The sun floated up through the gray dawn sky like a drop of blood swimming in an ocean of quicksilver. Temple bells rang, echoing across the hills, awakening Edo. Over the Nihonbashi Bridge streamed townspeople bound for work and travelers laden with bundles and armed with walking sticks. Along the banks of the canal, fishermen off-loaded their catch from boats. Gulls screeched and flocked. Through the crowds entering the fish market wandered a news-seller.
“The Ghost and his lady have been defeated!” he cried. “Read the whole thrilling story here!”
Customers eagerly snatched the broadsheets from him; coins exchanged hands. Near the foot of the bridge, a curious mob gathered at the place where executed criminals were displayed as a warning to the citizens. Today there were two severed heads mounted on a gibbet. One belonged to a woman; her long black hair blew in the cool, moist breeze. The other had the shaved crown and topknot of a samurai. Their faces were withered, pecked by birds, and rotting after four days of exposure to the elements. Their mouths and empty eye sockets gaped. Flies buzzed around them; maggots teemed in foul red holes. Bare bone showed on noses, cheeks, and brows. Dried gore blotched the ground under them. Only the tags affixed to the gibbet identified the criminals.
The woman’s read, YUGAO, MURDERESS; WOUNDED WHILE RESISTING ARREST; SURVIVED LONG ENOUGH TO BE EXECUTED. The man’s read, KOBORI, ASSASSIN; KILLED IN A FIERCE BATTLE.
Little boys swarmed around the heads, laughing and making fun of them. One hurled a stone that bounced off the man’s. They scampered away.
At Edo Castle, officials walked, trotted on horseback, or rode in palanquins out the main gate. They fanned into the Hibiya administrative district, going about their business, secure in the knowledge that the Ghost no longer stalked the city and they were in no more danger than usual. The wind that swept the streets carried ashes from funeral pyres, a reminder of the men who’d perished in the battle against Kobori. Black drapery on the castle gate honored their valor.
Inside the chamberlain’s compound, Masahiro stood in the garden. The boy wore a white jacket and trousers; his bare toes peeked through the grass. A little wooden sword hung in a scabbard tied to his sash. His face was solemn with concentration. Suddenly he contorted his features in a fierce scowl. He drew the sword, emitted a loud roar, then lunged and slashed at an invisible foe.
“That was very good,” Sano said as Masahiro looked eagerly to him for approval. “Now try this.”
Clad in his own white garments, he drew his own wooden practice sword and demonstrated a series of moves. Masahiro imitated them with more exuberance than grace, but Sano took pride in his son’s first baby steps toward mastering the martial arts. He took pleasure from the vivid purple irises blooming around the pond, the sweet fragrance of jasmine, the coolness of the morning, and the sound of Reiko’s voice speaking to the servants nearby in the house.
He relished the fact that he was alive.
Four days had passed since he’d defeated Kobori, and six since Kobori had stolen into his bedchamber. Every night when Sano had gone to sleep, he’d feared he wouldn’t see another dawn. Every waking moment he’d waited for an internal explosion of energy that would stop his heart, extinguish his consciousness. He’d watched Reiko watch him anxiously, expecting him to drop dead. Yet he had not, even though he’d suffered grievous injuries at the Ghost’s hands.
By the time he’d gotten home after the battle, he’d been in such pain he’d fainted at the gate. By the next morning he was covered with bruises and so stiff and sore he couldn’t move. His urine came out crimson with blood. Reiko fed him broth out of a spoon because chewing hurt. So did breathing. A physician treated him with medicinal potions and massages; a priest chanted prayers over him. Urgent summonses from Lord Matsudaira and the shogun went unanswered. Sano had abandoned the government to run itself while he lay on what he thought was his deathbed…
… until he’d begun to recover. Yesterday he’d felt well enough to get out of bed and eat solid food. Today he could move without extreme pain. The bruises were fading. There had been no single, revelatory moment when Sano knew that the Ghost hadn’t given him the touch of death; rather, a gradual belief had sunken in that Kobori’s last words had been a mere false threat meant to terrify him, a vain attempt at revenge. Now he celebrated each moment as a rare, fragile gift. As he gave Masahiro his first lesson in swordsmanship, he silently thanked the gods that the bond between father and son was unbroken. He rejoiced that he would live to guide his little boy along the path to manhood, to protect him, to see him grow into an honorable samurai, make a name for himself, and father his own children.
But this moment of perfect peace and happiness couldn’t last. Sano had duties of grave importance.
“That’s all for today, Masahiro,” he said.
They sheathed their swords. “We swordfight again tomorrow?” Masahiro said.
