by Rokuro Inui
Apparently he had spoken more sharply than even he realized. Hambei wilted visibly, and the atmosphere at his table became as cool as the sake at a funeral vigil.
Jinnai turned back to Matsukichi. “I didn’t quite catch that. Could you repeat it?”
Matsukichi took a deep breath to calm his nerves first. “Master Keian was invited by the imperial household to investigate the Sacred Vessel from the Age of Myth.”
“Oh?”
This was interesting. Jinnai knew vaguely that the Sacred Vessel was a symbol of imperial authority handed down from empress to empress since time immemorial, but what it was exactly he had no idea.
“When he talked about it—the Vessel—that’s what he would always say. ‘The mechanism’s workings are obscure.’”
“So the Sacred Vessel is some kind of machine?”
“I don’t know.”
“Another drink?”
Jinnai called to a severely pockmarked waitress and had her bring them a new bottle. Matsukichi’s cup was far from empty, but he reached to refill it anyway.
When Matsukichi saw Jinnai tilting the bottle, he grabbed his cup and drained it in one gulp. Hambei pointed and laughed at this, for whatever reason, but fell silent at a sharp glare from Jinnai.
“Once or twice a month, Master Keian was summoned to the palace in Kamigata. The other students told me that his automata were based on what he learned inspecting the Sacred Vessel.”
Once every sixty years, when the calendar completed another sexagenary cycle, the entire palace was rebuilt at a new location. “Kamigata,” literally “the upper region,” was the imperial word for wherever the palace currently stood. The last relocation had been around thirty years ago.
Imperial succession had gone through the female line since ancient times, but, mysteriously, no daughters had been born to the family for many years, as if it was cursed to bear only sons. Until the accession of the current empress, there had even been talk of ceding the throne to the daughter of the most closely related prince. And now the current empress was ill herself and rarely appeared before anyone.
Jinnai’s investigation into Kyuzo Kugimiya and the dissolution of the Muta domain was heading in some very odd directions.
If the refinery had inherited the Institute of Machinery’s secret knowledge of automata, perhaps that included something the imperial household, too, would prefer to keep quiet.
If so, this was a dangerous assignment. It might go far beyond the flow of public funds or political dealings within the tight-fisted shogunate, as Kakita suspected.
Beyond the refinery, beyond Kyuzo, who was still a cipher in any case, Jinnai sensed something dark and bottomless. The involvement of the Conch and Taiko also bothered him.
“‘The mechanism’s workings are obscure.’”
He muttered it to himself, without thinking. The words sounded like an incantation.
What kind of automaton was beyond the understanding even of a genius like Keian Higa?
“The Muta domain, its dissolution—did that have something to do with Master Keian?” asked Matsukichi.
The question surprised Jinnai. “What do you mean?”
Matsukichi looked flustered. “I just mean … Well, the ronin who leaked Keian’s plans to the shogunate was later made a Muta samurai, wasn’t he?”
He lowered his face and looked up at Jinnai as he spoke, watching to see how the other would react.
Jinnai’s mind was racing. He had been trying to find out where the Muta domain had gotten a mechanical cricket. What if the replacement had been done without their knowledge?
From what Jinnai had heard, when the accusation of tampering with the insect had been made at the tournament, the entrant from Muta had placed the cricket on the cup of water with absolute confidence, freely inviting the referees and officials to make their inspection. But what if he had been set up by someone seeking to destroy the Muta domain?
For example, a former student of Keian Higa?
Jinnai stood up. “You’ve given me a lot to think about,” he said. “Thanks.”
He left the restaurant without looking back.
III
Kyuzo Kugimiya, refinery assistant.
Eve, the woman who lived in his residence.
Keian Higa’s plot against the shogun. The Muta domain’s dissolution.
And the Sacred Vessel from the Age of Myth, passed down the imperial line …
A simple investigation into where the refinery directed its funding was turning up one new mystery after another.
The mechanism’s workings are obscure.
The question of the Sacred Vessel’s true nature intrigued him most. Despite Keian Higa’s plot against the shogunate, it had been his work that made automata so widespread today.
Jinnai had a hunch that the Sacred Vessel itself had inspired Keian’s plot. The man had been a scholar from the merchant class, not a warrior. The secret might lie in the devices and diagrams confiscated from his institute.
Perhaps Jinnai would have to pay an undetected visit to the refinery.
If Keian’s automata had been derived from the Sacred Vessel, they could be viewed as imperial secrets leaked to the wider world.
Whether that would be evident to a nonspecialist was another question. Even if Jinnai could catch a glimpse of it, would he understand what he saw? It was impossible to say in advance.
As he made his way to Kakita’s residence at the top of Nekojizo Hill, Jinnai considered what to include in his report.
None of these new revelations were the answers Kakita sought. Instead of clarifying the flow of funds, Jinnai had only found hints at further secrets lying just beyond his grasp.
The sun had set, and night had fallen. Jinnai climbed the hill without getting out of breath. Looking up, he noticed that it was a new moon. No wonder the street felt even darker than usual.
