The Snow Empress

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Hirata gazed in a straight line from them, through the place where Tekare had fallen. The spring-bow had been set somewhere along the line, in the woods on the path’s opposite side. The killer had tried out the weapon before the murder, had sprung the trap to see where the arrow flew. Hirata examined tree trunks near the rock. Caught in the rough bark of a pine tree were tiny fibers from the string that had triggered the spring-bow. They made a barely audible, trilling vibration in the field. Hirata envisioned and followed the string across the path, into the woods. He found more fibers on two more trees. The killer had experimented with different positions and angles, determining which was best. This told Hirata that the killer had a methodical mind—but did not reveal his identity.

  The green energy glow diminished; Hirata couldn’t sustain forever the trance that allowed him to see it. The sound of a temple bell ringing interrupted nature’s voices. Hirata strained his perception, listening with all his might; his head ached with the effort. As the glow disappeared, he felt an otherness in the woods, from some small, foreign object.

  The voices went silent. He was back in the ordinary world. The sun was shining, the sky blue above the trees, the forest’s mystical dimension closed to him. His feet were numb from the cold, his senses deadened. He searched frantically for the foreign object, but he couldn’t see anything that stood out.

  His teacher, Ozuno, spoke in his memory: Reality isn’t just what you see on the surface, you fool! It has layers beneath infinite layers. When the truth eludes you, dig deeper!

  Hirata sighted on the fibers in the bark of one pine tree. He dug in a circle in the snow around its base. Reaching the earth, he found nothing except twigs and leaves. He tried the other pine, digging rapidly with hands stiff from the cold. The object was visually indistinguishable from the debris on the forest floor, but Hirata’s keen nose detected a sweet, spicy, familiar scent that was out of place. He sifted through the debris and held up a short, thin sprig of sassafras wood.

  A toothpick.

  One of many Hirata had seen chewed, spat out, and littering the ground in Ezogashima. The harmless but now incriminating habit of one person.

  Gizaemon.

  Victory elated Hirata. He pictured Gizaemon tying the string around the tree, toothpick in his mouth. Before he walked across the path to tie the other end of the string to the spring-bow, he spat the toothpick onto the ground. He’d probably done it unconsciously, his habit so ingrained that he hadn’t even thought to remove the toothpick. And until this instant, his carelessness hadn’t mattered.

  Nobody else had noticed the toothpick. But now Hirata had the evidence that connected Gizaemon to the murder, evidence that Gizaemon couldn’t explain away by saying he’d dropped the toothpick when he’d discovered Tekare’s body. It had been nowhere near where she’d died. There was no reason for him to have been loitering in the woods by those tree trunks—except to rig the crime.

  Hirata stowed the toothpick in his glove. He ran down the path, heading for the castle. He had to find Sano and tell him the news that Lord Matsumae wasn’t the only person they wanted dead. Gizaemon must be punished for the murder of Tekare and its disastrous consequences.

  A peaceful morning graced the women’s quarters. In the garden, the trees’ bare branches resembled black embroidery decorating an azure sky striped with white puffy clouds. Blackbirds pecked crumbs strewn on the snow. Gaily patterned quilts aired on veranda railings. To look at this scene, one would never know that a war was imminent, Reiko thought. But as one of the guards from the keep sneaked her up to the building and the other kept a lookout nearby, she heard distant gunshots from the troops testing weapons and ammunition. Men cheered after each blast.

  Crouched on the veranda of the building where the native concubines lived, Reiko knocked on a window shutter until Wente held up the mat inside. Wente’s expression was unfriendly: She remembered too well their last encounter.

  “I’m sorry about yesterday,” Reiko said. “I shouldn’t have treated you like that. Will you please forgive me?”

  “Why I should?”

  “Because I was wrong to accuse you of killing your sister.” Reiko would say anything necessary to regain Wente’s good will. “I didn’t mean it.”

  Wente gazed at Reiko with suspicion, but she nodded, accepting the apology. Her eyes shone with even more terror than was due to the war that threatened her people.

  “Has something happened?” Reiko asked, sparing a moment of concern for the other woman.

