Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(67)

“You... hit him?”

She chuckled again. “Oh, yes. This wok makes a most satisfactory ring when it strikes a hard skull like Kee Sun’s.” She twirled her weapon in her hand. “I saw that you were wearing an initiate’s sash when you served out the soup that I’d added the poppy to. You know what it is that that old witch has been training us to be. Well, there are others who are better at singing and dancing than I, but I promise you, none of them can kill half as well.”

Mieko can, I thought, but said, “Except poisons. You’re terrible with poisons. Nearly killed Masugu when all you wanted to do was drug him so that you could search his rooms, and now you thought you’d given everyone poppy—overdosing us so that you could kill us, you thought—but all you put in the soup was corydalis. It’s put everyone to sleep for a bit, but they’ll wake up soon.” I was lying—I didn’t know how long the drug would last, but I was certain she wouldn’t either. “All you’ll have done is take away their cramps.”

I could feel her body tense. “Then I shall have to work quickly,” she said, and began to move toward me.

All uncertainty or anxiety replaced by terror, I ran.

I had a lead of perhaps ten strides to begin with, but I could hear her feet slapping against the frozen earth, and I knew that her longer legs would close the distance between us before long. My first thought was to get back to the Retreat’s chimney, climb onto the roof, then over the wall, and then hide out in the woods; I might freeze to death, but I knew that Fuyudori would never be able to catch me there.

Unfortunately, I had the image of her pulling me down from the chimney, beating me to a pulp and taking the damned letter that had caused all of this trouble from my bloody, broken hand. The women in the Retreat itself might or might not have awoken, but I couldn’t risk trapping myself in there if they were still unconscious; my mental image now included not only my battered body, but those of Emi and the others.

I turned the corner of the great hall and began sprinting toward the storehouse—perhaps the rats would bite Fuyudori—when I heard her take the corner close behind me. My lead was down to three or four strides now, and I knew that I would never make it to any of the doors before she caught me and beat me to death. In my mind, terror gave way to anger—Kee Sun’s anger, actually. That’s no way to use a good wok!

The bulk of the huge hemlock blotted out the moon for a moment, and I swerved toward the tree. Fuyudori squawked as she slipped on the icy ground, trying to turn with me. For a moment I thought that I had done it—that I would be able to reach the tree and climb into its safety before she could reach me, but her relentless footsteps began to pound behind me again. I sprinted to the far side of the tree, using the massive trunk for protection.

I was a squirrel. She was the fox. She would start to try to run around the tree, and I would run in the same direction, keeping its bulk between us. She would reverse direction, trying to surprise me, and I would change course and thwart her. This was to my great advantage—I could hear her all the better—but I knew that, like a squirrel, I would run out of endurance if we kept this game up. “Why?” I gasped when we had come to an uneasy pause, each trying to wait until the other committed to one direction or the other.

“Why?” She too panted; I could imagine her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth, though I was sure that Fuyudori would never allow herself to do anything so unladylike.

“Masugu... All of us...” I stared at the letter case, still in my hand. I was thinking of Lady Chiyome’s interrogation that morning. “The letter... Who... are you doing this for? Takeda-sama—”

I had been about to say that Lord Takeda would track Fuyudori down and kill her; Masugu and Lady Chiyome said that he was a great leader, but I was quite sure that he was far from being a terribly merciful man. Of course, I was quite sure too that no one from outside of the compound would ever know it if Fuyudori managed to kill us all and escape into the snow-choked mountains. By the time that we were all found, we would all look just the same: bones. How would anyone know who was who, let alone who was missing?

Fuyudori, however, was following another path altogether. “Takeda-sama,” she spat. “He is why.”

“Lord Takeda?”

“Beast!” she snarled. “Monster. These idiot rabbits call him The Mountain, but he’s nothing but a monster. His troops destroyed my village, killed everyone, left me for dead. Thought I was dead. Stuck under my mother’s body.” She gave what might have been a sob or a growl. “Two days. Then Lord Oda’s troops took the valley back. They were burning the bodies, and one of the soldiers saw me move; pulled me out of the fire.” She tried to rush around the hemlock and catch me, but I was still listening, and kept to the far side. “That’s when my hair turned white. Ghostie-girlie,” she snapped, mimicking Kee Sun’s bouncy burr perfectly. “Lord Oda himself met me; he likes prodigies, you see, and I was twice rare—I’d lived when I should have died, and I was a young girl with white hair. Thrice rare, since I was possessed with the demon of revenge; I wanted nothing but to kill the Takeda who had done this to me.”

“My father faced the Takeda,” I murmured. “He said that they were a terrible foe.”

“Your father. Now there was a brave warrior! Ordered to kill a bunch of brats, and he couldn’t even manage it! Pathetic!”