Young Samurai_ The Way of the Sword - Chris Bradford [61]
The pile of origami paper was soon used up, and Yori quietly thanked him for his help and said he would get more the next day. While he couldn’t quite muster a smile, he did seem less despondent about his situation and he had stopped crying, so Jack left and headed to bed. Sliding open the shoji to his own room, he stopped dead in his tracks.
His bedroom had been ransacked.
The futon was unrolled and ripped open; his ceremonial kimono, training gi and bokken lay discarded upon the floor; and the Daruma Doll and bonsai had been knocked off the window sill, the little tree now lying on its side, its roots exposed and earth spilt everywhere.
Jack’s first thought was Kazuki. It was exactly the sort of thing he or one of his Scorpion Gang would do. He scanned the room to see if anything had been taken. To his relief, he found Masamoto’s swords under the ceremonial kimono and spotted his sister’s drawing crumpled but intact beneath the bonsai’s pot, his inro carrying case discarded to one side. He then looked under the futon and realized what was missing.
Jack stormed up the now deserted corridor to Kazuki’s room and flung open his shoji.
‘Where is it?’ accused Jack.
‘Where’s what?’ replied an indignant Kazuki, who was in the process of polishing a gleaming samurai sword of black and gold that his father had presented to him upon the news of his acceptance into the Circle.
‘You know exactly what I mean. Now give it back!’
Kazuki glared at Jack, his left eye still swollen and discoloured by the bruising he had sustained during the Gauntlet. ‘Get out of my room!’ he demanded. ‘What sort of samurai do you think I am to steal from you? That might be something a gaijin would do, but never a Japanese.’
Then a malicious smile spread across his face as he saw Jack’s distress. ‘But if you do find out who did it, remind me to thank them.’
Jack cursed. Despite Kazuki’s arrogance, he seemingly had nothing to do with the break-in. Perhaps it had been Hiroto, getting his own back for Jack beating him in the trials. Jack glanced down the empty corridor and froze.
Creeping out of his room was a figure dressed head-to-toe in white. It held the leatherbound book in its grasp.
‘Stop!’ cried Jack.
The dark pebble eyes of the ghostly figure locked with his. It fled down the corridor as silent as the falling snow and out of the Shishi-no-ma.
Jack flew after it. He raced past startled students, who had emerged to see what the disturbance was, and out into the cold night air.
He spotted the figure sprinting across the courtyard and followed.
‘Give it back!’ Jack shouted, gaining on the intruder.
The figure reached the edge of the courtyard and launched itself at the school walls. Jack clambered up after the thief, his hands grabbing hold of the bottom of a white jacket. He wrenched back as hard as he could, but was kicked in the chest for his efforts and sent sprawling into the snow. Momentarily stunned, Jack could only watch as the intruder continued to scale the wall with cat-like grace.
Then, without looking back, the white-clad figure disappeared into the snowy night.
29
THE DECOY
‘Do you really think it was Dragon Eye?’ asked Yamato as he helped Jack tidy his room. ‘It’s been a long time since he showed himself.’
Jack was smoothing out his sister’s picture and wiping off the earth that had fallen on to it from the bonsai. Since Jack usually kept the drawing hidden in his inro, the intruder had clearly been carrying out a thorough search of his room.
‘It had to be, but he sent someone else this time. Unless he’s managed to grow another eye!’ replied Jack sarcastically, remembering the two dark eyes that had peered at him through the slit of the ninja’s hood.
‘But who’s ever heard of a white ninja? It must have been a disguise. Are you sure it wasn’t one of Kazuki’s Scorpion Gang playing a trick on you? I mean, ninja always wear black.’
‘At night, yes,