The Ronin’s Mistress si-15

by Laura Joh Rowland

  That was a common enough crime in Edo, but thieves usually avoided the samurai quarters because of all the armed troops there. Sano had never heard of an ambush in the administrative district.

  “But where was the other man?” Nomura asked himself. “Then I heard shouting, from an alley on the other side of the bridge. I ran over there. It was so dark, I could barely see. There was one man on the ground. Another man was beating him. I shouted, ‘Stop! Police!’ The man doing the beating ran away. The man on the ground was moaning. I figured he’d be all right by himself for a little while, so I chased after the other fellow.”

  Nomura said regretfully, “I wish I hadn’t left him. I didn’t know he was Magistrate Ueda, and I didn’t know how bad he was hurt. When I came back, he was unconscious. I dragged him out of the alley, and that’s when I recognized him. My assistants caught the runaway horse. The rider was dead. We brought Magistrate Ueda home and they took the two dead men to Edo Morgue.” Shamefaced, Nomura added, “The attacker got away. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m glad you were there,” Sano said. “If not for you, Magistrate Ueda might not have survived.”

  “Did you get a good look at the attacker?” Hirata asked.

  “No. It was too dark.”

  Sano tamped down his disappointment and his rage toward the man who’d beaten his father-in-law so savagely. Giving in to emotion wouldn’t help him catch the culprit.

  “Maybe I can track him,” Hirata said. “First, I need to see the crime scene.”

  “I’ll show you.” Nomura stood.

  “You go,” Sano told Hirata. “You’re better equipped to find clues at the scene than I am. And I have another line of inquiry that I want to pursue.”

  * * *

  Dawn began to lighten the sky when Hirata and the doshin arrived at the bridge. They found a street-cleaner at work with a bucket and a brush, scrubbing the blood off the bridge’s planks. Red-tinted snow and water slopped into the canal below.

  “Hey! This is a crime scene!” Nomura said. “Stop!”

  The street-cleaner halted, afraid he was in trouble. Hirata said, “It’s all right. Keep working.” The blood wasn’t the evidence he needed. He paced along the path, then the bridge, his eyes scanning the area, his other senses alert.

  Nomura trailed him eagerly. “Are you using magic to find the criminal?”

  “I’m looking for clues he left behind. It could be a trace of his aura.” Hirata explained what auras were and that he could detect them and use them to track people.

  They paced together in silence. After a while Nomura said, “Are you getting anything?”

  “I’m getting too much. So many people have passed by here. I can’t tell which aura belongs to the attacker. It would help if I could find something else he left.” Hirata spotted an arrow lying beside the street-cleaner’s bucket. “Hey! Did you find that here today?”

  “Yes, master,” the street-cleaner said. “It was stuck in the railing.”

  Hirata closed his fingers around the arrow’s shaft. He felt the faint aura of the man who had drawn the arrow in the bow and let it fly. The aura evoked a dull red color shot with flinty sparks. Hirata read a distinctive combination of weakness, brutality, and sullen resentment.

  “What do you think?” Nomura asked hopefully.

  “I’ll recognize him if I meet him,” Hirata said. “Show me where you chased him.”

  They traveled through the administrative district, Hirata on horseback, Nomura on foot. Hirata didn’t sense the aura in the walled mansions or among the troops and officials emerging as the sky brightened. He and the doshin crossed into the Nihonbashi merchant quarter and joined the commoners who streamed through the winding lanes. They stopped at an intersection between three lanes that contained blacksmith shops.

  “Here’s where I lost him,” Nomura said.

  Inside the shops, forges roared, warming the air. Smoke billowed. Clanging noises echoed as the blacksmiths pounded red-hot metal into horseshoes, helmets, and armor plates. Hirata tuned out the noise and concentrated.

  “Anything yet?” Nomura asked.

  “No,” Hirata said. “He’s gone.”

  “Maybe he lives around here.”

  So did too many other people. Hirata prepared for a long search. Maybe the attacker would cross his path, but in a city of a million people, what were the chances of that happening?

