Blood Ninja (43 page)

And besides, he suspected with a more cynical and lizard-like part of his mind that Lord Oda would have seen the girl die,
rather than have her be used as a bargaining chip. Taking her hostage would have achieved nothing.

All this went through his mind in a fraction of a moment, and then he made his decision, and bowed. “Taro, at your service.”

Yukiko stared at Taro and Lord Oda’s daughter. She didn’t understand at all what was happening. It seemed like Taro and the girl knew each other, but at the same time it appeared that they were strangers. Which was the truth and which was the pretense?

It was impossible for her to tell.

One thing she knew. Since her sister had died in Taro’s defense, she had felt as a samurai in armor—girded in cold metal, no signs of the human life inside.

That was until Taro had left Shusaku to die. Then she had felt anger take hold.

Now it burned fast, feeding on the aridity inside.

Heiko had died for Taro, and now here he was facing the daughter of their greatest enemy, and stammering, as if he were in a love story, rather than a story of revenge and violence.

She poked Taro with the end of her sword, and he turned to her, frowning. “What was that, about the woods?” she asked. “And what is that on your finger?”

He held his hand out to her. “It’s her ring,” he said. “She gave it to me.”

Yukiko felt as though the ground were giving way beneath her. “Lord Oda’s
daughter
gave you a ring?”

“Yes. I mean, I didn’t realize it then, but—” He paused in his babbling. Yukiko didn’t know what was happening, but she could see one thing. Taro was a liar and a traitor, and was certainly not the peasant he had appeared to everyone—including Shusaku!—to be. Here he was gazing into the eyes of Lord Oda’s daughter, and wearing her ring. She was sure of only one thing, and that was that nothing had been what it appeared. “We saved her life,” he said now. “In the mountains. Well, Shusaku did, mostly.”

“You’re too modest,” said Lord Oda’s daughter. “Your work with the bow was extraordinary.”

Yukiko stared at him. “You saved her life?” she asked, incredulous. “She’s the daughter of your enemy.”

Heiko gave her life for him because she thought he deserved to be shogun. She is dead not two days and now he stands before Lord Oda’s daughter, the spawn of his worst enemy, like a love-struck fool!

Then the most horrible thought of all struck Yukiko with the force of a heavy
bokken
blow to the head, worse than before, when it had passingly crossed her mind.

He could have saved Heiko. He was not paralyzed, and I was a fool to believe it
.

He lied
.

Yukiko backed away from them, disgust turning in her stomach like a trapped fish.

Lady Hana stared at the boy. She had heard the name Taro only the other day—and in extraordinary circumstances
.

It was when her father and the ninja guard were speaking
.

She looked into the boy’s startling gray eyes. “I heard that Lord Tokugawa has a son named Taro,” she said. “A secret son.”

As she had half-expected, the boy blinked. “I … I mean, yes, that’s me.”

She’d wondered, but the confirmation shocked her nevertheless. “You’re really
Tokugawa?”
Lady Hana asked the boy ninja, incredulous. The enmity between her father and Lord Tokugawa no Ieyasu had been her favored topic of gossip with her serving girl, Sono, but it had seemed less distant and abstract after Lord Tokugawa’s wife and son had been hauled off to the tower. Now she found herself experiencing a confusing mixture of emotions. Anger with her father, for his violent temper and harsh treatment of others, vied with a deep-seated mistrust of the Tokugawa clan that had been instilled in her almost since birth
.

“Yes. My father hid me in a fishing village. Lord Oda tried to have me killed.” He looked pained then. “Sorry. But it’s true.”

Lady Hana waved away his apology. It did not surprise her that her father would attempt to kill a mere boy. She knew his character better than anyone else
.

Anyway, she was not overly given to tradition, in any of its forms, even if tradition did demand that she should defend her father’s honor. Looking at this boy, she felt a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach—a swooping, dropping feeling, as if the core of her had been stolen by a seagull, and it was flying about with it. She felt something for this boy, some powerful connection that went beyond the bonds she felt to family or teachers
.

“Can you climb back down the tower?” she asked
.

The boy ninja—Tokugawa no Taro—shook his head. “The surface is too smooth. Climbing up was hard enough—the plan was always to go down the stairs.”

Hana stared. “There’s sure to be a guard. Maybe more than one. You could be killed.”

Taro gave her a wan smile. “My mother always used to say
, Ame futte ji—”

“
Katamaru,”
completed Hana. Her own mother had said it too. A samurai girl can expect a lot of rain in her life, and has a lot to harden herself against, so the expression had been frequently apt. She smiled at the boy ninja. “Your mother was a wise woman.”

A troubled expression crossed his face, and Hana had the sense that something had happened to his mother, or had happened between them. “As was yours, it would seem.” He bowed, then frowned, looking around him. “The other … ninja. Where did she go?”

Hana cast her eyes around the room. “I don’t know.”

Taro swore. “Is Kenji Kira nearby? She has … business to conclude with him. She may have gone to find him.”

Hana shook her head. “Kira is abroad in the country, looking for something. I think … it might be you.”

Taro grunted. “Well, she won’t find him then. Let’s hope she can find her own way to safety.”

