The difference was too small for the eye to catch. But my fingertips had felt it. Now, there must be a lock or a lever somewhere—yes. Simple. When I pressed down on one end of the board, the other sprang into my waiting hand.
I did not reach at once into the hole I had just uncovered. Instead, I slid my knife out of its sheath and used it to probe the cavity and to locate the three spikes that would have lacerated an eager and careless hand.
Avoiding the spikes, I groped in the hole and felt a soft, heavy bag of quilted silk, bundled with cord, of a size to fit easily in one hand. I plucked it out and untied the drawstrings, reaching inside to feel a tightly furled scroll, a string of coins, and several small, rough stones. Uncut jewels, I guessed. I slid one out, weighed it in my hand, and then tucked it into my mouth, securing it between my gum and upper lip.
Then I retied the bag, careful to use the same knots as before, and stowed it in a helpful pocket inside my jacket. After replacing the board and the mat, I rose to my feet and climbed onto the desk, moving slowly to hush any creaks from wood unaccustomed to such weight.
Once I’d slid the remains of the window screen gently to one side, all that lay between me and the night was a wooden shutter. I put an ear against it and held my breath to listen.
The loudest sound was my own heartbeat, but I focused my hearing beyond that, beyond Sakuma’s grunts and sighs, out to what was happening in the garden.
Wind. Grasses and the long leaves of bamboo rubbing together. Cicadas shrilling. Footsteps across the earth, the soft sigh made by the woven soles of old sandals. It was Taro. I could tell by the slight hesitation in every other step as his stiff knee took his weight. Wounded in some long-ago battle, the old veteran had been glad to find a job as a guard for a rich merchant who kept a good table.
There came a sigh, and I heard Taro’s hands rubbing together, the dry skin rasping. Even in late spring, the nights could still be chilly. Then his footsteps went on.
I let my breath out slowly and counted ten heartbeats after the last footfalls had faded away before I lifted the latch on the shutter and slid it open. With my sandals still over my shoulder, I slipped to the ground, reaching up to close the shutter after me. It was a shame that I could not fasten the latch on the inside, to leave no trace at all of my passing. But from the outside, no one would see the difference.
I did not have to worry about Taro returning soon. I’d spent more than one night crouched silently at a window, and one stretched flat on a rooftop, watching the two guards and learning their habits. Taro spent most of his time by the kitchen door; Chujiro rarely stirred from the front of the house. They walked through the garden now and again, but for the most part they relied on the dogs.
The dogs, that is, who were at that moment racing toward me in the dark.
THREE
I could hear the soft, rapid footfalls of the two dogs on the earth. “Easy, now, easy,” I whispered, slipping my hand into my belt.
There were the bits of sea urchin, wrapped in rice to keep them safe, that I had filched from dinner. (It had been Goro’s dinner, and not mine, of course. Goro was not a man to waste fresh fish on a servant girl’s dinner, even a servant girl who’d saved her master’s property, and maybe his life, by her aim with a teapot.)
I dared not raise my voice; Taro and Chujiro might have been lazy, but they were by no means stupid. If I or the dogs made noise, they’d investigate. I’d have to hope that my own scent, and that of the food, would reassure the animals.
I felt two cold, wet noses nuzzling eagerly at my outstretched hands, two warm tongues licking. I stroked soft ears and rubbed furry necks. The dogs didn’t have names; they were not pets. But I called them Brown and Black, and I’d taken care to make good friends with them. In their minds I was no stranger, no threat, and no reason to bark.
I flung another handful of food on the ground and left the dogs nosing the dirt as I crossed the garden.
I didn’t run; there was no need and not enough light, either. I stayed on the grass, away from the gravel of the path, and soon I was picking my way, still barefoot, through rows of cucumbers and radishes. At the end of the garden was the hedge, and in the hedge was the hole I’d made behind the shelter of an exceptionally leafy burdock plant. Each time Goro sent me to weed or water or pick what he needed, I’d scrape away a handful or two of dirt or break off twigs that would block my path. Now I paused to tie my sandals on before I slid headfirst into the hollow I’d made between the bare roots and the prickly branches. Careful not to crush the precious package inside my jacket, I wriggled my way out of Master Sakuma’s household.
