Blood Ninja (44 page)

She tried not to look up.

She noticed, though, that Oda poured the tea, then lifted the cup, with his left hand. His right hung in the shadow, the arm attached to it looking thin and wasted.

“I was in the middle of the tea ceremony, as you see,” he said. He was a muscular man, sitting not on a throne, as Yukiko would have supposed, but on a simple cushion on the floor. “So your reason for disturbing me had better be pressing.”

Yukiko smiled. That at least she was sure of.

“Taro is here.”

Lord Oda sprang to his feet, the tea spilling on his robe. He didn’t appear to notice. He moved across the long floor.

“Where?”

Yukiko raised a single elegant finger. “No. First you do something for me.”

Lord Oda paused, unsheathing a
katana
from behind his back. He wielded it left-handed, something Yukiko had never before seen.

This was a formidable man. She would have to be careful.

“You give me Kira, and I give you Taro,” she said. “Kira killed my sister. I would kill him in return.”

Lord Oda walked toward her, the sword tracing lazy spirals in the air. “You’re very confident,” he said. “What if I torture Taro’s whereabouts from you, then kill you?”

Yukiko took a deep breath. “Well,” she said, “then I would be
very
angry.”

Lord Oda laughed out loud, surprised.

“And,” continued Yukiko, “my anger is a terrible thing. Look what I am doing to Taro, for betraying me. If you killed me, maybe I’d come back as a ghost and make you sorry.”

Lord Oda’s eyes were bright with amusement. “I like you,” he said. Then he turned to the samurai who had led her in. “Leave. Take the other guards with you. Taro is mine.” He turned back to Yukiko. “Kira’s life is yours, to do with as you choose. And yours is mine. Do you understand? You will live, but you will suffer. Otherwise how can I be sure of your loyalty?”

Yukiko bowed. “I expect to suffer. It is in the nature of revenge.”

Taro recoiled, horrified. The stench of the room was awful. There was decay in it, but also blood and sweat. The circular space was dark, unlit by windows. Huddled on the stone floor was a figure—barely discernible as human—under a ragged blanket. As Taro stepped inside the room, holding his breath, the figure stirred and he saw that it was a woman holding a doll, its porcelain skin covered in dirt, its hair a filthy thatch.

Taro peered closer, and a shudder ran through him.

It wasn’t a doll. It was a dead child.

The woman lifted her head with visible difficulty and looked up at Taro, eyes wary but resigned, as if merely curious as to what fresh torture he wished to visit on her. Her shoulder bones protruded from her skin. She was dressed in sacking cloth.

Taro, speechless, gazed at his mother’s face. She had been attractive once. The heart shape of the face could be seen beneath the scars and lesions; the eyes were as black as night. But she had been starved, clearly, and subjected to the worst kind of treatment.
He knelt beside her, touched her hair. The child, to which she clung tightly, had apparently been dead for some time. Sores festered around its mouth, and in the corners of its eyes small flies crawled. Most of the stench seemed to come from this tiny corpse, but Taro’s true mother clung to it nevertheless, as if her embrace had the power to restore it to life.

The child was no more than four years old.

Taro knelt. “My name is Taro,” he said to the trembling woman who was his mother. “I don’t have much time. I …”

He broke off, gulping.

“Taro is your son, Lady Tokugawa,” said Hana. She too knelt in the bloodstained sawdust, her silk gown trailing in the dirt.

The woman stared. “My son?” Her words rattled in her throat like pebbles carried by a stream, and Taro saw that it was an effort for her to speak. “I have only two sons. One died by his own hand … seppuku … an honorable samurai’s death. The other is here, in my arms.” She looked down at the dead boy and kissed his cheek, then held him tight to her. “You cannot take him from me. I won’t have another of my sons die.”

She thinks he’s alive
, thought Taro.
Gods, she’s lost her mind
. He wondered how long she had been confined here, alone in the dark.

But he would not have this chance again. He looked into her eyes, and told her what Shusaku had explained to him, about Lord Tokugawa’s decision to keep him secret, wanting to spare him from Oda’s clutches, about the ninja who had saved him from death. And most of all, about what he suspected, that she was his real mother, this broken woman before him.

Lady Tokugawa smiled, a sad sight on a face so ravaged. “Come closer, that I might look on your face.”

Taro leaned closer, trying not to overcome his revulsion at the woman’s smell.

“Ah. No. I do not know you. I’m sorry.”

“But—but—,” stammered Taro.

Lady Tokugawa was still smiling. “I said … you are not my son.”

Taro couldn’t believe it. “Then what … Why …”

Hana put her hand on Taro’s arm. “Let her finish.” Sure enough, Lady Tokugawa’s mouth was still open to speak.

“You are not my son. But you
are
my husband’s. I see it in your face.”

“But …,” Taro started. “What does that mean?”

“You … have … a mother?” asked Lady Tokugawa. “One who raised you?”

“Yes.”

“Then … I presume … she is your mother. My husband … is not … faithful.”

Taro could think of nothing to say.
My mother is my real mother after all!
he thought with joy.

And a moment later, with sadness, he thought,
My father was not
.

Yet he raised me with her, knowing as he must have done that the boy he looked after was Tokugawa’s son
.

Taro felt a wave of love for his adoptive father crash over him, and he remembered again the frail body on the bed, the severed head—and the anger filled his veins like molten steel.

Lady Tokugawa raised her hand, shaking, and placed it on his. “You … kill … Oda. Support your father. Understand?
Lord Tokugawa must be shogun
. My son died for it, and so will this one. As I too must soon.”

