The Snow Empress: A Thriller (20 page)

Dagger in hand, Reiko pressed her back against the wall of a building inside Fukuyama Castle. Soldiers carrying armloads of guns hurried near her through the courtyard. When they were gone, she sped along passages. She glanced sideways and backward, alert for threats, but kept her mind focused straight ahead. The world outside the castle had vanished from her consciousness. Normal, human life had ended for her. She didn’t feel the cold. She had no past nor future; she existed solely in the present moment. All her physical and spiritual energy pulsed through her with concentrated intensity. She was a human arrow, burning flames at both ends, fired toward a single purpose.

She didn’t bother spying on Lord Matsumae. He could wait. If Sano and Hirata failed to assassinate him, she would succeed. She would slash his throat and gladly watch him die for what he’d done to Masahiro. Her sense of purpose blazed away self-doubt as well as fear. But she had other matters to take care of first.

Slaying Lord Matsumae wasn’t enough to satisfy her. Although he’d have made the decision to kill her son, a samurai lord didn’t dirty his own hands. He wouldn’t have tended to Masahiro in that cage, treating him like an animal. Other men had done that. Reiko wanted their blood, too. They must pay for Masahiro’s suffering. She didn’t know who among all the troops they were, but she knew where to start looking.

Reiko headed for the keep. She easily evaded the troops busy preparing for war and the servants trudging on their daily routine. She felt invincible.

The tower was a black monolith against the orange sunrise. It appeared on fire, the cloud wisps like smoke. Reiko hurried up the hill, retracing the path she’d taken yesterday, an eternity ago. As she ran in the open door, her heart pumped with wild, erratic rhythm. She could taste blood from her own innards lacerated by grief, from those about to die by her hand.

All her senses and instincts were preternaturally alert. They tested the atmosphere in the tower and found only dead, empty air. Nobody was inside. Disoriented, she stumbled outside, down the hill. She paused at the gate to rethink her plans and catch her breath. The violent energy charging through her made her dizzy. Black waves licked her vision. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d eaten or slept. Her body might give out on her before she was finished with it. She was aware that she’d gone as mad as Lord Matsumae. There must be something in the air in Ezogashima that drove people to extreme actions. The madness was destroying her as it had done him. Reiko clutched the gate for support and willed her strength to endure.

As she breathed deeply, her forehead pressed against the cold stone wall, the blackness retreated. She could see the wall’s rough, grayish plaster surface. Tiny black markings flecked it. They resembled crudely written characters. Reiko blinked, and they popped into focus. They actually were characters. She could read them.

Mama Papa

I escaped from prison

I will come home to you

Masahiro

A cry burst from Reiko. She dropped to her knees in the snow beside the wall. She yanked off her glove and touched the characters, afraid that she was hallucinating this message from her son. But she felt the rough edges where they‘ d been scratched into the plaster with some sharp object. The black color was charcoal ground into them. It rubbed off on her fingers. The message was real.

Reiko pictured Masahiro carving the words on the wall with a rock. Somehow he’d gotten himself out of his cage, out of the keep. He’d known that she and Sano would come for him, but decided to make his break for freedom in case they arrived too late to save him. He’d wanted to tell them he was making his own way home. He’d written the message where they might possibly find it, where his captors wouldn’t. Reiko saw Masahiro rub a piece of charcoal against the characters so that they would be visible, then run out this very gate. She clasped her hands and sobbed. Her brave, resourceful boy! The full implications of her discovery struck her.

Maybe Masahiro wasn’t dead after all.

Maybe he’d managed to get out of Fukuyama Castle, the Matsumae troops had never executed him, and the blood on the blanket wasn’t his.

Maybe he was still alive.

The hope she’d forsaken surged anew in Reiko. Her body trembled violently from its force that exploded the plans she’d made, shattered her unnatural state of calm, disciplined insanity. Her mind shifted focus, away from vengeance, to the new possibility of reuniting with Masahiro. She laughed for joy as mad as her grief had been. She noticed that the sun had risen, dazzling and gold. But her laughter quickly faded.

How long ago had Masahiro escaped?

What had happened to him since then?

Merciful gods, where was he now?

