“Perhaps there is a way we can avoid that unpleasantness, Lady, if not all unpleasantness. You’re here about your grandson, aren’t you?”
She covered her mouth with her fan to indicate that she was smiling. “Of course. Family matters have always been my special concern.”
Someone else entered the clearing. Another woman, dressed and veiled in a manner very similar to Akiko. “You said you’d come alone,” the newcomer said. It sounded like an accusation.
“It was not my doing that he is here,” Lady Akiko said. “And it will make no difference. Surely you can see that?”
“Perhaps.” The newcomer removed her boshi, but her voice had already announced her. Lady Kuzunoha. She glared at me as she approached. Now she and Lady Akiko were barely a few paces apart.
“Yamada-san, this no longer concerns you,” Lady Kuzunoha said.
“I respectfully disagree. My responsibility ends only when Lord Abe’s son is found.”
Lady Akiko glared at her former daughter-in-law. “And this . . . this vixen who betrayed my son knows where he is! Do you deny it?”
“Of course not,” Lady Kuzunoha said haughtily. “I know exactly where my son is. As do you.”
Lady Akiko practically spat out the words. “Yes! With the person who took him!”
“Yes,” Lady Kuzunoha said grimly. She drew her dagger. “Let us settle this!”
“Pitiful fool!”
It turned out that Lady Akiko already had her dagger unsheathed, concealed in the sleeve of her kimono. She lashed out and Lady Kuzunoha gasped in pain. She clutched her hand as her dagger fell uselessly into the grass. In a moment Akiko had Kuzunoha’s arms pinned at her sides and her dagger at the young woman’s throat.
“One doesn’t survive so long at court without learning a few tricks. Or, for that matter, giving your enemies a sporting chance. Now prove the truth of my words, worthless vixen! Tell me before this witness where Lord Abe’s son is, and do not try any of your fox tricks else I’ll kill you where you stand!”
“You will not taste my blood that easily, Old Woman.”
The fight was far from over. Lady Kuzunoha’s power was gathering around her like a storm; the air fairly crackled with it. Lady Akiko held her ground, but the hand holding the knife was shaking, and I knew it took her a great effort to keep the blade pointed at Lady Kuzunoha’s throat.
“Tell Yamada-san where Doshi is if you want to live!” Lady Akiko said. “And no lies!”
“Why would he believe anything I say,” Lady Kuzunoha said calmly, “if he does not believe what I have told him before now?”
I knew that, in a few seconds, anything I did would be too late. I stepped forward quickly, pulling out Kenji’s seal as I did so. Both women watched me intently as I approached. “Lady Kuzunoha, do you know what this is?” She nodded, her face expressionless.
Lady Akiko wasn’t expressionless at all. Her look was pure triumph. “Yamada-san, you are more resourceful than I thought. I will recommend to my son that he double your fee.”
I gave her a slight bow. “I am in Lord Abe’s service.” I concentrated then on Lady Kuzunoha. “If you know what this is, then you know what it can do to you. Do you truly know where your son is?”
She looked resigned. “I do.”
“That’s all I need. Please prepare yourself.”
Lady Kuzunoha went perfectly still in Lady Akiko’s grip but before either of them could move again, I darted forward and slapped the seal on Lady Akiko’s forehead.
“Yamada sarrrrrr—!”
My name ended in a snarl of rage, but Lady Akiko had time to do nothing else before the transformation was complete. In Lady Akiko’s place was an old red fox vixen with three tails. Lady Kuzunoha stood frozen, blinking in surprise.
There was no more time to consider. My sword was in my hands just as the fox gathered itself to spring at Lady Kuzunoha’s throat. My shout startled it, and it sprang at me instead. My first slash caught it across the chest, and it yipped in pain. My second stroke severed the fox’s head from its body. The fox that had been Abe no Akiko fell in a bloody heap, twitching.
I had seen Lady Kuzunoha butcher two men with barely a thought, but she looked away from the remains of her former mother-in-law with a delicacy that surprised me. “I-I still had some hope that it would not come to this. That was foolish of me.”
“She didn’t leave me much choice.”
Lady Kuzunoha shook her head. “No, your life was already worthless to her. Doubly so since you knew her secret. Speaking of that, how did you know?”
I started to clean my sword. “Lady Kuzunoha, I have just been forced to take a rather drastic step in the course of my duties. I’ll answer your questions if you will answer mine. Agreed?”
She forced herself to look at Lady Akiko’s body. “There is no reason to keep her secrets now.”
“Very well. There were two things in particular. Someone put me on the trail of a youkai that was pretending to be you. Once I knew that you didn’t send either it or those bandits, that left the question of who did. More to the point, you told me that Doshi was mostly fox, remember?”
She actually blushed. “Careless of me. I did not intend . . . ”
I smiled grimly. “I know, and at first I thought you’d simply misspoken. But, assuming you had not, for Doshi to be more than merely half fox meant his father was at least part fox himself. How could this be? The simplest reasonable answer was Lady Akiko. Did Lord Abe know about his mother? Or himself?”
“No to both. Fortunately his fox blood was never dominant. Lady Akiko and I knew about each other all along, of course. She opposed the marriage but couldn’t reveal me without revealing herself. We kept each other’s secret out of necessity until . . . ”
“Until Doshi was born?”
She nodded, looking unhappy. “I knew by then I couldn’t stay, but I thought my son’s position was secure. I was in error. There was too much fox in him, and Lady Akiko was afraid his fox nature would reveal itself, and disgrace the family. The position of the Abe family was always her chief concern.”
“If the boy was such a danger, why didn’t she just smother him in his sleep?”
Lady Kuzunoha looked genuinely shocked. “Murder her own grandson? Really, Yamada-san . . . Beside, it’s easy enough to dedicate an unwanted child to some distant temple with no questions about his origin. In preparation, Lady Akiko had him hidden within the shrine complex; the Abe family is their foremost patron, so it was easy to arrange. Once I knew my son was missing it took me a while to follow his trail and to arrange a meeting.”
“Duel, you mean.”
She looked away. “Just so. While I may have hoped otherwise, it was destined that either I or Lady Akiko would not leave this clearing alive. Her solution to the problem of Doshi was quite elegant, but you were an obstacle to that solution and, once you found me, so was I.”
“Which explains why she went to so much trouble trying to prevent me from finding you in the first place. Was she correct then? Won’t Doshi be a danger to the family now?”
“Yes,” said Lady Kuzunoha frankly. “Yet my husband already knows that. Perhaps not how great a risk, I concede, but I don’t think that would deter him. Do you?”
I finished cleaning my sword and slid it back into its scabbard. “No, but as grateful as he’s going to be at the return of his son, Lord Abe is going to be considerably less so when I explain what happened to his mother, proxy or no.”
Lady Kuzunoha covered her mouth as she smiled. “Yamada-san, perhaps there is an ‘elegant solution’ to this as well. For now, kindly produce my lord’s proxy seal and we’ll go fetch my son.”