  * * *

  Leaving Reiko at her father’s bedside, Sano rode back to Edo Castle and went straight to the chamber where the supreme court met. He found the thirteen judges already seated. They looked tired, ill-humored. Magistrate Ueda’s place was conspicuously vacant.

  “What are you doing back this soon?” Inspector General Nakae said. “Isn’t it a little early for you to have more news to report?”

  “We were going to continue discussing the evidence you brought us yesterday,” Superintendent Ogiwara said from the opposite row. “We’re just waiting for our chief.”

  “He’s late,” Lord Nabeshima said disapprovingly.

  “I do have news,” Sano said. “Magistrate Ueda was ambushed on his way home last night. His two bodyguards were killed. He was badly beaten, and he’s still unconscious.” Telling the story whipped up fresh anger inside Sano. He felt a new, visceral sense of identification with the forty-seven ronin. They had avenged their master. Sano must deliver Magistrate Ueda’s attacker to justice. “That’s why he’s not here.”

  Stunned silence greeted Sano’s words. If the judges had already known about the attack, they did a good job pretending they hadn’t. Old Minister Motoori said, “I’m terribly sorry.”

  The other judges echoed him. “Have you any idea who’s responsible?” Superintendent Ogiwara said.

  “Not yet,” Sano said. “I’m beginning an investigation.”

  “Maybe it was a robbery,” Lord Nabeshima said.

  “I believe it was an assassination attempt,” Sano said.

  “Oh, well, then, doesn’t Magistrate Ueda have quite a few enemies?” Inspector General Nakae said. “Thank you for bringing the news, but shouldn’t you be investigating them?”

  “What makes you think that’s not what I’m doing?” Sano swept his gaze over the judges.

  Although Inspector General Nakae and Lord Nabeshima retained their places in the row of Chamberlain Yanagisawa’s cronies, while Superintendent Ogiwara and Minister Motoori still sat with the opposition in Magistrate Ueda’s row, other judges had changed seats. The division now reflected the judges’ stances on the case instead of political allegiance, Sano deduced. There would have been seven on each side if Magistrate Ueda was here.

  The judges frowned as they absorbed Sano’s implication. “You’re accusing us of trying to murder Magistrate Ueda?” Superintendent Ogiwara demanded.

  “Not the judges who are on the same side as Magistrate Ueda.” Sano turned a hard gaze on the inspector general’s side. “This case has become a battle. How far would you go to win?”

  Nakae sputtered, outraged. “You think we would try to kill a colleague in order to sway the court toward condemning the forty-seven ronin?”

  “Did you?” Sano added, “You and Lord Nabeshima weren’t too happy with Magistrate Ueda when he had you removed from the court yesterday.”

  “No, we didn’t! That’s ridiculous,” Nakae said. “Moreover, I’m sure we can provide alibis. My guards and I rode part of the way home with Magistrate Ueda last night. He was fine when we left him. We went straight home, and I stayed there until this morning.”

  His friends hastened to say they’d been at home all night, too.

  “You wouldn’t have needed to get your own hands dirty,” Sano said. “You have people to carry out your orders.”

  Inspector General Nakae disdainfully waved away the notion. “Killing Magistrate Ueda would have taken away only one vote from my opponents. There would still be six other judges in favor of pardoning.”

  “Magistrate Ueda wasn’t just one vote,” Sano s
aid. “He was the chief judge. He made the rule that the decision had to be unanimous. With him gone, you could change the rule and decide by a majority vote. The verdict would go your way.”

  “Your reasoning is offensive,” Lord Nabeshima snapped. “We don’t care enough about the verdict that we would stoop to murdering our colleague.”

  “Don’t you?” Sano stared at Lord Nabeshima.

  Lord Nabeshima’s gaze shifted first. Inspector General Nakae said, “What if you’re correct in thinking that someone was trying to influence the court’s verdict by eliminating one of the judges? We aren’t the only suspects. Other people have an interest in the outcome, too.”

  “The whole city is in an uproar over it, in case you haven’t heard,” Lord Nabeshima said.

  “Other people don’t know what’s going on inside the court and which way each judge is leaning,” Sano said. “Your proceedings are confidential.”

