by Rokuro Inui
Which meant that if Kasuga fell asleep and failed to alert the gentlewomen of the inner rooms, the entire palace would remain on standby all night without a minute’s sleep.
Kasuga crawled forward quickly and listened to the sounds within the curtain around the imperial bed.
“Kasuga.”
That voice.
She looked around again.
Why was she hearing a voice when there was no one in the room with her?
She got goose bumps at the thought before suddenly remembering that there was someone in the room with her.
The empress.
But Kasuga was dubious.
She had joined the women of the innermost sanctum two years ago, and in all that time she had never heard the empress speak.
To report the empress’s sleeping and waking, two of the ladies of the inner sanctum stayed in the imperial quarters each night. One was there in case the empress woke in the night with business to assign, and she spread her bedding beside the empress’s bed. The other slept in a neighboring room.
Tonight, Kasuga was the first of these two. There was no one she could turn to for confirmation of what she had heard.
Nor would it do for her to ask the empress if she had called her. She would just have to peer behind the bed curtains and check.
She slipped her fingers through where the curtains met and parted them an extremely modest inch or so.
Looking through the crack, she saw that the empress was awake and sitting up amid the blankets spread on the black lacquered dais that was her bed.
She was also looking back at Kasuga—and laughing, hand over her mouth for propriety’s sake. Kasuga’s attempts at stealth must have amused her.
Kasuga froze.
She froze, fingers still in the curtains, body hunched forward to peer through. She felt a flash of anxiety. Was she actually doing something extremely impolite?
“Kasuga. That is your name, we believe? We have been calling to you for some time without receiving an answer. Were you asleep?”
“F—forgive me, Your Majesty,” said Kasuga, both mortified and astonished. Her voice came out as a squeak. Without getting off her knees, she sprang back at least two feet like a shrimp, then pressed her forehead to the floor.
“You are an amusing one,” the empress said. “Go and tell the gentlewomen that we are asleep. I hope you will then indulge us in some light conversation.”
Kasuga heard the empress chuckle whenever she wasn’t speaking.
She left the bedchamber as instructed to announce that the august slumber had begun. It felt like a dream, a fantasy, but if the empress willed it she could only obey.
As the chain of voices began passing on the news into the distance, she returned to the dim chamber to find one of the bed curtains fully raised. Had the empress done this herself?
Beyond the curtains, she saw the empress in her sleepwear beckoning to Kasuga with a smile.
II
After Tempu’s famed Thirteen Floors, the cluster of red-lantern establishments on the banks of the Ashikari River just outside Kamigata made a distinctly seedy impression.
Despite its relative proximity to the imperial palace, the scene put visitors in mind of the Sanzu River of myth, where unfortunate souls unable to cross over to the underworld were said to wander in limbo. Huts leaned together in rows, shingled roofs supported by posts sunk directly into the earth. A gaunt dog walked down the road through gritty clouds of dust.
But in an upstairs room at the best teahouse in the neighborhood, Jinnai Tasaka sat by a window sipping sake from a shallow cup and surveying the stone walls of the palace in the distance.
The chimneys at the palace’s five outer points reminded him of the refinery. Their white smoke drifted into the sky.
“Messengers from the shogun urging the empress to abdicate have been more frequent of late,” said the man sitting opposite Jinnai.
“Who handles state affairs?”
“Prince Hiruhiko has performed that duty during the empress’s long illness.”
Jinnai nodded. Hiruhiko was the reigning empress’s older brother. As a male child, he had no right to the throne himself, but his wife had recently given birth to a daughter.
His guest was a man who looked to be of the nobility but who was currently fidgeting before a tray of food and sake. Eager to call in the women, no doubt, but he would just have to wait until their conversation was over.
A senior attendant at the palace, the man had been cultivated by the Conch and Taiko as an informant, although whether he himself realized this was questionable.
Jinnai considered Hiruhiko’s situation thoughtfully.
Imperial succession ran through the female line.
Officially, only those born of an empress were considered part of the imperial bloodline.
Hiruhiko’s wife was a daughter of the shogun. Thirty years ago, the imperial household had borrowed most of the funds to move the palace from the shogunate, and when the period of mourning for the previous empress was over and the shogun had proposed a union between Prince Hiruhiko and the shogun’s then five-year-old daughter Mari, the palace had been unable to refuse.
Hiruhiko and Mari had not been blessed with an heir for some years, but they were now the parents of an eagerly awaited daughter of at least partly imperial blood.
If the reigning empress abdicated, the throne would surely be inherited by Hiruhiko’s daughter. As she was not yet old enough even to toddle on her own, Hiruhiko would act as her regent, continuing to control affairs of state as he presently did. When his daughter reached her majority and took up the responsibilities of her position, the absorption of the imperial household into the shogun’s family would be complete.
A great reversal, with the shogun supreme above the empress at whose pleasure he technically served.