Reiko staggered to her feet and looked around for some clue about what had become of Masahiro. But she saw nothing except the empty compound, the deserted keep. As she tried to think what to do, she heard footsteps from the other side of the wall. A male voice said, “Old Gizaemon is working us so hard, I’ll be exhausted before the war even starts.”

Another, similar voice said, “Me, too. Let’s take a rest in here. Maybe he won’t notice we’re gone.”

The gate opened. Two young soldiers were beside Reiko before she had a chance to hide. “Hey, who are you?” one said. His friend asked, “What are you doing here?”

Reiko took in their almost identical pudgy faces and stocky builds, their belligerent expressions. She recognized them as the two guards she’d seen on her first trip to the keep, the men she’d come hunting. She wasn’t so far past her obsession with revenge that she’d forgotten it; she hadn’t forgotten her anger toward her son’s jailers. She still wanted to kill them.

She lashed her dagger at the soldiers. They leaped away, too surprised to fight back.

“Hey!” one of them exclaimed. “Why are you attacking us?”

“This is for what you did to my son!”

“I know who she is,” the second said. “She’s the chamberlain’s wife.”

Reiko carved wild swaths in the air with her blade. The men dodged. The first drew his sword. She slashed at his hand.

He yelled and let go of the weapon, a cut on his hand dripping blood. “She’s crazy!”

“I’m going to kill you!” Reiko shouted.

The second man grabbed her from behind. She stomped on his feet and banged her head against his face. He lost his grip on her, and she lunged at his comrade, who stumbled and fell on his back in the snow. Reiko bent over him, her dagger at his throat. The other pulled his sword.

“Throw that sword as far as you can, or he’s dead,” Reiko ordered.

The fallen man lay pop-eyed with fear, arms spread, hands and heels dug into the snow. His comrade hesitated in confusion. Reiko said, “Is this your brother?”

The man gulped. “Yes.” He flung his weapon away.

“The other one, too.”

He obeyed. “Please don’t hurt him.”

Reiko would have liked to kill them both, but she wasn’t so consumed by her anger that she didn’t realize they were worth more to her alive than dead. “Where is my son?” she demanded. When they looked dumbly at her, she said, “The little boy you kept in the cage. Where is he?”

“We-we don’t know,” said the soldier on the ground.

“Did he get out of the castle?”

The brothers traded glances. A different fear shone in their eyes. The man standing said reluctantly, “I guess we have to tell her.”

“Tell me what?” An awful idea stabbed Reiko. “That he didn’t get away? That you killed him?”

As the arc of her hope plunged downward, Reiko sucked in a deep breath, ready to cleave the soldier’s throat.

“No!” he cried, squirming desperately. “We let him go.”

“What?” Reiko stared at him, then his brother.

“We felt sorry for Masahiro,” said the brother. “He was a nice little boy. He was always polite to us, even though we locked him in the cage.

Reiko drank in this news of her son. Her heart warmed because the soldier’s description of Masahiro was so in character. Masahiro was not only nice and polite, he was clever enough to have befriended his captors.

“Lord Matsumae ordered us to put him to death,” said the soldier on the ground, “but we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it.”

“So we told Masahiro we were going to set him free,” said his brother. “We took him out of the keep. He wanted to leave a message for you and his father. We gave him a knife and a piece of charcoal to write with.” The man pointed at the words on the wall. “I guess you found it.”

Reiko’s jaw dropped in surprise that these soldiers she’d come to kill had helped Masahiro escape. If he was alive, she owed it to them. Hardly daring to breathe, she said, “When was this?”

“About twenty days before you got here.”

Reiko trembled as her hope soared anew. “Where did you take him?

“Out the gate. After that, he was on his own,” the brother said.

Reiko was horrified. “On his own? An eight-year-old boy, in a strange land?” And the northern winter would have already begun.

“Did you give him food to take, or money, or warm clothes, or advice on how to get home?”

“I wish we could have, but there wasn’t time,” the fallen soldier hastened to excuse their actions. “We had to get him out fast.”

A wail rose from within Reiko. The idea of Masahiro turned loose to fend for himself! Anything could have happened to him since he’d left the castle. She let her weapon dangle. The soldier eased away from her and stood. He and his brother regarded her with sympathy as well as caution. They took turns continuing their tale.

