Dogsbody

Sunlight and shade dappled the Fifth Celestial Imperator’s Third Peace Garden. Dew gathered on the leaves and branches of oaks across the grounds. A stone fountain stood at the centre with proud canine statues. They were distant relations to Shinobu – nobodies raised to greatness after they came from the Plum Islands to aid the Imperator in a time of need. Through clever trickery of plumbing, water spiralled down around the statues like some otherworldly armour.

Shinobu reached out one pawed hand and touched the hedge walls. He noted the new growth of pale flowers reaching upwards towards the sun. He’d need to return in a week to keep them to Imperator Kaori’s prescribed standards.

The dew trickled from the tree canopy, each bead kissing the next, further sliding into other beads, a cascade until, finally, one large tear, containing a singular eyeball drooped from the bottommost branch. It hung suspended for a moment then fell into the fountain with a soft splash.

Shinobu stepped past the parted white robin hedges and surveyed a scene of carnage.

‘Oh my stars!’

Bodies floated in the fountain and severed limbs hung on tree branches. The fountain recycled its water over and over, now dyed with gore.

One floppy-eared head had been forcibly removed from its owner, and a long sword impaled it through the mouth to one of the oaks.

‘How can…? Who…? Why…?’

Shinobu’s shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes wishing he could unsee it all. He threw his paws up to his face, then threw up his breakfast into a boxwood.

In all, he counted eight… no, ten bodies, once he mentally pieced together a few limbs to bodies.

A low moan came from underneath the thick shrub roses, and he fled, coward that knew he was.

* * *

It took Shinobu longer than it should have to find the equipment to clean with. Someone had been to his caretaker’s shack while he was out that morning. His perfect order messed with.

Shinobu threw brushes, buckets and a mop into the wheelbarrow and squeezed past the topiary awkwardly just inside the entry to his yard. He began the arduous trek back to the peace garden. He’d barely taken one step onto the rustic stone path when he heard a vociferous bleat ahead and saw Master Hui.

The master peered at Shinobu with gold-slitted eyes and stroked a long, wispy beard with one hand. ‘Young pup,’ he said. ‘Where are you off to? Let’s take tea together. I’ve brought salted tarts.’ His long tongue licked the side of his mouth.

Shinobu sighed. Hui arched one eyebrow.

‘Not today, Hui,’ said Shinobu. ‘There’s been trouble nearby. There are many… bodies to clean up.’

Hui now used both hands to stroke his beard. ‘Ah, this is unfortunate,’ he said in a soothing voice. ‘First the mining camps, then the capital, now here. Is nowhere safe?’. Shinobu often wanted to take his shears and snip that beard off.

‘Master Hui,’ he said, glancing back to the rust-brown stone of his caretaker’s shack. ‘If you could pass on a message to the primus arborum, that would be most kind of you.’

‘Have there been any… survivors?’

‘None.’ Shinobu ignored the echo of sound in his mind he may have heard when he fled the peace garden. ‘All dead. So very dead.’

‘Tea tomorrow then,’ said Hui. He started to leave. ‘Unless… hmm. Unless I should request for the long-bills to help compile your report?’

The Supernal Bureaucracy had many functionaries available to good servants of the Imperator. From their offices on high, the long-bills could fly expeditiously anywhere, including the Thousand Gardens. But to invite anyone from the Bureaucracy was to invite scrutiny.

Master Hui’s unfathomable gaze shifted to the topiary forms of the Emerald Masters visible over the hedges.

‘Don’t trouble anyone.’ Shinobu genuflected to Hui. ‘My duties are not difficult to grasp.’ There were enough eyes already around him.

Stroke. Stroke. All it would take was one little cut…

‘Hmph. I look forward to tomorrow. Perhaps a game of Ques?’

‘If no-one else dies, Master Hui,’ said Shinobu.

Hui inclined his horned head slightly and blinked.

