Text copyright © 2017 by Sarah L. Thomson
Ornaments copyright © 2017 by Jim Carroll
All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Boyds Mills Press
An Imprint of Highlights
815 Church Street
Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-62979-777-9 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-62979-920-9 (e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937880
First e-book edition
Design by Anahid Hamparian
The text of this book is set in Bembo.
H1.0
Dedicated to Ann and Trina—ninja friends extraordinaire!
ONE
A bamboo floor can seem as long and as wide as a field of rice when you are cleaning it on your knees.
Whisking a small broom across the smooth boards, I swept dust and grit off the veranda. I was careful to keep my head bowed and my back bent, though my humble posture didn’t stop Goro, my master’s cook, from giving me a kick as he passed.
There was a time I would have made sure his kick never landed and broken his ankle for trying. Today I merely set down the broom and dipped a rag into the bucket beside me. Goro grunted as he disappeared around a corner of the house.
I wrung the rag half-dry. The mixture of water and vinegar made quick work of the dirty smudges from Goro’s bare feet. As I rubbed, I ignored the throb of my bruised thigh where his kick had connected. I also paid no mind to the tightness in my lower back or the ache in my knees. I’d been trained for hours of swordplay, to pick locks, to escape manacles. But no one had ever warned me that cleaning a floor was such hard work.
I hung the rag over the bucket’s edge and picked up the broom once more. By the time I’d swept myself into a far corner of the veranda, I heard the gate from the street swing open and shut. Footsteps approached along the curve of the garden path. I didn’t look up as the newcomer paused to slip off his sandals before stepping onto the pale, gleaming boards I had just wiped clean. The door with its paper screen slid aside, and Kumawaka, a servant who had been with my master since his seafaring days, greeted the guest.
“Oh, Captain Mori. Please do enter. I hope the winds were kind to you?”
“Kumawaka, always here. It’s been three years and nothing about you has changed. Your master is expecting me, I’ve no doubt.”
I had not glimpsed our visitor’s face yet, since it would be presumptuous of me to look up. But what I could hear of his voice sounded both cheerful and pleased with himself. It was the voice of a man who has a success to report. That was exactly what I had been hoping to hear.
“Oh, indeed, Captain. Please do us the honor of entering.”
The screen door slid shut, cutting off the conversation from my ears.
I picked up my washrag and hurried across the garden path to hang it over the top of the gate to dry. As I did so, a shabby beggar boy, crouched in the street to poke at a beetle with a stick, looked up and caught my eye. A moment later he was pelting away as fast as he could run.
I returned to the veranda, hoisted the sloshing bucket of dirty water to my hip, and headed around the corner of the house, in the direction Goro had taken earlier.
TWO
As I paused in the kitchen doorway, one of the guard dogs came up from behind me. Hidden in the folds of my wide cloth belt, there was a sticky clump of rice. I slipped it out and let the dog lick it eagerly from my fingers.
Goro, kneeling on the cook’s bamboo platform along one side of the kitchen, was setting out a tray. On it were cakes of sweet red bean paste and an elegant teapot with a milky green glaze, which had come all the way from the kingdom of Choson across the sea. Master Sakuma wanted every guest to know that, while he was no samurai, no nobleman, no courtier at the emperor’s palace, he could afford the same things they had—and better, if he wanted.
Goro poured in the boiling water, and the wisps of steam rising from the pot smelled like spring. I lugged my bucket over the threshold, toward the stone sink in the corner, where a bamboo pipe let wastewater outside. Goro didn’t glance at me. I slowed my steps. If my timing wasn’t perfect here, my entire plan might unravel like poorly woven cloth.
The inner door slid open. Kumawaka stood there, waving his hands anxiously.
“Tea, tea, tea, is it ready? The master does not want to wait!”
I tripped. As I fell, the bucket flew from my hands, dancing across the kitchen floor to drench Kumawaka in pungent vinegar and filthy water from the waist of his indigo kimono to the white socks on his feet.
He squawked. On hands and knees on the slick dirt floor, I gasped, frozen and wide-eyed.
“You! You!” Kumawaka shrieked, holding the skirts of his dripping kimono away from his skin. “Clumsy! Careless! Useless! I will teach you such a lesson. Get up, stupid girl. What’s your name again?”
“Raku, master,” I whimpered, crawling to his feet. I tried to brush at his soggy clothing with my grubby hands.
“Don’t touch me!” He swung a hand at me and I scuttled back. “You’ll make it worse, you slimy little toad!”
Goro watched us with a dull interest. He wouldn’t mind seeing me beaten, but he didn’t mind seeing Kumawaka humiliated, either. His sour nature wasn’t personal; he seemed to hold a grudge against the world, resenting the water that wouldn’t boil fast enough, the fish that was never fresh enough, the new maid his master had taken on two months ago, and the old servant who had authority over him in name only. Goro took orders from the kitchen fire and the gods and no one else.
“Tea’s brewed,” he said shortly, lifting the lid of the teapot to breathe in the steam.
“I can’t serve in this state!” Kumawaka wailed, dripping.
