Blood Ninja (25 page)

But try as he might, the thoughts wouldn’t stack up in his head,
only kept falling down, like smooth pebbles laid on top of one another.

Because Lord Tokugawa ordered Lord Oda’s assassination
before
those ninja attacked
.

Taro looked up at Shusaku. “Lord Oda learned about me. About where I was hidden. And he sent those ninja. There was no danger in assassinating me, because as far as anyone knows, I don’t even exist. Right?”

Shusaku gave a sad smile and nodded. “Yes.”

Taro thought some more. “Lord Tokugawa wished to protect me, but he couldn’t send his samurai because I was in Lord Oda’s territory, and because he couldn’t publicly admit that I was his son. So he sent you.” The words tumbled from his mouth in a rush, spiky and as hard as a landslide.

The ninja nodded.

“And why didn’t my—I mean, Lord Tokugawa, send more men with you?”

“That, I truly don’t know. He wished me to go alone. He was very clear on that.”

Shusaku looked at Taro, his head cocked slightly to the side. Taro took a breath. “You weren’t supposed to change me, were you?”

Shusaku shook his head. “Of course not. I was forced to when you were injured. I was supposed to save you and take you back to the Tokugawa castle. Now I cannot. For a man like Lord Tokugawa, to have a vampire for a son would be worse than if I presented him with a corpse.”

A tear welled up, unbidden, in Taro’s eye. “If that’s true,” he said, “why did you save me? Why not just leave me to die?”

Shusaku coughed, embarrassed. “Lord Tokugawa may prefer a dead boy to a vampire boy. But I do not.”

Taro looked away, touched. “So my true father doesn’t know I’m alive,” he said, changing the subject.

Shusaku shook his head again.

“But Lord Oda knows. The pigeon, remember?”

“Yes,” said Shusaku. “But he won’t tell Tokugawa. Even if he
wanted to, he can’t admit that he tried to kill his ally’s son! They must both pretend the incident never happened. And anyway, even if he could tell Tokugawa you still lived, he wouldn’t. It suits him for Tokugawa to believe his line to be finished.”

Taro thought again. “My … father … thinks I’m dead. He’ll be angry with Oda.”

“I think that’s a safe assumption,” said Shusaku.

“And now he’ll do something to hurt him.”

“Yes. I would not be surprised if he made another attempt to kill Oda himself, since Oda has no sons. As far as Tokugawa’s concerned, he has no sons left. The one who is held hostage might as well be dead, for all the good he does. It is time for him to take decisive action.”

Taro made one more logical conclusion. “When Lord Tokugawa decides to strike at Lord Oda again, he won’t use
ronin
, will he? That method has already failed.”

Shusaku nodded, as if to say,
go on
.

“He’ll use ninja.” He looked at Shusaku. “He’ll use you.”

“Not me personally. I imagine he assumes me to be dead too. But he’ll use the community, yes. I expect a pigeon will arrive at the sacred mountain soon, if it has not arrived there already.”

“When it comes, will you be able to go?”

“Why would I not?”

“Lord Tokugawa thinks you’re dead. Don’t you have to hide in case he finds out you’re still alive—and I’m still alive too?”

Shusaku smiled, his tattoos wrinkling. “I knew Lord Tokugawa well, once. We … well, we were friends, at one point. My father fought on Lord Oda’s side in the war against his enemies. I, however, did not agree with Lord Oda’s ambitions. When my father died, the lord dissolved his fiefdom and disinherited me. It was the greatest of dishonors. If your father had not taken me in, I would have become
ronin
.”

Taro leaned forward. “So he is a good man, then? Lord Tokugawa? Tell me—what is he like?”

Shusaku smiled. “This is how I would describe Lord Tokugawa:
Everyone knows that Oda is a sword saint, that he defeated Musashi himself. Nobody knows anything about Lord Tokugawa’s skill with a sword. But for all they know, he might be a sword saint too. Do you see?”

“He’s sneaky,” said Hiro.

Shusaku laughed. “That’s one way of putting it.” He turned to Taro. “Lord Tokugawa is samurai. I don’t agree with his every action. But he is brave and clever and decisive. I see those qualities in you, too.”

Taro couldn’t sort out his feelings—pride, that he shared blood and character with a lord; anger, that he shared nothing, it seemed, with the man he had always seen and admired as his father. “My father—I mean, the one who is dead. He was brave too, and strong. When I was bitten by that
mako
, he carried me back to the village, over a cliff.” Taro pulled his robe to expose once again his shoulder, the arc of scar that curved around it.

Shusaku examined the old wound. “You were lucky to live.”

“Not lucky. My mother and father sat with the healer for days. They didn’t sleep, they didn’t eat. And they paid him everything they had. Do
you
see?”

The ninja nodded, slowly. “It is a long time since I knew Lord Tokugawa. But I think he would be pleased with the parents he chose for his middle son.”

Taro nodded, too moved to speak.

Shusaku shook his head, as if to dispel water from his ears. “Besides, Lord Tokugawa thinks you’re dead. And look at me. I’m a ninja, and my face is obscured by writing. Lord Tokugawa wouldn’t know me from any other man in black clothes. It’s been many years since he laid eyes on me, and I didn’t have these tattoos then.”

“So when the order comes to assassinate Oda—
if
it comes—you’ll go yourself?”

“Of course. I’m the best ninja there is.”

Taro nodded, picked up his bow. “Good. When it comes, I’m going to join the mission. Oda killed my father. I want him for myself.”

Hiro stood up. “And I’ll be by your side.”

When Heiko and Yukiko finally returned, Yukiko stood awkwardly in front of Taro. She swallowed nervously. “I know you didn’t mean …,” she began. She was looking down, and a tear glistened on her thick, dark eyelashes.

“I know,” he said. “I understand why you were angry.”

