by I. J. Parker
"My sister will do her duty," Ayako said stiffly.
Two soldiers dragged in a tall man in bloodied monk's robes and tossed him down before the dais. The man raised himself slowly on muscular arms and assumed a kneeling posture.
"Turn around," said Akitada.
When the prisoner turned, Otomi gave a strangled sob.
Raising a shaking finger, she pointed first to the prisoner and next to the scroll. Then she fainted.
Catching her, Ayako said, "Otomi identifies this person as the one on the ship, the one who led the attack on the tax convoy." She bent over her sister, attempting to bring her around.
The prisoner jumped up and shouted, "I didn't hear her say anything."
"Kneel and state your name," snapped Akitada.
"Daishi," spat the man in his hoarse voice. "Not that it's any of your business. You have no right to arrest the disciples of the holy Joto."
One of the soldiers pushed him down and took a leather whip from his belt, looking at Akitada hopefully.
"Neither you nor Joto is a legitimate member of this temple," Akitada told the prisoner. "I want your real name."
The prisoner stared back defiantly. "Daishi."
The soldier raised the whip.
Akitada said quickly, "Very well. It is immaterial at the moment. You and your friends are under arrest for treason and murder. In a short time, all of you will undergo questioning until each of you has confessed fully. I trust you understand how this is done?"
"You can do nothing to me." The words were defiant, but a faint sheen of perspiration appeared on the man's face.
"You may be able to suffer repeated floggings without confessing, but I assure you that your fellow conspirators will be quick to place the blame on you. Their confessions will corroborate the other evidence, such as the painting done by this young woman who was an eyewitness to your raid on the tax convoy. Look at it closely. The figure on the raised platform of the ship is missing part of his ear."
The man turned his head and saw the scroll on the wall. His hand went to his right ear. The lower half of it had been torn or cut off, leaving an ugly red scar behind. He looked shaken. "It's a trumped-up lie," he said. "She wasn't there. That's just a picture of a storm dragon. There was no storm"--he corrected himself--"that time of year."
Motosuke snorted. "You heard him. He's like a cat protesting innocence with a fish tail hanging from its mouth."
"In addition to leading the tax raid," Akitada went on, "you led the nine assassins who slaughtered Higekuro and attempted to kill his daughters."
Tora called out, "Remember me, bastard? We saw you in the temple garden. And we caught two of your gang that night."
"Yes. He was there. I saw him, too," Ayako said in her clear voice.
"Do you want any more proof that you are lost?" Akitada asked.
For a moment, the false monk's eyes searched the room like a cornered animal. When they fell on Otomi, he jerked his chains from the hands of the astonished guards and rushed forward.
Ayako was still kneeling, holding her sobbing sister in her arms, when the wild-eyed brute attacked, howling, cursing, his chains flying, his clawlike fingers reaching for them.
Tora snatched up the small writing desk in front of Seimei and threw it across the room. It caught the monk between the legs. He fell, crushing the desk. The guards, awaking belatedly to their duty, pounced on him.
Seimei cursed for the first time in his life. When Akitada turned disbelieving eyes on his proper old servant, Seimei glared at his scattered papers, his brush still poised in his hand, ink spattered over his gown and the tip of his nose, and an expression of outrage on his face. After a moment, he raised his eyes to Akitada. "Ah," he said. "Hmm. Is there another desk? That is, if you intend to continue this ... ah ... unusual interrogation, sir." With the blame neatly shifted to Akitada, he sniffed and dabbed the ink off his face with a piece of paper.
"Never mind. We are finished," said Akitada, and added to the two soldiers who had jerked the limp figure of the monk into a kneeling posture again, "Take him away."
Ayako helped her sister up. Bowing slightly toward the dais, she said, "If you have no further need of us, we will leave. My sister is not very strong."
Akitada did not know what to say to her, but Motosuke told her, "You have performed a great service for this province and nation, both of you. We shall not forget what we owe you."
Ayako inclined her head a fraction. "Thank you, Excellency, but that is quite unnecessary. Our family has always honored its obligations to this country." Without another glance at Akitada, she led her sister from the room.
Akitada sat, lost in silent misery.
Motosuke cleared his throat. "Well?" he asked. "Is there anything else?"
"No. That is all."
* * * *
TWENTY-ONE
SNOWFLAKES
Leaden clouds hung low over the tribunal compound. Already a few snow flurries teased the snarling clay dragons guarding the curved eaves of the governor's residence and danced around Akitada as he dodged the many carts and porters who were loading Motosuke's household goods for the journey to the capital.
Outside the gate, Akitada turned left and walked to the prefecture. Tucking his chin into his collar against the wet flakes, he considered sadly how differently his great adventure had turned out from what he had hoped. Only a few weeks ago he had looked forward to the journey here, to meeting people in the provinces, to learning much and achieving more. All of these things had happened, but the price had been human lives. Far from bringing him pleasure and satisfaction, his assignment had left him humbled and distraught. He had lost a priceless thing: faith in himself. All that was left was the sense of duty his parents and teachers had instilled in him, and duty to his emperor and to his family overruled any private desires and was, in and of itself, sufficient reason to carry on. The prospect was a bleak one.
