“Come on,” Emmi said, jerking her thumb in the direction of Gion. She needed to find Kae soon, and she had a lot of ground to cover.
* * * *
Sachi was awfully quiet as they hurried along the crowded, narrow streets where the various stands and amusements were set up. She let him stop and watch some street performers while she scanned the crowd for signs of Kae. At least Kae was taller than many of the men. Hopefully his topknot of hair would catch her attention. Of course, the fact that ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of guys had the same hairstyle made things a bit trickier.
Emmi looked down at Sachi when he tugged on her yukata. He pointed. “I want to go there to see the dancing geisha.”
“So does half of Kyoto, it seems,” she said as she looked at the tangle of people moving that way. “Why don’t we go to where the fish game is? Maybe you can catch one.”
“I want to see the geisha dance. Why do my people not move out of the way? Why do they look at me? Why do they not lie at my feet and worship me?”
Okay. So maybe there was a reason Sachi didn’t get out much.
“Well, the streets are crowded. There isn’t room to lay, and you can’t help look at someone who is standing right next to you. Oh look, there’s a candy vendor. We can get to him.” She tugged Sachi’s sleeve and led him down the street.
A kid plus candy should have equaled what’s-not-to-love, but obviously Sachi wasn’t the average kid.
He was horror-stricken as the old vendor scooped up a handful of the sugar candies, put them in a paper pouch, and then gave it to Emmi. He was even more horrified when she took one out and offered it to him.
“Why do you use your hands? Why do you not cover your mouth with paper like the others who serve me?”
Great. Young Mr. Obsessive Compulsive emerges from his cocoon in front of the world. Emmi gave the candy vendor an abashed smile.
“Kids. You can dress them up, but you can’t take them out in public.”
Good lord, I’ve turned into my mother…
She grabbed Sachi’s hand and pulled him away. He stopped dead and jerked her back.
“I wish to see the dancing geisha.”
This boy was strong for such a skinny kid.
“Sachi, you and I need to talk. Let’s go over to that nice quiet corner, okay?”
So I can strangle the living daylights out of you, you little brat…
* * * *
Shinsengumi Headquarters, Mibu
Kae’s nose crinkled in distaste as he stepped inside the darkened storehouse where the merchant Furutaka was being interrogated. The air was thick with the rank stench of mingled sweat, urine and vomit.
“He still won’t talk?” Kae asked Takeda Kanryuusai, the captain who’d raided the merchant’s premises upon receipt of his information yesterday.
Takeda shook his head. “The beatings are breaking his body but not his will. Hijikata-san said he had an idea, though. He went to get something.”
Kae turned to face the opened doorway. The merchant had been hiding an incredible amount of rifles and ammunition. The rebel factions were definitely up to something, but what? Where? And when?
“I’m surprised your lovely wife is not here, Fujiwara-san,” Takeda teased from behind him. “She seemed quite the adventuress.”
His hand on the hilt of his short sword, Kae spun around. The only thing that kept Takeda’s head attached to his shoulders was the appearance of Hijikata.
Kae let Takeda pass.
“Fukuchou, what have you decided?” Takeda asked as he approached his commander.
Hijikata handed Takeda the two iron candle spikes he’d brought in. “Turn Furutaka so he’s hanging head down and pound these into the soles of his feet. Then light them.”
The vice-commander turned to Kae and smirked. “That will loosen his tongue,
ne
?”
Kae ignored the derisive gleam in Hijikata’s eyes when he turned to leave the building. As he left, Furutaka’s screams echoed through the storehouse.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, or so Hijikata-san says.”
Looking over to the other vice-commander who’d approached him, Kae nodded. “I suppose so, Yamanami-san, but that doesn’t make it any more palatable to men of decency and reason.”
“But if it saves lives and serves the emperor…”
Kae nodded again, sensing that although Yamanami said “the right thing” he too felt disgusted by it all.
He walked with Yamanami around the outside of the storehouse. The traitor’s cries from inside followed them with each step.
The afternoon was drawing to its end when the man finally broke. Kae’s blood ran cold when Hijikata relayed the information they had gotten.