Shinobu pushed past with the wheelbarrow. After a rough night’s sleep, and the events of the day so far, each squeak of the wheel felt like a blade jabbed in Shinobu’s furred ear.

Shinobu returned to the bloody garden. It was worse than he remembered. There was a severed arm. There were entrails, stretched out under the vinegar jasmine bush. Now the owner of the entrails here, and over there too.

He let out a whine and looked around in panic in case someone heard.

‘Long must I suffer for my misdeeds,’ he said. Not that they’d been that awful in the grand scheme of things. Just awful enough for the court to consign him to the outer extremes of the Thousand Gardens. But, really, he shouldn’t have made that disgraceful comment about Governor-Wife Zhang the Impatient’s ambergris perfume.

Shinobu made mental tallies and began writing on a slate with chalk. Were these bodies agents of the Emerald Masters? Or were they rebels? He couldn’t tell them apart in the gory mess.

The smell of death and viscera was suddenly overwhelming, but Shinobu forced himself to work – carefully trying not to get any blood on his white and tan coat. He set about piling the corpses. The Emerald Masters would want to put on a show of respect for their fallen agents, some ceremony or other. For the rebels, the Emerald Masters would want the hands collected for a grisly public display. Luckily, there were a few already detached for this purpose.

Weapon by weapon, limb by limb, body by body, he piled all into the wheelbarrow, and over multiple loads. He’d made several trips by the time the peace garden started to resemble its former self, despite the clotting blood everywhere.

Shinobu hauled water back and forth from nearby ponds. He sluiced it across the grass, paved pathway and flowering plants. He dropped to the flagstones with a mud brush and began furiously scrubbing. This did little to remove the bloodstains. The stones remained dark. ‘I’ll be rotting in the ground before this is pristine again,’ he muttered to himself.

The sun began its descent below the highest hedges. Just then, Shinobu heard a sound from the rose shrubs. While most smells had faded into the background, he was now struck with what could only be fresh blood.

‘Hu… huh… hello?’ he panted. He pawed closer to the bushes. A trottered hand reached out from the thick roses, and something cool and sharp touched his throat. A tuft of fur dropped to the ground. There was a snortle.

‘Don’t… move,’ said a figure emerging, breathless. ‘I… said…’

Shinobu barely managed to side-step them and the knife as they stumbled out of the bushes and fell face forward.

The attacker was covered in coarse hair and had a long, tusked snout. ‘Help,’ the figure said, voice muffled in the grass. ‘Help.’

Shinobu growled and sighed. No-one would know if he let them die. He grabbed the body by its shoulders. His job would be much easier if he just left them alone. He began to drag them away.

* * *

Shinobu’s caretaker shack was small and cramped with only two rooms. An elaborate desk hogged most of the bedroom space. A meticulously crafted piece of furniture with many draws and shelves. The shelves were filled with books – tawdry courtly tales – one of Shinobu’s comforts after dark. Some shelves held ledgers and journals, records of the Second Celestial Imperator’s Seventh Pond Garden and surrounds over the last few hundred years. One of Shinobu’s duties was to record day-to-day events around the garden, no matter how tedious.

He sat on the oak-wood chair, which creaked as he bent over the unconscious form of the survivor resting on the bed. One of his tusks had broken off – cleanly shorn through by a bladed weapon. The fur about his piggish face was matted with blood from a myriad of cuts.

Shinobu sponged him with a warm herbal brew to clean the injuries.

‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘Which side of the fighting are you on?’

The survivor grunted and rolled to one side. His clothes were ragged and marred by dirt and blood. He snorted, and angry eyes flicked open. Then he sagged.

‘Careful now,’ said Shinobu. ‘I’ve only cleaned your wounds. I’m no apothecary.’

‘Am I a prisoner?’

Shinobu stood, sliding the chair backwards forcefully. ‘You’re a rebel then?’ he said. ‘One of these Heaven’s Liberators.’

