Surei and I crouched just outside the wall of Ikeda Minbukyou’s manor. We had arrived just before sunset, to give us a chance to prepare while there was still some light.

We hid a cart around the side of the manor. Surei applied face powder until her skin was deathly white. Then, she took a mixture of soot and water and added it around her eyes to hollow out the sockets and obscure her brows. As a final touch, she painted her lips blood red. She put on a set of white burial robes and asked, “How does this look?”

Her resemblance to the onryou at Lake Awaumi was uncanny. My shiver of fear appeared to be answer enough for her.

Mouse and I had changed into gray and black robes and hakama. We covered our exposed skin with the same mixture of ashes and water Surei had used around her eyes. Mouse went one step further and put on the mask and scarf he had worn in Isé. Both of us were effectively invisible in the dark.

I need to remember this trick the next time I have to scout out enemy positions at night.

Mouse handed me an egg-shaped container with a fuse at one end. Then, he picked up his pack and disappeared into the gloom. He was going ahead of us to place smoke pots throughout the grounds.

Waiting in the shadows, I started having second thoughts about the plan. Would Ikeda Minbukyou react to our performance the way we expected? Was this really the best way to deal with the situation?

Before I could ponder the question further, I heard a hisssss from farther in the manor, and smelled the burning as Mouse lit the first of the hidden smoke pots.

Surei and I slipped through the woods surrounding the estate. She was completely covered in a piece of black silk making her all but undetectable but also making it difficult for her to see. I carried a shuttered lantern we had modified to produce a directional beam.

We came to the first smoke pot. The burning powder was throwing out a sullen red glow, and the acrid smoke made it difficult to breathe. I had to hold my breath to keep from coughing.

Suddenly, Surei dropped out of sight. I heard a hollow thunk sound and an ear-piercing shriek of pain.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

“Tripped and hit my head on a tree trunk,” she said savagely. She rubbed her forehead. “Get started,” she said. “They know we are here.” She took off the black silk and handed it to me.

I stepped in front of her and opened the shutter of the lantern, playing its light across her. She would be clearly visible from the main buildings of the manor. I heard a commotion coming from the direction of the house.

Surei threw her hands in the air dramatically and shouted, “Justice!”

We slowly walked the path marked by the burning smoke pots.

I whispered, “Yell like you did when you hit your head. That was good.”

Surei gave me a dirty look, but went ahead and shrieked in a high, quavering voice.

I could see some small groups of people gathering outside the main buildings of the manor, looking our way. No one seemed interested in coming over to investigate more carefully.

Surei stopped. I kept moving, waiting for her to start again, but she just stood there. “Come on,” I hissed. “We have to keep moving. We don’t want anyone to stumble over us here.”

“My robe is caught,” she hissed back. She yanked sharply on the robe, but it was held fast in a cleft of the tree.

Behind me, there came a scream and a crash. I whirled around. A man was lying on his back with a look of terror on his face. He appeared to have stumbled across us by accident while walking through the garden.

I heard a grunt of effort followed by the sound of tearing cloth. Surei hurtled forward, landing heavily atop the man on the ground. With a high-pitched shriek of terror, he pushed her off, sprang to his feet, and sprinted away through the trees, keening in fright.

I shuttered the lantern and found the torn cloth. Moving at a faster pace to make up for lost time, we continued following the trail of smoke pots. About halfway along our route, I tripped over a root. The lantern dropped out of my hand, immediately going out. To those watching, Surei must have disappeared.

Grabbing the lantern, I threw the black silk over her and half-led and half-dragged Surei away, still following the smoke pots.

When we got to where I thought no one could see us, I relit the lantern, then positioned Surei where she could be seen from the main house. After I reopened the shutter of the lantern, she gave a high-pitched wail, and again moaned, “Justice!”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

While the lantern was out, things had begun to quiet down near the house, and a few brave souls had come down the steps into the garden. With Surei’s reappearance, people resumed shouting and running back and forth. The place seemed to be in total confusion.

Several small fires appeared to have broken out in the main buildings.

How did that happen? We didn't go anywhere near the main house. What could have caused them to catch fire?

As a grand finale to our “haunting,” we intended to make a real impression on our audience. By this time, we were near the outside wall of the compound. Keeping the lantern on Surei, who continued to moan and cry, I climbed to the top of the wall.

Pulling out the small object Mouse had given me, I said, “Now!” then lit the fuse and threw it to the ground. We both closed our eyes and turned our heads away.

