Blood Ninja (29 page)

“You delivered your message?”

“In a manner of speaking. One of them raised the alarm, which was unfortunate. I killed every man on board.”

Hana’s father grinned a distasteful grin. “Good. Because yours is the most important task of all. You must protect my daughter by night. By day, my own samurai will defend her. They will be there at night too, of course, but they will be vulnerable to … those of your persuasion. I need someone to make sure no ninja gets into this castle. And even if they penetrate the walls, they must not reach the fourth tower, which is where I will be moving my daughter.”

Hana’s eyes widened. The fourth tower! That was where her father usually kept prisoners, men who had plotted against him or otherwise gravely offended him. It was the tallest part of the castle, and was protected by a circular staircase in the Portuguese style. In theory a single man could defend it. The staircase turned to the right as it ascended, meaning that a man stationed above could wield his sword in his stronger right hand, while an attacker would have to move his to his left. It had not escaped Hana’s notice that her father had made the tower impregnable to all but himself—for who but a left-handed sword saint could hope to fight their way up? This was Lord Oda’s way; he liked always to have insurance policies. The fourth tower would protect him and his family from attackers. But if for any reason he was outside and needed to get in, the tower was perfectly configured for his disability
.

Hana turned her attention back to the room, where her father was still talking. “Tokugawa will have heard by now what happened in Shirahama though he doesn’t know his son is a vampire, and I imagine the traitor who saved him would like to keep it that way. So of course, he’ll think that his precious son Taro is dead, since that fool of a ninja who turned him will try to hide him.”

Precious son Taro?
Hana had never heard of a Tokugawa son by that name. What was her father talking about?

“How do you know the boy is a vampire?” said her father’s mysterious interlocutor. “You’re sure he’ll come at night?”

“I’m sure,” said her father. “My ninjas saw him turned, on the hillside in Shirahama. They said he recovered from a dose of steel two hand-spans wide, right through the stomach.”

“And you’re sure the ninja will hide the boy’s transformation?”

“Yes. He’ll be terrified that Lord Tokugawa will never forgive him for making his secret son a vampire, instead of merely rescuing him as he was ordered.”

“He’s probably right.”

“Of course. But that isn’t the point. The point is that Tokugawa now believes his son to be dead. He has already killed one of his sons, and sent the other to me. To lose the last is unacceptable. If I know Tokugawa, he will not rest until our situations are rendered equal.”

“Meaning?”

“He will kill Hana.”

Behind the door, Hana stifled a gasp
.

Taro’s breath came out in a rush that he didn’t know was a scream, and he was running across the crater floor, as Shusaku ran too …

He got there moments after Shusaku, moments before Kawabata, who puffed heavily behind him. He dropped to his knees as he ran, letting his momentum carry him in a painful skid up to the wife’s body. She sat against the rock face, smiling, holding the shield in her hands. She passed the round target to Shusaku. Her face sagged with relief, and her mouth rose at the edges in a grin. Tears continued to fall.

Shusaku held the shield above his head. Right in the middle was the shaft of the arrow, standing perpendicular to the wood. There was a collective sigh from the crowd.

“Gods!“ exclaimed Yukiko, her voice carrying as usual. “He’s brilliant! Why didn’t you
say
?” she demanded as she bounded up to Taro. “Here I’ve been wasting my time wrestling with
that
lump”—she pointed to Hiro—”when I could have been learning the bow with you.”

Hiro waved a dismissive hand. “The bow takes delicacy and grace,” he said to Yukiko. “You’d be hopeless at it.”

She gave him a playful punch on the arm, and Taro felt a warm spreading gladness in his chest to have people on his side—more than one—and a place in the world. He smiled at Yukiko. “Are we … friends?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry about before. I was upset.”

Heiko squeezed her sister’s arm and smiled. Then she gave Taro a little bow. “That was magnificent,” she said softly. “Certainly worthy of a daimyo’s son.”

Taro blushed.

Kawabata stood in the middle of the crater, glowering. He put an arm around his wife, who did not look at him. Then he pointed at Taro and Hiro, followed by the two girls. “Let us all welcome our new apprentices,” he said, with bad grace.

There were a few nervous hellos from the assembled people. The ninja bowed. The young man with the spear nodded at Taro, an unsmiling but not unfriendly gesture. Taro raised a hand awkwardly to greet the silent people. Then his eye caught on a boy standing a little apart from the others. The boy was chubby, his red face set in a scowl of scorn and anger. His mouth, firmly closed in an expression of exaggerated disgust, put Taro in mind of a clam’s closed shell—pink flesh squeezed white in places by pressure. But the set of the crinkled eyes, and the fleshy softness of the countenance, reminded him of something much more immediate, something much
closer
. The physiognomy was unmistakably similar to Kawabata’s.

Kawabata’s son stared at Taro with undisguised hatred, and Taro shivered—not just from the cold. His arrival at the clan’s stronghold could not have gone much worse.

Shusaku turned to Taro, Hiro, Heiko, and Yukiko. “Come on. I’ll take you to your sleeping places.”

But Taro was thinking of his mother—or, at least, the woman he had always known as his mother. Heiko and Yukiko may have been destined from a young age, as the ninja had said, to become
ninja. But he was here for one reason and one reason only—to discover where she had gone, and to find her. “The pigeon,” he said to Shusaku. “Has it arrived?”

Shusaku went over to Kawabata and spoke to him for a moment. Taro saw Kawabata shake his head, and he felt his body ringing like a struck bell.

“No sign of it,” said Shusaku when he returned to their side. Seeing Taro’s expression, he added, “But don’t worry. If she has traveled far, the pigeon may take some time to get here.”