Slowly, in no hurry, I stood to my full height, brushed bits of dirt and bark off my jacket, and breathed out. For the first time that night, I relaxed enough to notice the weather—the damp air, the clouds that covered the moon and deepened the darkness, the mist that brushed the skin on my face with little pinpricks of chill and carried with it a hint of salt from the sea.
It was too dark to run, so I jogged easily down the street. There was no great need for haste. It was only the hour of the rat, and half the night was still to pass before dawn broke and Master Sakuma would wake to learn that his servant girl and his secret treasure were both missing.
I felt the last traces of Raku the drudge slip away, falling from me like scraps of a snake’s discarded skin. My shoulders shook off their furtive hunch; my gaze lifted from the packed dirt of the road to scan the lanes and buildings ahead of me. I had been Raku for two months, ever since Sakuma’s former servant girl had been given a surprising gift of money by a stranger in the marketplace and told to go back to her village and buy herself a husband. It felt good to move like myself once more.
I crossed the city’s wide main avenue, which began at the harbor and ran all the way up the city’s highest hill. Along it were the mansions of the city’s rich and powerful. The higher on the hill their mansions stood, the richer the families were. Highest of all, of course, were the Takedas. This was their city. They’d rule the tides if they could.
But as if to remind them that they could not, on the very top of the hill was the shrine to the dragon god Ryujin. He was the one who sent the tides in and out twice each day. Even here, at a distance from the water, my ear could still catch the soft growl and sigh of waves advancing and retreating against the coarse pebbles of the shore.
A little farther, I reached an arched bridge over the river that, like a slow-moving snake, coiled lazily among houses and streets. Inside my mind I consulted the map of the city opening up like a long scroll, and I skirted the pleasure district, the only place where people were likely to be stirring. From there I could hear scraps of laughter and broken song. Dressed as I was, I’d have drawn too much attention from musicians and actors, courtesans and customers, if I’d ventured into their space.
I jogged down a street of simple shops, their goods taken in, their shutters closed for the night. Even here, I had to be careful. There were voices around a corner up ahead. I slowed and stopped, listening to a high-pitched giggle and a deeper answer. A man and a woman, coming this way, carrying light to spoil my friendly darkness.
I backed into a side street just before the pair turned the corner. He wore the two swords of a samurai and had a lantern in his hand, as well as a round straw hat pulled low over his face. No warrior wanted to be recognized on his way to or from the pleasure district, especially with such a woman clinging to his arm as she wobbled a bit on her high wooden clogs.
If her elaborate kimono and her pretty face did not announce that she was a courtesan, her hair, gathered up to expose the slender nape of her neck, made it perfectly clear. And she was a particularly brazen one, to be out on the street with a male companion.
I had guessed the two of them would continue along the wider street. To my dismay, however, they turned down the same lane I had chosen for concealment. I’d knelt against a hedge, where my dark clothes and blackened face should have turned me into nothing but another nig
httime shadow. But a shadow cannot defeat light.
The woman was singing now, her voice blurred by wine; the man was laughing; they were passing within ten feet of me. The pool of light cast by the samurai’s lantern bobbed a few inches from my left knee, and I silently slid my knife from its sheath. A knife against two swords was no fair fight, but add surprise to that knife and the odds came considerably closer to even.
Luckily, I did not need to try those odds. The couple continued on their unsteady way and turned into a narrow alley between two houses. I waited a moment to be sure that they were truly gone before I sheathed my knife and got to my feet.
Carefully, I checked my mental map of the city. It wasn’t easy to find the way among winding streets and alleys, even in broad daylight; I had to be sure I didn’t take a wrong turn.
