The Snow Empress

“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.”

30

“The wall’s too high to climb,” the Rat said, bright with hope that Sano would give up on his dangerous plans.

“Don’t worry, we won’t try,” Sano said.

They hid with Marume and Fukida in a thicket of pine shrubs against the castle wall. Sano peered through the pine needles at the closest gate, some twenty paces away. It had taken them hours of sneaking and avoiding troops to get near the exterior wall, and he’d given up hope of escaping the castle undetected. By the gate, two guards stood over a fire smoking in a metal urn. There was no way out except through them.

Marume scooped up some snow, packed it into two balls, and leaped out of the shrubs. The guards turned. He hurled the snowballs and hit the men square on their noses. As they exclaimed in surprise, Marume charged them. He grabbed them, banged their heads against the wall, and dumped their unconscious bodies into a snowdrift. Sano and the other men hurried to join him at the gate, which Fukida unbarred.

“They’ll come to before they freeze to death,” Marume said.

“When they do, they’ll report that we escaped,” Fukida said. “We’ll have a hard time getting back inside the castle.”

“Never mind that now,” Sano said. “Let’s go.”

Outside, they cut through the woods and followed a rough track that was deep in snow, with a narrow rut tamped down the middle by not many footsteps. They entered Fukuyama City through its inland fringes. This was clearly the poor side of town, with tiny shacks huddled together, the snow fouled by ashes, cinders, and wastewater frozen in ditches. The few people outdoors had a grimy, primitive appearance. An old man tended a heap of burning trash. When Sano asked him the way to the gold merchant’s shop, he muttered directions and pointed.

Sano and his comrades trudged through the few alleys into the main part of town. As they passed a shrine, a movement beyond its weathered torn gate caught Sano’s attention. He glanced into the shrine and stopped. A little boy, bundled in a fur coat and hood, tiptoed around the brass gong. He aimed a child- sized bow and arrow, hunting imaginary game. Sano’s heart began to thud as the boy turned toward him.

It was Masahiro. He smiled and waved at Sano. Astounded, Sano waved back. Masahiro vanished.

“What’s the matter?” Fukida said.

“Nothing.” Sano didn’t want to explain. What he’d seen must have been the spirit of his dead son. He didn’t want his men to think he was as mad as Lord Matsumae.

They located the gold merchant’s shop. Upon entering, they ignored the clerks who greeted them and made straight for the passage at the back. A clerk ran after them, saying, “That’s private. You can’t go there.”

“Watch us,” Marume said.

Sano and his men hurried down the passage and burst into the office that stank of dead things. Daigoro sat on a bearskin rug beneath a display of mounted animal heads, masturbating. A book of erotic Ainu prints by a Japanese artist lay open on the desk in front of him. When he saw his visitors, he jumped in surprise.

“Hey!” He stuffed his erection into his loincloth, closed his fur coat, and slammed the book shut. “How dare you barge in here?” Recognition stunned him. “Chamberlain Sano?” He pasted an obsequious grin over the fright on his face. “What can I do for you and your friends?”

“You can answer a few questions,” Sano said.

“Oh? About what?”

Sano dumped Lilac’s pouch of gold nuggets on the desk. “Did these once belong to you?”

Daigoro’s eyes took on a hungry, acquisitive gleam as he looked at the nuggets. “Maybe. A lot of the gold in Ezogashima passes through my hands.”

“They were found in Lilac’s room.”

“Who?” Daigoro drew back from them as if they might burn him.

“Lilac. The girl who died in the hot spring yesterday,” Marume said.

“Why did you give them to her?” Sano asked.

“I didn’t. I never even knew the girl.”

“Yes, you did,” Fukida said. “Don’t lie to us.”

“I’m not lying,” Daigoro huffed.

“She blackmailed you,” Sano said, fed up with the runaround he’d been getting ever since he’d started his investigation. “About what?”

“Nothing! Whoever told you that was mistaken.”

“Did you kill Tekare?” Sano demanded. “Did Lilac find out? Did you pay her to keep quiet?”

“No! You’ve got it all wrong.”

“Oh, come on, don’t waste our time.” Impatient, Marume pulled his sword, then grabbed Daigoro’s hand and held it flat against the desk. “Start telling the truth, or I’ll cut off your fingers one by one.”

Daigoro squealed and struggled. “No! Please!”

Sano ordinarily didn’t approve of torture, but this time he would make an exception. Even if Daigoro wasn’t a double murderer who deserved to lose his head, never mind his fingers, he was a beast who preyed on native women, and Sano thought he was also hoarding information. Sano nodded to Marume.

Marume raised the sword. Sano braced himself for bloodshed. He felt as though he was crossing a line and compromising his principles but this was Ezogashima; here, ideals didn’t matter.

“All right!” Daigoro cried. “Stop! I’ll tell you if you let me go!”

“Talk first.” Marume kept his grip on Daigoro, and the sword poised to chop. “We’ll see if what you say is worth sparing your fingers.”

Daigoro strained away from the blade. “Lilac was blackmailing me, but it wasn’t about Tekare. It was about-” He moaned. “If I say, I’ll get in trouble.”

“Trouble doesn’t get any worse than this,” Marume said. “Spit it out.”

Daigoro blurted, “I lend money to Lord Matsumae’s retainers. Whenever they can’t pay it back, they steal supplies from his storehouse. I accept them in lieu of money and sell them in town. Lilac saw me with some soldiers, taking bales of rice from them and cutting a deal. She threatened to tell Lord Matsumae. I paid her not to.”

This was a petty crime, but if Lord Matsumae had found out, he would have put Daigoro as well as the thieves to death as an example to other would-be criminals. Sano could understand why Daigoro had been reluctant to confess, why he’d succumbed to Lilac’s blackmail.

“So Lilac asked you for more gold, and more,” Sano surmised. “She bled you dry. So you murdered her.”

“No, no. That was the only time she asked. She was satisfied. The little fool didn’t know I’d have paid ten times more to shut her up. I didn’t need to kill her. It wasn’t me.”

This sounded like the truth, and Sano was not only disappointed by the letdown, but consumed by fury. The air in Ezogashima seemed full of mischievous spirits goading him to violence.