- "Ketori-san, I bid you goodnight now," Mei smiled. The young man wasn't unpleasant. He was a son of a distant relative of the emperor's, and thus was groomed for a government position in the court, following in the footsteps of his father. Mei was an orphan with no important relatives - her mother an unknown nature spirit from faraway Shou Lung and her father just a bushi participating in a daimyo's convoy. So, as the thinking generally went, Ketori would make an excellent marriage prospect for her. However, Mei didn't want to get married. She needed her freedom for her nightly strolls. And she didn't love Ketori. The boy was pleasant and polite, but there was no edge in him, nothing arousing her interest.
- "What does love have to do with it?" Atsuko had said, astonished. "Marriages are practical arrangements, and if all goes well, you will fall in love with your husband. If not, well... there are ways to have an interesting love life nevertheless," she had winked.
Perhaps it was so. But Mei didn't want to form such a liaison with anyone she didn't feel strongly for. She would find other ways to keep herself in a position to continue her activities. She was still very young, and she would find out what she actually wanted to do with her life. For now it was best to stay in the court. Court was a place of never-ending intrigue. Alliances were formed, rituals were followed and an observant court woman could learn a lot. The sublest mispronunciation or neglecting to follow a correct procedure could tell volumes to the one who had heard the gossip and knew what to deduce of it.
- "Mei, will you go boating with me? On the river, tomorrow?" Ketori asked.
- "Let me think about it," she answered. That was the kind of question you never gave a straight answer to. Mei was tired of games, but nevertheless she had to play them.
Ketori bowed and went away. Mei went to her chambers, locked the door and opened the window. The mildly chill night air poured in, the crickets singing in the garden, the shadows hiding many secrets.
Mei knelt before her closet, pulled an assortment of silken kimonos away, and clicked the little button to slide the false wall away. She pulled the black garb from there and dressed into it. It was so light she could barely feel it. She wrapped the silk around her head so that only her eyes and nose were visible. Her slender body was like a shadow, and she could move quietly like a cat. She sheathed a ninja-to at her waist. It was a sword with a straight blade, a bit taller than a wakizashi. It was a dishonorable weapon, and a samurai wielding one would lose face greatly. Mei snorted at the idea of a dishonorable weapon. It was made of steel, just like a katana or wakizashi, and did the job just the same. Hers was of exceptional quality. She had bought it from a yakuza, anonymous. She had to admit that the samurai had a spiritual connection to their daisho, especially the ancestral ones that their families had had for centuries. Sometimes she envied them that. But that was not a life for her - you were born to be a samurai and that was it. Besides, it was not like she didn't enjoy her life. Mei grinned at her expression in the mirror, only the eyes visible. She picked her trusty crossbow and slid out from the window. The crossbow could not be used for high profile jobs, as it could be tracked down to her - but for self-protection and the deaths that didn't attract attention it was an excellent tool.
One toe, one finger at time she scaled down the wall. She also owned spiky accessories she could attach to her feet and palms, but she preferred to use those only when the wall was next to smooth. It felt better to feel the surface she was scaling with her own body parts. As she reached the garden, she put on her rubber-soled cloth shoes and walked, stealthily, surefootedly and quietly out the first district of the Inner City, where the Imperial Palace was situated. Its red tiled roof shone brightly all above Dojyu even in the darkness of the night. The second district, or ward, as they also were called, was quiet as a grave. It was the area of the administration buildings and the residences of high-ranking officials and nobles. Ketori's family also lived somewhere here. Mei had never been curious enough to find out exactly where. She passed the quiet streets under the empty eyes of the darkened windows of the sleeping honorable ones.
In the third district lived the samurai. The crests of their clans and families adorned the houses, and some had war-like decorations at the bright red torii gates. Most of the samurai of Kozakura lived in the lands of the daimyos, but all clans had their bases at the Imperial Palace as well. A few families had no clan of their own at all, but had served as the imperial guard for centuries. Mei knew that some of the other samurai looked down on the court samurai, thinking them letting go of their rigid standards of performance and behaviour, getting too fond of entertainment and food and weak of spirit. There might have been some truth to it, but it certainly was not the case with all of them. Some of them took their responsibility as the protectors of the imperial family and ambassadors of their own daimyo very seriously.
Mei unleashed herself into a spring and leapt over the wall dividing the third and fourth ward, ending her leap into a beautiful, soft ukemi on the other side. It was by no means necessary - she grinned at her own childishness. The samurai had their ancient traditions weighing heavily on their shoulders, they always had to be so proper and think of honor and face. Mei felt happy to be so free and independent, like a cat on a prowl. She was in the fourth ward now, the ward of the oldest businesses and most prominent merchants of the city. The ward flanked the Dai river, and the business demands of the imperial capital had long since ceased to be met by it alone, and so the city had sprawled into three more wards across the river.
There were two gates to the Outer city, Sunrise Gate and Sunset Gate. They were made of stone and decorated with carvings. It was behind those gates where the nightlife of the city was. It was there where Mei could see, hear and smell her Dojyu - the music and laughter of the courtesans, the kabuki actors entertaining the crew, the drunken common folk and bushi spilling their sake, the gamblers trying to stifle their cries of enthusiasm in vain. But she was on her way to a shrine. A very small, insignificant shrine no-one paid much attention to. Yet, that shrine gave many people hope. Mei began to scale the wall.