A moment later Taro was at the door that led to the spiral staircase. He felt Hana’s hand on his arm. “I’m coming with you,” she said. She began to pull on a heavy cloak over her sleeping garments.

“What about your father?” asked Taro, shocked. Already he feared that he might not leave the castle alive. To be weighed down by this girl, even if she was a samurai’s daughter, would be suicide. “Shouldn’t you stay here with him?”

“What for? To be married for my father’s convenience? I would rather die.” She looked at him sharply. “You’re worried I’ll slow you down, aren’t you?”

Taro stared at her. That was
exactly
what he was worried about.

Sighing, she reached behind her back. A
katana
appeared in her hand. She brought it round in a flat swipe to end up a hair’s breadth from Taro’s neck. He gulped, looking down dumbly at the blade. He hadn’t even known she was carrying it—and if she’d wanted to cut his throat, he wouldn’t have been able to move before blood was spilling from the wound.

Taro moved the blade aside, gently, with his finger. “I saw you kill that
ronin
, remember?” he said. “No need to convince me you know how to handle a blade.”

Hana spun the
katana
in a couple of graceful moves, and Taro saw that her skills of
kenjutsu
were superior even to his own. “Good,” she said. “Just don’t forget it.”

“All right,” he replied. “Let’s go.”

The girl held up a hand to stay him for a moment. She went to her bed and picked up a few items, which she placed in a silk bag. Then she lashed a leather guard to her left forearm. She went to the stand and coaxed the hawk onto her wrist.

Taro looked pointedly at the bird.

“She goes with me,” said Hana.

Taro shrugged, resignedly. He opened the door to see a sword swinging toward his face, held two-handed by a burly samurai wearing a tusked face mask designed to resemble a wild boar.

Instinctively Taro ducked. He felt stirred air on the nape of his neck as the blade passed overhead. He struck at the man’s legs with his own short-sword, opening a wound on one meaty thigh. The samurai cursed. Coming out of his duck, Taro met the man’s next blow, deflecting it with the side of his blade. Then, feeling a tap on his right shoulder, he sidestepped to the left, striking backhand at the right side of his opponent’s face, bending his elbow to create a wide space between his arm and his body. He hoped that he had interpreted Hana’s signal correctly.

The samurai raised his sword to parry the stroke—a mistake. At that moment Hana thrust her sword through the triangular gap created by Taro’s arm, plunging it into the samurai’s abdomen. The man gurgled and fell backward against the far wall of the narrow corridor. His head slumped.

Hana nodded. “We make a good team.”

Taro looked at the lord’s bright-eyed daughter, with her bloody sword, and thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.

They started down the stairs. Another samurai was on his way up, no doubt investigating the noise of his companion’s death. But his sword arm was obstructed by the turn of the stairs, and Taro dispatched him with a single judicious stroke. He moved quickly now, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Wait,” said Hana as they passed a wooden door.

Taro stopped.

“You are Lord Tokugawa’s son, are you not?”

Taro nodded.

“And your mother?”

“I don’t know. Shusaku—that’s the ninja who saved me from Lord Od— I mean, from the ninja who tried to kill me—he said that it might be Lady Tokugawa, or it might be a concubine. There’s no way of knowing.”

Hana shook her head. “There is one way of knowing.” She gestured to the door. “Lord Tokugawa’s wife and son are in there. That is, if they’re still alive. I saw them being dragged to the tower before I was moved to that room.”

Taro’s stomach believed suddenly that he was falling from a great height, and rushed accordingly upward into his mouth. He felt his pulse hammering in his veins. Lady Tokugawa.
Would it be a betrayal of my other mother to see her?
He felt almost as if to see her would kill his old mother, would cause the pigeon she had been given to drop dead from the sky.

But that couldn’t be true, could it? It was only superstition, not clear thinking.

“Come on,” said Hana. “We must be quick. I see you’re afraid to face her, but you deserve answers, don’t you?”

That decided him. Yes, he did deserve answers. And to ask them did not betray the memory of his father and mother, and the love they had shown him. This was about his heritage. It wasn’t about love.

He turned to the door. It was heavy, and locked with a tumble-pin mechanism. He shrugged his bag from his shoulder, rummaging inside it. Did he still have it? Yes! The key Heiko had used in the storeroom lock. He kissed it once, for luck. What were the chances that a locksmith all the way over here, in Lord Oda’s territory, would use the same key as one who worked near the crater?

Hana watched, eyes wide, as Taro slid the key into the bolt. Distractedly she stroked the hawk that sat on her wrist.

Taro pushed the key upward.

There was a click, and the bolt slid free.

Yukiko walked up the steps of Lord Oda’s private audience chamber. A samurai ushered her before him, his sword tip pressing into the base of her spine.

She entered the room. Cool, sharp shadows crossed on its smooth wooden floor like swords.

A scent of
o-cha
—green tea—rose from a lacquerware vessel set on a silver platter. Lord Oda Nobunaga finished pouring, not even raising his eyes, then lifted the cup—it was adorned with black-ink cranes and moons—and breathed deeply. Yukiko guessed that, for the lord to be relaxed enough not even to look at her, there had to be more steel aimed at her than the sword tickling her back. Most likely there were arrows trained on her heart—niches in the walls where archers awaited a single motion from the daimyo.