Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(25)

“Do not we all?” mimicked Mai. Shino snorted.

“Are those peas?” Fuyudori asked me, turning away from the two drunk girls.

“Uh. No.”

She raised an eyebrow. “No, Risuko-chan?”

“No, no, thank you, uh, Fuyudori-senpai.” A bead of sweat dripped into my mouth. “They’re soy beans.”

“Oh.” Fuyudori’s smile remained, but she looked a bit embarrassed, and I hate to say that her discomfort made me feel better.

I took an empty bowl from that end of the table and brought it back to refill it with kimchee.

As the meal went on and we brought out more and more sake, Lady Chiyome’s band of women, her kunoichi, began teasing the soldiers across the way. I had seen some of the women in our village do that sort of thing, and the soldiers had teased right back, answering one rude joke with another.

Here, however, the men seemed almost too terrified to answer. And the quieter Masugu-san’s troops became, the rowdier the women got. As the meal finally wound down, the women began to make the sorts of indecent comments that would have gotten any Imagawa soldier slapped in our village. But these men took the comic abuse in silence.

As I began cleaning up at the men’s table, I leaned over to Aimaru. “How are you doing?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Better now. I was hungry. But... oh, you haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

I shook my head. Only the raucous conversation had kept my stomach’s rumblings from being heard all over the hall through most of the meal.

“It’s hard not being able to talk to anyone,” he said. “It’s not so different, here, from life at the temple, but even there I had friends I could talk to sometimes.”

I smiled. “It’s only until we become initiates.”

“How do you do that?”

“No idea.”

“Well,” he said, grinning back, “let’s make sure that happens soon.”

As Emi, Toumi and I began to clear away the last of the empty platters, a deep bell rang from the back of the hall. All of the noise faded, like flames under rain.

The larger of the Little Brothers stood in front of the shrine. He had closed the doors and sealed them with a twist of white paper.

Mieko picked up the chopsticks at the empty spot beside her and thrust them into the bowl of rice, sticking straight up.

It was as if the whole building held its breath.

“Seven days ago,” said Lady Chiyome, her voice just above a growl, “we lost one of our number. One of the first of our number. She fought bravely, and she fought well; it was all that she would have wished.”

Some of the women grunted. A number looked as if they might be holding back tears. A few—Mieko among them—failed. The soldiers still looked uncomfortable, but they shared the solemn silence.

“Remember her,” said Chiyome-sama, and I was shocked to hear her voice catch. “Remember her, and strive to honor the red and white robes that she wore so well.”

The banquet ended then, as all of the Full Moon’s guests and inhabitants left the hall, grave and quiet.





14 —Squirrel on the Roof


I was certain that Kee Sun wouldn’t let us eat until after all of the cleaning was done. But as we brought the last of the dishes in from the hall, we found the cook smiling and gesturing to the small feast that he had laid out for us on the low cutting table: grilled beef, kimchee, soy beans, rice—even sake—was set out just as it had been for the banquet.

“Magnificent!” crowed Kee Sun. “Perfect! Not a drop spilled, and everything served hot! The three of you girlies made the last two look like the clowns that they are.”

We sat, and that was almost as glorious as the tempting smells wafting up from the table. We picked up our chopsticks and started serving ourselves. Emi picked up a handful of edamame and began shelling the soy beans directly into her mouth. I had the beef right in front of me, and so I slid the succulent-looking meat into my bowl along with a serving of rice.

Toumi, who had been denied the kimchee earlier in the evening, grabbed a huge clump of the pickled cabbage with her chopsticks and plopped it into her bowl.

As I began to lift my first bite of beef to my mouth, I saw Kee Sun start to say something, then turn away with a smirk on his face.

The beef was unlike anything I’d ever tasted—tender, juicy, sweet and peppery. It was the best food I’d ever had. Just as I was swallowing that first bite and reaching for the next, Toumi sputtered loudly, kimchee flying out of her mouth. She let out a howl, and grabbed for the sake.

Before she could drink it, however, Kee Sun handed her a huge cup of water, which she drained in heavy, rapid gulps. “What are you trying to do, kill us?” she gasped.

Kee Sun smirked. “Well, you wanted it so much before dinner, I thought yeh knew it was spicy.”

“Spicy!” yelled Toumi. “That’s pickled fire!”

The scar on Kee Sun’s face stretched and twisted as he rocked his head back and laughed. “Better get used to it, Falcon-girlie,” he said, shoveling rice into Toumi’s bowl. “’Cause the Old Lady loves my food, and the people here seem to also. Yeh Japanese and yehr food—yeh like everything sweet or as tasteless as the washing water.” Toumi was still panting, as if trying to blow out a flame inside her mouth. “Balance! Everything in balance, yeh hear? Eat the rice, Falcon-girl—it will take away the fire,” Kee Sun said.