Laura Rowland - The Ronin’s Mistress

Hirata touched his sword. Genzo saw and seemed to understand that lying was pointless. He said, “A man named Nakae. A big judge on some court at Edo Castle.”

Astonishment hit Sano like a club to his chest. Inspector General Nakae, not Magistrate Ueda, had been the assassin’s target. “Why did you want to attack Nakae?”

Genzo shrugged. He reminded Sano of a reptile, whose few basic, primitive emotions didn’t show much on the outside.

“Fine,” Hirata said. “We’ll skip the interrogation, and the trial, too. I’ll call the executioner.” He turned, as if to leave.

“Wait,” Genzo said in that same flat mutter. “If I tell you, will you spare me?”

He wasn’t the brightest criminal Sano had ever seen, but he realized that Sano and Hirata wanted the information he had and he could use it to bargain for his life.

“Forget it,” Hirata said. “This is your third offense. You’re finished.”

“Let’s listen to what he has to say first.” Sano told Genzo, “If it’s good enough, I can save you.”

Sano and Hirata had often played this game, one badgering and threatening their subject, the other acting kind and conciliatory, working as a team to extract his cooperation. But never had Sano enjoyed the latter role less. Still, in a case as personal to him as this, it was best that Hirata took the former role. Sano wasn’t sure he could play it and resist the urge to kill Genzo before they got the information they needed.

Hirata pretended to be put out by Sano’s leniency. “All right,” he said to Genzo. “Talk.”

A brief smile flexed Genzo’s mean mouth. “I was hired to kill Nakae.”

“Who hired you?” Sano asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Hirata jeered. “Or I’ll kill you and put you out of your stupidity.”

“I never saw him.” Genzo explained, “I was coming out of a teahouse in Nihonbashi. He was sitting in a palanquin, with the windows closed. He hissed at me and asked, did I want to make some money. I said, what do I have to do? He said, kill Nakae.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Hirata said. “People don’t ask strangers on the street to kill people for them.”

Genzo seemed as indifferent to Hirata’s disbelief as he’d been unsurprised by the offer from the man in the palanquin. “This fellow did.”

Odder things had been known to happen. Sano said, “Did he say why he wanted you to kill Nakae?”

“No,” Genzo said, “and I didn’t ask.”

Sano wondered if hired assassins thought they were better off not knowing their employers’ motives. Or maybe curiosity had been left out of Genzo’s personality. “Go on.”

“I told him a thousand koban. He said five hundred. I said-”

“So you haggled over the price,” Hirata said. “Then what?”

“He described Nakae. Big older man, big dark spot on his face. He said to wait for Nakae outside Edo Castle, follow him, and do it. He warned me that Nakae would have bodyguards and I would probably have to kill them, too.”

“All that went on and you never saw who hired you?” Sano said skeptically.

“He stayed inside the palanquin. He opened the window just enough to pass me half the money. We agreed he would leave the rest behind my house after Nakae was dead.” Genzo added with dull rancor, “He never did, the bastard.”

“Because you ambushed the wrong man, you idiot,” Hirata said. “How did that happen?”

Genzo glowered at the insult. “Nakae came out of the castle with another samurai who looked like him. I followed them. They split up.”

Sano recalled the inspector general saying that he and Magistrate Ueda had ridden part of the way home together.

“It was dark,” Genzo said. “I couldn’t see which was Nakae. So I went after the one I thought was him.” He shrugged. “I guessed wrong.”

Sano was so infuriated by Genzo’s mistake, and Genzo’s indifferent attitude, that he couldn’t restrain himself much longer. He had to force himself to speak calmly. “The man who hired you-can you describe his voice?”

“High-class,” Genzo said.

“What about his palanquin?”

“It was black.”

That narrowed the field down to the entire upper samurai society. “Were there any identifying crests on it?”

“Not that I saw.”

Sano marveled that anyone would agree to commit a murder for a person unknown, unseen, and of dubious trustworthiness. But of course the money had been a big incentive. “What did his bearers look like?”

“I don’t remember,” Genzo said, bored. “Who notices bearers?”

“Can you think of anything you did notice that might help us identify the man in the palanquin?”

“No.”

Not even to save his life, Sano thought. In addition to his other sins, Genzo was a deplorably bad witness. Sano turned to Hirata. “We’re finished here.”

“I agree.” Hirata looked as fed up with Genzo as Sano was. He opened the door of the cell. He and Sano started to walk out.

“Hey,” Genzo called in a voice louder than his usual mutter. “Do I get to stay alive?”

“No,” Sano said.

Disbelief pricked up Genzo’s flat eyelids. “But you promised.”

“No, I didn’t,” Sano said. “Next time, you should be more careful about who you do business with. Except there isn’t going to be a next time.”

“That’s not fair!” It was as if the reptile had basked in the sun long enough to bring its cold blood to a boil. Temper animated his eyes, clenched his fists, and revealed the brute who’d savaged Magistrate Ueda for a few pieces of gold.

“You may not think it’s fair,” Sano said, “but it’s justice.”

* * *

“Do you think Genzo was telling the truth?” Hirata asked Sano as they rode across the bridge that spanned the canal outside Edo Jail.

“Yes,” Sano said. “He hasn’t the imagination to make up that story.”

“So do I. How should we go about identifying the man in the palanquin?”

“We could start at the teahouse where Genzo met him. Maybe someone there saw him even though Genzo didn’t. Or saw where he went after he and Genzo made their deal.”

“Or can give us a better description of the palanquin and the bearers.” Hirata glanced around at the shacks that lined the road through the slums as he said, “If the Hosokawa people wanted to kill Inspector General Nakae, wouldn’t they handle it themselves? Why take a chance on hiring a stranger who could and did botch the job?”

“Whoever hired Genzo didn’t want the blood on their own hands. But you’re right, the whole assassination attempt smacks of incompetence.”

“That would exonerate Yanagisawa,” Hirata pointed out.

“That and the fact that he wouldn’t have wanted Nakae killed. Nakae is his crony.”

“There’s still the question of how anyone besides Yanagisawa and the judges and you could have known Nakae’s position on the vendetta,” Hirata said. “But maybe Nakae let his opinion be known before he was appointed to the court. Or maybe it was a personal enemy of his who wanted him dead, and the attack had nothing to do with the case.”

The inspector general had plenty of enemies, but Sano still believed that the attack and the case were connected. Sano followed Hirata’s gaze to a group of men huddled around a bonfire. Hirata was looking for his stalkers, Sano thought.

“Well, there are still other suspects besides the forty-seven ronin and the Hosokawa clan,” Sano said. “Before we try to pick up the palanquin man’s trail, let’s hear what my wife has to say about Ukihashi, Lady Asano, and Okaru. She was supposed to talk to them today.”

* * *

When Sano and Hirata arrived at home, Reiko hurried to meet them while they were hanging their swords in the entryway. “I’m so glad you’re back!” She sparkled with excitement. “I must tell you what I’ve learned!”