“There!” Kajikawa laughed, triumphant. “I showed the monkey!”
Kato shouted, “Ihara!” Yanagisawa was too stunned, and too appalled by the death of his ally, to speak. The guard let his bloody sword dangle. The gaze he cast around the room pleaded for absolution. Nobody offered any.
“Masahiro! Leave the room!” Sano said, anticipating more violence.
Masahiro hesitated, loath to abandon his father, then started toward the door. Servants and boys hurried after him. “Stay where you are, or the shogun is next!” Kajikawa said.
The rush stopped. Detectives Marume and Fukida peered in the door. Kajikawa yelled at them, “Go away! Clear everybody out of the palace, or the shogun dies!”
“Do as he says!” the shogun cried.
The detectives went. The atmosphere turned even more lethal now that the hope of rescue was gone. Everyone who remained seemed shrunken in size, diminished, except Kajikawa. The little man swelled with exhilaration and power over his superiors. The sword in his hand was steady over the shogun, who wept and cringed.
“Guards,” Kajikawa said. “Take everybody’s weapons. Then get out. You go, too,” he told Kato. Sano realized that although Kajikawa had been acting on impulse, he now had some sort of plan. When the guards hesitated, he said, “Or shall I make you kill somebody else?”
“Do as he says,” Yanagisawa told the guards, his voice tight with fury.
The guards collected the swords from Yanagisawa, Yoritomo, and Sano. They even took Masahiro’s junior- sized weapons. They carried the swords out of the room. Kato beat a fast, cowardly retreat. Sano stood beside Masahiro while he thought as fast as he could.
One wrong word could provoke another disaster.
Kajikawa bobbled his head at Yanagisawa. “You thought I was weak. You thought you could beat me down. Well, you were wrong. I have the upper hand.” He tittered exultantly. “Fancy that!”
“Please, please,” the shogun gasped out. “Have mercy!”
“You’re a fool who’s lost the brains he was born with,” Yanagisawa said, too incensed to control his sharp tongue. “You should have been content to see that the privies are cleaned. But no-you meddled in business that wasn’t yours. You’ve gone too far. Not even I can save you now.”
“Oh? Is that what the great chamberlain says?” Kajikawa’s glee turned to rage. “Then what have I got to lose by killing the shogun?”
Sano realized that Yanagisawa was the one who’d gone too far. Aghast, Sano said, “Wait, Kajikawa-
Kajikawa pressed down on his blade. The edge sank into the shogun’s neck.
36
Reiko couldn’t bear to sit at home and wait for news. Leaving Akiko with the nurse, she strapped her dagger to her arm under her sleeve, threw on her cloak, and hurried to the palace. The passages were full of guards and officials rushing in the same direction. Everyone had heard about the trouble; everyone wanted to find out what it was. Reiko’s sandals slipped on the icy paving stones as she ran. People slid, collided, fell. She kicked off her sandals and forged onward. She barely felt the cold through her thin cotton socks. Reaching the palace, she found a huge, noisy crowd. The Tokugawa army milled through groups of officials and servants. Guards blocked the doors. People craned their necks, buzzed with speculation.
Reiko looked around for Masahiro and Sano, in vain. Hearing her name called, she saw Detectives Marume and Fukida weave through the mob toward her. She greeted them eagerly. “What’s happened?”
“Kajikawa is trapped in the shogun’s private chambers,” Fukida said.
Marume’s usually cheerful face was grave. “He’s threatening to kill the shogun.”
Reiko clutched her throat. “He wouldn’t, would he?”
“He’s already killed Ihara from the Council of Elders,” Fukida said.
“Or rather, he forced one of the guards to kill Ihara while he held the shogun at swordpoint,” Marume said. “He ordered us to clear the palace or the shogun dies.”
The news was so disastrous that Reiko could hardly take it in. Fukida said, “There’s been no communication from Kajikawa since. So we don’t know what else has happened.”
“Where’s my husband?” Reiko asked anxiously. “Where’s Masahiro?”
“With Kajikawa and the shogun,” Marume said. “And Yanagisawa, Yoritomo, and a bunch of boys and servants.”
Reiko’s blood went as cold as the ice that filmed the castle. She began to shake with terror. She trusted Sano to take care of himself, but her child was trapped in a volatile situation where at least one person had already been murdered. And they’d parted on bad terms, barely speaking to each other. “Can’t you do something?”
Marume gestured toward the guards. “They won’t let anybody in.”
Reiko gazed at the army, powerless against one fugitive.
“You should go home, Lady Reiko,” Fukida said. “It’s cold out here, and there’s nothing you can do.”
But something might happen, and Reiko wanted to be among the first to know. When Marume and Fukida turned to speak with some other men, she edged around the crowd, circling the palace. Nothing was visible except shuttered windows and blank walls. Reiko mingled with a crowd of women and girls, the shogun’s relatives and concubines and their attendants. They chattered and fretted. They didn’t notice Reiko sidling toward the building. Neither did the guards. As she swept her gaze over the palace, desperate for a hint of what was going on inside, she saw a gap in the latticework that covered the space under the palace. She hesitated, fighting temptation. Maternal instinct outweighed the risk. Reiko dropped to her knees and scuttled through the gap.
* * *
Blood welled from the thin line that Kajikawa’s blade cut on the shogun’s neck. The shogun squealed like the pigs butchered at the wild game market. His eyes bulged so wide that the white rims showed all the way around his pupils. His mouth opened so far that Sano could see down his pinkish-gray gullet. His arms and legs shot out in an involuntary spasm. Sano was astounded as well as horrified.
The shogun’s blood was red like everyone else’s! Sano had been conditioned to think of the shogun as a sort of god, even though he knew the shogun’s human failings all too well. The shogun, although weak and sickly, had been such a constant, dominating force in Sano’s life that Sano was shocked to realize he was mortal.
The shogun touched his neck. He lifted his trembling hand in front of his face and saw the blood on his fingers. His breath sucked inward so fast that he choked. His complexion turned ghastly white. Groans poured from the other people in the room.
Kajikawa posed by the shogun, his sword still holding the shogun captive. His features wavered between a grin like a skull’s rictus and an upside-down smile of tragic woe. He resembled an actor who’d thought he was the hero in the play and has just discovered he’s the villain.
The shogun began to shake violently. He pressed himself against the platform as if he could sink through it and escape the blade that verged on slicing through his windpipe. He screamed, “Help!”
“This is blasphemy!” Yanagisawa exclaimed.
Kajikawa pointed at Yanagisawa and said, “That’s enough from you!” His head bobbled at Yoritomo. “Gag him!”
Yoritomo stared in fresh shock. “What?”
“Take off your sash,” Kajikawa ordered Yanagisawa. When Yanagisawa and Yoritomo started to protest, he said, “Or I’ll finish off the shogun!”
The shogun began shrieking hysterically. He drummed his heels on the platform. Infuriated but cowed, Yanagisawa stripped off his sash, threw it to Yoritomo, and knelt.
“I’m sorry, Father.” Yoritomo’s voice quavered as if he were about to cry. He tied the sash around Yanagisawa’s mouth.
Yanagisawa glared above the red and black cloth that muffled his tongue, that separated his lips and teeth. Sano didn’t dare say a word, lest he be gagged and lose his speech, too. The other people in the room were silent