Duty had brought Akitada out on his last day in the city. The prefecture, his first stop, was much smaller than the provincial headquarters, consisting only of a modest administration hall, a jail, and barracks for the constables. He found Akinobu bent over a desk piled high with documents. The new prefect greeted Akitada with a tired smile.
"I am sorry that I cannot offer Your Excellency tea," he said. "I doubt our budget permits such a thing in any case. But perhaps a cup of wine?"
"No, thank you. I have had some of the governor's excellent tea. Besides, I am not exactly accustomed to luxuries myself. My assignment, along with its honorifics, ends as yours begins. My heartfelt congratulations on your appointment as prefect."
Akinobu grimaced. "To tell you the truth, I'm merely the clerk in charge, and the work is very similar to my duties for the governor." He nodded at the towering stacks of documents on his desk.
"Surely the present crisis is abnormal," Akitada said. Then he sighed. "At the moment I feel that I have brought nothing but trouble to this province."
"No, Your Excellency. Our trouble has found you. We are very grateful for your help. I intend to pay a formal farewell visit before your departure tomorrow morning."
"Please call me Akitada. And there is no need for a special visit. You must know how grateful I am for your assistance. I have the highest regard for your ability." The two men smiled and bowed to each other. Akitada continued, "But there is another reason for my coming. I want to speak to one of your prisoners, the man called Scarface."
Akinobu raised his brows. "Is he connected to the tax case?"
"No. A different matter altogether. You are holding him in the murder of the prostitute Jasmin. I suspect him of having killed two other women."
"Here? He only arrived on the fifth day of this month."
"No. These are two murders of young women in the capital and in Fujisawa."
"But..." Akinobu hesitated, then asked, "Forgive me, but why are you only now sharing this information?"
"I did not know until this morning. Or rather I did not understand w
hat I knew until then. And I'm still merely guessing at the details. I need to speak with the man to confirm my suspicions."
"I'm afraid you don't know Scarface very well. He has steadfastly denied all charges against him. In the murder of the woman Jasmin he accuses his associate, a half-wit, of committing the crime."
Akitada nodded "Yes, he almost fooled me with that. But considering the murder of the prostitute in Fujisawa and his motive in Jasmin's case, I now believe it was Scarface who killed Jasmin. On the day of the murder, she told him that she was leaving him for another man. I believe he slashed her throat, then turned the corpse over to his mentally unbalanced follower for some additional mutilation. The second man has a fixation with blood and knives and is dangerous on his own account, but he did not kill the woman."
Akinobu said, "I suspected as much. What are these other murders you suspect Scarface of?"
"I believe that during the night of the Chrysanthemum festival he killed a young noblewoman in Heian Kyo for her jewelry." Akitada took the blue flower ornament from his sash and laid it on Akinobu's desk. "This is part of it. The woman Jasmin sold it to a local peddler, who, in turn, sold it to me the day I arrived here."
"Extraordinary!" Akinobu leaned forward to pick up the small object. He looked at it, then at Akitada. "I always thought such jewelry was worn only by the imperial women," he said. Akitada met his eyes and held out his hand without answering. Akinobu returned the flower ornament and reached for a document roll. "He left Heian Kyo on the tenth day of the leaf-turning month and spent the next two months traveling east along the Tokaido highway."
Akitada nodded. "The dates fit. He must have left the capital immediately after the killing. By the beginning of this month he was in Fujisawa. The Fujisawa victim was also a prostitute who had her throat slashed. We were passing through Fujisawa at the time, and my servant Tora was mistakenly arrested for the murder because his face was badly bruised and cut."
"Ah!" Akinobu sat forward. "Then there were witnesses?"
"Yes. In both cases. In Fujisawa, the murderer was seen by other women in the brothel. In the capital, he was observed by a vagrant. In both instances the witnesses described a man with horribly scarred features."
"You must be right." Akinobu rose. "Let me warn you, though, Scarface has been interrogated without confessing to any of the charges against him."
Akitada knew what that meant. The man had undergone questioning while being flogged with fresh bamboo whips, a particularly painful, lacerating form of torture. It rarely failed to produce positive results.
They walked across the courtyard in the wet cold to the small jail. The roofs of the buildings were already dusted with snow, and here and there patches were beginning to stick to the gravel underfoot.
A guard sat in the chilly anteroom, warming his hands over a brazier. At a word from Akinobu he got up, reached for his ring of keys, and unlocked a heavy door. Beyond lay a narrow hallway, dimly lit by flickering oil lamps attached to the walls. To the right and left were cell doors, their bars opening on darkness beyond, but directly ahead lay what appeared to be a fiery furnace. As they came closer, Akitada found that it was merely a small room with a stone pit in its center, where a large open fire burned, its black smoke rising toward a hole in the pitched roof, where it whirled away into the steel-gray skies. The rafters were blackened with soot, the walls scuffed and stained by dirt and generations of bloodied bodies, the air stifling with heat and smoke. It reminded Akitada vividly of those lurid paintings of hell displayed in Buddhist temples as reminders to sinners of what awaited them in the hereafter.
