Blood Ninja (16 page)

“We should talk alone for a moment,” said the abbess, putting a hand on Shusaku’s arm. “The young people can get to know one another.” She led the ninja into the house, leaving Taro and Hiro with the two girls.

“You don’t
look
very important,” said Yukiko to Taro.

“I’m sorry?” he replied.

“Shusaku must think you’re important, if he’s already turned you. Usually people have to go to the mountain and train before they get to be ninjas.” Her words were tinged with a hint of bitterness.

“I was dying.”

She sniffed, and then her shoulders relaxed a little. “Really?”

“Yes,” said Hiro. “He was run through with a sword.”

“Well,” said Heiko, putting a hand on her sister’s shoulder, “in that case I’m glad Shusaku turned you. It would have been a shame if you had died before we met you.” She smiled.

“Thank you,” said Taro. “And anyway, I’m not a ninja. Not yet, anyway.”

Yukiko looked him up and down, her gaze lingering on the point where his too-long kimono puddled on the floor. “I have to admit you don’t look the part,” she said, a touch of amusement entering her voice now.

“Yes,” said Heiko, a smile playing on her elegant features. “Where
did
you get that kimono?”

Taro felt acutely conscious now of the absurd clothes swamping his body. “I … borrowed it.”

“That means he stole it,” said Yukiko. “Maybe he will make a good ninja, after all.”

“Don’t worry about Yukiko,” said Heiko to Taro as they sat in the room that overlooked the garden. Occasionally, from outside, came the sound of Hiro and Yukiko’s wrestling. “She wants so badly to be turned, but she likes you even if she mocks you—I can tell.”

It had been several incense sticks since they had arrived, and Taro had come to like both sisters, though Yukiko still seemed cautious of him, and every now and then he had seen her looking at his elongated vampire teeth.

Heiko, the elder, was tall and willowy, with pale skin and enormous eyes. He felt a little bashful in her company. Yukiko was shorter than her sister, and younger, with an impish smile. She was also stronger, with a muscular physique that reminded Taro of Hiro. Already she had attached herself to Taro’s big friend, and had spent most of the time discussing holds with him, play-fighting, and exchanging tips for unbalancing an opponent. To Taro’s surprise, Yukiko had even challenged Hiro to a wrestling match, and the pair had been fighting ever since. Taro wasn’t
used to girls and boys fighting, but Heiko had assured him that ninjas made no distinctions—a woman could scale a wall and slit a target’s throat just as well as a man.

And besides, Yukiko kept winning.

“And you?” said Taro. “You don’t want to be turned?”

Heiko dipped her brush in the pot and drew a series of deft strokes across the paper. She had explained that Shusaku favored calligraphy as an exercise for swordplay, and though Taro had initially been surprised that this scholarly pursuit should be considered a martial training, he could see now the way that Heiko’s rapid hand movements—the brush dancing back and forth—could serve just as well to impel a sword.

She held up the parchment, then crumpled it up and threw it aside. Taro couldn’t see what had been wrong with it. “I will be a ninja,” she said. “It’s what I have always trained for. But I’m in no hurry to give up being a girl. To stop eating food, and live on human blood.” She made a face, then put her hand to her mouth. “Sorry,” she said. “No offense.”

“I wouldn’t have chosen it either,” said Taro. He had drunk the pig blood that Heiko had given him—she and Hiro and Yukiko had eaten soup—and though it had restored his strength, he had dug his nails into his palms as the warm, slippery blood had run down his throat.

More pleasant by far had been the bath he and Hiro had taken, stretching their aching limbs in a tub of very hot water that the girls had run for them, before retiring, giggling, to another room. Taro hadn’t bathed in hot water since he and his mother had gone to the
onsen
springs near Shirahama, a few days before her death, and he had enjoyed luxuriating in the bath while a small part of him, deep inside, had remained cold. He knew that it would not warm until he could see his mother again, could reassure himself that she was safe.

