The Snow Empress_ A Thriller Part 23

"So we told Masahiro we were going to set him free," said his brother. "We took him out of the keep. He wanted to leave a message for you and his father. We gave him a knife and a piece of charcoal to write with." The man pointed at the words on the wall. "I guess you found it."

Reiko's jaw dropped in surprise that these soldiers she'd come to kill had helped Masahiro escape. If he was alive, she owed it to them. Hardly daring to breathe, she said, "When was this?"

"About twenty days before you got here."

Reiko trembled as her hope soared anew. "Where did you take him?

"Out the gate. After that, he was on his own," the brother said.

Reiko was horrified. "On his own? An eight-year-old boy, in a strange land?" And the northern winter would have already begun.

"Did you give him food to take, or money, or warm clothes, or advice on how to get home?"

"I wish we could have, but there wasn't time," the fallen soldier hastened to excuse their actions. "We had to get him out fast."

A wail rose from within Reiko. The idea of Masahiro turned loose to fend for himself! Anything could have happened to him since he'd left the castle. She let her weapon dangle. The soldier eased away from her and stood. He and his brother regarded her with sympathy as well as caution. They took turns continuing their tale.

"We told Lord Matsumae we'd killed him. He believed us. But our lieutenant asked to see the body. Of course we couldn't show it to him. So we made up a story that Masahiro had broken out of his cage."

"The lieutenant sent us and some other troops out searching for Masahiro. He wasn't in the castle, so we went into town."

"My brother and I ran ahead of the others and found Masahiro before they did. He was at the harbor, trying to talk some fishermen into taking him across the sea in their boat. But then the others came. All we could do was tell him to run."

"They chased him out of town and lost him in the woods. That was the last we saw of him."

"We went out every night for the next few days, looking for Masahiro, but we never saw him again. We don't know what's become of him."

Both men said humbly, "We're sorry."

Reiko couldn't blame them; they'd saved Masahiro's life. But that didn't change the fact that he was gone, or let them off the hook. "I'm going to find my son," she said, "and you're coming with me!"

Reiko knew with bone-deep certainty that Masahiro was alive. She couldn't believe she'd ever thought him dead. How misguided by fears and false clues she'd been! There was no mistake now. She clutched at the two young soldiers with the same fervor with which she'd almost killed them.

They looked sadly at her. "We're sorry," said one. The other said, We can't leave our posts."

Reiko saw that there was no use arguing. The soldiers' duty was to the Matsumae clan, not a stranger in need. Her knees buckled, and she leaned against the wall. Masahiro had been out there in the wilds of Ezogashima, cold and hungry, lost and alone, for twenty days-during the last of which she had been trapped in the castle.

"What am I going to do?" she whispered.

Her first idea was to tell Sano and Hirata. They would think of something. But she didn't know where they were, and even if she could find them while evading the Matsumae troops, what could they do? They were unfamiliar with the terrain. No matter their intelligence and strength, they were city men; they would be as lost and helpless in the forest as she. Reiko knew of only one person to call on. Someone whose friendship she'd rebuffed, who'd generously given aid but might not be willing this time. Someone whom Reiko still suspected of murder.

Wente.

"If there's anything else we can do for you...?" one of the soldiers said anxiously.

Reiko's mind raced through ideas and strategies, obstacles and threats. From them she devised a plan. "Yes, there is." She told the men what she needed from them. But her plan's success ultimately depended on Wente.

29.

Hirata hid in plain sight as he traversed the castle grounds, walking noiselessly a few paces behind groups of soldiers. He damped down the energy that his body gave off, and they didn't sense his presence. When they pa.s.sed other people, he hid behind them, his human shields. n.o.body noticed him, but he could detect each person before they came within his sight or hearing. They emitted energy that shone like beacons to Hirata's inner consciousness. When he felt soldiers approaching from his rear along a path, he darted into a doorway and waited for them to pa.s.s him. Then he followed them, their silent shadow.

His journey took him by the storehouse where the natives were imprisoned, its walls stained orange by the rising sun. He could feel their energy inside, two faint pulses. Hirata was tempted to break in and rescue them. It would be so easy, but the hard part would be getting them out of the castle, then defending them and their people from the whole Matsumae army. Not even the best martial artist could do that alone. And Hirata's first duty was to Sano. No matter now lured by other interests he felt, he would always choose Sano because his honor depended on how faithfully he served his master who was also his dearest friend. Solving the crime and a.s.sa.s.sinating Lord Matsumae were Sano's top priorities and thus Hirata's. And there were clues that n.o.body except Hirata could hope to find.