The barrow looked panicked, but he was in no position to fight even against an unarmed gardener like Shinobu. He lifted his chin, as if attempting to find some pride, but his head lolled to one side in fatigue. ‘Yes.’

Shinobu snatched up the ink pot and a sheaf of paper from his desk.

‘Mongrel, don’t…’ the survivor hesitated.

‘You’re murderers and thieves,’ said Shinobu. ‘Barbarians! You ruined my garden!’

The survivor looked surprised, then uncertain, as if the garden should matter. ‘We ambushed the Emerald Masters’ meeting,’ he said. ‘They were after—’

‘You fought the Emerald Masters themselves?’ said Shinobu, dubious. ‘I’m amazed you survived.’

‘We fight all oppression in Ukyo.’

‘I don’t care about the fighting,’ said Shinobu. ‘Leave me out of it. I’ll inform the arborum primus, the long-bills… they’ll send a swordmaster.’

The barrow struggled to sit up and leant against the wall once he could. ‘Just kill me yourself then.’ He pointed a knobbly finger at Shinobu and snarled, ‘Coward.’

Shinobu hovered in the doorway, ready to flee if the survivor made a move but he’d struck a nerve. ‘But…’

‘If you need a name for your superiors, it’s Nao,’ the barrow said. He waved towards Shinobu’s desk. ‘I can write it down for one of your reports so you remember it after I’m dead.’

They watched each other carefully, then Nao closed heavy, red-ringed eyes and rolled over.

Shinobu’s face lit up and crumpled in one moment. He didn’t need this. He was already swamped cleaning gardens nobody visited. But didn’t he have a duty? If Shinobu reported Nao, he’d probably be killed all over his meticulous grounds – blood staining the sand garden, the fish pond, the topiary. And Shinobu would have to clean it all up. He sighed. Maybe he’d kick the barrow out tomorrow.

* * *

Ritsu found Shinobu making notes in a ledger.

‘Pardon the interruption, genteel one,’ said Ritsu from the doorway.

Shinobu tried not to react, but his heart beat furiously. Shinobu’s guest – prisoner? captive? he had no idea – had attempted take a walk and it was only pure luck that prevented the young messenger from coming across Nao at the caretaker’s shack.

Ritsu kept looking nervously outside, towards the wheelbarrow stacked with bodies. ‘Master Dogsbody?’

Shinobu hated that title. But it was not like he’d been bestowed with any of the more formal Thousand Garden titles, not even Arborum Secondus or Arborum Tertius.

‘One moment,’ said Shinobu as he further scrawled with the quill.

He had a good memory for faces, for smells. He’d known a few of the dismembered combatants. That rattus Celius had once given Shinobu a strangely long and uncomfortable handshake in front of Governor Temu at court.

He finished writing in the ledger and approached the young messenger. He pushed up the spectacles along his snout, closer to his eyes. ‘My bedpan is there.’ He pointed.

‘Yes, wise one, but… no,’ said Ritsu. ‘There’s been another fight.’

Shinobu slowly hauled himself to his feet. He waited for Ritsu to elaborate, but after a long pause, said, ‘Where?’

‘The Fourth Grand Market Pavilion.’

‘Radiant stars!’ swore Shinobu. He stepped outside and rubbed tired eyes. ‘Which Celestial Imperator’s pavilion?’ he said.

‘Er…’ said Ritsu, himself uncertain.

Shinobu stared at the wheelbarrow, grabbed the handle and tilted it to one side. Four bodies tumbled out and lay at Ritsu’s footpaws. He stared at Celius’s stumped arms. Shinobu had failed to find both hands while cleaning the peace garden.

Ritsu swallowed hard as he nudged a lagomorphic head back into the pile. He scrunched up his nose at the putrescine smell that Shinobu had acclimatised to.

‘I’ll find it. I’ll clean it up. Again,’ said Shinobu. ‘Oh, and get someone to remove these.’ He swept out a hand at the bodies.