The device popped with a glaring flash that penetrated even through my closed eyelids. I grabbed Surei by the wrist and pulled her up and over the wall, dropping to the ground next to her in the street outside the manor.

Surei was choking. “Are you all right?” I asked, concerned she might have inhaled some smoke.

She was holding her sides, gasping. “I haven’t had this much fun since we were kids,” she said, struggling to control her giggling.

I started chuckling myself. After a bit, her laughter began to subside. “Did you see that guy’s face when you landed on him?” I asked.

She began giggling uncontrollably again. She had to put her fist in her mouth to keep from making too much noise.

We couldn’t spend much time enjoying ourselves. We went back to the cart. There were a couple of peasant’s outfits in the back.

I stripped off my dark clothes and slipped into the disguise. “Come here.”

Surei was still having trouble controlling her laughter, but she came over to the cart and pulled the peasant clothes on. Both of us grabbed rags and started scrubbing, removing the make-up on our faces. Within moments, we were impossible to tell from any of the other peasant laborers in the capital.

We heard shouts and the sound of running men coming along the wall. We checked each other over one last time, Surei wiping at my chin, rubbing off some spots of ash I had missed in my hurry.

Just as we finished tying on headscarves, four men dashed around the corner of the estate. When they caught sight of us, they shouted for us to halt. One of them demanded in breathless tones, “Have you seen anything here? A ghost? Anything else strange?”

I cowered away from them. “Ghosts?” I said in a quavering voice. “Seen no ghosts, seen nothin’!”

“How about you, woman, you see anything?”

Surei bowed deeply to them, obviously frightened out of her wits. “No, no, seen nothin’. Ghosts?” Then she pretended to swoon and collapsed.

Grumbling “ignorant peasants,” the men continued on their way. I bent over Surei and pretended to try and revive her.

As they went around the corner of the road, Surei began shaking with suppressed laughter again. I realized I had been holding my breath. I let it out with relief. “Well,” I said, “that went better than usual.”

Surei looked at me with mock anger. “What do you mean, ‘better than usual’?”

“Well,” I said, drily, “you have to admit your plans didn’t always work out this well.”

“Well, no, perhaps not,” she agreed. With a breathtaking smile, she said, “We did have a lot of fun, though, didn’t we?”

I shook my head. “When we weren’t confined to the house.”

She smiled. “Admit it, you missed this.”

“Yes,” I admitted, “I have missed this. And I have missed you.”

Angrily, she said, “If you missed me that much, then you should have come back for me.”

“I wanted to,” I told her. “But first I had to find out who betrayed my family. Once I did that, I was going to come back and marry you.”

Surei began rearranging the contents of the cart to hide all our discarded clothing. Still angry, she asked, “So, what happened?”

I let the frustration I felt creep into my voice. “Nothing. No matter where I looked, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t find any information. I spent years running down every possible lead I could find. None of them led anywhere.” I paused for a moment. “A monk. People said a monk who visited the pirate captains told them of the plans for the attack. No one had seen him before, and no one I talked to knew his name. I was never able to find any of the captains who spoke with him. Eleven years of searching and all I know is a monk had something to do with it.”

I sighed. “I sometimes felt like killing every monk I ran across in hopes of getting the right one.”

In a more neutral tone, Surei said, “Was that all?”

Suddenly tired, I sat down on a rock by the side of the road and held my head in my hands. “No,” I said, wearily, “eventually, I think I just gave up. I went through the motions of chasing leads down, but all I was really doing was wandering from place to place, drinking, fighting, and gambling. I haven’t actually accomplished anything for close to a decade.”

I raised my head up and looked at Surei. “It occurred to me there is often a scribe at the critical strategy meetings. I know there was a meeting the night before we left Kyoto. My father attended. What was said was secret. He wouldn’t even tell my brothers and me where we were going.” I looked back at the wagon. “You see, they take down the names of everyone who attended. One of those people betrayed us. I thought if I could get a look at the notes of that meeting, I would have some idea of who to investigate.”

I closed up the baskets in the wagon and continued bitterly, “Instead I lost the money I had hoped to use for bribes to get access to the notes. Not only didn’t I find anything out about my family, but I also managed to add Akiko to the list of people I have let down. I did try to find you, but your aunt told my messenger you were dead. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not.”

We stood in silence. Finally, I cleared my throat and said, “We had better get out of here.”

Surei nodded at me, saying nothing. But I thought I could detect the glistening of tears in her eyes.