Risuko (30 page)

“Maybe,” grunted Toumi.

Emi gave a snort of frustration that made the rice paper flutter in my fingers. “Then why's Masugu
-
san
staying here all winter, instead of riding as fast as he can to the capital?”

“I don't know,” I said. In fact, it didn't make any sense.

Toumi wrinkled her sharp nose. “Maybe we're better off not knowing. Lords. Knowing their business is bad news.”

Aimaru murmured, “The monks always said, ‘Knowledge without understanding is like soup without seasoning.'”

“Though I could have done without the seasoning in this evening's soup,” grunted Emi.

We all agreed with that.

“Let's give this back to Masugu,” said Emi. I rolled up the map, and we all trooped out the door—including, to my surprise, Toumi, who shuffled along sullenly.

“Don't want you two hogging all the credit,” she said

—

Imagine a nation at war with itself.

Not so very hard to do in a time when ambition, greed, and fear gallop like unreined horses from heart to heart, from home to home, from town to town. The great lords play their games of conquest as if moving stones around in a huge game of Go, but instead of a lined board, they play upon the land itself, and instead of pebbles, they position, capture, and sacrifice living men.

And women. And children.

Mute, we gave the map to Mieko, who was watching Masugu sleep.
Serpent-girlie.
She promised that she would keep it safe and return it to him.

None of us spoke
as
we stumbled blearily into our dormitory. We had nothing left to say.

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

I hope that you enjoyed this first tale of Murasaki's
adventures
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David Kudler

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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?”

Masugu's face froze.

“Mieko
-sensei
was teaching us to do that. On a pig dressed in armor.”

“That... would be very effective.”

“I couldn't do it.”

“No,” he sighed. “There is a purpose for your being here, Murasaki
-san
. I do not know the reason that Chiyome
-sama
brought you to the Full Moon. I do not know the reason that the gods brought you, Emi, and Toumi here—but there is one.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Learn what Mieko and the rest have to teach you.”