“No!” said Taro. “We’ll carry you. Come—”

She shook her head, letting herself slump to the ground. “Too late for me. You must run. Take your brother. If my husband dies, he and you will take up the fight.”

Taro looked down at the dead boy. Lady Tokugawa was proffering the corpse, as if it were a living thing that could still be saved. He began to back away, revolted, but Hana nudged him and made a little hissing sound under her breath, and he reached out his hands, every nerve in his body trembling.

She handed over the body, and he was surprised by its lightness. He could feel the bones through the flesh. He felt not revulsion,
as he had expected, but a terrible sadness. He looked at Lady Tokugawa. “I will look after him,” he said gently.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

He was backing away through the door when Lady Tokugawa raised a clawed hand, shaking with the effort.

“Oda Nobunaga … must … die,” she said.

And then she closed her eyes.

Outside, Hiro heard nothing—no footfall or splash of water or crunch of leaf that would warn him of an approaching danger—before he felt the cold steel edge of a blade against his neck.

Keeping the blade there, the person holding it stepped around into Hiro’s field of vision. The figure wore a black three-piece mask that covered the face apart from the eyes.

A ninja.

Taro backed out of the room, holding the body of his young brother in his arms.

“What do we do with him?” he asked Hana.

“Get him out of this place, and give him a proper funeral,” she answered.

He began to walk down the stairs, carefully, so as not to drop the child. His heart pounded in his chest, fear of capture coursing through him. He hadn’t heard an alarm, but he and Shusaku had killed the ninja Namae, and he and Hana had killed two samurai, too.

Their absence might well have been noted.

The staircase continued to turn to the left, growing steadily brighter as they descended. Taro could feel the coolness of outside air now, stirring his hair and his dreams of escape. He began to move more quickly. If they could just get to the moat—

Shhht. Shuffle. Shhht. Shuffle
.

Taro stopped, and Hana barreled into his back, cursing. Taro almost dropped his brother. “What—”

He held his hand up for silence.

There was no sound now, but his highly attuned vampire ears had caught something, a quiet susurrus as of expensive silk clothes whispering together, as of a person trying very hard not to be heard. Taro drew his sword and motioned for Hana to do the same. Then he began to descend again, more slowly this time. He spoke loudly. “Hayao, Shigeru—when we get to the courtyard, you two head for the lord’s residence. Understood?”

Hana raised her eyebrows at him, then slowly nodded, understanding. He was trying to make it appear that there were more of them.

Taro gently laid his brother on the steps, then continued downward, Hana behind him. He and the man coming up the stairs saw each other at precisely the same time. They both struck out with their swords, acting from pure instinct, and the blades rang loud against each other in the narrow stone stairwell. In the grip of his vampire’s urge to fight, and the unthinking, deeply ingrained pattern of a sword fighter’s movements, Taro was only dimly aware that something here was wrong.

Taro’s blade was forced aside, the movement smacking the weapon into the wall with a
ding
and banging his knuckles painfully against the stone. His opponent was strong. Taro pulled back the sword and used it to parry another strike, and that was when he realized what the problem was.

The samurai coming up the stairs was attacking with his left hand. And he was enormously powerful with it, despite his movements being hampered by the turn of the stairs. He wore no armor but his sword was magnificent. His right arm was withered and thin. It reminded Taro of a tree branch, half-broken off by a storm and now hanging desiccated and fragile from the stout trunk.

All this Taro registered in a fraction of a second. But his distraction was sufficient for the samurai to punch him in the gut with his pommel, then turn his sword over and into a thrust at the chest.

“Father!” said Hana.

Now it was the samurai who averted his eyes for a moment.

Lord Oda
, thought Taro.

“Nobunaga!”
Taro shouted, deliberately insulting the daimyo by using his personal name. He cut up and under the older man’s strike, slashing his forearm. Oda grunted with pain and surprise, stepping backward down the stairs.

“Filthy peasant,” he said as he raised his sword. “You will address me as Lord Oda before you die.”

Taro grinned. “Then you will address me as Lord Tokugawa.”

He pressed the advantage of height, his sword moving faster than it ever had before as he forced his father’s killer ever downward. He grinned, lost to himself, his eyes locked on Oda’s. The Lord’s small, hard eyes nestled in deep wrinkles, pebbles on rumpled silk. His skin was sallow, patchy with red in places. He wore a mustache that reached his chin on either side in greasy points.

“You killed Namae,” said Lord Oda. “You must have been lucky, for I find you weak.” Sparks flew as his sword struck Taro’s clean in the center, knocking aside a blow that was meant to sever his left arm.

Taro held the man’s eyes as he had been taught.
Never watch the sword. It will lie to you about where it is going. But the eyes never lie
.

Sure enough, he saw Oda’s eyes twitch to the left, and a moment later his sword followed—but Taro had already moved his own blade to block the strike and rake the lord’s knuckles, cutting them open.

Oda spat, slicing at Taro’s legs and opening a long, shallow cut on his thigh. “Little brat. You should have died long ago. But if you want a job done …” The lord attacked.

Taro’s sword hand danced. He was barely aware of it. It was as if this part of his anatomy moved of its own accord, a white spider that liked to slash and cut.

Somewhere behind him was Hana, screaming.

In his joy he forgot her.

But gradually his grin began to fade. His strikes were still as fast as ever, but Oda always seemed to know where his sword would
be next. The lord began to smile now, as if stealing even this from Taro—his father, his simple future, and now his smile.

Sword flashing, Oda hissed at Taro. “Give me the ball. I know you have it.”

Taro parried a strike. “The ball?”

“The Buddha ball, boy. I must have it.”