Hirata headed for the castle gate through which the funeral procession had pa.s.sed. He approached it along the wall and stopped. Twenty paces farther, a sentry paced in front of the gate. Hirata backed away from the wall, crouched, drew a deep breath, and concentrated his physical power in his legs. He flexed a spiritual muscle within his mind and sprang.

A burst of energy fired along nerves and tendons through him. It launched him in a high, fast arc. He landed on his feet atop the wall, with a soundless impact that the guard didn't notice. There he squatted, looking down the other side. The hillside and path were empty, the woods dark as night except for the treetops, which glowed in the rosy dawn. Hirata jumped down from the wall and ran for the woods. As he followed the path that the funeral procession had taken, he blotted out his sensory impressions of the trees and snow, birdsong, the air's coldness in his lungs. He kept a small part of himself anch.o.r.ed to his surroundings; the rest walked in another dimension.

This dimension was a black void illuminated by traces of energy left by human emotions in the past. His hours spent meditating and attuning himself to the cosmos had developed his skill in detecting them. Along the path Hirata saw sizzles of light-the grief, anger, and dread experienced by the funeral party. He took the fork in the path that led toward the hot spring. Ahead, the energy flared into sparks and fountains where the Matsumae troops had ma.s.sacred the natives. Hirata slowed his steps, looking downward, searching.

He didn't know the precise location of the murder scene, but he stopped at a tangle of luminescence that lay on the snow. Here Tekare had fallen, struck by the arrow from the spring-bow. He read her pain, her terror. Sano hadn't found any clues here, but since Hirata had come to Ezogashima he'd discovered a new realm of existence. On the hunting trip, Chieftain Awetok had opened him to a glimpse of its power, its potential to reveal information heretofore secret. Now Hirata hoped to use his new perception to solve the murder case, for the natives' sake as well as Sano's. The truth might yet save Awetok, Urahenka, and their people.

As he had during the deer hunt, Hirata immersed himself in a meditative trance. Again came the sensation of escaping his body, the propulsion into a rich, vast, unfamiliar world. The spirit of Ainu Mosir flowed through Hirata. He was a dust mote tossed by its power, awash in the energy from the earth, the wild creatures, forest, and sky that comprised its mighty self. Their voices barraged him. Deafened by messages he couldn't interpret, feeling completely lost, Hirata clasped his head in his hands. Even if the world of nature did harbor clues about Tekare's murder, how would he sort them out from this chaos?

He instinctively reverted to the breathing techniques learned through long years of training. Their rhythm steadied him, slowed the deluge of sensations. Hirata found himself balanced between two realms-the human world and the natural-as if on a raft on a turbulent sea beneath a stormy sky. Two disciplines-samurai art and Ainu magic-worked together within him. Hirata gasped with sheer, joyous exhilaration. This was the breakthrough he'd been seeking. Arduous training had prepared him for it, but only in Ezogashima could he have found it. But this breakthrough was a station on the way to his ultimate destiny. He had work to finish before he could move on.

He revolved beneath the brightening sky, in the shadows that dispelled as day came. From a tall pine an owl took flight, heading to its nest after a night of hunting. Around the owl, around every branch and pine needle, and along the earth, pulsed a limpid green energy held that hummed with nature's life-force. The light where Tekare had fallen and the sparks from the ma.s.sacre blended with the radiance f the nonhuman world. Hirata called upon yet another discipline, the skills he'd learned as a police detective. He looked for something in the picture that didn't belong-a clue.

The green energy field wasn't uniform, its hum not continuous. There were interruptions with jagged edges. He spied one in the forest and stepped off the path to examine it. He discovered a hole on a leafless tree, the interior eaten away by insects. The tree was dying, its voice a moan of pain. Hirata listened harder. Sharp noises, like metal impinging on stone, led him to a snow-covered mound. Brushing off the snow, he found a rock about the size of his head. Small white scratches marred the rock's flat gray surface. Hirata recognized them; he'd seen their like at the archery range in Edo Castle, on the stone wall near the targets. Sometimes novice archers missed their shots by a wide margin, and their arrows. .h.i.t the wall. These scratches were arrow marks.

Hirata gazed in a straight line from them, through the place where Tekare had fallen. The spring-bow had been set somewhere along the line, in the woods on the path's opposite side. The killer had tried out the weapon before the murder, had sprung the trap to see where the arrow flew. Hirata examined tree trunks near the rock. Caught in the rough bark of a pine tree were tiny fibers from the string that had triggered the spring-bow. They made a barely audible, trilling vibration in the field. Hirata envisioned and followed the string across the path, into the woods. He found more fibers on two more trees. The killer had experimented with different positions and angles, determining which was best. This told Hirata that the killer had a methodical mind-but did not reveal his ident.i.ty.

