Jay Read online

  Darkness was spreading over the village as Jay slipped into the woods. It was times like these he was really glad not to be his friend Zane. A white ninja robe like he wore made it very hard to be stealthy, unless you were in a snowfield. Dark blue, on the other hand, was made just for the job.

  Of course, even with a dark ninja robe, the task was still difficult. Jay couldn’t make his appearance known to the skeletons, or he might discourage them from striking that night. That was why he was slipping as quietly as he could from tree to tree, trying to avoid the skeleton warriors. He needed to gather information, not rack up victories. Jay just hoped the skeletons liked to talk as much as he did.

  He spotted a point of light in the trees up ahead. Drawing closer, Jay could see it was a campfire. Although skeletons did not really feel warmth or cold, they were used to living in the underworld, which was a place of molten lava flows. Fire made them feel more at home.

  Jay scrambled farther up a nearby tree as quietly as he could. There were about two dozen skeletons down below, but he didn’t see Din anywhere. It was a larger group of warriors than would be needed to raid a village this size. But a raid wasn’t really what they had in mind, or so Jay believed.

  Of course, if I’m wrong, the town’s in a lot of trouble, the ninja said to himself. And so are Kai and I.

  He recognized two of the skeletons as Nuckal and Wyplash. They were having a conversation not too far from the tree Jay was hiding in.

  “We should have just gone in and taken what we wanted,” Wyplash growled. “Who cares how many guys they have in that village? We could have beaten them all.”

  Nuckal shrugged. “I thought the stuff was supposed to be in the woods? Hey, maybe it was and somebody stole it!”

  “Don’t be so dense,” Wyplash snapped. “Didn’t you see that the store fell down?”

  “Sure, I did,” said Nuckal. “But maybe he was using the crates with our stuff in it to keep the roof up, and when he went to move them, the building fell down.”

  Wyplash just glared at Nuckal.

  “Hey, it could happen,” Nuckal finished weakly.

  The two skeletons stared out into the dark woods for a while in silence. Then Nuckal said brightly, “Hey, maybe we should have shops in the underworld!”

  “Selling what?” asked Wyplash.

  “I don’t know. Lava boats, maybe, or skull polish … I hate it when my skull looks dull and dingy, don’t you?”

  Wyplash slapped Nuckal hard on the back. “You know, pal, I once heard this song all about how the head bone was connected to the neck bone.”

  “So?”

  Wyplash leaned in close, so he was skull-to-skull with Nuckal. “So if you keep making stupid comments like that, your head bone won’t be connected to your neck bone much longer. Got it?”

  Nuckal nodded rapidly.

  Jay decided he had heard enough. It was time to head back to the village. He almost started to climb down the tree when he spotted a pair of beady eyes staring right at him. They belonged to a red-tailed crow, a species known for its fierce protection of its territory, and its very loud screech. Jay glanced up. On the limb just above him was a large nest, no doubt belonging to the crow.

  “I was just leaving,” the ninja whispered. “Don’t mind me.”

  The crow took a step forward on the branch, then another.

  Jay glanced downward. Nuckal and Wyplash were still right underneath him. If the crow gave its cry, they’d definitely look up. Sure, they probably wouldn’t spot the ninja right away. But a screaming bird might attract enough attention that Jay would have a hard time escaping the camp.

  “Nice crow. Good crow,” Jay said under his breath. “Sweet, polite crow who isn’t going to get me killed.”

  The crow’s beak snapped open, as if it were getting ready to speak. “Sssshhh!” Jay said. “You’ll wake the neighbors!”

  The ninja heard a soft peep from above him. Glancing up, he saw the quizzical face of a baby crow staring down at him from the nest. This just gets better and better, thought Jay.

  He shifted slightly on the branch. Maybe if he leaped to another limb fast enough, the crow would relax. Jay was just about to jump when he noticed something was in his pocket. Fishing in with his hand, he discovered it was the piece of bread he had taken from dinner the night before.

  Smiling, he held the bread out to the mother crow. “See? Here’s dinner for you and the kid. And remember, don’t talk with your mouth full … please.”

  The crow pecked at the piece of bread. It fell from Jay’s hand, tumbling toward the ground, and finally landed at Nuckal’s bony feet. The skeleton bent over and picked it up, then looked up toward the tree.

  “Wow,” said Nuckal. “Dinner just fell from the sky. I didn’t know dinner could do that.”

  “It can’t,” said Wyplash, his eyes narrowing. “Could be that someone is in the tree, spying on us.”

  There was a rustle in the branches and a loud screech. An instant later, the mother crow came swooping down at Nuckal. Startled, the skeleton dropped the piece of bread. The bird caught it in her beak and flew back up into the branches.

