Samurai Son by M. H. Bonham Read Free Book Online

flying again.   The Tengu could no doubt bring him to those places and more.   He was certain of it.   After all, couldn’t the winds travel everywhere?
    With that thought, he lay awake on his pallet for some time before finally drifting back to sleep.

Chapter Eleven
     
    The sea was as gray and colorless as the sky when Kasumi and Jiro set sail on the junk toward Tsuitori-jima the next day.   Kasumi stared out at the receding shoreline; she felt queasy over the ship’s roll and also over her mission to Takeshi Ikumi.   She replayed the demon summoning within her mind, making certain that she had not imagined any of it.   Yet she could not deny the oni that Nanashi had summoned.   The oni wanted Nanashi to attack the Neko so the demon gate would be unguarded.
    For thousands of years—before even written history—the Neko had guarded the demon gate.   Kuan Yin and Maneki Neko had charged the Neko with keeping the demons from this world.   The Neko had been mostly successful in keeping the oni out.   The Guardian chosen to watch the Kimon had passed down her duty from mother to daughter throughout the millennia.   The Guardian herself was immortal—except that demons could kill her.   There had been five Guardians so far; four had died in battle against oni.
    The current Guardian was old, so old that her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren had died of old age many years ago.   That was old, Kasumi reckoned, since Neko were already long lived.   The Guardian had many scars from battle with oni.
    Nanashi was a fool to think that he could control one demon, let alone a whole underworld full of them.   Oni were tricky, evil creatures.   Kasumi doubted that the oni Nanashi had summoned would do the daimyo’s bidding.   She guessed that it would serve Nanashi only as long as it served the demon.   Then, when it and its fellow oni were in this world, they would overwhelm Nanashi.   They would eat him or perhaps even steal his form.   Such was the way of the demons.
    The junk’s captain and his sailors were friendly enough to both her and Jiro.   Like most sailors, they were strong men with a love of sake and little respect for samurai.   These were men whose lives were challenged by sea serpents, dragons, and wind kami; a mere mortal was nothing to them.   So when Jiro insisted that they show him the respect due a samurai, the men just laughed and went about their business.   When he bared the blades of his samurai swords, the men looked unimpressed, and the captain threatened to throw him off the ship when out at sea.   Kasumi offered to help them.
    “You’re looking a little green,” Jiro said as he joined her at the railing.   Kasumi met his mocking gaze and sardonic smile with bared teeth.   He sported a samurai topknot and carried both the katana and wakizashi in his belt.   His kamishimo was garish, with bright red silk and yellow dragons across it.   He was gangly at seventeen but had learned a samurai swagger well.   Kasumi barely knew him even though he was her half brother.   He usually did not pay much attention to her, especially because Keiko was Naotaka’s second wife.
    She smiled thin lipped at him.   “I haven’t been on many sea voyages,” she replied.   Neither had Jiro, she reminded herself.
    “I see,” he said.   “Too bad you have to learn women’s work; otherwise, you’d get used to the ship hunting dragons.”
    A growl rose in her throat, but she suppressed it.   Arguing with a fool is futile, she reminded herself.   She looked down at her own clothing, not too dissimilar from a male samurai’s—kamishimo, hakama, and tabi.   She looked no more like a painted court lady than he did.   Perhaps less so, she thought in wry amusement.   She had not chosen the garish colors he had.
    Jiro laughed, bringing her out of her reverie.   His laugh was harsh, and she suspected that he had made a joke at her expense.   Still, she smiled sweetly and