Shinju

building. He walked through the reception room, a large, open space broken by square pillars. There chaos reigned. Four clerks seated at desks on a raised platform in the room’s center dispatched messengers and dealt with the many visitors lined up before them. Doshin waited to sign on or off duty, or to give their reports. Servants streamed through the side entrances, bearing tea trays to and from the inner rooms where the yoriki had their private offices. Muted daylight came in through the windows, falling in shafts through the tobacco smoke from many pipes. The sound level remained at a constant civilized hum with only an occasional raised voice. But Sano found the inner reception room quiet, empty except for two men. Both wore formal dress-full, flowing silk trousers and wide-shouldered surcoats belted with wide sashes-of the most fashionable cut and pattern. The scent of wintergreen oil emanated from their meticulously arranged hair. They were the epitome of the proud, style-conscious yoriki.

“Yamaga-san. Hayashi-san.” Sano bowed. “Good day.”

Yamaga, the taller and elder, inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment. Face radiating hostility, he did not reply to Sano’s greeting. Hayashi, a man of Sano’s age, twisted his thin lips in a sarcastic smile.

“Good day, newcomer,” he said. “I trust that your work goes well with you. Or at least as well as could be expected, for one not born to the responsibility.” His mocking air made the solicitous words an insult.

Saddened, Sano watched them go. He’d seen at once that he would not easily make friends with them or his forty-seven other colleagues. Unlike himself, they were true yoriki who had inherited their positions from their fathers. That an unqualified outsider could slip so easily into their ranks was an affront to their family and professional pride. Now their chill disapproval followed him as he walked down the long corridor and entered his own suite of offices, nodding a greeting to the clerks under his supervision.

When Sano slid open the door to his private office, he found another source of unhappiness awaiting him. Hamada Tsunehiko, his sixteen-year-old personal secretary, lolled on the mats near the charcoal brazier that heated the room, reading an illustrated storybook. The reports that Sano had given him to file lay disregarded upon his desk. His plump body strained the seams of a black cotton kimono patterned in white swirls and bordered with red checks. His shaved crown made him look less like a grown samurai than an enormous infant. When he saw Sano, his round, pudgy face took on an almost laughable expression of horror.

“Yoriki Sano-san!” he cried. “You’re back!” Hastily he scrambled to his knees and bowed, first tucking the book out of sight beneath his buttocks. “I await your orders!”

Sano gazed at Tsunehiko with exasperated affection. The secretary’s father, a powerful bureaucrat who wanted his idle, not-very-bright son to have an occupation, had prevailed upon Ogyu to find work for Tsunehiko. Ogyu had assigned him to Sano’s office. So far he had proven himself lazy and incapable of getting even the simplest tasks right on the first try. He also breathed loud and hard through his chronically plugged nostrils, a further irritation. Still, Sano found it impossible to dislike Tsunehiko. The boy was cheerful, good-natured-and just as out of place as Sano felt.

“All right, Tsunehiko,” Sano said. “Please take this report.” He knelt before his desk while Tsunehiko took paper and writing supplies from the cabinet. After Tsunehiko had ground the ink and settled himself at his own smaller desk, Sano began. “The sixteenth day of the twelfth month, Genroku year one,” he dictated. “Regarding the matter of the suicides of artist Noriyoshi and Lady Niu Yukiko-”

He paused when Tsunehiko gasped in dismay at the two characters he’d written, then crumpled the paper. A mistake, already: Tsunehiko’s skills at calligraphy and taking dictation were minimal. Sano would have preferred to write the reports himself, but he must conform to the rules, even in so small a matter as using the incompetent secretary assigned to him. Just as he must issue a report in accordance with Magistrate Ogyu’s orders, though it ran counter to his own instincts. Besides, he didn’t want to hurt the boy’s feelings. He waited for Tsunehiko to take a fresh sheet of paper from the cabinet. Then, together they slowly and tediously completed the report to the accompaniment of Tsunehiko’s labored breathing. Sano read over the fourth and final draft, saw to his relief that it contained no errors, and affixed his seal to it.

“Take this to the chief clerk and have him convey the orders to the departments involved,” he told Tsunehiko.

“Yes, Yoriki Sano-san!” Tsunehiko took the report, rolled it, and tied a silk ribbon around it. Still breathing hard, he rose and slid open the door.

Laughter sounded in the corridor outside. Yamaga and Hayashi swished past.

“We’ll cut a swath through Yoshiwara tonight,” Sano heard Yamaga say. “The women there will satisfy our every desire.”

Hayashi replied, “Then let us not delay!”

Their laughter rang out again as they disappeared. Phrases of lewd conversation drifted back toward Sano: “… voluptuous buttocks… fragrant loins… ” All at once a picture of the future flashed before him. He saw what would happen if he followed the path that Ogyu had laid out for him. His principles would lose their meaning for him. He would end up like Yamaga and Hayashi, who cared more about fashion and tradition than for their work. He would let his minions run his department while he left his post early to sport with prostitutes in the pleasure quarter. He would sacrifice truth for security, justice for the sake of comfort.

“Wait!” he ordered Tsunehiko.

Snatching the report from his surprised secretary’s hand, he tore it in two. Quickly he wrote another report classifying Noriyoshi’s and Yukiko’s deaths as suspicious and requiring further investigation. This he gave to Tsunehiko. Then he strode from the room. He didn’t want to coast along in his position, reaping the certain rewards that unquestioning obedience would bring. Instead he wanted to feel the excitement of pursuing the truth-as he had when he’d been a scholar, then again during the arson investigation-and the elation of knowing that by finding it, he had done some good. Somehow he must reconcile personal desire with the Way of the Warrior and all its obligations to family and master. He must discover the truth about the shinju.

Chapter 2

Edo Jail was a place of death and defilement to which no one ever went voluntarily. Sano had never seen it before and wouldn’t have come now, except he knew that the bodies of Noriyoshi and Yukiko had been taken to the morgue there. Now he surveyed the jail with mingled curiosity and unease.

The Tokugawa prison sprawled along a narrow canal that formed a moat before its entrance. Guard towers perched at each corner of the high stone walls that rose straight up out of the stagnant water. Dark liquid of an unidentified and probably unspeakable nature trickled from holes at the base of the walls down to the canal. Above the walls, gabled roofs protruded. Signs of neglect gave mute testimony to the city’s repugnance toward the jail and its inhabitants: weeds and moss growing between the stones, missing roof tiles, and peeling plaster. A rickety wooden bridge spanned the canal, ending at the guardhouse and the portals of a massive, iron-banded wooden gate. All around the jail lay the miserable shacks and drab, winding streets of Kodemma-cho. Located near the river in the northeast sector of Nihonbashi, Kodemma-cho provided an ideal site for the jail-as far from the castle and the administrative district as convenience would allow.

Sano was thankful for the shrill shouts of the ragged children playing in the streets, and for the greasy smell of food frying in backyard kitchens. They masked whatever sounds and smells emanated from the jail. A tremor ran down his spine as he remembered the stories he’d heard about what went on there. Taking a deep breath, he urged his horse onto the bridge.

A commotion began in the guardhouse as Sano arrived. When he dismounted and secured his horse to a post, the three guards nearly fell over one another trying to get out the door. He saw them exchange confused glances. Then they bowed low.

“We are at your service, master,” the guards chorused.

Sano took in their unkempt appearance and cropped hair, the much-repaired leather armor and leggings, the single long sword that each wore. These were commoners-probably former smalltime criminals-permitted to bear arms in order that samurai would not have to serve in such a degrading capacity.