  “Nothing.” Wente shook her head, the gesture more a refusal to confide than a denial. “Why you come?”

  “I have news. About my son.” The joy in Reiko bubbled over in smiles and tears. “Masahiro is alive.”

  As Reiko explained what she’d discovered at the keep, a visible torrent of relief assailed Wente. The woman closed her eyes for a moment; she muttered in her own language, in the universal cadence of prayer. A radiant smile of vicarious joy, far above what Reiko had expected, transformed her face. She reached toward Reiko, and they clasped hands.

  “Where?” Wente asked eagerly.

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know.” Reiko described how the soldiers had chased Masahiro into the woods. “I have to ask you for another favor. Will you help me hunt for Masahiro? I promise this will be the last time.” Her voice trembled because should she fail this time, Masahiro would surely die.

  At first Wente didn’t answer. Thoughts flickered in her eyes; emotions evolved in their dark brown depths. Finally she said, “All right. We go now.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “The wall’s too high to climb,” the Rat said, bright with hope that Sano would give up on his dangerous plans.

  “Don’t worry, we won’t try,” Sano said.

  They hid with Marume and Fukida in a thicket of pine shrubs against the castle wall. Sano peered through the pine needles at the closest gate, some twenty paces away. It had taken them hours of sneaking and avoiding troops to get near the exterior wall, and he’d given up hope of escaping the castle undetected. By the gate, two guards stood over a fire smoking in a metal urn. There was no way out except through them.

  Marume scooped up some snow, packed it into two balls, and leaped out of the shrubs. The guards turned. He hurled the snowballs and hit the men square on their noses. As they exclaimed in surprise, Marume charged them. He grabbed them, banged their heads against the wall, and dumped their unconscious bodies into a snowdrift. Sano and the other men hurried to join him at the gate, which Fukida unbarred.

  “They’ll come to before they freeze to death,” Marume said.

  “When they do, they’ll report that we escaped,” Fukida said. “We’ll have a hard time getting back inside the castle.”

  “Never mind that now,” Sano said. “Let’s go.”

  Outside, they cut through the woods and followed a rough track that was deep in snow, with a narrow rut tamped down the middle by not many footsteps. They entered Fukuyama City through its inland fringes. This was clearly the poor side of town, with tiny shacks huddled together, the snow fouled by ashes, cinders, and wastewater frozen in ditches. The few people outdoors had a grimy, primitive appearance. An old man tended a heap of burning trash. When Sano asked him the way to the gold merchant’s shop, he muttered directions and pointed.

  Sano and his comrades trudged through the few alleys into the main part of town. As they passed a shrine, a movement beyond its weathered torii gate caught Sano’s attention. He glanced into the shrine and stopped. A little boy, bundled in a fur coat and hood, tiptoed around the brass gong. He aimed a child-sized bow and arrow, hunting imaginary game. Sano’s heart began to thud as the boy turned toward him.

  It was Masahiro. He smiled and waved at Sano. Astounded, Sano waved back. Masahiro vanished.

  “What’s the matter?” Fukida said.

  “Nothing.” Sano didn’t want to explain. What he’d seen must have been the spirit of his dead son. He didn’t want his men to think he was a
s mad as Lord Matsumae.

  They located the gold merchant’s shop. Upon entering, they ignored the clerks who greeted them and made straight for the passage at the back. A clerk ran after them, saying, “That’s private. You can’t go there.”

  “Watch us,” Marume said.

  Sano and his men hurried down the passage and burst into the office that stank of dead things. Daigoro sat on a bearskin rug beneath a display of mounted animal heads, masturbating. A book of erotic Ainu prints by a Japanese artist lay open on the desk in front of him. When he saw his visitors, he jumped in surprise.

  “Hey!” He stuffed his erection into his loincloth, closed his fur coat, and slammed the book shut. “How dare you barge in here?” Recognition stunned him. “Chamberlain Sano?” He pasted an obsequious grin over the fright on his face. “What can I do for you and your friends?”

  “You can answer a few questions,” Sano said.

  “Oh? About what?”

