Shadows & Lies

by Nancy Sauer

Editing by Fred Wan

Zakyo Toshi, Month of the Dog

The hour of Fu Leng found Shosuro Masanobi heading home, the last of the night’s parties behind her. She did not hurry, and yet somehow her sandal caught on an uneven cobble that her eyes had missed and she stumbled several for several steps before regaining her balance. The woman stopped and rubbed her forehead wearily. In this city she was “Shosuro Hana”, a would-be playwright and dedicated social butterfly. It was the ideal cover, but it was not without its difficulties. She hadn’t drunk as much sake as her fellow-partiers thought she had, but she had still drunk quite a bit and she could tell that she was going to have a headache in the morning. Masanobi took a deep breath and moved on. After this past night’s performance, no one would be surprised if she spent tonight at home, ‘working on her play’. And then she would pay some nighttime visits to the various merchant factors in town, and read up on what the Crane and the Crab were doing. The thought made her smile.

The last section of Masanobi’s journey took her down an alley behind a tofu shop. She could just make out her small house opposite the alley’s mouth when something moved in the corner of her vision. The Scorpion woman spun and tried to fling out her right arm to block whatever it might be while her left hand darted to the small knife she kept in her obi. Before she could complete the motions something hard slammed into her stomach and threw her back against the wall of the shop. As she blinked the pain away a hand came up and pressed against her mouth, pinning her head.

Masanobi looked at her opponent, trying to gauge her situation. It was a man, dressed in a dark kimono and with no mon she could see. His black hair was neatly tied back, and he had dark eyes that held a faint greenish sheen in their depths. Desperately she tried to squirm out of his grasp and then shrieked. The thing that had slammed into her stomach, she realized over her pain, was a knife.

“Are you so eager to be gutted, little Scorpion? Here, let me help.” The man made a sudden motion. Masanobi bit through his palm in her death throes, but he only smiled as blood and sake rained down on the street.

•

“And so ends another Scorpion,” Daigotsu Hirata said. He spooned up some of his stew, blew on it a moment, and ate it.

“Well done,” Daigotsu Masahiko said. “But however did you spot her in the first place?”

“It was the grace of our Kami. A few weeks previous I had been looking over one of the buildings belonging to a Crane-sponsored merchant when she crawled out of a window. No one else could have seen her in the darkness, but I could.” Hirata’s eyes gleamed. “I followed her home, and then found out who she claimed to be and what she was doing in this city. And then I ended her.” He dug out another spoonful of stew and chewed with obvious satisfaction.

Masahiko stifled the urge to roll her eyes and concentrated on her own bowl. Hirata’s mix of patient cunning and sudden violence had its uses, but there was no getting around the fact that he was the least sane Daigotsu she had ever met. It made it hard to predict what he was going to do next, and in this city they had no margin for slip-ups. Still, she reflected, his flaws made him expendable, which would prove useful if she ever needed to ingratiate herself with the local magistrates.

“More stew?” Hirata asked.

Masahiko pushed her bowl forward and Hirata began to refill it. “It is good, but it has an unusual taste.”

“It’s the local sake,” Hirata said. “It makes everything taste different.” He pushed her bowl back and began to refill his. “What will you do now that I have cleaned the city for you?”

“What I was sent here to do. With armies and soldiers seeking their winter quarters we should be seeing a rise in the number of ronin and ashigaru here. I’ll sort through them and recruit the best for our lord’s service.”

Hirata nodded. “Act without fear,” he said. “I know how to smell them now, and I will keep this town clean for you.”

•

Kyuden Bayushi, Month of the Rat

“Your sensei has said good things about you. He says that you have a great deal of potential, and the skill to put it to use.” Bayushi Paneki spoke casually, as if passing along an observation on the current court fashions.

Bayushi Eisaku kept his face expressionless, but it was hard. To know that his name had been praised to the Champion himself was a source of pride, but he would not allow it to distract him from the important things. “I wish only to serve our clan to the best of my ability,” he said.

“As do we all,” Paneki said. “I have a particular task for you, but you will have to wait a moment before I explain it. There is one other person I wish to have here first. When she arrives you must remember two things: Be very polite, and do not ask her any questions.”

