shrine maiden. Abruptly, I missed Tatsumi; though he never said much, his quiet presence could always be felt. I wondered where he was now, what he was doing. I hoped I would see him again, that he would meet us in the palace like he promised. I also hoped I wouldn’t put a foot in my mouth at the imperial court and expose us all.
“There,” Reika said, and rose, brushing off her knees. “I think you’re as ready as you’ll ever be.” Stepping back, she crossed her arms and regarded me with a critical eye, before nodding once. “Good enough. You look like an onmyoji, on the surface at least. Now, it’s almost sundown, and I must prepare myself, as well. Why don’t you go and see if the ronin has made it back yet? And please, do not get dirty before we even reach the palace.”
Trying not to step on the bottom of my robes, I walked outside.
Okame was leaning against the railing when I stepped onto the veranda, and his brows shot up as he saw me. “Sugoi,” he exclaimed quietly, pushing himself off the post. “Yumeko-chan, you look...different. I didn’t even recognize you.”
I grinned at him. “You as well, Okame.” The ronin had shaved, his goatee trim and neat instead of bristling over his chin, and his reddish-brown hair pulled behind him in a tight ponytail. His white hakama and brown haori jacket weren’t fancy, but they were new and clean and well fitted. He didn’t exactly look like a noble, but he didn’t appear to be an aimlessly wandering ronin, either. “You look almost respectable.”
“Bite your tongue,” he retorted, and looked away, a tinge creeping up his neck. “I can’t believe I have to parade around the emperor’s palace pretending to be a samurai with a bunch of stuck-up aristocrats.”
I cocked my head. “Why do you hate the samurai so much, Okame-san?” I asked. “Tatsumi said that ronin were samurai at one point, before they lost their master. What happened to yours?”
He gave me a crooked smile. “That is a long story for another day, Yumeko-chan. Let’s just say there was a time where I fully believed in honor and duty and the code of Bushido. But that was years ago, when I was young, stupid and eager to prove myself.”
“What happened?”
“I got slapped with the cruel hand of reality,” the ronin said, smirking. “And I realized that the revered code of Bushido is nonsense. There is no honor in the world, especially among samurai. It just took my becoming a ronin to realize it.”
I blinked at the underlying bitterness in his voice, wondering what had turned him into the jaded ronin he was now. “You’ll have to tell me the story one day.”
“I will. But right now, we have bigger concerns. Like making it through the emperor’s party without being discovered as charlatans. Just remember,” he went on, gently tapping my sleeve, dangling over the veranda, with a finger, “I’m no more a yojimbo than you are an onmyoji. And pretending to be either is a death sentence should anyone find out.”
“I know,” I said. Reika had explained it, in great detail, this morning. As soon as Okame left, she had dragged me into a room, slammed the door and proceeded to lecture me about being so reckless with my lies. I was lying to Daisuke about being an onmyoji, I was lying to Okame about being a peasant, and I was lying to the Kage demonslayer about being a normal human girl. I had gotten lucky so far, she’d told me, glowering like a small furious cat. Especially when traveling with the infamous Kage demonslayer.
And tonight, she went on, we would be inside the walls of the Imperial Palace, surrounded by nobles, samurai, aristocrats and the emperor himself. Where, if it were discovered we weren’t who we claimed to be, it would mean execution for us all. This wasn’t one of my kitsune games, Reika had warned. This was quite literally life or death. So I had better start taking it seriously.
I chewed my lip. She was right. I was dragging a lot of people into this crazy, made-up story, and the lies kept stacking on top of each other. Sooner or later, that tower was going to collapse. “Are you sure you want to come with us, Okame-san?” I asked, glancing up at the ronin. “You don’t owe me anything, you know. You’re free to leave if you want to.”
“Are you kidding?” The