Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale (Seasons of the Sword #1)(72)
Mai and Shino were sleeping in the head initiate’s room. Each was apparently unwilling to allow the other the honor of sleeping there alone.
Toumi and Emi fell into their bedrolls and were asleep almost immediately. I followed soon after, too tired to think, to worry.
I dreamt no dreams that night. None at all.
終
To be Continued in
Bright-Eyes
Seasons of the Sword #2
Coming Soon!
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Bright-Eyes
Seasons of the Sword #2
I meant to take the knife that Mieko was holding out to me, the handle toward my hand.
I meant to. But I couldn’t.
“Risuko,” whispered Mieko, her eyes locked on mine. The rest of the Full Moon’s girls and women were also staring at me.
My eyes flicked toward the pig, which struggled against its bonds, squealing.
We were outside the Full Moon’s kitchens, next to the well. The pig was stretched out, its legs tied to four heavy pegs that Emi, Toumi, and I had hammered into the still-frozen packed earth.
What stopped me, what kept me from being able to take the long, narrow blade from Mieko-san’s hand, wasn’t that the pig was in distress. Its squeals knotted my stomach, but I had slaughtered animals for the kitchens before — chickens, rabbits, even a goat.
But this animal had been dressed in a samurai’s battered armor, with a helmet over its head. And all I could think...
Through the long, snow-bound winter, Mieko and the other kunoichi had used this armor to teach us its weak points — to show us where even the most heavily armed warrior was vulnerable. As we stabbed under the armpits or between the front and back plates with daggers, it hadn’t seemed real; the armor had been on a kind of straw dummy, like the ones we used to put up next to the rice paddies to keep the birds away.
But screaming and straining, the pig was no dummy. It looked like a person, almost. It looked like a samurai. Like...
I looked down and shook my head. “I can’t,” I mouthed.
Mieko started to say something, but then shook her head and held the knife handle out to Emi, who frowned, but took it.
I ran.
—
I was still running—past our dormitory, past the white length of the great hall — when I ran into Lieutenant Masugu. Or rather, I ran into his horse, Inazuma.
“Going for a climb, Murasaki?” The lieutenant was leading Inazuma by the reins.
I blinked up at him and shook my head.
“I haven’t seen you climb since... In a while.” His eyes were small, concerned half-moons under his helmet.
I blinked again. “Are you leaving, Masugu-san?” Inazuma carried a pack of supplies, and Masugu was dressed in a full set of armor — not his usual shining black armor with the four diamonds of the Takeda emblazoned on his chest, but rather a battered brown set with the white disk mon of Mochizuki — the Full Moon.
He was dressed, in fact, very much as the pig had been.
I couldn’t hear the squealing any more.
The lieutenant nodded. “It’s time to go.”
“You’re not going to wait for Lady Chiyome to return?”
Now he shook his head. “She knew I needed to leave once the passes to the west started to clear. She won’t be surprised.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “I... We will miss you.” Mieko-san will miss you the most, I thought, but thought it best not to say.
“Well, it shouldn’t take me more than a month to get to the capital, deliver my... the map you returned to me, and get back here. No time at all.” He smiled and patted my arm. His horse whickered impatiently. “Besides, Inazumi wants to run.”
I nodded.
“Say, don’t you have a lesson? Shouldn’t you be with the others?”
My gorge rose, but I stared up at him. “Did you know that if I were to slip a very sharp blade up beneath the back of your helmet, I could push the tip just under your skull and sever your spinal chord?”