Chapter One: Turning Leaves

CHAPTER ONE Turning Leaves

Hiding in a ginkgo tree in the Imperial Palace’s gardens, Toshiko Kawakami did wonder if she might be out of her depth. She’d been looking forward to this mission, excited to put herself to the test, spying on Emperor Asayo Soramoto and her guests as they celebrated the Turning Leaf Festival.

It had been a difficult evening already, though, involving a hard climb over the walls into the Imperial Palace’s grounds, and then a desperate dash past the cameras and alarm systems, which Mei had helpfully disabled. Encountering the Palace’s guard dogs had certainly been alarming, too, although Jun had prepared her well, with a giant backpack of chicken gyoza that had done a surprisingly good job of distracting them. She’d faced a breathless scramble over the inner garden wall after that, before a last, hand-over-hand climb through hanging lanterns and leaves to make it all the way up here, to where she was perched high in the tree canopy.

She’d been so sure she was ready for tonight. After all, she’d recently turned seventeen, which surely counted as practically adult. Now, though, her palms and fingertips were raw, and she could feel herself shaking, only just maintaining her grip on the branch beneath her. She also couldn’t rid herself of the thought that her Auntie Reiko most certainly wouldn’t have been happy with any of this.

Taking a moment to catch her breath as she watched the stars and the Three Sister Moons shine out from the sky’s deep evening blue, Toshiko found that she could fully picture Auntie Reiko now, in her mind’s eye – Auntie Reiko with her eyebrows rising higher and higher up her lined forehead. You think this is a good way to behave? she might have said, accompanying the words with a slow, disappointed shake of the head. Look at this girl. She thinks she can just go off and do whatever she likes. No worry for safety. No cares for the consequences of breaking the law…

Reiko, however, was gone. Toshiko let the mental picture dissipate into the dusk and sighed, prompting a ‘What’s up, Tosh?’ from Mei, in her earpiece – Mei, her sister in every way but blood, and who, at twenty-one years old, was annoyingly unflappable. Mei always acted like she’d seen it all before and, irritatingly enough, more often than not it seemed she actually had.

Mei, unlike Auntie Reiko, was a family member who was, emphatically, still here. She was even perhaps too here sometimes, Toshiko reflected now, given that her older sister had predictably used the earpiece to provide a constant and generally critical commentary on all of her actions throughout this mission so far. Of course, though, Mei wasn’t actually physically anywhere nearby. Always hostile to the idea of leaving the comfort of her tech lab and its vast stockpile of snacks, she never risked her own skin, or did anything strenuous enough to chip her long acrylic nails.

‘What can you see?’ she piped up again in Toshiko’s ear, interrupting these mutinous thoughts. ‘You’ve made it into the gardens properly by now, right? Also, we need to discuss those dogs. I couldn’t tell from all the barking – were they cute scary or just scary scary?’

Judging the question sufficiently ridiculous to ignore, Toshiko took an extra moment to collect her thoughts.

‘Come in, Tosh? You could start speaking to me any time… now? Are you okay?’

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Toshiko hissed, scowling into the froth of gold-tinged leaves around her. ‘This may come as a surprise to you, but those of us who do things physically instead of virtually sometimes need a moment to breathe.’

She heard a pop on the other end of the line – the sound of Mei bursting her bubble gum. The sharp clarity of the noise was both a reminder of how little Mei cared about the physical versus virtual snipe, and of just how good the tech she built really was. Mei had earned her place at home with the snacks. Toshiko found herself rolling her eyes, only to have a passing squirrel flash her what was surely a look of reproach.

‘You’re getting flustered,’ Mei told her. ‘Come on, you’re doing great so far. How about you just tell me what can you see?’

Like most of her citizens, Emperor Asayo Soramoto made the most of summer’s lingering heat to celebrate the Turning Leaf Festival – Rainshadow City’s official first night of autumn, when the leaves were just beginning to change their colours – with a lavish outdoor banquet. As Toshiko shimmied forwards along her branch to peer through the leaves, she was rewarded with her first clear view of the banquet table below, not twenty feet in front of her, set out beneath the avenue of trees. She also got her first glimpse of the Emperor herself.

