Laura Rowland - The Ronin’s Mistress

Kajikawa laughed, a bitter bark. “You’re forgetting, I’ve been in this court for a long time. I know what you are. How stupid do you think I am?”

Sano winced.

“Listen to the chamberlain,” Kato urged. “You need his help. Take the deal.”

“It’s the best you’ll get,” Ihara said.

Holding the shogun pinned to the platform with his sword, Kajikawa poked his finger at Yanagisawa. “If you expect me to believe you, then you’re not only a corrupt, lying cheat, you’re the one who’s stupid!”

“Don’t talk to my father like that!” Yoritomo said.

“I know you, too,” Kajikawa said with the relish of a man who has kept his opinions pent up for ages and finally lets them spill. “You bedded your way to the top of the regime, just like your father did. If I kill His Excellency, you’re both as good as dead, too. Just watch!”

He moved his blade in a sawing motion a hair’s breadth above the shogun’s throat. The shogun flinched, moaning. Kajikawa let loose a hysterical giggle.

“Your entire family will pay for this,” Ihara blustered.

“They’ll all die with you,” Kato said.

“Be quiet!” Kajikawa yelled. “I’ve had enough of you two!”

“What are you going to do? Kill us?” mocked Kato.

The elders were trying to divert Kajikawa’s ire toward themselves, Sano realized. They hoped he would charge at them, the guards would seize him, and the shogun would be saved.

“I don’t have to kill you,” Kajikawa said with cunning born of desperation. “You’re going to do it for me.” He pointed at a guard.

The guard looked startled to find himself singled out, then chuckled as if he thought Kajikawa was joking.

“Kill the old monkey,” Kajikawa ordered. “Or I’ll kill the shogun.”

Dismay crinkled Ihara’s simian features. “You’re not serious.”

“Go ahead!” cried the shogun.

Reluctant, yet unable to disobey the shogun’s order, the guard drew his sword. Yanagisawa, Yoritomo, and Kato looked on in horror. Sano said, “Think about this for a moment, Kajikawa- san, ” but the shogun shrieked, “Do it!”

As Ihara backed away, too dumbfounded to plead for his life, the guard slashed his paunchy middle. A huge, bleeding gash doubled him over. He gurgled blood from his mouth. His knees knocked and he collapsed dead.

Cries of horror blared. The shogun retched and choked, vomiting. Horrified by the sudden carnage, Sano looked at Masahiro. The boy was as gray and rigid as a stone statue. He’d seen death before, but not a murder in Japan’s most secure, civilized place.

“There!” Kajikawa laughed, triumphant. “I showed the monkey!”

Kato shouted, “Ihara!” Yanagisawa was too stunned, and too appalled by the death of his ally, to speak. The guard let his bloody sword dangle. The gaze he cast around the room pleaded for absolution. Nobody offered any.

“Masahiro! Leave the room!” Sano said, anticipating more violence.

Masahiro hesitated, loath to abandon his father, then started toward the door. Servants and boys hurried after him. “Stay where you are, or the shogun is next!” Kajikawa said.

The rush stopped. Detectives Marume and Fukida peered in the door. Kajikawa yelled at them, “Go away! Clear everybody out of the palace, or the shogun dies!”

“Do as he says!” the shogun cried.

The detectives went. The atmosphere turned even more lethal now that the hope of rescue was gone. Everyone who remained seemed shrunken in size, diminished, except Kajikawa. The little man swelled with exhilaration and power over his superiors. The sword in his hand was steady over the shogun, who wept and cringed.

“Guards,” Kajikawa said. “Take everybody’s weapons. Then get out. You go, too,” he told Kato. Sano realized that although Kajikawa had been acting on impulse, he now had some sort of plan. When the guards hesitated, he said, “Or shall I make you kill somebody else?”

“Do as he says,” Yanagisawa told the guards, his voice tight with fury.

