40
“My husband will never believe Korin lured me to this theater and killed me,” Reiko told Minister Ogyu.
“Yes, listen to her, she’s right,” Korin said, trying to break free of Ogyu’s men. Anxiety shone in his swollen eyes. “Chamberlain Sano came to talk to me in jail. He doesn’t think I poisoned those women. If he did, he’d have put me to death already.”
“He’ll believe it when he sees the letter,” Minister Ogyu said in that same chilling monotone.
“What letter?” Korin shook his head, as if trying to waken himself from a nightmare.
Jagged Teeth walked across the stage and gave Minister Ogyu an old playbill and a stick of the charcoal that actors used for makeup. Minister Ogyu knelt, spread the playbill on the table, wrote with the charcoal stick, then and read aloud, “‘To Lady Reiko: I have information about Madam Usugumo’s murder. If you want it, come to the Nakamura-za Theater alone. Don’t tell anybody. Signed, Korin.’”
Reiko was amazed at his ability to make up a scenario as he went along. But his scenario had glaring faults. “My husband will never believe I would follow those instructions.”
“When he finds the letter by your body, he’ll have to believe it,” Minister Ogyu said.
“How will he find me?” Reiko asked, incredulous. “Why would he think to look here?”
“An anonymous tip will do.”
“He knows I was going to see your nurse,” Reiko said. “I told him. Besides, I didn’t go out alone. His guards saw me leave with my escorts. And my palanquin bearers are waiting for me at the landslide. They’ll tell my husband where I was.”
“Going to see my nurse was just a pretext,” Minister Ogyu said. “You left your bearers and walked to the theater district.”
“How will you explain away Kasane’s murder?”
“I won’t need to. He’ll assume you never got to her house. He won’t bother looking there.”
“But he’ll discover that my guards are missing.” Reiko felt as if she were pushing against a stone that kept rolling in the wrong direction no matter what she did. Minister Ogyu seemed impervious to reason. “He’ll figure it had something to do with what happened to me. He’ll send out search parties. When their bodies are found, he’ll know I was at Kasane’s house. He’ll know you followed me and took me.”
“The bodies are unrecognizable. They’ll be taken for bandits who broke into Kasane’s house, murdered her, then fought over the loot and killed one another.”
“If they did that, then who cut their faces?” Reiko said. “And where did their weapons go?”
Minister Ogyu’s calm silence said he’d decided to ignore any inconsistencies in his scenario.
“Hey, excuse me, I couldn’t have written that letter,” Korin chimed in. “I don’t know how to write.”
“You hired a scribe,” Minister Ogyu said.
Korin glared. “You have an answer for just about everything, don’t you? Well, answer this: How are you going to make me kill her? Because I won’t.”
Minister Ogyu rose. “You laid in wait for her.” He walked to the center of the stage and stood facing the door. “She arrived.” His gaze tracked Reiko’s imaginary progress down the gangway and onto the stage. “She said, ‘What did you want to tell me?’ And you attacked her.”
“With this.” Jagged Teeth held up a wooden club, a prop from a play, studded with iron spikes.
“I’m not doing it,” Korin declared.
“But Lady Reiko suspected a trap,” Minister Ogyu said. “She came alone but not unarmed.” He extended his hand. Winsome Smile gave him Reiko’s dagger. “She fought back. You killed her, but she wounded you so seriously that you died, too.”
He advanced on Korin. Korin yelled, “Hey!” He scuffled his feet backward, but Minister Ogyu’s men held him in place.
Reiko desperately worked her ankles against the rope. Her skin was raw. The loop widened. Minister Ogyu swiped at Korin. The dagger cut Korin’s chest. “Stop!” Korin screamed while Minister Ogyu cut his torso, again and again. Blood trickled onto the stage. His clothes hung in tatters.