Ritsu’s whiskers twitched. ‘If you don’t find the bodies readily, look to the rooftops…’

Shinobu waited for Ritsu to leave. But, first, Ritsu emptied Shinobu’s bedpan into a bucket, then hoisted it onto a carrying pole.

Shinobu supposed it could have been worse. He could have been trekking through the Thousand Gardens to collect everyone else’s shit. There were so many different ways the court kept one busy.

When Ritsu was out of sight, Shinobu relaxed.

But this calm was short-lived. He heard the familiar bleat of Master Hui, and the busybody emerged from between the hedges.

‘A pleasing morning to you, young sire,’ said Hui. To Shinobu, youth was a far away land. Now all he felt was aching and tiredness. ‘Just an old goat checking up on your wellbeing, after the unpleasantness.’

‘Good news, Master Hui,’ said Shinobu. ‘There’s been more.’

Hui merely blinked at the attempt at a joke so Shinobu brought out the tea chest and began to boil water at the firepit. Hui doddered over unsteadily and sat on the stone bench. ‘Please, make it quick, Hui,’ said Shinobu. ‘None of this cleaning does itself.’

‘Busy, so busy. It makes me tired.’

They sat in familiar silence as the tea brewed. Hui, like Shinobu, was once a courtier, fawning over the nobles day after day, trying to curry and trade favour. Hui was dangerous because he wouldn’t hesitate to find favour again.

Shinobu said, ‘All this strife is distasteful.’ He poured some tea. ‘Harmony?’ He raised a spoonful of red powder in offering.

Master Hui nodded. Shinobu stirred in the powder and passed over the steaming cup. He returned the spoon to an enamelled pot.

Hui took a tentative sip. ‘I’ve heard the rebels have tried to access the palace.’

‘The Imperator is well?’ said Shinobu.

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Well, praise the protection and guidance of the Emerald Masters,’ said Shinobu.

‘Quite.’ Hui’s eyes started to glaze over.

They fell into lackadaisical conversation until their cups were empty and Master Hui fell asleep, slumped on the bench.  Shinobu shook Hui’s shoulders to rouse him. ‘I do have work to attend to.’

* * *

On his way to the Twelfth North-East Rose Pavilion, along the North-East Walkway – or was it the East-East Walkway? – Shinobu took a moment of aloneness to himself. Here, the hedges and hanging plants stood thin. A rot in the dirt choked them.

This was the outer edge of the Thousand Gardens, where Shinobu’s reach of all things botanical collapsed. This was entirely the point of his consignment from court.

Vast Observations Spheres rose from the hills, a great distance away but seemingly so close due to their sheer size and ability to take up the horizon. They were each perfectly spherical, apart from one dark and squat cup-like ocular on each. The ‘eyes’ of the spheres pointed in different directions. One, up to the heavens. Another, further northwards, out to the ancient, uncivilised outlands where the genteels had once been feral creatures. Another, the nearest sphere, had its ocular pointed directly at Shinobu – observing him and his failings.

He’d pondered their purpose countless times. What were they watching? Who was watching? The sheer logistics of their construction awed Shinobu. And maybe he wasn’t as alone here as he thought.

A half-constructed Observation Sphere stood further out in the distance, the ghost of a skeleton.

Governor Temu had heightened security in recent months around the orphic mines and increased his labour forces – all to keep the pace of construction uninterrupted from the guerilla strikes of the rebels. More and more people were joining Kotai’s cause – rallying under the glamour of his unlighted sword and raging against the worsening conditions in the capital and the mines.

Shinobu took a duelling stance like he’d seen Celius perform at court. He raised his gardening trowel and feigned poking out eyes. ‘So much watching.’

He started salivating, then threw back his head and sculled from a hipflask – a favourite rosehip blend tea – and shook the sight of the spheres from his mind. He became lost in the maze of pathways and hedges and flowers for a while, wandering his way to the site of another bloodbath.

