The Iris Fan

27

An eerie hush lay over the guest quarters of the Mori estate. It seemed to Reiko as if the world were holding its breath in suspense while she waited on the veranda for Sano to come back from his meeting with Lord Ienobu. She didn’t want to see him or speak to him, but she was anxious to know what was happening.

In the empty garden below her, snow melted, exposing muddy brown grass. Water dripped from the eaves. She pulled her cloak tighter around her and paced to keep warm. She could have waited indoors with Midori and the children, but the house was polluted by the evil spirits of the people who’d once framed her for murder. She wondered how many women throughout the ages had waited like this for their men to come back. Had they been as restless and hungry for action as she?

She felt a prickling sensation of someone watching her. Across the garden, on the opposite veranda, stood Lady Yanagisawa. Her flat face was as expressionless as ever, but her anger blasted at Reiko like a flame from a torch.

Tonight the two of them would be kinfolk, locked together by their children’s marriage.

Reiko’s heart beat like wings that were trying to fly her body out of a trap. She ran down the stairs without knowing where to go. She ran through a gate, out of the guest quarters, and around the silent hulk of the mansion. She ran away from the husband who’d betrayed her and her son; she ran as if running could save her from the wedding, Yanagisawa, Lord Ienobu, and a war. She stopped when she lost her breath. Panting against the wall of the servants’ barracks, she sank into despair. She couldn’t leave her family, and she couldn’t outrun her problems.

As she trudged back toward the guest quarters, a huge black dog with a blunt face, thick, sinewy muscles, and a sleek pelt bounded up to her. A leather collar studded with iron spikes circled its neck. Vapor puffed like smoke from its nostrils as it growled. It was one of Lord Mori’s watchdogs. Frightened, Reiko backed away into a narrow, vacant passage between two outbuildings. The dog came closer and growled louder. She froze, afraid to move.

“Help!” she called.

The dog barked and bared its sharp teeth. Reiko slowly reached for the dagger strapped to her arm under her sleeve. She meant to use the weapon to scare the dog, not hurt it, but it interpreted her movement as aggression. It lunged. She screamed and flung up her arms to protect her face. The dog’s massive weight knocked her down. Pinned under its huge paws, she beat at it while it slavered at her throat.

A high voice yelled, “Stop!”

The dog climbed off Reiko and sat beside her. She gasped with relief. Someone came running down the passage. Reiko sat up and stared in surprise at her daughter.

“Here, boy!” Akiko called. The dog trotted to her, wagging his stumpy tail. She knelt and scratched him behind his ears. His long red tongue licked her face.

“Be careful, he’ll bite you!” Reiko cried.

“No, he won’t, will you?” Akiko addressed the dog in a friendly but firm voice. He let her pet him, as though he recognized her as his master. She seemed suddenly much older than her nine years, her fierce spirit connecting her to her samurai ancestors. Then her face regained her usual childishly defiant expression. “I followed you. Are you mad at me?”

“No, no,” Reiko said, ashamed of ever scolding Akiko for befriending dogs. “You saved my life.”

A long gaze bridged the distance between them. Much was spoken in silence that words couldn’t convey. Reiko told Akiko how thankful she was. Akiko’s face bloomed into a radiant smile: She was glad that for once she’d earned Reiko’s approval. Reiko felt that even though she’d lost the baby and was about to lose her son, she’d found her daughter.

The moment was as fragile, perfect, and short-lived as a spring snowflake.

“Where were you going?” Akiko asked.

Reiko started to say she didn’t know. Despair returned. Sano’s meeting with Lord Ienobu could have no good outcome. Time was speeding toward Masahiro’s wedding. Then she looked into Akiko’s bright, lively eyes. Reiko felt a tingle, as if she’d tapped into Akiko’s energy. She suddenly saw her young self in Akiko-the girl who’d once dressed as a boy, stolen a horse from her father’s stable, and ridden around town. She hadn’t been any more afraid of mean, unruly horses than Akiko was afraid of fierce dogs.

That girl wouldn’t have let herself be trapped like a mouse in a box. She would have found a way out. Reiko felt boldness and adventurousness flowing back into her. She focused her attention on the dog, now tame and friendly. Her heart beat faster with sudden inspiration.

“Come with me,” she told Akiko. “Bring the dog.”

They hurried to the guest quarters. The dog trotted after Akiko. He waited on the veranda while Reiko found the iris fan, swathed in white cloth, which Sano had brought from the castle. She unwrapped the fan. The iron ribs and the cloth were stained with the shogun’s blood. Reiko set the fan on a lacquer chest. It was the cloth she wanted.

“What are you going to do?” Akiko asked.

“I’m going to the castle to find the bloodstained socks,” Reiko said.

Sano or Masahiro would have asked her why the missing socks mattered now, when the investigation had ceased. Reiko would have had to explain that she wanted to prove that Lord Ienobu really was responsible for the stabbing even though Madam Chizuru’s confession was false. If Ienobu was condemned to death as punishment, Sano’s alliance with Yanagisawa wouldn’t be necessary and neither would Masahiro’s marriage to Kikuko. Yoshisato would have a new chance to become shogun, but Reiko would worry about that later. Sano or Masahiro would have forbidden Reiko to leave the estate because it was too dangerous and her plan was foolish, but Akiko said, “Oh, I see! The dog can track the socks! Good!”

Akiko was smarter than Reiko had thought, another surprise. They hurried outside. Akiko held the cloth under the dog’s nose. He sniffed the shogun’s blood, sniffed the air, then barked and ran down the stairs. At the bottom he turned and barked.

“He wants you to follow him,” Akiko said. “Can I go, too?” She looked suddenly peeved, expecting Reiko to say no.

