Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(34)
“N-nothing, lady,” I spluttered.
“Do not lie to me, girl. You were beneath the window ledge well before Masugu left.”
I knew better, but I could not help staring at the old woman. “How—?”
She favored me with a wicked grin. “Little girls shouldn’t be too curious. Now tell me, Risuko, what did you hear?”
My stomach, which had been clenched tight, suddenly felt as though Kee Sun had force-fed me lead. “I...”
She waited, unblinking.
I took a deep breath. “You were speaking with Masugu-san about me. About whether I could be trusted. About whether I’d done... something. I couldn’t figure out what though. He said something about spirits in his rooms?”
She grunted again. “And were you playing the fox spirit earlier tonight, Risuko-chan?”
I blinked in confusion.
“Where you the kitsune haunting Masugu-san’s chamber? Someone has been playing games there.”
“No, Chiyome-sama!” I said, shocked. “Absolutely not!”
We sat there, staring at each other, until I thought I might choke or that my beating heart might explode out of my chest. Finally, the old woman gave a half nod and said, “Perhaps not. Perhaps not.” She twirled one of the colored shapes on her desk between her fingers—I saw that they were pebbles of various sizes, painted in bright colors and distributed over a large, creased piece of paper that had been webbed with squiggly lines and cramped calligraphy. At the top was written Land of the Rising Sun. The wicked smile reappeared. “Do you know what this is, my little squirrel?”
I was about to shake my head, when the lines and shapes that marked the paper suddenly seemed to come unclouded and I recognized them. “It’s a map. Of Japan?”
My patron clapped her hands together, clearly pleased. “Ah, well, done, my dear. Your father didn’t waste your childhood entirely. Can you find our location upon the map?”
Scowling with concentration, I looked down and found my family’s home province, Serenity—toward the eastern edge at the top. It had many red stones to the northern, left-hand edge, as many of blue at the southern edge and one large green stone in the middle, just where I knew my family’s home to be. I touched the pebble briefly, and then followed the blue line that marked the Weatherbank River’s flow down to Pineshore, and the heavy dashed line that showed the Eastern Sea Road, the great coastal highway up which we had marched—had it been only weeks before? It felt as if that journey had belonged to another lifetime.
Tracing our path through Quick River and Worth Provinces (a sea of red stones, small and large) and into the mountains, I found the southern end of Dark Letter Province; here there were more red pebbles, one at what looked like the Rice Paddy Pass garrison, and one very small one over the tiny mark of a full moon. Clustered around the stone were a number of sharp, metal spikes—pins, such as my mother had sometimes used to use when she was mending our clothes. The top of each was painted red and white. “Here,” I said, pointing.
“Well done, my little navigator. And what would you guess these are?” She touched a dry finger to one of a large number of white stones that stood near the Imperial City.
The painted pebbles were scattered around the map in clusters; the largest number where white, red and blue, with a number of other colors sprinkled here and there. The red-and-white pins were distributed in ones and twos across the provinces, seemingly at random, always near a pebble.
The stones weren’t towns—those were painted directly onto the map, their names labeled in a cramped, neat hand. They could represent rice or gold, but it seemed odd that so many of the stones were gathered around the center of Honshu Island, the main island of our nation; I knew that other parts of the country produced food and wealth.
Knowing that Lady Chiyome hated it when I stuck my tongue out, I bit it as I continued to scowl down at the map. “Are they... ?” I did not want to appear to be stupid. “Are they armies, Chiyome-sama?”
A look of pleased surprise rushed over her face, and I felt relief rush through me. “What makes you say that, my squirrel?”
“Well,” I said, “It looks like a multicolored game of Go, like Otō-san used to play with old Ichihiro from the castle.” Peering back up at her, I asked, “Is this a game?”
The old woman loosed her wheezing, mirthless laugh. “Yes! Yes, indeed, it is a game—a very complicated and deadly one.” She touched the one green pebble where it stood near our home. “Do you see this green marker?”
I nodded.
“Does it look familiar, child?”
I blinked. The large green stone surrounded by smaller stones of blue and red. “The picture I drew for you. That I saw Lord Imagawa and the soldier looking at.”
“Indeed. That told me that a large battle was coming, though Masugu and his friends brought it to us rather more quickly than I expected. This green piece represents the remaining force of the Imagawa—a considerable army, but a shadow of the power that they used to wield.”
“Then the red... The red are the forces of the Takeda?” I reasoned.
“Well done,” the old woman said, though the praise was fainter in her tone than in the words. Pointing just north of the tiny stone that marked our own little army, she said, “This stone represents the garrison at Highfield, where Masugu’s riders are serving, guarding our territories from the forces of the Uesugi.” A group of yellow stones stood further to the northwest.