The green energy glow diminished; Hirata couldn't sustain forever the trance that allowed him to see it. The sound of a temple bell ringing interrupted nature's voices. Hirata strained his perception, listening with all his might; his head ached with the effort. As the glow disappeared, he felt an otherness otherness in the woods, from some small, foreign object. in the woods, from some small, foreign object.

The voices went silent. He was back in the ordinary world. The sun was shining, the sky blue above the trees, the forest's mystical dimension closed to him. His feet were numb from the cold, his senses deadened. He searched frantically for the foreign object, but he couldn't see anything that stood out.

His teacher, Ozuno, spoke in his memory: Reality isn't just what yon see on the surface, you fool! It has layers beneath infinite layers. When the truth eludes you, dig deeper! Reality isn't just what yon see on the surface, you fool! It has layers beneath infinite layers. When the truth eludes you, dig deeper!

Hirata sighted on the fibers in the bark of one pine tree. He dug in a circle in the snow around its base. Reaching the earth, he found nothing except twigs and leaves. He tried the other pine, digging rapidly with hands stiff from the cold. The object was visually indistinguishable from the debris on the forest floor, but Hirata's keen nose detected a sweet, spicy, familiar scent that was out of place. He sifted through the debris and held up a short, thin sprig of sa.s.safras wood.

A toothpick.

One of many Hirata had seen chewed, spat out, and littering the ground in Ezogashima. The harmless but now incriminating habit of one person.

Gizaemon.

Victory elated Hirata. He pictured Gizaemon tying the string around the tree, toothpick in his mouth. Before he walked across the path to tie the other end of the string to the spring-bow, he spat the toothpick onto the ground. He'd probably done it unconsciously, his habit so ingrained that he hadn't even thought to remove the toothpick. And until this instant, his carelessness hadn't mattered.

n.o.body else had noticed the toothpick. But now Hirata had the evidence that connected Gizaemon to the murder, evidence that Gizaemon couldn't explain away by saying he'd dropped the toothpick when he'd discovered Tekare's body. It had been nowhere near where she'd died. There was no reason for him to have been loitering in the woods by those tree trunks-except to rig the crime.

Hirata stowed the toothpick in his glove. He ran down the path, heading for the castle. He had to find Sano and tell him the news that Lord Matsumae wasn't the only person they wanted dead. Gizaemon must be punished for the murder of Tekare and its disastrous consequences.

A peaceful morning graced the women's quarters. In the garden, the trees' bare branches resembled black embroidery decorating an azure sky striped with white puffy clouds. Blackbirds pecked crumbs strewn on the snow. Gaily patterned quilts aired on veranda railings. To look at this scene, one would never know that a war was imminent, Reiko thought. But as one of the guards from the keep sneaked her up to the building and the other kept a lookout nearby, she heard distant gunshots from the troops testing weapons and ammunition. Men cheered after each blast.

Crouched on the veranda of the building where the native concubines lived, Reiko knocked on a window shutter until Wente held up the mat inside. Wente's expression was unfriendly: She remembered too well their last encounter.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," Reiko said. "I shouldn't have treated you like that. Will you please forgive me?"

"Why I should?"

"Because I was wrong to accuse you of killing your sister." Reiko would say anything necessary to regain Wente's good will. "I didn't mean it."

Wente gazed at Reiko with suspicion, but she nodded, accepting the apology. Her eyes shone with even more terror than was due to the war that threatened her people.

"Has something happened?" Reiko asked, sparing a moment of concern for the other woman.

"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 a.s.sailed 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 f.u.kida 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 b.a.l.l.s, and leaped out of the shrubs. The guards turned. He hurled the s...o...b..a.l.l.s 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 f.u.kida unbarred.

"They'll come to before they freeze to death," Marume said.

"When they do, they'll report that we escaped," f.u.kida 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 with a narrow rut tamped down the middle by not many footsteps. They entered f.u.kuyama 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. a narrow rut tamped down the middle by not many footsteps. They entered f.u.kuyama 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 pa.s.sed a shrine, a movement beyond its weathered torn 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 bra.s.s gong. He aimed a child-sized bow and arrow, hunting imaginary game. Sano's heart began to thud as the boy turned toward him. 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 bra.s.s 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?" f.u.kida 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 the clerks who greeted them and made straight for the pa.s.sage at the back. A clerk ran after them, saying, "That's private. You can't go there." clerks who greeted them and made straight for the pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 j.a.panese 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 pa.s.ses 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," f.u.kida 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 h.o.a.rding information. Sano nodded to Marume.