Laura Rowland - The Iris Fan

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Yanagisawa’s compound was secured with extra troops stationed outside the walls. Sano handed over his swords to the guard who frisked him. Inside the mansion, Sano found Yanagisawa huddled in his office with his top retainers, conversing in low, agitated tones. When Yanagisawa saw Sano at the door, he dismissed his retainers. They departed; he stood. The look he gave Sano could have sliced through stone.

“We had a deal,” he said, “and you stabbed me in the back.”

“Our deal was to work together to prove that Lord Ienobu is responsible for the attack on the shogun,” Sano said. “I’m not the one who broke it.”

“I held up my end of the bargain,” Yanagisawa said. “I gave you the proof.”

“Madam Chizuru’s confession wasn’t proof. It was fraud!” Sano was exasperated because Yanagisawa didn’t seem to know, or care about, the difference.

Yanagisawa’s hostile eyes accused Sano of stupidity. “Well, you should have gone along with it. Now look what you’ve done! You’ve handed the dictatorship to Lord Ienobu!”

Sano badly regretted it, but he said, “It’s not my fault he’s the shogun’s heir again and Yoshisato is disowned.” How infuriating that Yanagisawa should put the blame on him! “If you hadn’t played your trick, and wasted my time on a false confession, maybe I would have found real proof that Ienobu is guilty. Maybe he would be put to death instead of getting ready to inherit the regime.”

“‘Maybe, maybe,’” Yanagisawa mocked. “What’s certain is that Lord Ienobu is on top again, and see where your lofty principles have gotten you? You’re stuck with me, down here in the mud.”

As much as these facts distressed Sano, he couldn’t deny them. “Our deal is still on, if you’re willing.”

“Let bygones be bygones?” Quizzical humor edged into Yanagisawa’s cruel smile. “Why didn’t you make a deal with Lord Ienobu? He must be grateful to you for saving him. Grateful enough to keep you alive in exchange for helping him get rid of his enemies.”

Sano knew how astute Yanagisawa was, but he was nonetheless surprised that Yanagisawa had read the situation so well. Yanagisawa saw his surprise and said, “So Lord Ienobu did offer you a deal. You turned it down. Why not go with him instead of me?”

He sounded honestly puzzled. He had no idea that one reason was Yoshisato. Sano saw Yoshisato as a counterweight to Yanagisawa’s villainy. Lord Ienobu had no such redeeming factor. Sano said, “Just be satisfied that I won’t be joining Lord Ienobu’s attack on you.” Yanagisawa didn’t need to know that Sano hoped to drive a wedge between him and his son.

“How can I be sure you won’t stab me in the back again?”

The price of a rift in their alliance was much higher now, with the shogun weakening by the moment and Lord Ienobu set to claim the dictatorship. Sano said, “You have my word.”

“You’ve shown me that your word is worthless. I want collateral.”

“Squeeze blood out of a turnip. I’ve nothing to my name but a little house and a few coins. Take it all if you want.”

A sly smile leavened Yanagisawa’s expression. “Oh, you have something much more valuable. Your son Masahiro.”

Sano frowned, disturbed and wary. “What do you want with Masahiro?”

“He’s of marriageable age. So is my daughter Kikuko. We’ll wed them to each other.”

Intermarriage was the traditional method by which samurai clans cemented their alliances. Intermarriage between hostile clans made the bride and groom, and any children they had, hostages to each clan’s good behavior. Intermarriage was a completely unreasonable, shocking, and outrageous demand for Yanagisawa to make on Sano.

“No!” Sano was horrified, and not just by the idea of a legal, familial, entrapping bond with Yanagisawa, his ally not by choice and his enemy these twenty years. Nor was it because Reiko would hate the idea or because Masahiro wanted to marry Taeko. “Your daughter tried to drown Masahiro when he was a child! Your wife told her to do it.”

“That was a long time ago.” Yanagisawa sounded annoyed that Sano would bring up such a trivial matter.

Sano wasn’t finished relating his grievances against Yanagisawa’s wife and daughter. “Your wife tried to kill mine! I don’t believe she’s changed. I’m not letting her or Kikuko near my family!” Infuriated and adamantly opposed, Sano headed for the door. “I’m going to tell Lord Ienobu I accept his offer. He didn’t try to marry his child to mine.” Sano knew the offer had expired, but Yanagisawa didn’t. He had to make Yanagisawa retract his demand.

Yanagisawa moved swiftly to block Sano’s exit. “I’m going to change your mind. Three words should do it.” His eyes glinted with determination and malice. “Dr. Ito Genboku.”

Sano’s heart flipped like a speared fish. “Who?”

“You know-your friend at Edo Morgue. The old man who was caught practicing foreign science.”

Foreign science, along with books and religion acquired from Western barbarians, was banned by Tokugawa law, due to a policy of isolation established some seventy years ago. The shogun at that time had feared that foreign weapons and military aid were a threat to Japan’s stability. People caught doing anything that smacked of foreign science were usually exiled, but the government had made an exception for Dr. Ito.

“He was sentenced to a lifetime as the custodian of the morgue.” Yanagisawa’s taunting smile said he saw and relished Sano’s discomfiture. “He’s been helping you with your investigations. He dissects the corpses of murder victims and finds clues for you. Which means you’ve been a party to foreign science.” Triumph broadened Yanagisawa’s smile. “Don’t bother denying it. I’ve had you followed to the morgue; I have spies there. I know.”

Sano experienced a falling, perilous sensation. His collusion with Dr. Ito, begun twenty years ago, had set him up for this moment of reckoning. He’d been young and impulsive then, a single man with little to lose, and he’d unwittingly put himself under Yanagisawa’s power. “How long have you known?”

“Oh, seven or eight years.”

All those years of wearing disguises to the morgue, delivering the corpses there by circuitous routes-all for nothing. Sano didn’t need to ask why Yanagisawa had kept his secret, had let him think he was safe. “You’ve been hoarding the information in case you ever needed it to use against me.”

The corner of Yanagisawa’s smile twisted upward. “How well we know each other.”

“And now, if I don’t agree to marry my son to your daughter, you’ll report me for practicing foreign science.”

“The shogun is too sick to care about it, but Lord Ienobu will like the excuse to banish you to the silver mines on Sado Island. He won’t have to worry that any friends of yours will rally to your defense. They won’t want to be associated with you and share your exile. Which your family will.”

Banishment to Sado Island was tantamount to a death sentence. Nobody lasted long in the mines. Sano hurried to find the advantage in the catastrophe. “So you have my secret to hold over my head. You don’t need Masahiro to marry Kikuko.”

Yanagisawa’s expression told Sano not to take him for a fool. “When I tie up a man, I don’t give him room to wriggle free.”

The falling sensation stopped as Sano hit bottom in a pit of despair. Events had flung him back and forth like a ball between Yanagisawa and Lord Ienobu, and although Yanagisawa was losing the game, he’d claimed Sano’s soul as a prize.

But it wasn’t Sano who would ultimately pay for his sins. It was his beloved son.

“The wedding needs to happen soon,” Yanagisawa said. “Tomorrow, I think. Afterward, Masahiro and his bride will live with me, to guarantee your cooperation.”