Deadly Flowers

  “We are not helpless children, Ichiro. Not anymore. Our father was willing to die to keep the pearl safe. Our uncle is willing to kill. You have to be willing to do both of those things now. It’s the only way we can win.”

  “Enough,” Tosabo said, even more sharply than he had spoken to me.

  But there was one more thing that needed to be said. I rose and moved to Ichiro’s other side. He had drawn his knees up and hidden his face against them, as if hiding from his sister’s words, or from the truth that my wish had shown him.

  “Ichiro.” I laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ll kill him for you. I promise.”

  The next day Tosabo rode close to Ichiro, talking to him softly. I was relieved. How to confront Ichiro’s murderous uncle—that was something I could understand. How to comfort a stricken boy—that was beyond me.

  I was busy with my own thoughts, in any case, and rarely rode close enough to hear what they were saying, though I did notice Saiko interrupting more than once. Ichiro would answer her politely and then return his attention to Tosabo without truly seeming to notice that his sister was there.

  So I should not have been so surprised, perhaps, by what Ichiro said when he turned to his sister and me. It was late afternoon and the three of us stood on a hill overlooking the castle town of Kashihara Yoshisane.

  The road we had been following meandered down the hill, crossed a broad, flat river, and led through the town’s main gate. Tosabo and his monks had bidden us good-bye, but for some reason they’d paused on horseback perhaps twenty yards away, in sight but too far to overhear.

  I looked back a little uneasily. The warrior monks had been nothing but kind to us, but that did not change what they could do if they decided to stop being kind. Of course, I had something in my pocket that could tip the odds in our favor. And Tosabo knew it. Still, why did the monks seem as if they expected something to happen?

  “What are they waiting for?” I muttered.

  “For me,” Ichiro answered.

  I blinked and looked down at him. “What?”

  “They’re waiting for me,” Ichiro explained. “I’m going back to the monastery with them.”

  Small and stubborn, he stood there with a smile exasperatingly like Tosabo’s. Saiko stared at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted a second head or perhaps a tail. With exaggerated patience, as if her brother were much younger than he was, she pointed out that he was not a monk or even a novice—he was a warlord’s son. Trained to fight and born to rule.

  “What are you going to do in a monastery?” I asked in my turn. “Pray? All day long? What good will that do you, or anyone?”

  “I’ll find out,” Ichiro said simply.

  “But what about—” I stopped. It did not feel safe, especially after last night, to mention the pearl under the open sky.

  “Our family!” Saiko finished for me. She seemed to be slowly realizing that her brother meant what he said. “Will you shame us all like this? What am I to tell Uncle Yoshisane?”

  “Tell him where I am.” Ichiro shrugged. “What shame is there in that?” But he looked at me as if he knew what I had been going to say.

  “It’s yours now,” he said soberly. “And, Kata, I’m sorry. You saved my life, and I handed you such a burden in return.”

  He’d handed me a demon to do my bidding, and he was apologizing to me. And he still thought I’d been kneeling by his bed to rescue him, that night. Shame welled up in my mouth and shriveled my tongue.

  Saiko hissed and turned away.

  “But what about your—your uncle. The one who—” I could not say, the one who hired me to kill you.

  “The one who killed our father!” Saiko turned back in a flutter of skirts and sleeves. “You’ll leave me alone, Ichiro? Am I the only one who’ll seek vengeance?”

  “If you need to.” Ichiro actually looked sorry for her. “But, sister, I truly don’t think it will help.”

  “Help!” Saiko looked ready to slap him.

  “What if your uncle—” I lowered my voice. “Gets what he wants?” I fought the urge to slip my hand inside my jacket and clutch the pearl tightly. “You could—I need—” These were not words that came easily to my tongue. “We ought to keep the pearl from him,” I said tightly. I’d seen his face, the man who’d held a sword to his own brother’s throat. And I knew that the power of the pearl was not something that should be handed to a man like that. “You could help.”

  I couldn’t say, I need your help. But perhaps I did.

  He was nothing but a boy. Still, he was brave and loyal. And kind. Not a virtue I’d have thought much of, a week or two ago. But I might have been wrong.