“The weapons we found were only part of it. They have banners and lanterns decorated with the crest of the Aizu clan. They plan to raise an army of the ronin in and near Kyoto, execute Matsudaira-sama and march on the Imperial Palace in the guise of Matsudaira’s forces.” He paused and looked hard at Kae. “They want to burn Kyoto to the ground, abduct the emperor and take him back to the Choshu han. They’re meeting to decide it all tonight. Somewhere in Gion.”
Rage boiled up inside Kae. “Let me get word to the palace and have someone watch over those nobles we’ve had suspicions about. They’d need someone on the inside to get away with such insanity.”
“Exactly,” Hijikata said with a cold look.
Kae dismissed the suspicious look in the vice-commander’s narrow eyes. He had far more to worry about than the petty jealousies of a farmer turned self-proclaimed samurai.
Hurrying away from the Shinsengumi headquarters, Kae tried to think of which nobles were the most likely to be involved. Kojima Toshimasa topped the list. It certainly would explain his fawning interest in Emiko. Clearly Kojima was hoping to get her to share whatever information she could regarding those suspicions Kae and his father had.
Luckily, he hadn’t had a chance to tell Emmi anything of importance. In fact, he hadn’t had much of a chance to speak with her at all.
Oh, but he wanted to. He wanted to walk in the moonlit gardens, sit on the engawa or beside the lake and simply talk. He wanted to know so much more about her and her world. He wanted to know what the future held for not only Japan but also for himself.
He wondered if he would be able to live a tranquil life without her to share it. Kae shook off those thoughts. This was no time to think of himself. He had to think of the safety of the emperor and Japan.
Cursing under his breath, he tried to hurry through the crowded streets. If the rebels were anything, they were clever. They couldn’t have picked a better time for their deadly game than during the festival. With this much congestion in the streets, it would be impossible to relay messages quickly or summon help from the local patrol groups without losing precious time. With so many peasants coming in from the outskirts of Kyoto, the rebel ronin could easily blend in with the crowds.
The one saving grace was that the emperor and his family were safely sequestered inside the Gosho. Though the real faction may have their inside sources helping, they were not going to get close enough to—
Kaemon froze in his tracks.
It couldn’t be.
He couldn’t be seeing what he thought he saw across the way. He was
not
seeing his wife abducting the emperor’s only son. Oh, gods. There was only one thing he could do. He had to save Prince Mutsuhito at all cost.
Even if the cost was Emmi’s life.
* * * *
“Look, Sachi, you’re really starting to piss—” Emmi stopped herself. She was not going to let an eleven year old get to her. “Sachi. I need to find Kae. It’s important. He might be in danger.”
“Why? Who would dare to threaten him?”
“A bunch of guys who—” She figured she shouldn’t spill her guts to the kid and risk doing any kind of time warp damage. She knelt down and tried to put her hands on his shoulders, but he pulled back as though she had the plague. “Trust me. He might be in real danger, and we have to find him before it’s too late. So just be quiet and follow me. Please.”
“Emiko. Move away. Immediately.”
Emmi whipped her head around. She was about to jump up and hug Kae, but his expression stopped her dead and made her stomach twist.
His hand was on his sword.
And he had that look in his eye—the look he’d had when he drew on Kojima-san, the look he’d had when he killed those men at the teahouse, the look he’d had when he’d dispatched those who’d attacked them at Nijo Castle that night.
What was happening? What had she done?
“Emiko,” he said again, his tone colder.
Emmi stood up and backed away. She tried not to notice the people stopping to look at what was happening.
Kae went down on his knees and bowed his head at Sachi, and the sick feeling in Emmi’s stomach grew. This was bad. It had to be.
“I will welcome whatever punishment you choose to hand down for myself and my unworthy wife,” Kae said quietly. “But I beg you, let me take you home at once.”
Unworthy wife? Punishment? This was worse than bad… But what exactly was it?
“I do not like it out here. I will go.”
Kae barked an order for a man nearby to secure a palanquin at once. After it arrived and Sachi was safely deposited inside, Kae ordered the guys carrying it to head north on the double. They took off at a fast clip with the small boy inside. Kae seized her by the wrist and dragged her as he ran behind the palanquin.