“Yes, Paneki-sama,” Eisaku said without hesitation. He could not imagine being anything other than polite in his champion’s presence, and asking questions of an unknown Scorpion was simply a bad idea.

“Excellent. I–” Paneki paused and cocked his head as if listening. “Please, Maru-san, come in.”

The door slid open and framed in the doorway stood an attractive woman in a black kimono embroidered in black thread with circles and scorpions. “I thank your for your welcome, Paneki-san,” she said. She bowed as if to an equal. “Do you have a question for me?”

“Not at all,” Paneki said with a smile. He waved her towards a pillow. “I just wanted to share with you some information I have received recently.”

“I am always happy to help the Scorpion Clan,” Maru said. She smiled and knelt where Paneki had indicated. “What would you like me to know?”

“Since they first appeared, we have been watching the members of this self-styled ‘Spider Clan’” Paneki said. “I find their actions suspicious and their motives suspect.”

“They have been about for some time,” Maru said. “Surely your information network has given you what you need to move against them–or to dismiss them from your mind, if they are really no more than what they seem.”

“In the normal course of affairs, yes. And yet something strange happens in the areas that the Spider become active in. People who were once ready gossips become close-mouthed, or dead; our agents vanish, messages go astray. And none of it, of course, can be traced to the Spider.”

“How distressing,” Maru said. “You have a plan?”

“I do.” Paneki nodded at Eisaku. “I have a report from one of your people that members of the Spider Clan have become very active in Zakyo Toshi. I am going to send this one there, posing as a ronin, to join them.”

“Inelegantly direct,” Maru said thoughtfully. “Still, if other means fail…”

“I believe that he has the capacity to succeed in this task.”

Maru stared intently at Eisaku for a moment, and the young Scorpion tried very hard not to flinch. There was a focus to her gaze that he had seen before only in his sensei. “Success is a difficult thing to judge,” she said. “When the time comes, will you recognize it?”

“You are sounding positively oracular,” Paneki said dryly.

Maru’s lips curled up in a slight smile, but her gaze did not waver. Eisaku hesitated for a moment, and then spoke. “I am a samurai. I will carry out my lord’s orders, and let him decide if I have succeeded.”

“A virtuous sentiment,” Maru said. “May it keep you from harm.”

•

Zakyo Toshi, Month of the Tiger

Masahiko was not concerned when she realized that there was someone following her. She knew her worth in a fight, and she feared nothing that stayed dead after she killed it. The Spider continued down the night-darkened alley until she reached its end and then abruptly turned around and walked back. She hadn’t gone halfway when she encountered her quarry. He wore a slightly stained kimono and looked to be only a few years past his gempukku. In the dim light of the moon it was hard to be sure, but Masahiko thought she detected the lost look of a newly-lordless man.

“What do you want?” she said.

The man looked startled by her directness. “I don’t understand,” he said, not meeting her eyes.

“You were following me,” Masahiko said mildly. “What is your name?”

“Ieyasu. And I was just walking down the alley. Going somewhere.”

It wasn’t a particularly good lie, Masahiko thought: he must have been a Lion. “Ieyasu-san, it is late and the tofu-seller isn’t even up, much less opening his shop for business, so there is nowhere to be–save here, speaking to me. What do you want?”

“You are Masahiko, right? The woman who runs the Steel Strand Dojo?”

“I am.”

“I–I want to know if I can train at your dojo.”

“So, Ieyasu-san, why follow me around in the dark?” Masahiko said. “You could have just come to the dojo.”

“I did, once.” The man straightened up slightly. “It was full of ashigaru.”

Masahiko heard something in his voice and suppressed a smile. The fact that he was a samurai was a ronin’s last shred of pride. “There are ashigaru who train at my dojo, yes. I will teach anyone with the determination to improve themselves. Is that what you want? To improve?”

“Yes,” he said. “I want to be stronger and better than I am now, so that I can find a new lord.” This was going to be easier than he had thought, Eisaku reflected. Maru’s contact had given him a briefing on what type of people could be found at the Steel Strand, so it was merely a matter of coming in with a public cover that would be at home in such a place.