  “Yes, any outsider who wanted to eliminate a judge would run the risk of picking the wrong one.” A dirty gleam kindled in Inspector General Nakae’s eyes. “But there’s one man who does know, even though he’s an outsider.”

  His smile bared his rotten teeth at Sano. The other judges sat back, startled by the turn the conversation had taken.

  “You accuse me of trying to manipulate the court’s decision by attacking my own father-in-law?” Sano was exasperated. But of course he did bear some blame for Magistrate Ueda’s injuries. He had nominated Magistrate Ueda to the court, had put him in harm’s way. Guilt spread a nauseous feeling through Sano. He turned his anger at himself on the judges. “That’s absurd and insulting!”

  They gazed back at him with disapproval, Magistrate Ueda’s opponents and allies alike. Sano saw another bad consequence of the attack on the magistrate: He’d lost his only friend on the court, whom he’d counted on to help him protect his family’s interests. He said to Nakae, “You’re trying to divert suspicion onto-”

  A new thought stopped Sano. He realized that Nakae had spoken the truth about one thing: There was an outsider who’d heard the judges’ confidential discussions, who’d guessed Magistrate Ueda’s position, who surely wanted a hand in the verdict, even though he’d kept quiet about where he stood on the issue of the forty-seven ronin. But it wasn’t Sano.

  “What’s the matter?” Inspector General Nakae said. “Choking on your own words?”

  “Thank you,” Sano said.

  Surprise lifted Nakae’s sagging brow. “For what?”

  “You just provided a new lead for my investigation.”

  25

  Reiko knelt by her father’s bedside for the rest of the night and all morning. Magistrate Ueda lay so still, his swollen eyes closed, the bruises turning a morbid purple. Not one hint of consciousness did Reiko see in him. His servants brought her food that she couldn’t eat. His retainers stopped by to ask about his condition. They spoke kindly to Reiko and she answered, but their sympathy couldn’t touch her. She felt imprisoned in some dark place, alone with her terror that her father would die.

  Memories glimmered like fireflies through the darkness. She recalled her childhood self running to meet her father. He’d lifted her, tossed her up in the air, and they’d laughed. Her mother had died when she was born, but her father had never held it against her; he’d not been disappointed that she wasn’t a boy who could be his heir; he hadn’t left her to the care of servants, remarried, and started a new family, as other men would have done. He’d loved her and raised her with such devotion that she’d never missed having a mother. And he’d given her advantages that were usually reserved for sons.

  He’d hired tutors to educate her in reading, arithmetic, writing, and history, and a martial arts master to teach her sword-fighting. He’d ignored the relatives who disapproved. He’d said that his daughter was too clever to let her grow up as ignorant as other girls. When she got older, she shared his interest in the law, and spent days in a chamber behind the Court of Justice, listening to the trials he conducted. Often she would whisper advice about questions he should ask the defendants or witnesses, or offer her opinion about whether the defendant was guilty. Her father trusted her intuition; he often took her advice even though she was only twelve, or fourteen, or sixteen years old. Now Reiko mused upon the fact that her upbringing had made possible her unconventional marriage to Sano and the work they did together. She had her father to thank for everything. She adored him for his kindness and his humor. How could she bear to lose him?

  Especially if she lost Sano, too?

  Reiko fought back tears. Falling apart wouldn’t help her father. Neither would letting herself be overpowered by rage at whoever had injured him. She must remain calm, strong. Her father was depending on her now.

  She heard a faint groan. The slits of his eyes opened wider.

  Reiko’s heart leaped. “Father?”

  His head slowly turned toward her. “Reiko?” He frowned in confusion. “Where am I?’”

  Thank the gods he was conscious! “At home,” Reiko said.

  “How did I get here?”

  “A doshin brought you.”

  Magistrate Ueda made a feeble move to sit up. “My guards are dead. He shot them.” Grief appeared on his face as his memory returned. Urgency snapped his eyes fully open. The whites were stained red with broken blood veins. He fumbled to throw off the quilt. “I have to catch him! Before he gets away!”

  “He’s gone, Father,” Reiko said. “It happened last night.”