She nodded. “Thank you.” Then she turned and went to gather her things. The sun was dropping below the horizon, and Shusaku was keen for them to get to the mountain as soon as possible.

As they began walking up the valley toward the sacred mountain, Taro hung back. The forest they walked through seemed taken from the Pure Land. Elegantly twisted trees rose on all sides, luxuriant in soft green moss. Mounds of grass littered the ground, some of them revealing grinning carved faces of rock, especially near streams or unusually large trees—
kami
, placed here by local villagers to protect the forest.

Or found here by them.

As Taro walked, he attempted to conjure the face of his father,
projecting it like a shadow puppet onto a screen in his mind that lay over the trees and moss, shimmering and transparent. But like a shadow puppet’s, his father’s features were dark, rough, impossible to make out. Taro grimaced, concentrating.

His eyes had been wide-set, had they not?

His mouth had been turned always in a smile.

No.

His eyes were narrow, catlike—

Taro cursed. Death had torn his father into pieces, like so much carrion—a hand he remembered clearly, the tendons and veins traced like rivers on a map; an ear, too, conch-shaped. But the whole was gone, torn limb from limb, and Taro could not piece it back together. It was impossible to picture his father in his entirety, the way that he had been when he lived.

Then, as Taro concentrated on the elusive image, which shook with the effort of his imagining, another image replaced it. A man in a rich robe, wearing the helmet of a samurai lord, his kimono adorned with a hollyhock
mon
.

Lord Tokugawa.

Taro had never even seen the man, yet his image dispelled that of his other father as effectively as a monk banishes a ghost. Taro spat, turned his eyes on the trees and their roots, which burst through the ground beneath his feet, and he quickened his pace.

The screen of his mind shivered, and went dull. But then another image floated up, completely unasked for—the girl they had saved, the one who had given him her ring. He cursed his own thoughts. She was just another impossible dream, come to taunt him, his admiration for her courage and beauty as useless as his curiosity about Tokugawa, or his grief over his father’s death.

Because this was the real world, not the fairy-tale world of Heiko’s stories. Nothing he felt for his father would bring him back from the Pure Land, just as nothing would bring Taro to one day stand in front of Lord Tokugawa and be acknowledged as a lost son and heir. He was a vampire, and, worse, he was a
peasant. He might as well dream of walking the night sky to the moon as dream of that beautiful girl.

He twisted the ring on his finger, feeling its tightness against his skin as a form of mockery, yet equally unable to remove it, since it represented the only part of the girl he could see, and touch.

He didn’t even know her name.

He could feel the bow on his shoulder, and its weight seemed unbearable. It too was a tangible symbol of the change that had come over him. Whereas before it had always been the bow his father had made him, decorated with a motif of leaves, now it was a Tokugawa bow, the magical item left with him to identify him as the son. It was as if the object itself had been taken away from him, and returned as something strange and changed.

His focus now was on the bow on his shoulder, not on the roots and stones at his feet, and so it was that he remembered what the girl had said, the lady they had rescued. Something about the grip being thicker than usual. Frowning, he took the bow from his shoulder, holding it up before him while hurrying to keep up with the others.

There had been something at the back of his mind …

Gods
. He tapped the grip.

A thin, hollow sound reverberated down the length of the bow, and there was—he could swear it—a very slight rattle that accompanied it.

There’s something inside
, he thought.
Something hidden within the heart of the bow
.

His heart racing, he picked up the pace. He was remembering what the abbess had said, about the Buddha ball. About how it had been returned by the ama’s son to the woman who retrieved it from the deep. Couldn’t another ama have recovered it from the sea? He glanced at the bow.

What if the Buddha ball is hidden inside?
He thought. It was a ridiculous idea, but then so was the idea of being a daimyo’s son. He felt slightly dizzy, as he thought that perhaps the bow might contain two legacies—one from Tokugawa, to identify him, but another one even more powerful and magical.

But no. The Buddha ball couldn’t exist, could it? It was only a fairy tale. Even Shusaku didn’t believe in it.

Still. When I get to the mountain, I will break the bow, even if it means destroying my only link to my real father. I must know what is hidden inside
.

Then Taro was distracted by the sound of a sniff from ahead. He was surprised to see Heiko, walking alone, her eyes red. He hurried to draw level with her, when she turned and saw him.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “It’s just … the abbess, you know. And Shusaku. I’m worried about him. I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

“Shusaku?” said Taro, confused. Worrying about Shusaku seemed a little like worrying about an earthquake, or a tsunami. The man was a
ninja
.

Heiko sighed. “You didn’t hear what the prophetess said? And those tattoos. I can’t believe he did that. It’s like he’s tempting fate!” She looked at him for confirmation but he could only shrug. “Because of Hoichi!” she said, as if he were being very dense.

“I’m sorry,” said Taro. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, tell me what it is that’s worrying you. If Shusaku’s tattoos are putting him in some sort of danger, I want to know about it.”

“You haven’t heard of Hoichi the Earless?”

Taro shook his head.

“He was a blind musician. He was tricked into playing his
biwa
for the Heike family, singing them the story of their defeat by the Minamoto, in the great sea battle.”

Taro shrugged. “And?”

“The Heike family were all dead: every one of them killed in the battle, even the women and children. Hoichi was singing to their ghosts. And the palace he thought he was playing in was their graveyard. He didn’t realize. It was only because a young priest in the seminary where Hoichi lived followed him to the graveyard that anyone knew what was happening. And of course he was becoming pale, and weak, from all that time with the ghosts.”

Taro shivered, imagining the blind man playing to people he didn’t know were dead—playing to the
gaki
spirits of the lower realm, who were called hungry ghosts and who returned at night to the earth in order to feed on the force and vitality of the living, so constantly empty and needful had they become in their death.