Free Blood Ninja by Nick Lake Page A

and—yes—worried. She would not have believed it of the Sword Saint daimyo, whose eyes and will were made of the same steel as his swords. But he was afraid. And lately he would not allow her to leave the castle under any pretext. These last days, Kame had been confined to Hana’s room, submitting with increasingly poor grace to the indignity of food she hadn’t killed herself, its blood no longer flowing in its veins .
    Hana gazed out of the window, looking at the oblong patch of sky above the main gate of the castle. A few wispy clouds drifted by, against the pale blue .
    The calligraphy sensei rapped Hana on the knuckles. “You’re miles away! Concentrate, girl! You’re worse than the Tokugawa boy.”
    The Tokugawa boy, who was sitting right next to Hana at the adjacent desk, looked up from where he was scrawling messy spiral on his paper with a wet brush. “I hate you!” he said. “Calligraphy is stupid!”
    Lord Tokugawa’s son was a ruddy-faced boy of around four—far too young for calligraphy, of course, and Hana didn’t quite see why he had to sit there with her. She strongly suspected that it was meant to teach her some sort of salutary lesson, useful one day for her management of a samurai household. Patience, perhaps. Or the fortitude required not to gut an obnoxious four-year-old boy with one’s sword .
    Little Tokugawa loved mud, frog spawn, and stone fights, and hated anything to do with sitting inside. On that point, Hana was in complete agreement with him—though on that point only. He was an arrogant brat, and she tried to keep her contact with him to a minimum.Some days she worried that her father might try to marry her to him. A four-year-old boy! She wouldn’t put it past Lord Oda .
    The lesson crawled along slowly, like a dog with three legs. Hana applied herself to several new characters, deriving—despite herself—a certain pleasure from the brush’s progress across the white paper .
    Suddenly there was a cough from behind her, and Hana turned, startled, her brush sketching a wild, unplanned stroke. Kenji Kira had entered the room, his tabi shuffling lightly on the polished wooden floor, as he placed his weight on his uninjured leg, dragging the wrecked one behind him .
    Not that there was much weight to place—the man seemed thinner every time Hana saw him, as if a hungry ghost from the lowest realm of samsara were feeding on his flesh. She had never seen him eat anything but rice, and he drank only water. She wondered how he remained alive. His eyes were sunk in dark pools, surrounded by bruises; his bones showed through his near-translucent skin like sticks bundled in a sack .
    He bent over Hana’s desk and greeted her respectfully. Hana would be more grateful for the man’s respect if he didn’t convey it with such terrible breath. The man’s every word carried a scent of decay, as offensive to the nostrils as unconvincing to the ear .
    In truth, she trusted nothing Kira said .
    He was her father’s head of security—his spymaster, as Hana’s indiscreet maid Sono called him—and he had a wide remit of responsibility. Hunting fugitives, interrogating prisoners, quelling insurrections—he had done them all. There was, however, one insurrection he was powerless against: Hana did not return his obvious admiration .
    Kira leaned his long, emaciated body over hers, forcing her to squirm aside, and plucked up her sheet of white paper. He examined the image she had drawn there, the character for “crane.”
    “Your strokes are too bold,” he said in his nasal twang. He tutted at the mistake she had made when he’d surprised her. “You must aspire to a more feminine line if you wish to make a fine match for a desirable nobleman.” He smiled at her, revealing rotten teeth, and red, bleeding gums. “Unless, of course, you already have your eye on someone …?”
    Hana shook her head. “Even if I did, it would be futile. I will marry whomever my father wishes me to