Deadly Flowers

  No one was hiding in Madame’s cupboards or beneath her low desk or under the cushions that lay on her floor. The window screens were smooth and undamaged, the shutters latched. My skin prickled the whole time, but that was merely from imagining what Madame would say if she found we’d been in her room without her permission.

  Yuki knelt before a chest much too small to hide a person, and before I could protest, slipped it open.

  “What are you doing?” Masako whispered, alarmed.

  Mutely, Yuki showed her what she had taken out—rolls of bandages and several small ceramic jars with tight-fitting lids.

  “Well—in the other room, then,” I told her. Medical supplies, the ones Madame kept in her room to treat training injuries. We might need them tonight, certainly. But I felt better when Yuki had closed the chest and we were all clustered around the hearth in the main room.

  “Nothing. I said.” Fuku was trying to sound disdainful, but her gaze kept skittering toward The Boulder’s mat.

  “What’s in the kitchen is not nothing,” Masako countered. “And something happened to—” Her gaze dropped to the mat as well. “To him.”

  Yuki had knelt beside me and was smearing a greasy paste from one of her little jars over the scratches on my stomach and neck.

  “He probably just ran away,” Fuku grumbled.

  “And bled all over his mat?” Masako countered. “And locked the door behind himself?”

  With a hand on my chin, Yuki turned my head gently to one side, squinting at my face. Then she took another little jar and rubbed its contents over my cheek. I hadn’t realized how much it was stinging until it stopped.

  “Kata could have locked the door, and—” Fuku stopped mid-sentence as I pushed Yuki’s hand away and got to my feet.

  “She didn’t. And the instructor didn’t just run.” Saiko sounded certain. All eyes, even mine and Fuku’s, turned toward her. Ichiro nodded.

  “What do you mean?” Masako asked.

  “What do you know?” My right hand, still holding the kitchen knife, twitched. “The two of you—”

  The flames of every lantern blew out.

  The darkness closed in. Our eyes had adjusted to the lantern light, and our night vision was gone. All I could see was the dimmed glow of the hearth.

  “No one move.” It was Masako’s voice. On her knees by the hearth, she was using the poker to stir the coals into life. Faces sprang out of the darkness—startled, worried, alert, afraid. “There, now we can see. Hand those lanterns to me. Quickly.”

  The shutters rattled.

  It wasn’t wind. That would have stirred the trees outside as well. But the leaves were silent.

  Something else was shaking the wooden shutters. Something was trying to lift the latches.

  “Weapons.” Masako’s voice was low but clear. “Kata, Aki, Okiko. Go.”

  I snatched up a lantern and lit it at the hearth, charring one of the paper screens in my hurry. Then, with the twins on my heels, I dashed for the kitchen. No one wasted breath on words.

  Through the kitchen, skidding in mud, leaping over the demon’s corpse. Into the storeroom, piled high with bags of rice and millet, barrels of salted fish, baskets of radishes and eggplant. I seized hold of a section of wall, hooked my fingers in a knothole, and pulled. The wall slid aside.

  A storeroom of a different type lay beyond.

  I began tossing weapons back to Aki and Okiko. Staffs. Swords. Shuko for close fighting. No throwing knives; the house was too small. We’d be in danger of hitting each other. I kept a short wakizashi blade for myself.

  Back to the main room. Masako had the rest of the lanterns lit again. No sound came from the windows. The squares of rice paper were white and blank in their frames.

  Quickly, Masako dispatched her tiny army—Aki and Okiko to the top of the stairs, where they could listen for any signs of intrusion on the second floor. Kiku with Masako herself to Madame’s room. Kiku let out a little whimper at the idea of intruding on that shrine once more, but there was another wide, shuttered window there, another point of attack.

  Tomiko and Kazuko to the classroom. Fuku and Oichi to the kitchen, to watch the outside door. “And the drain!” I called out after them.

  Yuki and me in the main room. “And Saiko,” Masako ordered.

  I shook my head. “Take her with you.”

  “You might need—”

  “I don’t want her at my back!”

  Masako nodded after one glance at my face. “Saiko, with me. What’s your name—Ichiro? You look after Ozu.”