“Yes,” Sano promised, “tomorrow.”
A crowd gathered outside a small shrine wedged in a road of basketry shops in Ginza. Out the torii gate marched Detectives Arai and Inoue, hauling two samurai rebel outlaws who’d been hiding in the shrine. Hirata followed on horseback with more detectives who carried out guns, ammunition, and firebombs that the rebels had stockpiled for attacks on Lord Matsudaira’s regime. As he passed the gawking spectators, Hirata reflected on what a dramatic difference a few days could make.
Business was back to normal now that Kobori had been slain. Sano’s position was secure, and so was Hirata’s own. Yet not much else had changed for Hirata. He was still a prisoner of his ailing body. He still sat on the sidelines while other men acted, as he had during the battle against Kobori. His memory of that night was clouded with the shame of his helplessness. His life seemed destined to continue this way, for he hadn’t seen Ozuno again, even though he’d spent every spare moment looking for the priest. Ozuno was an opportunity that fate had tantalized him with, then taken away.
But Hirata closed the door on self-pity and regret. He had his position, his family, and his good name. He still had his dreams in which he could fight and always triumph, as well as his memories of battles won. Hirata counted himself as lucky.
As he rode off with his men and their captives, he saw a familiar figure limping toward him. It was Ozuno.
Hirata felt his face brighten with joyful amazement. He scrambled off his horse and rushed to meet the priest. “Hello!” he called.
“What? Oh, it’s you,” Ozuno said.
The chagrin on his face struck Hirata as comical. Hirata laughed, so glad to see Ozuno that he didn’t mind that Ozuno wasn’t glad to see him. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I thought you’d left town. Isn’t it astonishing that we should happen to run into each other?”
“Sometimes we find what we want when we’re not looking for it.” Ozuno added snidely, “And sometimes we stumble upon what we don’t want no matter how hard we’ve tried to avoid it.”
Hirata was too happy to care that Ozuno had been hiding from him. “Some of us are just luckier than others.”
Ozuno nodded grudgingly. “I hear that Chamberlain Sano has captured my renegade pupil. I owe him a great debt for taking Kobori out of the world.”
“He owes you a great debt for your advice,” Hirata said. “It helped him defeat Kobori.”
“I’m glad to have been of service.” Ozuno’s chronic bad temper relented, although not by much.
“Do you remember what you said last time we met?” Hirata asked. “That if we met again, you would be my teacher?”
Ozuno grimaced. “Yes, I did say that. After living eighty years, I should know enough to keep my mouth shut.”
“Well, here we are,” Hirata said, opening his arms wide as if to embrace the priest, their surroundings, and this blessed day. “This is the sign that we’re destined for you to teach me the mystic martial arts.”
“And who am I to ignore a sign from fate?” Ozuno rolled his eyes heavenward. “The gods must be playing a joke on me.”
Now that Hirata’s dreams were within reach, hope invigorated him. He glimpsed a vast reservoir of power that would soon be his to tap. “When do we begin my lessons?”
“We can’t know how much time we have left on this earth,” Ozuno said. “All we have for certain is this moment. We should begin your lessons at once.”
Now that Hirata had his heart’s desire, he felt less haste to claim it. “In a few days would be better for me. I have work to finish. When I’m done, you can move into my estate at Edo Castle, and-”
Ozuno slashed his hand through Hirata’s words. “You are now my pupil. I am your master. I decide when I’ll train you and where. Now come along, before I change my mind.” His stare skewered Hirata. “Or have you changed yours?”
Hirata experienced an internal shift, as though cosmic forces were realigning his life. His allegiances to Sano and the shogun still ruled him, but he’d put himself under Ozuno’s command. Until this instant he hadn’t thought of what conflicts of interest or what physical and spiritual challenges might come with becoming one of the secret, chosen society. Yet he could not refuse his fate any more than Ozuno could.
Hirata called to the detectives who’d paused to wait for him: “Go ahead without me.” He turned to Ozuno, who regarded him with scant approval as though he’d passed the first test, but just barely. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Inside Edo Castle, a procession of samurai marched slowly down an avenue lined with cedar trees. All wore elaborate, ceremonial armor. Each carried a large box wrapped in white paper on his upturned hands. The shogun led the procession. Lord Matsudaira walked on his right, Sano on his left. Ahead of them filed ten Shinto priests clad in white robes and black hats. Some bore lit torches; others held drums and bells. They entered a large space newly cleared in the castle’s forest preserve and spread with white gravel. Clouds drifted in the overcast sky; the morning was as dim and cool as twilight. Faint earth tremors shook the ground. The procession moved down a flagstone path toward the new shrine that the shogun had ordered to be built.
