Laura Rowland - The Incense Game

“At least lie down until I bring your medicine and your breakfast,” Reiko said as she and Akiko left the room.

Shamed by his frailty, Sano obeyed.

The medicine helped. Soon after he swallowed it, Sano was able to dress and eat, although he still felt shaky. “I’d better start spying on Priest Ryuko before he slips past me.”

“And I’d better begin my trip to Mitake to see Minister Ogyu’s nurse,” Reiko said.

“Here he comes,” Sano whispered to Detective Marume.

From behind a grove of bamboo outside the guesthouse, they watched Priest Ryuko hurry down the steps. He wore a heavy, hooded cloak over his saffron robe. He climbed into a waiting palanquin. The bearers carried him out the gate.

Sano and Marume, dressed in garments without identifying crests and wide-brimmed wicker hats that shaded their faces, followed on horseback at a safe distance. “If Priest Ryuko is going on a journey, where’s his baggage?” Marume asked.

“I don’t see the porters he was trying to hire, either. Maybe he’s not leaving town after all.” Sano hated to think he was wasting time on this surveillance while he could be looking for other leads. “Let’s see what happens.”

As they rode through the passages inside the castle, his horse’s every footfall aggravated his headache. He resisted the temptation to take the opium pills he’d brought, which would dull his mind along with the pain. Priest Ryuko’s bearers walked briskly. Sano and Marume mingled with the soldiers and the workers who thronged the passages. Outside the castle, the crowd of beggars on the streets and the roving squadrons of troops in the daimyo district shielded Sano and Marume from Ryuko’s view. Sano warily eyed the troops. Either Lord Hosokawa hadn’t yet warned the daimyo not to flaunt their armies or they’d chosen to disregard the warning.

Beyond the daimyo district, the crowds thinned. Townspeople crawled over the wreckage of Nihonbashi, picking out wood and paper scraps to burn in their bonfires. The heaps were shrinking. Eventually, all the combustible materials would go up in smoke. Sano and Marume dropped farther behind the palanquin. Past a tent camp, the bearers carried Ryuko to an oasis of houses amid the ruins. Sano and Marume watched from a distance as the priest climbed out of the palanquin. They dismounted and hid their horses behind one of the tall debris piles that dotted the area, which had been an affluent merchant district. Sano’s legs felt weak and wobbly. Taking cover behind other piles, he and Marume stole up to the houses.

There were three, flanked by the burned remains of neighboring residences. Peasants armed with spears were stationed at the gates. In many improvised forts like this, the lucky few citizens who still had their homes tried to bar trespassers seeking loot or shelter. Sano and Marume positioned themselves behind a pile some thirty paces from the houses.

Priest Ryuko walked up to the guards, who let him in the gate. Sano waited. His head throbbed. He blinked to focus his eyes on the house. After a long while, a muscular peasant man backed out the gate, carrying one end of a large wooden trunk. A second man followed, holding the other end. The porters dropped the trunk by the palanquin. Priest Ryuko emerged, shepherding a woman and a little boy. The boy was about three years old and so padded with clothing that he looked like a ball, his fat arms sticking out from his sides, a red cap with earflaps on his head. The woman was slender and young. She wore a blue coat whose hood framed a pretty, anxious face. Priest Ryuko led her and the boy to the palanquin and opened its door. He spoke to the woman. Sano couldn’t hear his words, but he seemed to be reassuring her. She climbed into the palanquin. Priest Ryuko crouched before the boy. He smiled and said something that made the boy laugh. Then he lifted the boy into the palanquin and settled him beside the woman.

“Priest Ryuko isn’t going on the journey,” Sano said. “They are.”

Sano and Marume strode toward the priest. Ryuko shut the door of the palanquin and turned. His eyes hollowed and his mouth sagged with shock. “What are you doing here?” He moved in front of the palanquin, as if to hide it from Sano’s view. “Did you follow me?”

“Yes.” Sano peered around Ryuko. The open window of the palanquin framed the woman’s and boy’s frightened faces. “Who are those people?”

Ryuko’s expression darkened. “That’s none of your business.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Sano said. “I can guess. The woman is your mistress. The boy is your son. They’re your secret, aren’t they?”

“Yes, damn you, and keep your voice down. I don’t want the whole world to hear.”

“You mean, you don’t want Lady Keisho-in to hear.” Sano realized the magnitude and dangerousness of the priest’s secret. “Imagine what she would do if she found out that you’d not only been unfaithful to her, but that you have a child with your mistress.”

“Lady Keisho-in is insanely jealous.” Fear of her wrath made Ryuko’s voice quiver. “She would kill me.” He gestured toward his woman and son. “She would kill them, too.”

“Madam Usugumo knew about them, didn’t she?” Sano asked. Ryuko nodded weakly. “You confessed to her during her incense ritual. You couldn’t stop yourself.”

“A curse on her! She threatened to go to Lady Keisho-in unless I paid for her silence.”

“Would Lady Keisho-in have believed her?” Marume said skeptically. “Would she have even been able to get an audience with Lady Keisho-in? Couldn’t you have kept them apart?”

“Madam Usugumo wouldn’t have had to speak with Lady Keisho-in. She could have started a rumor. Lady Keisho-in hears all the rumors, and she listens. She’s always accusing me of something or other-stealing from her or making friends with people she doesn’t like. I’ve always managed to get around her. But this-” The breath gushed out of Ryuko. “This, she would never forgive.”

“So you paid Madam Usugumo,” Sano said.

“Yes.”

“She was bleeding you dry. You were afraid you would run out of money and she would let out your secret. So you slipped her the poisoned incense.”

“No!” Ryuko swelled with the wind of his denial. “I said I didn’t kill her, and I didn’t.”

“You said you didn’t have any secrets, but you do,” Sano reminded him.

“I’m telling you the truth this time. The truth is that I would have killed Usugumo if I thought I could get away with it. But it turned out that I didn’t need to.” Ryuko smiled, triumphant yet shamefaced. “Because somebody else did.”

Sano didn’t know whether to believe him. “Either you were fortunate or you’re still lying.”

“You can’t prove I poisoned her.”

“But you’re still my best suspect,” Sano said. Unless Reiko discovered evidence just as incriminating about Minister Ogyu. “Because now I know that you have a secret that’s worth killing to hide.” He pointed to the woman and child in the palanquin. “There’s proof.”

Priest Ryuko wiped his hand down his face, which was shiny with sweat. His ghastly expression said he’d been struck anew by the seriousness of his predicament. “I should have sent her away before our son was born, but I couldn’t bear to let them go.”

He gazed at his family, and Sano saw love in the eyes of this vain man who’d never appeared to care about anyone except himself. Mother and child gazed solemnly back at him with utter trust and dependence. Sano pitied them.

“I have to get them out of town to someplace where they’ll be safe. Before anyone else can find out about them.” Ryuko raised his clasped hands to Sano. “Please don’t keep them from leaving. Please don’t tell Lady Keisho-in.”