Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(69)

I clung to the top of the tree, quivering with cold and fear, with no idea what to do to save myself.

On Fuyudori climbed. As she did, she gasped, “After all, they slew all of my allies—the Oda scouts who were trying to get my messages back to the capital. I was so angry when it was Masugu who came back through that open door, and not Lord Oda’s soldiers, ready to kill you all!”

I began to weep, I will not deny it. I considered throwing the letter case away, but then she would simply kill me and go to retrieve it. “What is in this letter?” I howled down at her. “Why are you willing to kill us to get it?”

“I don’t know,” she snarled back; she was struggling as she came to branches that could barely support her weight, which was considerably greater than mine. “All that I know is that it is Masugu’s mission to deliver that letter, and if Lord Takeda wants that to happen badly enough to risk his own nephew, then it is worth killing all of you to stop it.” She had reached the level just below my feet; when she tried to climb one branch further, it snapped beneath her foot, and she had to cling to the thin trunk to keep herself from tumbling down to the frozen ground below.

We both remained motionless there for a few breaths, hugging the tree for sheer survival.

“Give me the letter,” she spat.

I whimpered, but shook my head. “N-no.”

“Don’t play games with me!” she shouted and shook the tree trunk. Being higher, my perch swayed more than hers, and Fuyudori suddenly began to smile. “Want to fly, Risuko?” she asked, and began to rock the tree. We began to swing wildly from side to side, and I could see that I was swinging out past the branches below.

Soon, I knew, either the force of the tree whipping me back and forth would shake me loose and send me tumbling out into the dark, or the top of the tree would snap. Fuyudori might go with me, but I would be just as dead either way.

I wanted to be brave, to be like Father, accepting death as a stage along the journey, but how could I? I was young and frightened—terrified. “STOP!” I bawled. “Please, please, please stop!”

“All right,” said Fuyudori, panting. She stopped, and the top of the tree slowly found its way back to its natural position. “Now, Risuko, give me the letter.”

I trembled there, clinging to the treetop, trying to urge myself to refuse—for my family’s honor, for the people of the Full Moon, for my friends.

My hand, however, extended down toward the white-haired demon, the monster, whose face seemed to glow with exultation as she reached up for the letter. Fuyudori was standing on tip-toe, one hand barely clutching a thin wisp of a branch as the fingers of the other stretched out to take her prize from me.

I knew that, as soon as she had the letter, she would kill me, but I couldn’t stop myself.

Her fingers closed around the end of the metal case and tugged.

My fingers refused to let go.

Why? Cold, perhaps. Or panic. Or rage. Or sheer madness. But strong though she may have been, Fuyudori was fully extended, and couldn’t pull the letter from my clutches.

“LET GO!” she demanded.

For a moment, I fought, and we became locked in the oddest, deadliest game of tug-of-war that I had ever participated in. Fuyudori’s muscles strained, her face contorting so that all of her loveliness was gone. “LET! GO!”

“All right,” I said, and I did.

For a moment, triumph flared on Fuyudori’s face as she held up the letter case. That look was instantly replaced with desperation, however, as she overbalanced, and then with sick dread as the tiny limb beneath her right foot gave way, and she fell back, away from the tree trunk, eyes wide, mouth wide, tumbling backward into the dark, falling through the branches of the hemlock that she had thought was a pine, snapping branches loudly on her way down until she hit the hard ground with the thud of an overripe peach falling to the courtyard below.

Blossoms on the ground...

No blossoms up there at the top of the enormous old hemlock I was clinging to, cold twisting my fingers, terror teasing my gut.

Snow flakes around me, appearing from nowhere, falling to nowhere. Silence: the proper sound of falling snow.

And death waiting below.

No blossoms.

Soldiers falling fast...

For months after that night, only one dream disturbed my slumber: the sight of Fuyudori’s wide eyes, her soundless cry, her white hair streaming as she fell backward, away from the tree and into the darkness.

—

I made my way slowly down from the top of the tree. My fingers were trembling and raw, my arms and legs all but strengthless from the ordeal. I wept, my nose running until tears and snot soaked through the front of my thin jacket, making me feel even colder and—if it were possible—more miserable.

I did not want to reach the bottom. I did not want to see what had happened to Fuyudori. A part of me dreaded finding her shattered body; another part imagined that I would find a nine-tailed fox, smirking and laughing at me when I reached the ground, ready to punish me for daring to try to trick it so.

When at last I reached the bottom-most branch of the tree, however, that was not the sight that awaited me.

Lady Chiyome stood, leaning against Kee Sun, whose head was encased in an enormous bandage. Which one of them was holding up which, I could not have said. The Little Brothers, moving stiffly as I had never seen them move, were arranging a white sheet over a shape below. Fuyudori’s body, I realized.