Shinju (24 page)

The room felt oddly cold. An icy draft stirred the air, but didn't obliterate the strong metallic odor that made Sano's nostrils flare. Another peculiar scent—fainter, and musty, like dried herbs—prickled his throat and forced a sneeze from him. And there was something else different about the room, something missing.

Tsunehiko's snores. Sano no longer heard them—or any sound at all from the inert form next to him.

“Tsunehiko?” he called.

Bending over, he touched his secretary. And gasped, jerking his hand away. Something warm, wet, and faintly sticky coated the quilt. Filled with dread, he dropped his sword and groped around on the floor for the lamp and matches. It took his shaking hands three tries to light the wick. The lamp guttered, then flared into brightness. Sano looked at Tsunehiko.

Shock stopped his heart, froze the words on his tongue. His lungs sucked in breath with a long, sharp hiss.

Tsunehiko lay face up on the futon, the quilt pulled back to expose his neck and shoulders. Blood from the cruel gash in his throat, red and lustrous in the lamplight, stained his bedding and nightclothes. His sightless eyes gazed at the ceiling. He did not move, or speak, or make a sound.

“N
o!” Sano cried.

Moaning, he knelt beside Tsunehiko. He ripped off his robe and pressed it to the terrible wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood that had already ceased. He slapped the boy's cheeks in a desperate effort to revive him. But he knew in his heart that Tsunehiko was dead. That first horrifying look had told him.

Now he understood the significance of the intruder, the strange gurgle, and the departing footsteps. He hadn't dreamed them after all. Half asleep, oblivious to the danger, he'd heard Tsunehiko cry out as his throat was cut, and let the murderer escape afterward.

“No!”

Grief and rage exploded in Sano's chest as he thought of Tsunehiko's youthful innocence and cheerfulness. Not bothering to dress, he seized his sword. He registered the open door and splintered catch in the moment it took to hurl himself outside. The murderer—was it the mysterious watcher?—had entered and killed without difficulty. But he wouldn't get away! A monstrous craving for vengeance howled inside Sano, one for which he hadn't known he possessed the capacity. He wanted blood for blood. He wanted to call down the wrath of the gods. Barefoot, clad only in his loincloth, he stumbled into the freezing darkness of the garden. He thrashed his way blindly around the guest quarters, sword raised.

“Stop! Murderer!” he shouted.

As if in reply, rapid hoofbeats pounded away from the village and into the night.

“Stop! Murderer!”

Lights began to appear in the inn's windows as Sano charged past them. He heard the guests stirring inside their rooms, and heard excited voices asking, “What is it? Who's shouting?” But where was the nightwatchman? Having failed to keep the intruder away, he should now be summoning the checkpoint guards and village police with his clappers.

Sano found no one lurking outside the guest quarters. Then, as he ran through the garden, his foot struck something. He tripped and went sprawling facedown. He gasped as his body hit not cold, hard ground, but something warmer and more yielding. Someone rushed up with a lantern and began to scream. Righting himself, Sano saw an old woman standing over him, her face stricken.

“Jihei!” she screamed. “My son!” She burst into sobs.

Sano looked at the thing he'd tripped over, and understood why the nightwatchman hadn't sounded the alarm. Gorobei's son lay motionless on his back. His terror-filled but lifeless eyes bulged; his tongue, protruding from between clenched teeth, oozed blood. Dark bruises encircled his throat. He was dead; strangled—probably by the same man who had killed Tsunehiko. Sano closed his eyes as the dizzying horror washed over him again. The woman's sobs echoed his own anguish. He heard running footsteps and men's voices. He opened his eyes to see his fellow guests, the samurai and priests, gathered around him.

“Stay with her,” he ordered the priests, pointing at the distraught woman. To the dazed, bleary-eyed samurai: “Come with me! We have to catch the killer!”

Without waiting for a response, he ran for the stables. The samurai, pudgy from easy living and the worse for tonight's drinking, nevertheless rose to the challenge. In various states of undress, they panted after Sano, clutching their swords, bellies jiggling.

But although Sano and his helpers searched up and down the road and all through the sleeping village, they found no one. The killer had simply vanished into the night.

The next few hours passed in a blur. Sano endured them with every bit of the self-control and stoicism he possessed. He informed the grieving innkeeper that in addition to his son, a guest had been murdered. He reported the murders to the guards, who summoned the village police, elders, and headman. Everyone trooped over to the Ryokan Gorobei to see the bodies.

“Are you sure he's dead?” the headman kept asking anxiously as he hovered over Tsunehiko's corpse.

Sano knew that the death of an upper-class traveler meant much trouble and expense for a post town. It meant sending reports to the central highway administration in Edo, holding an inquest, notifying the next of kin, arranging for cremation of the body or its transportation home. But the headman's idiotic question made Sano's precarious self-control snap.

“Yes, of course he's dead, you fool!” he shouted, throwing on his cloak over his shivering body. “So just forget about putting him in a
kago
and sending him on to the next town so he can die on someone else's hands!”

The headman gaped at him. Then he frowned. “How do we know you didn't kill him yourself?”

“This wasn't robbery-murder,” one of the elders chimed in helpfully as he opened the cabinet and pawed through its contents. “Look, the money's still here.” He held up Sano's and Tsunehiko's cash pouches.

