Laura Rowland - The Snow Empress

“One more word out of you, and I’ll cut you even if you are the chamberlain.” Deer Antlers told the guard, “Take her.”

Sano felt helpless as he was led in one direction and Reiko another. He sent up a silent prayer for her safety. He never should have let Reiko come.

A garden of snow-mounded shrubs and boulders surrounded the palace. Servants were clearing paths bordered by snow from earlier falls. Shaggy evergreens almost hid the half-timbered walls. More guards let Sano, his comrades, and his escorts in the door. Deer Antlers led them along a corridor almost as cold as outside. They entered an audience chamber. Its smoky heat from many charcoal braziers and glowing lanterns was a relief. But Sano felt something bad in the atmosphere even before he saw its occupant.

Lord Matsumae crouched on the dais. He sprang to his feet as his men pushed Sano, Hirata, the Rat, and the detectives to their knees before him. An old, faded black robe that hung loose on his emaciated figure gave him the look of a crow. His face was gaunt and shadowed by whisker stubble, his shaved crown sprouting tufts of hair. His eyes were sunken, bloodshot, and burned with a strange light.

Sano had met him once, during his attendance in Edo three years ago. He remembered Lord Matsumae as an intelligent man with sensitive features, refined manners, and impeccable grooming. The change in him shocked Sano. When Lord Matsumae moved to the edge of the dais and loomed over him, Sano smelled a foul stink of unwashed body. His robe was blotched with stains. What had happened to him?

“Honorable Chamberlain.” A sneer twisted Lord Matsumae’s voice. “This is such an honor, that you’ve come all this way to see me.” His mockery turned to rage, and he shouted, “Now what in hell are you doing in my domain?”

Sano realized that Lord Matsumae had gone mad. Whatever the reason, he was the source of the trouble in Ezogashima. And madmen were dangerous, especially when they commanded an army. Hirata and the detectives looked at Sano, angered by Lord Matsumae’s rudeness to him and expecting him to put the man in his place. But Sano thought it wiser to be cautious.

“The shogun is concerned about you because you didn’t show up for your attendance,” Sano said, his tone deliberately mild. “He sent me to find out if you’re all right.”

“Why, I’m perfectly fine.” Sudden tears glistened in Lord Matsumae’s eyes. Half his attention focused on Sano; half aimed inward, at something dark.

“Then why didn’t you come?” Sano said.

“I had more important things to take care of.”

There shouldn’t be anything more important to a samurai than obeying his lord’s law. “Such as?”

Emotions jerked Lord Matsumae’s face into tics.

“Why have you closed Ezogashima?” Sano said, impatient as well as fearful because this man in the throes of a mental breakdown held the power of life and death over him and his comrades. “Why have you cut off communications?”

Lord Matsumae crouched face-to-face with Sano. His stink nauseated Sano; his teary eyes blazed. “For the sake of justice. That’s something you should understand very well, Honorable Chamberlain. You, who have a reputation for seeking justice yourself and stopping at nothing to get it.” He laughed at the surprise on Sano’s face. “Oh, yes, I know about you. We in the far north aren’t such a bunch of isolated, ignorant brutes as you think. I am simply following your fine example.”

Sano was dismayed that he could have inspired Lord Matsumae’s bad behavior, even unwittingly. “Justice for whom?”

Lord Matsumae dropped to his knees. He whispered, “Tekare.”

Sano felt Deer Antlers and the other guards hold their breath, a signal that the conversation had entered dangerous territory. “Who is Tekare?” Sano asked.

“She was my mistress.” Grief clenched Lord Matsumae’s face. His tears spilled. “My dearest, beloved mistress. She’s been dead almost three months now.”

Glad that they seemed to be getting somewhere at last, Sano said, “What happened to her?”

“She was-” Lord Matsumae gulped. Tremors shook his body.-murdered.“

This, the loss of his woman, was the cause of his breakdown and the reason for everything that had followed. Love and grief had deranged him. Then he’d used his power to act out his madness and put himself in bad odor with the regime.

“I’m sorry to hear that. My sincere condolences.” However, Sano couldn’t quite believe that mourning was all that ailed Lord Matsumae. He’d never seen it cause such a spectacular transformation of character. There must be more to Lord Matsumae’s troubles, although Sano couldn’t imagine what. Again he had the disorienting sense that things were different here, the people as well as their environment subject to strange phenomena. “But I don’t understand why you closed off Ezogashima. What was that supposed to accomplish?”

“I want to know who killed my Tekare,” Lord Matsumae said. Sardonic humor glinted through his misery. “You may think you’re a great detective, Honorable Chamberlain, but I’ve spent twenty years ruling this domain, and I know something about police work. What do you do with a murder suspect?

“You lock him up and interrogate him until he confesses. Well, I have a whole city of murder suspects, all the people who were in the area when Tekare died. I’ve locked them all up. I’ve been busy interrogating them. I don’t want anybody from the outside to come in and interfere. And I won’t stop until one of them confesses to killing Tekare.”

Holding the domain hostage was a clever albeit extreme plan for a murder investigation, but it didn’t seem to have worked. “No one’s confessed?”

Not yet. But somebody will. They can’t hold out much longer.“

A cold, ominous sensation trickled through Sano as he remembered the fear in the townspeople’s faces. “What have you done besides interrogate them?”

Lord Matsumae laughed. “Come now, Honorable Chamberlain. Certainly you’re aware of means of making people talk.”

Torture, Sano thought; legal although not always effective. “I’m aware that they often produce false confessions.”

“No matter.” Lord Matsumae’s hand flicked away the legions who must have suffered at it. “And no matter that some of the suspects couldn’t withstand my interrogation.”

“How many died?” Sano said, all the more disturbed.

Lord Matsumae’s expression turned deliberately vague, mockingly innocent. “Did I say anyone died? But if they did, then their example should encourage someone who knows the truth about the murder to inform on the culprit.”

If Lord Matsumae didn’t kill everybody first. Sano’s ominous feeling turned to dread. “I sent some envoys to you a while ago. They never returned. What became of them?”

The darkness inside Lord Matsumae emanated from him in almost visible waves. “Ask them. You’ll be seeing them soon.”

Sano was horrified for another reason besides his certainty that Lord Matsumae had murdered them and intended to kill him, too. “Lord Matsudaira had my son kidnapped and brought here.” Lord Matsdaira couldn’t have known what the trouble in Ezogashima was; by sheer luck he’d sent Masahiro, and Sano, into peril beyond his wildest imagining. “What’s happened to him?”

The women’s quarters of Fukuyama Castle had winged eaves shading a railed veranda and wooden bars over the windows. A garden that might have been beautiful in summer was bleak with deep snow, bare trees, a frozen pond, and a deserted pavilion. The guard escorted Reiko inside, opened a sliding door, and thrust her into a room.

“Here’s a visitor,” he announced to the people inside, then pointed a finger at Reiko. “You stay put. Or else.”