* * *

A maze of dark hedges filled the sky. Shinobu washed off dirt from the day’s labours in the pond. He heard movement in nearby walkways and expected to see Hui yet again.

Like some wraith passing through a wall, a hooded and cloaked figure emerged from the greenery. Shinobu startled. They were especially broad and tall and, evidently, light on their hooves. Their hood fell to reveal a broad snout and purplish black skin. They wore at their side a wide-bladed sword in an elaborate sheath embroidered with flame lilies.

A swordmaster! Here?

‘I am Amara.’ She spoke slow and soft. ‘Good day to you, master gardener.’ She spoke with respect and Shinobu felt the glimmer of importance he hadn’t felt in some time.

‘Good day to you, swordmaster,’ said Shinobu. ‘Are you well?’

‘Mmm,’ said Amara. ‘The court keeps me busy.’ She stroked her sword’s hilt almost affectionately.

She moved further into the garden. ‘There has been a great deal of fighting nearby. Many killed, by all manner of weapons of death.’

‘I am aware,’ said Shinobu. ‘I’ve reported the conflict at the Fifth Celestial Imperator’s Third Peace Garden.’

She nodded sagely. She moved further in, now by the firepit. Her eyes flicked this way and that, looking at every detail she could find. For a moment, she stared at some markings near the sand garden, then directly up at Shinobu.

Shinobu wrung his paws as dry as he could. ‘Refreshment?’

‘Thank you,’ said Amara. She remained standing as Shinobu brewed the tea. The moment Amara peered through the frosted glass window into the shack, he spooned some harmony into the pot and served.

Shinobu half-expected the cup of tea dwarfed in Amara’s hand to shatter. But she drank the tea quietly.

‘So, no… survivors?’ said Amara.

‘None that I saw,’ said Shinobu.

Amara placed the cup down and strode with sudden speed, circling the caretaker’s shack. ‘Master Hui reported seeing a stranger nearby.’

‘Master Hui’s sight has faded in his age.’ Shinobu swallowed and laughed nervously. ‘These gardens are so busy this time of year. The Twenty-Sixth Imperator’s villa nearby is surprisingly popular.’

Amara finished circling. ‘Mmm,’ she said and smacked her teeth together. ‘Master gardener, this is such a pleasant setting you oversee here.’

‘Thank you?’ said Shinobu. He cleared his throat. ‘It’s my duty to cultivate the gardens for the Imperator and Ukyo’s peoples.’

‘Duty, yes,’ said Amara. She lazily drifted towards the exit. ‘Mmm. And it’s your duty to report anyone suspicious. We must protect the court.’

She looked up at the topiary figures near the entrance to the garden – Ophella the Revered, two-headed chelonian, equine Augusta the Thunderer and the golden and black striped Sujira the Steadfast.

‘Victorious may the Emerald Masters be,’ she said and vanished into the shadows of the hedgeways.

* * *

‘What did you do, before the fighting?’ Shinobu asked Nao.

Nao winced as he dragged the rake slowly over the sand garden, methodically around and around the river rock. The sand likely offered little resistance, but Nao’s injuries were numerous.

‘I cooked and served for Kotai and his friends.’

‘But why did you fight?’

‘They told me they needed me.’

‘But why?’

‘The Imperator grinds us down every day,’ said Nao. ‘Seeds in a pestle and mortar.’

‘The Celestial Imperator really isn’t doing much of anything, sitting around gorged all day.’

Nao’s wispy brows furrowed as if he was trying to remember exact wording. ‘So you know as well? The Emerald Masters puppet-string Ukyo. As far back as when genteels started to think for themselves.’

Shinobu snapped, ‘You’re so young, how do you know anything?’

‘Kill the Imperator and someone else could lead Ukyo. Kick the Emerald Masters out of power.’

Shinobu baulked. ‘Ha! I should know. I’ve been in the thick of courtly power. Nobody jumps without the Emerald Masters deliberating how high.’