It was almost a surprise to discover that Emperor Asayo looked, in person, almost exactly as she did in the daily telecasts. Sitting towards the centre of the long, laden table, she was dressed to perfection as usual in a sharply tailored trouser suit, its material the burnt-orange colour of an autumn forest.

Toshiko had just begun to shift further along her branch, hoping to see who the Emperor was talking to across the table, when her foot caught on an unexpected knot in the wood and then slipped against the tree’s ridged bark.

She managed to recover her balance, but the movement set the many paper lanterns that were suspended from the tree swinging gently back and forth, the whole cluster of them moving like a cloud of outsize fireflies. Toshiko held her breath, certain she must have revealed her presence to the whole gathering.

Everyone sitting at the table below, though, still seemed too intent on each other and on the spread of festival food before them to even think of looking up into the branches. The stewards serving them also appeared far too focused on carrying out their duties to the Emperor’s satisfaction to expect anything more than a gentle breeze at work in the treetops above – thank the Gods. Toshiko let her breath out, slowly, feeling her heartbeat settle.

The sound of Mei popping her gum came crisp and clear again over the earpiece. ‘Well?’ she asked Toshiko.

Toshiko looked back down through the ginkgo leaves, and considered how she might describe the scene to Mei. There were perhaps as many as fifty people seated at the long table below, being waited on by a mixture of stewards in Imperial livery and simple Service-bots on wheels. The table itself was laid out with a magnificent spread of different types of food, and set with more gleaming cups, plates and glasses than Toshiko would have known what to do with.

Many of Emperor Asayo’s guests seemed to be high-ranking ministers or advisors: the kind of people responsible for delivering her agenda in running day-to-day life in this island city state of Rainshadow City, as well as for managing the city’s relationship with the other islands that made up its wider Empire of the Rainshadow Archipelago. These were all people in nondescript middle age, looking elegantly professional in well-cut suits and dresses, which were all of subtly rich shades of dark blue, grey and black. Scattered amidst these guests were others dressed in the colourful reds, oranges and golds that were more typical of the Turning Leaf Festival. Toshiko guessed these might be members of the Emperor’s extended family.

With a start, then, she registered that the Emperor’s young son was here, sitting next to his mother on her left-hand side. Like his mother, the Crown Prince, a boy of ten, looked just as he did in the telecasts. He wasn’t the only child at this banquet, either. There were a couple of small girls sitting a few seats further down from him, who Toshiko thought might be his cousins, and a small cluster of even younger children at the table’s far end.

Somehow, Toshiko hadn’t expected any children to be here tonight at all, though she realized now how foolish that had been of her. While there were big political dinners and events at the Palace almost every evening of the week, the Turning Leaf Festival was one of the city’s most family-focused celebrations. It was sometimes all too easy to forget, given the enormous power that Emperor Asayo Soramoto held in her position as autocrat of the whole Rainshadow Archipelago, that she was also in fact a real human being, with a family of her own.

Family festival or not, Toshiko knew there would surely still be a high degree of political manoeuvring taking place between the adults at the table – something that was obviously contributing to rising levels of restlessness and boredom amidst the gathering’s youngest members. If she were going to be spotted tonight, she realized, it would most likely be by one of them.

‘So, did you fall out of the tree, or…?’ Mei’s words were accompanied by an impatient tapping sound, and Toshiko could just picture her drumming her lime-green nails on the shiny surface of her desk.

‘As if you’d care.’

‘Of course I care. I have a vested interest in this mission going well. Now, stay focused. Is the target there?’

