The Ninja's Daughter (2 page)

“So you asked, and she refused, and then you killed her.” Hiro hoped the accusation would speed up the narrative.

The color drained from Jiro's face. “No . . . at least, that's not the way I remember it. We sat together by the river. She told me about her plans to move to Edo. I felt dizzy from the sake and lay down, in hopes of feeling better.

“Next thing I remember, I woke up and found her dead.”

CHAPTER 2

A door on the opposite side of the room rattled open, revealing a portly Portuguese man in a knee-length linen shift. His rounded belly protruded before him, causing the nightshirt to stretch across his stomach and then droop like a wrinkled curtain.

“So, what happened?” the man demanded. “Did you kill the girl or not?”

“Luis!” Father Mateo exclaimed.

Luis Álvares folded his arms across his ample belly. “He woke me at this indecent hour—the least I deserve is to hear the rest of the story.”

Hiro stared at Luis's feet to avoid the unfortunate sight of the man as a whole. In the years since Hiro arrived in Kyoto, he had never seen the merchant barefoot. Luis's hairy toes repulsed and intrigued the shinobi in equal measure.

“I don't know if I killed her,” Jiro said. “I don't remember anything after lying down on the riverbank.”

“You're certain the girl was dead? She wasn't sleeping?” Father Mateo asked.

“She wasn't breathing,” Jiro said. “Her eyes were full of blood.”

“Why do you think we can help you?” Hiro asked.

Jiro gave him a pleading look. “You helped the brewer, Ginjiro—please, I don't know what to do.”

“Turn yourself in and confess to a drunken accident,” Hiro said. “Perhaps the magistrate will show mercy and grant you an easy death.”

“What if he didn't kill her?” Father Mateo looked dismayed.

Luis snorted. “Who else could have done it? A river spirit?” He waved a dismissive hand. “Don't be ridiculous, Mateo. Your translator's right. The boy is guilty. I'm going back to sleep.”

Luis returned to his room and shut the door.

Hiro recognized the determined look on the Jesuit's face. Father Mateo intended to help the youth, despite the evidence—and the potential danger.

“Kyoto is barely safe for the innocent, let alone the guilty.” Hiro spoke quickly, in Portuguese, to stop the priest from making a foolish promise. “We must not intervene where we don't belong.”

“The boy needs help,” the priest replied. “If we refuse, he faces execution.”

“He forfeited his life when he took another. As I said, this is not our concern.”

Jiro bowed his head and waited, unable to understand the conversation.

“I choose to make this matter my concern.” Father Mateo turned to Jiro and switched to Japanese. “I will help you, but I cannot shield a guilty man from justice. If you killed her, you must answer for the crime.”

Tears welled up in Jiro's eyes as he looked at the priest. “I wish I never drank sake. I wish I went home by another path. . . .” He paused to recover control and bowed his face to the floor again. “Thank you for helping me. Thank you both.”

Hiro felt an unexpected spark of compassion. The parallel scars on his shoulder, and the matching ones on his inner thigh, were constant reminders that all men's indiscretions had a price.

“We will help you discover the truth.” Father Mateo rose and smoothed his kimono. “Take us to the place where you woke up and saw the girl.”

Jiro shook his head. “I can't go back. The police—”

“—will find you one way or the other,” Hiro finished. “You asked for help. Now do as you are told.”

Hiro hoped their investigation wouldn't involve the Kyoto police and wouldn't draw the attention of Matsunaga Hisahide, the warlord who seized the Japanese capital after the shogun's death three months before. Officially, the emperor hadn't named a successor shogun, but Hisahide claimed the title—over the objections of the former shogun's clan. With Kyoto's future uncertain, and rival samurai threatening war, wise men took great care to avoid attention.

“Shall we go?” Father Mateo's question interrupted Hiro's thoughts.

“One moment.” Hiro returned to his room and fastened a pair of swords to his obi. He also slipped a star-shaped metal
shuriken
and a dagger into hidden pockets in his sleeves.

He rejoined the others and left for the scene of the crime, thoughts of breakfast temporarily forgotten.

CHAPTER 3

Hiro, Father Mateo, and Jiro reached the Kamo River as the sun appeared on the eastern horizon. Dawn sent reddish sparkles over the flowing river and burnished the wooden bridge that spanned the flow at Marutamachi Road.

The armored samurai guarding the bridge walked up to meet them. He didn't bow or offer a greeting, but Hiro didn't expect any trouble. The tensions that followed the shogun's death had eased as Hisahide's samurai learned to recognize the people who lived in the wards they guarded.

The samurai indicated Jiro. “Who is this man? He said he knew you, and had an appointment, or I would not have let him pass. The shogun disapproves of people traveling before dawn.”

Hiro waited for Father Mateo to respond. A translator had no right to speak before his master, and Hiro couldn't risk revealing his true identity. He wondered whether Father Mateo realized that Jiro's life depended on the answer. No commoner lied to a samurai and lived.

“I apologize for his unfortunate timing.” Father Mateo bowed. “I am a priest. This young man summoned me to attend the dead.”

Hiro admired Father Mateo's growing talent for walking the line between pragmatism and honesty. A parallel but nonresponsive truth was not a lie.

“I will not delay you further.” The samurai looked at Jiro. “In future, wait for dawn to get the priest.”

“Yes, sir.” Jiro bowed so deeply that he almost tumbled over.

The samurai nodded to Father Mateo and looked away. Hiro received no recognition, but didn't mind. As a rule, the shinobi preferred to pass unnoticed.

Jiro turned south on the path that paralleled the western bank of the Kamo River. Hiro and Father Mateo followed. At every bridge, they stopped to explain their business to the samurai on guard. Fortunately, no one questioned Father Mateo's story.