The guards collected the swords from Yanagisawa, Yoritomo, and Sano. They even took Masahiro’s junior-sized weapons. They carried the swords out of the room. Kato beat a fast, cowardly retreat. Sano stood beside Masahiro while he thought as fast as he could.

One wrong word could provoke another disaster.

Kajikawa bobbled his head at Yanagisawa. “You thought I was weak. You thought you could beat me down. Well, you were wrong. I have the upper hand.” He tittered exultantly. “Fancy that!”

“Please, please,” the shogun gasped out. “Have mercy!”

“You’re a fool who’s lost the brains he was born with,” Yanagisawa said, too incensed to control his sharp tongue. “You should have been content to see that the privies are cleaned. But no-you meddled in business that wasn’t yours. You’ve gone too far. Not even I can save you now.”

“Oh? Is that what the great chamberlain says?” Kajikawa’s glee turned to rage. “Then what have I got to lose by killing the shogun?”

Sano realized that Yanagisawa was the one who’d gone too far. Aghast, Sano said, “Wait, Kajikawa- san -”

Kajikawa pressed down on his blade. The edge sank into the shogun’s neck.

Reiko couldn’t bear to sit at home and wait for news. Leaving Akiko with the nurse, she strapped her dagger to her arm under her sleeve, threw on her cloak, and hurried to the palace. The passages were full of guards and officials rushing in the same direction. Everyone had heard about the trouble; everyone wanted to find out what it was. Reiko’s sandals slipped on the icy paving stones as she ran. People slid, collided, fell. She kicked off her sandals and forged onward. She barely felt the cold through her thin cotton socks. Reaching the palace, she found a huge, noisy crowd. The Tokugawa army milled through groups of officials and servants. Guards blocked the doors. People craned their necks, buzzed with speculation.

Reiko looked around for Masahiro and Sano, in vain. Hearing her name called, she saw Detectives Marume and Fukida weave through the mob toward her. She greeted them eagerly. “What’s happened?”

“Kajikawa is trapped in the shogun’s private chambers,” Fukida said.

Marume’s usually cheerful face was grave. “He’s threatening to kill the shogun.”

Reiko clutched her throat. “He wouldn’t, would he?”

“He’s already killed Ihara from the Council of Elders,” Fukida said.

“Or rather, he forced one of the guards to kill Ihara while he held the shogun at swordpoint,” Marume said. “He ordered us to clear the palace or the shogun dies.”

The news was so disastrous that Reiko could hardly take it in. Fukida said, “There’s been no communication from Kajikawa since. So we don’t know what else has happened.”

“Where’s my husband?” Reiko asked anxiously. “Where’s Masahiro?”

“With Kajikawa and the shogun,” Marume said. “And Yanagisawa, Yoritomo, and a bunch of boys and servants.”

Reiko’s blood went as cold as the ice that filmed the castle. She began to shake with terror. She trusted Sano to take care of himself, but her child was trapped in a volatile situation where at least one person had already been murdered. And they’d parted on bad terms, barely speaking to each other. “Can’t you do something?”

Marume gestured toward the guards. “They won’t let anybody in.”

Reiko gazed at the army, powerless against one fugitive.

“You should go home, Lady Reiko,” Fukida said. “It’s cold out here, and there’s nothing you can do.”

But something might happen, and Reiko wanted to be among the first to know. When Marume and Fukida turned to speak with some other men, she edged around the crowd, circling the palace. Nothing was visible except shuttered windows and blank walls. Reiko mingled with a crowd of women and girls, the shogun’s relatives and concubines and their attendants. They chattered and fretted. They didn’t notice Reiko sidling toward the building. Neither did the guards. As she swept her gaze over the palace, desperate for a hint of what was going on inside, she saw a gap in the latticework that covered the space under the palace. She hesitated, fighting temptation. Maternal instinct outweighed the risk. Reiko dropped to her knees and scuttled through the gap.