  Ichiro shrugged again.

  “Uncle Hikosane’s fate is his own. If he gets what he wants, maybe he’ll be a better man. Maybe I’d be just as bad as he is, if the pearl were in my hands.” His gaze was on my face, and the trust in it nearly knocked me speechless. “The pearl came to you, Kata. I think you are the right guardian for it. Do as Tosabo told us, please. Don’t use it again. Keep it safe.” He glanced over his shoulder at the waiting monks, then surprised me for a second time by flinging his arms tightly around me. “Thank you, Kata,” he whispered. “For my life.”

  Saiko shrugged out of the embrace he gave her next. Then Ichiro was running back to the monks. Tosabo reached down and pulled the boy onto his horse behind him.

  So it was Saiko and I who crossed the bridge, walking by bored soldiers, dodging carts piled high with bags of rice and barrels of wine, listening to the songs of women beating clothes clean on the rocks below. Together, the two of us entered the castle town.

  NINETEEN

  “Get back here!” Saiko whispered fiercely.

  She pulled me around the corner of a stall selling rice wine. An instant later, I saw why.

  He was riding down the street, rather too fast for the crowded town, and surrounded by a troop of samurai, each with the dragonfly emblazoned on his brightly lacquered armor. People scattered out of their way, two porters nearly losing the load they carried from a pole over their shoulders. A fan seller leaped for safety and dropped his basket, spilling his brightly colored wares into the dirt where they lay like trampled butterflies.

  I’d last seen him in a vision. I’d hoped not to see him again.

  “Uncle Hikosane,” Saiko whispered.

  She put her hands to her face, as if to shield herself from flying mud. The warlord and his samurai went thundering up the street toward the castle, strong and well defended on the crest of a hill.

  So that put an end to any thought of simply knocking at the gate.

  “What is he doing here?” Saiko whispered, anxiously.

  “Looking for Ichiro, probably. Looking for you.”

  “But now—what will we do?”

  The rice wine dealer was starting to glare at us. We were not buying, and yet we were blocking access to his stall. Luckily, a crowd of customers charged up just then, claiming his attention as we moved a few steps away.

  “We’ll have to make sure Hikosane doesn’t see you, that’s all,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “We don’t know how long he’ll stay,” Saiko protested. “We could wait until he leaves, but—”

  She didn’t need to finish the thought. We could not hide days, or weeks, with the pearl in my pocket, demons stirring, and Lord Hikosane’s samurai roaming the town.

  The drinkers were still clustered around the booth, complaining loudly.

  “Mud all over my kimono, look.”

  “That’s nothing. My hair! Look at my hair!”

  “I nearly had to dive out of the way. Suppose I’d sprained my wrist?” fretted a lean, droopy youth, rubbing his fingers tenderly. “I could have broken something.”

  “Here, have another cup to get over the shock,” suggested a plump man, his eyes gleaming with a touch of malice.

  “Certainly not!” A bulky man with a harried look and a bold mustache snatched the pottery cup and drained the
wine himself. “Trying to get him drunk won’t make you the foremost performer at the castle tonight. Right, then. Is everyone here? Is everyone safe? Is everyone sober? If no one has more to complain about than a bit of mud, we’re all well off. No, not another cup! You’ve got to sing tonight!” The sour-faced woman who’d been fussing about her hair set down her cup with a drawn-out sigh. “Chokei, settle up. Give the poor man a tip for putting up with the likes of this lot. Honest merchant of the elixir of heaven—” There were groans from the drinkers, and the plump man took a sip of his wine and burst into exaggerated coughing. “Kindly tell all of your customers that this ragtag band of drunken reprobates will perform the finest songs and stories tonight at the castle for the entertainment of the warlord Kashihara Yoshisane himself!”

  So, they were actors. I saw Saiko draw herself aside, pulling in her skirts to avoid contamination. She’d probably never been close enough to touch riverbank dwellers like these in her life.

