Laura Rowland - The Shogun's Daughter

“The fire.”

Reiko realized that someone else had been involved in Yoshisato’s murder. The crime wasn’t yet solved, all culprits not brought to justice. Reiko demanded, “Whose idea was it?”

“Lord Ienobu.” Korika’s voice was as soft as dry grass rustling in the wind. “He came to see me. He knew I would. Do anything for. Her.” A smile twitched her lips. “And I did.”

Reiko’s heart gave a thump of astonishment. “Ienobu put you up to it? He was involved in Yoshisato’s death?”

The shine in Korika’s eyes dulled. A last breath sighed from her. Reiko was holding the hand of a dead woman.

A tremendous contraction squeezed Reiko like a cruel fist inside her. She doubled over, hugging her belly, gritting her teeth in pain. Warm liquid oozed between her legs. The baby was coming.

The morning after the funeral was gray, windy. Clouds shadowed the castle. In the palace, an assembly convened. The shogun sat on the dais, flanked by Ienobu on his right and Yanagisawa on his left. “I have two announcements,” he said to the government officials packed into his reception chamber.

Sano and Masahiro sat together in the front row, on the higher of the two floor levels below the dais. Sano’s cut, bruised face was stiff with his effort to conceal his astonishment. He couldn’t believe he’d lived to see this day.

The shogun held up his index finger. “I have heard a full report about the confession made by that woman Korika. I am satisfied that she set the fire and killed my son.” Grief momentarily halted him; he swallowed. “Sano- san, I hereby void the charges against you and your family. I declare all of you innocent of murder and treason.”

“Many thanks, Your Excellency.” Sano bowed. Waves of disapproval emanated toward him from the silent, motionless audience. He remembered the previous assembly, the purge, General Isogai, and Elder Ohgami. He had no friends here.

He looked at the men beside the shogun. Ienobu met his gaze calmly. Yanagisawa’s face was as white and rigid as an ice sculpture. Only the molten heat in his eyes hinted at how furious he was that Sano had survived against all expectation. If the death of his son’s murderer gave him any satisfaction, Sano couldn’t tell.

“I also excuse you for killing three of your guards when you escaped from house arrest,” the shogun said. “You can keep your post as rebuilding magistrate. And Masahiro, you are reinstated as head of my private chambers. That should suffice as reward for, ahh, solving the murders of my son and daughter.”

Masahiro glowed with jubilation. Sano was glad, too, but he felt bad about killing the innocent men. He also felt a bad sense of unfinished business. He couldn’t consider the crimes solved. Ienobu’s role in them had yet to be exposed. Sano and Reiko were the only people who knew about it so far.

“Today begins a fresh start for me.” Determined to follow the course of action into which Sano had pushed him, the shogun cast a baleful gaze around the assembly. “None of you will twist me around your fingers again.”

The disapproval aimed at Sano grew stronger. These men, who’d been his enemies to begin with, blamed him for the shogun’s fresh start, which would diminish their power. Sano himself wasn’t sure he liked it. Had he created a monster that not even he could control?

“Now for my second announcement,” the shogun said. “I am adopting my nephew, the honorable Ienobu, and naming him as my heir.”

Ienobu bowed to the shogun, then the assembly. He acted as humble as if inheriting the regime were a duty for which he must nobly sacrifice himself. Nobody seemed surprised. Sano wasn’t. The shogun had had his face rubbed in his own mortality twice. He needed more than ever to choose a successor. Ienobu, his closest surviving relative, was the logical choice. Sano suspected that many people weren’t happy about it, but they didn’t object and test the shogun’s new temperament. Neither did Sano.

He and Reiko were the only people who’d heard Korika’s and Lord Tsunanori’s full confessions. Last night, when they’d talked over what had happened, they’d agreed not to tell anyone, not even Masahiro. It was too dangerous to accuse Ienobu of multiple treasonous crimes when the only evidence against him was the words of two witnesses who were now dead.

Yoshisato the fraud wouldn’t inherit the dictatorship. Ienobu the double murderer was set to be the next shogun.

“Consider this a warning,” the shogun said. “You know what happened to the person who murdered my previous heir. Harm this one at your own peril.”

All attention swiveled to Yanagisawa, the most likely threat to Ienobu. A muscle in Yanagisawa’s rigid jaw twitched. He didn’t look at anyone. Nor did he reveal his disappointment that instead of being the adoptive father of the shogun’s heir, he was the enemy of the next shogun. Sano could only imagine how Yanagisawa would react if he knew Ienobu was partially responsible for Yoshisato’s death. He wondered whether, or when, to tell Yanagisawa.

“In view of new circumstances,” the shogun said, “some changes in the government are necessary.”

Yanagisawa stood. He didn’t wait for himself and his allies to be purged and replaced by men friendly to Ienobu. His back straight, his eyes ablaze, he walked out of the room.

* * *

“Here’s your medicine,” Midori said, handing Reiko a ceramic cup.

Reiko sat up in bed. She drank the potion of lotus seeds, ginseng, cassia twig, ginger, and beef heart that the doctor had brewed. Then she lay back, clasping her hands over her flat, tender stomach. Blood oozed into the cloth pad between her legs. Her eyes were sore from weeping.

“You can have another baby,” Midori tried to console her.

A sob caught Reiko’s breath. No child could replace this one that she’d spent five years hoping to conceive.

“I know this is terrible,” Midori said, “but remember, you’re lucky to be alive.”

“I know.” But nothing could assuage Reiko’s heartbreak. Nothing could change what had happened yesterday.

When the troops had come to remove Korika’s body, they’d found Reiko lying beside it, in the throes of labor. They’d carried her home, where she’d delivered a stillborn baby boy. Reiko had cried while she held him. He was hardly bigger than her hand. His pink skin was wrinkled and blue-veined and translucent, his eyes closed as if in sleep. Reiko loved him as immediately and powerfully as she’d loved Masahiro and Akiko when they were born. But he would never grow up, never know her or his father or his brother or sister. This was a loss whose magnitude she’d never comprehended, a grief worse than any she’d experienced.

“Your family is lucky to be alive, too.” Midori spoke as if she knew her words were no comfort to Reiko, but she had to keep trying. “It’s a miracle, how everything turned out.”

Moments after the baby had been born, Sano had come home. He’d told Reiko that the news of Korika’s confession had reached the shogun at the mausoleum. Reiko tried to be happy that she’d exonerated him and her family was safe. With Sano’s reputation cleared, the servants had returned. But good fortune didn’t abate Reiko’s immense sorrow or guilt.

She’d known she was overexerting herself. No matter that she would do it again given the same circumstances. She’d saved her family but sacrificed her baby.

Midori said, “Look who’s here,” and left.

Akiko stood in the doorway, her face tight and unsmiling. “That old lady is here to see you.” She turned to go before Reiko could say she wasn’t receiving visitors.

“Wait, Akiko.” Reiko hadn’t seen her daughter since they’d separated in the passage yesterday. “Come here.”