“We told Lord Matsumae we’d killed him. He believed us. But our lieutenant asked to see the body. Of course we couldn’t show it to him. So we made up a story that Masahiro had broken out of his cage.”

“The lieutenant sent us and some other troops out searching for Masahiro. He wasn’t in the castle, so we went into town.”

“My brother and I ran ahead of the others and found Masahiro before they did. He was at the harbor, trying to talk some fishermen into taking him across the sea in their boat. But then the others came. All we could do was tell him to run.”

“They chased him out of town and lost him in the woods. That was the last we saw of him.”

“We went out every night for the next few days, looking for Masahiro, but we never saw him again. We don’t know what’s become of him.”

Both men said humbly, “We’re sorry.”

Reiko couldn’t blame them; they’d saved Masahiro’s life. But that didn’t change the fact that he was gone, or let them off the hook. “I’m going to find my son,” she said, “and you’re coming with me!”

Reiko knew with bone-deep certainty that Masahiro was alive. She couldn’t believe she’d ever thought him dead. How misguided by fears and false clues she’d been! There was no mistake now. She clutched at the two young soldiers with the same fervor with which she’d almost killed them.

They looked sadly at her. “We’re sorry,” said one. The other said, We can’t leave our posts.“

Reiko saw that there was no use arguing. The soldiers’ duty was to the Matsumae clan, not a stranger in need. Her knees buckled, and she leaned against the wall. Masahiro had been out there in the wilds of Ezogashima, cold and hungry, lost and alone, for twenty days-during the last of which she had been trapped in the castle.

“What am I going to do?” she whispered.

Her first idea was to tell Sano and Hirata. They would think of something. But she didn’t know where they were, and even if she could find them while evading the Matsumae troops, what could they do? They were unfamiliar with the terrain. No matter their intelligence and strength, they were city men; they would be as lost and helpless in the forest as she. Reiko knew of only one person to call on. Someone whose friendship she’d rebuffed, who’d generously given aid but might not be willing this time. Someone whom Reiko still suspected of murder.

Wente.

“If there’s anything else we can do for you…?” one of the soldiers said anxiously.

Reiko’s mind raced through ideas and strategies, obstacles and threats. From them she devised a plan. “Yes, there is.” She told the men what she needed from them. But her plan’s success ultimately depended on Wente.

Hirata hid in plain sight as he traversed the castle grounds, walking noiselessly a few paces behind groups of soldiers. He damped down the energy that his body gave off, and they didn’t sense his presence. When they passed other people, he hid behind them, his human shields. Nobody noticed him, but he could detect each person before they came within his sight or hearing. They emitted energy that shone like beacons to Hirata’s inner consciousness. When he felt soldiers approaching from his rear along a path, he darted into a doorway and waited for them to pass him. Then he followed them, their silent shadow.

His journey took him by the storehouse where the natives were imprisoned, its walls stained orange by the rising sun. He could feel their energy inside, two faint pulses. Hirata was tempted to break in and rescue them. It would be so easy, but the hard part would be getting them out of the castle, then defending them and their people from the whole Matsumae army. Not even the best martial artist could do that alone. And Hirata’s first duty was to Sano. No matter now lured by other interests he felt, he would always choose Sano because his honor depended on how faithfully he served his master who was also his dearest friend. Solving the crime and assassinating Lord Matsumae were Sano’s top priorities and thus Hirata’s. And there were clues that nobody except Hirata could hope to find.

Hirata headed for the castle gate through which the funeral procession had passed. He approached it along the wall and stopped. Twenty paces farther, a sentry paced in front of the gate. Hirata backed away from the wall, crouched, drew a deep breath, and concentrated his physical power in his legs. He flexed a spiritual muscle within his mind and sprang.

A burst of energy fired along nerves and tendons through him. It launched him in a high, fast arc. He landed on his feet atop the wall, with a soundless impact that the guard didn’t notice. There he squatted, looking down the other side. The hillside and path were empty, the woods dark as night except for the treetops, which glowed in the rosy dawn. Hirata jumped down from the wall and ran for the woods. As he followed the path that the funeral procession had taken, he blotted out his sensory impressions of the trees and snow, birdsong, the air’s coldness in his lungs. He kept a small part of himself anchored to his surroundings; the rest walked in another dimension.

