Laura Rowland - The Cloud Pavilion

"Then go out and look some more," the shogun said. "Find her before sunrise tomorrow, or I'll have both your heads."

"Yes, Your Excellency," Yanagisawa said.

He looked as weary and discouraged as Sano felt. As they walked down the palace corridor, he said, "If this case is like your others, then we won't have to keep up the search much longer. With luck, the kidnapper will dump Lady Nobuko near the shrine in time for us to meet our deadline."

"That's not good enough, and you know it," Sano said, testy from fatigue. "The shogun wants her back safe and sound, not drugged and violated."

"Too bad for us." Yanagisawa added, "I didn't put Yoritomo up to telling the shogun about the connection between your investigation and Lady Nobuko's disappearance. It was his idea again. I'm even sorrier than I was last time."

"Do you believe him?" Hirata asked Sano.

They and Marume and Fukida sat in the private chambers at Sano's estate, where Sano had stopped for a quick meal. Hirata had heard about what had happened and was eager for news.

"Yes and no," Sano said. Reiko poured tea for him and the detectives, then served rice gruel with pickles and fish. Marume and Fukida, who'd been working alongside Sano all night, gobbled the food. Too hungry and in too much of a hurry to mind his manners, Sano ate while he talked. "I believe Yanagisawa is sorry for what Yoritomo said. After all, it got him in trouble, too."

"But?" Reiko said as Sano paused to swallow.

"But Yanagisawa has been behind so many plots against me that I'm not convinced he's innocent this time."

"Neither am I," Reiko said. She looked through the open partition that divided the room from the adjacent one and called, "Masahiro, don't you have a lesson now? Go!"

Sano saw their son in the other room, fiddling with his toy soldiers, and pretending not to listen to their conversation. Masahiro said, "Yes, Mother," and obediently left.

"Do you trust Yanagisawa to help you look for Lady Nobuko?" Reiko asked.

"Yes and no," Sano said. "It's in his own interests to find her, but I still think he's up to something. That's why I have to take other action besides our searching the city together."

"What kind of action?" Hirata asked.

Sano could see how much Hirata wanted to participate in it, but they both knew he shouldn't. Reiko poured Hirata a bowl of tea, all she could offer in the way of sympathy that wouldn't hurt his pride.

"Action against three people who thought they were safe from me," Sano said.

Ogita lived in a modest neighborhood in Kuramae, near his rice brokerage. The two-story houses were respectable rather than elegant, uniformly constructed with brown tile roofs, balconies shaded by bamboo screens, and weathered plank fences. When Sano and his entourage arrived at Ogita's house, Ogita and his samurai bodyguards planted themselves in front of the gate.

"Hello, Honorable Chamberlain," Ogita said. "How may I be of service to you?"

Sano had met Ogita at audiences with the shogun's officials, but they'd never exchanged more than formal greetings. Today he noticed that Ogita wore expressions like layers of clothing. The pleasure on Ogita's fleshy face overlaid apprehension.

"I want to search your house," Sano said. "Stand aside."

The apprehension rose to the surface of Ogita's features like silt in a stream stirred by undercurrents. "May I ask why?"

"I'm looking for the shogun's wife," Sano said. "She's missing, as you may have heard."

"Indeed I have." Now offense hid whatever else Ogita may have felt. "First you think I kidnapped and raped your cousin. Now you think I have the shogun's wife locked up in my house."

"Do you?"

"I'd have to be insane to do such a thing."

"Then you won't mind if I see for myself," Sano said.

Ogita stood his ground. "With all due respect, I do mind. I like my privacy." His features took on a neutral cast, his eyes alert but carefully devoid of emotion. Sano imagined this was the guise he wore when negotiating business deals.

"The sooner I'm finished, the sooner you can have your privacy again," Sano said.

"Didn't your chief retainer tell you what I said when he came to visit me? Before he murdered my servant boy?"

"He said you threatened to call in my friends' debts unless I left you alone."

"I wouldn't call it a threat," Ogita said with a false, congenial smile. He knew, as everyone did, that threatening a top official could mean death. "Just a bit of friendly advice."

"Here's a bit of friendly advice for you," Sano said. "If you call in those debts, I'll seize everything you own."

Ogita kept smiling, but his bulging double chin jerked as he gulped, and Sano could see droplets of sweat on his shiny forehead. Ogita knew the Tokugawa regime had seized property from merchants in the past, for various reasons.

"If I go out of business, the sales of rice will be held up. My customers, including the Tokugawa clan, will be short on cash for quite a while until other brokers can take over for me." Ogita's smile broadened. "Do you want thousands of armed samurai blaming you? How about a famine in the city? You'll be hounded out of the government."

Merchants had gained considerable power because the ruling samurai class had put its financial affairs into their hands, Sano knew. The traditional samurai belief that money was dirty had given the merchants a big advantage. Ogita was right; if Sano shut down a rice brokerage as big as Ogita's, the economy would suffer, and Sano would pay. But Sano's first concern was finding the shogun's wife.

"My men and I are going inside your house whether you like it or not," he said. "We'll kill anyone who tries to stop us."

Ogita's bodyguards looked at each other, shrugged, and moved away from the gate. Ogita dropped his smile just long enough to glare at them. Then he said, "How about if we strike a deal? I convert your rice stipend to cash for half my usual commission, and you leave me out of your investigation."

That discount would save Sano a small fortune, but he said, "Move, or I'll arrest you."

Ogita complied with bad humor. As Sano and his men marched through the gate, Ogita followed with his guards. Sano discovered that Ogita's home consisted of four houses, each at a corner of a square that made up an entire block, built around a central garden and connected by covered corridors. As Sano walked through them, people he took to be Ogita's family and servants scrambled out of his way. Ogita vanished into a maze of rooms crammed with expensively crafted lacquer tables and screens, shelves of valuable porcelain and jade vases and figurines, and cabinets filled with silk clothing that the merchant class wasn't supposed to wear.

"Maybe this is what Ogita didn't want us to see," Fukida said. "He's broken the sumptuary laws."

"Not only the sumptuary laws," Marume said, holding up swords he'd found in a trunk. Martial law said that only samurai were allowed to own swords.

"Never mind about that. All I care about is the shogun's wife." Sano called to his troops, "Turn this whole place upside down."

In a corridor, Sano met Ogita, who said, "Even if I had kidnapped the shogun's wife, surely you can't think I would be keeping her here."

"This is the one place you wouldn't expect anyone to look."

"Look to your heart's content. You're wasting your time."

"We'll see about that. Show me your private quarters."

Ogita led Sano to a bedchamber that adjoined an office and a balcony that gave him a view of his ware house and the river. The bedchamber was bare and austere compared to the rest of the house, furnished with a few tables pushed into its corners and silk cushions neatly stacked. Sano eyed the cupboards built into one wall.

"There's no room for a person in there," Ogita said. "I don't know what you expect to find."