‘We could be out from under their yoke,’ said Nao. ‘That’s what Kotai says, I think.’

‘Are you sure your words just aren’t someone else’s?’ said Shinobu.

Nao huffed. ‘Those with power force the commons to labour. We live, we work, we die, all at their behest. The mines eat at us, generation after generation.’

That sounds like my life, Shinobu didn’t say out loud. Consigned to work until I die. What he did say was, ‘I’m not sure all the killing is really helping. Bodies and entrails everywhere. Aren’t you living, fighting, dying for someone else? Is savagery really the way?’

‘Kotai says to strike down those in power. Help the commons.’

‘Then what?’ said Shinobu. ‘A new leader?’

‘Something new. A new leader, a new…’

‘Imperator?’ said Shinobu. ‘We’ve had plenty of those. Right back to the first one from the outlands.’

‘We’ve got to fight against those grinding us down.’

‘Didn’t you say that already?’ Shinobu stared into his teacup and stirred his spoon around. ‘I should just turn you in. Much neater.’

Nao looked ponderous. He rubbed his eyes, as if trying to wake from a dream.

Shinobu threw more sticks and dried brush into the firepit. He stirred the bubbling soup. ‘I used to be part of the court. I had money. I shipped equipment for the mines.’

‘The mines that killed my father?’ said Nao.

Shinobu was silent for several moments. ‘Probably.’

Nao stepped towards Shinobu – anger in his face. He stumbled after a few steps, then rested on the rake and slid down.

Shinobu took his hand off the trowel behind his back.

‘It was all the same. I give you a favour, you give me a favour. Today’s trend is purple silk, tomorrow’s trend is massive shoulder pads. I was a good little courtier.’

‘Why aren’t you there now?’ said Nao.

‘This is… simpler,’ said Shinobu.

‘You sound unsure,’ said Nao.

‘This… was simpler. Now it’s not.’

‘So, go on, turn me over.’

Shinobu ladled soup into two wooden bowls. ‘I’m a genteel! I’m no murderer’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘And turning you over wouldn’t help even me.’

* * *

Shinobu returned from working nearby gardens. He found Nao circling the topiary, long-handled shears in both hands. Nao stepped forward, cut, cut, Ophella lost several toes, a knee, a hand. The two long-necked heads cast their shadow over Nao.

‘Idiot!’ snarled Shinobu. ‘That’s going to give me trouble.’

‘Genteels are dying! What’s all this neat and clean for?’

‘I like the beauty and peace here,’ said Shinobu. But did he like the lie of quietude?

He thought he wanted back into the court, somewhere safe and comfortable. But maybe what he truly wanted was escape from drudgery and scrutiny. What the rebels wanted seemed like a kind of freedom. Was Nao more free than Shinobu?

Nao cleared his throat. ‘I killed someone. Three genteels. I watched their eyes close as they bled out in front of me.’ He put his face in his hands. ‘What’s it all for, if all this liberation is just more dying? Butchered with these hands!’

He held out bloody palms from reopening cuts. He looked sallow.

Shinobu said, ‘There was a swordmaster here the other day. She may have alerted the long-bills already.’

‘We stole something,’ said Nao. ‘From the Observation Sphere. Before the others died. Something the Emerald Masters want back. I know what they’re looking for.’

Shinobu nodded. He studied his caretaker’s yard carefully and pondered. ‘Then let’s be prepared for what comes next.’

A few strides into the Second Celestial Imperator’s Seventh Pond Garden, Shinobu stopped suddenly and placed one hand firmly on the bundle of rags Nao clutched to his chest.

Nao gave a startled grunt.

Shinobu knew every inch of his garden. The manicured grass. The topiary forms of the Emerald Masters, clipped to perfection every few days. The dirt-free stones of the caretaker’s shack. The sand garden he used to keep himself from going mad. The fish pond he cleared with a fine-meshed net.