  “Last night?” Magistrate Ueda sounded puzzled. “What time is it?”

  “It’s morning. Around the hour of the snake, I think.”

  Anger compressed Magistrate Ueda’s cut lips. “So he did get away.”

  “Not for long.” Reiko felt the burn of her own anger at the attacker. “My husband is hunting for him. So is Hirata. They’ll catch him. Don’t worry, Father.”

  He tried to push himself upright, gasping. “I have to go. I have to help.”

  Reiko gently restrained him. “You can help us figure out who did this. Do you know?”

  “No.” Magistrate Ueda spoke with sad regret. “It was dark. I couldn’t see his face.”

  “Did you notice anything about him?”

  Magistrate Ueda’s eyelids drooped. His body went limp.

  “Father?” Reiko could see his consciousness ebbing.

  “Two,” he whispered.

  Puzzled, she said, “Were there two men who attacked you?” A moment ago he’d referred to the attacker as “he.” And Sano had stopped in to relay the doshin’s story. The doshin had said he’d chased only one man he’d seen beating Magistrate Ueda.

  “No,” Magistrate Ueda said faintly. “Two tattoos. On his arm. I saw.”

  Comprehension excited Reiko. “He’d been convicted of two other crimes?” Repeat offenders were branded with tattoos on their arms. The tattoos were characters for the crimes they’d committed. If they were arrested again, the police would know they’d been in trouble before. The law would impose a harsher sentence than for a first offense.

  “Yes,” Magistrate Ueda whispered.

  “What were his crimes?” Reiko asked eagerly. “Could you read the tattoos?”

  Magistrate Ueda closed his eyes. His breathing slowed.

  “Father,” Reiko said. He didn’t respond. She tried to quell the fear that she’d heard his voice for the last time. She held his limp hand. “I’ll find out who he is.” The need for revenge consumed Reiko like fire licking dry tinder. It was the same, ancient, bred-in-the-blood impulse that had set forty-seven ronin on the man they held responsible for their master’s death. She had joined their brotherhood of avengers even though she was a mere woman. “I promise.”

  * * *

  On his way out of the house to spend the day with the shogun, Masahiro paused in the corridor, reluctant to leave. His grandfather was hurt, and he wanted to wait for news from his mother. And despite his worry about his grandfather, he couldn’t forget Okaru. The memo
ry of watching her bathing yesterday sent waves of excitement, pleasure, and shame through him. Then, after she’d gone to see Oishi, she’d come home crying so hard. Although Masahiro pitied her, he couldn’t help being glad that Oishi had rejected her. Masahiro had thoughts that were so wild and improbable that he didn’t dare put them into words, even in his mind.

  Taeko came down the corridor, walking carefully, carrying a tray laden with a teapot, cup, and covered dishes. When she saw Masahiro, she lowered her gaze. She’d been cool toward him since he’d been mean to her yesterday. He was sorry but too proud to say so.

  “Is that food for Okaru?” he said.

  “Yes.” Taeko edged past him. “I told the maids I would take it to her.”

  Masahiro sensed that she didn’t like Okaru. “I’ll take it,” he said.

  Taeko reluctantly handed over the tray. Filled with excitement and longing, Masahiro carried the tray to Okaru’s room. Okaru was in bed, curled up beneath the quilts, only the top of her head visible. Although Masahiro wanted to see her, he thought he probably shouldn’t bother her. He tiptoed into the room and bent to set the tray on the table beside the bed.

  “Who’s there?” Okaru said in a muffled voice thick with tears.

  Masahiro dropped the tray on the table with a crash. “It’s-it’s me. Masahiro.”

  “What do you want?” Her head emerged from beneath the quilt. Her hair was tangled. Her face was puffy from crying.

  “I-I brought your breakfast.” Masahiro pointed at the tray.

  She ignored the food. “What are you looking at?” she demanded.

  Masahiro was dumbstruck by the anger in her red, swollen eyes, embarrassed to see her suffering.

  “You must think I’m stupid and pitiful,” Okaru said, her voice shaking. “Everybody probably does. I hate you! I hate everybody! Just leave me alone!”