Spirit's Chosen (42 page)

I said nothing to Daimu. It was not the time for confidences. I did not want him to know my plans. Ryu hated him and would be ecstatic for the chance of making him suffer with me if my scheme failed. I refused to give the vindictive wolf chieftain such a gift.

“Hush, my love,” I murmured as though he were a wakeful child. “Your uncle would never want others to die for his sake. Let’s pray his spirit finds its way into Ryu’s dreams and gives him no peace until he sees how terribly this path of his must end. Believe in the mercy of the gods.”

“Do you?” he asked weakly. “Even after all the tragedies your clan has suffered?”

“I do,” I said. It was no lie, though if he had insisted I explain how I could still have faith in divine compassion when my kin and I had lost so much, I would not have been able to find the words.

I cannot use a sword to shoot an arrow. I cannot use words to account for what I feel about the spirits. I accept this
.

But I also accept that there are times when I cannot wait to find out which path leads me where the gods desire. I must clear the way and create my own
.

By the time Mori’s tomb was ready, I had learned much about the preparations for the human sacrifice. It was easy to find out whatever I wanted to know, such as where my kin were being kept and what measures were being taken
to prevent their escape. The Ookami themselves provided the information willingly. Now that I was no longer a slave, they saw me only as a respected shaman and were eager to share conversation. From what I gathered, it was considered a mark of great favor to be in my company.

Lady Sato confirmed this. Ryu’s status-hungry mother sent daily invitations for me to visit her. I ignored nearly all of them, making one exception because I wanted to see how Chizu and the baby were doing. Now, however, I made it a point to go to Ryu’s house, taking pains to make sure he would be absent. My aged hostess’s love of gossip was a gift from the gods. She confirmed everything that I had already heard from other Ookami and gave me the priceless knowledge that my younger brother Sanjirou was allowed to remain with his mother until the day of her death.

Thank the gods!
I thought.
This will make it easier to free them both at once
.

There was a burdensome price to pay for every scrap of information Lady Sato provided: I had to endure the meanness of her company. She was one of those disturbing souls who took more pleasure from other people’s bad luck than from their own good fortune. Her tongue wagged eagerly over the impending funeral rites, especially the matter of the sacrifice.

“My dear Lady Himiko, it’s always so nice to have you in our humble home,” she greeted me. “And I must say, every time you come here, it is an inspiration to see what a brave face you wear! I know that if
my
kin were being sent to their deaths so soon, I would not be able to bear it. I would lie down on my bedroll and never get up again!
Of course I have a
very
sensitive, sympathetic nature. It’s a curse. If only I could be as aloof as you!”

I smiled. I would not let her think that her words had the power to touch me. “You mistake me, Lady Sato,” I said as pleasantly as I could. “If I came here and revealed my true feelings about the fate awaiting the chosen captives, it might upset the baby.”

“Oh, you needn’t worry that something as trivial as a girl’s tears will bother our little hero!” Lady Sato lifted her chin and smiled. “Arashi has a warrior’s spirit and grows stronger every day. He takes after my father that way, as well as bearing his name.” She beamed at Chizu, who was seated between us, happily nursing her child. “You will have my blessings forever, dearest Daughter, for choosing to honor that good man. And to think my own son would have named the child Katsuro. Where did he get such a name? Thank the gods
you
are more thoughtful of an old woman’s feelings.” There was not a trace left of the old woman’s former contempt for her daughter-in-law.

“It was an easy choice, Mother,” Chizu said placidly, never taking her eyes from the baby’s face. “I have heard your father’s virtues praised by many people. Names are important, especially one that a future chieftain bears.”

“Who would have suspected you to be so wise, my sweet girl?” Lady Sato gushed. “When my son conceded the privilege of naming the child to you, in thanks for bearing a son after going through such a perilous delivery, I confess that I had my doubts. I feared you might give the precious boy an ill-omened name.”

“How could I have done that?” Chizu asked.

“By naming him after anyone cowardly, malformed, weak minded, sickly, lazy, too fat, too skinny, too smart for his own good”—she counted off a list of forbidden conditions on her fingers—“or after a person who failed to enjoy a long, healthy life. And think of how awful it would have been if you’d chosen the same name as one of our male captives! We don’t want my grandson’s fate linked to a slave’s!” She gave me a look of feigned compassion. “Especially not one of the Matsu slaves escorting dear Master Daimu’s uncle to the spirits’ realm.”

