by Rokuro Inui
He had to stop her. He pulled a throwing spike from the front fold of his kosode and let it fly.
But it only struck one of the lower railings, and the figure in indigo vaulted the bannister, still carrying the girl.
Another blast—Jinnai instinctively dove out of the path of the heat. A fireball erupted from within the building and blew out the paper screens along the outer corridor.
Wire glittered in the air, zipping by Jinnai, and wrapped itself around the railing. He peered over the edge.
The figure had used it to control her fall. All he saw on the surface of the canal more then twenty feet below was a remnant white splash.
He watched as the torn paper screens tumbled down toward the canal like great burning leaves.
V
“Sounds like ukami work.”
In the inner courtyard of Tempu Castle, Kihachi Umekawa was wrapping a red pine in straw for the winter.
“Ukami?” repeated Jinnai.
“The empress’s shinobi.”
Jinnai held the mat of straw against the pine’s trunk while Kihachi bound it in place with rough rope. Both were dressed in the same work clothes as any other gardener.
It had been several days since the disturbance at the Thirteen Floors. The flames had ultimately been contained to the floor they’d broken out on, and Jinnai had escaped unharmed.
The shogunate was not inclined to let the matter rest, however. No one had died in the blaze, but several rooms on the higher floors had been in use by high officials when the bomb had gone off.
Chokichi Yaguruma’s men were also searching grimly for the parties responsible.
And now Jinnai had been summoned to this courtyard of white gravel at Tempu Castle to help wrap the trees in the Garden of August Repose for the winter. The request had come directly from Kihachi himself, head gardener and secret chief of the shogun’s intelligence service.
This was unusual.
The shogun’s spies sometimes visited Tempu Castle even when not on patrol duty if they wanted to consult with Kihachi on something, but this was the first time Kihachi had called one of them in.
He must have heard about Jinnai’s involvement with the incident at the Thirteen Floors from somewhere. Chokichi’s people, most likely.
Kihachi ordered Jinnai to tidy up around the pine, now snugly protected from the cold, and began spreading a sheet under the next tree, humming as he worked.
This was just like any other visit with Kihachi. Why had he been called here?
Jinnai knew that Kihachi was a wily conversationalist. People who came to question him ended up running off their mouths about all sorts of things. Jinnai very carefully sought only the information he needed from him, to keep the older man from rummaging through his secrets.
“The imperial household is a darker place than you think, Jinnai,” said Kihachi. He nodded with satisfaction at the spread-out sheet and began wrapping the next mat of straw around the tree. “You need to look closely into what Kyuzo Kugimiya is doing, and where.”
After that, the conversation stayed on safer topics: the walnut cakes at the teahouses along the Okawa that the whole city was talking about, the new shows at Nakasu Kannon, the question of when exactly to burn the straw mats in spring. Then the work was done, and Jinnai left the castle.
He was almost disappointed. He had expected Kihachi to interrogate him on his assignments and what the master of the Conch and Taiko was planning. Why else go to the trouble of summoning him to the castle?
Since Kihachi’s summons could not be ignored, Jinnai had secreted numerous weapons about his person, even bringing poison in case he had to end his own life. But none of it had been necessary.
So what was going on?
Try as he might, he could not figure it out.
He certainly didn’t need Kihachi to tell him to investigate Kyuzo. Jinnai had checked the Kugimiya residence countless times since his failure to appear at the Thirteen Floors, but behind its high earthen walls both main house and workshop seemed utterly deserted.
Was it possible that Kyuzo and Eve had been kidnaped?
He know nothing of the ukami that Kihachi had mentioned, including the scale and scope of their organization. He had only come into contact with them twice.
Mulling the problem over, he made his way to Ganjin Canal. The canal flophouses were where he went to ground when temporarily back in Tempu.
He smelled the stagnant, polluted canal long before he saw it. The narrow pathway along the canal bank was dotted with people sleeping, wrapped in filthy mats, unable to afford even a flophouse room. There was also the occasional drunkard, wandering around almost naked and growling in a too-loud voice about obscure grievances.
“Hey, Tasaka!”
The voice came from behind him, but he was not surprised. Someone had been following him for a while now. He stopped and turned to see who it was.
A small group of thugs glared back at him. Their heads were stubbly, and their beards were unkempt. Their clothes hung loose and sloppy. None of them wore shoes, but some had daggers at their belts and made sure Jinnai knew it.
Their poor attempt at creeping up on him had led him to assume they were just muggers or street toughs, but if they knew his name that changed the situation.
Jinnai sensed several other men emerging behind him, in the direction he had originally been walking. Accomplices who had been waiting in a convenient side alley, no doubt.
“That mess on the Thirteen Floors was a big embarrassment for us,” said one of the men. “The boss wants a word with you.”
Jinnai tutted to himself. First Kihachi, and now Chokichi?
This was what you got for making trouble on the Floors. Everyone had a bone to pick with you.
It was obvious what Chokichi wanted to talk about. He and Jinnai had remained in contact since the girl’s abduction. If the magistrate’s attentions turned to Jinnai, warrants for Chokichi and his men wouldn’t be far behind. Jinnai could understand the man’s agitation.