“So, you have knowledge of what you want, and the will to achieve it. That is good, very good.” Masahiko smiled. “As you grow in strength and insight you will learn how to control your destiny, and find not just a lord, but one who is worthy of your service.”

Eisaku started to reply, and then stopped as Masahiko suddenly looked up away from him. There was an abbreviated shout from the rooftops, and then a loud crashing noise from behind. The Scorpion spun around in time to see two figures struggling in a pile of scattered wooden trays. As he watched the two disengaged and rolled to their feet. One was a powerfully-built man in a dark kimono. He stood with his katana in hand and glared murderously at the other figure, a man in close-fitting black garments and a black-smudged face, armed with a short, straight sword.

As Eisaku watched the two men spring at each other, swords flashing, he realized that he was not really who Paneki had sent to spy on the Spider–he was merely a stalking horse for Paneki’s real agent. Who was now fighting for his life. He swung back to Masahiko, executing a perfect iai draw as he did so. The blade swung smoothly through its arc until it collided with Masahiko’s blade. She gave him a cool look. “I don’t think so,” she said.

The two samurai broke apart and then came at each other again. Masahiko lashed out with a cut that cut intended to take her opponent’s arm off, but it was too short by a handspan and just grazed him. Eisaku ignored the pain of the wound on his shoulder and bore in for a slash across Masahiko’s midsection. The woman staggered back but did not, as he expected, drop to the pavement. Instead she steadied herself against a wall and pressed her left hand against the slash, panting shallowly and glaring at Eisaku as she did so. The Scorpion looked from her to his blade and realized with dawning horror that he had seen human blood on his katana many times, and there was something different dripping off of it now.

“My lord has given me access to great power,” Masahiko said. Her breathing had returned almost to normal, and her bleeding has stopped. “What has your lord given you?”

His lord had given him a task, Eisaku thought. And even though it was not going to be fulfilled in quite the way Paneki had planned, he was going to fulfill it.

“AIAAAAA!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs and charged. Masahiko stared at him wide-eyed for a heartbeat and then she was back-pedaling, trying to gain room while she brought up her sword in a defensive position. Blessed Fu Leng, she thought to herself, I’ve found the Scorpion version of Hirata. The idea didn’t appeal to her at all.

Eisaku attacked furiously, trying again and again to slash at the point he had cut her before. Masahiko gained her ground and turned the attacks away, matching easily the pattern that Eisaku had set. And then Eisaku abruptly changed the angle of his strike, going higher, and Masahiko’s head neatly and cleanly separated itself from her neck. The Scorpion jumped back to escape the spray of black blood as her body toppled over.

Eisaku paused a moment to make sure she wasn’t going to get back up, and then he turned around and sprinted to where the other combatants were, hoping that the other Scorpion could still be saved. He found them laying together in a heap: the Spider had impaled the Scorpion on his blade, and the Scorpion had apparently pushed himself down its length to tear out the Spider’s throat with the sheared-off remains of his ninja-to.

Eisaku leaned wearily against the wall, saying a prayer for his clanmate’s soul. Slowly he cleaned and sheathed his katana, wincing at his renewed awareness of the pain in his shoulder. Then he walked over to the nearest door and kicked it in, the wood frame splintering with little resistance. If the bodies of the Spiders were found by the authorities then everyone would know that they were Tainted–including the Spider. If the Scorpion were to do something about them they had to be kept out in the open, which meant hiding the truth from the rest of the Empire. Eisaku went over the logic in his head again and again before he could steel himself to drag the bodies into the shop. When he was finished, he took a small flask from the belt of the unknown Scorpion and dribbled its contents on the three bodies and the floor and walls of the shop. Finally Eisaku set fire to the Scorpion’s body, apologizing silently to the corpse for the improvised nature of his pyre.

As the flames ran from body to body and then up the walls Eisaku turned and ran out of the shop. There was no crime feared more than arson, so he needed to hurry and be somewhere else. He had information Paneki needed, and he would let nothing stop him from delivering it.