Risuko (23 page)

I wanted to rush forward, to try to help Masugu, but fear rooted my feet in the floor.

The lieutenant gave another wordless groan, and Mieko shouted, “You had to drink it all! Idiot!” And a missile—a
sake
bottle—flew through the doorway and shattered against the wall by the Little Brother's head. For the first time since I met him, he actually flinched.

Now my feet tore themselves free; I ran into the room, the medicines still clutched to my belly, ready to defend Masugu.

The lieutenant lay on his side on his bedroll, his eyes open but unfocused, his face slack and shiny with sweat. Mieko too was sweaty, but where his face was pale, hers was unusually flushed. Her hair, which was usually so neatly arranged, flew wildly around her head. She looked like a bear. An angry mother bear.

She punched his shoulder with a force that surprised me and he groaned. She growled and shook him, muttering, “Idiot! Nothing to throw up. You had to drink it all last night, didn't you?
Baka-
yarō
!”
Mieko gave Masugu another shake and then slapped his back.

I must have gasped, because she looked up, and when she saw me, her face hardened. “You.”

“I won't let him die,” I squeaked.

Slowly her eyes widened. “What have you got there?”

I walked and knelt opposite her, in front of Masugu, trying to let her know that I was going to protect him. “Ginger. And mugwort.”

“From Kee Sun?”

I nodded.

“No tonic?”

“He's making it now. He said the ginseng needed to be fresh.”

Now her eyes narrowed. “Give me the ginger.”

In spite of my mistrust, I gave it to her. As she opened the lid, I looked down at Masugu's face. His eyes looked warm yet somehow inhuman; it took me a moment to realize that it was because the pupils had all but disappeared.

She sniffed at the pickled ginger, and then pulled out a slice and nibbled at the smallest portion. She nodded, her face settling back into the calm, focused mask that I was used to. “Give me the ginger,” she said. “You can burn the pellets—against his feet, I think.”

“I...” I pulled both herbs back to my chest. I don't know what I envisioned—that she was somehow going to use the ginger to finish poisoning him? “I... don't know how to burn the
mogusa
. I might hurt him.”

“You could hardly hurt him any more than he already has been.” When I remained frozen with the herbs held tight to me, she huffed, but held out her hand again. “Then give me the mugwort.”

I did. I could think of no excuse not to.

She yanked a long straw from the
tatami
and lit it from the small brazier that warmed the room. “If you're going to be helpful, crush some of the ginger under his nose.”

I did this too, squeezing a slice between my thumb and finger. His nostrils twitched at the fragrant scent, though the rest of his face continued to sag.

The bitter odor of burning mugwort clashed with the sweet heat of the ginger. I looked down to Masugu's feet, where Mieko knelt, that fierce concentration still on her face: a she-wolf, now, rather than a bruin. In her long, elegant fingers, she held one of the smoldering pellets against the lieutenant's bare instep. Her eyes flicked up. “Don't cram it into his nose. He needs to breathe.”

Glancing down, I realized that I had in fact pushed the ginger into his nostril while my attention had strayed. “Oh. Sorry. Sorry, lieutenant.” I cleared the airway and got a fresh piece of ginger from the pot.

She grunted, lit another pellet of mogusa, and held it against Masugu's foot. This time, he actually gave a small wince. “So,” she said, “did you find what you were looking for?”

“Find—?” I began, but at that moment, the lieutenant groaned, and his eyes, which had been open but misty, focused up at my face.

“'ko?” he murmured, and then his face, which had been as lax as that of a dead man's, twisted into a flabby grin.

“Ko?”
I asked. I couldn't think why he would call me by my nickname; he was always so careful to call me
Murasaki
.

“'ko-ko,” he burbled, and his fingers reached up to stroke my cheek. They were cool. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mieko stiffen. “Ma'me?”

“What?” I blinked down at him in confusion; on the one hand, he was awake, which was good, but on the other, he as behaving so...

“Ma'me!” he repeated, and his face twisted in a babyish pout. His fingers closed on my chin. Mieko's eyes widened. Big, round tears rolled across Masugu's nose. “Ma'r'me! Mar'me, ‘ko-ko!”