“Maybe another time,” Jinnai said. “I’m trying to pin down whoever started the fire myself.”
“All I know is the boss told us to bring you in,” said the man.
Talking did not seem likely to work.
And, of course, Jinnai had no intention of following these clowns anywhere.
He doubted Chokichi had much more regard for them than he did, which meant cutting them down here wouldn’t necessarily end his relationship with Chokichi as long as he made amends once everything was resolved.
The problem was there were too many of them. Even for Jinnai, ten against one were long odds. He decided to take down two or three quickly and run for it while the rest were still in shock.
When he shifted the sword on his hip, Chokichi’s men tensed.
When he popped the scabbard with his left thumb, one of the jumpier men in the group charged him with a dagger.
Jinnai neatly sidestepped the blade, then turned to bring his sword down across the man’s back as he stumbled past.
A scream echoed across Ganjin Canal.
Still gripping his sword, Jinnai ran forward.
The man in his direct path fumbled for his dagger, but before he could draw it Jinnai kicked off the ground and soared through the air to plant his foot directly on the man’s chest, kicking him squarely into the filthy waters of the canal.
His escape route now open, Jinnai kept running and didn’t look back.
Hurdling over drunks passed out in the gutter, ignoring the jeers of people watching from under the eaves along the path, Jinnai ran.
Chokichi’s men gave pursuit, but their angry cries gradually receded as he got farther ahead of them. When he reached the end of the canal, he paused and looked back. Only a handful of men were still in sight, and they were exhausted, crouching where they were or slumped in
doorways gasping for breath. Another was leaning over the edge of the canal and vomiting into it noisily. Running was hard on some people. Jinnai, on the other hand, was not even out of breath.
He could have gone back and finished them off in no time at all, but they looked so ridiculous to him that he just shook the blood off his sword and put it back in its scabbard.
He had something new to worry about.
A boat on the canal had been following him for the entire duration of his footrace with Chokichi’s men. He had mistaken it for one of the many tiny covered boats with women aboard selling their affections, but on closer inspection he realized he was wrong.
As he watched, the boat’s prow turned toward the edge of the canal.
More trouble? Jinnai’s guard went back up. But then he heard a voice he recognized.
“Jin! Jin!”
Squinting, he saw a woman in a red kosode, sleeves tied back for practical work and hair wrapped up in a hand cloth, rowing furiously.
“Eve?!”
“So Kyuzo is still in hiding too?”
“Yes. He said something about important business to take care of.”
The two of them were in the bathhouse’s steam-filled washing area. Eve’s sleeves were still held back with cords, and her kosode hem was rolled up above her knees. Once she finished scrubbing Jinnai’s back with the bag of rice bran, she reached for a basin of hot water and dumped it cheerfully over his head.
A boy watching from nearby laughed. Jinnai rubbed his face with his palms and smiled ruefully.
“Do me next!” came a voice from elsewhere in the washing area.
Jinnai turned and saw a heavyset woman somewhere north of thirty years of age beckoning.
“O-Tomi! Don’t overwork our Eve!” said the woman in the red high chair, who seemed to be in charge there.
Leaving Jinnai to fend for himself, Eve went to scrub the other woman’s back. Jinnai found something peculiar in the sight. The melancholy air about her when doing her hundred prayers at Nakasu Kannon was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she was cheerful and bright—an entirely different person. She clearly enjoyed the work.
Jinnai stooped to pass through the low door to the men’s bath and was pleased to find it unoccupied.
Easing himself into the steaming water right up to his shoulders, he finally felt human again.
You’re being followed. It was the first thing Eve had told him back at the canal.
She didn’t mean Chokichi’s thugs, of course. She was talking about men who worked for Kihachi. The elite of the intelligence service’s elite.
It seemed that Jinnai still had his freedom only because they wanted to see what he would do with it.
They must have followed him from the castle, watching to see where he went and whom he talked to. Perhaps they believed he was in contact with Kyuzo.
Knowing that Jinnai was moving from one flophouse to the next by Ganjin Canal, Eve had borrowed the bathhouse’s old boat, the one that had once gone all the way to the Thirteen Floors, and launched it on the canal to wait for him.
Not even the shogun’s spies could maintain their surveillance once he was aboard. No doubt they were currently grinding their teeth in frustration over his escape.
Jinnai emerged from the bath, slipped on a thin yukata, and ascended the narrow stairway into the changing area.
The room upstairs had a low ceiling, six feet at most, and Jinnai had to hunch his shoulders to cross the room. He was just oiling his hair when Eve appeared at the head of the stairs.
“I have to say,” he said with a wry smile, “I didn’t expect to find you lying low in a bathhouse.”
“I am as loyal to Chitose as I would be to my mother,” Eve said, removing the cords that held back her kosode’s sleeves. Then she looked down, hands on her cheeks. “She even asked me to take over the high chair if Tentoku ever returns.”
Was she blushing? A trick of the light, or the result of workings Kyuzo had installed?
“Who’s Tentoku?” he asked.