“Yes, Mother.” Chizu shifted the infant to her other breast and sighed. “Poor things. They don’t have much longer to wait. Didn’t you tell me that the tomb is finished?”

“Indeed. The burial will take place in three days. I don’t see why there has to be such a wait, but Rinji—I beg your pardon,
Master
Rinji—told my son the spirits wish it to be so.”

“Great events require the gods’ approval,” I said quietly. “It’s best for us if we ask them to choose auspicious days.”

“Well, Master Rinji took his time getting an answer! He
claimed
there was some disturbance at work preventing him from speaking with them.” Her tone implied that the real cause for the delay was Rinji’s fault.

“I believe that,” Chizu said. “There’s been a strange sensation in the air for a few days now. I keep waking up in the middle of the night with my skin prickling, and not just when Arashi cries. It feels like something’s wrong, but I don’t know what it is.”

“If you don’t know what’s the matter, then everything
is fine,” Lady Sato said crisply. “My goodness, Chizu, you have the silliest fancies.”

“She might be right, Lady Sato,” I said. “Such things exist: premonitions.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve had the same
oh-dear-something’s-wrong-but-nothing’s-wrong
feelings, Lady Himiko?” She tried sweetening her patronizing words with a solicitous manner.

“If so, I haven’t noticed,” I told her. “Other things are on my mind.”

“Of course they are.” She patted my hand. “This waiting must be so dreadful for you, but at least now you know when it will end. I think we’ll all be glad to have Oni’s funeral behind us.”

“Will I have to attend the ceremony?” Chizu asked with a little shudder. Arashi sensed the tension radiating from his mother and began to fuss.

“Don’t worry; you can stay home. The burial ground is no place for a new mother.” Lady Sato looked at me again, grinning so wide that I could see her gums. “I do hope
you
will be there, Lady Himiko?”

“You can count on that, dear Lady Sato.”

Three days …

It was not a long time, but I had been making plans ever since I’d learned of Ryu’s heartless intentions toward my people.

It must be after nightfall when I take them from their prison
, I thought, pacing the floor of my sleeping chamber.
Once I lead them out of this accursed village, I’ll give them supplies and directions for the long journey ahead and set them on the right road
for home. After they’re gone I’ll make sure that they aren’t tracked and brought back. This must be carefully timed. Rinji had great difficulties discovering the divinely approved day for Mori’s interment. Ryu would not dare postpone the ceremony and risk angering the gods. Setting them free on the eve of the funeral would be best, but cutting it close. If I can set things in motion the night before that, they’d have a greater head start and it would still be close enough to the ceremony to make hunting them down impossible. All right, it’s settled; with the gods’ help, that’s what I’ll do!

What
I meant to accomplish sounded as simple as a child’s game.
How
I would be able to accomplish it was not. There was one factor on which everything depended: the Ookami guards.

Two of them stood between my condemned kin and freedom: one stationed at the doorway of the isolated old pit house holding them, one in the village watchtower. During my conversations with Lady Sato and the other Ookami, I learned that the fellow assigned to the nighttime sentry post was a high-ranking noble’s son. He was an easy-going, apathetic young man who would have been beaten for his idle nature if he’d been lowborn. The wolf clan gossips nattered over how surprised everyone was when Lord Ryu entrusted the security of the settlement to such a loafer.

“Maybe he thinks it will give that slug a sense of responsibility,” one of them said.

“And maybe he’ll doze off in the dark when a fire breaks out and we’ll all die in our sleep!” came the reply.

I listened to their fretting and smiled to myself, thanking Ryu for putting that lazybones in the watchtower.

The guard on night duty at the house was another
story. The Ookami rumor-mongers liked telling me all the faults of the men who minded the captives by day, but they had nothing bad to say about the lone warrior who stood watch at night. When they brought his name into our conversation, I gave a little start:
Hiroshi! The same Hiroshi I know, or another one?
Some praised him honestly for his many virtues, but he was a grave disappointment to Lady Sato.

