Only a Shadow by Steve Bein

1.
    Muromachi Era, the Year 117
    (1442 CE)
    The young man walked into Old Jujiro's candlelit study with his head held high and his shoulders square. He’s a quick one, Jujiro thought, if he’s already guessed this is a test. Is he trying to impress me with this mask of boldness? Does he think it will earn him entry into the arcane secrets? Or is he not quick at all, but simply rash? Is the boldness genuine?
    Jujiro hoped it was not. At this point in his career, everyone he met treated him with deference—and, more often than not, with a trace of fear. This boy showed neither. Still, the clan elders had endorsed him. If his reputation was accurate, this boy was exactly the one Jujiro needed to pull off the greatest theft in living memory, to say nothing of saving the clan from extinction.
    â€œWhat is your name?” Old Jujiro asked. The reedy quavering of his own voice surprised him. He sometimes exaggerated the effect when meeting someone for the first time—it was no small advantage to be underestimated by strangers—but this time there was no need. Age was catching up with him all too swiftly.
    â€œTadanao,” the young man replied. He stood in the center of the room, tall enough that he had to duck below the rafters. Dressed in simple blue farmer’s garb, his features were sharp, his black hair short, his cheeks freckled from laboring in the sun. His loose-fitting pants were dusty, the cloth about his shoulders faded. He looked shabby. All to the good, Jujiro thought; he knows how to be nondescript.
    â€œSit, Tada-san.” Old Jujiro motioned at the wooden floor with a spotted, callused hand. He laid his hands on the lacquered black table before him, its surface so polished he could see his reflection even by candlelight. The wrinkles there surprised him, as did the wrinkles across his gnarled knuckles. How had he grown so old so quickly? Or was it being in the presence of this lithe, muscular boy that forced him to recall the grace and power of his own youth?
    Tadanao kneeled on the mat, close enough to Jujiro's low table that he could touch it. His back was still straight, his head high. If he’d taken offense at Jujiro calling him by his childhood name, he gave no sign.
    â€œTell me, Tada-san, what do you know of the daimyo Hirata Nobushige?”
    â€œEnough.” Jujiro did not approve of the boy’s haughty demeanor. “He has been fighting for control of the Kansai since before I was born. Now that he has finished his new fortress, they say he will win.”
    â€œAnd what do you think of that?”
    â€œI think Hirata has been hunting the Iga like dogs. If he secures the Kansai, I think our days are numbered.”
    â€œIndeed,” Jujiro said. “And do you know who I am, Tada-san?”
    â€œYou are Iga Jujiro. They say you are the best
shinobi
in the clan.”
    Jujiro nodded curtly. The boy used no honorifics, none of the deflections and self-deprecations of polite conversation with an elder. Another sign of boldness, and of pride.
    â€œDo you know why you are here, Tada-san?”
    â€œI am being evaluated,” he said, masking the resentment in his voice almost completely, narrowing his eyes so slightly and so briefly that Jujiro almost doubted he’d seen it at all.
    â€œDo you know why?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAh.” Honesty, even when it rankles, Jujiro thought. Good. “Now,” he continued, “the second test.” He reached by his side for a length of rope, showed it to the boy, then quickly tied a knot of his own invention. “Take an end of the rope,” he said.
    Tadanao did as he was told, and Jujiro took the other end. “Slowly now, lean back,” he told the boy, and Jujiro did the same. For a moment they each supported the other’s weight, hanging back over their haunches with a two-fisted grip on the cord. Then Old Jujiro sat back up, the boy mirroring him. “The knot can support