Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(65)

I remembered that night of the first snow, Masugu walking away in the direction of the storehouse, I had thought, tapping a sealed scroll against his own shoulder. Not toward the storehouse, I realized: Toward the Retreat!

“Kee Sun-san, I need to go get it before the...” I stopped at the door and turned. “Why do you keep calling who did this she?”

He laughed again, sharp and bitter this time. “’Cause I know it’s not me that’s done it, and the other men in the Full Moon are all asleep. I’d never believe such sloppiness of a kumiho—a fox spirit, as yeh call it. And in this weather, I don’t think it’s someone come in from outside o’the wall over and over without anybody knowin’, do yeh? Though if it’s one of the girls who’s worked in my kitchen, I’d like to remind her of a lesson or two in how to handle herbs proper!”

“Oh,” I said. “I see.” And I did. It occurred to me in that moment that it couldn’t be Emi who’d done this—or Toumi either, for that matter. All of us knew poppy by sight—and if we’d wanted for some reason to poison the inhabitants of the Full Moon, there were herbs that we’d have known to use before grabbing the corydalis at random from the rafters. “I’ll be right back,” I called, and waved, but Kee Sun was already bent over the table, tossing herbs into the long-handled wok, and filling the kitchen with their rich scent.

Growing up, I had always been the one who insisted loudly that there were no such things as spirits and demons, that they were just something that Mother made up to scare us with. But as I sprinted behind the great hall, I felt the presence of the kitsune, in spite of Kee Sun’s certainty: the fox spirit, lurking in the shadows, laughing, the tips of its nine tails whipping, threatening, taunting, just beyond the edges of my vision.

Why does the kitsune want the scroll? I wondered as my feet slapped the hard, frozen dirt. It must be something important, to go to all of this trouble to try to hurt people. And she—Kee Sun now had me thinking of the poisoner as a she—must be getting frantic.

When I got to the Retreat, before I tried to climb, I went to the front door. It was open; Emi lay snoring, her cheek pressing against the cold stone threshold and the shards of her soup bowl still clutched in her hand. I would have found it funny: she always fell asleep so quickly under any circumstances that I could imagine her dropping off in mid-step, on the way to warn us of the poison. But I was worried that she would freeze, out in the winter night, or cut her hands on the shattered porcelain. I removed the pieces of the bowl, pushed her with some difficulty into the Retreat where the other women were strewn about on the floor like blown dandelion seeds, and closed the door.

Then I walked around to the far side of the building where the stone chimney butted up against the back corner of the Retreat. There didn’t seem to be any crevices there—certainly none large enough to hide a scroll in. Looking up, I saw a trickle of smoke drifting from the covered top of the chimney and swirling, dancing with the falling snow. Perhaps, I thought, he hid it where he could be sure that no one could find it. Another thought gave me a guilty sense of righteousness: Or perhaps he hid it where he knew only I could find it. Reaching up, I began to scale the rough stone of the chimney.

There were plenty of handholds there, and so, cold and icy though it may have been, I quickly made my way up to the roof of the Retreat, scrambling up onto the dense thatch before I’d even started to breathe hard. There was a huge mound of snow blanketing most of the building, but there at the back, close to the compound wall, the wind and the heat from the chimney kept the roof more or less clear.

I scrambled along the stone base of the chimney; just above me I could see the top of the Full Moon’s wall, where I’d knelt and listened to Masugu and Mieko’s argument (not fight, he’d said). I couldn’t see the scroll, nor any obvious cranny in the chimney in which to hide it.

Chimney.... Roof, he had said. I had assumed that he had meant that he had hidden the scroll—or whatever it was that I was looking for—in the side of the chimney, somewhere at roof-level. What else could he have meant?

Peering down, I considered the possibility that he had hidden the scroll at ground-level. That seemed unlikely—it was too easy a place for someone to find the scroll, and I would most likely have seen it when I was down there. Inside of the Retreat? No. In the first place, I couldn’t see Masugu-san, who always tried to be so extremely proper, sneaking inside of the Retreat—except to meet Mieko. In the second, he had very clearly said Roof, which meant that it had to be outside.

I searched the surface of the chimney again; no loose stones, no crevices, and no place to hide anything larger than a pebble. I couldn’t imagine that even a demon would make all of this trouble over a pebble.

Trying to think, I let my eyes wander up, watching the smoke trickling out from under the chimney’s slanted cover.

The chimney’s roof.

I stood. For a man of Masugu’s height, the chimney roof would have been within reach. For me, however, it meant a little more climbing. Not a problem, I thought with satisfaction, and shimmied the small distance up and found a good foothold so that I could reach up under the chimney roof’s soot-smeared eaves. There was a small ledge out of sight there—just right.

My fingers danced along the hot, grimy wood. At first I found nothing, and I began to worry that if the lieutenant had left a paper scroll there, perhaps it had been burnt to ash. But just before I reached the far corner, my fingers touched something warm, hard, and round. I grasped it and pulled it down.