Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(12)

We all began to stumble toward the kitchen doorway.

“Aimaru!” Mieko called, her voice betraying more emotion than I had ever yet heard, “they are your responsibility, do you understand?”

He snapped a stiff, almost soldier-like bow, and led us into the kitchen.

There was another rumbling sound in the distance, longer and higher than the cannon’s thunder. Horses were galloping in our direction.

Aimaru grabbed a curved chef’s knife from the shelf next to the pots we had cleaned the night before. Its edge was nicked and scarred, but its point still looked lethal. He gave it a practice slash or two, and then looked up at the three of us. I realized that he was as terrified as we were. “There’s a small pantry there. Can you three fit in it?”

I started to object, but he cut me off with uncharacteristic impatience. “Have you been trained to fight?” We all stood, silent. “Can you face a grown soldier?” Our shoulders sagged. He opened the door and pushed us in.

“Does he know how to fight?” Toumi muttered. Her shoulder pressed against my nose. I couldn’t breathe.

The pantry was tiny. The shelves were bare except for a few cobwebs that fluttered as we squirmed to stay quiet.

Emi grunted and turned her head to try to get it away from Toumi’s hair. “I was there when Lady Chiyome picked him up on Mount Hiei, rock-head. He was training to be a warrior-monk.”

Toumi looked as though she might bite Emi, but a loud yell from the front of the inn snapped her to attention. “Who was that?”

There was an answering shout—“Get away from here!”—from a voice that I thought I recognized as Kuniko’s.

“I think that’s coming from the front gate,” I whispered. I could hear our horses braying loudly. Then there was an explosion of noise: the shouting of many more voices, the sharp ring of steel meeting steel, and a wrenching snap that made the whole rickety inn tremble.

I heard the Little Brother outside the back door yell, “Come here, come here! It is a good day to die!” Several angry voices answered his.

There was no escape from the inn.

Now I was panicked—furious—at being trapped in the airless closet. If I could only climb to the roof, I thought, I might jump to the next building... Desperate to find some way out, I looked up.

Above, a crescent-moon sliver of light shone through the thatch roof. Before I had even considered, I had used Toumi’s shoulder to push me up onto the flimsy shelves.

“Hey!” barked Toumi.

“Murasaki,” Emi hissed, “come back down!”

“I just want to see,” I whispered back, feeling a twinge of guilt at leaving them behind. “I’ll be right back.”

I could feel the brisk morning air blowing in through the sliver of space between the wall and the singed thatch, could smell the smoke of a thousand meals that had been cooked in the kitchen below. I pushed up, widening the opening by pressing between the straw and the wall.

As I squeezed up into the smoke hole, I heard Aimaru gasp below. “What are you doing?”

“Uh, just taking a look.”

“Get down!”

“I will, I...” I didn’t want to abandon him or Emi—it didn’t seem fair. But I couldn’t just sit there, locked up. I wriggled against the wall, pushing up into the smoke hole.

Looking up, all that I could see was the charred roof that covered the chimney, keeping rain out. Like all else in the inn, the cover had a moth-eaten look. The supports were charred and spindly, and it looked as if a stiff breeze might have blown it away like the ash from the previous night’s fire.

But the sky beyond was blue—the bright, silver-blue of early morning—and I could just smell the distant tang of the sea through the thick odor of stale smoke. As I pushed up through the chimney, I was so feverish with relief at my soon-to-be-certain escape that I almost missed another scent, one that made the hair on my forearms stand up.

Gunpowder. Close by.

As soon as I raised my head through the smoke hole in the thatch, a thunderstorm of sounds burst over my ears. Gun shots. The ping of steel on steel. Screams.

As I peered around, looking for a nearby roof that I could escape to, I could see knots of dust, with occasional silver flashes. I tried to see any of our party, but the chimney was on the far side of the roof from the inn yard. I could hear the younger of the Little Brothers howling like an angry bear, but I could not see him; he must have been just out of sight, hidden by the edge of the roof. Which way to go? I wondered.

A puff of hay suddenly flew into my face. I couldn’t imagine why—it wasn’t windy, and so there was no reason for the roof to be blowing apart, ramshackle as it was.

I turned toward where the thatch had come from and saw a bright flash of red from the dust-filled street.

I did not hear the gunshot until the bullet had splintered the smoke-lathed support a hand’s width from my ear. The support gave way, and the roof above me squealed as it began to lean and fall.

As I scampered back down into the pantry with a squeak, I could see relief and concern on Aimaru’s round face.

“Well?” snapped Toumi.

“I... couldn’t see anything,” I murmured as I stood once again between them, trying not to tremble.

There was noise now in the corridor of the inn. The older Little Brother must have been fighting like a demon to protect Chiyome-sama.