Shinju

porters he’d hired to carry his possessions from the barracks. Dismounting, he helped them unload the bundles outside the gate, paid them, and sent them on their way. Then he stood alone in the gathering gloom, contemplating a thought just as dark.

As a samurai, he’d always known there might come a time when he must commit seppuku to avoid disgrace, or to atone for it. His training told him that time had come. After what had happened, only his ritual suicide could restore honor to his name and family. But although his warrior’s spirit welcomed the release and purification of death, he must forswear it. His life was not his to take until he had avenged Tsunehiko’s death, cleared Raiden’s name, and achieved justice for Yukiko, Noriyoshi, and Wisteria.

Sano roused himself to stable his horse and put his bundles in the entryway of the house. He slid open the door to the main room. To drive a dagger into his own stomach would have been easier. He dreaded facing his father, dreaded also seeing again the mark of death on the old man. So at first he was relieved to find the room empty. Then he saw something that disturbed him far more.

The door that connected the main room with the bedchamber stood open. Through it he saw his mother standing by the window, her back to him, despair evident in the slump of her shoulders. His father lay on the futon. His eyes were closed. Low, rumbling coughs shook his body almost continuously. Fear shot through Sano. He’d never seen his father take to bed so early. And the amount of sickroom paraphernalia arranged by the bed-tea bowls, washbasin, crumpled cloths, medicine jars-indicated that he’d been there all day, or longer.

“Otosan?” Sano said.

His father stirred. Slowly he opened his eyes. A frown crossed his sunken face. Then the frown disappeared, as though the slight movement of facial muscles had exhausted him.

“Ichiro,” his mother said, turning with a strained smile.”What a surprise. We were not expecting you.”

Sano walked over to his mother and embraced her. Always a sturdy, robust woman, she now seemed smaller and more frail, as if weakened by her husband’s illness. Then he knelt beside his father.

“My son,” his father whispered. “Why have you come? Shouldn’t you be at your post? Even if your work is done for the day, the others will want you in the barracks.”

Should he make up some excuse, Sano wondered, and tell his father that he’d lost his position and his patron only when-or if-the old man grew stronger? Surely it would be an act of mercy.

His father’s emaciated hand emerged from under the quilt to touch Sano’s. “Go,” he said, making a feeble pushing motion. A cough shuddered through his body. “Do not shirk your duty.”

“Otosan.” Sano swallowed against the dry lump in his throat. He couldn’t lie. His father’s own uncompromising honesty had always demanded the same from him. “I’m sorry, but I have something bad to tell you.”

He explained all that had happened, from the start of his investigation of the shinju to his parting with Katsuragawa Shundai. When he finished, he braced himself for his father’s recriminations.

But his father said nothing. Instead he blinked once, slowly. Before he turned his face away, Sano saw the weak light in his eyes grow dimmer still.

“Otosan, I’m sorry,” Sano said, less alarmed by the wordless rejection than by the knowledge that he might have just destroyed his father’s last chance for recovery. “Please forgive me. Don’t give up!”

He put his hand over his father’s. It shrank from his touch. For the old man, he no longer existed. Now he wished he had committed seppuku. His father would prefer a son dead than in this terrible disgrace which would speed him to his own grave.

“Otosan!”

His mother was beside him, tugging gently on his arm, urging him to his feet. “Let your father rest,” she entreated him. “Wouldn’t you like to put your things away and have a bath before dinner?”

Sano turned away from her pleading eyes and anxious smile that begged him to act as though disaster hadn’t just shattered their world. He walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” his mother called, hurrying after him. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know.”

A steady rain began to fall, drenching Sano’s clothes as he roamed the streets. It pattered onto the tile rooftops and dripped off eaves into puddles that splashed under his feet. Lamplight made hazy yellow squares of the windows he passed. The tops of the fire towers disappeared in mist and darkness. An occasional pedestrian hurried past him, hidden beneath an umbrella. From the alleys behind the houses, Sano could hear the rumble of wooden wheels and the clatter of buckets and dippers as night-soil collectors made their rounds. The night soil’s odor mingled with the clean scents of wet earth and wood, charcoal smoke and cooking.

Sano had been walking for hours; he’d lost track of how many. His legs ached, but his mind would not let him rest. All the thinking he’d done hadn’t reconciled him to either of only two possible courses of action: to somehow mend the rift between him and Katsuragawa Shundai and salvage his career, or to commit seppuku. Either way, he must relinquish the murder investigation that could only result in more disgrace and a dishonorable death for both himself and his father. But that was what he could not accept. His desire for truth and justice forbade such passive submission to defeat, even as the Way of the Warrior dictated filial piety and obedience.

So he wandered aimlessly through the city, turning corners at random-or so he thought, until he saw the moat and walls of Edo Jail looming before him. Torches flared on the ramparts; the guards at the gate wore rain cloaks over their armor. The whole edifice shimmered in the mist like a haunted castle. Sano had never imagined returning to the loathsome place, but he marched across the bridge and up to the guards without hesitation.

“I am Yoriki Sano Ichiro,” he said, hoping they hadn’t heard otherwise yet. “I wish to see Dr. Ito Genboku.” Conscious thought hadn’t provoked his desire to see Ito again, but now he saw the rightness of it. The doctor had made sacrifices for his own ideals. Sano could talk to him. Ito would understand his dilemma.

The guards hadn’t heard, and they admitted him. Instead of escorting him through the prison, one of them led him around the buildings, through a series of courtyards and passages, to a hut near the far wall. Its one window shone weakly; smoke rose from the skylight.

The guard opened the door without knocking. “Ito. Someone here to see you.” He bowed to Sano and left.

Since there was no veranda or entry way, Sano left his shoes on the ground beside the door, where the thatched roof’s overhang provided inadequate shelter from the rain. It didn’t matter; they were soaked anyway. He ducked his head to avoid hitting the low door frame.

He was standing at the threshold of a single room that occupied the entire hut. Ito knelt in the middle of the floor beside a small charcoal brazier, lamp and book in front of him. In the corner, Mura the eta was washing clothes in a bucket. The doctor regarded Sano without surprise.

“Somehow I always thought you would return,” he said. “Don’t just stand there shivering, come and warm yourself. Mura-san? Sake for our guest, please. And a bowl of rice gruel.”

Mura went to a makeshift kitchen composed of a one-burner stove and a few crowded shelves. Sano knelt by the brazier, grateful for its heat. He hadn’t realized how cold he was. Great shudders racked his body and rattled his teeth. He couldn’t hold his trembling hands still over the coals.

Without speaking, Ito rose. From the cabinet he took a quilt and brought it to Sano.

“No, thank you,” Sano said. The cabinet had held just the one quilt, his host’s own.

Ito continued to hold out the quilt. “Take off those wet clothes and put this around you, or you’ll be sick.” He added, “Please oblige me. I get few chances to offer hospitality.”

Sano did as he was told. He drank the heated sake and ate the steaming gruel that Mura brought him. When warmth returned to his body, he told Dr. Ito everything that had happened since they last met.

Ito listened without comment. When Sano finished, he said, “What will you do now?”

“I don’t know,” Sano admitted. “I thought you might help me decide.”

“I see. And why do you wish my advice?”

“Because you understand what it’s like to be in this situation. And because I value your opinion.”

Ito studied him in silence for a moment, his gaze stern but not without sympathy. Finally he said, “Sano-san, when I was convicted, I lost my home, my wife, my family, my wealth, my