Only a Shadow Read Free Page A

well.
    â€œLet me help you with that, at least. I didn’t intend to insult your grandfather—”
    â€œI said go.”
    The walk home took forever, and with every step Tada tried to sort out where he’d gone wrong. Nothing was permanent. Even the young died suddenly, grabbed by a rogue wave, maybe, or falling from a roof or a tree. Earthquakes. Fire. Sometimes they died for no reason at all. How much more so the old? Tada had seen that little pinhole between the pearly inlays of Old Jujiro's table. There was a crossbow behind it, its needle-thin darts tipped with poison. Tada was sure of it. And why would the old man have it there if not for the fact that life was fleeting? How many enemies had he made over the years? Someday one of them might come calling. Someday a young upstart, maybe one like Tada himself, might seek to make his name by killing the famous Iga Jujiro. The old man was right to put the table between him and his enemies. He was right to be afraid.
    And if the old man had that much sense, why couldn’t Chieko? Tada couldn’t see how he’d gone so far astray, simply by suggesting that old people would eventually die.
    Unless . . . yes, that was it. She’d seen weakness in her grandfather. She must have. She’d glimpsed some sign of it, and now she was afraid for him and his frailty. Then for Tada to be summoned for this theft—well, that sealed it. Chieko knew her grandfather was losing his strength and she wanted to deny it. And now her soon-to-be betrothed had confirmed it in her mind.
    As he trudged up the last hill before home he thought, what an awful bitch life can be. I can’t marry her unless I do this thing, and I can’t do it without giving life to these shades of fears that plague her. There must be a clearer road for me to take, he thought, if only I could see it.

3.
    By noon Tada’s back was sunburned and his fingers were raw and bleeding. He could see none of the wounds, for they were no bigger than the tiny pinpricks dotting the sharp rocks he’d been collecting all morning. They’d caused more surprise than pain. Ordinarily his hands would have been more than hardy enough to handle sharp rocks. They were callused to the point that the pads of his fingers were as tough as boiled leather. But the rocks he’d been collecting all morning lay where the surf lapped up against the jagged black rock of the shore, and the work had left his hands doused in saltwater for hours. Now his calluses were as soft as prune skins.
    So his fingers bled. His shoulders felt like hot, dry roof tiles, and neither his sweat nor the surf’s lazy spray could soothe them. But Tada voiced no complaint. It would not do for Old Jujiro's man to report that he was shiftless.
    Gyomin was his name. He was of an age with Old Jujiro, his wrinkled skin as brown as a walnut shell. Tada looked up to see him sitting atop a big rock peaked like a
kabuto
, his brown toes clinging like claws to the rough stone, his toenails large, long, and yellowed. His white hair seemed to have migrated from his pate to his chin, where a long snowy beard flowed in the breeze. His back was hunched in just the position he’d take if he were sitting on the bench in a rowboat fixing bait to a tiny hook. Behind him stood the high promontory where Tada could see Lord Hirata’s castle overlooking the bay. The castle was far enough away that Tada would be tired if he ran there along the beach, and Tada did not tire easily.
    The fortress was a sight to behold. Built to watch over shipping lanes, Toba castle boasted not only the muskets of the southern barbarians but even their cannon. It perched atop a sheer face of black rock draped with emerald kudzu, and its eastern wall formed a single face with the sea cliff. The wall was black, two stories tall, the central donjon twice that high, but from the east face it was a six- or seven-story plunge to the crashing waves. The