Laura Rowland - The Ronin’s Mistress

The Edo Castle guard captain came riding up through the rain that streamed down in liquid silver lines. “I’ve checked with all the sentries. Kajikawa hasn’t gone out through any of the gates. He’s still inside the castle.”

“How can he have evaded the search parties for so long?” Marume asked.

“There are many hiding places here,” the guard captain said, “and a keeper of the castle knows them all.”

“Fetch the other keepers,” Sano ordered. “Have them show you their secret spots.”

When dawn came, Kajikawa was still missing. The rain stopped. Sano, Marume, and Fukida climbed to the top of a guard tower and looked out at an unearthly sight. Every wall, pavement, roof, and tree inside the castle was glazed with a translucent coat of ice. Snow had frozen solid. The passages and grounds were deserted except for the search parties; everyone else stayed indoors rather than risk breaking their necks. Below the gray sky, the buildings in the city gleamed. Nothing moved there. The scene was spectrally, frighteningly beautiful.

“I think this is the end of the world,” Marume said.

Sano heard his name called. He looked up. Hirata was leaning out the window of a tower higher on the hill, waving. He called, “Kajikawa has been sighted!”

* * *

Breakfast at Sano’s estate was a tense affair. Akiko chattered gaily to Chiyo, but Masahiro glowered as he shoveled noodles into his mouth. Reiko toyed with her food and listened to the frozen trees rattle outside. As soon as Masahiro finished eating, he rose, said, “I have to wait on the shogun,” and stomped out the door.

Reiko sighed. Chiyo gave Reiko a questioning look.

“He’s cross because of what happened yesterday,” Reiko said. “I caught him with Okaru. Now I understand what you were trying to tell me. I’m sorry I was so dense.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t speak more plainly,” Chiyo said with sad regret. “Did they…?”

“I was afraid to ask. And Masahiro won’t talk to me. I handled the situation badly.”

“He won’t stay angry.” Chiyo soothed her. “Everything will be fine.”

But Reiko’s concern for Masahiro persisted. The thought of Okaru, locked in the servants’ quarters, made her conscience uneasy. The trees rattling sounded like fingernails tapping on a door, someone trying to get out. Reiko worried about her father, whom she couldn’t visit today. The cold air sank into her spirit, along with a sense of foreboding.

* * *

“Kajikawa was seen near the palace and at the Momijiyama within the past hour,” Hirata said.

“You take the Momijiyama,” Sano said.

He and Marume and Fukida sped to the palace. Icicles hung from the eaves like jagged teeth. Pines wore heavy, grotesque swags of ice. Dismounting outside the main door, Sano called to the sentry, “Where is Kajikawa?”

The sentry gestured. “In the back garden.”

Sliding on the hard, smooth snow, Sano and his men hurried around the palace. The bridge over the frozen pond and the pavilion in the middle seemed sculpted from ice. Trees clattered in the wind. Ice shards tinkled on the ground. A guard pointed at the latticework that enclosed the space beneath the palace’s foundation and said, “We chased Kajikawa under there.” A panel of lattice had been removed and thrown aside. A dark hole gaped. From it came scuffling and yelling.

“Some of the troops went in after Kajikawa,” the guard said. “Some ran around the building to try to catch him when he comes out.”

“He could come out inside the palace,” Sano said. Its floor was riddled with openings. “Is anybody watching for him there?”

The guard’s chagrined expression said nobody had thought of that. Sano and his men stampeded through the door. They ran off in separate directions along the corridors. Sano flung open doors, surprising a few officials who’d shown up for work. None had seen the fugitive. Sano heard thumps as the searchers groped their way through the palace’s underbelly. He sped along a covered corridor that joined two wings of the building. At the end was a door, decorated with gold Tokugawa crests, that led to the shogun’s chambers.

Premonition made Sano’s heart drop.

He tried the door, which was locked from the inside. He kicked the wooden panels until the door caved in. Stale, overheated air that smelled of smoke and medicines wafted out. As Sano raced down passages lined with movable wall panels, he heard shouts and whimpering. He halted at the threshold of the shogun’s private sitting room.

Inside, amid clouds of smoke, servants exclaimed and coughed as they beat brooms at flames that spread across the tatami. An overturned brazier had spewed hot charcoal around a large, square hole in the floor. People shrank against the walls. Sano pushed past the servants, treading over cinders and ash. He stopped near a low platform backed by a mural of white cranes and a red sun. Four men occupied the platform, like actors onstage who were so intent on their drama that they didn’t notice that the theater was on fire.

The shogun held a cushion in front of his chest like a shield. His cylindrical black cap was askew. He cringed away from Kajikawa, who knelt at the left edge of the platform.

“A thousand apologies, Your Excellency.” Gasping, Kajikawa staggered on his knees toward the shogun. “Please excuse me for intruding on you like this.”

The other two men on the platform were Yanagisawa and Yoritomo. Yoritomo put his arm around the shogun. “Don’t come any closer!” he yelled at Kajikawa.

Standing behind his son and the shogun, Yanagisawa ordered, “Get out this instant!”

His face, and Yoritomo’s, showed shock as well as anger. Sano pictured the scene he’d just missed-the brazier erupting out of the floor, the burning coals flying, and Kajikawa surfacing like a demon from the underworld.

Kajikawa ignored Yanagisawa and Yoritomo. “I can explain everything, Your Excellency. I beg you to listen!”

The shogun whimpered in fright. Yanagisawa called to the men hovering by the walls. “Don’t just stand there. Take him away!”

Three palace guards stumbled forward. The other men were the shogun’s boy concubines and Yanagisawa’s two cronies from the Council of Elders.

“In all my years, I’ve never seen such a thing!” Kato said.

“It’s an outrage!” Ihara said.

Dismayed by the way his search for the fugitive had ended, Sano shouted, “Kajikawa!”

The servants put out the fire. The guards paused. Everyone turned toward Sano.

“Ahh, Sano- san. Good.” The shogun smiled weakly; he’d forgotten he was displeased with Sano. He looked hopeful that Sano could restore order.

Yanagisawa’s and Yoritomo’s expressions hardened into hostility. Surprise marked Kato’s mask-like features and Ihara’s simian face. Kajikawa turned to Sano. The little man’s clothes were streaked with grime, drenched from the rain. His topknot had unraveled; soot smeared his delicate features. His eyes were wild, his mouth a downturned grimace.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your father-in-law.” Kajikawa seemed horrified by his predicament, by the forces he’d unleashed that had spun out of his control. “I didn’t mean for anyone to be hurt except for Kira.”

“I know. You wanted to punish Kira, and you weren’t able to do it yourself.” Although Sano pitied Kajikawa, his tone was hard. “So you set Oishi on Kira. It was revenge by proxy.”

Kajikawa’s grimace gaped with surprise. “How did you know?”

Yanagisawa recovered his voice. “If you want a little chat, have it someplace else.” He obviously realized that revelations about the vendetta were forthcoming.

“Oishi told me,” Sano said to Kajikawa.