It had occurred to Sano that the officials might suspect him of committing the murders. Now he said, “Look at my weapons—there's no blood on them. Even if I'd wanted to kill my companion, I wouldn't have done it in our room. But if I had, I would have sneaked away instead of raising the alarm. I wouldn't have needed to kill the nightwatchman, or to force the door.

“If we're to catch the killer, we must send a search party up
and down the highway and out into the countryside. Now. Before he gets away.”

Fortunately no one else took up the headman's argument—due, Sano guessed, more to his status as a
yoriki
than to his explanation. But they hesitated so long over the decision to send the search party that Sano despaired of ever catching the killer. Three of the elders wanted to wait until daybreak; it was so dark, they said, that a search would be useless. The others thought it best to begin immediately—but they didn't want to risk disturbing important guests at the inns. The headman threw up his hands in confusion. A young man who had only recently inherited his job from his father, he'd obviously never dealt with murder before. At last he announced that they would postpone the decision itself until he'd had more time to think about it.

“Then let me organize the search,” Sano pleaded. “I'll take full responsibility for any disturbance.”

But the headman and elders refused. As an Edo official, Sano had no authority in Totsuka. He must remain at the inn; a guard would see that he did. He must dictate a statement and sign many documents, just like anyone else whose companion had died on the highway. In addition, he must attend the inquest in the morning, arrange for the cremation of Tsunehiko's body, and promise to convey the ashes to the boy's family on his return trip.

Finally they left Sano alone, in a spare guest room hastily prepared for him by Gorobei's weeping maid. Exhausted though he was, Sano didn't sleep. Instead he knelt on the floor and watched the windows gradually brighten with the coming dawn. The emotions he'd suppressed came flooding back. Grief, anger, and horror sickened him. Although the room was warm, a violent tremor seized him, one that had nothing to do with physical cold. He clenched his jaws and tightened his muscles against it. The floor shuddered with his uncontrollable spasms. After what seemed an eternity, they subsided, leaving his body weak and drained but his mind sharply lucid.

He knew without proof, but also beyond doubt, that the man who had been watching him had killed both Tsunehiko and the innkeeper's son. But why? The answer came to Sano from some still, quiet place deep inside him.

He, not Tsunehiko, had been the intended victim. Only his fortunate awakening and quick reflexes had saved him from a killer who, unable to tell them apart in the darkness, had meant to kill them both as a precaution and begun with the wrong one. As to why, he knew the answer to that, too. He was getting close to the truth about Noriyoshi's and Yukiko's murders, and someone wanted to stop him. Who, then? Young Lord Niu or one of the countless Niu clan retainers, who would kill at their master's bidding? Kikunojo, with his intelligence and flair for disguise? Raiden, of the great strength and violent tendencies? Sano could not dismiss them as suspects. Or perhaps the spy who had reported on his activities to Magistrate Ogyu and Lady Niu had had orders to kill him.

With a kind of desolate satisfaction, Sano pondered these questions. He'd wanted proof that Noriyoshi and Yukiko had been murdered. What better than an attempt on his life? But any pleasure he might have taken from realizing his goal fell before his guilt over Tsunehiko.

He shouldn't have exposed Tsunehiko to danger. He should have at least told him the real purpose of the journey. He should have recognized the threat posed by the watcher and warned Tsunehiko, protected him somehow. More to the point, he should never have undertaken the journey at all. Magistrate Ogyu had ordered him to abandon the investigation, and he should have obeyed. He couldn't shift the blame to Ogyu for sending Tsunehiko with him. The boy's blood was on his hands.

Sano realized that he'd never seriously considered giving up the investigation, not even when his obligations to his father and Ogyu had held him back temporarily. The part of him that yearned after the truth had always known he would continue. Now he did
consider the alternative. The cost of truth was too high. He couldn't pay it with more human lives.

Then his desire to bring the killer to justice rose anew. His craving for vengeance came surging back. He couldn't let Tsunehiko's murderer go unpunished. His honor demanded satisfaction, his spirit a relief from sorrow and guilt.

Sano's hand moved to his waist. He slowly unsheathed the long sword and held it before him in both hands.

He stayed like that, unmoving, for what remained of the night.

F
ujisawa, Hiratsuka, Oiso, Odawara. The names of the post stations ran together in Sano's mind, as did his memories of the journey through towns and woods, over hills and plains, along seashore and across rivers, past houses and temples. Pushing himself beyond exhaustion, he neared Hakone in the gray early afternoon two days after leaving Totsuka.

The approach to Hakone was the most difficult and dangerous section of the Tōkaido. Here the land turned mountainous; the road narrowed to a steep, rough trail that twisted upward through stands of tall cedar trees. Sano dismounted and continued on foot, leading his horse. Soon he was panting from the effort of climbing, sweating despite the moist, bone-chilling cold. The altitude made him light-headed, and he couldn't get enough of the thin air into his lungs. Every breath seemed poisoned with the resinous fragrance of the cedars.

And the landscape overhelmed his troubled mind. In its surreal splendor, it seemed like something out of an ancient legend. Every step sent small rocks skittering dizzily over the sides of sheer cliffs. Roaring waterfalls tumbled over boulders and precipices toward the sea, which Sano occasionally glimpsed in the east. Fissures in the ground leaked steam: the breath of dragons, who lived beneath Mount Fuji, hidden in the clouds to the northwest. Far below, a
swirling river appeared and disappeared. High, fragile wooden bridges crossed it, leading Sano through tiny mountain villages.