New clothes had been laid out for him and Hiro when they’d gotten out of the bath, and now Taro was sitting cross-legged on the floor in a kimono that, mercifully, was just about the right size.
Taro hugged his knees, happy to be once again warm and clean. From outside, he heard Yukiko say, “Tell you what, I’ll go easy on you. If you can beat me one round out of five, I’ll let you be my servant for the rest of the year. You can bring me tea and refreshments.”

Hiro tutted. “Big talk for a weed like you.” But he was panting, and Taro smiled. Yukiko was obviously a fearsome opponent.

“She won’t break him, will she?” he asked Heiko.

She grinned. “No. But he may be sore for a while. Be glad you’re in here with me. A bit of writing isn’t likely to get you hurt.” She twirled the brush in her hand, then dipped it into the ink and began drawing the kanji character again.

“What does it say?” asked Taro.

“It says Shusaku. I intend to give it to him as a present. And to show how I have progressed.”

Taro nodded. “He’ll be pleased.”

“I hope so.”

“Is he … your uncle?” said Taro. He was sure Shusaku was not the girls’ father, but his demeanor toward them was affectionate and protective, as if he stood in some relationship of familial authority toward them.

“No!” said Heiko. “He saved our lives, when we were very young. He had just become a vampire himself.”

Taro was surprised. “He wasn’t always one?”

“No one is. You have to be turned, like you. Before that, he was a samurai.”

Taro stared. “A samurai? Shusaku?”

“Yes.” She held up the brush. “How many ninja teach calligraphy, do you think?”

Taro rocked back on his heels. He couldn’t imagine Shusaku being anything other than a solitary ninja, creeping around the landscape in darkness. He couldn’t picture him on horseback, wearing armor, bearing a
katana
. “But why would he become a ninja instead?” he asked.

“It wasn’t his choice. He was turned to save his life, like you.”

“Turned? Who by?”

Heiko drew the brush across the page with a flourish, then smiled at the character she had drawn. “This one will do.” She set it aside. Then she leaned a little closer to Taro, as if to impart a secret. “He’s never spoken of it. But the abbess says that it was for love.”

“He became a vampire for love?”

“In a manner of speaking. It seems that he fell in love with a ninja girl, and she with him. But he was injured in a great battle, and she could save his life only by changing him. Like a love story from a poem, isn’t it? Of course, it all ended tragically too, just like a poem.”

“Why, what happened to her?” asked Taro.

“She was killed.”

“Killed?”
Gods, poor Shusaku. That explained why he had never mentioned any of this.

“Yes, a samurai killed her in battle, when she was with Shusaku.”

Taro nodded slowly. A samurai. Of course. It explained so much about his ninja rescuer’s attitude toward the warrior class.

Just then Hiro and Yukiko tramped heavily into the room, smiling. “I’m not sure if I want to be a ninja,” said Hiro, continuing a conversation from outside.

“But you should!” said Yukiko. Her eyes gleamed. “Uncle Shusaku has already taught us some elements of the discipline. It’s great. Well, not the meditation. That’s boring. But the sword-fighting and the staff … oh, and the
shurikens
! I think when I’m a real ninja the
shurikens
will be my favorite weapon for killing with. We practiced once on dead pigs, and when the throwing star hits the meat—
thwock
—it’s such a satisfying sound!”

Heiko tutted. “You would do better to concentrate on the more elegant disciplines. Lock-picking. Calligraphy.”

Yukiko scoffed. “Calligraphy leads to madness and watering eyes. And anyway, careful and elegant doesn’t save your life if someone is trying to kill you. Imagine if Shusaku had come to our rescue with a brush when we were babies. He’d have been slaughtered.”

Taro stared. He had never in his life heard a young woman talk so casually of violence. But Yukiko narrowed her eyes, and he looked down, realizing he was being rude.

“Shusaku rescued you when you were only babies?” he asked, ignoring the playful argument between the two girls.

