Laura Rowland - The Assassin's Touch

“Yes,” Sano promised, “tomorrow.”

A crowd gathered outside a small shrine wedged in a road of basketry shops in Ginza. Out the torii gate marched Detectives Arai and Inoue, hauling two samurai rebel outlaws who’d been hiding in the shrine. Hirata followed on horseback with more detectives who carried out guns, ammunition, and firebombs that the rebels had stockpiled for attacks on Lord Matsudaira’s regime. As he passed the gawking spectators, Hirata reflected on what a dramatic difference a few days could make.

Business was back to normal now that Kobori had been slain. Sano’s position was secure, and so was Hirata’s own. Yet not much else had changed for Hirata. He was still a prisoner of his ailing body. He still sat on the sidelines while other men acted, as he had during the battle against Kobori. His memory of that night was clouded with the shame of his helplessness. His life seemed destined to continue this way, for he hadn’t seen Ozuno again, even though he’d spent every spare moment looking for the priest. Ozuno was an opportunity that fate had tantalized him with, then taken away.

But Hirata closed the door on self-pity and regret. He had his position, his family, and his good name. He still had his dreams in which he could fight and always triumph, as well as his memories of battles won. Hirata counted himself as lucky.

As he rode off with his men and their captives, he saw a familiar figure limping toward him. It was Ozuno.

Hirata felt his face brighten with joyful amazement. He scrambled off his horse and rushed to meet the priest. “Hello!” he called.

“What? Oh, it’s you,” Ozuno said.

The chagrin on his face struck Hirata as comical. Hirata laughed, so glad to see Ozuno that he didn’t mind that Ozuno wasn’t glad to see him. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I thought you’d left town. Isn’t it astonishing that we should happen to run into each other?”

“Sometimes we find what we want when we’re not looking for it.” Ozuno added snidely, “And sometimes we stumble upon what we don’t want no matter how hard we’ve tried to avoid it.”

Hirata was too happy to care that Ozuno had been hiding from him. “Some of us are just luckier than others.”

Ozuno nodded grudgingly. “I hear that Chamberlain Sano has captured my renegade pupil. I owe him a great debt for taking Kobori out of the world.”

“He owes you a great debt for your advice,” Hirata said. “It helped him defeat Kobori.”

“I’m glad to have been of service.” Ozuno’s chronic bad temper relented, although not by much.

“Do you remember what you said last time we met?” Hirata asked. “That if we met again, you would be my teacher?”

Ozuno grimaced. “Yes, I did say that. After living eighty years, I should know enough to keep my mouth shut.”

“Well, here we are,” Hirata said, opening his arms wide as if to embrace the priest, their surroundings, and this blessed day. “This is the sign that we’re destined for you to teach me the mystic martial arts.”

“And who am I to ignore a sign from fate?” Ozuno rolled his eyes heavenward. “The gods must be playing a joke on me.”

Now that Hirata’s dreams were within reach, hope invigorated him. He glimpsed a vast reservoir of power that would soon be his to tap. “When do we begin my lessons?”

“We can’t know how much time we have left on this earth,” Ozuno said. “All we have for certain is this moment. We should begin your lessons at once.”

Now that Hirata had his heart’s desire, he felt less haste to claim it. “In a few days would be better for me. I have work to finish. When I’m done, you can move into my estate at Edo Castle, and-”

Ozuno slashed his hand through Hirata’s words. “You are now my pupil. I am your master. I decide when I’ll train you and where. Now come along, before I change my mind.” His stare skewered Hirata. “Or have you changed yours?”

Hirata experienced an internal shift, as though cosmic forces were realigning his life. His allegiances to Sano and the shogun still ruled him, but he’d put himself under Ozuno’s command. Until this instant he hadn’t thought of what conflicts of interest or what physical and spiritual challenges might come with becoming one of the secret, chosen society. Yet he could not refuse his fate any more than Ozuno could.

Hirata called to the detectives who’d paused to wait for him: “Go ahead without me.” He turned to Ozuno, who regarded him with scant approval as though he’d passed the first test, but just barely. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Inside Edo Castle, a procession of samurai marched slowly down an avenue lined with cedar trees. All wore elaborate, ceremonial armor. Each carried a large box wrapped in white paper on his upturned hands. The shogun led the procession. Lord Matsudaira walked on his right, Sano on his left. Ahead of them filed ten Shinto priests clad in white robes and black hats. Some bore lit torches; others held drums and bells. They entered a large space newly cleared in the castle’s forest preserve and spread with white gravel. Clouds drifted in the overcast sky; the morning was as dim and cool as twilight. Faint earth tremors shook the ground. The procession moved down a flagstone path toward the new shrine that the shogun had ordered to be built.

During his convalescence Sano had heard axes ringing day and night as many woodcutters removed the trees. Now he beheld the shrine that honored the memory of the men who’d died in the battle against Kobori. It was a wooden building whose curved roof overhung the steps that led up to it from a raised stone platform. A grille covered the entrance to the chamber that the spirits of the dead could inhabit when summoned. Beside the shrine were stone lanterns; in front of it, a low table that held a tray of incense cones adjacent to a metal vat. The building wasn’t large, but its ornate carved brackets and trim indicated that no expense or labor had been spared. Many craftsmen must have worked nonstop to finish the shrine by today, which the court astrologers had deemed an auspicious time for this memorial ceremony.

The priests lit the stone lanterns, then the incense in the vat. Fragrant smoke rose into the air. They chanted prayers, beat the drums in slow, sonorous rhythm, and rang the bells while the shogun approached the shrine. He halted at the table, where he laid his box that contained forty-nine cakes made of wheaten flour filled with sweetened red bean paste-offerings to the dead, symbolic of the number of bones in the body of one slain soldier. He bowed his head over his clasped hands a moment, then dropped an incense cone into the vat. Lord Matsudaira stepped forward and repeated the ritual. Then Sano took his turn. As he paid his wordless respects to his fallen army, emotions flooded him.

Shame tinged his gratitude that he was alive. It didn’t seem fair that one man should have survived while so many perished, that he was here in the flesh and his troops only in spirit. Sorrow pained him because their destruction had preceded his victory. He joined the shogun and Lord Matsudaira beside the shrine and watched the other men in the procession perform the ceremony. There were seventy-four, each representing a soldier that the Ghost had killed. They included the Council of Elders, other important officials, and male kin of the deceased. But the thirty men seriously wounded and crippled- including Captain Nakai, still paralyzed despite treatment from the best physicians-weren’t represented. Blame settled upon Sano, more distressing than the agony from the beating he’d taken from Kobori.

The ceremony drew to a slow, solemn end. The music ceased; the priests departed. Members of the procession lingered around the shrine, clustering in small groups, conversing in low voices. General Isogai approached Sano and said, “Congratulations on your victory.”