  “I can fight!” Ichiro looked indignant. When girls his own age were drawing swords and strapping clawed shuko over their knuckles, being a nursemaid was a lot for the Kashihara heir to swallow.

  “You may have to.” Masako threw him a sword, which he caught deftly enough in a hand that I noticed had been neatly bandaged. “But for now I don’t know how to use you. Ozu, be brave, pet—you know how. Scatter, girls!”

  At every point of entry, we waited.

  Nothing happened.

  I shifted my grip on my sword’s hilt, rolled my shoulders to keep them loose, and waited.

  Nothing happened.

  Eyes on the window. Breathing soundlessly. Ears not strained, but alert.

  Without looking, I could feel Yuki beside me. She was best at herbs and medicines and potions, but she could still handle the staff she’d chosen as a weapon. If I had my choice, I’d pick her to slip poison into a cup rather than to have at my back in a melee, but she would do.

  Ichiro had pulled Ozu over by the staircase, out of the line of sight from the window. The shutter outside creaked.

  Of course Madame would make sure that all her shutters creaked. Anyone coming into this house would not do so in silence.

  Something poked through the screen.

  It was thin and black and it didn’t poke far. Just enough to pull downward, slitting the rice paper as it went.

  I held up a hand to Yuki, pointed at myself. She nodded.

  The sharp black thing reached through the slit it had made. It was—I did not know what it was. A long, gnarled, knobbed, clawed finger? It grew and stretched like a root. It flexed like a snake.

  I stepped silently nearer, raised my sword, and sliced it off.

  The blood that spurted out was smoking hot, and the scream from outside roiled my guts and nearly made my eardrums bleed. And then five—ten—a dozen of those fingers punctured the screen, and Yuki was beside me, swinging her staff overhead and slamming it down as I sliced and stabbed.

  Fuku shouted from the kitchen. “The door! Brace it!”

  The paper of the screen before me was in shreds, but still I could not see much of what was outside. The firelight glinted off a handful of smooth scales. I hacked off a clump of matted, stinking fur.

  Ozu shrieked.

  I whirled to see something swooping down from the second floor on wide wings knitted out of cobwebs and midnight. At the bottom of the stairs, Ozu and Ichiro ducked as the thing stretched out sleek black talons, talons that might have snagged a bell thread not so long ago.

  Hot breath as foul as the grave rolled over me, making me gag, and wrenching my attention back to my own fight. I stabbed straight into a black mouth, my blade sliding between white fangs that nearly took my hand off at the wrist. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ichiro’s sword sweep up over his head, but before he could touch his enemy, Ozu snatched up a lantern that had been left by the hearth and flung it with all the strength in her wiry little body straight at the creature plunging down on the two of them.

  Light flared. The bakemono writhed and rippled in the air like smoke caught in a strong breeze. I wrenched my blade free, and Yuki jabbed with her staff, smashing through the remnants of the window frame to score a direct hit on what was left of our opponent’s face—if that was a face, if the thing had a face.

  Something from Madame’s room keened like a hunting hawk. “There!” Masako called out. “Watch it, the
re!”

  I stabbed again, hard, right where Yuki had struck, but my sword sliced through nothing and I nearly lost my balance, braced to meet resistance that didn’t come. How could I fight something that no longer seemed to be there?

  I snatched up a lantern and thrust it between two splintered wooden slats and out into the night. I could see nothing. The thing had melted away, as if the darkness had taken it, piece by piece.

  Yuki seized my shoulder, pulled me back, and scowled at me. She slapped at my arm, as if she were asking, “Don’t you want to keep that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s gone.”

  “Ours, too. Yuki, we need you.” Masako was at the door to Madame’s room. Kiku was leaning against her. The younger girl’s arm was bloody from shoulder to fingertips.

  Ichiro was stamping on the wreckage of the paper lantern. There was no sign at all of the flying creature that had come down the stairs. Ozu ran to throw herself on Masako as the older girl eased Kiku down by the hearth.

  “It was a bird!” Kiku chattered, shivering. “I think it was a bird! It was huge! Its beak came right through the screen! Will it be back? Do you think it will be back? Masako, what if it comes back?”