This street held craftsmen’s homes: cobblers and potters, a basket weaver, a man who made clogs and another who sold combs. One building showed the dim light of an oil lamp through a screen, with a shadow cast on the rice paper. Someone was working late. The hunched figure behind the screen rose and stretched, as if to ease an aching back.
I turned away. Time to keep moving. As I did so, I heard a soft sound behind me, something between a pop and a crunch.
The sound of a paper screen breaking. I spun around.
The light from the house I had noticed earlier was brighter now, because two or three panels of the paper screen had been broken. And coming toward me, outlined against that light, was a shape on two legs—but not a human shape.
Oh, no. Not here, not now …
My knife was in my hand as I backed up carefully, putting distance between myself and the thing approaching me.
The creature should have been awkward, balanced on two legs, but it was not. Lithe and muscled, as tall as my shoulder, it stalked toward me, lamplight brushing soft gray fur. It let out a soft, hungry meow.
Two tails waved, helping the thing keep its balance. Its ears were flattened, its whiskers swept back; the green-gold eyes were narrow and hungry. A double-tailed cat, a neko-mata.
I’d been pleased to have finished my mission, to be out in the night, to be done acting like a timid and stupid servant girl to fool stupider men. And so I’d gotten careless. How could I have forgotten to be on my guard at every moment? Had I let myself believe that there was nothing in this darkened city more dangerous than I was?
Careless. I’d pay for that carelessness now.
The neko-mata faced me and the corners of its mouth pulled back in a snarl. Its teeth were half the length of my longest finger.
“Mine,” it whined, an unnatural sound, human words forced out of an animal’s throat. “Mine, mine …”
Its back legs flexed as it drew itself together to leap.
A cat will stalk a mouse for long minutes before it finally closes in for the kill. But the last dash and pounce happen as quickly as fire moving from twig to twig. I threw myself facedown just as the neko-mata jumped, and it passed over me, its back claws brushing my hood. Rolling, I came up in a crouch to see the cat land, whirl, and leap again, all in a single movement.
The beast was too fast. I could not dodge again. I barely had time to throw both hands out—one gripping the knife, one ready to grab—and fling myself backward as it hit. We tumbled across the dirt; the neko-mata was on top. Had it somehow grown bigger in the air?
Its front claws jabbed into my forearms, which I was using to keep the thing away from my throat. The back legs were coming up, ready to disembowel me. Neko-mata always craved human flesh. This one would be happy to feast on my intestines—after it had gotten what it had attacked me for.
I got my knee up and kicked hard, connecting with the creature’s rib cage. It yowled. Other cats answered from behind hedges and fences and shutters, along rooftops and alleys, and I realized that we had an audience. Had every feline in the city come to watch me die?
Well, if they had, they were going to be disappointed.
My kick threw the neko-mata off. It flopped gracelessly on its back, caught off balance for a moment, and I leaped upon it.
I avoided the head, with the snarling mouth and needle-sharp teeth. I ducked away from the claws, which slashed the air beside my face, snagging a hank of hair. I took aim at the tails.
A double-tailed cat was a thing of magic and menace. What would it be if it had no tails at all?
I sliced. Warm blood sprayed. The neko-mata shrieked. And it shrank under my hands like a doll that had lost its stuffing, so that two seconds later an ordinary house cat raced tailless down the street, yowling in anguish. The watching cats screeched their dismay.
More lights were beginning to glimmer behind paper screens as I rose, checking with my tongue to be sure that the jewel I’d taken from Master Sakuma’s pouch was still in place inside my mouth. It was. Someone not far to my left slid a shutter open. Voices rose.
“What is it?”
“Fire?”
“Thieves?”
“Is it bandits?”
I could not be found here in my dark clothing and soot-smeared face, splattered with blood. I ran for a house that was still dark, jumped, and in a moment was on the low, thatched roof. Several cats were ranged along the ridgepole above my head. I looked up, drew back my lips to show my teeth, and hissed; they scattered in panic.