Reiko hesitated. A mother shouldn’t take her child into a city on the brink of war. But Reiko’s notion of her maternal responsibility underwent a sudden change. Akiko was a member of the family; she shared its fate. Better for her to help her mother find the truth about the crime that had put them in peril than to sit at home waiting for their enemy to attack.

“Yes,” Reiko said. If a war started, Akiko would be safer in the city streets than in this estate with Lord Ienobu’s enemies, and Reiko needed her to handle the dog.

Delighted, Akiko smiled. The dog led them to a small gate near the kitchens. Reiko and Akiko struggled to lift the heavy bar. Opening the gate, Reiko saw the backs of four sentries who were stationed outside. The dog barked at the men. Startled, they turned. The dog bounded down the street.

“Come on, Mother!” Akiko cried.

Holding hands, they ran after the dog. Reiko felt connected to her daughter in a way she’d never thought possible. For once they were moving together instead of Reiko leaving, Akiko clinging, and Reiko pushing her away. The emptiness left by the baby Reiko had lost didn’t feel so big or hurt quite so much.

“Hey!” the sentries yelled, but they couldn’t desert their post to pursue two female guests who were running away with the master’s dog.

Reiko and Akiko laughed at the sentries. Reiko knew they were foolhardy; Lord Ienobu’s troops might recognize them as Sano’s kinfolk, capture them, and use them to force him to surrender. But it felt so good to laugh again.

Nose snuffling, the dog loped through the daimyo district along narrow side streets, avoiding the army troops massed outside estates that belonged to Yanagisawa’s allies. “How will we get in the castle?” Akiko asked.

Reiko envisioned the three of them marching up to the gate with no passes and no one to tell the sentries they were allowed to enter. But the missing socks must be inside the castle. The dog was leading her and Akiko in that direction. “I’ll think of something.”

Whereas Sano or Masahiro would have challenged her plan, Akiko blithely accepted it. The dog veered to the right, down a street that led away from the castle. “He’s lost the scent,” Reiko said, disappointed even though she’d known that this search was a long shot and the socks had probably been destroyed by the shogun’s attacker. “He’s going the wrong way.”

“No, he’s not.” Akiko spoke with confidence in her new friend.

They followed the dog. He trotted faster to a canal that separated the daimyo district from the Nihonbashi merchant quarter. Reiko and Akiko and the dog crossed an arched wooden bridge. Behind them the walls of the daimyo estates rose straight up from the retaining wall that lined the canal; below them the gray water was frozen into muddy ice along the banks. The dog raced into a street of houses with balconies concealed by bamboo blinds above shuttered fronts on the ground floors. Nihonbashi was strangely deserted and quiet. The townspeople must have seen the troops massing in the daimyo district, realized a war was coming, and either hidden themselves indoors or fled. The dog rounded a corner and loped down the alley behind the houses. The stench of rotten food and human waste came from wooden bins and ceramic vats outside back doors. The garbage and night soil collectors must have stayed home or fled, too. Rats scampered as the dog sniffed around the bins on his way down the alley. A gray heap partially blocked the far end. The dog sat by it and barked.

“He’s found them!” Akiko ran to the dog and petted him. “Good boy!”

The heap was ashes emptied from hearths and braziers. The dog began digging. He unearthed a tiny bundle just beneath the surface. He nosed it and looked up at Akiko. She picked it up and gave it to Reiko.

Reiko examined the wad of cloth, brushed off the soot, and separated it into two crumpled pieces stuck together by a reddish brown substance. Her breath quickened with excitement as she held up the bloodstained socks.

* * *

Hirata stood in a fire-watch tower high above Nihonbashi, gazing down at the city. Commoners in palanquins and on foot streamed along the roads, heading out of town. The estates in the daimyo district were laid out like territorial divisions on a giant game board. Miniature troops lined the street outside Lord Mori’s estate. Hirata trained his eyes on the white tent. His supernatural vision and hearing couldn’t penetrate it, but he sensed Sano inside. Sano’s aura resembled a jagged steel mesh around his core of courage. Auras from Yanagisawa, Yoshisato, and Lord Ienobu impinged on Sano like cannons firing red-hot missiles. The tent was the center of a cosmic storm, the focus of the fear, excitement, and anticipation crackling from the spectators’ auras.

“Sano is in trouble,” he said, appalled by the situation that he had helped create.

Before he could climb down the ladder and rush to Sano’s aid, General Otani locked his hands onto the railing. Stay away from Sano.

The tower swayed on its stilts as Hirata, enraged, struggled to break his own grip. The fire bell suspended by a rope from the little roof above him swung and jangled. “I’ve done everything you asked. The least you could do is let me help Sano!”

Sano must be allowed to play his role.

“What role?”

You’ll see.

“I’m sick of this!” Hirata demanded, “Why don’t I just kill the shogun and Lord Ienobu can take over the regime?” He didn’t balk at the traitorous idea. The shogun was close to death; at worst Hirata would shorten his time on earth by only a few days.

Things must continue along their present course.

“Why? If you want Ienobu to be shogun, let’s take the quickest route. Then you won’t need me anymore, or Sano. You can get the hell out of my body.”

Laughter resounded through Hirata. What makes you think that after Ienobu is shogun I’ll let you go?

Taken aback, Hirata said, “Won’t our work be finished then?”

I want to destroy the Tokugawa regime. Helping Ienobu take it over is just the first step.

“The first step?” Dismay opened a cold chasm in Hirata’s heart. “I thought that when he became shogun, he would destroy the regime for you. What more would there be for me to do?”

Lord Ienobu has enemies, as you well know. They’ll interfere with his plans and try to oust him. We have to make sure he stays in power.

In that terrible moment Hirata understood that his enslavement to the ghost wasn’t nearing its end. It had only begun.