Laura Rowland - Black Lotus

Now, as the priests seized Midori and marched her down the tunnel, she rued her naïveté. Surely she would pay for it with her life.

Huddled in her palanquin, Reiko heard shouts and clashing blades from the battle raging outside. Then the world shifted, and she was standing alone inside Minister Fugatami’s house, where the minister and Hiroko lay dead in their blood-spattered chamber. Reiko fled through empty rooms and corridors, seeking a door that didn’t exist, fleeing an unknown danger. She came to a window and wrenched at the bars that covered it.

“Help!” she called.

Outside, in a garden eerily still in the gray dawn, stood Haru. She held a flaming torch.

“Haru, let me out!” Reiko pleaded.

But the girl, whose face wore a look of blind, intense concentration, didn’t seem to notice her. Haru raised the torch, and fire exploded around Reiko. She screamed.

The sound of her own voice started her awake. She sat up in bed, her heart thudding. Now she recognized her own chamber, its windows pale with morning light. An afternoon, evening, and night had passed since the attack in Nihonbashi, but she again experienced the breathlessness and tremors of a delayed reaction that had set in after she’d arrived home.

Because her palanquin bearers had all perished in the battle, Reiko had ridden back to Edo Castle on a horse that had belonged to one of Sano’s dead retainers, while Sano held the reins and rode beside her. She’d thought herself unaffected by the attack, until she and Sano were seated in the parlor of their mansion and she tried to discuss what had just happened.

“Surely now you must realize how dangerous and evil the Black Lotus is,” she said.

“Yes, I know the sect is evil,” Sano said. His matter-of-fact tone echoed hers, though he watched her with concern. “But so is Haru.”

“Then you still mean to leave her in jail, awaiting her trial?” Reiko said, dismayed.

“I believe that the arson and murders were Haru’s contribution to the Black Lotus’s scheme, whatever it is,” Sano said. “But let’s not talk about this while you’re upset.”

“I’m fine,” Reiko said, but a sudden onrush of tears contradicted her claim. "You can’t condemn Haru to death when there’s a chance that she’s innocent and blaming her could leave the real killers free to do whatever they please!”

Sano had refused to continue the discussion, and insisted that Reiko go to bed. Toward dawn, she’d fallen into a restless sleep that had brought the nightmare. Now she drew deep breaths, willing away emotion. She couldn’t bring the Black Lotus to justice unless she pulled herself together.

She tried to forget her dream about Haru, and everything it implied.

Reiko washed, dressed, and forced herself to swallow some tea and rice gruel. She fed Masahiro, then went to the palace. She found Lady Keisho-in in her chambers in the Large Interior, eating her morning meal.

“I’ve come to see Midori,” Reiko said.

“She’s not here.” Slurping fish broth, Lady Keisho-in looked surprised. “I thought she was at your house.”

“Not this time,” Reiko said. “I haven’t seen her since the night before last.”

“Well, she told me she had important business, so I gave her a holiday,” Keisho-in said. “She left here some days ago, early in the morning before I was up.” Keisho-in turned to her attendants. “Midori-chan hasn’t come back at all, has she?”

The women shook their heads. Keisho-in said in peevish disapproval, “I didn’t mean for her to be gone so long, and a young lady has no business staying out all night. Midori-chan is probably gallivanting in town with disreputable folk. If you find her, tell her she must return at once.”

“I will,” Reiko said as anxiety stole through her. Midori wasn’t the kind of girl who ran wild. Her extended absence boded no good.

After bidding Keisho-in farewell, Reiko went home and ordered a manservant to find out whether Midori had reentered the castle and might be somewhere inside. Reiko sent another servant to Lord Niu’s estate in the daimyo district to see if Midori had stopped there to visit her family. Within an hour, Reiko received news that the gate sentries recalled Midori leaving, but she hadn’t returned. She wasn’t at her family’s house, and Reiko doubted that Midori had anywhere else to stay. A dreadful suspicion burgeoned in Reiko’s mind.

Then, as she paced in her chamber, oblivious to the sight of Masahiro and his nurses playing in the sunny garden outside her window, she caught sight of a scrap of paper lying on the floor. The wind must have blown it off her desk. Absently, Reiko picked up the paper, and the words she read on it turned suspicion to terrible reality.

Midori had broken her promise and gone to the Black Lotus Temple.

After seeing what the Black Lotus had done to Haru, after the Fugatami murders and the attack by the priests, Reiko knew the sect had no mercy. What if Midori had been caught spying at the temple? The sect would surely kill her. Reiko dreaded telling Sano what had happened, but she must.

She hurried to his office, interrupting him in a meeting with Hirata and several detectives. “Please excuse my intrusion, but it’s an emergency,” she said, bowing to Sano.

Sano dismissed the detectives, but asked Hirata to stay. “What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.

Reiko knelt and poured out the whole story of Midori’s plan to spy on the temple and the note that Reiko had just found. She watched Sano’s face reflect incredulity, then outrage.

“You brought Midori into a murder investigation?” he demanded. “You’ve done many foolish things during this case, but this is the worst!”

“No, I didn’t. Midori begged to help,” Reiko defended herself as Hirata stared at her in openmouthed horror. “I told her not to go, but she went anyway.”

Shaking his head, Sano smacked his palms down hard on his desk.

“You must have given her the idea to go. She wouldn’t have thought of it herself. This is all your fault. Midori’s only fault is her ill-conceived loyalty to you.”

Reiko didn’t want to appear craven by making excuses, but neither could she let Sano misinterpret the situation and think the worst of her. She said, “I tried to talk Midori out of spying-”

“But you failed,” Sano interrupted, rising as he glared at her. “Or perhaps you didn’t really try. Perhaps you wanted to take advantage of your innocent, helpless friend and further your mistaken defense of Haru.”

His words battered Reiko like blows. How she wished she could go back in time and restrain Midori from leaving by physical force instead of ineffectual words. Wretched, she gazed up at Sano. “All right, I’m sorry for whatever I did wrong.” She felt the trembling and tears beginning again. “Now, please help me rescue Midori before it’s too late!”

Hirata sat listening to Sano and Reiko argue, but he hadn’t really heard anything after Reiko’s announcement that Midori had gone to the Black Lotus Temple and not returned. A torrent of emotions had focused his thoughts upon things he’d forgotten or ignored.

He remembered how Midori had been a loyal friend to him, and how the world had always seemed brighter and sweeter whenever he was with her. He remembered a rainy evening spent in her company, when he’d thought how happy he would be to have her as his wife. Hirata experienced a powerful surge of tenderness toward Midori.

Then he recalled his recent treatment of her. Caught up in the excitement of high society, he’d spared her little time. He thought of her hovering dejectedly on the fringes of his life, and shame filled him. Now he understood why Midori had changed: She’d been desperately trying to recapture his attention. Horror overwhelmed him as he wondered if she’d decided to be a detective and spy on the Black Lotus Temple so he would take new notice of her. Could he be responsible for whatever trouble Midori had gotten herself into? His mind echoed with stories he’d heard at police headquarters-tales of husbands, wives, and children swallowed up by the Black Lotus and never seen again. He didn’t quite understand why he was so upset by Midori’s disappearance, but he knew he had to do something.