“
That
boy,” she said with a derisive sniff. “Oh, how
seriously
he takes himself, as if he belonged to the aristocracy. Everyone knows his father was an ordinary farmer. The spirits chose to give the lad a handsome face, so he probably thinks he can attract the attention of some nobleman’s ugly daughter and marry his way into a better family. Ha! Good luck to him!”

Other tongues were kinder, speaking of his stainless reputation, of how courteous he was, how dutiful, how brave. I wondered which reports to believe until the night I stole near to the pit house where my kin languished. I wanted to take the measure of the man I would have to outwit if Emi and the others were going to survive.

I crept along the side of the run-down old house and tried to peer at him without sticking my head completely around the corner. It was no good: there was only a crescent moon to light the darkness, so I had to crane my neck farther before I could make out his face.

If I can just get a quick look before he spies me …
, I thought. Then I saw him, and no longer had to wonder.
He
is
that Hiroshi: the young guard who saved Kaya from his brutish partner, the same one who was kind to me as well, when I was left alone. I have to get him out of the way when it’s time for the escape, but
whatever means I use, he must not come to any lasting harm. What shall I—?

“You!” The young guard’s voice rang out, interrupting my thoughts. He leveled his spear in my direction. “I see you! What are you doing here? Explain!”

I moved out of hiding. “I’m sorry,” I said, approaching him with my hands spread wide so that he could see I carried nothing worthy of suspicion. “I didn’t intend to cause trouble. All I wanted was to see where my clanfolk are being kept.”

“Lady Himiko?” He stood straighter, and though the moonlight remained faint, I could see his look of sympathy. “You’ve come to say good-b—to visit them?”

“If I may.”

“I guess so.” He rubbed the nape of his neck. “I don’t have any orders forbidding it, but you should have come in the daytime. If you hadn’t spoken up and shown yourself right away, I might have thrown my spear, and then …” He shivered.

“These people will die in just a few days. They are my kin,” I told him. “One is my father’s widow, my second mother. Her death will leave my brother Sanjirou an orphan.”

“So that’s the little boy’s name,” Hiroshi said, half to himself. “Sometimes I bring him and the girl a bit of dried fruit or a morsel of honeycomb. She thanks me for it, but he never accepts anything I offer him.”

“He’s a chieftain’s son,” I said. “What you see as a small kindness, he sees as taking a bribe from his enemy.”

“Oh. Well, I wish he’d change his mind. I’m on duty when the prison—your clanfolk get their evening meal, and
they’re never brought more than six bowls of food. No one cares if Sanjirou stays with his mother while he can, but I think Lord Ryu doesn’t really like it. He won’t pick a fight with the boy, but he won’t make it comfortable for the lad to remain here. I’d feel better if he’d share my dinner with me, but …” He shrugged.

“Perhaps I can change his mind,” I said, and slipped through the doorway.

The roof of the old pit house had many places where the thatch had fallen or been pulled away by the weight of many winters’ snows. Weak glints of moonlight filtered through the gaps, just enough for me to catch a glimpse of Emi’s face before she embraced me.

“Himiko!” she cried, pressing her cheek to mine. “I thought I heard your voice out there. My darling, I’m so glad you’ve come. Listen, you must persuade Sanjirou to leave this place. He’s starving, but too much like his father to admit it.”

“I am not,” came a sleepy protest from the darkness.

I felt my stepmother’s fingers turn to claws in my arms. She dropped her voice to an urgent whisper. “Take him away, Daughter. Do it now or tomorrow but don’t wait any longer than that. He must not be here when they come for us. Be sure he’s not there when we—when we go into the tomb. Do whatever it takes to keep him from seeing that horror! Tie him up, give him a potion to make him sleep, cast a spell of forgetfulness over him:
anything
, I beg you, but show mercy to your little brother. Save my precious son.”

“Yes, Mother.” I gently disengaged her grip. “I promise
you, Sanjirou will be spared.” Then, leaning close, I murmured in her ear: “And so will you.”

I spoke swiftly and so quietly that my awestruck stepmother sometimes had to ask me to repeat the words of hope I brought her. By the time I finished letting her know my plan, we were surrounded by the other prisoners, except for the two children, who slept on. “Now let them know,” I told her. “You’ll have to do it one by one. The guard must not suspect.”