Hence the frequent messengers urging abdication.
There were rumors that the reigning empress’s long illness might already have rendered her barren, though no one dared speculate publicly. In any case, every year she aged made the prospect of children less likely. Talk of marriage prospects had ceased, and her day-to-day affairs were left in the hands of a group of young girls known as “the ladies of the innermost sanctum.” And it seemed doubtful that she would take one of the boys who did odd jobs around the palace as a concubine. In fact, rumor had it that at the age of almost thirty the empress was still a virgin.
“I want to speak to someone close to the top,” said Jinnai, raising his cup to his lips. By “top,” of course he meant the empress.
“Close?”
“A servant. Someone who attends to her everyday needs.”
The senior attendant looked pained.
The reigning empress’s mother had died in childbirth. For a time there had been rumors that the child had been stillborn also, but these had eventually been dispelled.
Her father had been one of the palace boys—an entirely different sort of man from Prince Hiruhiko. After the empress had ascended to the throne, he had been promoted to chief of servants but had later succumbed to a fatal illness of unknown cause.
“That I cannot do,” said the senior attendant finally.
His reluctance caught Jinnai by surprise. The man was tougher than he had expected. Bottling up his irritation, Jinnai said, “If it’s a question of money …”
The man shook his head. Apparently this was not the issue. “The only ones who see Her Majesty directly are the ladies of the innermost sanctum,” he said. “Girls, none yet in their fifteenth year. Money is unlikely to prove much inducement to them.”
His speech was beginning to slur from drink, but on this matter he was quite firm.
“I see,” said Jinnai with a nod. The palace must keep the number of people in direct contact with the empress as low as possible.
In
Tempu, the only people who knew that the empress was an automaton outside the Conch and Taiko were Jinnai himself and Kyuzo Kugimiya. It was the secret among secrets, shared only with a select few even among the imperial household. Prince Hiruhiko must know, but the man across the table from Jinnai right now clearly did not.
“Also,” he continued, “once a girl becomes a lady of the innermost sanctum, she may not set foot outside the palace again until the conclusion of her service. I could not bring one to meet you even if she were willing.”
“Are there any whose service is about to conclude, then?”
“Well …”
Sake had loosened the man’s tongue easily, but he clammed up now. Not a difficult man to understand, Jinnai thought, reaching for the small porcelain bottle and pouring him another cup.
“The other day, one of the ladies of the innermost sanctum … was careless. She will be leaving the palace soon.”
“‘Careless’? What does that mean?”
“I am not privy to the details.”
“Is there a lot of carelessness at the palace?”
“Rarely. The ladies of the innermost sanctum serve terms of a few years. Once they turn fifteen, they are either made court ladies or sent back to their homes.”
“I gather that neither of those fates await those who are careless?” said Jinnai, pursuing the man relentlessly.
“In confidence …” The man looked around nervously. His aversion must have been to speaking the words themselves aloud, because the chances of anyone eavesdropping on their conversation were low.
“They’re going to kill her?” Jinnai said, when the man continued to have trouble finding the words.
A nod.
Jinnai’s expression remained impassive as things clicked into place in his mind.
The girl must have discovered the truth.
She knew that the empress was an automaton.
Reducing the empress’s personal staff to an absolute minimum would not be enough to ensure that the secret remained hidden. Keeping each attendant’s term of service short and forbidding them to leave the palace for the duration was clearly another part of the strategy.
Even so, every so often someone in close contact with the empress would see through the facade. It appeared that those unfortunate souls were condemned to death.
“Tell me more,” Jinnai said.
He put a hint of iron into his voice, knowing that the man would cringe before it.
If all those who learned the empress’s secret were executed for “carelessness,” questioning those who had served as attendants in their youth would be pointless. Even those who did know the truth would never speak it, knowing that their circumspection was what had allowed them to finish their term of service unharmed.
Jinnai made his decision. He would have to abduct this girl marked for death and interrogate her instead. This would give him proof that the empress was alive as well as more information about her current state.
“Are executions performed at the palace?”
“Bloodshed on the palace grounds is generally frowned upon.”
So she would be taken elsewhere. Good. Breaking into the palace and kidnaping someone from the innermost sanctum would have been a tall order even for Jinnai.
“The girl herself doesn’t know that she’s going to her death, does she?”
The man shook his head. This was logical. They didn’t want the girl to make a break for it once they were outside the palace walls.
“All right. Send word to me when the day is decided. What’s the girl’s name?”
“Kasuga.”
Jinnai nodded and clapped his hands. Several ladies of pleasure who had been waiting outside the room came in.
The palace attendant’s grim expression was gone in an instant.
Jinnai remained entirely sober as he watched the man settle in for an evening of debauchery.
If this was the man who managed the attendants of the palace’s outer rooms, then he had a fairly good idea of the class of person who supported the imperial household.