  “Ha! There’s your spy,” laughed Nuckal. “It’s just a hungry crow.”

  “I guess,” Wyplash said. “All right, then, let’s get ready. It’s almost time to move out.”

  The two skeletons turned and headed back for the center of the camp. Neither noticed the blue-garbed ninja sneaking away into the night.

  Jay found Kai at the ruined shop. “Been busy?” Jay asked.

  “As only I can be,” replied Kai.

  Jay began rummaging through the ruins of Lee’s shop for some odds and ends. He eventually wound up with a metal box and an armful of wires, tools, and various pieces of metal.

  “What’s all that?” asked Kai.

  “I’m going to build a gadget,” answered Jay. “It will solve the mystery of who attacked Lee once and for all. Should be ready by morning. But we’d better get in position — the skeletons are on their way.”

  Jay was right. No sooner had he, Kai, Soon, and the village’s defenders gotten to their hiding places than the skeleton raiding party arrived. As the ninja had suspected, they didn’t launch an attack on the village. Instead, they headed for the ruined shop. One by one, they uncovered the crates of supplies and carried them back to the woods.

  “Shouldn’t we stop them? Shouldn’t we attack?” asked Soon.

  “No,” Jay answered. “They are just taking what they paid for, right? We should let them have it.”

  “But —”

  “Trust me,” Jay said with a smile. “Have I ever been wrong?”

  “Well, no,” Soon admitted. “But then I’ve only known you a few hours.”

  In less than ten minutes, the skeletons were done and had vanished back into the woods. They left one thing behind: Din, tied up, gagged, and sitting in the middle of the ruins. Jay and Kai untied him and brought him back to where the others were waiting.

  “Are you all right?” asked Soon.

  Din nodded. “They wanted to know how many men were defending the village, but I refused to answer. Once they saw I wouldn’t talk, they let me go. But why aren’t you going after them?”

  An explosion rocked the ground, followed by another and another. “That’s why,” Kai said, grinning. “One of the crates had blasting powder in it. That didn’t seem fair somehow, so … I made sure all the crates had some.”

  “So the skeletons are —?”

  “Takes more than that to stop skeletons,” Kai answered. “But they probably won’t be bothering anyone for a while.”

  “But we still don’t know who tried to hurt Lee,” said Soon.

  “You will in the morning,” Jay assured him. “Just get everyone involved in the case together. My little gadget will take care of the rest.”

  Just after dawn, Jay and Kai had all of the suspects assembled in the town square. Lu and Din both looked wary, Soon seemed angry and uncomfortable, and Mrs.
Park just looked tired. Jay cradled his newly built gadget in his arms and looked at them one by one.

  “We only came to this town to buy supplies,” he began. “But it turned out the general store business is a dangerous one around here. Mr. Lee is still recovering from having the roof fall in, and we came close to being jailed for attacking him. Somebody went through a lot of trouble to make it look like we did it, and that wasn’t very nice.”

  “So we started investigating,” said Kai. “You, Mrs. Park, almost went broke because of the shoddy goods Lee sold you. And you had access to red and blue string — the stuff you were using to make that scarf you were knitting — so planting the threads would have been easy for you.”

  Jay turned to Lu. “You lost money, too, but in a different way. You got robbed by bandits, thieves you were convinced Lee had supplied. You’d heard of the sensei, and Spinjitzu, and even his tea … which made me wonder if you might have met him once, maybe even been trained by him. If that was the case, you could have brought those beams down.”

  Kai spoke now, looking directly at Din. “You were in business with Lee, weren’t you? When you had some extra goods that could be sold to the skeletons, you left a mark for Lee on one of his trees — a little X. You left one the night he was attacked. That’s why he made an excuse to leave the house, so he could go meet you. And that’s why his records showed so much more coming in than was being sold. He was selling it to the skeletons. They came last night to collect when they didn’t find their crates in the usual spot.”

  Jay turned to Soon. “Your whole treasury was wiped out by Lee, in return for a measly twelve swords and shields. That was never going to be enough to defend this village — Lee knew it, and you knew it. But he didn’t want anyone driving the skeletons away, and you couldn’t say no to any offer of help. So you had to pay, no matter how much it hurt.”

  Kai gave a tight smile. “Four suspects, but only one of you caused the collapse. If we had more time, we could probably find the proof we need, but Jay here promised to settle this case by this morning. Good thing he’s an inventor.”

  For the first time, everyone paid attention to what Jay was holding. It looked like just a simple metal box with a few wires sticking out here and there. But Jay held it as if it was a golden treasure.

  “What is it?” asked Din.

