Risuko

by David Kudler

  “All right,” said Fuyudori, panting. She stopped, and the top of the tree slowly found its way back to its natural position. “Now, Risuko, give me the letter.”

  I trembled there, clinging to the treetop, trying to urge myself to refuse—for my family’s honor, for the people of the Full Moon, for my friends.

  My hand, however, extended down toward the white-haired demon, the monster, whose face seemed to glow with exultation as she reached up for the letter. Fuyudori was standing on tip-toe, one hand barely clutching a thin wisp of a branch as the fingers of the other stretched out to take her prize from me.

  I knew that, as soon as she had the letter, she would kill me, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  Her fingers closed around the end of the metal case and tugged.

  My fingers refused to let go.

  Why? Cold, perhaps. Or panic. Or rage. Or sheer madness. But strong though she may have been, Fuyudori was fully extended, and couldn’t pull the letter from my clutches.

  “LET GO!” she demanded.

  For a moment, I fought, and we became locked in the oddest, deadliest game of tug-of-war that I had ever participated in. Fuyudori’s muscles strained, her face contorting so that all of her loveliness was gone. “LET! GO!”

  “All right,” I said, and I did.

  For a moment, triumph flared on Fuyudori’s face as she held up the letter case. That look was instantly replaced with desperation, however, as she overbalanced, and then with sick dread as the tiny limb beneath her right foot gave way, and she fell back, away from the tree trunk, eyes wide, mouth wide, tumbling backward into the dark, falling through the branches of the hemlock that she had thought was a pine, snapping branches loudly on her way down until she hit the hard ground with the thud of an overripe peach falling to the courtyard below.

  Blossoms on the ground...

  No blossoms up there at the top of the enormous old hemlock I was clinging to, cold twisting my fingers, terror teasing my gut.

  Snow flakes around me, appearing from nowhere, falling to nowhere. Silence: the proper sound of falling snow.

  And death waiting below.

  No blossoms.

  Soldiers falling fast...

  For months after that night, only one dream disturbed my slumber: the sight of Fuyudori’s wide eyes, her soundless cry, her white hair streaming as she fell backward, away from the tree and into the darkness.

  —

  I made my way slowly down from the top of the tree. My fingers were trembling and raw, my arms and legs all but strengthless from the ordeal. I wept, my nose running until tears and snot soaked through the front of my thin jacket, making me feel even colder and—if it were possible—more miserable.

  I did not want to reach the bottom. I did not want to see what had happened to Fuyudori. A part of me dreaded finding her shattered body; another part imagined that I would find a nine-tailed fox, smirking and laughing at me when I reached the ground, ready to punish me for daring to try to trick it so.

  When at last I reached the bottom-most branch of the tree, however, that was not the sight that awaited me.

  Lady Chiyome stood, leaning against Kee Sun, whose head was encased in an enormous bandage. Which one of them was holding up which, I could not have said. The Little Brothers, moving stiffly as I had never seen them move, were arranging a white sheet over a shape below. Fuyudori’s body, I realized.

  Emi stood there, swaying, along with Aimaru—who was holding his head—and Toumi, the Horseradish girls, Sachi—all of the women. Even Masugu was there; there was no question however, that Mieko was the one who was holding him up. However unsteadily, he was at least standing, wrapped in several robes.

  I must have gasped because suddenly all of their gazes flashed up at me. I wanted to hide; I felt as if my failure, my cowardice, my shame were all too obvious to all of them, and my tears and sobbing redoubled.

  Chiyome-sama shuffled over to the base of the tree and squinted up. “Well,” she wheezed, “I thought I knew what I was getting when I bought you. Serves me right.”

  Then she knelt unsteadily and bowed. Deeply. Touching her grey, wild hair to the earth.

  Astonished, I gaped at the others. Perhaps the corydalis had affected the lady’s mind?

  They all seemed as surprised as I was, but one by one—or, in the case of Mieko and Masugu, two by two—they followed her example.

  The last two standing were Toumi and Emi. Toumi grunted and started to sneer, but looked over at the sheet covering Fuyudori’s body and then up at me. She gave me a curt nod, and then she too knelt. It was not as deep a bow as the rest had given, but it was—aside from Lady Chiyome’s—the one that most overwhelmed me.

  Emi smiled. Emi smiled. She mouthed the words We heard and Thank you.

  And then she too bowed before me at the foot of the hemlock tree as the snow settled softly to the ground.

  Epilogue—On the Ground

  All of the inhabitants of the Full Moon shuffled to their rest, the corydalis still thickening the blood in their veins.

  We turned our backs on the covered body of Fuyudori. Several of us made our way back to the great hall. Some to the dormitories.

  Nobody went to the Retreat.

  I couldn’t stand to go anywhere where there were others. The chill of what had happened made me shiver even more than the biting cold of the winter night. I couldn’t think of sleeping—of dreaming.

  I shuffled and shivered my way toward the bathhouse, which had always been a warm, cheerful place for me, in spite of the hard work that Emi, Toumi and I did there. And it was untainted by any memory of Fuyudori the kitsune. Fuyudori the kunoichi. Fuyudori the would-be assassin.