Tearing her eyes away from all the beautiful clothes, raden-worked rice bowls, lacquered chopsticks and platters of sushi, tempura, golden sweet potato tartlets and huge grilled matsutake mushrooms, Toshiko made herself remember the real reason she’d come here tonight, and began studying the guests at the table with more intention. To begin with, she thought that maybe he wasn’t here and Jun’s information had been faulty. Then, finally, she clocked him: Ken Saito of the Lucky Crows, sitting next to the Crown Prince, just one place away from the Emperor herself on her left-hand side.

The Lucky Crows were the biggest, most formidable, and officially the only organized crime syndicate on the island, controlling the whole of Rainshadow City’s underground economy. Mei was certain, too, that they also pulled the strings of all sorts of elements within the island city state’s ruling elite. Back when the Kawakamis had still lived in the Keeper’s Crescent – the fenced-off arc of shanty towns that ran along the southern section of the island’s coast, and a place that none of the city’s legal citizens liked to think about – Ken Saito had served as the gang’s head of operations there. Known as ‘the Captain’, he’d managed the exploitation of the Crescent’s residents as cheap labour for Rainshadow City proper. He’d also been responsible for the collection of the ‘taxes’ that the Lucky Crows demanded from everyone who lived within the Crescent’s confines, as well as for the gang’s brisk trade in kakogan dust.

At first, Toshiko was amazed she hadn’t recognized Saito immediately. Then again, it had been a full five years now since Auntie Reiko had done the unthinkable and defied him, refusing to let him take her adopted children into the city for a job in the granitarium mines so dangerous there would have been a good chance of them not coming back. It had been five years too, of course, since the night following that act of defiance, when Reiko had looked out of their little house’s front door and announced that Saito was approaching.

Toshiko and Mei had huddled with Jun, the third Kawakami sibling and their adoptive brother, under the large wooden table that had formed the centrepiece of their home – the same table at which the three of them had eaten all their meals together, and at which Reiko had taught them their lessons. Concealed by its overlarge tablecloth, they had clung together in the gloom as a cut-short scream from Reiko had torn through the very air around them. As Mei had started to sob, Toshiko had slipped her siblings’ protective grip to peek out from their hiding place. First, she’d seen Ken Saito, and had noticed immediately how completely out of place he’d seemed in their small but cosy main room. Then, she’d registered that he was wiping a dagger on a pocket-handkerchief and looking down at the floor – at Reiko’s body, lying twisted at his feet.

Jun had it on good authority that Saito had since risen to become a General in the gang, and was now one of the closest advisors to the Sensei – the Lucky Crows’ leader, who was never seen in public but was often whispered about in the city’s shadier corners. To be at the Sensei’s right hand was a high position indeed, and Saito’s rise had been remarkably swift. As Jun said, you had to wonder what he’d done to get so far so fast – and whether it had left him with nightmares.

Toshiko took a moment now to simply watch Saito, taking in all the details of this man who had killed the closest person to a parent she’d ever known, studying him in a way she hadn’t been able to back in the half-light and horror of the last time she’d seen him.

Her first thought was that he was younger than she’d expected – still in his late twenties, maybe. With a confusing jolt, she realized that this surely meant he couldn’t have been much older than Mei and Jun were now when he’d killed Auntie Reiko. It was a jarring idea to consider, since he always seemed so adult in her memories. There were other small differences, too, between Saito as he sat at the banquet table tonight and the image of him that had haunted her thoughts so relentlessly over these past five years. When he’d worked as the Captain, Saito had always kept his hair shorn short, in a dark fuzz over his scalp. He wore it longer now, in a typical business cut. He’d acquired a new scar – a vicious little apostrophe just above his left cheekbone – and his jawline seemed sharper, his shoulders even broader than Toshiko remembered, too. His cold grey eyes, though, were just the same as they always were in her nightmares.

She continued to observe him closely, watching those same hands that had killed Reiko as they reached now through the general dance of movement continuously unfolding over the table’s surface – an improvised ballet of chopsticks, bracelets, rings, cups, dumplings, sashimi and tempura – to settle on a decanter of whiskey.