I followed their example. It was not hard to move from roof to roof, hurdling the gaps between houses. I jumped over an alley and glanced down to catch the pale face of the courtesan I had seen earlier lifting toward me as I flew through the air over her head. Beside her in the lantern light, lying facedown, was the body of the samurai, which she had been stripping of weapons and valuables.
I followed the rooftops for as long as I could, easily outpacing the clamor and confusion behind me. When at last I was forced to jump down, I found myself in a street of simple but prosperous homes—hedges neatly trimmed, roofs freshly thatched, small gardens with beds of moss and carefully spaced boulders under artistically pruned trees. It was too dark to see any of this at the moment, but that didn’t matter. I knew what was there.
I walked up to one such garden, knocked at the gate, spoke briefly to the man who had been waiting, and was allowed inside.
Entering the house, I strode along the earthen passage that ran straight from the front door to the back. To my right was the raised platform where the owners of the dwelling lived and slept; I heard someone there sigh irritably and turn over. But the sleepers were used to midnight comings and goings, and no one opened an eye or lifted a head. They were paid well not to.
Just before I would have stepped out the back door, I paused, laid my hand on a panel of the left-hand wall, and pushed. It swung silently inward, and I stepped into the dark hole that had been revealed.
FOUR
The passageway I’d entered was pitch-black, but I didn’t need light. I counted twenty-five paces, reached out to slide another door open, and entered a hallway lined with mats and lit by the warm glow of an oil lamp. Any watchers in the street would have seen me enter a house and not leave again; they’d have no way of knowing that I was now in a different building altogether.
A boy who had been kneeling beside the door rose to his feet. He was about my own age, young enough to be gangly still, with an indigo jacket that was too short for his arms. Over his left cheekbone was a puffy, red swelling, starting to bruise, where I had hit him with a teapot when he tried to climb into Master Sakuma’s house.
He nodded, not surprised to see me, but satisfied. My presence marked a mission completed. “You have it?” he asked.
I gave him an irritated look. He laughed. “I didn’t ask. Of course you have it.”
“Is he in his room, Jinnai?” I asked, careful not to let the pebble hidden in my mouth alter my speech.
Jinnai nodded. “He is. Waiting for you. He expected you a bit sooner.” I saw his gaze flicker down to the ripped sleeve of my jacket, but my dark clothes concealed the worst of the neko-mata’s blo
od. At any rate, Jinnai would never have been rude enough to ask about the details of my assignment if I did not volunteer them.
“I had something to take care of” was all I said. Brushing past him, I made my way down the hall.
“You have good aim!” he called after me.
“You knew that when you climbed in the window. You should have ducked,” I answered without looking back.
When I got to a door, I paused and raised my voice a little. “Master Ishikawa? I’ve returned.”
“Enter,” came the command.
I did so.
Master Ishikawa’s room was so simple it looked almost bare. It was odd that, at the same time, it made Master Sakuma’s private study look like a peasant’s hut.
The screen along one side of the room, where just a few strokes of black and gray ink conjured an island out of a misty bay, had been done by Sesshu. A small brazier stood on three legs, a few coals smoldering in it to take any nighttime chill out of the air. Master Ishikawa knelt near it, his back to the door, counting jewels that he’d spread across his desk. Occasionally he held one up to the oil lamp so that the blood red of a ruby or the tawny smoke of a chunk of amber seemed to gather the light and give it back with a richer, more opulent glow.
Most men would not kneel with their backs to the door, counting riches that could buy a castle complete with the warlord inside it. Most men would post guards or hire soldiers or at least lock the door.
Master Ishikawa was not most men.
I closed the door behind me and knelt, pressing my forehead into the mats and breathing in their fresh, grassy scent, feeling the pressure of the jewel inside my lip. The stone was too small to leave a visible lump, but it felt as if I were trying to hide an unshelled walnut.
Every thief who worked for Ishikawa Goemon had heard what happened to the rare and rash employee who had stolen from the master. And so no one ever stole from him. Which had led me to wonder if the stories were true, or merely convenient.