“Ma—?” I sat there, unable to move. “Marry you?”

“He doesn't mean you,” whispered Mieko, her voice deathly low. “He thinks he's talking to me.”

“Kill me ‘gain,” sobbed Masugu. Then his eyes rolled back into his head, his hand fell limp from my chin and he drifted back into the open-eyed sleep that I'd first seen him in.

Kill me again.
What did he mean?

“Don't let him fall unconscious again!” barked Mieko, but she was crying—tears of guilt no doubt, at his accusation.

“You!” I snarled, the ginger forgotten in my hands. “He wouldn't want to marry you! He knows you tried to kill him!”

Mieko sat back on her heels, apparently surprised by the vehemence of my attack. “What are you talking about?”

“He knows you're the one who poisoned him, who... destroyed his rooms, and—!”

“Me!” Mieko let out an angry growl of a laugh. She dropped the pellet—it had apparently burned her fingers in her inattention—and had to smother it with the sleeve of her robes to keep the straw
tatami
from catching light. “He knows that I would never hurt him. You were the one—”

“I heard him!” I was suddenly standing, my feet wide. “Last night! In the Retreat! He said that you'd tried to kill him five years ago. I heard him.”

She stared up at me. “You heard—?” I expected her to become angry again, but her expression bowed downward into sadness. She shook her head, lighting another pellet and applying it to the lieutenant's feet. “Oh, Risuko. I thought that I had heard someone moving about outside. This idiot told me that I was imagining things, but I knew.... You are one of us after all, aren't you? You gave him too much of the poppy, and you made a mess out his rooms, but you are a
kunoichi
after all.”

“NO!” I howled, rage coursing through my body. If I had had a sword then.... Well, I would have used it, in spite of everything. No harm. “No! I'm not a killer like you! Lady Chiyome talks about
kunoichi
being ‘a special kind of woman,' but that's all you are, all of you! You're murderers! Assassins! I couldn't be one of you. Not ever!”

Mieko's sad gaze never broke from mine. “Yet you drugged Masugu's wine. He could still die from that, you know—and though it is me that he wants to marry, he is quite fond of you.”

“Drugged?” I spluttered. “I never! You—!”

“And why?” sighed Mieko. “Just so that you could ransack his rooms. What a waste.”

“That was your work, not mine.” My fists clench around the clay pot and the ginger. “Remember, I know that you were the person he accused of trying to kill him!”

“Five years ago,” sighed Mieko, the sadness spilling over into tears, “he asked me to marry him. And I—”

“She refused,” said Chiyome
-sama
from the door behind me, “knowing her proper duty.”

Mieko and I both gasped and turned. Our mistress favored us with her usual smirk of sour amusement and walked toward us. Kee Sun trailed at her shoulder, scowling.

“Congratulations, Risuko,” said Lady Chiyome. “You have earned an initiate's sash.” Her face. “The question, I suppose, is whether we shall have to use it to hang you as a traitor.”

“
I
am no traitor!” I shouted, and then dropped to my knees and bowed. The ginger spilled onto the mat. “Mieko was the one who—!”

“No,” said Chiyome
-sama
. “While I suppose that Mieko might have gone against her own sentiments and drugged Masugu there to search his rooms, she would never have done it so sloppily.” I looked up in surprise. Lady Chiyome was staring at Mieko, who was bowing beside me. “And of course, if she had wanted him dead, he would have died. No doubt without any of us being any the wiser.”

Chiyome
-sama
sniffed and looked back down at me. “This was done by an amateur. A child.” She gestured around the jumbled room in disgust. “None of my
kunoichi
would have made such a mess of such a simple job. Least of all my Mieko.”

I turned to accuse the maid, but she had gone silently back to burning pellets of mugwort against the soles of Masugu's feet. Kee Sun was lifting the tonic to the lieutenant's lips, forcing the liquid down; Masugu seemed to be gagging on it.

“Risuko. Look at me.” Chiyome
-sama
's sharp tone pulled me back around. “I visited the ladies in the Retreat just now. Fuyudori and Mai tell me that you were wandering about late last night—and they seldom agree that the sun has risen. I learn now that you used your delightful talents to spy on the lieutenant and Mieko.”