This dimension was a black void illuminated by traces of energy left by human emotions in the past. His hours spent meditating and attuning himself to the cosmos had developed his skill in detecting them. Along the path Hirata saw sizzles of light-the grief, anger, and dread experienced by the funeral party. He took the fork in the path that led toward the hot spring. Ahead, the energy flared into sparks and fountains where the Matsumae troops had massacred the natives. Hirata slowed his steps, looking downward, searching.

He didn’t know the precise location of the murder scene, but he stopped at a tangle of luminescence that lay on the snow. Here Tekare had fallen, struck by the arrow from the spring-bow. He read her pain, her terror. Sano hadn’t found any clues here, but since Hirata had come to Ezogashima he’d discovered a new realm of existence. On the hunting trip, Chieftain Awetok had opened him to a glimpse of its power, its potential to reveal information heretofore secret. Now Hirata hoped to use his new perception to solve the murder case, for the natives’ sake as well as Sano’s. The truth might yet save Awetok, Urahenka, and their people.

As he had during the deer hunt, Hirata immersed himself in a meditative trance. Again came the sensation of escaping his body, the propulsion into a rich, vast, unfamiliar world. The spirit of Ainu Mosir flowed through Hirata. He was a dust mote tossed by its power, awash in the energy from the earth, the wild creatures, forest, and sky that comprised its mighty self. Their voices barraged him. Deafened by messages he couldn’t interpret, feeling completely lost, Hirata clasped his head in his hands. Even if the world of nature did harbor clues about Tekare’s murder, how would he sort them out from this chaos?

He instinctively reverted to the breathing techniques learned through long years of training. Their rhythm steadied him, slowed the deluge of sensations. Hirata found himself balanced between two realms-the human world and the natural-as if on a raft on a turbulent sea beneath a stormy sky. Two disciplines-samurai art and Ainu magic-worked together within him. Hirata gasped with sheer, joyous exhilaration. This was the breakthrough he’d been seeking. Arduous training had prepared him for it, but only in Ezogashima could he have found it. But this breakthrough was a station on the way to his ultimate destiny. He had work to finish before he could move on.

He revolved beneath the brightening sky, in the shadows that dispelled as day came. From a tall pine an owl took flight, heading to its nest after a night of hunting. Around the owl, around every branch and pine needle, and along the earth, pulsed a limpid green energy held that hummed with nature’s life-force. The light where Tekare had fallen and the sparks from the massacre blended with the radiance °f the nonhuman world. Hirata called upon yet another discipline, the skills he’d learned as a police detective. He looked for something in the picture that didn’t belong-a clue.

The green energy field wasn’t uniform, its hum not continuous. There were interruptions with jagged edges. He spied one in the forest and stepped off the path to examine it. He discovered a hole on a leafless tree, the interior eaten away by insects. The tree was dying, its voice a moan of pain. Hirata listened harder. Sharp noises, like metal impinging on stone, led him to a snow-covered mound. Brushing off the snow, he found a rock about the size of his head. Small white scratches marred the rock’s flat gray surface. Hirata recognized them; he’d seen their like at the archery range in Edo Castle, on the stone wall near the targets. Sometimes novice archers missed their shots by a wide margin, and their arrows hit the wall. These scratches were arrow marks.

Hirata gazed in a straight line from them, through the place where Tekare had fallen. The spring-bow had been set somewhere along the line, in the woods on the path’s opposite side. The killer had tried out the weapon before the murder, had sprung the trap to see where the arrow flew. Hirata examined tree trunks near the rock. Caught in the rough bark of a pine tree were tiny fibers from the string that had triggered the spring-bow. They made a barely audible, trilling vibration in the field. Hirata envisioned and followed the string across the path, into the woods. He found more fibers on two more trees. The killer had experimented with different positions and angles, determining which was best. This told Hirata that the killer had a methodical mind-but did not reveal his identity.