  “It’s a truth-seeker,” said Jay. “I won’t bore you with how it works, but it can tell if you’re lying or not. To be honest, I already know which of you did this — the clue was in Lee’s last word before passing out — but this will give me all the proof I need. So … who wants to go first?”

  There was a beat of silence. Then Din broke and ran. Jay tossed the box to a startled Lu and ran after him.

  Din knew the town much better than Jay, and cut between buildings and leaped over fences in an effort to escape. Jay matched him move for move, then suddenly appeared to give up. Din looked over his shoulder to see the ninja stopped in the middle of the road, wiping his brow and breathing hard.

  Din smiled. Ninja, he decided, must be overrated. How else to explain one quitting halfway through a chase? The trader cut left and jogged past the ruins of Lee’s shop, heading for the woods. Then he staggered and almost fell at the sight of Kai stepping out from behind a tree up ahead.

  “Why waste energy chasing you when we already knew where you had to be going?” Kai laughed. “Now we can do this the hard way, or the harder way. Either one will end up with you on the ground.”

  Din raised his hands, ready to fight. “Go ahead. You have no evidence against me. So I ran — how do I know your friend’s stupid machine wouldn’t give off some strange rays or something? Maybe you just wanted to get rid of us so you could get away with something you did.”

  Kai faked a punch with his left and then struck with his right hand, but Din blocked it like an expert. “Strange rays … that’s a good idea … I’ll have to tell Jay about that one.”

  Din executed a perfect lotus dragon kick, but Kai was no longer standing where he had been. He had slipped under the kick and emerged behind his opponent. Kai tapped Din on the shoulder, and when Din turned, he used a sweep kick to knock him to the ground.

  “You’re good,” Kai said. “Fast, even. I can see how you brought those beams down. But where did you get the red and blue thread?”

  Din sprang to his feet and rained blows on Kai, who parried each one. Then the trader launched a leaping kick from a standing start, surprising Kai and bowling the ninja over.

  “So I did some business with the skeletons. Big deal,” Din growled. “They’re going to win anyway. Do you really think four ninja and an old man can stop an army?”

  Kai rolled at Din, crashing into his legs and bringing his foe down. They struggled in a tangle of arms and legs, neither one getting much advantage over the other. “Got it,” said Kai. “You were staying at the inn. All you had to do was borrow some thread from Mrs. Park’s knitting.”

  “Would you be quiet about the stupid thread?” Din snarled, pushing Kai off him.

  Suddenly, Jay was behind Din, grabbing his ankle and swinging him into a mound of soft earth. “My turn, Kai. Okay, let’s talk about something else, then. Mrs. Lee said her husband’s last conscious word was ‘traitor.’ She heard wrong, didn’t she? He didn’t say ‘traitor’ — he said ‘trader’ — meaning you. What happened? You wanted more money and Lee didn’t want to give it to you?”

  Din’s face changed into a mask of fury. “All right. Lee was a liar and a cheat. He deserved what he got, and more.”

  “You should have waited until the skeletons got their goods,” Jay said, starting to spin. “They weren’t too happy with you. How did you talk your way out of their clutches?”

  Din tried to stand up, but Jay had him pinned down. “Okay, okay! I told the skeletons they could get their goods, and get rid of you, plus I would give them their next load of supplies for free. So they let me go.”

  Jay turned into a Spinjitzu whirlwind. The force of the tornado lifted Din off the ground and spun him like a leaf in a storm until he was too dizzy to see straight. Then Jay let him drop unceremoniously into a mud puddle.

  Park, Soon, and Lu arrived then, with Jay’s gadget in tow. They looked at the ninja, now slowing his spinning to a stop, and then at the muddy and defeated Din. Soon and Lu grabbed Din by the arms and hauled him to his feet.

  “Don’t worry,” said Soon. “We’ll see that he’s jailed for his crimes.”

  “It’s too bad you didn’t get to use your truth-seeker,” said Lu. “I would have enjoyed seeing how it worked.”

  “I can show you now,” said Jay, smiling. “Kai, would you do the honors? Open it up.”

  Kai pried the box open. Inside there was nothing but a few colored wires, not connected to anything.

  “Wait a minute,” said Lu. “That’s pretty much an empty box. It couldn’t detect lies or anything else.”

  “Really?” said Jay. “Well, Din didn’t know that, so I guess it did its job after all.”

  A few hours later, the ninja had all the supplies they needed loaded on the mules. It would be a long walk back to camp, but they would have quite a story to tell once they got there. Still, Jay and Kai agreed that they wouldn’t mind at all if the next shopping trip was a little less eventful. Just in case it wasn’t, Jay decided to start figuring out how to build a real truth-seeker — you never knew when one might come in handy.

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  First printing, January 2012

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-76595-4

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