  When I slipped out of the snow, which was beginning to fall hard, and into the little building, I reveled in the warmth before noticing that there were two people already there: Emi and Aimaru.

  Her face was grim, but then it always was. His face was ashen, making the bruise that peeked out from under his hairline look almost black in the candlelight. Yet he was smiling. “We thought you might come here.”

  I stared at them blankly.

  “The tubs need to be cleaned,” said Emi, as if this were the most sensible statement in the world. Which, in some ways, it was.

  Together, the three of us began to drain the tubs in preparation for cleaning and refilling them.

  Once we were scrubbing at the walls of the two wooden tubs—Emi and Aimaru in the cool tub, me in the hot—I began to stop shivering.

  By the time we began filling the tubs again with buckets full of snow, I was actually sweating.

  We laid the firewood for the next morning and sat back against the walls of the bathhouse, pleasantly exhausted.

  I peered over at them. They seemed to be careful not to look at me—nor at each other. “How much did you hear?” I asked.

  “Not much,” said Aimaru with a shrug.

  Emi cocked her head. “Enough. We heard her talk about you giving her some kind of letter.” She gave a quick gasp. “So she was the one! That’s what she was trying to find in Masugu’s room!”

  “And in the stable,” Aimaru added, nodding.

  “Yes.” I wiped a drop of sweat out of my eye. “Only she had no idea what the poppy juice was going to do to Masugu, and then tonight she thought the corydalis root was dried poppy.”

  Emi actually laughed. “Good thing for us!”

  “Yes.”

  “So...” Aimaru shifted uncertainly. “What was this letter she was looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered. I’d been trying not to think about the thing. “Oh! I’ve still...!” I pulled the now-flattened roll of rice paper out from between my jacket and my undershirt, where I had shoved it when I was on top of the Retreat. We all stared at it.

  “We should—” began Aimaru.

 
“—return it to the lieutenant,” finished Emi.

  We all continued to stare at the paper.

  “It doesn’t look like a letter,” I said.

  They both nodded.

  “Maybe,” Emi began slowly, “we should check. To be sure that it’s the same one.”

  Now we all nodded, even though I knew—and was sure that they knew—that it couldn’t possibly be any other piece of paper than the one I’d pulled from the letter case.

  I leaned forward and unfolded the paper on the floor. Emi took one end and held it down, and I held the other. It wasn’t big.

  “It isn’t a letter,” said Aimaru.

  No, it wasn’t. It was a drawing. Some squiggles in black, and then squares in different colors—blue, red, and white. The paper had been stained by moisture, but the ink did not seem to have run. The blue and red squares all had what looked like arrows pointing from them toward the white squares. In the bottom corner a crest was stamped in red: a three wild ginger leaves, like shovels. It made me think....

  We all squinted down at the paper.

  “It looks like...” Aimaru said, biting his lip.

  It made me think of sitting in Lady Chiyome’s rooms, the night that I’d climbed up the outside wall. Looking down at...

  Emi gave a grunt. “It’s a map.”

  Yes, it was a map. Of course! As soon as Emi said that, I realized that it looked a lot like the map I’d seen Lord Imagawa and his general looking at the morning that I met Lady Chiyome. “But what of?”

  “The provinces around the capital,” came a sharp voice from my shoulder.

  I spun around, clutching the map to my chest.

  Toumi was standing, her face lumpy as if from lack of sleep. “A battle map, I think.”

  “I...” I started to talk, but couldn’t think what to say.

  “We found it,” said Emi. “In the snow. I showed it to Murasaki because we didn’t know what it was.”

  Toumi just shrugged.

  I stood, as did Aimaru and Emi behind me. I clutched the paper to my chest. “I...”

  Toumi’s dark eyes did not rise to mine. “Kee Sun has the others cleaning the kitchens, which they hate. I’m supposed to help you. But it looks like you’re done.”

  “Yes.” I held my breath.

  “You’re an initiate.” She was squinting at my now-stained sash.

  “Oh.” My stomach felt cold again, in spite of the warmth. “Yes.”

  “Huh.”

  “I...” I leaned forward so that she had to look into my eyes. “It’s because I found out what kunoichi are. We think that’s the test.”

  “Huh.” She scowled at me as I stood straight again. “What kunoichi are?”

  Over my shoulder, Emi whispered, “Assassins. Spies. Bodyguards.”

  Toumi’s eyes widened. Even now, I am not certain whether it was because of what we had just revealed to her, or that we had told her at all—that we had showed her that trust. “Assassins?” She spoke the word with something like reverence.

  “And spies,” I sighed. No harm.... “And bodyguards.”

  Toumi’s face fell into a relaxed smirk. “I’d like to see you as a bodyguard. Mouse.”

  I felt the heat rise in my face, but I answered her in kind: “I’d like to see you as a spy!”

  She snorted.

  Emi hummed almost happily. “That would leave me to be the assassin.”

