his right and Police Commissioner Hoshina at his left. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi looked ill, his features fragile as crumpled paper, his eyes rimmed with red and shadowed underneath. Trembling visibly, he glared at Sano.
Dread chilled Sano as he knelt and bowed. Just as he’d feared, the shogun was furious with him.
“How could you?” demanded Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. “After all I’ve, ahh, given you, after I’ve trusted you, how could you do such a, ahh, cruel, disgraceful thing?”
“A million apologies for displeasing you, Your Excellency.” Quaking, Sano tried to stay calm. “I couldn’t let Magistrate Aoki condemn the treasury minister and end the investigation while there was a strong chance that Nitta was innocent.”
“Of course Nitta was innocent!” The shogun’s voice rose to a high pitch of hysteria. As Sano listened in surprise, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi said, “He didn’t kill my cousin. You did!”
Sano felt shock resonate through his body. The shogun was accusing him? What was going on? Aghast, he looked around at the other men, and his gaze lit on Hoshina.
“The sosakan-sama appears bewildered, Your Excellency.” Hoshina’s expression was smug, gloating. “If I may enlighten him?”
Tokugawa Tsunayoshi nodded as a sob wracked his body. Hoshina said to Sano, “I’ve located the missing pillow book of Lady Wisteria. It contains a description of a sordid love affair between her and you. She wrote that you used her for pleasure, then mistreated her. She also wrote that you called His Excellency a despicable idiot, and you intended to murder Lord Mitsuyoshi so His Excellency would adopt your son as his successor.
“I showed the book to the Honorable Chamberlain. We agreed that we must show it to His Excellency, and we have done so.”
Yanagisawa inclined his head, silently concurring with his lover. Alarm and confusion beset Sano. Lady Yanagisawa had told Reiko that her husband had gotten the book from an anonymous sender. Had she lied, or had Hoshina secretly opened the package, then pretended he’d found the book somewhere, to impress his superiors?
But however the book had come to light, the shogun had read it before Lady Yanagisawa stole it. Her attempt to do Reiko a favor had failed. Sano had destroyed the book too late, and Hoshina had used it against him.
“I have never insulted His Excellency,” Sano said, his panic balanced by anger at his foe. “Nor have I ever expressed threats toward Lord Mitsuyoshi. I didn’t kill him, and I’m not plotting to put my son in power. The book is a fraud.’’
Hoshina gave him a cocksure smile. “Residents of the Great Miura brothel have identified it as Lady Wisteria’s.”
“Did you bribe them? Or did you threaten to kill them unless they said what you wanted? You wrote the book yourself, to ruin me.” Sano grew certain this was true. “Admit it!”
The shogun’s puzzled gaze flicked from Sano to Hoshina, who said ruefully, “I’m not the author of the book. The sosakan-sama is trying to save himself by accusing me.”
“Let’s examine this book and compare the calligraphy to yours.” Knowing the book was in ashes, Sano hoped that forcing Hoshina to admit it no longer existed would lessen the harm it could do him.
“The book has vanished,” Hoshina said, unperturbed.
“How convenient for you that no one can scrutinize it too closely,” Sano said.
Hoshina’s gaze rebuked him. “How much more convenient for you if you’d had it stolen before we read it instead of afterward.”
Hoshina dared frame him for theft along with murder and treason! “I didn’t know the book had turned up until now,” Sano said. “How could I have stolen it?” Yet he feared everyone could see through his pretended ignorance. He addressed the shogun: “Even though you’re understandably upset by what the book said about me, please consider that there’s no other evidence that anything in it happened.”
“That is, ahh, true.” Realization eclipsed the anger on Tokugawa Tsunayoshi’s countenance. “You’ve always been loyal to me in the past. And the, ahh, man in the story was a cad who didn’t, ahh, resemble you at all.”
His unexpected good sense relieved Sano, but Hoshina said, “The affair between the sosakan-sama and Lady Wisteria was verified by my informants. And here’s a page of the account book from the brothel, showing a sum paid by Sano Ichiro for the discharge of Lady Wisteria.” Hoshina held up a paper.
