Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(66)

It was a metal cylinder—the letter case that I had seen Lady Chiyome with that first day at Pineshore; the letter case that Masugu had poked me with our first night at the Full Moon. The end was closed with a seal marked with three ginger leaves.

Grinning, pleased with myself, I slid back down to the roof. The snowfall had broken for the moment, the clouds had parted to expose the black night sky and snowflake stars, and bright moonlight turned the entire compound silver as trout scales.

As I sat, preparing to make my way down to the ground and return to help Kee Sun revive everyone, I looked down at the cylinder in my hand. What is in it?

Perhaps it was simple curiosity. Perhaps the presence of the trickster spirit had infected me. Without even considering, I pulled open the end of the case and tapped it twice, sliding the enclosed scroll into the palm of my hand.

If I had anticipated some formal letter or contract, such as my father had often prepared for Lord Imagawa, I was disappointed. It wasn’t parchment, but thin rice paper. Even before unrolling it, I could see that it was a drawing. I unrolled it and was bewildered by a swirl of color that didn’t seem to make any sense. I started to roll it up again—perhaps if I showed it to Kee Sun—

A flickering, golden light from the direction of the great hall caught my eye.

It came from high up on the building’s side wall, a glimmering square of light set between the black half-timbers that ran up the middle of the wall: the window of Lady Chiyome’s chamber, light wavering as if someone had lit a small fire there, a lamp, or—much more likely—a candle. That struck me as odd, since Chiyome-sama was almost certainly not well enough to have gone back up to her room, and I couldn’t imagine that Kee Sun had gone up there on his own. As I scowled up at the window, I saw a small flame—a candle indeed—and then a flash of white that seemed to fill the frame. A head. It turned, showing me a fine, brittle face.

Fuyudori stared back at me, and her expression was that of a predator stalking its prey.

Stalking me.





34—Falling Fast


Fuyudori’s eyes locked with mine across the space, and the light from the candle in her hand made them flash red.

Then her gaze shifted downward, and I could see that she had spotted the letter. The drawing. A smile formed on her thin, red lips: a wolf’s smile. Or, rather, a fox’s. She looked hungry. She looked very much as if she were about to devour me.

“Kitsune,” I gasped, and though I know that she couldn’t have heard me she blinked, and the smile grew.

Fuyudori. Winter bird. Snowbird, as Masugu had said. Ghostie-girl. Kee Sun had laughed that she’d snuck out of the Retreat, desperate to make sure that Masugu was all right, but no—she’d snuck out to finish the job and find the scroll. And to make sure that the rest of us couldn’t interfere, she’d tried to poison us. And no wonder she’d used too much poppy with Masugu, and then corydalis rather than something more effective this time—Fuyudori couldn’t tell radishes from turnips or pine from hemlock. She probably couldn’t be bothered to care. Rage filled me and then terror, in part because it seemed awful not to care, and in part because I realized that she truly didn’t care—not what happened to Masugu, nor what happened to Chiyome, and certainly not what happened to me.

Then the snow began to fall again, like a white wing sweeping between us, and I could not see her.

The spell broken, I began to move. My first instinct, as always, was to climb—to get up onto the Full Moon’s exterior wall and then to escape to the forest.

I knew, however, that I couldn’t leave Fuyudori alone in the compound where she might hurt all of the people whom she’d drugged. I had to warn Kee Sun and the others. I had to stop her. Against my instincts, then, I clambered down the chimney. I started to sprint back toward the kitchen, along the space between the great hall and the wall, hoping to reach Kee Sun before Fuyudori could.

As I approached the corner of the building, however, a shape appeared out of the snow-thickened gloom: not the cook’s scarecrow silhouette, but a shape that shone in the dark, clad almost all in white, with splashes of what I knew to be red that looked all but black in the murk. “Good evening, Risuko-chan,” said Fuyudori. “How lovely to see you.”

“You’re wearing a miko’s robes,” I said, though there were a dozen more urgent thoughts in my mind.

“A kunoichi’s.” Fuyudori took a step toward me, and I stepped back; we both froze. Fuyudori laughed her annoying little chirp of a laugh. “I thought it appropriate, given what I was going to be doing tonight, that I marry myself to Death, if only for the evening.”

The compound wall was plastered there; there was no way that I could climb to safety that way. And the great hall’s timbers were set too far apart here at the back for me to gain any purchase on such a cold evening. I was fairly certain that Fuyudori could outrun me. “We’re close to the kitchen,” I improvised. “Kee Sun will hear you.”

“I rather think not,” she tittered.

“He didn’t drink any of the soup you poisoned.”

“No.” She started to step toward me; I stepped back again. Once again, we froze in place. “However, I believe that Kee Sun will be resting quite soundly for some time.” When I gave a surprised grunt, she laughed again—not the bird-chirp titter, but a low, hunter’s chuckle. “It’s true that I’m not terribly good with herbs. They all look the same to me, you see. However, I was always quite good with the pots and pans.” From behind her back she drew what I recognized by the outline to be the long-handled wok.