  Sano dumped Lilac’s pouch of gold nuggets on the desk. “Did these once belong to you?”

  Daigoro’s eyes took on a hungry, acquisitive gleam as he looked at the nuggets. “Maybe. A lot of the gold in Ezogashima passes through my hands.”

  “They were found in Lilac’s room.”

  “Who?” Daigoro drew back from them as if they might burn him.

  “Lilac. The girl who died in the hot spring yesterday,” Marume said.

  “Why did you give them to her?” Sano asked.

  “I didn’t. I never even knew the girl.”

  “Yes, you did,” Fukida said. “Don’t lie to us.”

  “I’m not lying,” Daigoro huffed.

  “She blackmailed you,” Sano said, fed up with the runaround he’d been getting ever since he’d started his investigation. “About what?”

  “Nothing! Whoever told you that was mistaken.”

  “Did you kill Tekare?” Sano demanded. “Did Lilac find out? Did you pay her to keep quiet?”

  “No! You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Oh, come on, don’t waste our time.” Impatient, Marume pulled his sword, then grabbed Daigoro’s hand and held it flat against the desk. “Start telling the truth, or I’ll cut off your fingers one by one.”

  Daigoro squealed and struggled. “No! Please!”

  Sano ordinarily didn’t approve of torture, but this time he would make an exception. Even if Daigoro wasn’t a double murderer who deserved to lose his head, never mind his fingers, he was a beast who preyed on native women, and Sano thought he was also hoarding information. Sano nodded to Marume.

  Marume raised the sword. Sano braced himself for bloodshed. He felt as though he was crossing a line and compromising his principles, but this was Ezogashima; here, ideals didn’t matter.

  “All right!” Daigoro cried. “Stop! I’ll tell you if you let me go!”

  “Talk first.” Marume kept his grip on Daigoro, and the sword poised to chop. “We’ll see if what you say is worth sparing your fingers.”

  Daigoro strained away from the blade. “Lilac was blackmailing me, but it wasn’t about Tekare. It was about—” He moaned. “If I say, I’ll get in trouble.”

  “Trouble doesn’t get any worse than this,” Marume said. “Spit it out.”

  Daigoro blurted, “I lend money to Lord Matsumae’s retainers. Whenever they can’t pay it back, they steal supplies from his storehouse. I accept them in lieu of money and sell them in town. Lilac saw me with some soldiers, taking bales of rice from them and cutting a deal. She threatened to tell Lord Matsumae. I paid her not to.”

  This was a petty crime, but if Lord Matsumae had found out, he would have put Daigoro as well as the thieves to death as an example to other would-be criminals. Sano could understand why Daigoro had been reluctant to confess, why he’d succumbed to Lilac’s blackmail.

  “So Lilac asked you for more gold, and more,” Sano surmised. “She bled you dry. So you murdered her.”

  “No, no. That was the only time she asked. She was satisfied. The little fool didn’t know I’d have paid ten times more to shut her up. I didn’t need to kill her. It wasn’t me.”

  This sounded like the truth, and Sano was not only disappointed by the letdown, but consumed by fury. The air in Ezogashima seemed full of mischievous spirits goading him to violence.

  “Kill him,” Sano told Marume.

  Marume, Fukida, and the Rat looked astonished by the savagery in Sano’s voice, but an order was an order. Marume shrugged. “Here goes.”

  He seized Daigoro in a tight hug and put the blade to his throat. Daigoro wriggled and shrieked for help. None came; his employees were probably too scared. He clawed at Marume’s arm, trying to pry it off his chest, his eyes goggling with fear.

  “Wait!” he screamed. “Don’t kill me. If you want to figure out who killed Tekare, I’m worth more to you alive than dead.”

  “Why? Do you know who did?” Sano said in spite of distrusting Daigoro and understanding that this was his last-ditch effort to save himself.

  “Not exactly.” Feral with desperate cunning, Daigoro said, “But I have a good idea.”

  “Because it was him that killed her,” Fukida said. “Don’t let him manipulate you, Sano-san.”

  But Sano wasn’t so possessed by desire for violence that he’d lost his instincts, and they said not to kill Daigoro yet. “How is that?”