“That proves nothing except that I freed her,” Sano said, appalled by the thoroughness of Hoshina’s effort to authenticate the book.
“Any verified detail lends credibility to the others,” Hoshina said. “Besides, I’ve located the house where Wisteria lived after she left Yoshiwara. The neighbors say she had a samurai lover. Their description of him fits the sosakan-sama. They also say that he and Wisteria quarreled frequently and violently, as the book describes.”
Sano couldn’t admit he’d visited Wisteria at all, and make himself look guiltier. “I never quarreled with her. Either those witnesses are lying, or you are,” he told Hoshina. “Your evidence is slander woven from a few innocuous facts!”
The shogun recoiled from Sano’s vehemence.
“See how he rages when someone irks him,” Hoshina said to the assembly, his face alight with vindication. “This is the bad temper that caused him to hurt Lady Wisteria.”
Further incensed, Sano looked at the chamberlain. Yanagisawa met his gaze with a warning expression that said their truce didn’t make them allies and Hoshina had free rein here. The elders watched with a detachment that fueled Sano’s anger. They expected him to destroy their enemies for them, at his own risk, and now they were doing nothing to help him. The contemptible wretches!
Stifling an impulse to rage at them, Sano mustered his self-control. He said to the shogun, “That Police Commissioner Hoshina has demonstrated an association between Lady Wisteria and me isn’t proof that I’m a murderer or traitor.”
“That the sosakan-sama attempted to conceal the association indicates that he’s guilty,” Hoshina said quickly.
Sano turned on his foe. “Just when does the book say I plotted against His Excellency and Lord Mitsuyoshi? Or is the story as vague about dates as it is untrue?”
Caution narrowed Hoshina’s eyes. “Lady Wisteria marked the date as Genroku Year Five, the seventh month, on the night of the full moon.”
“You mean you did. When you wrote the book, you made the mistake of specifying an exact time. My wife will swear that I was with her that night,” Sano said.
“I certainly did not write the book. And the wife of a liar is no more honest than he,” Hoshina scoffed. “Everyone knows Lady Reiko is very fond of her husband and would do or say anything to protect him. She’s an untrustworthy witness.”
“Do you have any witness at all who can confirm that I said the things in the book?” Sano demanded.
“Your Excellency, the only witness to his statements was Lady Wisteria, who’s been murdered. Her body was discovered the night before last.” The crime hadn’t escaped the notice of Hoshina and his spies. “How convenient for the sosakan-sama that she can’t speak against him.” Hoshina flashed a sardonic glance at Sano.
“The body may not even be Wisteria,” Sano said, “and it was found in a house belonging to Fujio the hokan. He’s the primary suspect in that murder, and also in Lord Mitsuyoshi’s. There are other suspects, including Wisteria’s chaperone, and maybe more we don’t know about because the investigation isn’t finished.”
“The investigation has been controlled by the sosakan-sama from the start,” Hoshina said with disdain. “The suspects he mentions are only people who can’t prove their innocence. He persecuted them to shield himself.”
“You were the one who arrested Momoko,” Sano pointed out.
“Because he tricked me into it,” Hoshina told the shogun. “He even defended Treasury Minister Nitta at his trial to make everyone believe he cares about justice. But his investigation is a farce, and his good character a disguise.
“Lady Wisteria wrote in her pillow book that she wanted to force the sosakan-sama to marry her. He gave her the weapon she needed when he insulted Your Excellency and threatened Lord Mitsuyoshi. It’s obvious that Wisteria tried to blackmail the sosakan-sama, and he killed her so she could never tell anyone what he’d said. He’s a traitor who killed once to place his son in line for the succession, and again to cover up his crime.”
“Indeed.” Tokugawa Tsunayoshi glowered at Sano.
Sano felt the escalating pulse of panic along his nerves. Whatever he said in his own defense, Hoshina twisted to make him appear guiltier. Terrified by the nightmare that enmeshed him, furious at Hoshina, the elders, the
