Laura Rowland - The Incense Game

“Suit yourself.” Sano resumed stuffing the sack.

“All right, all right!” Mizutani scuttled into the adjacent room and returned with a small brown ceramic jar. “Here!”

Sano took the jar, removed the lid, and saw grayish white powder inside.

“But I never put it in incense!” Mizutani said. “I only use it to kill rats!”

Maybe he’d thought Usugumo was one. He’d possessed the means, if not the opportunity, by which to poison the women at the incense game. Sano handed over the sack.

“If you want to find out who did it, you should talk to Korin,” Mizutani said.

It was the classic, obvious way to cast off suspicion-direct it toward someone else. Sano took the bait anyway, because he needed all the leads he could get, especially leads that didn’t point to the Hosokawa clan.

“Who’s Korin?” Sano asked.

“Usugumo’s apprentice,” Mizutani said, relieved that his ploy had succeeded. “He helped her blend her incense. It would have been easier for him to put poison in it than me. Besides, I’m a respectable, law-abiding businessman, whereas Korin is a shady character. He used to work as a tout for the pleasure houses in Yoshiwara. That’s where he and Usugumo met. He also had a side business pimping for nighthawks.” Nighthawks were illegal prostitutes who operated outside the licensed pleasure quarter.

Skeptical, Sano said, “But Usugumo was Korin’s employer. His livelihood depended on her. Why kill her? Wouldn’t she have been worth more to him alive?”

“I once had an apprentice who hated me because I hit him with a stick when he ruined a batch of incense,” Mizutani said. It was common knowledge that apprentices were often worked like slaves and harshly punished by their masters. “That could have happened with Usugumo and Korin. Maybe he wanted to do to her what she did to me: Rob her and run.” Mizutani grinned. “That would have been easier if she was dead.”

“Where is Korin?”

“I asked around. He hasn’t been seen since before the earthquake.”

“He may have died during it,” Sano pointed out.

“He may have.” Mizutani’s grin broadened, showing his red gums and yellow teeth. “But if he murdered those women, wouldn’t that be a good reason for disappearing?”

The Shogun stood in his chamber, wearing his loincloth and a pair of quilted brown trousers fastened with drawstrings. He held his arms out to his sides while the twins dressed him in layers of quilted underrobes. “I think I’ll wear my, ahh, green brocade kimono today.”

Masahiro watched the shogun’s other pages search for the green kimono on stands that sagged under the weight of draped garments. Robes strewn on the floor almost covered the tatami. Cabinets and drawers spilled toiletries and other personal articles. Shoes fallen from their cubbyholes lay in heaps; underclothes were crumpled haphazardly into shelves. The monthlong shortage of servants had resulted in a mess that worsened every day.

When the pages located the kimono and the twins tried to put it on the shogun, he wrinkled his nose. “It smells! Why hasn’t it been washed? Bring me my burgundy satin instead.” The pages found the burgundy robe wadded up on the floor. The shogun frowned and rubbed at the creases as the twins dressed him. “My black sash with the gold dragons would look well with this.”

The hunt began again. Masahiro saw the shogun growing impatient, the pages worried and frantic. The twins and the shogun’s bodyguard rushed to help. The shogun’s expression darkened into a scowl. Masahiro joined the search because he knew what that scowl portended. They had to find that sash.

“I’ve had enough! I can’t stand this any longer!” The shogun hopped from side to side; his hands waved. “I’m surrounded by, ahh, disorder, incompetence, and stupidity! You oafs are driving me mad!”

He picked up an ivory fan from the mess and struck one of the twins on the head with it. The boy yelped in pain. Masahiro had never seen the shogun hit anyone before, but since the earthquake his temper was even quicker than usual, and violence had seemed inevitable. The shogun beat the boy about the shoulders. The boy fell on the floor and moaned, but he didn’t defend himself or protest, lest he be put to death. Everyone else stood by, helpless. The other concubines, the pages, and the guard didn’t want the shogun to turn his wrath on them. The shogun shrieked as he wielded the fan against the boy’s face, splitting his lip, bloodying his nose. The boy sobbed.

Even though the shogun had the right to do whatever he wanted, Masahiro couldn’t let an innocent person be hurt. He lunged at the shogun, grabbed his arm, and shouted, “Stop, Your Excellency!”

The other people in the room gasped, shocked because he dared to lay a hand on their lord. The shogun emitted a startled grunt. Masahiro hauled him away from the fallen boy. He spun the shogun around to face him. Fury twisted the shogun’s mouth. He raised the fan to strike Masahiro.

Masahiro seized him by the wrist. He was aghast at his own audacity, terrified because the shogun could have him killed, but he said, “Let go of that fan!” in the stern tone that his sword-fighting teacher used when he made a mistake during a lesson.

The shogun gaped. His hand opened. He let the fan fall. The room was silent except for the injured boy’s weeping. Masahiro released the shogun. As they stared eye to eye, he was astonished to realize that they were of equal height. The shogun’s mouth trembled as if he were about to cry. Suddenly Masahiro was the powerful adult and the shogun the child at his mercy. Suddenly Masahiro pitied the supreme dictator of Japan.

“It’s all right.” Masahiro spoke in the gentle voice he used toward his sister Akiko when she was upset. “There’s no need to hit anybody. I’ll make things all better.”

“You will?” The shogun’s eyes shone with hopeful trust.

“Yes.” Masahiro heard the others sigh in relief because the danger had passed. He remembered when a horse in his father’s stable had gone wild, kicking and bucking, and the groom had seized its reins and talked to it until it calmed down. This was just like that. “I’ll find your sash.”

“But how?” The shogun gazed despairingly around the room.

Masahiro took the shogun by the hand. “We’ll sort everything. Your sash will turn up.”

That was what his nurse had taught him when he was little, when he’d cried because he’d lost his favorite toy soldier. Now he and the shogun picked up clothes, folded them, cleared out cabinets and drawers and shelves, then refilled them with neatly arranged items. Pages, boys, and the guard helped. The shogun seemed captivated by the novelty of it. When they were almost finished, he exclaimed, “Look!” He held up the black and gold sash.

Everyone cheered. The shogun beamed at Masahiro. “From now on, you shall be in charge of my private chambers.”

Masahiro felt the pride of every samurai who’d ever won a battle for his lord and been rewarded with riches. Then he realized that he’d done the very thing his father had warned him against doing. He’d attracted the shogun’s notice, and there was no going back.

Yanagisawa looked around in amazement as he rode through Edo with his four bodyguards. He’d not realized how bad the earthquake damage was, because he’d never gone out to see. He’d heard his retainers and servants talking about it, but the devastation was beyond belief. Along with his horror came an unexpected thrill. The politician in him, which was coming back to life, recognized opportunity in this crisis.

When they reached the Sumida River, he and his men dismounted at the lone dock that the earthquake hadn’t shaken loose. They climbed into two little wooden ferryboats, the only means of crossing the river now that the Ry o goku Bridge was gone. The boatmen rowed the ferries through the debris that clogged the shallows. As he crossed the clean middle of the river, Yanagisawa felt like a survivor of a stormy voyage, heading toward a new shore. In spite of his grief over Yoritomo, he felt hopeful, euphoric.