Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)
David Kudler
Prologue—Serenity
My name is Kano Murasaki, but everyone calls me Risuko. Squirrel.
I am from Serenity Province, though I was not born there.
My nation has been at war for a hundred years, Serenity is under attack and the Kano family is in disgrace, but some people think that I can bring victory. That I can be a very special kind of woman.
All I want to do is climb.
My name is Kano Murasaki, but everyone calls me Squirrel.
Risuko.
1—The Left-Hand Path
Serenity Province, Land of the Rising Sun, The Month of Leaves in the First Year of the Rule of Genki
(Totomi, Japan, late autumn, 1570 a.d.)
Spying on the lord of the province from the old pine was a bad idea. Risky. Stupid. That’s why I didn’t see what was coming. I knew it was a bad idea, but something about being there, high up in that pine, made me feel free.
And, of course, I was always fascinated by what happened in the castle. Can you blame me?
I watched where Lord Imagawa stood in his castle with a samurai, pointing at a piece of paper. Paper covered with splashes of color. Green, mostly. Blue and red shapes marking the edges.
It was a hundred paces away or more. I must have been squinting hard, trying to make out what they were pointing at. That’s the only way to explain how I didn’t notice the palanquin until it had almost reached my tree.
Below, two hulking men carried the shiny black box by the heavy bar between them. The thing scuttled like a beetle through the slanting morning shadows that darkened the woods. It was coming from the direction of the village.
Seeing it startled me—made my chest tight and my hands colder even than they already were.
I scooted to the top of the pine, hands chilled and sticky.
Half-way up the pine tree though I was, I had the urge to stomp on the dark, gleaming thing. Only nobles traveled by palanquin. And when had nobles ever done my family any favors?
I sensed danger in the steady, silent approach. Had they seen me spying on the castle?
“Risuko!” My sister called up to me. I could not even see the top of her head.
The black box crept closer, into the clearing below me. Then the palanquin stopped.
I scrambled to hide myself. The cold sap smelled sharp and raw as I pressed my nose to the bark. I gave a bird whistle—a warbler call, the one that I’d told Usako I’d use if she needed to hide.
I had actually been looking for birds’ eggs, though it was the wrong season for it. Hunger and the desire to do something, as well as my own pleasure in climbing, had driven me up the tree. Mother had not fed us that morning. Once the weather turned cold, she could not always provide us with even a small bowl of rice a day. Also, the castle had been bustling like an ants’ nest that’s been prodded with a stick, and I had been curious....
Someone below me began talking. An old woman, I thought, her voice high and birdlike, though, again, I couldn’t make out the words. Usako—my sister—stepped forward into view. I could see her head bowed, like a frightened rabbit. The old woman spoke again. After a pause, Usako-chan’s face, open and small, turned toward my hiding place. She pointed up at me.
“Risuko,” the old woman said, “come down now.”
She and her men were at the bottom of the tree. I considered leaping across to one of the other pines, but there weren’t any close enough and big enough to jump to. And I was worried that my hands were too cold to keep hold.
Usako scurried off on the trail toward home. Thanks, sister, I thought. I’ll get you for that later. I wish that she had turned and waved. I wish that I had called out a good-bye.
If I was going to be grabbed at the bottom, I decided that I might as well come down with a flourish. I dropped from limb to limb, bark, needles, and sap flying from the branches as my hands and feet slapped at them, barely breaking my speed. Perhaps if I came down faster than they expected, I could make a run for it once I reached the ground.
My bare feet had no sooner hit the needles beneath the tree, however, than a large hand came to rest on my shoulder. The two huge servants had managed to place themselves exactly where I would land.
“What an interesting young girl you are,” the grey-haired noblewoman said.
Somehow I didn’t want to interest her. The two men stepped back at the wave of her hand. She stood there, still in her elegant robes, her wooden sandals barely sinking into the mud. “Do you climb things other than trees?” she asked, her deeply lined face bent in an icy smile, her eyes lacquer-black against her white-painted skin.
I nodded, testing my balance in this uncertain conversation. “That’s why my mother calls me Risuko. I’m always climbing—our house, rocks, trees....” Her eyes brightened, cold as they were, and I started to let go and brag. “There’s a cliff below the castle up there.” I pointed to where Lord Imagawa’s stone castle stood on the hill at the edge of the woods.
“Ah?” she said, looking pleased.
“I like to climb up the cliff.”
“Oh?” she sniffed, “but certainly a skinny little girl like you couldn’t get terribly far.”
That stung. “Oh, yes, I’ve climbed all the way to the top of the cliff bunches of times, and up the walls too, to look in at the windows and see the beautiful clothes....”