Then, as she paced in her chamber, oblivious to the sight of Masahiro and his nurses playing in the sunny garden outside her window, she caught sight of a scrap of paper lying on the floor. The wind must have blown it off her desk. Absently, Reiko picked up the paper, and the words she read on it turned suspicion to terrible reality.
Midori had broken her promise and gone to the Black Lotus Temple.
After seeing what the Black Lotus had done to Haru, after the Fugatami murders and the attack by the priests, Reiko knew the sect had no mercy. What if Midori had been caught spying at the temple? The sect would surely kill her. Reiko dreaded telling Sano what had happened, but she must.
She hurried to his office, interrupting him in a meeting with Hirata and several detectives. “Please excuse my intrusion, but it’s an emergency,” she said, bowing to Sano.
Sano dismissed the detectives, but asked Hirata to stay. “What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.
Reiko knelt and poured out the whole story of Midori’s plan to spy on the temple and the note that Reiko had just found. She watched Sano’s face reflect incredulity, then outrage.
“You brought Midori into a murder investigation?” he demanded. “You’ve done many foolish things during this case, but this is the worst!”
“No, I didn’t. Midori begged to help,” Reiko defended herself as Hirata stared at her in openmouthed horror. “I told her not to go, but she went anyway.”
Shaking his head, Sano smacked his palms down hard on his desk.
“You must have given her the idea to go. She wouldn’t have thought of it herself. This is all your fault. Midori’s only fault is her ill-conceived loyalty to you.”
Reiko didn’t want to appear craven by making excuses, but neither could she let Sano misinterpret the situation and think the worst of her. She said, “I tried to talk Midori out of spying-”
“But you failed,” Sano interrupted, rising as he glared at her. “Or perhaps you didn’t really try. Perhaps you wanted to take advantage of your innocent, helpless friend and further your mistaken defense of Haru.”
His words battered Reiko like blows. How she wished she could go back in time and restrain Midori from leaving by physical force instead of ineffectual words. Wretched, she gazed up at Sano. “All right, I’m sorry for whatever I did wrong.” She felt the trembling and tears beginning again. “Now, please help me rescue Midori before it’s too late!”
Hirata sat listening to Sano and Reiko argue, but he hadn’t really heard anything after Reiko’s announcement that Midori had gone to the Black Lotus Temple and not returned. A torrent of emotions had focused his thoughts upon things he’d forgotten or ignored.
He remembered how Midori had been a loyal friend to him, and how the world had always seemed brighter and sweeter whenever he was with her. He remembered a rainy evening spent in her company, when he’d thought how happy he would be to have her as his wife. Hirata experienced a powerful surge of tenderness toward Midori.
Then he recalled his recent treatment of her. Caught up in the excitement of high society, he’d spared her little time. He thought of her hovering dejectedly on the fringes of his life, and shame filled him. Now he understood why Midori had changed: She’d been desperately trying to recapture his attention. Horror overwhelmed him as he wondered if she’d decided to be a detective and spy on the Black Lotus Temple so he would take new notice of her. Could he be responsible for whatever trouble Midori had gotten herself into? His mind echoed with stories he’d heard at police headquarters-tales of husbands, wives, and children swallowed up by the Black Lotus and never seen again. He didn’t quite understand why he was so upset by Midori’s disappearance, but he knew he had to do something.
Wild panic launched Hirata to his feet. “Please excuse me,” he said, bowing hastily to Sano. “I must go to the Black Lotus Temple to rescue Midori.”
Sano’s expression was worried, conflicted. “The shogun has ordered me to stay away from the Black Lotus, and his order includes my retainers.”
Reiko exclaimed in outraged alarm: “But we can’t just leave her there!”
Hirata wished with all his heart that he could go back in time and treat Midori better so she wouldn’t have felt a need to put herself in danger. Suddenly he recalled the warning given him by the police clerk Uchida: “By succumbing to pride and ambition, one may end up losing everything that really matters.” Too late, he realized that his shallow new friendships meant nothing to him. What a blind, vain fool he’d been! Midori was all that mattered. He was in love with her, and now he stood to lose her. Hirata wanted to raise an army, storm the temple walls, and tear apart every building until he found Midori, then slay anyone who had hurt her.
Yet his samurai spirit could neither disobey his supreme lord’s wishes nor jeopardize Sano, who would share the blame for his disobedience. Torn between love and honor, overwhelmed by his helplessness, he dropped to his knees before Sano.
“Please,” he said in a voice that broke on a sob. “Help me find a way to rescue Midori.”
Sano decided that Midori’s disappearance justified a search of the Black Lotus Temple, which required the shogun’s special permission. He and Hirata hastened to the palace. There they found Tokugawa Tsunayoshi seated on the dais in his reception room. As various officials presented documents for his approval, he affixed his personal signature seal to each.
“Ahh, Sōsakan-sama and Hirata-san,” he said, smiling wearily. “This is such tedious, exhausting work that I, ahh, hope you have come to refresh me with interesting news.”
Sano and Hirata knelt below the dais and bowed. “Yes, we do bring news, Your Excellency,” Sano said. “Niu Midori, one of your honorable mother’s ladies-in-waiting and daughter of the daimyo of Satsuma and Osumi Provinces, went to the Black Lotus Temple two days ago. No one has seen or heard from her since.”
“Most puzzling,” Tsunayoshi said, wrinkling his brow in an obvious attempt to guess how this concerned him.
“Recently there have been some serious acts of violence associated with the sect,” Sano continued.
He glanced at Hirata sitting silently beside him. Hirata’s face was set in rigid lines that betrayed his desperation to get to the point of the conversation. Yet asking the shogun to change an order was an extreme step for which Sano must demonstrate strong cause.
“Minister Fugatami and his wife were murdered and their children kidnapped by the killers, who painted the Black Lotus symbol in blood on the walls,” Sano continued. “My entourage and I were attacked and some of my men killed by armed Black Lotus priests. Now it appears that Niu Midori is trapped in the temple and is most probably in grave danger. I know that you have ordered me to stay away from the Black Lotus sect, but I must beg you to let us go into the temple to save an innocent, helpless young woman.”
The shogun frowned in displeasure. The officials stirred uneasily, and Sano sensed their wish to flee. He himself wouldn’t want to be around when some other foolhardy soul challenged the shogun’s authority.
“Niu Midori is a good, kind, loyal girl,” Hirata blurted. “She-I-”
As his voice faltered in his effort to convey how much Midori meant to him without expressing unseemly emotions, the shogun’s expression softened.
“Ahh, I see that the young woman in question is important to you,” Tsunayoshi said, perceptive regarding matters of love, if about nothing else. “Something certainly must be done to rescue her.” Worry clouded his face. “However, I cannot allow anyone to interfere with the Black Lotus.”
Sano thought of the powerful Tokugawa relatives intimidating the shogun into protecting their religious sect. His heart sank, and Hirata flashed him an agonized look.