  “I was there. When Tekare died.”

  Sano said to Marume, “Let go of him, but keep that sword handy.” Marume obeyed; Daigoro slumped and groaned in relief; Fukida looked askance. Sano turned to the Rat. “Start counting from one to a hundred.”

  “What for?”

  “Convince me that you were there,” Sano told Daigoro. “If you haven’t by the time he’s finished, you’re dead.”

  “One…two…three…,” the Rat began.

  Daigoro gulped and spoke rapidly: “That night, I went to the castle to collect on a debt. My man met me at the back gate and paid me with a bag of tobacco he’d stolen from Lord Matsumae.”

  The Rat continued counting. Daigoro hurried to say, “I started back to town, along the road that goes down the hill behind the castle. I stopped to urinate, and I’d just finished when I heard someone coming. It was two women. They were arguing. One of them ran past me, into the woods. I didn’t turn around fast enough to see who it was. The other came running.”

  “Thirty…thirty-one…thirty-two…”

  “Her I did see. It was dark, but there was a full moon. It was Tekare. I hadn’t seen her since she moved on to Lord Matsumae, but I still wanted her. When she passed me, I thought, Here I am, there she goes, tonight’s my chance. I followed her.”

  A dirty gleam of lust appeared in his eyes; saliva pooled in his grin. Sano was revolted. As the Rat counted past fifty, Sano said, “You don’t have much time left. What happened?”

  “I could hear Tekare running and panting ahead of me. Then suddenly she screamed. There was a thud. It sounded like she’d fallen. I kept going until I saw her. She was on the ground. She was moaning and flipping around. I didn’t know what to make of it. She screamed again. Then she stood up and staggered toward me. I was scared. I backed into the woods to hide.” He saw Sano frown. “What?”

  Tekare had obviously been hurt, and Daigoro hadn’t even thought to help. Sano said, “Never mind. Go on.”

  “She fell again. She thrashed and made awful noises. Pretty soon she stopped, though. She just lay there. I tiptoed over to her.” Daigoro swallowed a retch. “And oh, merciful gods.”

  “One hundred,” said the Rat.

  Sano raised his hand, signaling Marume to wait.

  Daigoro said, “There was blood all over her. I knew she was dead. So I got out of there. I ran all the way home.”

  “Well, I have to say that sounds just like him,” Fukida said to Sano.

  Marume said, “I think he’s finally telling the truth.”

  So did Sano, but he was furious at Daigoro. “You not only neglected to mention this t
o Hirata-san when he came to see you about the murder, but you never told anyone else, either.”

  “After how Tekare treated me, I was glad she was dead,” Daigoro hastened to excuse himself. “When I found out she’d been murdered, I figured someone had done me a favor. Why turn them in? I thought I’d better not say I’d been there because Lord Matsumae might think I did it. And I didn’t want him looking into why I’d been at the castle that night. Later, when he went crazy—” Daigoro paused, then said with a shamefaced grin, “Well, I was too scared.”

  These excuses failed to placate Sano. He grabbed Daigoro by his fur coat. “If you’d reported it at once, maybe none of this would have happened. Lord Matsumae wouldn’t have gone mad. He wouldn’t have murdered my son.” Almost choking on his rage and grief, Sano said, “He wouldn’t have declared war on the natives. This is as much your damned fault as the murderer’s!”

  “I beg to disagree,” Daigoro said haughtily. “Who’s to say what would or wouldn’t have happened if I’d told? I didn’t kill Tekare. What I saw wouldn’t have helped Lord Matsumae. I don’t know who did it.”

  “But you have a good idea, as you said yourself. That other woman you heard lured Tekare to the spring-bow. She must have set it.” Sano shook Daigoro so violently that his head whipped. “Who was she?”

  “Hey, you’re hurting me.”

  “Want me to start counting again?” suggested the Rat.

  “Was it Lady Matsumae?” Fukida asked.

  “If you want me to say any more, you have to let me live,” Daigoro bleated. “You have to pardon me for stealing from Lord Matsumae.”