A trio of samurai stood on the riverbank south of the bridge at Shijō Road. The larger two wore wide-shouldered tunics with pleated
hakama
. Plenty of samurai wore pleated trousers, but these men also carried hooked metal nightsticks, which identified them as
dōshin
—low-ranked members of the Kyoto police.

The third samurai wore a tunic sewn from alternating stripes of brilliant green and orange silk. A pair of swords hung from his patterned obi. The gaudy clothing and lack of a nightstick marked him as a yoriki, or assistant magistrate.

All three samurai had their backs to the path. They stared at a rumpled lump on the ground, about the size and shape of a human body.

The yoriki turned as Hiro and the others approached. His expression changed from surprise to recognition, and then annoyance. “Not you again.”

Hiro had much the same reaction, though he kept his face a neutral mask. In an unfortunate stroke of luck, the girl had died within the jurisdiction of the yoriki who handled the brewery killing the month before. He hadn't approved of Hiro and Father Mateo's involvement then, and he clearly wasn't pleased to see them now.

Father Mateo bowed to the yoriki. Hiro followed suit.

Jiro bent forward and held his bow, awaiting permission to rise.

“Good morning,” Father Mateo said. “We understand a girl was murdered here.”

“You understand incorrectly,” the yoriki said. “There was no murder.”

“What?” Jiro spoke—and straightened—in surprise. A moment later he fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the ground. “A thousand apologies for my rudeness.”

The yoriki ignored him.

Father Mateo leaned sideways in an attempt to see around the samurai. “That certainly looks like a corpse to me.”

The yoriki stepped aside and motioned for the dōshin to clear the way.

A girl of no more than sixteen years lay on her back with her arms at her sides. Faint green grass stains streaked her gold kimono. A pale blue obi trailed at her side, and bits of hair strayed loose from her long black braid.

Angry rope burns crossed her neck, with darker bruising spreading out around them. Moon-shaped cuts and vertical scratches around the bruises revealed the girl had struggled with her killer.

Hiro noticed a leather thong around the victim's neck. It disappeared into her robe, suggesting a pendant tucked within her clothes. Based on the size and shape of the burns and bruises, the thong appeared to be the murder weapon.

Above the victim's mangled neck, a set of delicate features balanced in her oval face. The girl had a loveliness, and an innocence, even death could not erase.

Then Hiro saw her eyes.

Hemorrhages bloomed within the whites, the color startlingly vibrant even hours after death.

Father Mateo gasped and backed away. He made the sign of the cross and clasped his hands together as if in prayer.

Hiro watched the Jesuit with surprise. Father Mateo had never reacted dramatically to a murder victim, even though most of the bodies they had seen looked worse than this one.

He wondered if the Jesuit had seen this girl before.

“Do you know her?” the yoriki demanded.

Father Mateo shook his head. “No, I . . . simply wasn't prepared to see a girl so young. How can you say this wasn't murder? Clearly, she did not die of natural causes.”

“The girl is an actor's child,” the yoriki said, as though this answered the Jesuit's question.

Jiro's head rose up in surprise, but he pressed it to the ground again at once.

“An actor's daughter?” Father Mateo looked confused.

“Actors stand outside the social order,” Hiro said in Portuguese.

“What does her status have to do with the nature of her death?” Father Mateo spoke in Japanese and to the yoriki.

“Actors' daughters do not matter to the law.” The yoriki spoke slowly, as if addressing an unusually stupid child.

Father Mateo's look of confusion changed to one of anger.

Before the priest could argue, Hiro said, “Then you consider the matter closed.”

The yoriki nodded. “My office has more important business than finding out who dumped this pile of filth on the riverbank.”

“And yet, you spared three men to come and stare,” Father Mateo said. “How do you know the girl is an actor's daughter? She didn't tell you.”

The yoriki gestured toward the bridge that crossed the river at Shijō Road. “After she didn't come home last night, her parents sent her siblings out to find her. The sister arrived just after we did. We are only here to ensure the family removes the corpse before it stinks.”

“How thoughtful.” Father Mateo's frozen tone revealed unusual self-restraint.

Hiro glanced at Jiro, wondering whether the boy had lied to them about the girl's profession. Entertainers lived at a teahouse, never in their parents' homes. The youth's reaction indicated surprise, but ignorance was easily faked.

He also wondered what Father Mateo intended to do when the family arrived—assuming the yoriki let them stay, which, under the circumstances, seemed unlikely.

Father Mateo hadn't finished. “Your words imply you don't intend to investigate this murder.”

“Her life meant nothing,” the yoriki said. “No investigation is required."

CHAPTER 4

The yoriki looked down at Jiro. “Who are you? Identify yourself.”

The young man kept his face to the ground. “A merchant's apprentice, sir, called Jiro. I work for Basho, in the rice-sellers' street.”

“You have no business here,” the yoriki snapped. “Be on your way.”

Jiro stood and scurried off without a backward glance.

Hiro noted the look of relief on the young man's face as he departed—unusual for someone who just discovered the girl he loved was a liar. And yet, had Jiro known the truth, he wouldn't have bothered to ask the priest for help.

Either way, the youth's reaction didn't fit the facts.

Fortunately, Jiro's suspicious behavior no longer mattered. Hiro had no intention of investigating a crime without a reason.

“Someone killed her.” Father Mateo gestured to Emi's body. “How can you claim there was no crime?”

The yoriki stared at the Jesuit. “Her death is of no consequence. To anyone.”

Hiro caught the warning in the words. The yoriki had allowed them to investigate the brewery murder, mainly because his supervisor—the magistrate—respected the foreign priest. However, that crime involved the death of an artisan, not an actor. Father Mateo might object, but to the Japanese the social status of the victim made a difference.