As Saito poured himself a drink, she noticed the hint of Lucky Crows sleeve tattoos just visible at the tops of his shirt cuffs, along with the Comms-Disc on his left wrist. These wrist-strapped devices were Lucky Crows tech, worn by all of the gang’s higher-ranking members. While preparing for this mission, Mei had discovered that the Crows could use them to communicate with each other via a closed network which covered most of Rainshadow island.

Saito’s Comms-Disc would have looked like a fairly typical model for the gang, had it not been studded with bright gemstones. Clearly, he had a taste for the ostentatious. His fingers, too, were loaded with gleaming, heavy-looking rings, and he wore a large, luminescent pearl on a gold chain around his neck. The pearl gleamed against the black T-shirt he’d paired with his suit jacket like a miniature moon – a luminous, unearthly medallion.

‘I’ve found him. He’s here,’ was all Toshiko said to Mei.

‘You’re absolutely sure it’s him?’ Mei was still trying to put on a bored voice, but Toshiko knew her well enough to detect a new agitation in her tone.

‘It’s Saito. I’m certain.’

There was nothing else from Mei for a moment, but Toshiko could sense the ticking clockwork of her thoughts. ‘How friendly does he seem with Emperor Asayo?’ Mei asked eventually.

‘Well, it’s a cosy-enough gathering,’ Toshiko replied, a little unsure of what Mei was getting at now in asking this. ‘Wait, she’s talking to him now. And he’s smiling, kind of. Looks a bit like a shark.’

‘Is her kid there?’ Mei asked.

‘You mean the Crown Prince?’

‘No, I meant an obscure nephew on the Emperor’s mother’s side.’ Mei’s voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘Yes, clearly the Crown Prince.’

‘He’s here,’ Toshiko told her, biting back a retort.

‘And where is he sitting, in relation to Saito?’

‘Right next to him, actually.’

‘Gods,’ Mei replied, her voice suddenly tight. ‘You know, it’s enough to make anyone sick, the extent to which she’s so obviously in Saito’s pocket, and in the Lucky Crows’ pocket by implication. Inviting him to a Turning Leaf dinner with her family, and seating him next to her only child? Could she honour him any more highly?’

Toshiko never quite knew how to reply when Mei talked like this about the Emperor and the politics of Rainshadow City’s ruling powers.

‘Right,’ Mei was continuing, though, sounding suddenly businesslike. ‘I think we should move on to the next phase. It’s time to steal the ring.’

‘What? Now? Weren’t we going to wait to do that?’

‘No time like the present.’

‘But this is my first time properly on my own on a mission,’ Toshiko hissed, getting louder now, forgetting to care whether those below could hear her. ‘You promised this was just recon.’

‘We hadn’t found him yet, when I said that. I didn’t know how I would feel.’

‘You’re serious? You really want me to do this?’

‘Unless you want to be all scared about it. Is he actually wearing the ring?’

‘I’m not scared,’ Toshiko huffed. ‘You’re the one who never leaves the apartment.’

‘Stay focused. Is he wearing the ring?’

Still grumbling at Mei in her head, Toshiko went back to watching Ken Saito’s hands. There it was – a flash of gold on the little finger of his left hand. It was distinctive in being the simplest and plainest ring of all of those he was wearing tonight – the only one, in fact, that didn’t look as if it had been designed to double as a weapon.

‘Yes, he’s wearing it,’ she told Mei.

‘Perfect.’

Toshiko could hear in her sister’s voice just how much she wanted that ring. According to Jun’s investigations, this apparently simple piece of jewellery contained a chip that held access codes to almost every closed network in Rainshadow City, as well as to the Lucky Crows’ private accounts, including bank accounts. There was no copy, and Saito never let it leave his person. For a hacker like Mei, that ring was the key to whole new realms of possibility, reaching even beyond the next stage in their current scheme of skimming credits from the gang’s reserves. After everything they’d suffered at the Lucky Crows’ hands, the Kawakamis were only too happy to steal as much as they needed from the gang in order to fund the life they’d managed to grasp for themselves beyond the Keeper’s Crescent in the years following Reiko’s death.