He arrived at Kakita’s mansion and was about to announce himself when he realized something was wrong. Warily, he backed off the property and went around to the rear.
As far as he could see from the outside, there were no lights burning in the house at all. He slipped into the back garden through a gap in the hedge and tried the kitchen door. It was unlocked and slid easily to the side.
Entering the dark entryway, he saw a person lying facedown in front of the cooking stove. Probably a maid. No need to check if she was alive. Her clothing was dark with blood.
He stepped up out of the kitchen as if fleeing the stink of gore, but if anything it was stronger farther inside the house.
That isn’t just one or two murders, his intuition whispered to him. Could the whole household have been slaughtered?
He headed for Kakita’s library and pulled aside the sliding screen.
Jinnai was no stranger to violence, but even he blanched at what he saw.
The corpse of Lord Kakita, governor of Aji, lay in the dwindling light of a standing paper lantern. His body faced the floor, but his eyes gazed at the ceiling. His head had been all but severed and was connected to his neck by only a thin flap of skin. Perhaps the murderer had wanted to make sure. Plumes of blood had stained not just the floor but also the white plaster walls and even the roof.
Probably not the work of a burglar.
Inspecting the wound, Jinnai found that Kakita’s throat had been cut in a single blow, delivered from behind. Not the kind of feat just anyone could pull off. He doubted Kakita had even had time to scream.
Going by the intensity of the reek of blood, more than two hours had passed since the murder. And since no one in the neighborhood had raised the alarm, every single person in the house must have been killed. Methodically, room by room, with no one given a chance to escape.
Not unlike the way his fellow spies handled such matters.
He put his hand to his chin and though
t. Why had Kakita been killed? All that came to mind was the matter that Jinnai was currently nosing around in. Perhaps someone had started their own investigation of the master of account’s menacing actions. Kihachi was unlikely to tell him if so.
Someone pounded on the front door, then yelled in a familiar voice.
“This is Hambei Sayama on the authority of the western magistrate’s office! We have received a report and are here to investigate! If nobody answers, we will force our way in to inspect the premises!”
It was a setup, then.
Holding his breath, Jinnai rose silently to his feet.
The timing was too good. Whoever it was must have waited until Jinnai was heading for Kakita’s mansion before making their report.
To judge from the noises outside, Hambei had brought a dozen or more men from the constabulary with him. And to judge by the tension in his voice, he expected to find a murder scene or worse.
The master of accounts was a key shogunate official. Hambei and the others must have come from the nearest police station to contain the scene, but dozens of reinforcements from the magistrate’s office would be on their way at that very moment.
If Jinnai revealed himself, he would become the prime suspect for the murders. They certainly would not just let him go.
In cases like this, an informant like Hambei had one job: to watch the scene until the real police arrived, making sure that not even a stray cat got out. But Hambei, perhaps hoping to make a name for himself, seemed to have come up with the foolish idea of entering the house and searching it himself. If the killers were still inside and he could capture them before the constabulary arrived, it would be quite a coup.
The front door rattled open. The first few men inside groaned and retched at the stench of blood.
If Hambei had any sense at all, he would have posted men at the back door too.
Hambei and his men were pouring in, shouting with false bravado. Time to make a decision.
Jinnai kicked over the lantern.
As its remaining oil spilled onto the floor, its last flickering scrap of wick bloomed into rapidly spreading flames.
Once the library filled with smoke, Jinnai drew the sword at his waist and leapt out of the room.
The men were already in the corridor.
“Y—you?!” Hambei stuttered with shock.
Without hesitating, without mercy, Jinnai brought down his sword.
Hambei tried to catch the blade with the fork in his jitte but only managed to deflect it. This was probably the first time he’d ever used it for anything other than extorting other criminals.
Taking advantage of Hambei’s reflexive flinch, Jinnai kicked him firmly in the chest. Hambei fell backward, knocking over the men behind him like dominoes.
Before the flames rose any higher, Jinnai turned and fled, retracing his steps to the back entrance. Instead of opening the door, he hurled himself at it bodily, smashing through the timber and flying out into the yard.
He quickly brought up his sword in a defensive stance, but it seemed that Hambei was an even bigger fool than he looked. There was only one man guarding the door. Hambei must have used almost every man he had to storm the front door, like a bunch of bandits.
The lone guard’s eyes went wide as he saw Jinnai smash through the door. Jinnai raised his sword and brought the blunt edge down right on the man’s throat.
The man groaned and collapsed where he stood.
Jinnai swept him up over one shoulder and carried him to a nearby thicket of bamboo, where he quickly stripped the man and exchanged clothes with him. This was why he had not used the sharp edge of his blade: he had not wanted the clothes to be torn or spattered with blood.
He pulled the man’s headband tight around his forehead, then rolled up his kimono hem and tucked it into the obi around his waist, the way the muscle at the police station did.
The fire had spread to most of the building now. The air was filling with dense smoke.
