The Cloud Pavilion

33

Sano roused groggily from a sound sleep. Into his dark chamber spilled light from a lantern held by Detective Fukida, who stood in the doorway. "I'm sorry to bother you," Fukida said, "but there's an urgent message from Lady Reiko."

Instantly wide awake, Sano said, "What?" He bolted upright in bed. "Is she all right?"

"Yes," Fukida said, "but there's been an attack at the Kumazawa house. She asks you to come at once."

Sano threw on some clothes. Heading for the door, he met Masahiro, rubbing his sleepy eyes, in the hall. "Where are you going, Father?"

"To fetch your mother," Sano said. "Don't worry, she's fine. Go back to bed. We'll be home soon."

He rode through the dark, slumbering city with Marume and Fukida and some troops. The neighborhood gates had long been closed for the night, but Sano and his men wore the Tokugawa crest, and the watchmen let them pass. After a hard ride along the highway, they reached the Kumazawa estate.

It was lit up like a house on fire. Flames burned in metal lanterns along the wall and at the gate; more lights flickered from within the courtyard. Smoke melted into the misty night. The guards let Sano's party through the gate. As they dismounted in the courtyard, Reiko came running out of the mansion. Dressed in a night robe, she was agitated and disheveled, her face bare of makeup, her long hair carelessly braided. But she was indeed alive and well, to Sano's relief.

"What happened?" Sano said.

As Reiko told him about the attack, he listened in horror that didn't ease much when she told him she'd killed the man. Killing was a traumatic experience. Reiko must have been terrified, and she hadn't been the only one in danger.

"Where is Chiyo?" Sano said. "And Fumiko?"

Out of breath from excitement and speaking too fast, Reiko gestured toward the house. Chiyo and Fumiko stepped out onto the veranda. They looked shaken but unharmed. Major Kumazawa appeared behind them, fully dressed in his armor tunic, his swords at his waist, as if ready for battle.

"My daughter and her guest weren't touched," he said. "But they would have been killed if not for your wife."

His tone conveyed some admiration and gratitude toward Reiko but more fury at the attack on his house hold. "The man climbed over the wall. We found the rope he used. He got past my guards-he killed two of them. He must have been a professional assassin."

"Where is the assassin now?"

"In the backyard," Major Kumazawa said. "Your wife insisted on keeping his body until you arrived."

Sano cast a thankful glance at Reiko. She smiled briefly through her distress. He was proud of her for having the presence of mind to save the evidence.

"Come," Major Kumazawa said, lifting a lantern off a stand and walking down the steps. "I'll show you."

He led Sano around the mansion, across the garden, and through a gate. The detectives accompanied Sano and Major Kumazawa past the kitchen building, to a small, fenced yard. Major Kumazawa's lantern illuminated wooden bins that reeked of rotten fish, and a blanket-covered shape that lay on the ground. Fukida drew back the blanket. Underneath lay a youngish man with the shaved crown of a samurai, a wiry build, and an oval face with long, thick lashes that fringed his closed eyes. His gray kimono and trousers were drenched with blood from the wound Reiko had inflicted on his belly. The clothes had no identifying crests on them. The man was a stranger to Sano.

"Do you know him?" Sano asked Major Kumazawa.

"Never seen him before. Neither have my daughter or your wife, so they say. At first the girl thought he was the kidnapper, but she was fooled by the mask. It must be like the one the kidnapper wore. When she saw his face, she changed her mind and said she didn't recognize him after all."

Marume and Fukida shook their heads; they didn't know the assassin, either. Fukida covered the corpse.

"Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt your family?" Sano said.

"No one with enough nerve to break into my house."

"We need to find out who he is." Concern filled Sano because he was starting to get an idea about the reason behind the attack.

"It'll be day soon," Fukida said. "Do you want us to take his body around the neighborhood and see if anyone recognizes him?"

"Have some of my troops do it," Sano said. It was hardly standard procedure, but there seemed no other way to identify the dead man. Sano hoped it would work better than his experiment at Edo Jail. Envisioning the gory corpse paraded through the streets, he added, "Tell them to keep the body covered and just show the face."

The detectives went off to obey. Sano and Major Kumazawa walked back toward the mansion.

"It's no coincidence that this happened after you started your investigation." Major Kumazawa spoke as if stating a distasteful fact.

"No. I don't believe it is, either." Sano experienced a bad, familiar feeling. Once again, he hadn't solved a case soon enough. "I think the assassin came to kill Chiyo so that she could never identify the man who raped her."

"Do you think he did it?" Incredulity vied with hope in Major Kumazawa's voice.

Sano knew why Major Kumazawa wasn't ready to accept the idea. The dead assassin seemed so ordinary, not an evil monster. And Sano had other reason to doubt that the man had acted alone, on his own behalf. "No. I think he was sent by the guilty party."

"Those oxcart drivers?" Major Kumazawa turned to Sano, his disbelief clear in the light from the brightening sky.

"Not them," Sano said. "While I was looking for them, I found three new suspects."

He told Major Kumazawa about the kennel manager, the rice broker, and the exorcist. Surprise halted Major Kumazawa in the courtyard. "This happened when?"

"Their names came up yesterday," Sano said.

"And you didn't tell me?" Vexed, Major Kumazawa said, "I expected you to keep me informed about your progress."

"I'm informing you now." Although Sano could understand that Major Kumazawa didn't like being kept in the dark, he'd wanted to prevent his uncle from confronting the suspects himself and causing trouble again.