‘Any advice on how I get hold of it?’ Toshiko asked Mei. ‘It seems pretty firmly on his finger.’

‘I got you in there,’ Mei replied, and Toshiko could just visualize her shrugging as the sound of her nails tapping against the desk came over the earpiece again. ‘Didn’t you decide fieldwork was going to be your area of expertise?’

‘Fine,’ Toshiko sighed. ‘But you’re cooking me dinner for the rest of the week.’

‘Jun will cook dinner. You know he loves cooking dinner.’

‘You’re on washing-up duty, then.’

‘Just get on with it,’ Mei said.

Sisters. Were they more trouble than they were worth? Rolling her eyes, Toshiko wriggled back through the densely clustered leaves, towards the ginkgo tree’s trunk, then began to climb down. She moved noiselessly, naturally, able to shift her weight and centre of balance with a dancer’s grace, barely having to think at all about where she put her feet.

She took just a moment to check that everyone at the table was still fully immersed in their various conversations before dropping, catlike, onto the paving below without so much as rustling a leaf. A grin spread over her face in spite of her nerves. Mei might have all the talent for computing, but Toshiko could climb like it was a skill that had been gifted to her by the Gods.

‘And they don’t teach that at high school,’ she whispered, triumphant, at exactly the same moment that the Crown Prince looked up from his place at the table and caught her eye.

‘Oh shiitake mushrooms,’ she hissed.

‘What is it? What have you done?’ said Mei.

‘It’s fine, just give me a minute.’

Toshiko darted behind the tree’s trunk, hoping the midnight blue of her jacket and trousers would help her blend into the night. And yet the child was obviously not that stupid or easily distracted, because when she looked out from behind the tree again a moment later, he was still staring.

This was fine, Toshiko told herself. She would just have to give up on the idea of getting Mei to do the washing-up for the week. She would back away, slowly, and retreat, hoping the dogs would remember her as the blessed giver of gyoza and so refrain from attacking her as she climbed back over the wall. Yes, she would have to face Jun’s concern and Mei’s superior attitude for a few days, and yes, she might have slightly confirmed her older siblings’ views of her as young and inexperienced, but she would also be home, safe and alive. They could find another way of locating Ken Saito and steal the ring when they’d actually had time to formulate a proper plan for getting it off his finger. All would be well.

She turned, crept to hide behind the delicate fronds of a maple tree, then dropped behind a low, ornamental wall, crawling forward on the ground in its shelter, forearm over forearm.

She didn’t get very far before a pair of small blue slippers, embroidered with silver cats, stepped into view in front of her. She looked up to see the Crown Prince.

‘Who are you?’ the boy asked Toshiko. ‘What are you doing here?’

He hadn’t bothered to modulate the volume of his voice at all, and Toshiko found herself making hushing movements at him with her hands.

He was still very much a child – she might yet be able to get away with this, so long as she didn’t scare him, or reveal any sign that she wasn’t simply a regular, law-abiding citizen. As she considered how best to answer, she shifted her arm to hide the small tattoo that danced across her wrist, of three terns in flight over the watery curves of a river. There was no reason the Crown Prince would recognize it, but all the same – all three Kawakamis had one, and it didn’t hurt to be cautious.

‘Tosh?’ Mei’s voice piped up in her ear. ‘Who’s that? Who are you talking to?’

‘Not now,’ she hissed at Mei.

‘What?’ said the Crown Prince.

‘What?’ said Mei.

‘Be quiet, both of you,’ Toshiko snapped, wishing Mei had installed an off-switch in the earpiece.

‘You weren’t invited, were you?’ said the Crown Prince. ‘My mother didn’t invite you.’

‘Wow, is the Emperor really your mother?’ Toshiko asked, playing for time, frantically trying to think of the best way out of this.

The boy only frowned at her. ‘Yes. And I can tell she didn’t invite you. I bet she doesn’t like you.’