Gasping, Reiko tugged at the frayed rope around her wrists. It wouldn’t break. The men released Korin. He flung up his hands, and Minister Ogyu slashed them. Screaming, he tried to run, but the men shoved him at Ogyu, who worked with deliberate concentration, as if he were cutting wood instead of flesh. The blade carved deep into Korin’s thigh. He fell to his knees, clutching at the wound, from which blood spurted. His screams faded to mewling.
“Help,” he whispered, collapsing on his side. He stretched a blood-drenched hand out to Reiko. His expression went slack.
Minister Ogyu carefully laid the dagger on the stage. Moving toward Reiko, he took the spiked club from Winsome Smile. His eyes were empty sockets drained of humanity. There was no use pleading with him. Reiko wriggled backward. He raised the club over his head. He swung it down.
Reiko rolled. The club bashed the stage with a resounding thud. He hauled it back for another swing. Reiko kicked at him. Her feet hit his knee. He stumbled backward. Reiko yanked her right foot out of the rope. Rising, she staggered; her muscles were stiff. One of Ogyu’s men hurried to block the gangway. The others gathered behind her. Ogyu raised the club and advanced on her. His face was like a wax mask, soft but unanimated by emotion.
Caught between him and his men, Reiko ran at Minister Ogyu. He hadn’t expected that; he faltered. Before he could hit her, she clasped her tied hands into a tight lump of knuckles. She lowered them to thrust them upward at his groin, but in a split instant corrected her error and swung at his chest. Her knuckles connected with soft flesh flattened by wrappings under his clothes. Minister Ogyu screamed. It was a woman’s scream, shrill and piercing. He dropped the club and clutched his wounded breast.
Reiko ran past him. His men yelled and chased her. She jumped off the edge of the stage, onto the nearest divider. It was narrower than her foot. She’d seen refreshment sellers scamper nimbly along the dividers, carrying baskets of snacks, but she teetered as she ran. With her hands tied, she could hardly keep her balance. Ogyu’s men ran onto the dividers, which shook under their steps. Reiko almost fell off before she reached the mounded debris in the center of the theater. As she loped over it, jutting boards tore off her shoes. Sharp roof tiles pierced her feet through her socks. The men were close behind her. Clear of the debris pile, she teetered down a divider. The back wall of the theater loomed. Her heart juddered. Where was the door?
She jumped off the divider, into a passage that extended along the back of the theater. She spied a narrow crack in the wall, at the bottom, where two panels had buckled apart. She dropped to the floor and squeezed into the crack just as the men landed in the passage. On the other side was darkness. While she wriggled through the crack, a hand grabbed her ankle. Reiko kicked and pulled. Her sock slid off in the man’s hand. She was free.
Inside the theater, Minister Ogyu shouted, “Bring her back here!” Reiko heard the men racing for the door. Rising, she found herself in an alley between the theater and a row of teahouses whose walls leaned together like cards stood on end. She ran.
“Wait.” Sano halted his troops in the street where they were riding between houses whose shattered roofs rested atop flattened walls. “Did you hear that?”
Faint screams drifted across the night. They struck hope and dread into Sano. Here at last was a sign of life, a clue to Reiko’s whereabouts but also evidence of violence in progress.
“It’s coming from over there.” Marume pointed in the direction of the main street.
As Sano and his men galloped through the theater district, ruins forced them to detour farther from the noise instead of closer. Sano leaped off his horse. His troops followed suit, detaching the poles from their backs, flinging the poles aside. They carried the lanterns as they and Sano and Marume ran. Vertigo tilted the street under Sano’s feet. His head pounded with every step. The light from the lanterns glanced off walls that seemed to undulate. He reeled. Marume caught his arm, kept him running. The screams were louder now; they had a masculine harshness. They abruptly stopped. Sano and his men raced up an alley, lined with collapsed buildings, that joined the main street. One building had fallen across the exit. Ready to backtrack and find a clear path, Sano heard another, different scream.
It was high-pitched, a woman’s.
Terror spiked through Sano like a vein of lightning. The breath rushed from his lungs in a whisper:
