The Iris Fan Page 5

  Sudden terror gripped Hirata. “Are we in a trance? Is that what this is?” He looked around for General Otani, whose powers were limitless, his wrath deadly.

  “No,” Kitano said. “This is the real world.”

  “Then how—?”

  “General Otani?” Tahara repeated, louder.

  Hirata experienced a strange, zinging sensation, like a current of extra life force speeding along his nerves. The blood in his veins and organs swelled. Heat flushed him. He felt a jolt in his brain. A part of him that he hadn’t known was still unconscious snapped alert. His lungs drew a deep, involuntary breath. His arms and legs stretched and flexed of their own accord. He couldn’t control his movements! He opened his mouth to yell, “What are you doing to me? Stop!” Instead he said, “I am here.”

  His voice was deeper than normal, with a strange yet familiar accent. Tahara said to Kitano, “It worked!” They hooted with laughter and slapped each other’s backs.

  “What worked?” Hirata was relieved that this time he’d said what he meant to say, yet terrified by what had just happened.

  “The spell for possession,” Kitano said. “We’ve been working it on you for six months.”

  “General Otani isn’t just a disembodied spirit anymore,” Tahara said. “He’s inside you!”

  An alien presence bloomed in Hirata’s mind, like a carnivorous flower that preyed on his mental faculties. General Otani spoke in his thoughts: You and I share your body.

  This was the terrible purpose for which General Otani had ultimately wanted Hirata—to give the ghost a human form. Hirata cried, “No! I don’t want you! Get out of me!”

  “The spell is permanent,” Kitano said.

  Tahara shrugged and smiled. “Sorry.”

  Their attitude compounded the rage Hirata felt toward them for luring him into treason. “Why does Otani have to possess me? Why not one of you?”

  “He thought you would be the easiest to take over,” Tahara said.

  Hirata clawed at his chest, yelling, “Get out!” His nails raked bloody tracks on his skin.

  You can’t get rid of me, General Otani said inside his head. His arm muscles stiffened, jerking his hands away from his body.

  Hirata lunged toward the veranda railing. “Leave, or I’ll jump!”

  A fear that wasn’t entirely his own stabbed his gut. Hirata realized that General Otani shared his mortality as well as his body. He tried to climb over the railing, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. He staggered toward the wall of the building and beat his head against it. Otani’s voice in his head howled at the pain. Hirata’s back arched, and he fell to the veranda. His arms and legs curled to his chest. He struggled with all his might, but he was as immobilized as if wrapped in chains.

  “No use fighting,” Kitano said.

  “He’s got you good,” Tahara said.

  “You should listen to your friends,” General Otani said aloud. His voice was breathless as it emerged from Hirata; the struggle had tired him. “Stand up, or must I force you?”

  The chains loosened. Hirata stood, conceding defeat, but he’d learned that the ghost had physical limitations now that it was in him. He would play along until he figured out how to expel it and be his normal self again.

  It won’t work.

  Hirata’s breath caught. General Otani said, I can hear your thoughts. You can’t hide anything from me. Hirata’s lips moved as General Otani spoke aloud: “We are going back to Edo.”

  “Good, I’m ready for some action,” Tahara said.

  “It’s too quiet here,” Kitano said.

  “You two are not coming with us,” General Otani said through Hirata.

  The other men looked surprised. “Why not?” Kitano asked.

  “I have no further use for you.”

  They apparently hadn’t realized that after they gave Otani a human body, he would be independent. “We’ve served you for years.” Tahara’s voice rose with indignation. “You can’t just ditch us.”

  “Watch me.”

  Propelled by the ghost, Hirata moved toward the door to the bedchamber. Tahara and Kitano stepped in front of it. “We gave up everything to help you destroy the Tokugawa regime,” Kitano said. “We’re fugitives because of you. We’re not letting you walk away.”

  “I’ve rewarded you handsomely for your service. You have mystical powers that you could not otherwise have attained.” Hirata tried to bite his tongue to stop Otani from speaking, but he couldn’t. “Our collaboration is over.”

  “If it’s over, then we’ll send you back where you came from,” Tahara retorted.

  He and Kitano began chanting words in archaic Chinese that Hirata couldn’t understand. Inside him, General Otani’s spirit recoiled with fear from the spell that would permanently banish him to the netherworld of the dead. Hirata’s mouth opened. From his depths came a shout so loud that he thought his head would explode. Tahara and Kitano choked and staggered, mouths agape, while the force that Otani had summoned from Hirata blasted down their throats. They jerked and twisted like hanged men suspended from gallows, then fell to the floor. Flames burst from their mouths and eyes. They writhed, screamed in agony, then lay still. In the sudden quiet, the waterfall murmured.

  Hirata fell to his knees, crying, “Tahara-san! Kitano-san!”

  Their eyes were burned black as coals; their mouths leaked wisps of smoke. Hirata remembered how much he’d hated them, how he’d wanted desperately to kill them. He’d thought that if they were gone, he could reunite with his family, reconcile with Sano, and regain his honor. Now he desperately wished for the power to bring them back to life. They were the only people in the world who could have saved him, and the Tokugawa regime, from General Otani.

  It is time to go.

  Hirata’s muscles jerked him upright. He and the ghost inside him walked out of the temple, down a mountain path, toward the road to Edo.

  7

  Month 1, Hoei Year 6

  (Edo, February 1709)

  “HAS ANYONE STARTED a search for the attacker?” Sano asked Captain Hosono.

  “Not yet. But the sentries reported that no one has left the palace since His Excellency was stabbed, and all the exits are sealed now.”

  “So he’s still inside. He can’t go anywhere.” Sano knew that wouldn’t necessarily make catching the attacker easy. There were hundreds of people in the palace, any one of whom could be the culprit. The first order of business was examining the crime scene for clues that would focus the search.

  Sano looked around the chamber. The shogun was deep in opium-induced sleep, his breathing harsh and labored. The physician and guards sat by the bed. Lord Ienobu and Chamberlain Yanagisawa hovered warily near Sano. Sano unhooked a lantern from its stand and moved it in a slow arc as he walked, sweeping its light across the floor. He bumped into Ienobu, turned, and came up against Yanagisawa.

  “Would you mind not breathing down my neck?”

  “We’re supervising your investigation,” Yanagisawa said.

  “Supervise it from over there.” Sano pointed at a corner he’d already searched.

  “Sano-san, I’d like a word outside with you,” Ienobu said. “Then I’ll leave you to your work.”

  Anything to get Ienobu off his back. Sano replaced the lantern, then followed Ienobu and Yanagisawa to the corridor. Ienobu said in a vehement whisper, “I didn’t do it!”

  “I don’t believe you,” Sano said.

  “Keep your voice down,” Yanagisawa murmured. “You’ll wake the shogun.”

  “When he was stabbed, I was with you,” Ienobu insisted.

  That Sano himself was the alibi for the man he thought responsible for the attack! “You’d have sent someone else to do your dirty work. There must be an incompetent assassin with your money in his pocket. You’ll have to ask for a refund.”

  “I didn’t hire an assassin!” Distraught as well as angry, Ienobu said, “Just ask Yanagisawa-san. He’s privy to all my affairs.”

  Th
e day the secretive, cautious Ienobu let anyone in on all his affairs would be the day whales flew. Sano turned his skeptical gaze to Yanagisawa.

  A beat passed. Yanagisawa said, “Lord Ienobu is telling the truth.”

  Lord Ienobu frowned because Yanagisawa hadn’t spoken up for him fast enough. Sano was all the more puzzled. Was Yanagisawa trying to encourage Sano’s suspicions? If so, why?

  “Did you send the assassin?” Sano asked.

  “No,” Yanagisawa said calmly.

  “What’s going on between you two?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” Ienobu snapped. “And don’t try to pin another crime on me. It didn’t work last time. It won’t this time.”

  “Both the shogun’s children were murdered and now there’s been an attempt on his life,” Sano said. “The two people who confessed to killing Yoshisato and Tsuruhime are dead. They couldn’t have stabbed the shogun. But you’re still around.”

  Ienobu sputtered. “That’s ridiculous logic! Everybody else in Japan is still around, too. You might as well say they’re all guilty.”

  “The two confessions implicated you, not everybody else in Japan,” Sano said. “You were my primary suspect for those murders. You’re my primary suspect this time.”

  “And you think you can use your investigation to frame me and get me this time?” Scornful anger twisted Ienobu’s face. “Well, think again. You’re going to prove I’m innocent.”

  “How so?” Sano said, offended that Ienobu would ask him to conduct a dishonest investigation, get Ienobu off the hook, and subvert justice.

  “I don’t care. Just do it.” Ienobu jabbed Sano’s chest with his finger.

  Sano pushed the finger away. “I don’t take orders from you.”

  “I’m Acting Shogun. You’ll do as I say.” Ienobu’s bulging eyes gleamed with vengefulness. “Or I’ll have you and your family put to death.”

  Being thrown out of the regime and made a rōnin was trivial in comparison to the threat that Lord Ienobu had kept in reserve for a special occasion like this. Sano knew that Ienobu could kill him, his wife, and his children without asking for the shogun’s permission and worry about the consequences later, but even as fear knotted his stomach, he said, “Go ahead, kill me. That should convince the shogun that you’re afraid of my investigation because you’re responsible for the attack.”

  Angrily aware that Sano had a point, Ienobu scowled. Yanagisawa said, “Lord Ienobu, why not let Sano-san do a proper, thorough investigation? You’ve nothing to hide.” A dubious note in his voice suggested the opposite. “Let him find the real culprit, and your innocence will be proven.”

  Ienobu turned on Yanagisawa, who’d pretended to uphold his claim of innocence while virtually proclaiming that he was guilty. Sano was stunned because Yanagisawa apparently wanted him alive, after years of trying to destroy him.

  “Very well.” The black look Ienobu gave Sano and Yanagisawa said the matter was far from settled.

  Sano led the way back inside the shogun’s bedchamber. His knees felt shaky; he’d walked away from a battle he’d expected to lose, and onto very thin ice. This was his most important case ever—the attempted murder of his lord. Bushido required him to find the truth, to exact blood for blood. Yet it might not be Ienobu’s blood. He hadn’t one scrap of evidence against Ienobu, and Ienobu could still make good on his threat.

  For now Sano concentrated on solving the crime, his first priority. He would worry about Ienobu—and wonder about Yanagisawa—later. He fetched the lantern, resumed inspecting the floor, and found a dark patch on the tatami, near the wooden sliding door between the bedchamber and the shogun’s study. He crouched.

  “What is it?” Ienobu’s tone was half eager, half frightened.

  The patch gleamed red. “Blood.” It was irregularly shaped, and wider at the end nearer the door. Sano noted the distinctive marks made by toes and heel. “It’s a footprint.”

  * * *

  YANAGISAWA WATCHED SANO open the sliding door and carry the lantern into the shogun’s study. More footprints led past the niche that contained a desk on a platform, to the lattice-and-paper wall that divided the room from the corridor. They grew fainter with each step.

  “The attacker escaped through here.” Sano slid the partition aside and walked into the corridor. Tracking the bloodstains along the palace’s maze of corridors, he gathered an entourage of curious guards, servants, and officials. Yanagisawa and Lord Ienobu walked together behind the parade.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Ienobu demanded in a furious whisper.

  “I’m trying to help Sano find out who stabbed your uncle.”

  “Don’t feed me that tripe! You as good as told Sano that I’m guilty and dug my grave!”

  Yanagisawa smiled at the fear he saw beneath Ienobu’s anger. He’d lived in fear since Ienobu had kidnapped Yoshisato and it felt good to have the shoe on the other foot.

  “You’re playing a dangerous game,” Ienobu said.

  “Dangerous for whom? I’m not the primary suspect in this crime.”

  Ienobu shook his finger in Yanagisawa’s face. “Hold up your end of our deal or you’ll never see Yoshisato again.”

  “Our deal is off. I’m going to help Sano convict you of conspiring to assassinate the shogun.”