Pushing herself up to her elbows now, so as to face him more properly while still remaining hidden from the banquet table, Toshiko decided there could be worse ideas than running with his interpretation of her as a spurned party guest.

‘Is it a fun party?’ she asked, trying to sound as plaintive as possible.

The Crown Prince kicked one of his slippers against the paving of the path. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Just grown-ups talking about boring things.’

Toshiko nodded sympathetically. ‘Sounds rough. What kinds of boring things?’

‘Like…’ The boy looked up to the starred sky, as if that might provide some explanation for the adults’ behaviour, then sighed heavily. ‘You know. Like taxes and stuff.’

‘I see,’ Toshiko said. ‘And what kinds of things do you prefer to talk about?’

‘I don’t know,’ the boy replied. ‘I like stories, I suppose. Good ones, with lots of adventures and fighting. And I like games.’

‘I know a game you could play with me,’ Toshiko told him then.

‘Oh?’ said the boy, sceptical but interested.

‘Yeah, it’s a really fun game,’ she said. ‘You see that guy over there?’ She shifted herself on the ground to point at Saito.

‘My uncle?’ asked the boy, pointing over to the table too, but at a completely different man.

‘No,’ Toshiko tried again. ‘The younger one, who you were sitting next to. With the scar and the giant pearl around his neck.’

‘Ohhhh, him,’ said the boy. ‘Mr Winter. I don’t like Mr Winter.’

Mr Winter. Toshiko mentally filed away the alias. ‘Why not?’

The Crown Prince didn’t seem to want to reply to that, and only scuffed his slipper into the path again.

‘Well, this is a game to play a trick on Mr Winter,’ Toshiko continued.

‘Okay.’ He was listening.

‘You have to try and get Mr Winter to give you his ring.’

‘His ring?’

‘Yes. That small gold one, there. You see? On his little finger.’

‘Oh,’ the Crown Prince said. ‘You mean the one with the dragon on it?’

‘I don’t know, I can’t see that from here.’

‘Well, it does have a dragon on it.’

‘That’s really good knowledge,’ Toshiko said, flattering the boy. ‘I bet you’re going to be great at this game.’

‘How do I get him to give it to me though?’ the Crown Prince asked.

‘That’s the challenge,’ said Toshiko. ‘Tell him you want to play with it. Or that you want to see the dragon.’

‘What happens if I do get the ring?’

‘You’d win this round,’ Toshiko said. ‘Then you’d have to set me a challenge for the next round. The only thing to be careful of is that in order to win, you have to manage to get the ring all the way back here, to where I am, without Mr Winter trying to take it back.’

The boy frowned for a moment, his head on one side, thinking about it. Then – ‘Okay,’ he said, and trotted back towards the guests.

‘What are you doing?’ Mei demanded in Toshiko’s ear.

‘Improvising,’ she hissed back.

Still sheltering behind the low wall, Toshiko watched the events at the table. For a while, things seemed to proceed mostly as before, except that the meal was obviously now drawing to a close. Soon, it wasn’t only the Crown Prince who had gotten down from the table and was roving the gardens; several of the other young children began doing this too, and Toshiko found herself trying not to breathe, almost, in her efforts to blend in with the night.

She watched as the Crown Prince pottered over to two small girls who had gone to sit beside an ornamental pond, and then as the three of them started throwing pebbles into the water. After this had continued for several minutes, Toshiko began to wonder if the boy might have forgotten all about the ring. The children seemed to be trying to see whose throw could generate the biggest splash, and as Toshiko found herself growing increasingly impatient, a startled frog sprang from the water, setting all three children off in shrieking and recoiling, giggling loudly.

The noise caught the Emperor’s attention. She glanced up from the conversation she’d been deep in with Ken Saito, who had shifted into the Crown Prince’s empty seat, right next to her.

‘What’s going on over there?’ the Emperor called, a note of sternness in her tone.

‘It was a frog!’ the smallest girl spluttered.

