Laura Rowland - The Iris Fan

Reiko hesitated. A mother shouldn’t take her child into a city on the brink of war. But Reiko’s notion of her maternal responsibility underwent a sudden change. Akiko was a member of the family; she shared its fate. Better for her to help her mother find the truth about the crime that had put them in peril than to sit at home waiting for their enemy to attack.

“Yes,” Reiko said. If a war started, Akiko would be safer in the city streets than in this estate with Lord Ienobu’s enemies, and Reiko needed her to handle the dog.

Delighted, Akiko smiled. The dog led them to a small gate near the kitchens. Reiko and Akiko struggled to lift the heavy bar. Opening the gate, Reiko saw the backs of four sentries who were stationed outside. The dog barked at the men. Startled, they turned. The dog bounded down the street.

“Come on, Mother!” Akiko cried.

Holding hands, they ran after the dog. Reiko felt connected to her daughter in a way she’d never thought possible. For once they were moving together instead of Reiko leaving, Akiko clinging, and Reiko pushing her away. The emptiness left by the baby Reiko had lost didn’t feel so big or hurt quite so much.

“Hey!” the sentries yelled, but they couldn’t desert their post to pursue two female guests who were running away with the master’s dog.

Reiko and Akiko laughed at the sentries. Reiko knew they were foolhardy; Lord Ienobu’s troops might recognize them as Sano’s kinfolk, capture them, and use them to force him to surrender. But it felt so good to laugh again.

Nose snuffling, the dog loped through the daimyo district along narrow side streets, avoiding the army troops massed outside estates that belonged to Yanagisawa’s allies. “How will we get in the castle?” Akiko asked.

Reiko envisioned the three of them marching up to the gate with no passes and no one to tell the sentries they were allowed to enter. But the missing socks must be inside the castle. The dog was leading her and Akiko in that direction. “I’ll think of something.”

Whereas Sano or Masahiro would have challenged her plan, Akiko blithely accepted it. The dog veered to the right, down a street that led away from the castle. “He’s lost the scent,” Reiko said, disappointed even though she’d known that this search was a long shot and the socks had probably been destroyed by the shogun’s attacker. “He’s going the wrong way.”

“No, he’s not.” Akiko spoke with confidence in her new friend.

They followed the dog. He trotted faster to a canal that separated the daimyo district from the Nihonbashi merchant quarter. Reiko and Akiko and the dog crossed an arched wooden bridge. Behind them the walls of the daimyo estates rose straight up from the retaining wall that lined the canal; below them the gray water was frozen into muddy ice along the banks. The dog raced into a street of houses with balconies concealed by bamboo blinds above shuttered fronts on the ground floors. Nihonbashi was strangely deserted and quiet. The townspeople must have seen the troops massing in the daimyo district, realized a war was coming, and either hidden themselves indoors or fled. The dog rounded a corner and loped down the alley behind the houses. The stench of rotten food and human waste came from wooden bins and ceramic vats outside back doors. The garbage and night soil collectors must have stayed home or fled, too. Rats scampered as the dog sniffed around the bins on his way down the alley. A gray heap partially blocked the far end. The dog sat by it and barked.

“He’s found them!” Akiko ran to the dog and petted him. “Good boy!”

The heap was ashes emptied from hearths and braziers. The dog began digging. He unearthed a tiny bundle just beneath the surface. He nosed it and looked up at Akiko. She picked it up and gave it to Reiko.

Reiko examined the wad of cloth, brushed off the soot, and separated it into two crumpled pieces stuck together by a reddish brown substance. Her breath quickened with excitement as she held up the bloodstained socks.

* * *

Hirata stood in a fire-watch tower high above Nihonbashi, gazing down at the city. Commoners in palanquins and on foot streamed along the roads, heading out of town. The estates in the daimyo district were laid out like territorial divisions on a giant game board. Miniature troops lined the street outside Lord Mori’s estate. Hirata trained his eyes on the white tent. His supernatural vision and hearing couldn’t penetrate it, but he sensed Sano inside. Sano’s aura resembled a jagged steel mesh around his core of courage. Auras from Yanagisawa, Yoshisato, and Lord Ienobu impinged on Sano like cannons firing red-hot missiles. The tent was the center of a cosmic storm, the focus of the fear, excitement, and anticipation crackling from the spectators’ auras.

“Sano is in trouble,” he said, appalled by the situation that he had helped create.

Before he could climb down the ladder and rush to Sano’s aid, General Otani locked his hands onto the railing. Stay away from Sano.

The tower swayed on its stilts as Hirata, enraged, struggled to break his own grip. The fire bell suspended by a rope from the little roof above him swung and jangled. “I’ve done everything you asked. The least you could do is let me help Sano!”

Sano must be allowed to play his role.

“What role?”

You’ll see.

“I’m sick of this!” Hirata demanded, “Why don’t I just kill the shogun and Lord Ienobu can take over the regime?” He didn’t balk at the traitorous idea. The shogun was close to death; at worst Hirata would shorten his time on earth by only a few days.

Things must continue along their present course.

“Why? If you want Ienobu to be shogun, let’s take the quickest route. Then you won’t need me anymore, or Sano. You can get the hell out of my body.”

Laughter resounded through Hirata. What makes you think that after Ienobu is shogun I’ll let you go?

Taken aback, Hirata said, “Won’t our work be finished then?”

I want to destroy the Tokugawa regime. Helping Ienobu take it over is just the first step.

“The first step?” Dismay opened a cold chasm in Hirata’s heart. “I thought that when he became shogun, he would destroy the regime for you. What more would there be for me to do?”

Lord Ienobu has enemies, as you well know. They’ll interfere with his plans and try to oust him. We have to make sure he stays in power.

In that terrible moment Hirata understood that his enslavement to the ghost wasn’t nearing its end. It had only begun.

When Sano returned to the guest quarters, he found Magistrate Ueda sitting alone by a brazier with a sake decanter warming on it and two cups on a tray table.

“I thought you might need a drink,” Magistrate Ueda said.

Sano realized how much he did. “A thousand thanks.” He knelt while Magistrate Ueda poured two cups. He emptied his cup, and the liquor spread a fire through him that simultaneously calmed and invigorated. “Where’s Masahiro?”

“I thought he was at the gate, waiting for you.”

“I didn’t see him there.”

Magistrate Ueda looked grave. “Maybe he needed some time alone. He’s very unhappy about the wedding.”

“I know.” Sano’s spirit sagged under the weight of his betrayal of Masahiro, no matter that he was within his rights to force his son to do whatever he asked. “Where is Reiko?”

The concern in Magistrate Ueda’s expression deepened. “She went out with Akiko. They didn’t say where they were going.”

Sano felt a stab of fear. Reiko was as unhappy about the wedding as Masahiro. She’d been unhappy with Sano for a long time. She’d said she would leave him. Had she really gone and taken their children with her? Had his actions finally driven his family away?