The pebbled path to the pond was wet. There were splashes by the victory shrine. It hadn’t rained in weeks. Patches of lawn near the pond looked depressed, crushed under a heavy weight, but the blades of grass rose their heads one by one in a gentle breeze.

Under the clear pond water, Shinobu saw a dark shape, a ripple, a trickle of bubbles, then a broad nose. A cold sweat broke out beneath his cloak.

‘What is it?’ hissed Nao.

Amara’s purple-black form rose with a spray of water from her nose.

‘Er… wait now,’ said Shinobu. ‘Let’s not be hasty.’

A perilous glint sparkled in Amara’s eyes as they flicked back and forth between Shinobu and Nao. ‘Mmm.’

Nao’s eyes bulged and his jaw dropped open. Amara’s form continued to emerge slowly, hand on her sword hilt.

‘It’s not what it looks like,’ said Shinobu.

A slow shiiiiink as Amara drew the sword.

‘No, wait… please wait?’

‘What do we do?’ whispered Nao with urgency.

Amara rose to full height. She opened her mouth wide and the last of the water dropped from her skin. She took one steady step forward, then barrelled towards them.

Shinobu had prepared for this moment, but wasn’t ready for the speed at which Amara now closed upon them. He wasn’t a fighter, and the swordmaster was coming.

He shoved Nao hard and ran.

He fled to the topiary Augusta. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Amara advancing on the prone Nao. She was tutting and shaking her head sadly. ‘Is the lens intact?’ he heard her ask Nao. ‘Give it here.’

Shinobu plunged his hand into the shrubs and drew out a long sword with irregular notches along one edge – the same sword that had once impaled a severed head in the peace garden.

His reflection in the blade’s metal stared out at him before it was lost to moisture from his heavy breathing.

He saw Amara strike at the defenceless barrow with her blade, lopping off several of Nao’s fingers. He watched aghast as the bloodied appendages dropped onto the grass.

His hackles prickled and something burnt in him, furious as the sun. Shinobu yipped and hurled himself at Amara, thrusting out as he went. The sword skimmed off her rough hide. Amara twisted and swung her sword out in a graceful arc. He felt a burn at his ear and saw something spin away into the hedges.

The swordmaster flared her nostrils. She threw a flurry of blows at him. Spittle flicked up into the air as Shinobu threw himself backwards again and again, his chest heaving from the effort. Tufts of fur floated to the ground.

She kept coming.

Shinobu gripped the blade and took a swordmaster stance – any one of those would do surely?

Blood dripped into his eye.

Amara was again upon him. She lunged and slashed. Shinobu brandished his sword and both blades crashed into each other. The swordmaster’s strength catapulted Shinobu’s sword from his hand, which flew through the glass window of the caretaker’s shack.

Shinobu couldn’t feel his hand.

He glimpsed Nao, still alive, and leaving a grizzly trail as he crawled to the sand garden.

There was a CRACK and a rustle as the already weakened topiary Ophella slid in two and crashed down on Shinobu and the swordmaster.

Shinobu dragged himself out as the pinned swordmaster thrashed about. He stepped away and caught his breath.

Amara freed herself from the dissected topiary and lined up her attack on Shinobu. She balanced the sword in one hand and eyed him cautiously. ‘Traitor, mutt,’ she said.

As he ran again, Shinobu yelled over his shoulder, ‘Not me! No!’

The swordmaster’s gait pounded hot on his heels. At the woodshed, Shinobu kicked a stack of logs and they cascaded downwards into Amara’s path. She halted, but not fast enough. Her sword flashed, effortlessly slicing through a log or two, but the rest tumbled in her way and she staggered.

He reached the garden with his sand art whorls and spirals, leapt to the other side of the sand and picked up his wood-handled rake and spun.