“Oh, yes,” said Yukiko. “We grew up in Lord Oda’s domain. Our parents were killed by Yoshimoto’s army. Shusaku found us when he was on a mission. We were hiding under the doorstep of a pleasure house in winter, shivering against the cold. Some bandits were hiding out in there, and Shusaku had been hired to kill them. But as he went inside …”

“I heard the crying of young children,” continued Shusaku, entering the room ahead of the abbess. Taro had the sense that this was an oft-told story. “And so I peered under the step. There were a toddler and a baby, the one holding the other, both weeping with terror. So …”

“He picked us up, walked through the door with one of us under each arm, and killed the bandits using only his feet,” concluded Heiko. Taro noticed to his surprise that she was blushing.

“Well, that’s not quite true,” said Shusaku. “I bit out the throat of one of them.”

Taro looked at the ninja, thinking how little he knew the man still. He’d thought he was only a ninja—a dishonorable assassin—and now it turned out he had been a samurai, and he spent his time rescuing babies from bandits.

Shusaku walked over to the writing desk. “Heiko. I see you’re working on your calligraphy.”

Heiko presented him with the drawing of his name, and he smiled. “It’s beautiful. You have made much improvement.”

Heiko beamed with pride. But then she looked quizzically at the ninja. “You still wear your mask.”

“Yes. I ought to tell you about that.”

“Are you injured?” said Yukiko. “Burned?”

Taro looked at her, puzzled. “It’s just his tattoos,” he said.

“Tattoos?” asked Heiko, just as puzzled, and Taro remembered that the girls didn’t know about them.

“Taro’s right,” said Shusaku. Slowly he unwrapped the black scarf that concealed his face. As it came off, Heiko gasped. She ran to him, studying every detail of his face, and Taro almost wished that he could see it—could see the writing covering the ninja’s skin.

All he saw was the eyes.

Then, shocking Taro, Heiko burst into tears, and ran from the room. The abbess reached out a hand to stop her, but Heiko jagged to the side with surprising speed and grace—in that instant Taro saw that to consider her more studious and still than her sister would be a mistake—and disappeared through the door.

“See?” said Yukiko. “I told you calligraphy leads to madness and watering eyes.”

Heiko’s eyes were still puffy and red, but the abbess had calmed her down, and now they were all gathered again in the main room, Shusaku standing with his arm around Heiko.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It must have come as a shock.”

She touched his face. “Why did you do it?” she asked. “Two months ago your skin was clear.”

Taro was as amazed as she was. Shusaku had done this only two months ago? He had thought the ninja had always been tattooed.

Shusaku sighed. “It is the Heart Sutra. It protects me from other ninjas, makes me invisible.”

“I know what it
does
,” said Heiko. “You told me the story of Hoichi yourself.” She sounded angry.

“Ah, yes. Of course.” Shusaku’s eyes looked pained.

“I would have thought you would have thought twice, given his example, about undertaking such a foolish course of action,” said Heiko. She shook her head. She looked angry and upset, and Taro felt that there was something he was missing here. Who was
Hoichi, and what did he have to do with Shusaku’s tattoos?

Now Yukiko stepped forward, glaring at Shusaku. Unlike her sister, she remained composed, but Taro could tell that she was just as angry. “What,” she said, “could possibly have been so important that you were willing to cover your whole body in tattoos in order to pass unnoticed among other ninja? You realize, of course, that you will never be able to return to samurai life now?”

“I left samurai life behind a long time ago,” said Shusaku.

“That’s not the point,” said Yukiko. “The point is the
risk
you took. Why did you do it?”

But Shusaku only looked at Taro, and Taro realized with a silent groan why the ninja had done what he had done. He looked at Shusaku’s floating eyes. “You did this to rescue me, didn’t you? You knew you would have to fight many ninja. You wanted to be able to turn invisible.”

Shusaku nodded. “Yes.”

“Gods,” said Taro. He felt as though the ground were trembling beneath his feet, no longer able to hold him. “But the pain … tattooing your eyelids and your face … You went through that for me? To save
me
? What could possibly make me so important?”