Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(50)

“Here is your tea,” I said, holding the small pot out to Emi.

She shook her head. “No, thank you. I’m so tired, to be honest, I really don’t think I need it.”

Biting back my frustration at having wasted my labor, I turned to bring the pot back to the kitchen. Toumi stood in my way, her arms folded. “Where have you been, Mouse-chan? Peeking at the Lieutenant so you could sigh some more?”

No, I kept myself from saying, I was eavesdropping on him having an argument with Mieko-sensei, you vulture. Instead, I repeated the lie that I had told Kee Sun: “I got lost in the snow after I dumped the rubbish. The wind turned me around and I couldn’t find the door. And then I had to chop up corydalis for this tea, because someone took the poppy juice. Did you decide to have some poppy with the sake, Toumi?”

I’d hoped to get some kind of a reaction out of her, but she gawked at me in confusion. “Why would I want a bunch of poppy juice? I sleep fine.”

“Who knows? Excuse me: I need to return this pot.”

As I left the dormitory, I saw through the thickening snowfall a shadow moving toward the front gate. Not wanting to run into Masugu-san or Mieko-sensei, I fairly ran to the kitchen. By the time I had gotten back to our dormitory, Toumi had joined the others in snoring. I assumed that Emi too was asleep, since she could fall asleep as quickly as a drop of water freezing on an icicle.

I hung my clothes on the rail by the tiny stove that kept our room more or less warm. Shivering, without even the meager heat of a tepid bath to cut the deep chill, I crawled into my bedroll, prepared to lie there, teeth chattering, no one’s company but my own until the darkness took me.

As I pulled the bedding up to my nose, I heard Emi’s voice. “Murasaki?”

“Yes?”

“Did you really get lost? On the way to the trash pit?”

“Why?”

“Well, it isn’t that far. And you always seem to know where you are.”

“Not always,” I muttered. And a part of me wanted to leave it there. “But... not exactly. I kind of overheard something, and so I kind of had to stay out.”

“Stay out?” I could hear her shifting in her bedding, turning toward me. “There was someone outside of the Full Moon? On a night like this?”

“Um, no, not exactly. More like I heard them and I climbed up, and...”

“Oh. That makes sense.” We lay there, silent for a moment. “Who was it?”

“I... It was kind of private. I think.” I was feeling very uncomfortable; on the one hand, I really wanted to talk with Emi about what I had overheard. I needed help understanding just what it was that they’d been talking about. “I...”

“Well,” Emi said, very slowly, “you don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that. I...”

We lay there in silence for a while longer.

“I suppose,” Emi mused, “that it must have been the lieutenant and Mieko.”

I turned toward her, gawking into the darkness. “How did you know that?”

On Emi’s far side, Toumi muttered, “Honest, officer, I didn’t take the radish!”

Emi and I giggled as we hadn’t done in days. She moved her bedding onto my mat. “You’re shivering,” she whispered.

“I didn’t get to take a bath. And it is cold outside.”

“True.” She moved closer to me, pulling me close with one arm; even through our bedding, her warmth washed over me.

“Thanks.”

“Welcome,” Emi sighed. “So, it was Masugu-san and Mieko-san?”

“Yes. I think they were having a fight.”

“They’ve been having a fight since before we got here.”

That was true enough. “But I think he said she’d tried to kill him.” And I told her what I had overheard.

“And then they just stopped talking?” Emi asked, when I was finished.

“Yes. I thought it was strange. And I was worried that they would come out and see me, so I hid for a while, but they didn’t. They stayed in the Retreat.”

“The Retreat?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a funny place for them to fight. Funny place for him to be at all.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said, though I hadn’t thought it in so many words.

“Hmm,” Emi said, and then she began to snore.

—

I dreamed that night: a vivid dream, a dream that felt as if it had been sneaking up on me for days.

Father was standing out in the snow, his sword in his hands, doing the exercises that he used to do every morning: a swift, flowing dance of space and steel. “Do no harm, Murasaki,” he said, slicing the air as he moved from foot to foot.

“But Otō-san...!” I cried.

“No harm,” he said as he danced on, cutting at the air. Only now, the snowflakes began to bleed as he cut them. Battle of white and scarlet...

“Otō-san, what can I do?” I wept in the dream, my tears freezing to my cheeks.

“Dance,” he said, his face still and calm, his blade whistling through the air. Blood flew from the tip of the sword, painting characters of death and disaster across the white ground.

Dancing.