During his convalescence Sano had heard axes ringing day and night as many woodcutters removed the trees. Now he beheld the shrine that honored the memory of the men who’d died in the battle against Kobori. It was a wooden building whose curved roof overhung the steps that led up to it from a raised stone platform. A grille covered the entrance to the chamber that the spirits of the dead could inhabit when summoned. Beside the shrine were stone lanterns; in front of it, a low table that held a tray of incense cones adjacent to a metal vat. The building wasn’t large, but its ornate carved brackets and trim indicated that no expense or labor had been spared. Many craftsmen must have worked nonstop to finish the shrine by today, which the court astrologers had deemed an auspicious time for this memorial ceremony.
The priests lit the stone lanterns, then the incense in the vat. Fragrant smoke rose into the air. They chanted prayers, beat the drums in slow, sonorous rhythm, and rang the bells while the shogun approached the shrine. He halted at the table, where he laid his box that contained forty-nine cakes made of wheaten flour filled with sweetened red bean paste-offerings to the dead, symbolic of the number of bones in the body of one slain soldier. He bowed his head over his clasped hands a moment, then dropped an incense cone into the vat. Lord Matsudaira stepped forward and repeated the ritual. Then Sano took his turn. As he paid his wordless respects to his fallen army, emotions flooded him.
Shame tinged his gratitude that he was alive. It didn’t seem fair that one man should have survived while so many perished, that he was here in the flesh and his troops only in spirit. Sorrow pained him because their destruction had preceded his victory. He joined the shogun and Lord Matsudaira beside the shrine and watched the other men in the procession perform the ceremony. There were seventy-four, each representing a soldier that the Ghost had killed. They included the Council of Elders, other important officials, and male kin of the deceased. But the thirty men seriously wounded and crippled- including Captain Nakai, still paralyzed despite treatment from the best physicians-weren’t represented. Blame settled upon Sano, more distressing than the agony from the beating he’d taken from Kobori.
The ceremony drew to a slow, solemn end. The music ceased; the priests departed. Members of the procession lingered around the shrine, clustering in small groups, conversing in low voices. General Isogai approached Sano and said, “Congratulations on your victory.”
“Many thanks,” Sano said.
“I must apologize for the disgraceful behavior of my troops.” Mortification subdued General Isogai’s jovial manner. “As soon as I round up the deserters, they’ll be forced to commit seppuku.”
“Perhaps that’s too severe a punishment, especially under the unusual circumstances,” Sano said. “They were good, brave soldiers. The Ghost drove them out of their minds.” He’d forgiven Marume and Fukida for leaving him. He’d also forbidden them to commit ritual suicide even though they’d pleaded to atone for their disgrace. “I don’t want more lives lost on his account. And we need those men.”
General Isogai looked unconvinced, stubborn. “I have to uphold discipline. Seppuku is the standard punishment for desertion. Making exceptions will weaken the moral character of the army. Can’t have that. But if you order me to spare the deserters…?”
Sano entertained the idea for a mere moment before he reluctantly said, “No.” Although he had the power to command whatever he wished, he was as bound by the samurai code of honor as General Isogai. Bending the code would not only violate his principles but leave him open to attack. “Do as we must.” Yet the impending deaths of the deserters sat as badly in his mind as the deaths of the troops slain by Kobori.
As General Isogai moved away, Yoritomo hurried up to Sano. “Please allow me to express how thrilled I am that you defeated the Ghost.” Yoritomo’s eyes shone with admiration.
The shogun joined them. “Ahh, Sano-san. You’ve saved us all from the Ghost. I feel much better now.” He sighed and fanned himself. Then his eyes widened in horror as he took a closer look at Sano. “My, but you look awful. Those bruises all over your face! The sight of them makes me ill. I order you to, ahh, wear makeup to cover them.”
Sano had thought that nothing the shogun said could surprise him anymore. “Yes, Your Excellency.”
“Come along, Yoritomo.” The shogun bustled away as if he thought Sano’s injuries were contagious. Yoritomo gave Sano a look of apology.
Lord Matsudaira strode up to Sano. “Honorable Chamberlain. It’s good to see you on your feet.”
“It’s good to see you.” Still on yours, Sano added silently. During the four days Sano had been absent from court, Lord Matsudaira appeared to have consolidated his position.
Lord Matsudaira raised his eyebrows and nodded in satisfaction as he read Sano’s thoughts. He looked calmer, more secure, now that his new regime was no longer threatened by an assassin. “Certain problems are much less trouble than they were a few days ago.” He glanced at Elders Kato and Ihara, who stood with a few of their cronies. They eyed him with resentment. “If certain people wish to attack me, they’ll have to do it themselves instead of relying on Kobori. Besides, I’ve won a few new allies, while they’ve lost a lot of ground, because you eliminated him. Good work, Sano-san.”