Goro shrugged. “Send the girl. Beat her later.” And he turned his attention to a long white radish that needed chopping.
Kumawaka fumed for a moment and then scowled at me, still cowering penitently on the floor. “You. Girl.” He spat the word. “Take in the tea. Don’t make the master wait or it will be worse for you later. I promise you it will be bad enough as it is!”
I bowed—more of a crouch, really, like a frightened dog—and took up the tray as Kumawaka stamped off to change his clothes, trailing dirty water as he went. Water that I would undoubtedly have to wipe up once I was done serving tea.
I hurried out with the tray, making my way through the house’s central room, the one where Master Sakuma most often entertained his guests as if he were a samurai and not a humble merchant. It was empty. Good. That meant that my master had taken Captain Mori to his private study. Usually only Kumawaka was allowed to slide open the screen door to that room. Before today, I’d never been permitted even to sweep dirt off the floor mats.
If Master Sakuma and his guest were in there, it meant the captain had brought a treasure beyond price. And that meant the last two months of scrubbing floors and pulling weeds and enduring Goro’s foul temper had been worth it.
Taking care to let my footsteps make no noise at all, I set down my tray beside the study door. Then I crossed the room and slid open the window farthest to the left, giving me a view of the front garden. The beggar boy who’d run away earlier was back in the street; I could see him peering in over the top of the gate.
I left the second window closed, slid open the t
hird, and watched the boy dart away once more. Then I crossed the room again, letting my footsteps sound a bit heavier this time, and knelt to slide open the study door. Picking up the tray again, I rose to my feet.
My eyes darted back and forth, taking in all I could. I would not be here long, and I needed to learn as much as possible before the tea was poured.
The study was a small room, but Sakuma had made sure that any guest would know his wealth. There was a desk set into the wall underneath a window, ink and brushes and an abacus standing ready, and a few scarlet cushions nearby. The two mats that covered the floor were new and shiny, the scroll hanging on the wall was elaborate in its calligraphy, and Master Sakuma, kneeling with Captain Mori, had on a black kimono that glittered with embroidery and moved with the heavy grace of the finest silk from the Ming Empire.
He frowned just a little on seeing me; of course he had expected Kumawaka. But he didn’t want to admit in front of a guest that anything about his household came as a surprise. So he merely went on talking over my head as I knelt again to pour the steaming tea into small cups of gleaming green porcelain.
“Yes, Ryujin was gracious to our voyage, no doubt,” the captain said, taking his cup from my hand without glancing at me.
“I will visit the old water dragon’s shrine,” Sakuma answered. “And the jade pendant you found will make an excellent gift for the youngest Takeda boy. He’s just taken a wife. Perhaps you hadn’t heard? Of course I want to pay my respects.”
“Who did his father find to marry that worm?” the captain asked, amused. “I’m surprised he was able to lift his nose out of his wine cup long enough to finish the ceremony.”
“A girl from a mountain province, or so I’ve been told. Niece to some warlord or other. Pretty enough, but—what was that?”
That was what I had been listening for.
The dogs were barking frantically outside. Shouts from the garden and a bellow of surprise from the kitchen were followed by Goro’s furious cry: “Thieves! Thieves!”
Sakuma rose to his feet in alarm, and Captain Mori got up as well, laying a hand on the hilt of his longer sword.
I dashed to the door, teapot swinging from my hand, to see two black-clad figures, scarves over their faces, pelt from the kitchen into the central room. I fell back into the study with a startled squeak, like a mouse that had been stepped on, and Captain Mori pushed past me, his sword now out of its sheath. The two thieves took one look at him and fled. He followed.
“Guards! Where are my guards!” Master Sakuma called out, panic in his voice. He was not a ship captain or a samurai; he had no swords at his belt.
“Master! The window!” I shrieked.
Just after I spoke, a heavy club smashed through the thin wooden slats and the frail rice paper of the window over the desk. Another black-clad figure was climbing in. Master Sakuma made a quick, darting movement toward the desk. His hand reached out before he snatched it back and jumped away. Rich, plump, and lazy, fond of his bed and his meals, he was no match for a wiry young thief holding a knife that flashed in the sun.
I flung the teapot as hard as I could.
Pale amber tea splattered the tatami mats, the desk, and my master. The teapot caught the intruder square in the face, so that he cried out and fell backward through the window.
The sounds of shouting men and running footsteps told us that the guards outside were approaching at last. The thief took to his heels, leaving behind a damp room, a ruined window, a broken teapot, a very relieved merchant, and a maidservant who had just saved the day.
Chujiro and Taro, the two guards, claimed that there had been at least a dozen thieves. Even allowing for natural exaggeration—for what guard wants to admit that a few ragtag thieves had burst into the house and been within a few feet of his master?—six or eight of the criminals must have been working together. On some signal, Taro said, they’d all climbed the hedges and raced for the house, hoping that at least one or two would make it inside.
A signal, perhaps, like a rag over a gate, or two windows open and one shut.