  “I think that’s the Matsudaira crest,” said Aimaru. We all blinked. “On the map.”

  I lowered the paper from my chest. The ginger-leaf seal lay in the corner where the blue squares were congregated. Once again, the stones on the map in Chiyome-sama’s room came to mind. “Yes. I think that the blue... are the Matsudaira. And I’m sure the red are the Takeda.” Then I waved at the white squares ranged along the end of what had looked like a long thumb, but which I now saw clearly as Lake Biwa, near the capital. Father always said the lake was beautiful in the springtime. “And these must be Oda-sama’s troops.”

  Toumi gulped. Even she could see it. “So Matsudaira-sama wants the Takeda—us—to help him... attack Lord Oda?”

  Lord Oda. Who had dishonored our fathers. I almost told them then. I almost asked if they knew....

  “But I thought the Matsudaira and the Oda were on the same side.” Emi rested her chin on my shoulder, peering at the map. Battle of white and scarlet...

  “So are the Takeda,” Aimaru pointed out.

  We all stared at the map again.

  “If... Matsudaira-sama is trying to get Takeda-sama to attack Oda-sama... Perhaps Takeda-sama is doing the honorable thing and warning Oda-sama?”

  “Maybe,” grunted Toumi.

  Emi gave a snort of frustration that made the rice paper flutter in my fingers. “Then why’s Masugu-san staying here all winter, instead of riding as fast as he can to the capital?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. In fact, it didn’t make any sense.

  Toumi wrinkled her sharp nose. “Maybe we’re better off not knowing. Lords. Knowing their business is bad news.”

  Aimaru murmured, “The monks always said, ‘Knowledge without understanding is like soup without seasoning.’”

  “Though I could have done without the seasoning in this evening’s soup,” grunted Emi.

  We all agreed with that.

  “Let’s give this back to Masugu,” said Emi. I rolled up the map, and we all trooped out the door—including, to my surprise, Toumi, who shuffled along sullenly.

  “Don’t want you two hogging all the credit,” she said

  —

  Imagine a nation at war with itself.

  Not so very hard to do in a time when ambition, greed, and fear gallop like unreined horses from heart to heart, from home to home, from town to town. The great lords play their games of conquest as if moving stones around in a huge game of Go, but instead of a lined board, they play upon the land itself, and instead of pebbles, they position, capture, and sacrifice living men.

  And women. And children.

  Mute, we gave the map to Mieko, who was watching Masugu sleep. Serpent-girlie. She promised that she would keep it safe and return it to him.

  None of us spoke as we stumbled blearily into our dormitory. We had nothing left to say.

  Mai and Shino were sleeping in the head initiate’s room. Each was apparently unwilling to allow the other the honor of sleeping there alone.

  Toumi and Emi fell into their bedrolls and were asleep almost immediately. I followed soon after, too tired to think, to worry.

  I dreamt no dreams that night. None at all.

  終

  To be Continued in

  Bright-Eyes

  Seasons of the Sword #2

  Coming Soon!

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  THANK YOU FOR READING Risuko!

  I hope that you enjoyed this first tale of Murasaki’s adventures. If you did, please tell your friends what you thought. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend — and I’d like to think you’d be doing your friends a favor too! You can share an honest review on your blog, post a pic on Instagram or Snapchat or a link on Facebook, or leave a review Goodreads (risuko.net/goodreads).

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  David Kudler

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  Sneak Preview:

  Bright-Eyes

  Seasons of the Sword #2

  I meant to take the knife that Mieko was holding out to me, the handle toward my hand.

  I meant to. But I couldn’t.

  “Risuko,” whispered Mieko, her eyes locked on mine. The rest of the Full Moon’s girls and women were also staring at me.

  My eyes flicked toward the pig, which struggled against its bonds, squealing.

  We were outside the Full Moon’s kitchens, next to the well. The pig was stretched out, its legs tied to four heavy pegs that Emi, Toumi, and I had hammered into the still-frozen packed earth.

  What stopped me, what kept me from being able to take the long, narrow blade from Mieko-san’s hand, wasn’t that the pig was in distress. Its squeals knotted my stomach, but I had slaughtered animals for the kitchens before — chickens, rabbits, even a goat.

  But this animal had been dressed in a samurai’s battered armor, with a helmet over its head. And all I could think...

  Through the long, snow-bound winter, Mieko and the other kunoichi had used this armor to teach us its weak points — to show us where even the most heavily armed warrior was vulnerable. As we stabbed under the armpits or between the front and back plates with daggers, it hadn’t seemed real; the armor had been on a kind of straw dummy, like the ones we used to put up next to the rice paddies to keep the birds away.

  But screaming and straining, the pig was no dummy. It looked like a person, almost. It looked like a samurai. Like...

  I looked down and shook my head. “I can’t,” I mouthed.

  Mieko started to say something, but then shook her head and held the knife handle out to Emi, who frowned, but took it.

  I ran.

  —

  I was still running—past our dormitory, past the white length of the great hall — when I ran into Lieutenant Masugu. Or rather, I ran into his horse, Inazuma.