She was perfect, Kaori had insisted. Young enough to unlearn her provincial ways, pretty enough to enjoy the attentions of the duller sex, but not so beautiful she would stand out in a crowd. And so they began training her for a different battleground, just as deadly as those stalked by Iron Samurai and bushimen. A battleground of polished pine and fluttering fans and rippling curtains of blood-red silk.
Kaori had been raised in the Shōgun’s court, privy to the upbringing of a “lady of station.” And so, she became Michi’s new sensei. Hour after hour, day after day. Music lessons. Poetry. Philosophy. Dancing. The crushing, mindless tedium of tea ceremonies, intricacies of courtly fashion, poise, diction, face. And then came her weapons training. Innuendo. Rumor mongering. Eavesdropping. Lip-reading. Flirtation. Sex. And if the thought of it all terrified her in the long, empty watches of the night, she needed only think of her cousins lying beheaded in the street, the emptiness in her uncle’s eyes as he plunged the blade into his own belly and dragged it right to left, and the fear became less than nothing; the weakness of a girl-child who had perished beside her cousins in the village square.
“Remember,” she would breathe. “Remember Daiyakawa.”
They smuggled her to Yama, and from there to Kigen. Paid an iron fortune to have her irezumi re-inked by a master artisan, decorating her flesh with the artistry a woman of her “breeding” deserved. She played the role of a sole-surviving daughter to a noble Tora family, murdered in a fire lit by Kagé insurgents, come to beg the First Daughter for mercy now that the Shadows had taken everything she was. And the Lady Aisha had looked at her with narrowed, puff-adder eyes as Michi told her story, false tears spilling down her cheeks, lower lip trembling just so; an audition for a role in the most dangerous treason afoot in all of Shima.
And then the Lady had smiled.
“You are perfect,” she said.
21
WEBS AND SPIDERS
Rebel. Traitor. Servant. Sister. Clanless. Kagé. Nothing. No One.
The line between who Hana was and wanted to be was growing more indistinct by the day. At the turning of dawn and dusk, she would peel away her mask like a snake shedding skin, one identity left crumpled in the corner as she shrugged on the new one, hoping it still fit.
And she had never felt more alive.
Evening hours were spent shuffling through the Daimyo’s palace. Watching the wedding preparations unfold, guest rooms being prepared for the clanlords of the Dragon and Phoenix, the huge retinues each would bring in tow. Listening for the tick-tick-tick of the spider-drones, watching for the palace bushimen, other servants, the house mistress and her powdered scowl. Cautious steps. Downcast gaze. Head bowed. Playing the role of the lowly Shit Girl nobody saw or heard or cared about. Counting down to the day they would have no choice.
By day, she would keep company with Akihito in her room—the big man watching the street from his perch by the windowsill, the girl sitting on her bed as they talked of revolution, of bright futures and distant dreams. He was at least ten years older than she, a decade deeper in the world. But when he laughed, she would feel it in her chest. When he told tales about hunting the arashitora, she found herself squirming on her mattress. She would watch him carve his blocks of clay or pine into works of beauty, the Lady Sun lighting his profile as if the Goddess herself adored him. And Hana would think of the boys she’d known—the clumsy fumbling and promises unkept—and wonder what other tricks Akihito’s hands might know.
He slept in the corner, a thin blanket for a pillow, as far from her as he could be. And when she woke in the evening as the sun was failing, he would be gone.
She’d asked Daken to follow him two days ago, more out of curiosity than concern. It turned out Akihito spent his days at the Market Square in the shadow of the Burning Stones. Pillars of blackened rock, the lingering scent of burnt hair, ashes swept into corners by a wailing wind, as if Fūjin himself were ashamed of the sight. The altar where Guild Purifiers burned children in their campaign against “Impurity.” The place where the Black Fox had been shot, where Hana had seen the Stormdancer kill Shōgun Yoritomo right before her wondering eye.
The square was filled with spirit tablets now, carved from wood, stone, clay. Wreaths of paper flowers rippling in the dirty breeze. Hundreds of names scribed by hundreds of hands. Tributes for the slaughtered gaijin, the Black Fox, sons and fathers killed in the war overseas. Akihito would work on his carvings, occasionally place a new tablet among the others. Daken was unable to read the names he scribed. Hana had a notion she knew who they were for anyway.
When she’d arrived home from her shift this morning, she found a package laid out for her on her mattress—thin black crepe tied with a bow of real silk. Unwrapping it with trembling fingers, she’d found new clothes of soft, dark fabric, a pair of good, split-toed boots. A comb of Kitsune jade and kohl to wipe around the edge of her eye. A bottle of black dye. A handful of coins. Beneath it all, a small note written in a messy hand she’d recognize anywhere.