Deadly Flowers Read online

  All that my pin had for decoration was a round stone, halfway between brown and gray, polished smooth. It wasn’t anything that would catch an admirer’s eye, but then, it wasn’t meant to. It had other uses.

  My clumsy fingers fumbled with the thing and dropped it.

  Ninjas should not curse out loud. Even a profane whisper can be heard just when you don’t want it to be.

  I did so anyway and picked up the pin awkwardly, gripping it between two fingers that were starting to go numb. Then I took the thicker end between my teeth and twisted the wooden stick to pull it in two.

  Inside was a sharp sliver of a blade. I gripped the blunt end of the stick in my teeth and used the knife to cut the cords, then spent a few precious moments rubbing my aching, tingling hands and flexing my fingers, encouraging the blood to flow.

  The cords had cut my skin in more than one place. I blotted the blood dry on my sleeves so I would not leave a trail.

  And now the door. Simple. I screwed my hairpin back together and used the thin end to lift the latch that held the cupboard shut. Then I nudged the door open and checked. The room, one of the two on the second floor of the house, was empty.

  Snatching up my shoes, I slipped out of the cupboard and flipped the latch shut. Nothing to show that I was gone.

  I reassembled the pin and slid it back into my hair. The cords that had bound me, I shoved in a pocket. They might be useful later.

  Still barefoot, for the sake of silence, I went to the door. Kneeling low to the ground, I eased it open a slit and peered out. People naturally look at eye level when they are walking down a corridor. They are less likely to notice you if you are near the ground—or the ceiling.

  Aki and Okiko were walking down the hallway, headed for the stairs. They, along with the other girls, would have been told to raise the alarm if they saw me. And my ability to get out of a locked cupboard would count for nothing if I could not also get out of the house.

  I waited until the girls had disappeared down the staircase. Then I slipped through the door, sliding it shut behind me, and made my way out into the hall as quickly as I could while still moving quietly. I dared not take too much time. I had no idea when The Boulder would be back, no idea what he’d do when he found me gone. Instructors came and went at the school like leaves blown by the wind, hired by Madame for a month or two, maybe a week, now and then half a year. We never knew how long they would stay or what they did in the world beyond the school’s gates. Madame wanted it that way. It ensured that we kept facing new, unknown opponents as we trained.

  If it had been night, I could have gotten out of the building easily. This was the first time I’d been asked to do it in daylight. How was I going to hide when everyone could see me?

  By getting to a place where no one would look.

  There was a window to my right. I slid the screen open, then ducked down to the floor and waited while a maid passed by outside with a bucket of slops for the latrine. After she had gone, I gripped the cords of my sandals in my teeth, stepped up to the sill, turned so my back was to the yard outside, balanced, and took hold of the edge of the roof over my head.

  Then a jump, pushing off with my toes, using my arms to lift myself up. I let my legs swing once to give me momentum, and I was on the roof.

  I reached one leg down to slide the window screen shut with my toes. Not necessary, but elegant. The best ninja leaves no traces behind, blowing through an enemy’s home like the wind. People say we can walk through walls. It’s better if they keep on believing it.

  A thatched roof isn’t slippery, but it does make noise if you move quickly. And there are things living in it. With as much speed as I could manage while staying silent, I crawled up to the peak of the roof. Beetles scuttled across my bare feet and centipedes writhed over my fingers.

  I clenched my teeth and shook one off my hand with a shudder. I hate centipedes. They have too many legs for any decent creature.

  At the top I lay flat, so that I would not be silhouetted against the sky. Cautiously I peered through the bristly thatch to be sure the coast was clear, then rolled so that I was on the other side. Here I faced only Madame’s garden, where the girls and the servants were forbidden to walk, and beyond that the thick hedge that shielded the school from outside eyes.

  I slid cautiously to the edge and dropped onto the roof of the classroom, only one story tall. From there I’d have an easier route to the ground. Then I heard a voice.