Amara stepped back with one foot, bent her other knee and charged once more. As she reached the sand garden, her head cocked violently to one side – Nao had thrown a rock. It wasn’t enough to do much damage, though there was trickle of blood. It was enough, however, to distract Amara from seeing Shinobu’s poorly laid trap. Amara stepped onto a sand-covered hessian sack. Her momentum and weight were too much to stop what happened next. She trumpeted in surprise. Her sword fell as she tried to steady herself but she crashed face first into the ditch Shinobu had dug.

‘Mmm,’ she grunted.

Before she could gather her senses, Shinobu rushed at her with the rake and struck. Amara’s injuries steeped scarlet through her clothes. Shinobu had never hit anyone in violence before. He foamed at the mouth and felt light-headed.

‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Stop. I yield.’ One eye was bloody and swollen shut.

Shinobu stood poised above Amara, bloody rake ready to strike again. ‘You… yield?’

Nao pulled himself near Amara’s fallen sword.

‘Stay put, swordmaster,’ said Shinobu.

Amara rolled to one side and held herself up on one arm. ‘Can’t breathe,’ she panted. ‘Sand.’

Nao barely managed to drag himself over to Shinobu. ‘Finish her.’ He winced and offered the broad-bladed sword. ‘One strike.’

Shinobu looked at the sword, to Amara, then to the sword again. ‘You’ve killed before, you do it.’

‘I can barely lift the sword,’ said Nao.

‘And you want me to kill a swordmaster of the court?’

‘She’s death,’ said Nao. ‘She thinks by killing us, the Imperator’s enemies, she’s keeping order.’

‘I’m not the Imperator’s enemy! I’m just a gardener!’

Nao looked inside the bundle he held. Gold and smoky glass bulged through the rags.

‘I keep order. I take orders to kill,’ said Amara in a silky voice. ‘Again and again. Upstarts. Anarchists. Murderers.’ She began to grunt in a strange way that took Shinobu a few moments to realise was laughter. ‘That’s all you are. Not “liberators”.’

‘Quiet,’ said Shinobu, his breathing becoming rapid. ‘Let me think.’

Amara fell silent and glared at him.

Shinobu discarded the rake. He reached for the sword.

Amara raised a hand to ward off the blow, but Shinobu shifted sideways. He lashed out, catching her chest. A spurt of blood splashed onto Shinobu’s cream-brown fur. Bile formed at the back of his throat.

Amara crumpled and the sand around her stained further.

‘Sorry… so sorry,’ said Shinobu.

‘Let me have the boy, the lens,’ said Amara weakly. ‘We’ll talk no more of this.’

‘Kill her,’ whispered Nao. Under his coarse brown hair, Nao’s skin was pale.

‘I can’t,’ said Shinobu. He faced Amara. ‘Sorry, Amara. I usually take tea with Master Hui about now. If you don’t die before then, I’m sure he’ll find you, get you help.’

‘Hui is dead, ’ said Amara. ‘I couldn’t find his head after the… struggle.’

Shinobu should have felt upset, but at least he wouldn’t have to look at that stupid beard anymore.

Amara muttered a little bitterly, ‘I thought he was hiding the rebel.’

The nearby hedges shivered and the last of Shinobu’s sand garden whorls and spirals disintegrated in the wind. ‘You and your friends. They stole a lens?’ he asked.

‘From an Observation Sphere,’ said Nao. He swayed unsteadily.

‘Why? What’s it for?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nao. ‘For the Emerald Masters?’

Shinobu took a step back. ‘Does it still work? The Observation Sphere?’

‘Not without a lens?’ said Nao.

A panel of glass crashed down from the broken window. Shinobu contemplated his garden, his diminished domain.

‘So,’ Shinobu licked his lips, ‘you’re telling me that no-one is watching us?’

Amara and Nao shook their heads, puzzled.

‘Nobody? No-one at all?’

Shinobu rubbed at his eyes, and the blur lifted. Drool seeped from his mouth. He felt a growl build up deep within, leaned in close, and raised the sword.

In the sigh of a gentle breeze, red mist rained onto the lone, pale flower of the topiary.