‘Please do excuse the children, Mr Winter,’ the Emperor said, turning to Saito, her voice catching a little knowingly on the false name. ‘They are unaccustomed to the formality of occasions such as these. They were too young to be present for the Turning Leaf celebrations last year, you see.’

‘It is no trouble, of course, Majesty,’ Saito replied. His voice had the timbre of rust, of gravel, of the hardest rock found in the depths of the mountains – and he spoke stiffly, seeming unaccustomed to contorting his words into such pleasantries.

‘Oof,’ said Mei in Toshiko’s ear. ‘Someone sounds grisly.’

Toshiko sighed. Of course the mic attached to her earpiece was somehow so good that Mei could pick up the nuances of Saito’s voice from twenty feet away. If Mei had been born with a legitimate Rainshadow City ID card, she’d surely have been able to get any job she wanted at any tech company on the island.

‘Mr Winter,’ piped up the Emperor’s son then, as he stood up from where he’d been sitting with the girls and began to trot back over towards the table. ‘Do you like games?’

Oh no. Toshiko closed her eyes and sent out a prayer to any God who might be nearby that the boy wouldn’t reveal her.

‘It depends on the game,’ replied Ken Saito, not sounding very playful at all.

‘Can I see the dragon, Mr Winter?’ the boy tried again. ‘The dragon on your ring?’

‘On my ring?’ said Saito, as a hush began to fall over the banquet table.

‘I’m so interested in dragons, you see. I’d love to see the dragon on your ring more clearly.’

Saito didn’t move. No one else spoke. The boy smiled winningly and held out his hand.

‘Well?’ said the Emperor. With a skip of her heartbeat, Toshiko saw that the Emperor was looking at Saito expectantly. ‘Surely he can see it for a moment.’

‘I would rather not part with it, if avoidable, Majesty.’

‘You would deny my son this small request? Please, we are among friends, Mr Winter, and children need these little kindnesses, as flowers require the light of the sun.’

‘I’ll be careful with it, Mr Winter, I promise.’ The boy blinked up at him.

Under the combined gaze of the Emperor and the whole table of guests now, Ken Saito slipped his golden dragon ring off his little finger and placed it in the palm of the child.

‘Yesss,’ the boy said as his small fingers closed in a fist around it. He did a little jump on the spot and then, watched by everyone at the Emperor’s Turning Leaf celebration, ran right back to where Toshiko was still hiding behind her low wall.

‘Got it!’ he cried when he reached her, and handed her the ring. It felt cold and strangely heavy in her palm. ‘I won! Now I have to set a challenge for you.’

With the eyes of the whole table surely watching now, the time for subterfuge had clearly passed. In the awful, silent moment that followed, Toshiko stood up to her full height and stepped out from behind the wall, revealing herself to the guests and to the Palace stewards serving them. She made sure to raise up her hands, open-palmed, to show she was holding no weapons – only the ring, gleaming incriminatingly from between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Toshiko watched as the Emperor’s sharp gaze took in every inch of her. Saito’s jaw tightened, too, his hands curling into fists.

‘Arrest her,’ called the Emperor at last.

Mei shrieked Toshiko’s name down the earpiece as, in a clatter of crockery, five of the stewards who had been attending the table dropped their trays and hurtled towards Toshiko like the trained Imperial Guards they clearly were. Of course, Toshiko almost groaned aloud. She should have realized that for all the show of this dinner being an intimate family affair, the Emperor would never host any kind of event without security on hand.

‘Until the next time,’ Toshiko called back to the Crown Prince as she turned and fled. ‘I owe you another round of the game.’

And then she was away, a gust of wind loose through the gardens, even before the expression of triumph on the boy’s face had had time to change to puzzlement.

She flew over potted plants, a stream, a path of stepping stones and a little bridge, acutely aware all the time of the Emperor’s Guards behind her – of the sounds of their shoes on stone, then on gravel, and then of a crash as one of them kicked over what was probably a flowerpot. She didn’t stop for breath until she reached the empty gatehouse by the side of the garden wall. Ducking around it, she paused to slip the ring into her pocket, freeing up her hands for the climb out of the gardens.

