Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(59)

“Nice sash yeh got there, girlie.” He began pulling some herbs from the rafters and dropping them into a large pot of chicken stock that was just beginning to boil over the fire.

“Uh. Thank you, Kee Sun-san.” I picked up the knife that I had been using, and then put it down again. I wanted desperately to forget the sash and all that it represented—married to death and that which is deathless. “So. What are we making for the mid-day meal?”

He grunted. “We? I’m brewin’ another batch of tonic, and then I’m headin’ back to care for Masugu.” He grinned at me. “Yeh’re making rice, and servin’ it with some o’ the smoked eel from the storeroom. Oh. And radishes,” he snickered, pointing at the pile on the cutting table.

“I?” I gasped. “All alone?”

“Well,” he said, “guess yeh’re an initiate and all now. So I’ll send Moon-cake over t’help yeh. Though I’m thinkin’ he’d rather be talkin’ to Smilie, right?”

“Thank you, Kee Sun-san.” I was so pleased that I wouldn’t be preparing the meal alone that I didn’t even mind him making fun of my friends. A question occurred to me. “Kee Sun-san? Did they—? Did Masugu-san really ask Mieko-sensei to marry him?”

I watched his shoulders bunch—a grimace or a shrug, I couldn’t be sure. “I tell yeh, Bright-eyes. Men and women? A bloody mess. Every time.” And that was all that he said on the subject.

—

Not long after Kee Sun had left with another dose of the spicy-scented tonic, I found myself standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding the long stick that Kee Sun kept to shoo away the rats. Gripping it in both hands like a sword. Like a samurai’s katana.

Could I? I wondered. Could I be like Mieko and the rest? Could I be like Father?

I was in the starting rest position, feet spread, sword in front of me, balanced. The Two Fields. I stepped to the side, bringing the stick up at an angle as if to parry a downward cut. The Bamboo Bud.

I heard a noise behind me and whirled, not even thinking, bringing the stick above my head and down...

Down onto Aimaru’s head. The Key of Heaven.

The stick snapped, leaving me holding just a stump.

I can’t tell you who was more astonished, Aimaru or me. “I... I’m so sorry!”

“I’m all right!” Aimaru said, falling to his knees. “I’m all right! You didn’t hurt me.” He touched his hand to the top of his head, where a dark bruise was already starting to rise. He shook his head and added with a grin, “Well, not too much.”

“I’m so sorry,” I repeated, clutching the shattered end of my erstwhile sword to my chest.

“What...?”

“I didn’t... I was thinking about the dance, Mieko’s dance, and my father’s sword exercises, and, and I am so sorry, Aimaru!”

He dismissed that apology with a wave of his hand and staggered to his feet. “I’ll make sure never to sneak up on you.”

“I could have hurt you!”

“With this head?” He grinned at me a bit blearily and looked down. At first I thought he didn’t want to look me in the eye, but then I realized that he was staring at my new sash. “You’re... an initiate.”

“Yes, I’m an initiate. So you can talk to me.” I took a breath, trying to block out the thought of what I had just done. “I’m sorry.” I tossed the bit of stick away. “I... I have to make the mid-day meal for everyone.”

“I know,” he said. “Kee Sun asked me to help you.”

“Great.” I tried to think what jobs I could give him. The small barrel by the stove that held rice was nearly empty. “Do you think you could get us some rice from the storeroom?”

He frowned. It still wasn’t an expression that I was used to seeing on his open face, but had been seeing more and more.

“That’s all right,” I sighed. “Here. If you can watch the fire and make sure that it stays hot enough to boil that big pot of water, I’ll go get the rice.”

Now he smiled. “I can do that, Murasaki-san.”

I picked up the longest shard of the stick that had broken over Aimaru’s head and ran to the storeroom by the stables. As always, there were rats in the stores, glaring at me as if I were the intruder. I slashed at the closest with the broken stick (Key of Heaven...), and they all scattered, gone before I could pull back the stick for another swing.

“We should have a cat,” I grumbled, trying to still my trembling. There was a half-empty sack of rice against the right-hand wall, and I grabbed it. It was only once I’d lifted the sack to my back and was almost back to the kitchen that I realized that it had taken all three of us to carry a full sack on the day of our arrival at the Full Moon.

I suppose all that rock-carrying is good for something after all, I thought.

—

As we prepared the meal, Aimaru told me what little there was to tell about Masugu—which wasn’t anything I didn’t already know. He asked me how I had earned the sash, and I had to admit that I didn’t have the slightest idea.

And of course neither of us had any idea who could have poisoned the lieutenant—though I told him about Mieko’s suspicious behavior. He seemed more relieved that Lady Chiyome didn’t suspect me than anything else. “Someone must have been looking for... something.”