  I had only heard that voice speak a few words in the last three days, but I still recognized it.

  “Lift your arms. There. Knot the obi like this.”

  Curiosity is a good servant, but a bad master.

  For that moment, I made a mistake and let curiosity rule me. I eased my head over the edge of the roof and peeked into the window below.

  She was there—Saiko. She knelt at Masako’s feet with her back to the window. Masako had on a silk kimono the color of the sun that was probably worth more than the house she stood in, with one end of her red obi tucked under her chin. She was trying to wind the rest of the silk belt around her waist, looking more alarmed than when, the day before, I’d swung a sharp blade straight at her head in the practice yard.

  “But what if I tear it?” she was saying, indistinctly.

  “You won’t tear it if you walk the way I showed you,” Saiko said firmly.

  Intrigued, I let myself stay there, upside down in the window, my braided hair dangling down toward the ground.

  Was this the answer to the riddle of Saiko? Was she here to teach girls how to wear a kimono or pluck their eyebrows or flirt behind a fan? Those were skills that might be useful; I could see that. An elegant kimono could be an effective disguise. But surely Saiko was not old enough to be an instructor, and no instructors ever revealed their names or slept beside the students at night. And why would someone here to teach the art of tying an obi need to learn the silent walk or be punished for letting a floorboard squeak?

  “No, don’t let it wrinkle,” Saiko was telling Masako. “You’ll look like a maid trying on her mistress’s clothes. And leave your hair down!”

  Fuku and Oichi, who knelt nearby, burst into laughter. If I’d been giving the lesson, I would have slapped them into attention.

  “It’s in my eyes. I can’t see what I’m doing,” Masako protested.

  “I don’t care. Never twist it up like that. Leave the back of your neck bare for anybody to see? It’s shameless. Only a courtesan would do that. A very bold courtesan. Now, take a step. Go on. You won’t trip.”

  Masako began to pace in a slow circle around the room, peering anxiously down at her feet. Fuku and Oichi were still giggling together. As Saiko turned to watch her student walk, she lifted her gaze and saw me. Or rather, my upside-down head framed by the window.

  For a heartbeat we held each other’s eyes. Then Saiko turned back to Masako as if she’d seen nothing more remarkable than a sparrow or a cloud crossing the sky.

  “Mind your sleeves. Don’t let them drag on the floor.”

  Careful to make no noise or sudden movement, I inched myself back up onto the roof.

  Saiko had no reason to protect me. In a moment she’d call the alarm, and both instructors would be on my trail. Half of the girls, too. There were plenty who’d love to see me humiliated, not to mention whatever reward Madame would grant to the one who caught me. A bite of meat at dinner? A cake of sweet rice flour? Permission to sleep past dawn the next morning? Most of the girls would leap at the chance to earn a privilege like that.

  “And stop looking at your toes! Fuku, will you be laughing when it’s your turn?”

  I let my breath out slowly. For the moment, at least, Saiko’s lesson was continuing. She had spared me. I didn’t know why. I didn’t have time to wonder.

  I sidled cautiously away from the open window, checked to see that Madame had not stepped outside for a stroll in her garden, and then gripped the edge of the roof so that I could flip over, dropping to the g
round as quietly as I could. I ducked behind the bathhouse, took a moment to slide my straw sandals on and tie the cords around my ankles, and risked a dash along the curving garden paths.

  Where two hedges met to make a corner, some hungry creature had gnawed through a root. I’d spotted the hole from the other side when, a few days ago, Instructor Willow had led us to the river for a test of how long we could swim underwater. At the time I’d thought it might make a good escape route, if I ever needed one. I needed one now.

  Headfirst, I wiggled through the hedge, forced my way out—and flung myself into the soft dirt as the bright blade of a sword slashed down.

  It wasn’t a planned move, nor a graceful one. My instincts simply screamed, Don’t be here! and I wasn’t.