It was in this moment of distraction that Ken Saito stepped around the gatehouse’s other side to appear before her, blocking her path. Standing in front of her like this, he seemed somehow bigger than she’d expected – a harsh, hulking figure against the glow of the evening sky. She couldn’t help but note that there was nothing in his expression to suggest he recognised her. But why should he remember the face of one frightened child in the dark, she supposed? He’d probably seen hundreds of them.

Saito grinned and reached into his jacket, unsheathing a hidden blade. It wasn’t the same one he’d used to take Reiko’s life. If anything, it looked even more lethal, being longer and having a curve to it which made the whole knife flash like an unpleasant grin in the moonlight. Toshiko found herself stumbling backwards only to collide with hard brick. Saito had her trapped here, between the gatehouse and the wall.

‘Hand it over,’ he growled, sounding far more comfortable in this situation than he had at the dinner table. ‘I won’t wait.’

Toshiko could hear the Emperor’s Guards coming closer, too, making their way towards her through the gardens. She chanced a glance in their direction, trying to gauge how long she had before they reached her – and as she did so, she took her eyes off Saito. In that instant of her attention being elsewhere, he seized her by the shoulder and brought his knife up to her throat.

Toshiko gasped in shock as he ran the very edge of his blade over the fine skin covering her larynx, drawing just the whisper of a thin, beaded trail of blood. Even at this proximity, so close that she could see the full intensity of menace concentrated within his gaze, he still showed no signs of recognition. How insignificant she was to him, when he had taken so much from her.

‘Fine,’ she spat. ‘You can have it.’ She reached into her pocket for the ring and threw it at his feet.

She couldn’t really say what possessed her to do what she did next. The only possible reasons were that she hated losing, especially against Ken Saito, and that she had no time to think clearly. As he lowered his blade, lurching to stoop for the ring, she reached out and closed her fist around the oversized pearl suspended from the chain around his neck. It fit neatly into the hollow of her palm – as if it were somehow meant to be there – and felt surprisingly cool on her skin.

She pulled hard and the chain snapped, the pearl coming away in her hand. Saito’s fingers flew to his neck, but he was distracted, still not having retrieved his precious ring from where it had rolled between the stones of the path.

Toshiko took advantage of his hesitation to spring away from him, bracing her left hand and left foot against the gatehouse behind her, while her right hand and right foot flew up the garden wall opposite. Moving crabwise like this up the vertical, she hoisted herself over the wall to drop into the darkness of the wider grounds beyond.

She landed hard, but somehow remained blessedly uninjured. With the stolen pearl still clutched in her fist, she set off running again for the Palace grounds’ outer walls, sending a prayer of thanks as she went to any nearby God who might be looking out for her.

She was surely being followed, but she was fast, and when it came to running on smooth, paved paths like these, no one could match her for speed. Before long, she was nearing the walls, where she was met by the Palace’s guard dogs.

Mercifully, they didn’t attack, perhaps remembering her from the gyoza bonanza earlier. They did still bark at her enthusiastically, but it wasn’t as if the noise mattered much anymore, since everyone in the Palace likely already knew she was here. As she clambered up the wall, she decided she’d tell Mei that the dogs were overall more cute than scary.

After a quick scramble down the wall’s other side, Toshiko was finally out of the Palace’s confines and plunging into the city beyond. Rainshadow City was a place so dense with people, buildings and activity that surely no one would be able to catch her now. Especially not tonight, with the streets and squares so busy with Turning Leaf celebrations. Everywhere, hawkers were selling maple leaf cakes, children were playing with kites and paper flags, and neighbours were eating together in lantern-lit outdoor gatherings, most of which seemed filled with far more laughter and liveliness than the Emperor’s celebration had been, regardless of its grandeur. Toshiko could easily disappear among all this. Or she could for tonight at least.