Chapter 24

The same trainee, a skinny solemn teenager that looked to be about fourteen years old, brought him the same tray at the same time each day. Perhaps the rigid punctuality was a deliberate reminder of his status as a captive. The sliding screen door would open a crack, just enough for the tray to fit through. The boy would kneel and push it inside the room, looking determined to keep his eyes on the floor, but almost always flicking them up for a brief second or two to catch a glimpse of Leonardo, as if he were a mythological monster come to life, imprisoned but still so dangerous that looking at him could be deadly, like looking straight at the sun or into the eyes of the Gorgon. Then the door would shut again.

The tray that had just arrived had a bowl of rice with some assorted vegetables, a cup of tea, and a bowl of warm water with gauze pads and a roll of cloth dressing next to it. Leonardo unwrapped yesterday's dressing from his leg, washed the wound and redressed it. It was healing up nicely after five days of forced rest, a luxury he knew his brothers did not have.

He ate the rice and vegetables using the accompanying chopsticks, his mind, as it usually was, on his family and how they were faring. The room he'd been ensconced in didn't offer much to distract him from worry. Hidden away in the basement level of the main building, it had probably been a storage room, converted into a detention space for Foot soldiers who merited punishment. It was small, not much bigger than a cell, windowless, lit by a naked overhead light bulb, with no furniture, just tatami mats laid over concrete and a tiny sink and toilet. He couldn't complain. The Foot soldiers roaming upstairs and outside would no doubt prefer to see him shackled to the floor of a dank, vermin-infested cave and routinely beaten with sharp and heavy implements. For some reason he did not quite understand, Kan had seen to it that he was comfortable and unmolested, at least, it seemed, for the ten days allotted. After that, he would probably be killed.

That brought him back to pondering his situation. He was afraid that if, after ten days, his brothers were empty-handed, and hadn't already been maimed or killed by Doshida's gun-toting super soldiers, Raphael would try something momentously stupid, such as storming the Foot compound. He would never get to this tiny room in the deepest bowels of the building. It would be suicidal. That meant Leo would have to find a way out before that happened.

There were two very nervous-looking guards outside the screen door. Nervous because they knew, as he did, that they were there just for the sake of appearances. If anything, they functioned to prevent other Foot soldiers from approaching. He could easily kill two guards. He could not escape a fortified compound full of ninjas.

He left the tray by the door. When he heard the screen slide open, he expected it would be the same prompt trainee retrieving it. Instead, when he turned, he was surprised to see Kan Masataro's silhouette in the doorway.

Neither of them spoke. Finally, Leonardo inclined his head. "Masataro-san."

Kan's face was hidden in the shadow of the doorway. His deep, deliberate voice said, in Japanese, "I once knew a man named Hamato Yoshi."

Leonardo said nothing.

"He was a well-known and respected senior chonin when I was just a boy. In many ways, he was like an uncle to me. I looked up to him a great deal. He could have become jonin of one of the Clan branches, had he not been undone by his rivalry with the Oruku family."

Leonardo remained silent; he did not know how to respond, and his brain needed extra seconds to make the switch to Japanese. Kan took a step into the room, his eyes never leaving his prisoner's face, studying it with the immense curiosity and guarded revulsion of a hunter approaching some unusual, never-before-seen animal in his snare. "I have wondered," Kan continued, "if it is true, what some of the Clan Elders, the older, suspicious ones, have said about you."

Leonardo was not aware that these distant, shadowy Foot Clan Elders said anything about him.

"They say that the tormented spirit of Hamato Yoshi could not rest. That it returned to this world as a demon rat, taking the form of those creatures he was so fond of in life. And that he brought back with him four fiends of the underworld, to be the bane of the Clan that had betrayed him."

Leonardo managed to catch himself before he could burst out laughing at the absurdity. Mocking the Clan Elders in front of Kan would be unwise.

Kan smiled a thin smile. "As I said, some of the Elders are old and suspicious. Rites were even performed, offerings and amends made to Yoshi's spirit, yet here you stand. And I can see that you are no demon, but a creature of flesh, that can bleed and suffer as the rest of us do."

Too true, Leo thought. It had never occurred to him that the Foot would have their own, mystical, explanation for his existence- one no less plausible, really, than mutagenic chemicals- though he wasn't sure whether he was disturbed or flattered to be deemed a beast of hell.

Thoughtfully, half to himself, Kan said, "You fight in the Hamato style. You show courage and loyalty to your clan. How very strange that Yoshi lives on in this way, spirit or not."

Leonardo found his voice behind a small, ironic smile. "You might try to put an end to that."

"If it will safeguard and rebuild the Foot Clan, as I have sworn to do before I return to Japan."

"You plan to return?"

"When it is time for another to assume leadership, as Karai did from Saki, and I did from her."

At the mention of Karai, the memory of that night in the courtyard, her blood spreading so slowly, the audience so still and silent, he, so powerless and transfixed, came back into vivid recall and Leonardo felt something inside himself shift, painfully. The words came out before he could stop them. "How can you say that so smugly, when you forced Karai to commit seppuku rather than allow her to return to Japan?"

The hard lines around Kan's mouth deepened at the sudden accusation. "It was entirely her choice, to set an honorable example rather than return in dishonor. I would have done no differently." He regarded Leonardo with a kind of pity, as though he'd seen the great beast and found it wanting. Straightening to his full height and leaning in, Kan towered several inches over Leonardo, clearly seeing him no longer as the embodiment of a supernatural curse, but merely a lone enemy prisoner. "Karai understood that the Clan is far greater than the life of any one person, be it Oruku Saki, or her, or myself. Common people may find our methods disreputable, but the Foot Clan has endured for hundreds of years. Your clan is small, a peculiar blip, and it will be soon be gone- within a few days, or within a generation- does it matter which?"

He turned and left the room with long, swift strides. The guards jumped to attention, pretending not to have been eavesdropping, and hurried to slide the door closed behind him.

Softly, Leonardo said to the empty room, "It matters to me."