  The blade snagged a strand of my hair as I rolled, and then I was up to face my attacker as quickly as I could, moving backward to put a pace or two between us. It was Instructor Willow. She must have known about the hole in the hedge, known that I had seen it. She’d been waiting here for me.

  As I rolled, I’d snagged a handful of soft earth. Now, while the instructor recovered from her failed swing and drew back her blade for a thrust, I flicked the dirt into her face.

  Several things happened next, very quickly.

  Instructor Willow shut her eyes for a moment, and her thrust was slowed, so I could pivot out of range.

  I snapped my arm forward, and my fist connected with her sword hand, right at the base of the thumb, where a cluster of nerves lies under the skin.

  She gasped, and the sword fell. I knew how her arm must feel: limp and helpless, tingling from fingertips to shoulder.

  I crouched low to snatch the sword and then swung around on one foot, the other leg extended. My straight leg hit her knees from behind and took her down onto her back.

  The sword in my hand flashed for her throat. I saw her eyes widen.

  “Stop.”

  My blade halted in the air, not two inches from my enemy’s skin, the moment I heard Madame’s voice.

  Madame?

  Sleep might be a warrior’s first duty, but it wasn’t coming easily that night.

  I had two things to wonder about as I lay on my mat. The first was why Madame had come to watch a training exercise. The second was what, exactly, I’d been training for.

  Not just escaping from a prison. I’d been doing that for years.

  Something more. Something … important.

  Did Madame think I had done well? Did she think I’d done well enough?

  Could it be that she’d come to watch because she wanted to see if I was ready?

  During the years I had lived with Madame, I’d seen it happen again and again. A girl, always older than myself, would simply vanish. Her mat would be empty one morning. There’d be nothing left but rumors that would flit among all the remaining students—Raku had infiltrated a samurai’s castle, Haru had stolen a single jewel from a merchant’s hoard, Toshi had died with a message undelivered, a failure, a disgrace to her training.

  The girls who completed their missions didn’t return. Students no longer, they were ninjas at last. There were always men with enough gold, eager to pay Madame for the skills and service of a deadly flower.

  The girls who did not complete their missions … they didn’t return either.

  Now Masako and I were the two oldest ones left.

  The air in the room seemed to prickle along my skin, as if a storm full of lightning were approaching. But I knew the sky outside was clear. It was my own anticipation that crackled like lightning.

  What would my mission be? What would happen after it was over? Who would Madame sell me to? A warlord, a nobleman, a samurai, a criminal? What would it be like to put what I had learned to use in the service of a master?

  I felt as if I were trying uselessly to peer into the depths of a black pit. I’d been at the school since I was three years old. There were only the smallest scraps of memory to tell me what my life had been like before Madame. I couldn’t imagine what might happen to me without her.

  But I was ready.

  My first mission. I wouldn’t be like Toshi. I would not fail. If only Madame thought so, too.

  And perhaps she wouldn’t think so, if she knew the truth—that I had not made it out of the house unnoticed. That I’d been seen. By Saiko.

  I remembered Saiko’s firm voice and clear instructions as she knelt at Masako’s feet. She was not quite the timid little mouse I had thought her, at least not when it came to tying an obi. She’d surprised me then, and she’d surprised me a second time when she had lifted her eyes.

  In that moment when our gazes had met, there had been some thought in her mind that I could not read.

  If Masako had been the one to see me, she would not have called out the alarm. She would have felt pity for me, or for any girl being hunted, the same kind of pity she felt for homesick little Ozu. If it had been Fuku to catch me with my head in the window, she would have announced it gleefully and joined in the hunt. She had never liked me, and she was always hungry. An extra portion of rice at dinner would have been more than enough reward for her.

  Saiko had not pitied me. Nor had she betrayed me. She had been thinking of something else as she went calmly on with her lesson.

  I did not know what had been in her thoughts. But I knew that it made me feel uneasy to be in her debt.

