Free Moonshadow by Simon Higgins

asked with fascination.
    'He was obliged to!' Badger's supposedly dull eyes had sparkled. 'But though he fired all his cannons many times, not one was ever loaded with a cannonball. On arriving, the general demanded to know why the castle walls were still intact. His captain politely claimed he'd forgotten how to load the cannons. The general, a sharp fellow, had ordered him to speak the truth without fear. Apparently, on hearing the real reason and my name, the general exclaimed, "Hosokawa? I love his work! You acted wisely, Captain. Hosokawa must not die, and further more, I want his autograph!" Imagine that!'
    Badger had laughed, then his face had clouded with sadness. 'He ordered his men to take the castle without using cannons. The hard way – just ladders and a battering ram. His army captured Tanabe all right, but a third of them died doing it. No harm came to me, and the general got his autograph. But when I learned all this, long after the siege, the burden of it split my heart. I withdrew from public life, never publishing again. Instead, I answered the Shogun's call,' his voice had turned to a whisper, 'to slip into the grey light, to become one of its phantoms, to live only as a secret guardian of peace.'
    They had returned then to the scheduled lecture, but from that moment on, Nanashi had found it in him to respect Badger, to work harder in his classes, and to more readily tolerate both his abrupt manner and his stinking, pesky pet.
    Back in the present, Moonshadow blinked and stared down at the paper, brush drooping in his hand.
    Passive recall had proven itself again. While dreaming of the past, he had completed his map of Fushimi without apparent thought. Now it had to be checked with his conscious mind. He studied its wet lines, starting with the image of the great castle and moving clockwise around the page as he compared the map with his dawn memories. Every detail had to be right.
    His planning – his life – depended on it.
    The town of Fushimi was set among low rolling hills, beyond which sharp mountains rimmed the horizon. The original folds of the hand-made paper had left creases through his map, dividing it into four equal quarters.
    In the top-left quarter, his brushstrokes showed Momoyama Castle, surrounded by a wide moat and linked to the town, downhill from it, by a single, heavily guarded bridge.
    The top-right quarter of the map depicted the tangle of drab buildings, massive round, wooden vats and bamboo pipes that made up the sake brewery. Along with the castle to its left, it occupied the highest ground in the area, overlooking the town. A long, high cargo cable was suspended between the brewery and the castle. Lord Silver Wolf, renowned for loving sake, had obviously set this up so he could have barrels of his favourite drink cabled directly into his fortress.
    On the bottom-right quarter of the page, the map showed the main road leading into town near a small shrine and a tori gate, a simple, three-beamed wooden archway marking the entrance to a holy place.
    In the final, bottom-left quarter, his brush-strokes conveyed the grid-like streets of the town itself, sprawling away over a fold between the low hills.
    He put down the brush, watching the ink change hue as it dried. The map looked correct, so the procedure now was to check it again, add any last details that came to him, then sit still, staring at it, until he could see it perfectly whenever he closed his eyes. If interrupted, or if he sensed another study session was required, he would hide the map in the ceiling of his room in the interim. Keeping it on his person at any time would be too dangerous. If injured, caught and searched, it would be bad enough that his concealed weapons would reveal him as a spy. The discovery of the map would do something far worse: it would help his enemies confirm his mission, making life even harder for any agent replacing him. Once he felt complete confidence in his knowledge of it, he would burn