Blood Ninja (32 page)

Shusaku summoned Hiro and handed Taro to him. Taro felt a little better as soon as he felt his friend’s hands under his armpits. He walked past the other students, Hiro taking most of the weight off his feet. He passed Yukiko, who looked ashen, and Heiko, whose eyes were lit by a kind of pained triumph. He smiled weakly at them.

“Take him to the sick room,” said Shusaku. “He will need patching up. Even vampires can be hurt.”

Little Kawabata lay on the cold, hard floor, listening to Shusaku’s hateful voice. How this man had taken over the clan was beyond him. His father had told him the whole story—how the clan had sent a ninja girl named Mara to protect Lord Tokugawa, and how Lord Endo Shusaku had learned her secret and forced her to turn him, before murdering her in cold blood
.

The devious brilliance of it was that no one could accuse him, because everyone had to pretend she was only a serving girl. And for the same reason, Little Kawabata’s father had never been able to prove what Lord Endo had done. Lord Endo claimed that the girl had been killed by some mysterious agent working for Lord Oda, and how could anyone contradict him? No one had seen her die
.

But for Lord Endo to become such a strong vampire that he ended up leading the clan, at the expense of the man whose envoy he had tortured and killed?

That was unbearable. Worse was that where before the clan had done work for all sides, hiring their services to the top bidder, Shusaku
had insisted that they work only for Lord Tokugawa, for whom he had been a spear-carrying samurai, one of the top ranked
.

And now, to add insult to injury, Shusaku had brought another samurai vampire to the mountain. Tokugawa’s son, of all people. This would destroy the clan, Little Kawabata was sure of it. How could Lord Oda allow such a boy to live? How could Lord Tokugawa allow it? He was willing to use the ninja, but to have one as a son? It was grotesque
.

Little Kawabata’s head was aching terribly, and his mouth felt filled with broken glass. But he felt strong, he felt good. His father had never succeeded in ridding himself of Shusaku, but his father had always relied on words. Little Kawabata thought words were perhaps not the best way to deal with one’s enemies
.

He spat something white out onto the floor—a tooth. In his mind he still heard Shusaku saying
Even vampires can be hurt.
He was relying on it
.

It took several days for Taro to recover from his injuries, and he passed them in a fog of boredom and frustration. The only thing he looked forward to was the occasional visit from Shusaku, who was teaching him where to apply pressure with his
shobo
ring if he wanted to incapacitate an enemy—permanently or otherwise.

Every time Taro looked down at the simple wooden ring, he couldn’t help comparing it to the one the noble girl had given him, which he wore on his other hand. It was almost as if the two rings symbolized the two halves of himself, his dual nature as both vampire and daimyo’s son. The one ring rough-hewn and possibly deadly; the other elegant, though ultimately—like Taro himself, who could never reveal his existence to his true father—useless.

Finally enough time had passed that Taro moved more easily, and was able to think again about going to recover his bow, which he felt sure now held the answer to everything, the power that would enable him to resolve the two sides of himself into one complete being.

That night he waited until everyone had gone to sleep, then snuck over to the niche in which Heiko slept. He touched her arm and was surprised when she woke immediately. “Shh,” he said. “Will you come with me? I need your help.”

She followed him out of the weapons room, and they followed the tunnel toward the crater. When they had gone far enough, Taro stopped and explained to the girl about his bow, and how he wanted to get it back from the rice store. He didn’t say anything about his crazy suspicion, that there might be something hidden inside the grip.

But if it
was
the Buddha ball, then he would be the most powerful man in the country, wouldn’t he? He could avenge his father’s death, avenge the abbess’s death, if indeed she
was
dead. In short, he could do anything, and conquer anyone, and he would certainly be able to improve the lives not only of Heiko, but also of everyone he loved.

And if it
wasn’t
in there, and he told Heiko it might be, then he would look an idiot. All in all, a small lie seemed better. “You can pick locks, can’t you?” he asked. He looked at her hopefully.

She nodded slowly. “Yes … if I have the right tools. But they’re with my things, back in there.” She pointed back to the weapons room.

Taro blanched. “If Little Kawabata were to wake up and find us gone …”

Heiko smiled. “That would be bad,” she said. “But I can be very quiet.”

She turned and crept back to the weapons room. Taro waited for several anxious moments. At one point he heard something fall to the ground. It made a striking sound like metal on stone.

He froze.

Time seemed to hang suspended in the air, like droplets of water on a spider’s web.

But no one stirred or spoke, at least as far as Taro could hear, and gradually he relaxed again. A moment later Heiko returned, holding a small leather bag. “That was close,” whispered Heiko.
“I knocked into something, and I was scared for a moment that someone might wake up.”

Taro had hidden black cloaks and
hakama
trousers behind a statue in one of the stone corridors, and now he and Heiko changed into these clothes that would camouflage them against the night. Taro also slid a short-sword into a scabbard concealed at his waist.

It was as well to be careful.

He and Heiko tied on their heads the three scarves—the
sanjaku tenugui
—that made up the ninja mask, leaving only the eyes uncovered. Then they followed the tunnel to the hut on the mountainside. Taro found it far less frightening this time, though it did take longer than he had hoped to negotiate the complicated system of tunnels. They came out of the hut into a clear, crisp night. The moon was dark, and the only light came from the myriad stars sparkling in the sky.