Master Sakuma told his guards at length what he thought of men who left their employer to be defended by a guest and a skinny little scrap of a servant girl. Captain Mori was loaded down with gifts and gratitude, and I was promised a new kimono and an extra bowl of black rice that evening—plus being spared from the beating Kumawaka had promised me. Master Sakuma even magnanimously forgave me for breaking his most valuable teapot.
Not a bad day, I thought, as I lay beside the kitchen stove that night, listening to Goro’s breathing settle down into steady snoring.
Goro had tried to fight off the thieves himself, armed with no more than a ladle, and earned a noticeable bump over one eyebrow for his trouble. Master Sakuma had given him an extra cup of rice wine that evening, and when Goro’s back was turned, I had added something to make sure that his snores would continue unabated until dawn.
Kumawaka, fortunately, considered himself too grand to sleep in the kitchen; he had his own little cubbyhole of a room where he laid out his mattress and kept his belongings. I did not have to concern myself with him tonight.
I sat up cautiously, waited to be sure Goro had not stirred, and crawled to the woodpile in the corner. Working slowly and silently, I shifted most of the logs and tugged out something I’d hidden underneath them a few days earlier.
It only took a moment to slip off the ragged, undyed kimono that had helped turn me into the servant girl Raku and leave it in a heap on the floor. I drew on the clothing I had taken from the woodpile—trousers, a short jacket, a long sash to wrap around my waist, a hood to hold my hair back, all of it dyed a blue that was very nearly black. I touched the warm stones of the stove and rubbed soot over my hands and face. Now there was nothing about me that would stand out in the night. The shadows would welcome me as one of their own.
I picked up the knife that had been hidden under the clothes and slid it into a sheath along my forearm. Then I tied my sandals together and slung them over my shoulder.
One of Raku’s jobs had been to see to it that the doors of Master Sakuma’s household were well oiled and free of dirt or grit, so that they would not stick or scrape. I had always been most conscientious about that chore. The keenest ear would not have heard a sound as I slipped out of the kitchen and entered the central room.
The windows were shuttered. I did not even have the dim glow of a banked stove to help me. This I would have to do by memory. I kept to the edges of the room, where the bamboo floors had been less used and weren’t as likely to groan or squeak. On each step I eased my bare foot down, rolling my weight from the outer edge to the inner. I could feel every woven strand in the smooth mats under my feet as I counted my strides. Six along the wall that the central room shared with the kitchen. Turn the corner. Eight more and there was the door to Master Sakuma’s private study.
This time I had no need to kneel before entering.
Once inside, I shut the door behind me and stood still. It was really the kind of job I needed a dark lantern for, but that would have been too much to smuggle into the house and keep hidden from Goro’s watchful eye. The clothes and the knife had been difficult enough.
I would have to complete this task without using my sight. I closed my eyes so that I would not distract myself by straining to see. My other senses opened up like night-blooming flowers. Hearing sharpened. My sense of smell heightened. My skin tingled with eagerness to touch.
I could hear my own breath in my nostrils, my pulse beating against my temples and in my throat. I shifted my awareness outside my own skin and heard leaves brush against the wooden shutters, someone singing a cheerful drinking song, unsteady footsteps scuffling over the road. I heard heavy breathing coming from the room next door, where Master Sakuma slept. Through the thin rice paper of the door, I smelled the sweat on his skin, garlic and pepper and wine on his breath.
It was a pity I had not managed to drug his drink as well, but Goro had left me no
chance. The rhythm of the merchant’s breath, steady but not too steady, told me he was genuinely asleep, though not deeply. Any noise could stir him into wakefulness.
I’d have to make no noise, then.
I let the room take shape in my memory. I had only seen it once, but that one time had been enough. I stood without moving until the vision was clear in front of my closed eyes, and then gently slid one bare foot along the floor.
The study was long enough for two mats laid side by side. The sole of my foot found the crack between them, and I followed it. After five steps I stopped, then inched forward until the desk in its alcove bumped against my shin.
I eased myself down so that I was kneeling before it, just as Master Sakuma must every day, calculating his accounts or checking lists of cargo.
My right fingers spread out to brush the mat. Earlier today, Master Sakuma had leaped toward his desk, stretching out his hand. If I could find the spot he had been reaching for …
There. I felt it. The edge of the mat was frayed. I took hold of the worn spot and slowly pulled the woven straw back, exposing the bare floor beneath.
Sakuma snorted in the next room. Quilts rustled and the cotton inside the mattress sighed as he turned over. I held myself motionless as a rock in a rainstorm, letting the sounds of his restlessness wash over me, until he settled into stillness once again.
I rubbed my fingertips together and breathed softly on them, giving them the extra sensitivity of warmth, then began probing gently at the floor.
When a thief had burst into his home, Sakuma’s first move had been toward this place. Toward the window, toward the man with the knife, toward danger. And he was not a man who loved danger. That told me there was something precious here, something he loved almost as much as he loved his own skin.
All I had to do was find it. In darkness and silence. Before anyone could wake and discover that their meek and cringing servant girl was something else entirely.
Each bamboo board was sleek and smooth under my touch. No hint, no clue of anything unusual or out of place—until the fourth board, the one that was raised just slightly higher than its neighbors.