you! You’re murderers! Assassins! I couldn’t be one of you. Not ever!”

  Mieko’s sad gaze never broke from mine. “Yet you drugged Masugu’s wine. He could still die from that, you know—and though it is me that he wants to marry, he is quite fond of you.”

  “Drugged?” I spluttered. “I never! You—!”

  “And why?” sighed Mieko. “Just so that you could ransack his rooms. What a waste.”

  “That was your work, not mine.” My fists clench around the clay pot and the ginger. “Remember, I know that you were the person he accused of trying to kill him!”

  “Five years ago,” sighed Mieko, the sadness spilling over into tears, “he asked me to marry him. And I—”

  “She refused,” said Chiyome-sama from the door behind me, “knowing her proper duty.”

  Mieko and I both gasped and turned. Our mistress favored us with her usual smirk of sour amusement and walked toward us. Kee Sun trailed at her shoulder, scowling.

  “Congratulations, Risuko,” said Lady Chiyome. “You have earned an initiate’s sash.” Her face. “The question, I suppose, is whether we shall have to use it to hang you as a traitor.”

  30—Battle of White & Scarlet

  “I am no traitor!” I shouted, and then dropped to my knees and bowed. The ginger spilled onto the mat. “Mieko was the one who—!”

  “No,” said Chiyome-sama. “While I suppose that Mieko might have gone against her own sentiments and drugged Masugu there to search his rooms, she would never have done it so s
loppily.” I looked up in surprise. Lady Chiyome was staring at Mieko, who was bowing beside me. “And of course, if she had wanted him dead, he would have died. No doubt without any of us being any the wiser.”

  Chiyome-sama sniffed and looked back down at me. “This was done by an amateur. A child.” She gestured around the jumbled room in disgust. “None of my kunoichi would have made such a mess of such a simple job. Least of all my Mieko.”

  I turned to accuse the maid, but she had gone silently back to burning pellets of mugwort against the soles of Masugu’s feet. Kee Sun was lifting the tonic to the lieutenant’s lips, forcing the liquid down; Masugu seemed to be gagging on it.

  “Risuko. Look at me.” Chiyome-sama’s sharp tone pulled me back around. “I visited the ladies in the Retreat just now. Fuyudori and Mai tell me that you were wandering about late last night—and they seldom agree that the sun has risen. I learn now that you used your delightful talents to spy on the lieutenant and Mieko.”

  I tried to speak, but fear bound me, squeezing my throat, my chest, my bowels. I tried to plead with her with my eyes, but her face was empty of any humor at all and I could only look away. Behind her, a scroll hung askew from the door screen.

  “Perhaps,” Lady Chiyome said, her voice low and cold, “you chose to visit Masugu’s rooms while he was gone? Perhaps you brought the drugged wine along in case he returned before you were done? Kee Sun tells me you’ve been learning about herbs; of course, he swears to me that you’re far too deft to have used a whole bottle of poppy juice at once.”

  The inscription on the scroll was a familiar one:

  Soldiers falling fast

  Battle of white and scarlet

  Blossoms on the ground

  The calligraphy too was familiar. It was my father’s.

  “Who are you spying for, girl?” asked the old woman. “The Imagawa? They’re finished.”

  The scroll was, in fact, identical to the one hanging inside of the door at my home, except that instead of a picture of cherry blossoms, the bottom of the parchment was taken up with a carefully rendered circle—the full moon that is the Mochizuki crest.