  “To the inn,” the mustached man insisted. “No, I said no more! Hurry along, we’ve got three hours or so to make ourselves presentable. And that’s barely enough time for Hideo to comb his hair.” He gave the sake dealer an elegant bow of thanks and herded his troupe along the street.

  My eyes met Saiko’s, and we both nodded. Together we started off after them.

  Three hours later, you would not have known them. The harridan who’d shrieked about her hair looked as prim as Saiko, in a pale gold kimono; the plump man who’d tried to get his colleague drunk looked as solemn as a tax collector. The mustached leader had on a fine blue robe and a samurai’s swagger, and he kept a hand on the elbow of the lean young man, who was humming and seemed to be paying no attention to anything that went on around him.

  They were all much too busy thinking about their upcoming performance to notice two girls trailing them from their inn to the castle gates.

  It had taken most of the three hours to find Saiko a kimono. She was fussy, and I wasn’t willing to spend every one of the gold coins I’d stolen from Commander Otani. It had not been wise of him to leave a bag of looted treasure lying on the floor of the cave as we were talking. And he’d been quite right that I was in the wrong profession if stealing bothered me. Fortunately, I’d tucked the gold coins into one of the small and secret pockets along the hem of my jacket, so they had not been lost with the rest of our money when I’d left my pack behind in Okui’s house.

  After Saiko had rejected the first twelve kimonos, I’d lost patience and gone to wait under a tree, whittling sticks into slivers with my knife until she finally chose a robe of cheap, thin silk, dyed orange-red and embroidered with black diamonds. Once she had it on, it contrived to look showy rather than garish. Our leftover copper coins from Ryoichi’s villagers had been spent on camellia oil for her hair, rice powder for her face, and safflower paste for her lips.

  She should have looked like a child playing with her mother’s clothes. But somehow, she looked—well, if not elegant, at least interesting. Like someone who might be allowed through the castle gates if she happened to come along behind a troupe of entertainers.

  When we reached the gates, I moved away from her. She might have looked the part of a singer or a courtesan or both, but I did not.

  Luckily, a band of samurai had just dismounted. I moved over toward them and grabbed the reins of a black mare with a nose as white as if she’d dipped it in paint. My hair was hidden under a hood, and hopefully I’d seem just another stable boy, unworthy of anybody’s notice.

  Saiko glanced behind her, and for one quick moment, our gazes met. She lifted a hand to her throat to touch the necklace that hung there.

  It was a simple piece, a white pearl inside a ring of gold, hung on a black silk cord. But it would surely catch the eye of her uncle Yoshisane. It was more than an artifact of power, now. It was our passport to her uncle’s notice. All she needed to do, once inside the castle, was to get herself into his line of sight.

  It only lasted a moment, the look that passed between us. But it said all that needed to be said.

  I still didn’t like her—much. She was not particularly fond of me. But I trusted her to do her job, and she knew I’d do mine.

  At least for this brief mission, she was a ninja after all. Like me.

  When a hand in a heavy leather-and-iron gauntlet fell on my shoulder, and a voice bellowed, “What are you doing with my horse, boy?” she didn’t even turn her head, but swept through the gates right behind the troupe of actors, leaving me behind.

  The hand spun me around, and I lost my grip on the mare’s reins and nearly my balance as well. “Only taking her to the stables, please, master,” I whined, cringing.

  My gaze went up to his face, and I felt my head jerk back a little in shock. Something soft—my hood—slithered down the back of my neck.

  “So Yoshisane has stable girls looking after the horses now?” bellowed the samurai who had ahold of my shoulder. He seemed twice my height, was certainly twice my weight, and had the dragonfly on the breastplate of his armor. And half of his right ear was missing.

  “Oh, master, please,” I whimpered, hiding my dismay. “There’s a boy, he works in the stables. Please, have mercy. I only wanted a word with him. He promised me—” And I cast a pitiful glance downward at my belly, hoping Daigoro would take the hint.

  Of all the horses here, I’d had the bad luck to pick the one belonging to the man who’d chased me across a mountain range. Lord Hikosane’s trusted retainer, the one Saiko had called his loyal dog.