  “Do you really think I did?” Ienobu’s air of wounded innocence stank like old fish.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” Yanagisawa said. “What matters is whether the shogun believes you’re guilty, and when I’m done with you, he will. You won’t live to inherit the dictatorship.”

  “Don’t forget, I have Yoshisato. Step out of line again, and he’ll be as dead as everybody else thinks he is.”

  Yanagisawa swallowed the panic that always clutched his heart whenever he thought of his beloved son at the mercy of Ienobu’s henchmen. “You’ve only got him until I find him.”

  “I suspect you’ve been looking for him all these years. You haven’t found him yet.”

  Every trail had gone cold, and there had been no new leads for fifteen months, but Yanagisawa said, “I feel my luck changing.”

  Ienobu chuckled, a sound like the rattle of a snake. “Your time is running out. The shogun is going to die.” He didn’t have to say, When I take over the regime, I won’t need to keep your son—or you—alive any longer.

  “Maybe the shogun will make a miraculous recovery and my searchers are rescuing Yoshisato even as we speak.” Yanagisawa added with sly humor, “I feel your luck changing, too.”

  “Are you really willing to gamble that you can find Yoshisato, or destroy me, before the shogun dies and before I can send out my orders to have Yoshisato killed?”

  Yanagisawa answered with passion, a substitute for certainty. “Yes.”

  The parade slowed. Yanagisawa heard Sano say, “The footprints stop here.”

  Over the heads of the men in front of him Yanagisawa saw a massive oak door banded in iron and decorated with carved flowers. It sealed the door to the Large Interior, the private section of the palace where the shogun’s wife, female concubines, their attendants and maids lived. A murmur swept through the crowd.

  “A woman stabbed the shogun?”

  8

  “HERE’S YOUR NEW chaperone,” Midori said.

  Taeko’s heart sank as she beheld the plain young maid named Umeko, whose sharp eyes missed nothing.

  “How am I supposed to keep her away from Masahiro, along with all my other work?” Umeko said in her nasal, insolent voice.

  Taeko missed the old days, before they got so poor, when their servants were polite. Now they had servants like Umeko that richer folks wouldn’t put up with.

  “Taeko will help you do your work.” Midori glowered at Taeko. “Cleaning house will keep you too busy to get in trouble.”

  Umeko led Taeko into the bedchamber; the younger children were asleep there. She laid bedding in front of the door and tucked herself in. “I’m a light sleeper. Don’t
bother trying to sneak out.”

  Taeko crawled into her own bed and lay awake and miserable in the dark. She’d been so happy in love with Masahiro that she hadn’t thought about the future. She couldn’t bear to be separated from him, and if they couldn’t marry, all was lost.

  “Taeko?” whispered Masahiro, kneeling outside the chamber on the other side of the paper wall.

  “What are you doing here?” Taeko whispered, glad to have him near her yet afraid Umeko would catch them.

  “I wanted to tell you, I’m sorry for what happened.” Masahiro expelled a mournful breath. “I shouldn’t have started this.”

  “It’s not your fault. I wanted it as much as you did.” This was such a bold, unfeminine thing to say, Taeko’s face burned.

  “But I’m older. I should have kept things under control.”

  Glum silence stretched between them. Taeko whispered, “What are we going to do?”

  “I’ll think of something.” But Masahiro sounded as forlorn as she felt.

  Taeko thought of the times when matchmakers had brought proposals from clans that wanted to wed their daughters to Masahiro. Each time she’d prayed that the marriage would fall through. Each time one had, she’d secretly rejoiced, but now she was scared.

  “You won’t marry someone else, will you?” Her voice came out loud and shrill.

  “Shh! Don’t worry. It’s like I said: Nobody else wants me.”

  “But if somebody did…?”

  “I’ll never marry anybody but you.” Masahiro spoke with impatience and tenderness.

  Hearing him say it pleased Taeko but didn’t relieve her fear. She knew how much he loved, respected, and felt a duty toward his parents. If a match were arranged for him, would he be able to say no? “We should run away and get married!”