  “Let’s not give it the chance,” I said, and knelt. One of the tatami mats that lay across the floor was askew, its corner overlapping its neighbor. I peeled that corner back. Under it was a trapdoor.

  It probably wasn’t the only one in the house. But it was the only one all of the girls knew about. It connected to an underground tunnel that led to a hole beneath the hedge. Perfect for escape. Or ambush.

  “No,” Masako said.

  From where I knelt, I looked up at her. My sword was still in my hand.

  “To strike blindly is to lose,” she said. “We don’t know what we’re fighting.”

  “We can still fight.” I laid a hand on the trapdoor’s latch. “Better than waiting here like frightened birds in a nest.”

  All the girls were watching. Fuku, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, had a smirking smile on her face.

  The latch to the trapdoor moved easily under my fingertips. It was open. Had I turned it without noticing, my eyes on Masako?

  “Kata,” Masako insisted. “No.”

  I was sure I hadn’t.

  “You shouldn’t”—Ichiro’s voice startled everyone. Saiko shook her head. But the boy didn’t stop talking, and he didn’t take his eyes from me—“go. If anyone does. You’re the one they’re after.”

  “Explain.” I was back on my feet, and my sword felt light in my hand, like a bird longing to fly. “They’re after me? Why?”

  The trapdoor at my feet exploded.

  Heavy planks of wood burst into splinters and sawdust. Girls were screaming. The blast flung me to the floor, and I was rolling. I caught a glimpse of Masako’s face, half of it red with blood from forehead to chin. I saw Ichiro snatch Ozu and turn, falling to his knees, his back between her and danger.

  Something grabbed my right ankle.

  It was a fierce grip, and cold as a fetter of steel, dragging me backward, facedown along the floor. I groped for a handhold, but my fingers found nothing but slippery, flimsy mats. My sword—where was it? There, on the floor—beyond my grasp.

  What had me?

  I writhed and twisted, craned my neck, and saw.

  My mind could not assemble what my eyes were seeing into a single creature. Impossibly long arms. Impossibly huge mouth. Tattered flesh, all gray and white, that seemed to be unraveling like poorly woven cloth. If it had eyes, I could not see them. If it had a heart, I did not know where.

  If hunger had a body, it would look like this. And The Boulder hadn’t been enough of a meal for it. It wanted me.

  Someone had an arm around my chest and was trying to pull me backward. My foot was going to snap off at the ankle. I kicked with my free leg, but it was no use. The girl holding me was being pulled right along the floor with me.

  Masako’s sword lifted, a red-gold slash in the dark air, and came down. Once. Twice.

  The thing howled and let go. I tried to roll free, but I was in a tangle with my would-be rescuer, and by the time I’d shoved myself away, snatched up my sword, and spun on my knees to face whatever was attacking me, the thing was—

  —melting?

  Ropes and rags of gray-white flesh were dissolving into shreds of clammy fog that crawled blindly about on the floor as if searching for help. Masako stood with her sword raised, and I braced myself, but we had nothing left to fight. The last of the mist vanished with a stench like rotting leaves, cold damp earth, age and decay.

  “Find something—” Masako waved at the shattered trapdoor and then clapped a hand to her bloody forehead. “Cover that hole.” She sat down abruptly on the floor. Yuki was at her side in an instant.

  “That chest over there,” said the girl sitting on the floor behind me, the one who’d tried to drag me away from the demon’s grasp.

  I recognized the voice.

  Saiko.

  I threw myself on her and locked my hands around her throat.

  TEN

  The other girls pulled me off of Saiko quickly, and I wasn’t actually trying to hurt her. If I’d been trying, I would have succeeded. But being attacked by a demon for the second time in one night had soured my temper, and lovely little Saiko had much to answer for.

  I’d lived fifteen years without demons trying to eat me. It was only after I’d met this girl and her brother that I had become a target.

  I shrugged Oichi’s hand off my shoulder and pulled my arm out of Aki’s grasp. “All right, I won’t,” I growled, and I wheeled to face Ichiro instead of his pretty, deceitful sister. “You said the demons were after me. Why?”