  “You?” Daigoro shouted, and I caught a waft of sour rice wine on his breath. “I doubt it, I very much doubt it. The stable boys have pigs if they’re that desperate!” By now he had collected quite a crowd, and he looked around proudly as they laughed and I writhed in mock humiliation.

  “Why are my retainers making a display of them selves at the castle gates?” asked a smooth and level voice behind me.

  I was alarmed by the way the man holding me and all his laughing comrades fell instantly silent. Daigoro was a bully, and stupid to boot. Whoever he was afraid of might be trouble for me.

  “Forgive me, my lord,” he stammered. “I caught this little thief trying to steal my horse!” And he gave me a shove, so that I fell at his warlord’s feet.

  I looked up into the face of Kashihara Hikosane.

  The man barely glanced at me. “And don’t you know what to do with a thief?” the warlord said impatiently. “Throw it in the moat and waste no more time.”

  But the moat was not where I’d been planning to end up. It was still broad daylight. I could hardly swim across the water and scale the castle walls with the whole town looking on.

  Daigoro seized my arm and yanked me up.

  Well, if it was a thief they wanted …

  Every kind of armor has joints built in, or the warrior would be unable to move. If that warrior is going to be riding a horse, the joints at the crotch must be generous. So that’s where I landed my best kick.

  As Daigoro folded in two and let go of my arm, Lord Hikosane reached for my hair. I dodged his hand, seized the jade-and-gold earring in his ear, and yanked. Now he and his loyal retainer would match.

  Hikosane roared with pain and surprise, and I darted downhill toward the town, clutching my handful of bloody gold. They were all so shocked that I actually had to slip and let myself fall to give them time to catch me.

  A horse thief they might have tossed in the moat to drown. A hellion who’d ripped open a warlord’s ear—for her they had different plans. So I was told at length, before being dragged inside the gate, manhandled down a flight of stone stairs, stripped of my weapons, and tossed into a tiny cell. The door clanged shut, a bar slammed down across it, and footsteps clattered up the stairs.

  Well, at least I was inside the castle.

  I wiped my bloody nose on my shoulder and set about getting my hands free. That took longer than I would have liked. Daigoro had been the one to tie them behind me, and he’d done it much
too tightly. If they’d left me like that all night, I’d have been a cripple by morning.

  I wondered how Saiko was managing.

  By the time I had the ropes off, both wrists were bleeding and I had to spend time I didn’t have to stretch and massage my fingers. I couldn’t rush it, though. I needed my hands in working order for the next thing I had to do.

  Two choices now: the door or the stinking hole in the floor. I pried up the grate to take a look, but the smell nearly made me throw up, and the hole was narrower than my shoulders. I wasn’t that desperate yet.

  So, the door.

  Not a simple latch, which would have taken me half a minute. Through the crack between the door and its frame, I could see the width of the wooden bar that held it closed. Thicker than my wrist, and heavy as well.

  They’d taken my knife, but hadn’t bothered to search me carefully enough to find the length of cord around my waist or the slender steel rod sewn into my right sleeve. One end was pointed and as sharp as a needle. The other was bent into a hook.

  The rod fit neatly through the crack between the door and its frame. With the hooked end, I was able to draw the cord into a loop around the right end of the bar. Then I looped the free end of the cord around the bar’s left end. With my sleeve wrapped around my fingers, so that the narrow cord would not cut the skin, I pulled gently and steadily upward. The bar came out with no trouble, and I eased the door open with my shoulder.

  Once I was outside the cell, I set the bar back down into its rests, hoping to make it look as if I’d simply vanished. By the next morning, they’d be saying I was a demon. Soon the story would be that I’d bitten off Lord Hikosane’s ear and flown away.

  If they knew demons as I did, they would not speak of them so lightly.

  There was no guard outside the door or at the top of the stairs. Perhaps they’d have set someone to watch a valued prisoner, but why bother for a girl thief? The cord went back around my waist, the rod into my sleeve. I did my best to clean all the blood off my chin and cheeks and hands, and pulled my loose hair over my face to cover what I hadn’t been able to rub off. One good thing about dark clothing is that blood doesn’t show.