Eve’s eyes went wide. “You don’t know? Geiemon Tentoku, the wrestler! He used to work here too. He’s dropped out of the public eye of late, for certain reasons. I first met Chitose when I came here to tell her that he was all right.”
Jinnai shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “Did you have anything else you came up here to tell me?”
They were the only two in the room, which was less busy during the day.
“Yes,” Eve said, sitting up straighter. “In fact, I have something I want to ask you. You must not tell anyone—not even Kyuzo.”
A secret even from Kyuzo? That was out of character. Whatever it was must be big.
“I think that Kihachi’s men are watching his residence.”
Jinnai nodded. If they were following him, they would hardly leave Kyuzo’s house unguarded.
“After Kyuzo saved your life, he told me to hide here until the heat died down. But …”
“But?”
“If we leave the Kugimiya residence empty too long, someone might burn it down. I cannot tell you how much this worries me.”
“Where is this going?” Jinnai frowned.
“I wonder if you remember that box with a picture of a fin whale on it.”
“Yeah, I remember it,” Jinnai said. He also remembered that Eve had been very attached to it.
“Well, should someone set fire to the house, that box would burn with it. Before that happens, I wonder if I could impose on you to retrieve it.”
“You really are obsessed with that stool, aren’t you?”
“It is not a stool!” Eve said with a flash of anger. “And I am not obsessed. I just …”
Now her face was definitely redder. It wasn’t just the light, then. And there was something else about the way she was acting today, the things she said—at times he found it hard to grasp their import. The thought processes of an automaton were ultimately opaque in some ways.
“Well …”
There was no getting around it: sneaking into a place known to be dangerous was not a wise practice.
Eve frowned at Jinnai’s reluctance. “Very well,” she said. “I withdraw my request. I will retrieve the box myself.”
She stood up to leave. After a moment’s thought, Jinnai said, “Wait. I’ll do it.”
What was he saying? Did he have a soft spot for her that even he was unaware of?
“But you’ll owe me a favor afterward. And I can’t guarantee it’ll go as planned.”
Eve nodded eagerly.
Jinnai had half expected that the Kugimiya residence would be full of hazardous karakuri and booby traps, but Eve insisted that it held nothing of the sort.
Fortunately, it was a new moon. The silent streets around the Kugimiya residence were shrouded in darkness.
Back in his shinobi garb, Jinnai kept a wary eye out for any sign of company as he approached the property.
Since meeting Kyuzo and Eve, his luck had gone from bad to worse. He had never imagined that he would spend so much of his time breaking into buildings dressed as a shinobi.
Keeping his breath shallow, Jinnai entered the main residence.
The box should still be where he had seen it last, in the inner room where Kyuzo spoke to his guests. Jinnai just had to find it, carry it out of the house, and lug it safely back to the bathhouse.
Eve had made a burglar of him. He chuckled at the thought of how far he had fallen.
But when he pushed the sliding door aside and slipped stealthily into the inner room, the smile on his face froze.
“Jinnai. Where have you been hiding?”
The voice was Kihachi’s.
Jinnai was astonished. From outside the door, just a yard or two away, he had sensed nothing at all. Now the room was overflowing with murderous intent.
Kih
achi was sitting cross-legged on the very box Jinnai had come to steal. It really was just the right height.
“You seem to be laboring under a few misunderstandings,” Kihachi said. “Let me set you straight. The shogun’s spies work for the shogun. We might find other means of support, but everything we do has to be for the shogun’s benefit.”
Jinnai sensed several other men appearing outside the room like ghosts. Kihachi’s most trusted henchmen, no doubt.
“Let’s get back on the right foot. Tell me about the master of the Conch and Taiko. What does he know, and what is he planning?”
Jinnai hesitated. Kihachi was telling the truth. Those within the shogun’s intelligence service tended to wag their tails for whoever paid their bills, but ultimately they were spies for the shogun.
Kihachi was trying to make Jinnai into a mole, just like the Conch and Taiko had done to Kyuzo. Jinnai would continue to feign loyalty to Lord Haga while conveying all his secrets to Kihachi. And if the time came to finish them, Jinnai would ensure that Kihachi had the evidence he needed.
If he accepted Kihachi’s proposal, things probably wouldn’t go badly for him. He might even end up one of Kihachi’s most prized assets.
But Jinnai shook his head.
Even he did not understand why. The old Jinnai would have obeyed without question.
Kihachi sighed. “Have it your way. I saw real potential in you, Jinnai. But this is where your story ends.”
The men closing in on Jinnai from behind made it clear that Kihachi was speaking of more than his career in the service.
VI
A few days after Jinnai’s disappearance during his visit to the Kugimiya residence, word of the empress’s death began going around Tempu.
Kasuga scanned a broadside from a street corner vendor for details. Maintaining the deception must have finally become too difficult even for the imperial household.
Things would finally cool down now. She could start working toward her original goals again.
They say that art can save your life, and it had certainly saved Kasuga and her companion. With Kyuzo Kugimiya vouching for them, they had secured positions in the acrobat troupe currently performing at Nakasu Kannon, alongside the karakuri floats that Kyuzo had built long ago—although Kasuga’s unexpected popularity as a performer had brought some problems of its own.