A man who spoke secrets so freely would speak of Jinnai too.
Once this was all over, Jinnai would have to quietly eliminate him.
A woman sat down beside Jinnai, and he slipped his hand into the front fold of her kimono, groping without much enthusiasm for her breast.
III
“Closer.”
The empress beckoned from within the bed-curtains.
Kasuga crawled numbly toward the lacquered dais.
“Closer still,” said the empress.
Kasuga hesitated. Was she to climb onto the bed itself? She sensed an almost supernatural power in the ring of the empress’s words, the pale crimson of her parted lips.
And then, with a start, she woke.
She had been riding in the palanquin for almost an hour. The boredom and the swaying must have lulled her into a fitful sleep.
We know what you are, Kasuga …
She recalled the words the empress had spoken that night.
Yes. Her Majesty knew all, saw all.
Kasuga had watched as the empress loosened the obi of vermillion crepe around her waist and removed her sleepwear of white silk with its socked feet.
She had seen the empress’s skin many times before but still gasped at how white and sharp it was in the paper lantern’s bleary light.
“Touch us.”
The empress gripped Kasuga’s wrist with a surprisingly cold hand.
The ladies of the innermost sanctum were strictly forbidden from allowing their skin to come into contact with the empress’s, even when attending her at her bath, combing her hair, or helping her dress. Another measure to protect her purity from pollution, just like the socks of her sleepwear.
But now, with no regard for this injunction, the empress brought Kasuga’s hand to her chest.
The empress’s ribs were just visible through her skin. Just over her sternum, between the slight swellings of her breasts, Kasuga’s hand made contact.
Something that was plainly not a heart beat out a rhythm inside.
Kasuga raised her head and looked at the empress.
In her amber eyes she saw her own reflection.
The empress placed her hands on Kasuga’s cheeks and drew her nearer, hugging the girl’s head to her bosom.
With a sob, Kasuga pressed her ear to the empress’s chest.
Through the cold skin she heard the rhythm from before, clearer and louder than when it had come to her through touch alone.
Kasuga closed her eyes.
The faint metallic tick of a balance wheel swinging back and forth and striking a pendulum.
Gears large and small, teeth precisely interlocked, whirring as the clockwork drove them.
In the darkness behind her closed eyes, Kasuga saw the mechanisms packed into the empress’s body spread out before her and felt peace and comfort.
So the empress truly is—
But before she could finish the thought, the empress spoke.
“You understand now, we think, that we are not human.” She spoke of herself, pluralis maiestatis, as an empress must.
Kasuga opened her eyes. The empress’s face was only a breath away.
“Our person has been deprived of maintenance for many years. Since our father, Keian Higa, departed from this world.”
Kasuga knew the name. A conspirator against the shogun who had been caught and executed, he was also the greatest karakuri designer of his time.
“Before long, we believe that our mechanisms will cease to operate.”
“No,” Kasuga said, eyes welling with tears. The empress ran her fingers through Kasuga’s black hair, stroking her head.
“If that should come to pass, will you protect us?”
Kasuga nodd
ed. She had no idea how to make good on the promise, but she nodded.
“We thank you.”
The empress touched her lips lightly to the back of Kasuga’s neck.
And not long after that, there arrived a morning when the empress’s day failed to dawn.
When the procession with the palanquin at its center emerged from the palace, it was the Hour of the Rat. The dead of night.
Ten or more torches bobbed in the night like ghost lights, illuminating the bridge as the group crossed the moat. They reached the highway and headed west, giving the distinct impression that they hoped not to be seen.
The date and time both matched what his informant had told him.
Jinnai, dressed in his black shinobi outfit to better melt into the darkness, howled like a wild dog to signal to Chokichi Yaguruma’s men lying in wait nearby.
They were street toughs, unlikely to show much subtlety when they sprang into action. But Jinnai usually worked alone. When he needed backup, he could not be too choosy. And he had an existing connection to Chokichi since the business in Tempu not long ago.
So, after explaining the situation to the master of the Conch and Taiko, he had paid Chokichi a hefty sum to procure the corpse of a girl of fourteen or fifteen from the execution grounds and send it to Kamigata, along with a few men to assist him.
The plan was the height of simplicity. Chokichi’s men, pretending to be highwaymen, would overwhelm the procession. The roads were dangerous around the palace, and Chokichi’s thugs were not so different from actual highwaymen in any case. The attack itself should not seem unusual.
Next, Jinnai would kill everyone who had emerged from the palace except for Kasuga, whom he would abduct, leaving the corpse in her place.
She was being carried to her death to begin with, so if she appeared to have been murdered along with the others, the outcry should be minimal. The entire incident might be hushed up.
Compared to the sort of work the shogun’s intelligence service was capable of, this would be a simple operation. But since the people enacting it were common criminals rather than trained agents, Jinnai felt a degree of unease.