  FOUR

  I was still wondering about Saiko the next morning, when I was called to Madame’s room. I’d given the new girl half my millet porridge at breakfast, although she hadn’t asked for it. I’d just slapped the bowl down in front of her without a word. It was my way to even the score between us, to show her that I no longer considered myself beholden to her.

  The trouble was, I thought, as I slid open the door to Madame’s room, that I did not know what Saiko might consider me to be.

  “You performed well yesterday,” Madame said after I’d entered and knelt to bow humbly and deeply. The mats beneath me were thicker and softer than those in the rest of the house, cushioning my knees.

  Praise from Madame? The hairs on the back of my neck stirred uneasily, as if warning me that an attack must be coming. With her face as wrinkled as a rotten pear, her hair more white than black, Madame was no taller than Kazuko. Masako towered over her and even I topped her by the breadth of a hand. But she was like a twisted silk cord that could fray to its heart without breaking. Every girl in the school had felt the strength of her hand on the bamboo rod. And she never offered words of approval.

  “You have spent twelve years here,” she went on in her thin voice, looking at me steadily as I knelt on the mat. “Time for you to prove you are worth all of your training.”

  In a flash, I jumped to my feet. I’d been right. Yesterday’s assignment had been a test—and I’d passed.

  “Oh, Madame—I will—I promise—thank you! I know I’m ready—”

  She held up a hand.

  Keep your face a mask. Betray your thoughts to no one.

  I’d forgotten that rule entirely.

  “Do you think I need you to tell me that you are ready? Do you think it is up to you to decide?”

  Shamed, I gulped down the words in my throat and sank meekly back to my knees. I could only hope she would not decide I was no more than a child after all, and take the mission from my grasp.

  “No, Madame,” I murmured.

  There was a tiny dish of pickled plums on the low table next to her. She picked up a slice delicately with her chopsticks and dropped it into her mouth. I waited while she chewed.

  I was still hungry, having given away half my breakfast. I’d tasted a plum like that once. The smell of it, sharp and sour and still sweet, teased at my nose.

  “There is a castle less than a day’s journey from here,” Madame said at last. “You’ll enter it at night and make your way to a particular room. The person sleeping there is never to wake.”

  My throat tightened. My gut felt cold and heavy. Madame lifted another p
lum to her mouth.

  I’d never heard of a girl whose first mission had been an assassination.

  “It should not be difficult. You will have a confederate inside the castle. It will be her task to make sure the way to the room is clear for you to follow.”

  A confederate. I nodded dumbly, all the while wondering how I would complete the task. A blade? A tight cord across the windpipe? Poison? I knew so many ways …

  Another plum.

  “Your assistant will be Saiko.”

  “Saiko!” I blurted.

  I would be going on my first mission with that weakling hanging around my neck? What did Saiko know of climbing a wall, wielding a sword, using a knife? What kind of mission could this be if Saiko were a part of it?

  Madame’s hand moved so quickly I could hardly see it. My head was snapped sideways by the force of her blow.

  “You have some objection?” she asked, with perfect courtesy.

  My left eye was watering, and the tears spilled down my burning cheek. I did not dare lift a hand to wipe them away.

  “Speak, girl.”

  Madame never forgot the rules a ninja lived by. Her face was like the surface of a well; no one could guess what thoughts were hidden in the depths. I could not tell what she wanted now. A meek apology, or my true reasons for speaking as I had?

  I took the risk, tightening my neck for the next blow, if it were coming.

  “She’s—she knows nothing, Madame,” I said as steadily as I could. “She barely knows which end of a sword to hold! She could never—”

  Her hand moved again. The blow was hard and fell in the same place as before.

  “Are you proud of yourself, then?” Madame asked softly, her black eyes bright and merciless in their soft nests of wrinkled skin. “Do you think you know everything a ninja must know? Pah!” She nearly spat, as if her last slice of plum had been rotten. “You can scale a wall or swim a moat. No more than any foot soldier can do. Do you know the right moment to peer out from behind a fan? Can you catch a man’s attention with one glance? Could you keep his eyes on your smile and off your hands?”