Laura Rowland - The Iris Fan

“Are you afraid?” Ienobu sounded disappointed by Manabe’s lack of faith in him.

“Yes.” Manabe wasn’t afraid for himself; his fear was all for Ienobu. If the shogun came to believe that Ienobu had kidnapped and imprisoned Yoshisato and faked his death, it would be the beginning of the end of Ienobu. Manabe would gladly die alongside Ienobu if it came to that, but he desperately hoped it wouldn’t. “Yoshisato isn’t the only problem. Yanagisawa has the shogun half convinced that you tried to have him assassinated.”

Manabe gave the words an inflection that asked, Did you? He’d been Ienobu’s confidant for a lifetime, but he didn’t know whether Ienobu had engineered the attack on the shogun. He was Ienobu’s right hand, but Ienobu had many hands. Ienobu wasn’t the outcast, helpless child anymore. He’d used his wits, his position in the Tokugawa clan, and his peculiar quality to gain friends and control them. Two of those friends were Madam Chizuru and Lady Nobuko, both suspects in the stabbing.

“What do you think?” Ienobu challenged. “Are you half convinced that I’m guilty?”

More than half, Manabe thought. He was afraid to know for sure. He would willingly carry most burdens Ienobu placed on him, but he didn’t want the attempted murder of the shogun on his conscience. That was too extreme a violation of Bushido. “It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what the shogun believes. You should do something to counteract Yanagisawa and Yoshisato.”

Screams interrupted the conversation. Ienobu’s two-year-old son toddled into the room, stamping his little feet as he cried. Ienobu’s wife hurried after the child and picked him up.

“Can’t he ever be quiet?” Ienobu demanded.

“He’s just a baby,” his wife said apologetically.

Ienobu jabbed his crooked finger in the child’s face. “You’d better learn to discipline yourself.” The child shrank from him and cried harder. “You’re going to be shogun after me.”

His wife carried the screaming child out of the room. Ienobu smiled and said, “I have a bet with myself that Yanagisawa and Yoshisato will be taken care of for me.” He tilted his gaze toward the ceiling. “The gods want me to be shogun.”

Manabe experienced a familiar discomfort in his gut. “Not that again.”

“Don’t act like it’s nonsense. What else can explain the money that regularly appears on my doorstep?”

“The gods leave you gold coins in dirty sacks?”

“You couldn’t prove otherwise.”

Manabe had kept watch outside the house for many nights. On some mornings he’d found a sack of gold beside him with no idea how it had gotten there. “But I still think the money was left by a human.” It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in mysterious cosmic forces; he just didn’t like the idea of them meddling with Ienobu. Cosmic forces were dangerous.

“What about the other things that have happened?” Ienobu demanded.

The thought of those other things worsened the discomfort in Manabe’s gut. They were much more serious than gold magically appearing. “Coincidences.”

“They’re too good to be coincidences. They’re signs that the gods are on my side and my plans will be successful.”

Manabe’s gut churned. Acid burned up to his heart. He was as leery of those plans as he was of cosmic forces, but there was no winning this argument with Ienobu. He tried a different tactic. “You wouldn’t want the gods to think you’ve grown lazy and dependent on them. They may decide to fulfill someone else’s destiny instead. Do something about Yanagisawa and Yoshisato. And Sano. He’s probably halfway toward proving you tried to assassinate the shogun.” Manabe stated his firm belief: “The cosmic forces help those who help themselves.”

Ienobu said with a sly smile, “Would you like to make a bet with me?”

“What kind of bet?” Manabe didn’t like gambling.

“By tomorrow the tide will turn in my favor without my having to do anything.”

Manabe could only nod. He realized that he’d made the riskiest bet of all forty-seven years ago, when he’d cast his lot with Ienobu.

At the palace, the search for evidence and witnesses in the Large Interior continued. Masahiro ransacked chambers while Sano and Detective Marume questioned the women. So far none had seen or heard, or admitted to seeing or hearing, anything unusual during or immediately before or after the attack on the shogun. Sano had just finished another fruitless interview when a squadron of soldiers marched into the Large Interior.

“Chamberlain Yanagisawa sent us to help you with your investigation,” said the leader, a stiff-necked lieutenant named Haneda.

Sano saw that Yanagisawa’s help was a mixed blessing. “Come with me.” He herded the soldiers out of the Large Interior, to the wide corridor in the public part of the palace. “Now undress.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

The men reluctantly stripped while clerks, officials, and servants passing along the corridor gawked. All except one man unwound their loincloths. Sano gave him a stern look. As he peeled away the long white strip of fabric, out fell a small ceramic jar.

Sano picked up the jar and uncorked it. Inside was fresh red blood, probably from a horse. He asked the naked soldiers, “Where were you planning to sprinkle this?” They were silent, nervous. Sano didn’t waste his anger on them; they were only following orders from Yanagisawa. After they’d dressed, he took them back to the Large Interior and told Marume and Masahiro, “These are Yanagisawa’s men. They’ll help you move things around. Keep an eye on them, and search them before they leave. I’m going to talk to Lord Ienobu’s people.”

Leaving the Large Interior, he passed Madam Chizuru’s chamber. The old woman peeked out past the guard stationed by her door and beckoned Sano. When he entered the cramped, cluttered room, she stood with her hands clasped inside the sleeves of her gray kimono and said in a low, unsteady voice, “I want to confess.”

It was so unexpected that Sano tilted his head and frowned.

“Lord Ienobu told me to stab the shogun,” Madam Chizuru said.

Sano’s heart gave a huge, thumping leap. This was the answer to his prayers-a confession that not only solved the crime but incriminated Lord Ienobu.

It seemed too good to be true.

His instincts sent out a warning that sliced through his elation like a knife through a sail. He looked closely at Madam Chizuru. “Why are you confessing?”

Head bowed, she gazed at the floor. She gulped several breaths, then spoke in a rush. “Because I’m guilty.”

Suspicion bred in Sano. “That’s not what you said yesterday.”

“Yesterday … I lied.”

Sano thought she’d sounded more convincing then than she did now. “What changed your mind?”

Madam Chizuru lifted her head. Her eyes were rimmed with red. “I–I don’t want it on my conscience any longer.” Oddly, she also seemed more afraid that he wouldn’t believe her.

“Very well,” Sano said, still dubious. “Tell me what happened that night.”

“I waited in my room until everybody was asleep.” Now Madam Chizuru spoke too fast, too fluently, as if her speech were rehearsed. “Then I tucked the iron fan under my sash.” She pantomimed. “Then I-”

“Wait,” Sano said. “Where was the fan?” She responded with a worried, uncomprehending frown. “I mean, where did you keep it?”

Madam Chizuru glanced uncertainly around the room. “There.” She pointed at a shelf. “Behind those ledgers.”

“So you took the fan from behind the ledgers. What next?”

“I tiptoed through the palace.”