Heads appeared behind the bars of two cell doors, one a moon-faced goblin, the other the predatory beak of a vulture. The guard selected another key and unlocked a third cell. "Get out, scum!" he bellowed. "Visitors."
The figure that emerged from the darkness, rattling chains on its feet and arms, fit the place. Such faces gave the fainthearted nightmares. Akitada, who had been prepared by Tora's description of the man, took a step backward. The prisoner saw it and grinned maliciously.
In the flickering firelight, the man's face no longer appeared quite human; the raised purplish scars distorted his features grotesquely. Bloodshot eyes blazed with some hidden excitement, and his lips, swollen and discolored from torture, stretched into a grin that bared teeth like yellow fangs. He stood, tall and broad-shouldered, with an easy arrogance, grinning, mocking, a devil in human shape.
Akitada looked back at him silently, confirming to himself that the killer of Jasmin matched the demonic creature of the ghost story told by the Rat. That murder had really happened, almost three months ago, in another city and to another woman. Strangely, here and now the three murders finally met through an extraordinary set of coincidences.
In spite of the heat from the fire pit, Akitada shivered. His hand closed around the tiny flower fragment in his sleeve. Who knew by what strange and bizarre ways the ghosts of victims found their revenge? The blue flower had accompanied the killer here, the witness had traveled the same route, and Jasmin, the latest victim, had passed it on until it reached the only person who would understand its meaning. But he had come to that knowledge slowly, resisting the signs when they were given to him. He had dreamed of a morning glory dripping with blood. He had received a letter from home, telling him of the disappearance of Lady Asagao, the emperor's favorite. Asagao meant morning glory. And there had been another message: Akitada's handsome friend Tasuku had abruptly renounced the world and become a monk. Tasuku, the notorious ladies' man whose affairs with the women of the court had been the talk of the town. Perhaps Akitada would learn the truth of that when he got home--or perhaps he would never know what had happened.
Akinobu touched his sleeve. "Are you feeling well, Excellency?"
Akitada nodded. With an effort, he asked the prisoner, "What is your name, and where were you born?"
The man bowed. "They call me Roku, short for Heiroku, of the Sano family, at your service, my lord," he said in a surprisingly cultured voice. "Please forgive my appearance. These stupid dogs of provincial officials have mistaken me for some low killer. Perhaps Your Honor can clear up the matter?"
The nerve of the man was astounding. Faced with a long list of charges and more torture, he was yet trying to brazen it out. Akitada decided to play along. "Your speech tells me that you were raised in the capital and well educated. How does a man like you come to be here and in this condition?"
A shrewd, calculating look came into the grotesque face. "Ah," Scarface said, "one can always tell a fellow gentleman. As you say, I was raised in the capital. And attended the Buddhist academy near Rashomon. My parents wanted me to become a schoolmaster, but my spirit was too ambitious for that. I took up the sword and trained at several fencing academies. When I was just beginning to make a name for myself, I ran into trouble. My skill had made me enemies, and when one of my competitors challenged me, the bout turned ugly." The man raised a hand to his scarred face and smiled crookedly. "I killed him after he cut me up. His friends charged me with murder. I had to seek my fortune elsewhere and made my way here. Unfortunately, I found myself almost immediately arrested for the murder of a local whore. Some demented maniac has confessed, but the authorities refuse to believe him and try to beat a confession out of me." Scarface glanced pointedly at Akinobu, who gazed back calmly. When Akitada made no comment either, the prisoner turned around. His white shirt was dark with dried blood across the back. He lifted it to show the swollen and oozing stripes of the whips. Then he bent and raised his stained trouser legs. Both calves were a mass of raw flesh.
Akitada was sickened. It was surprising that the man was able to stand. He reminded himself that Scarface's deeds had been far worse than anything he had suffered, and said, "As I am about to return to the capital, I will take you along. The authorities there will sort out the charge quickly enough."
The man flung about to face him. "No. Don't trouble yourself. It would embarrass my clan. Only put in a word
for me here."
"Nonsense. I can do nothing here, but I'll have you on the road in no time. The Sano clan is not important enough to be embarrassed." Akitada waved his hand dismissively and turned to go.
Behind him, Scarface cursed loudly until the sound of the guard's whip caused him to suck in his breath with a moan.
Akinobu followed Akitada outside. "You cannot be serious about taking him, Excellency," he protested. "He lied."
"I know and I am absolutely serious," replied Akitada, gulping the clean air and tasting snowflakes on his tongue. "I shall send my report ahead by special courier today."
"But what of his crimes here? What of the murder in Fujisawa? He's a dangerous character."
"He will travel under heavy guard." Akitada's expression was bleak and weary. "The crime he has to answer for in the capital will result in a secret and speedy trial and execution, which is more than you could get here without a confession."
