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Seasons of the Sword #0.5
Ghost: A Dream of Murder (Seasons of the Sword prequel)
Mochizuki Chiyome wants someone dead
And someone wants to serve herAt a banquet to celebrate a new alliance, Chiyome contemplates murder, and discovers a new servant.
This is the third of six Kunoichi Companion Tales, prequel stories to David Kudler’s historical novel A Kunoichi Tale (amzn.com/B01FPWWCNA)
White Robes — Mired in her own grief, Lady Mochizuki Chiyome encounters two young women who give her a whole new, much more interesting opportunity.Silk & Service — A young Takeda warrior meets a servant who is much more than she seems. Mieko and Masugu’s first encounter crosses love and death.Waiting for Kuniko — Mieko is waiting at a rendezvous behind enemy lines. In the rain. Without a hat. The person who comes up the road is the last person she expected to encounter.Wild Mushrooms — A Hōjō commander is delighted when two pretty young shrine maidens enter his camp on the evening before a battle. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been.Ghost — At a banquet to celebrate a new alliance, Chiyome contemplates murder, and discovers a new servant. Sometimes, appearances can be deceiving, and sometimes they reveal all.Schools for Talented Monthly Headmistresses’ Dinner — Three unique ladies get together once a month to share the joys and challenges involved teaching young ladies with very particular… talents. (Historical fantasy/crossover)Shining Boy — Plucked off of the streets of the capital, an orphan girl tries to figure out what story she’s wandered into.Blade — Toumi doesn’t want anyone messing with her business.Little Brother — Returning to the monastery turns out to be as hard as leaving it was.(Short historical fiction, appropriate for adult and teen readers — medieval Japanese history/Sengoku Jidai)The Way of the Warrior, Chiyome knew, teaches that one must fight without anger and kill without hatred. That a warrior must act always out of duty and never out of personal need. She knew this because her mother had taught her so. She knew it because her father and her husband had died acting so. She knew it because because her annoying servants Mieko and Kuniko always seemed to act so.
And yet, staring across the shōgun’s banquet hall, all that Mochizuki Chiyome could think was that she hated Uesugi Kenshin; that she wanted to cut off the far-too-pretty lord’s nose, wanted to strangle him, wanted to rip out his heart.
She considered it a great act of restraint to have remained sitting through the long feast commemorating the new alliance.
Lord Uesugi leered at her, and her restraint shattered.
“Mieko?”
“My lady?”
Chiyome leaned closer to the young woman who looked like nothing so much as a perfectly sweet companion for a perfectly harmless old lady. “If I were to ask you to kill that insufferable fop Uesugi, could you do it?”
And someone wants to serve herAt a banquet to celebrate a new alliance, Chiyome contemplates murder, and discovers a new servant.
This is the third of six Kunoichi Companion Tales, prequel stories to David Kudler’s historical novel A Kunoichi Tale (amzn.com/B01FPWWCNA)
White Robes — Mired in her own grief, Lady Mochizuki Chiyome encounters two young women who give her a whole new, much more interesting opportunity.Silk & Service — A young Takeda warrior meets a servant who is much more than she seems. Mieko and Masugu’s first encounter crosses love and death.Waiting for Kuniko — Mieko is waiting at a rendezvous behind enemy lines. In the rain. Without a hat. The person who comes up the road is the last person she expected to encounter.Wild Mushrooms — A Hōjō commander is delighted when two pretty young shrine maidens enter his camp on the evening before a battle. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been.Ghost — At a banquet to celebrate a new alliance, Chiyome contemplates murder, and discovers a new servant. Sometimes, appearances can be deceiving, and sometimes they reveal all.Schools for Talented Monthly Headmistresses’ Dinner — Three unique ladies get together once a month to share the joys and challenges involved teaching young ladies with very particular… talents. (Historical fantasy/crossover)Shining Boy — Plucked off of the streets of the capital, an orphan girl tries to figure out what story she’s wandered into.Blade — Toumi doesn’t want anyone messing with her business.Little Brother — Returning to the monastery turns out to be as hard as leaving it was.(Short historical fiction, appropriate for adult and teen readers — medieval Japanese history/Sengoku Jidai)The Way of the Warrior, Chiyome knew, teaches that one must fight without anger and kill without hatred. That a warrior must act always out of duty and never out of personal need. She knew this because her mother had taught her so. She knew it because her father and her husband had died acting so. She knew it because because her annoying servants Mieko and Kuniko always seemed to act so.
And yet, staring across the shōgun’s banquet hall, all that Mochizuki Chiyome could think was that she hated Uesugi Kenshin; that she wanted to cut off the far-too-pretty lord’s nose, wanted to strangle him, wanted to rip out his heart.
She considered it a great act of restraint to have remained sitting through the long feast commemorating the new alliance.
Lord Uesugi leered at her, and her restraint shattered.
“Mieko?”
“My lady?”
Chiyome leaned closer to the young woman who looked like nothing so much as a perfectly sweet companion for a perfectly harmless old lady. “If I were to ask you to kill that insufferable fop Uesugi, could you do it?”
38 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 15, 2021
About the author
David Kudler
60 books190 followersDavid Kudler writes about people who refuse to stay small.
His multi-award-winning Seasons of the Sword series follows Risuko, a teenage girl pulled into the brutal beauty of sixteenth-century Japan — beginning with Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale and continuing through Bright Eyes, Kano and Murasaki.
When he's not writing, he runs Stillpoint Digital Press, producing print, ebook, and audiobook editions across genres from philosophy and poetry to memoir and romance.
He previously served as managing editor for the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, shepherding into print Pathways to Bliss, Myths of Light, Asian Journals, and the first revised edition of The Hero with a Thousand Faces since the author's death — along with a hundred-plus other titles in print, audio, and video.
He lives just north of the Golden Gate Bridge with his wife, director and author Maura Vaughn, their wordsmith daughters, and a stubbornly non-literary cat.
His multi-award-winning Seasons of the Sword series follows Risuko, a teenage girl pulled into the brutal beauty of sixteenth-century Japan — beginning with Risuko: A Kunoichi Tale and continuing through Bright Eyes, Kano and Murasaki.
When he's not writing, he runs Stillpoint Digital Press, producing print, ebook, and audiobook editions across genres from philosophy and poetry to memoir and romance.
He previously served as managing editor for the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, shepherding into print Pathways to Bliss, Myths of Light, Asian Journals, and the first revised edition of The Hero with a Thousand Faces since the author's death — along with a hundred-plus other titles in print, audio, and video.
He lives just north of the Golden Gate Bridge with his wife, director and author Maura Vaughn, their wordsmith daughters, and a stubbornly non-literary cat.
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