“What happened? What did I do?”
He shot her a look of pure hatred that she would never forget.
“You have issued both of our death warrants.”
Chapter Thirty
Icy fear replaced the blood in Emmi’s veins, and a sickening shiver ran through her as Kae dragged her along. Tears blurred her vision and she stumbled more than once. Kae didn’t care. He jerked her back to her feet and dragged her harder.
They weren’t too far from the palace when they came upon Kae’s father, Prince Asahiko, who was at the head of a small army of palace guards. Kae ordered the carriage bearers to stop.
Emmi was crying hard by the time the elder prince knelt before the palanquin and also offered to accept whatever punishment Sachi chose to have his own father hand down. He ordered the palanquin bearers to head off again.
They were running again toward the palace. Guards now ran behind as well as in front of them, and Emmi started babbling to herself, mostly in Japanese, partly in English. “Who is that boy?”
Kae jerked her to him, and she tripped again. He pulled her up and hit her with that look again. That look that said he wouldn’t have a problem watching the whole “death warrant” thing be handed down upon her.
“That is the emperor’s only son,” he hissed in her ear.
“Oh, shit!” barely described the dread that settled over her. Emmi was so caught up in fear over what she’d done that she never saw the band of rebel ronin until they were on them.
The clang of swords, angry shouts and screams filled her ears. Blood splattered her face and hands. Shock and fear paralyzed her, until Kae’s father slumped to one knee behind the palanquin, now on the ground not far from her.
She didn’t know what she was thinking. In fact, she wasn’t thinking, she simply reacted. She launched herself at the rebel and kicked his knee. He fell. Asahiko seized the fallen sword and slashed his attacker’s throat.
Behind Emmi, Sachi screamed. A ronin tried to reach through the flaps of the carriage. Kae stabbed him from behind. Running toward them, Emmi evaded Kae’s attempt to grab her. Before he could reach for her again, another attacker came at him. She made it to the palanquin and looked in.
Sachi may have been the ‘son of a living god’ but right now, he looked like any other scared little kid. Emmi scrambled into the palanquin and held him, covered him so that if anyone tried to attack him they’d get her instead.
“It’ll be all right. It’ll be all right. I promise. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Hands seized her shoulders. She fought. Digging her nails into their arm, the other, braced to keep her body covering the young prince. “Stay away from him!” The attacker punched her head.
Sachi screamed and so did Emmi. She was thrown backward and hit the ground hard enough to make the world go gray and fuzzy.
Palace guards took up the palanquin and took off. She was yanked up and pulled forward. It was Kae. He held his sword to her throat for what seemed an eternity, but then lowered it and dragged her into a run once more.
“Your father—?”
“Alive,” he spat as a bunch of soldiers from Aizu charged past to take care of the remaining injured rebels.
The only thing Emmi could think as they hurried the rest of the way back to the palace was that Kae had wanted to kill her.
Of course, they were both as good as dead, since her actions would be seen as a bad reflection on Kae. And—oh God—Kae’s father was doomed as well, since the son’s behavior would lead back to the father. They were all going to die because she’d been a total idiot.
Oh, no! She was a Maeda! They might even want to take it out on Takehito! Even the entire clan! She might have wiped out the entire Maeda family forever with her own stupidity!
Emmi was nearly hyperventilating by the time they rushed up those few broad steps and through the red-orange main gates of the palace compound. A swarm of guards and furious nobles surrounded them, and Emmi could barely see the palanquin as it stopped and a smaller, similar thing was brought forward to take Sachi the rest of the way to his father’s quarters.
Before getting in, the young heir looked back at Emmi, not angry nor scared, but confused.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear her.
“Shut your lying mouth, girl!” Kae’s father shouted. His deep voice rang through the open courtyard. “Get on your knees where you belong!” he ordered.
One of the guards shoved her down so hard she ended up face first in the dirt. Kae ran forward, but other guards with spears stopped him.
“Kill her now,” Asahiko ground out.