Jinnai pressed the point of his sword against the still-unconscious guard, then drove it in to finish him off. Then he slipped out of the bamboo thicket from the other side into Nekojizo Street.
As expected, several bobbing police lanterns were already climbing the hill.
Hambei and his men were nowhere to be seen. They were probably panicking back at the mansion—the building they were supposed to secure had gone up in flames.
Jinnai ran down the hill, waving both hands at the lanterns.
“Fire!” he cried, trying to sound as panicky as possible. “Fire at Lord Kakita’s mansion!”
He saw that the man closest to him was wearing the leather jacket and hat of a fire brigade member.
“Hurry!” he yelled. “Please hurry!”
He stepped aside to let the man and the dozens with him pass, waving his arms and raving to inflame the situation further. As he watched them race up the hill toward the smoke and flames, he allowed himself an exhalation of relief, then bolted down the hill and away from the scene.
IV
A few days after Lord Kakita’s mansion burned down, the magistrate’s office announced that Jinnai was wanted for his murder.
To an extent Jinnai had been resigned to this, but it did mean he could no longer visit Kihachi in the castle gardens.
Both murder and frame-up had to be related to the refinery investigation. But the fact was that Jinnai still knew next to nothing about the matter.
Still, someone had killed Kakita to keep him quiet, and Jinnai was determined to figure out what they were hiding. Under the circumstances, that information would give him more cards to play. It would probably also help him figure out what to do next. If he was going to surrender to the magistrate and reveal all, that could wait.
After a few days staking out the hundred-prayer stone at Nakasu Kannon, he finally saw Eve again. It was the first Day of the Ox of the new month—the same festival day of their first meeting, when they had seen the karakuri show.
Jinnai was sitting on the banks of the Okawa, fishing line in the water and conical sedge hat on his head to deflect suspicion as he closely watched the crowds crossing Ten-Span Bridge. He recognized Eve’s red kosode immediately.
He waited a few beats, then set his fishing pole down and crossed the bridge after her. When he arrived at the hundred-prayer stone, he found the abacus in use, as expected.
Glancing toward Kannon-do Hall, he saw glimpses of Eve’s kosode through the crowds. She would be back. He just had to wait.
He pulled the brim of his hat lower and took up a position a short distance from the pillar. Finally he heard the sound of geta clogs scraping through the gravel. A woman’s footsteps.
Slender white fingers pushed a tag on the abacus to one side.
Jinnai seized her wrist.
“You’re coming with me,” he said.
Eve was a full head shorter than him, so the hat did not hide his face from her. She showed no sign of distress but only frowned and cocked her head to one side.
“Are you the samurai I met here once before?” she asked with a suspicious look.
She was right to be wary, of course. He had not looked like this at their last meeting; he had dressed and even carried himself differently.
Jinnai pulled the front fold of his kimono to one side for a moment, giving Eve—and only Eve—a glimpse of the dagger inside.
Eve nodded slightly and went with him, still not seeming particularly taken aback.
Jinnai led her back toward the bridge.
“Not going to try and run?” Jinnai asked, prodding the small of her back with the dagger hidden under his clothing.
No one around them noticed. Children clutching pinwheels and candy from the stalls at the temple ran past, calling for their parents to hurry up.
“I suppose you have something to talk to me about?” E
ve said, without stopping or turning her head. “I have questions for you too.”
Her tone, for some reason, gave Jinnai chills.
His plan had been to take her back to the cheap lodging house where he had gone to ground, but she had taken charge.
She was walking not toward the bridge but away from the main path, toward the edge of the island. They arrived at a quiet corner with a row of tiny subshrines surrounded by a stone fence. The black pines growing on the sandy shore made the area cool and shady.
In stark contrast to Kannon-do, this area was deserted apart from a single cat curled up in the sun on top of a crumbling stone lantern.
Eve passed through the torii gate into the fenced-in area, then took a seat on a convenient stone by the miniature shrines. They were crammed together like men in one of the city’s longhouses: Inari, Hachiman, Kehaya.
Jinnai resheathed his dagger for the time being but stood with his back to the gate to prevent Eve from fleeing.
“You said you had something to ask me,” he said.
“What is your interest in Kyuzo Kugimiya?”
“You noticed?” Jinnai frowned.
“I noticed the first time you approached me here.”
So that was why she had talked to him so readily. She had been feeling him out even as he investigated her.
“It will only make trouble for you,” she added, looking at him from under her lashes. She sounded as if she meant it as a sincere warning.
“It already has,” said Jinnai wryly. “My patron was murdered, and I’m the prime suspect. All right, let me get to the point. What is Kyuzo’s relationship to Keian Higa?”
For a moment, Eve’s eyes of green agate seemed to look into his soul. Then she looked away, turning to the Okawa River.
“Could you swim this river?” she asked.
“No idea,” Jinnai said warily. Where was this going?
“Let’s suppose you could. Could you then swim back across the same river?”
“What are you trying to say?” Jinnai’s confusion gave way to irritation.