Sano bowed, acknowledging the praise yet finding it distasteful. Seventy-four men were dead, and he’d almost sacrificed his own life, but all Lord Matsudaira cared about was that the destruction of the Ghost had shored up his regime.
“But don’t get too complacent,” Lord Matsudaira warned him. “There are still many opportunities for you to take a wrong step. And there are just as many men who are eager to take your place if you do.”
Before he slipped away, his gaze directed Sano’s attention across the shrine precinct. Police Commissioner Hoshina loitered on the fringe of a crowd around the shogun. Ire enflamed his features as he started toward Sano. Before Hoshina reached him, Sano was surrounded by officials who greeted him, inquired about his health, and welcomed him back to court. Some of them were men Hoshina had enlisted in his bid for power. Sano could tell how eager they were to make up for shunning him when his position was in jeopardy, how worried that he would hold their disloyalty against them. Obviously, Hoshina’s campaign against him had fizzled.
Hoshina elbowed his way through the crowd. He paused beside Sano long enough to murmur, “You win this time. But you haven’t seen the end of me.” Then he stalked away.
Sano felt the world settle into its familiar, precarious balance. Earth tremors vibrated his feet. He pictured cracks branching underground, toward his home, where he’d noticed that Reiko seemed troubled and distant. She hadn’t confided in him, and he’d sensed she hadn’t wanted to burden him with problems during his convalescence, but he knew she was upset about the way her investigation had turned out. Sano felt a sudden, pressing need to talk to her, before his whirlwind of business reclaimed him.
“Excuse me,” he said to the officials.
He signaled Detectives Marume and Fukida, who cleared his path toward the gate.
Storm clouds massed above the pines that shaded a cemetery in the Zōjō Temple district. Rows of stone pillars marked graves adorned with portraits of the deceased and offerings of flowers and food. The cemetery was deserted except for a small party gathered around a bare plot of land.
Reiko, Lieutenant Asukai, and her other guards watched a laborer dig a new grave. His shovel upturned soil dark and damp from the rainy season that had come early this year. The fresh scents of earth and pine did nothing to soothe the grief that consumed Reiko.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The gravedigger finished his work. Reiko stooped and hefted a lidded black ceramic urn sitting beside the grave, which contained Tama’s ashes. She gently lowered the urn into the hole. She knelt, bowed her head, and murmured a prayer for the girl’s spirit. “May you be reborn into a better life than the one you left.”
Her escorts waited silent and somber. Reiko whispered into the grave, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
She rose, and the gravedigger filled the hole, tamped down the dirt, and left. Lieutenant Asukai positioned the stone grave-marker that bore Tama’s name. Reiko laid before it the rice cake, the sake decanter, and the bouquet of flowers she’d brought. Rain pelted the cemetery. Lieutenant Asukai opened an umbrella over Reiko’s head and gave it to her. Reiko lingered, reluctant to depart. She’d never expected to mourn so keenly for someone she’d known such a short time. How strange that the death of a virtual stranger could alter one’s life.
She heard hoof beats outside the cemetery. Looking up, she saw Sano enter the gate, followed by Detectives Marume and Fukida. Sano came to stand beside her at the grave while the detectives joined her escorts under the pines. The rain gushed down, drenching the grave and offerings. Reiko took meager comfort from Sano, pressed close against her, in the scant dry haven under her umbrella.
“The servants told me I’d find you here.” Sano regarded her with concern. “What’s going on?”
“I just buried Tama’s ashes. There wasn’t anyone else to do it.” Reiko explained, “I went to the house where she worked to ask if she had any relatives. Her employers said she didn’t. And they weren’t interested in what happened to her body. So I held a funeral for her the day after she died. No one came except my father.” Reiko felt sad for Tama, who’d been so alone in the world, and Magistrate Ueda, who had his own regrets about how Yugao’s murder case had turned out. “And there was no one to give Tama a proper grave except me.”
Sano nodded in approval. “That was good of you.”
“It’s nowhere near enough to do for her.” Guilt plagued Reiko. “You tried to warn me that power is dangerous. You said that things we do with it might seem good at the time, but they can have bad consequences. Well, you were right. I abused my power and I did terrible harm to an innocent girl.”
“It was Tama herself who gave away the fact that she knew too much for Yugao’s good,” Sano pointed out. “If she’d kept quiet, Yugao would have let her go back to town, before I brought the army.”
