Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(5)

“Don’t be mean, Toumi,” said Aimaru. “It’s not her fault we had to wait here—”

“For three days!” snapped Toumi. “What makes the old lady think you’re such a prize? Something special?” Her face darkened in the firelight.

I could feel the blood pounding in my ears. My fingertips were buzzing. Food and warmth had returned feeling to my limbs and to my soul. “I don’t know! I don’t know what she wants with me! She bought me off of my mother this morning.” All of the rest of them—even the carriers, even Toumi—gaped at me. “One moment I’m climbing trees with my sister and the next moment I’m being marched off without even a chance to say goodbye to anyone!”

“You’ve got a mother,” said Emi. “You’ve got a sister.”

I gawped at her, her down-turned mouth looking even sadder than it had. I tried to speak but the miserable expression seemed so extreme—like my own sister’s when her straw dollies would break, or she stubbed her toes, or after Father went away—that it struck me dumb.

Aimaru put his hand very softly on my arm. I realized I was gripping my chopsticks like a dagger. He said, in that same even voice of his, “It’s not your fault that the rest of us are orphans.”

“Orphans?” I responded.

Emi and Aimaru both nodded, solemnly. Aimaru said, “The lady found each of us. I grew up at a temple, I was left there with the monks when I was an infant. And Emi...”

“I lived in the capital city's streets,” said Emi. “I only remember my mother a little.”

Toumi snorted again.

“Orphans?” I repeated. I could feel my eyes beginning to tear up, my throat filling. Why was I crying?

“Well, say what you want, my family’s dead but I’m no orphan,” snarled Toumi. “I am the Tarugu family. And no one would ever have been able to sell me like trash to a rag-picker.”





3—Flying


I have no clear memory of what happened next, or why. I don’t think I’d ever in my life tried to hit anyone before, not even my sister. Though I must admit I had considered it from time to time.

But something about Toumi’s sneer—her brittle anger, even more than her insult, but also something familiar—pricked me to action. She hadn’t even turned away from me when my open hand caught her cheek. We both stood there, frozen in shock. It must have lasted less than a heartbeat’s time, but it felt as if a tree might have sprouted, grown, and fallen in the moment that we stood there, staring at each other.

The print of a red hand that matched the shape of my own began to darken against her pale skin. My palm burned.

In the same tree-slow time, I watched her eyes narrow with rage and knew that she now wanted to kill me—actually to kill me. And I knew that she was capable of it. She began to lean forward and I knew that she was getting ready to drive her hand into me.

Again, I have no idea how things happened next. I leaped backward and bounced against the wall. The boards had loose grooves that led straight up to the cat’s-cradle of overhanging beams. I could see that the door was now open on the other side of the stable and that, if I got up into the rafters, I could climb over Toumi’s head and escape out into the snow.

Toumi surged after me, snarling like a wild dog.

My arms and legs began to move without any conscious direction from me.

Before she could reach me, Toumi’s charge was snapped short. Little Brother’s enormous hand had fastened itself to the collar of her jacket and stopped her as surely as an iron chain. He held her at arm’s length, her feet dangling. He turned his round tiger face up to me.

Somehow, without even being aware of it, I had carried out the first part of my plan. I was in the rafters, well above Little Brother’s head, poised for escape.

Little Brother’s face was, as always, blank and unreadable. So was his companion’s, staring up at me from just inside the door, which he was blocking. I wouldn’t have been able to get out that way after all.

“Come down,” Little Brother said. His voice was as deep, slow earthquake rumble. “No one will be hurting anyone here today.”

He gently placed Toumi back by the fire.

I dropped out of the rafters onto the straw-strewn dirt floor.

“Listen to me, both of you.” He turned to the others, sitting around the fire. “All of you, listen to me. We face dangers enough. Do not add to them. You children are here out of Lady Chiyome’s kindness, out of her greatness of heart. All of you belong to the lady. You are her guests—” He looked at me. “—but you are also her possessions. If you wish Lady Chiyome’s kindness to continue, you are to treat all of her possessions respectfully.” His calm gaze caught Toumi as her face contorted in a look of poisonous hatred, a look that was aimed at me. “If you feel the need to fight, to hit, you are to hit me. But if you hit me, expect to be hit back.”

Toumi blinked, blinked again, and then turned away and strode out of the stable and into the snow.

Little Brother and his fellow giant stood, unmoving, not acknowledging her exit. I walked toward the fire, sat and tried to breathe. Their eyes followed me—the stares weren’t threatening, but I felt unnerved, even so. I was ashamed to have given way to anger, to have struck another in spite of everything that my father had always taught. No harm.