"Nanbu, Ogita, and Joju." As Major Kumazawa turned their names over on his tongue, he looked stunned to think they could have stooped to kidnapping and rape. Then he nodded, aware that even three such important men could have perverted tastes and no scruples. "If one of them wanted my daughter and hired those oxcart drivers to kidnap her-if one of them sent the assassin to kill her-how can I get my revenge?"

Despair pervaded his stern manner. "If I should go after Nanbu, I'll have to kill his dogs. I'm in debt to Ogita. He could make my clan paupers. And Joju is the shogun's protege." He said bitterly, "I can't touch them any more than you can. I don't care what happens to me, but I can't let my family suffer."

Sano had been in the same position, blocked because his family would share whatever punishment he incurred, too many times to count. But he said, "Let's not give up. Whichever man is guilty-and I'm sure one or more of them is-he shouldn't be allowed to get away with it."

"Shouldn't, but will." Major Kumazawa faced Sano with determination. "Because the investigation stops now."

People had tried to stop his investigations before, but Sano shook his head. "You don't have the authority to call off my investigation."

"Yes, I do," Major Kumazawa said. "I requested your help. Now I'm withdrawing my request."

"You can't just dismiss me as if I were an unsatisfactory servant," Sano said. "I'll continue the investigation until the criminal is brought to justice."

"Even if he sends another assassin who succeeds where this one failed? Even if it means my daughter could die?"

"Another woman has already died. The nun," Sano reminded his uncle. "She deserves justice."

"What in hell do I care about her?"

"And as long as the rapist and the kidnappers are at large, other women are in danger," Sano said.

"I don't care about them, either," Major Kumazawa insisted. "You must stop your investigation."

Under different circumstances, Sano would have respected the wishes of the head of his mother's clan. "I'll continue with or without your blessing," Sano said coldly. "You might recall that my wife was attacked, too. This is personal for me now."

Major Kumazawa stared. Sano saw satisfaction as well as enmity in his eyes. "The longer I know you, the more I realize that you are like your mother. You are just as willful and stubborn as she ever was. Well, that's your choice. But when you choose your actions, you have to take the consequences."

More enraged by the insult to his mother than to himself, Sano retorted, "Willfulness and stubbornness appear to run in the family. It's obvious that my mother and I aren't the only ones who share those traits."

Then he forgot what he was saying, because Major Kumazawa's last sentence had struck a chord in his memory. His anger entwined with the same sense of familiarity that he'd felt during his first visit to this house. In his mind Sano saw Major Kumazawa and his wife standing on their veranda; he heard the woman's voice pleading; he felt the same, dizzy sickness as he had then. Now the vague impressions solidified into a memory of stunning clarity.

"I heard you say that to my mother," he said.

Startled, Major Kumazawa said, "What?"

Recollection flooded Sano, as if a door that sealed off his past had suddenly opened. "I was here. My mother brought me. I must have been four or five years old." Now he knew why she'd defied the ban on contact with her family. "I was sick with a fever. She was afraid I would die." Sano remembered lying in bed, wracked by chills, struggling to breathe. Across the years he heard his mother crying and his father saying they couldn't afford a doctor or medicine. "So she brought me here, to ask for your help."

"You remember?" Major Kumazawa frowned in dismay.

"Yes. I also remember that you said she deserved for me to suffer. You said, 'When you choose your actions, you have to take the consequences.' " Sano's anger burned hotter. "Then you turned us away."

Major Kumazawa wore the expression of a man who'd believed he'd put out a fire and discovered that it had been smoldering underground when it blew up in his face. "I thought you'd forgotten."

"I'm sure you wish I had," Sano said.

He watched Major Kumazawa realize that the incident constituted more than a just punishment of a cast-out relative and her child. Although it had happened in the distant past, it could be interpreted as striking a blow against Sano the chamberlain, the shogun's second-in-command, and the punishment for that was whatever Sano chose.

"I've always regretted what I did," Major Kumazawa said. "I should have helped Etsuko. You were an innocent child; you didn't deserve to suffer. I apologize."

"It's a little late for that," Sano said.

"I only did what was right at the time," Major Kumazawa said, fearful yet insistent. "My parents were still alive. They forbade me to do anything for Etsuko. I had to respect their wishes."

Sano regarded Major Kumazawa with contempt. "Your tendency to justify yourself by blaming other people has made your apology a sham. It's a trait that's even worse than willfulness or stubbornness. So is your belief that you're entitled to things that you won't give to other people. When my mother asked you to save her child, you refused. But when your daughter was kidnapped and you came to me for help, I agreed."

Sano would have been sorry he had, if not for Chiyo, who was as blameless as his own childhood self had been.

"So you're a better man than I am." Major Kumazawa's resentful tone belied the compliment. "Well, if you'd rather not trouble yourself on my behalf or that of my family any longer, then stop your investigation."

"I can't do that," Sano said. "I've already explained why."

The hostility between them solidified, thick as the humid dawn air, as hot and suffocating as smoke. Major Kumazawa said, "Since we'll never see eye to eye, there's no use talking anymore. Be sure to take your wife with you when you go."

The dismissal stung Sano even though he was eager to leave this place and never come back. As he walked toward the house to fetch Reiko, he heard Major Kumazawa call after him, "I should never have broken the ban against contact with Etsuko and her kin. I'll uphold it from now on."

"That suits me just fine," Sano said.