The green energy glow diminished; Hirata couldn’t sustain forever the trance that allowed him to see it. The sound of a temple bell ringing interrupted nature’s voices. Hirata strained his perception, listening with all his might; his head ached with the effort. As the glow disappeared, he felt an
otherness
in the woods, from some small, foreign object.

The voices went silent. He was back in the ordinary world. The sun was shining, the sky blue above the trees, the forest’s mystical dimension closed to him. His feet were numb from the cold, his senses deadened. He searched frantically for the foreign object, but he couldn’t see anything that stood out.

His teacher, Ozuno, spoke in his memory:
Reality isn’t just what yon see on the surface, you fool! It has layers beneath infinite layers. When the truth eludes you, dig deeper!

Hirata sighted on the fibers in the bark of one pine tree. He dug in a circle in the snow around its base. Reaching the earth, he found nothing except twigs and leaves. He tried the other pine, digging rapidly with hands stiff from the cold. The object was visually indistinguishable from the debris on the forest floor, but Hirata’s keen nose detected a sweet, spicy, familiar scent that was out of place. He sifted through the debris and held up a short, thin sprig of sassafras wood.

A toothpick.

One of many Hirata had seen chewed, spat out, and littering the ground in Ezogashima. The harmless but now incriminating habit of one person.

Gizaemon.

Victory elated Hirata. He pictured Gizaemon tying the string around the tree, toothpick in his mouth. Before he walked across the path to tie the other end of the string to the spring-bow, he spat the toothpick onto the ground. He’d probably done it unconsciously, his habit so ingrained that he hadn’t even thought to remove the toothpick. And until this instant, his carelessness hadn’t mattered.

Nobody else had noticed the toothpick. But now Hirata had the evidence that connected Gizaemon to the murder, evidence that Gizaemon couldn’t explain away by saying he’d dropped the toothpick when he’d discovered Tekare’s body. It had been nowhere near where she’d died. There was no reason for him to have been loitering in the woods by those tree trunks-except to rig the crime.

Hirata stowed the toothpick in his glove. He ran down the path, heading for the castle. He had to find Sano and tell him the news that Lord Matsumae wasn’t the only person they wanted dead. Gizaemon must be punished for the murder of Tekare and its disastrous consequences.

A peaceful morning graced the women’s quarters. In the garden, the trees’ bare branches resembled black embroidery decorating an azure sky striped with white puffy clouds. Blackbirds pecked crumbs strewn on the snow. Gaily patterned quilts aired on veranda railings. To look at this scene, one would never know that a war was imminent, Reiko thought. But as one of the guards from the keep sneaked her up to the building and the other kept a lookout nearby, she heard distant gunshots from the troops testing weapons and ammunition. Men cheered after each blast.

Crouched on the veranda of the building where the native concubines lived, Reiko knocked on a window shutter until Wente held up the mat inside. Wente’s expression was unfriendly: She remembered too well their last encounter.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Reiko said. “I shouldn’t have treated you like that. Will you please forgive me?”

“Why I should?”

“Because I was wrong to accuse you of killing your sister.” Reiko would say anything necessary to regain Wente’s good will. “I didn’t mean it.”

Wente gazed at Reiko with suspicion, but she nodded, accepting the apology. Her eyes shone with even more terror than was due to the war that threatened her people.

“Has something happened?” Reiko asked, sparing a moment of concern for the other woman.

“Nothing.” Wente shook her head, the gesture more a refusal to confide than a denial. “Why you come?”

“I have news. About my son.” The joy in Reiko bubbled over in smiles and tears. “Masahiro is alive.”

As Reiko explained what she’d discovered at the keep, a visible torrent of relief assailed Wente. The woman closed her eyes for a moment; she muttered in her own language, in the universal cadence of prayer. A radiant smile of vicarious joy, far above what Reiko had expected, transformed her face. She reached toward Reiko, and they clasped hands.

“Where?” Wente asked eagerly.

“That’s the problem. I don’t know.” Reiko described how the soldiers had chased Masahiro into the woods. “I have to ask you for another favor. Will you help me hunt for Masahiro? I promise this will be the last time.” Her voice trembled because should she fail this time, Masahiro would surely die.

At first Wente didn’t answer. Thoughts flickered in her eyes; emotions evolved in their dark brown depths. Finally she said, “All right. We go now.”