Heiko suggested descending through the rice paddies, instead of following the walkways that crisscrossed them. It was a good choice, as the deep water kept their profiles low, and anyone on the lookout would have expected them to arrive on the path. Soon their feet and legs were soaked from wading through the terraced plots. Each time they came to a step in the terrace, they lowered themselves down silently, crouching instantly to keep their silhouettes invisible. Once, Taro thought he heard a light rustling noise from behind them, but when he turned, all he could see was the ascending plateaux of the rice paddies, and the moon’s blue light on the water.

Winter was coming on, and they could see snow glittering on the mountaintops. Their breath misted in the air as they walked, making ghosts that hung in their wake.

In the space of three or four incense sticks, they had reached the village. Its roofs were visible through the trees ahead, and smoke spiraled into the night sky above the treetops. Taro pointed out a dark shape in the paddy below—someone keeping watch. He signaled to Heiko, who took out a blowpipe. The arrows were
anointed with a drug that would cause the recipient to sleep but not to die. She aimed at the man and fired. His body fell down face-first in the paddy.

The water! The man would drown!

Taro leaped lightly down into the paddy and crouched by the body. Sure enough, the face was immersed in the water. He turned the body over, checked the breathing. Shallow but regular. He breathed a sigh of relief. Then he saw what the man had been holding: a bow and arrow. Nor had he seemed to be hunting. Taro thought he was a guard.

“They’re keeping watch on the village,” he whispered to Heiko.

She looked at the bow, then at the man, who was also wearing dark clothes in order to blend into his surroundings. “It would seem so. There was a drought this year. Perhaps their food stocks are low. They wouldn’t want anyone stealing their rice.”

Taro cursed. “In that case, getting into the rice store might be tricky. We can turn back if you like.” Annoyed, he contemplated the idea of never again seeing his bow—his one link to his true father, Lord Tokugawa, and perhaps the object in which was hidden his destiny.

No. They had to go on.

Heiko laughed softly. “This just makes it more interesting,” she said.

They continued, crossing a little stream and then entering a wood that surrounded the village.

At this point Taro passed within a body’s length of his mother’s message.

But he didn’t see it.

Instead he spotted another guard, standing just behind a tree. He made a series of hand gestures to Heiko. She nodded. He shinned up the nearest tree, a tall pine, and used its regular branches to climb easily to its upper reaches. Then he tensed his muscles and leaped onto the neighboring tree, landing as lightly as a monkey, his small body coming in useful for once. He passed from tree to tree this way, until he was above the guard. Then he shimmied down
until he was just above the man’s head. Clinging on with his legs, he allowed his upper body to flop downward, bringing his head to the same level as the guard’s, only upside down. For a second their eyes met and he saw the man’s mouth open to scream, but Taro’s
shobo
ring had already found a pressure point in the man’s neck, and the guard slumped to the ground.

There were a couple more guards, but Heiko dealt with them easily, knocking one out with a deft flick of her
shobo
, and taking down the other with the blowpipe.

The stone-built rice store was accessible only through one door, and so this was where the two final guards stood. Taro and Heiko climbed up onto the roof, shimmied along, and then dropped silently next to the guards. The men had barely time to turn in alarm before a pair of
shobo
rings to the neck had knocked them unconscious.

Heiko knelt by the door and examined the lock. “Traditional Japanese,” she said. “Not Portuguese. That’s good.”

She explained that a hollow metal bolt slid through two staples, and was held in place by pins that fell down inside one of the staples to fill corresponding holes in the bolt. To spring the lock, a key was inserted down the length of the bolt. Prongs that matched the shape and number of the pins would push these back up into the staple, allowing the bolt to be slid out.

She took a long key from the bag at her waist, with two prongs at the end like the remaining teeth of an old man. “Most locks in this canton are made by the same blacksmith, and he is too lazy to change the key mold very often,” she whispered.

She slid the key in, then raised it up. There was a click. Heiko pulled on the bolt and it slid easily out of the staples that held it to the door. She lowered the bolt to the ground. “It’s a good idea to always remove the bolt. The key is not required to lock it. The pins will fall into place as soon as the bolt is returned to its positions, so it can be unwise to leave it in place, in case someone locks you in.”

They went inside. Piles of rice, like drifts of white snow in the
dimness, rose almost to the ceiling. Taro peered around for his bow.
There it is!
He picked it up and clasped it to his chest. Then he held it out in front of him, gripped either end, and bent it back on itself, against the grain of the wood. It resisted for a moment. Then there was a loud snap and the bow broke in half, the hilt falling to the ground. The broken ends whipped up into the air as the pent energy in the bow was released, and one of them passed fractionally in front of his eye.

“What—,” began Heiko, but Taro put his finger to his lips. He bent down and picked up the hilt. When the body of the bow had broken, it had cracked open the cylindrical piece of wood that had formed the main of the grip, and only the tape wrapped around it held it together, like a bandaged broken leg. He shook the tube.

Something fell out.

He caught the object, and even as he felt its weight hit his fingers, he knew that it could not be what he had hoped. He sighed, lifting it to see what it was.

A note, rolled up tight and secured with thread.

He held it out to Heiko. “What does it say?” he whispered, his voice betraying his disappointment.

She broke the thread and unrolled the little piece of paper. “It says, ‘The boy who bears this bow is Lord Tokugawa’s son.’ We know that already, though.”

He nodded, miserably.

She handed the note back. “You expected something else?”

“I thought … It was stupid, but …”

Understanding lit her features. “Of course. The Buddha ball.”

He shrugged. “A silly idea. But it would have helped so much. I could have destroyed Kira, and Oda. Made them pay for … well, for everything they have done. My father. The abbess. I should have liked to do something for you and Yukiko.”