I tried to speak, but fear bound me, squeezing my throat, my chest, my bowels. I tried to plead with her with my eyes, but her face was empty of any humor at all and I could only look away. Behind her, a scroll hung askew from the door screen.

“Perhaps,” Lady Chiyome said, her voice low and cold, “you chose to visit Masugu's rooms while he was gone? Perhaps you brought the drugged wine along in case he returned before you were done? Kee Sun tells me you've been learning about herbs; of course, he swears to me that you're far too deft to have used a whole bottle of poppy juice at once.”

The inscription on the scroll was a familiar one:

So
ldiers falling fast

Battle of white and scarlet

Blossoms on the ground

The calligraphy too was familiar. It was my father's.

“Who are you spying for, girl?” asked the old woman. “The Imagawa? They're finished.”

The scroll was, in fact, identical to the one hanging inside of the door at my home, except that instead of a picture of cherry blossoms, the bottom of the parchment was taken up with a carefully rendered circle—the full moon that is the Mochizuki crest.

Father. A brush poised like a knife. I was just learning to write myself, and I loved to watch him practicing his calligraphy and his drawing. He sat in our yard, staring at the bare cherry tree, a length of rice paper on his scribe's lap-desk. I tried to imitate with a stick in the dirt Father's beautiful handwriting, the beautiful blossoms. As he wrote out the poem for what felt like the hundredth time and began to draw the cascade of flowers, I asked him why he was drawing cherry blossoms in the autumn. He thought about that for a moment, put down his brush, and said, “The blossoms fall just once each winter, yet in our memories, they fall every day.”

“
SQUIRREL!
”
snapped Lady Chiyome. “What on earth are you staring at?”

Without even looking back at her, as I should have, I pointed and gasped, “Where did you get my father's poem?”

Lady Chiyome blinked at me and then at the huge scroll. When she looked back at me, her furious expression had been replaced by a more familiar one: shrewd calculation. “Your father's?”

“Of course!” I blurted. “I know it by heart! I would recognize that handwriting anywhere! I swear that is my father's poem!”

“I know,” she said. “He gave it to me.”

Masugu groaned.

I blinked at her, and then suddenly remembered where I was, who I was. I fell to the
tatami
, which still reeked of pickled ginger, and began to apologize for my rudeness.

Chiyome
-sama
interrupted. “Come, Risuko. We shall let Kee Sun and Mieko care for the lieutenant. You will come and explain yourself to me.”

I looked up to answer, but she was already striding away. I scampered after her out of the guesthouse and into the bright cold of the courtyard. The Little Brothers fell in on either side of us. I wasn't sure whether they were protecting her, keeping an eye on me, or both.

I felt, in fact, very much as I had that first day, stumbling along beside her palanquin away from our village, from my home, and from my life.

—

We marched back to the great hall, empty now except for Aimaru, who stood at the bottom of the narrow stairs that led up to Chiyome
-sama
's rooms, shifting from foot to foot. His usually bright face was dark and troubled; he looked away from me as we approached.

“This puppy can go back to guarding the guesthouse,” Lady Chiyome barked, nodding her head at Aimaru. “With Mieko and Kee Sun caring for Masugu, I don't think anything can go wrong there that hasn't already. You two,” she said, gesturing to the Little Brothers, “keep an eye on things down here. I don't wish our conversation to be... interrupted.” She began to stride up the stairs. “Come, Risuko.”

I followed. Halfway up the stairs I turned back. The Little Brothers had faced away, watching the doors. I drew a deep, unsteady breath, turned, and fled upward.

By the time I entered Lady Chiyome's chamber, she was already kneeling at her desk, mixing ink in a small bowl. I found myself coming to a stop in the doorway with one foot in the air, the memory of my one previous visit to her rooms rendering me as cold and as still as if I'd been encased in ice.

“Much easier simply to climb the stairs than the outside wall, isn't it, my Risuko?” said Chiyome
-sama
without raising her gaze from whatever it was that she was writing. “And if you've been invited in, there's no point in trying to hide. Especially in the middle of the doorway.”