  “In your pocket,” Ichiro said simply. “Look.”

  I did not know what to think of him. He stood there, in his loose jacket and trousers, somehow managing to look as ordinary as a peasant boy and as dignified as a prince. He looked trustworthy. But then, Saiko looked meek and innocent. I knew better than to believe a face was anything more than a mask.

  As Aki and Okiko maneuvered a heavy chest over the gaping hole in the floor where the trapdoor had been, I slipped a hand cautiously inside my jacket. I felt something smooth and hard and round, like a pebble from the sea floor, and I drew it out.

  A pearl, encircled by a band of gold, the whole thing a bit smaller than the circle made by my thumb and forefinger. There was a hole in the golden ring, trailing a short length of the thin chain that had snapped when Ichiro yanked it off his neck. It lay in my palm more heavily than it should, as if something beyond its own density weighed it down. Centuries of age, perhaps. Or maybe …

  Something dry and brown was smeared across the milky whiteness of the pearl. Blood.

  “I thought I was going to fall,” Ichiro explained. “So I gave it to you.”

  My eyes were on Ichiro. Everyone’s were. But I could not miss the way Saiko was looking at her brother. Her glare could have set him on fire.

  I remembered how Ichiro had dangled from my hands for a moment at the top of the castle wall. He’d cared more about this jewel than he had about his life.

  “And my hand was bleeding,” he finished. “So …”

  He shrugged. He seemed to think that everything made sense now.

  I looked to Saiko, who still knelt on the floor, rubbing her throat. She closed her eyes and sighed, perhaps letting some frustration go.

  “My mother told me once that a god gave it to our family,” she said, as if she were used to filling in Ichiro’s gaps. “So long ago no one can remember. She said that it was a gift, and a burden. That it can do things. And that it—calls to things.”

  “Things?” I pressed.

  She waved a graceful hand at the chaos around us—splintered floor, broken window frames, tattered paper screens. “It passed to Ichiro a few months ago, when our father was killed.”

  “Killed how?” I wanted details. I needed to understand.

  “Ba
ndits attacked him on the road,” Ichiro answered, his voice flat. “Our uncle brought the pearl to me. There was—” He faltered. “Blood was on it. Uncle Hikosane said our father held it and willed it to me with his last breath.”

  “Blood.” I understood now. “Blood allows it to—”

  “To pass to a new owner.” Saiko nodded. “That is how it has always been done in our family. From father to son.” Something flickered through her dark eyes and was gone in an instant. “When a father thinks his oldest son is ready, he’ll draw his own blood and hand the pearl to him. But, of course, there is another way. As our uncle knew.”

  “Sister, what are you saying?” Slow shock was dawning on Ichiro’s face.

  “If an owner dies with the pearl in his possession, then it is free to be taken.” Saiko didn’t take her eyes from her brother. “Taken by anyone except the killer. Our uncle wanted Ichiro dead, so that the pearl could pass to him.”

  Ichiro was shaking his head. “No. No, it can’t be Uncle Hikosane, sister. He took me in—he took us both in. He’s been good to us.”

  “To you.”

  “Saiko. Please.”

  “You trust much too easily, little brother. He was kind to you? Of course he was. You’re the boy, the heir.” Disdain twisted Saiko’s mouth. “But he barely noticed my existence, and that gave me the chance to watch him. And I’ve never seen a colder heart.” Her gaze moved briefly around the room. “Not even here.”

  “But he, he brought the pearl to me!” Ichiro was stumbling over his words, as if arguing was not one of his skills. “You know he did. He took it from—” The boy swallowed. “Father was dead. Uncle Hikosane could have kept the pearl for himself, but he brought it straight to me.”

  “Ichiro, it was Daigoro who brought me here.” Saiko was impatient. “He told me it was on Hikosane’s orders, and that our uncle wanted me to do whatever I was told. You know what I was told.”

  “That doesn’t mean it was true,” Ichiro said a little wildly. “Daigoro could have been lying. How do you know he didn’t want the pearl himself?”

  “You think Daigoro disobeyed our uncle? He’s been Hikosane’s faithful retainer for years. He’s like a dog; he follows any command.”