Taro nodded. But how far could his mother have gone? He may have been an illiterate peasant, but he was smart enough to realize that a pigeon could cover ground faster than a person on foot, and hadn’t he and Shusaku and Hiro covered many
ri
in their walk to the mountain?

The pigeon should have been here before them.

“It was my best bird,” said Shusaku. “It will come. And if not, then I will help you look for her myself. I swear it.”

Taro smiled at the man. He believed him. “All right, then,” he said. He was suddenly overwhelmingly tired. “Show us where we sleep.”

Shusaku led them into a cave that gave off the crater. Again Taro had to hold back a gasp. They followed a corridor that opened onto another corridor, and leading off to either side were passageways lit by candles, doorways from which people peered in open curiosity, and even pens from which pigs gazed with their friendly, mindless eyes. Taro recognized a stable as they passed by it at Shusaku’s customary fast pace. The horses followed him with their eyes, their long noses tracking him, their nostrils flaring. Even the horses could spot a new arrival.

Taro was sure that he would never be able to retrace his steps. This was no cave—this was a network of roads, of alleyways. It was a village inside the rock. Every so often they passed an opening that didn’t give onto another tributary passageway. Instead he would get a glimpse of a dining room, the floor laid with tatami mats, small lacquered wood tables set with bowls and chopsticks, or a
simple room furnished with cushions and decorated with painted screens. In some of these rooms people looked up as they passed and watched them with hard eyes.

Finally they turned into a passageway deeper than the ones before, and then they came into another cave. This one was carved with wild animals, gods, and demons. And again, candlelight glowed in myriad sconces. This cave was filled with equipment: wooden horses, sword racks, tables on which had been laid a number of bows and crossbows. Armor lay strewn on the floor, and in some cases had been placed on straw-and-leather mannequins, which looked as a result like the headless ghosts left behind by some terrible military campaign. The whole scene made Taro think of an army encampment, transported by mischievous
kami
from the field of battle to this eldritch cave.

Shusaku laughed. “Quite impressive, isn’t it? This is the weapons room. You’ll sleep here, along with the other children—including Little Kawabata, the son of the charming man you met out there. We like to accustom our young people to the presence of weapons.”

“We sleep
here
?” asked Hiro. He poked at a leather chest guard with his foot.

“Not right here, no.” Shusaku crossed the room and showed them where holes had been carved into the rock. These were the length of a man, and their mouths were shaped in a semicircle, flat side down. Each niche was lined with piles of blankets, and illuminated by a large candle set into the wall. They were snug little sleeping caves.

“
This
,” Shusaku said, “is where you’ll sleep.”

“Only if you’re lucky,” said Heiko. “Little Kawabata snores like a pig. You can wrap a scarf around your ears, but it does no good. Sometimes I think the little brat does it on purpose.” She looked at Taro. “Little Kawabata was the fat boy who glared at you out there.”

“You know him already?” said Taro.

“Yes. We have trained with him a couple of times, when his
father came to consult with the abbess. He’s a nasty child.”

“You shouldn’t speak ill of such a senior ninja’s son,” said Shusaku. But the amusement in his voice undermined his reprimand. “And anyway, to show personal dislike is unbecoming of a ninja. Remember, you should be always as passive and yielding as the river in its banks, which is soft and without desire or hatred but can cut through solid rock.”

Heiko smiled, and bowed. “Of course, Lord Endo. I don’t dislike Little Kawabata. It’s merely that I’m jealous of him, because he is the son of an important man and has been better provisioned than I with intelligence, good looks, and skill.” She winked at Taro, then turned and walked with exaggerated elegance and bearing toward the beds.

Taro had been hoping to get Heiko on her own, so that he could ask if she would accompany him down to the rice store when the others were asleep. He wanted the bow back, and he was going to do it without Shusaku’s help, even if that meant asking Yukiko instead. She knew how to pick locks, and she could fight. But Yukiko and Hiro were engrossed in the weapons, and Taro could not see how he would manage to get her alone. He would have to put off the expedition to the next night, and hope that the bow wasn’t moved between.

Just then, Little Kawabata entered the room. The similarity with his father was astonishing—the same fat belly, the same waddling walk. He glared at Taro. “So, another samurai who has turned traitor and become a ninja. I don’t know if it’s better or worse that you thought you were just a peasant.”

“He didn’t ask for any of this,” said Shusaku.

“Of course not,” said Little Kawabata. “Nor did you, when you took my father’s rightful place as leader. That ninja girl turned you for
love
, isn’t that your story?”

Shusaku sighed. “I was dying. She bit me to save me.” His voice sounded weary, as if he had gone over this many times.

“Yes, yes, so you say. And then she just
happened
to die, on a day when there wasn’t even any fighting! How convenient.”

Shusaku took a step toward the boy, his fists clenched, and Taro thought for a moment that he was going to strike him. But he just rubbed his mask with his hand and stretched his neck, cracking the bones. “Run along now,” he said. “Your father cast these aspersions before you, and you’re the only person to whom they ever stuck.”

“I don’t know why he wasted his time with accusations,” said Little Kawabata as he turned on his heel. “He should have just had you executed as a murderer.”

That same night Junichiro the tanner’s son walked down the mountain stream toward the tanneries, which were downriver so as not to pollute the village’s drinking water. He was on the lower slopes of the sacred mountain, far below the small hut by the cliff that they said was haunted and should never be approached. But even here it was steep enough that walking demanded concentration, and often levied a fine in the form of a twisted ankle if that tribute were forgotten
.

He kicked at a pebble, sending it skittering into the water. Once again the other children had not wanted to play with him, something that had been abundantly clear to Junichiro when they had begun to pelt him with mud and stones, sending him running back toward his house. This was the last time he would try
.