“Tama couldn’t have been expected to know what or what not to say,” Reiko said. “She was just a simple peasant-whereas I should have anticipated all the risks.”
“You couldn’t have known what would happen. The fire that got Yugao out of jail was an unforeseeable circumstance.”
Reiko was grateful to him because he didn’t heap more recriminations on her for disregarding his advice, but she couldn’t absolve herself. “You warned me that something I didn’t expect could happen. I didn’t listen.”
“Plenty of good came out of your investigation as well,” Sano reminded her. “If you hadn’t delayed Yugao’s execution-and she hadn’t escaped from jail-I might still be searching for Kobori. He might still be assassinating people.”
“Maybe. But how can we know? All I’m certain of is that if I hadn’t kept Yugao alive, she couldn’t have killed Tama.”
“You did the best you could to save her. You risked your own life.”
“I failed. I’m alive. Tama is dead.” Now Reiko acknowledged the problem that bothered her the most. “And I didn’t take on the investigation just because I wanted to discover the truth or serve justice. I was hankering for adventure. I found it. Tama paid the price.”
Sano’s expression grew troubled; Reiko saw that her words had touched a nerve in him. “You’re not the only one who’s ever had selfish personal motives. When Lord Matsudaira ordered me to catch the assassin, I was glad to get out of my boring duties. I wanted adventure as much as you did.”
“But you had orders,” Reiko said, able to justify his behavior although not her own. “You wanted to save lives and punish a murderer.”
“True, but I also wanted to save my own position, which I would have lost if I’d failed. My own honor was at stake. And you’re not the only one whose investigation went wrong.” Pain etched Sano’s bruised face. “I led an army on what turned out to be a suicide mission.”
“That’s a different situation,” Reiko protested. “Those troops were samurai. Fighting that battle was their duty.”
“They’re just as dead as Tama is,” Sano said. “And I’m alive.”
They stood joined together by the sobering fact that they had survived while those who’d served them had not, that their lives were a burden as much as a blessing from the gods. The rain streamed down, obscuring the graves; water puddled the cemetery.
“What are we going to do now?” Reiko asked.
“We can make up for what happened.”
Atonement seemed impossible, yet the idea of striving for it had a certain desolate appeal for Reiko. “I’ll quit investigating crimes,” she vowed. “I’ll put myself under house arrest so I can’t ever bring harm to anyone again.” But her spirit died even as she spoke. That she should bury all her skill, experience, and ardor along with Tama’s ashes! She told herself that it was a small price to pay.
“I don’t have the luxury of withdrawing from the world,” Sano said ruefully. “I’ve still got my duties to fulfill. I can’t stop using my power. I can’t stop making judgments even though they might prove to be faulty.” He paused, deep in thought. “And I still want a chance at doing good, at using my power and position to serve honor.” Determination and hope strengthened his voice. “That much hasn’t changed.”
That hadn’t changed for Reiko, either. “But if we do act, how can we be sure that things won’t go wrong again?”
“We can’t. Power doesn’t exempt us from bad luck and mistakes, obviously. All we can know is that our power makes the consequences of our actions most extreme.”
Sano sounded tentative, as though he was working out the issues himself. “But too much caution is as bad as not enough, and inaction can be worse than action. If I hadn’t gone after Kobori, he might have gone on killing, Lord Matsudaira’s regime might have weakened, and Japan might have been torn apart by civil war. If you hadn’t gotten involved with Yugao, I might never have caught him. Events are connected in mysterious ways. I can’t help thinking that these were meant to happen the way they did, that we were meant to do as we did and not otherwise. I can’t help believing that we survived for a purpose.”
Reiko was skeptical, but she yearned to believe it, too. “What purpose?”
“I don’t know. Maybe if we rise to the challenges that come our way in the future, they’ll lead us to our destiny.”
Reiko smiled with wistful amusement. “I always imagined that my destiny would be revealed to me by celestial apparitions or weird visions.”
Sano chuckled. “I doubt that we get to choose how our destiny is revealed any more than we get to choose what it is. The gods might not think we’re worth putting on such a spectacular drama.”
Their shared humor warmed Reiko. She began to believe that her life had been spared for a purpose and she would have an opportunity to do better the next time. She hoped that when the challenges came, she and Sano would be ready to meet them.
He gazed around the wet, forlorn cemetery. “Somehow I don’t think we’ll find our destiny here. We should be getting back to Edo Castle.”
She nodded. Together they left Tama’s grave. The rain continued pouring down, and they were both drenched, their umbrella inadequate protection. Yet a faint luminescence shone in the distant sky even while the thunder boomed and the earth trembled.