He saw the four bearers set down the palanquin and hurry to join the four guards in a rear defense. Drawing his sword, he leapt from his mount. Hirata and the detectives followed suit. An attacker rushed Sano, spear aimed at his heart. Sano dodged. He bumped into Hirata, who was parrying slices from the spears of two more attackers. Sano clashed blades with his opponent.
“Reiko!” he called. “Stay inside the palanquin!”
Another attacker joined the man battling Sano. They lunged and jabbed at him. Sano hacked at the wooden shaft of one opponent’s spear. The shaft broke. Sano sliced the man across the throat. Blood spurted, and the man fell dead.
The other man lunged; Sano sidestepped, crashed against a building, and the spear grazed his shoulder. Swinging his sword around, he struck at the man’s hands. The man dropped the spear, ducked another cut from Sano, and drew a long-bladed dagger. As he slashed and parried, Sano noticed that another attacker lay facedown in a pool of blood nearby, slain by Hirata or the detectives. Through the narrow gap between the palanquin and the buildings he saw his men fighting the attackers on the other side of the palanquin. The remaining four on his side formed a line of offense. Thrusting spears crowded Sano and his men together, forcing them backward. Sano glimpsed the attackers’ intent, merciless eyes above the masks.
Who were they? Why did they risk ambushing an armed Tokugawa procession?
The horses, frightened by the battle, neighed and circled, trying to escape, but the fighters and the palanquin hemmed them in. One of the horses reared; its flailing hooves struck the detective at Sano’s right, and he stumbled. A spear pierced his middle. He screamed, collapsed, then lay still.
Outraged by the murder of a loyal retainer, Sano fought harder. Spears and swords flashed, battered, and rang in the air between his side and the attackers. Sano darted past spears and around to the rear of the offense. He sliced an attacker down the back. The man howled and died. Sano, Hirata, and the other detective circled the three remaining attackers and soon felled them, then ran to the back of the palanquin. There, two guards were wielding swords against the spears of two attackers. The corpses of the other guards, attackers, and the palanquin bearers lay strewn upon the road.
Sano called to the attackers, “Your comrades are dead. Surrender!”
They turned toward him, and he saw them realize that they were now outnumbered five men to two. They fled down the street. Hirata, the detective, and the guards raced off in pursuit. Reiko jumped out of the palanquin and gaped at the carnage.
“You’re bleeding,” she said to Sano, pointing at his shoulder.
Sano inspected the wound, which hurt but had stopped bleeding. “It’s not serious. Are you all right?”
Reiko nodded, but her lips trembled. Sano worried that this trauma, so soon after the murders of the Fugatami, was too much for his wife. He felt an impulse to hold her, to reassure her that she was safe. Yet their strife had created a distance between them that precluded intimacy.
Reiko averted her gaze from Sano and walked over to the corpse of an attacker.
The man lay sprawled on his back. Blood from the fatal gash across his belly drenched his garments; his hood and face cloth had fallen off. He was young, with coarse features, and a stranger to Sano. His head was shaved bald.
“A priest,” Reiko said.
Leaning closer, she examined his neck, then pointed at a tattoo just below his throat. It was a black lotus flower.
“First the sect attacked Haru, and now us,” Reiko said, her voice deliberately calm. “They must have followed us from the jail and set up the ambush. They wanted to keep us from discovering the truth about the Black Lotus.”
Sano agreed with her logic, and he began reassessing his opinion of the attack on Haru, but before he could reply, his men returned. “You lost the last two?” Sano said.
“We cornered them in an alley,” Hirata said,”but they cut their own throats to avoid capture.” Eyeing the corpse beside Reiko, he added,”They’re both priests, with that same tattoo.”
Reiko turned a bleak gaze on Sano. “They’ll stop at nothing to destroy their enemies and protect their secrets.”
30
The land of the Bodhisattva of Infinite Power
Will be filled with treasures and heavenly palaces.
The faithful will be transformed,
Their bodies will glow with light,
They will feed on joy and unlimited knowledge
– FROM THE BLACK LOTUS SUTRA
Iridescent pink cloud glowed in the twilight sky above the Zōjō temple district. Bells clamored, heralding evening rites. Peddlers and late worshippers trudged homeward from the marketplace, while nuns and priests streamed into temples. But the gates to the Black Lotus Temple were closed; no one passed in or out. Shrouded in secrecy, the walled compound gathered the night around itself.
Inside the temple precinct, monks armed with spears guarded the gates and patrolled the grounds. Lights burned behind the windows of the buildings. Flames flickered in stone lanterns along the main path, where a hundred nuns and priests stood in rows, each holding a wooden dagger. Priest Kumashiro, armed with a steel dagger, headed the group. He whirled, slashing the air in ritualistic combat. The nuns and priests imitated his actions like an army of shadows.
Midori clutched her dagger, panting as she tried to keep up with her comrades. She wondered why they needed to learn how to fight. Kumashiro had merely told them it was vital to their future. Her comrades mimicked him with rapt concentration, as if they shared his secret purpose. The lesson, which reminded Midori of military drills at Edo Castle, intensified her fears about the Black Lotus. As she darted and stabbed, she tried to keep an eye on Toshiko, in the next row.
All day she’d waited for her friend to create a diversion so she could escape the sect’s supervision, but Toshiko had done nothing. She hadn’t winked; she hadn’t even spoken to Midori. Now Midori was starving because she didn’t want to be poisoned by eating the sect’s food. She wanted to finish spying and avoid spending another night at the temple, but she feared that Toshiko had changed her mind about helping.
Beyond the rows of moving figures Midori saw nuns stationed along both sides of the path, watching the group. She would never get past them without Toshiko’s cooperation. Despair filled her.
The lesson halted, and the group stood at attention while three priests joined Kumashiro. Each carried a horizontal pole with a life-sized human dummy at the end. The dummies had wooden heads and wore men’s kimonos and wicker hats.
“Watch carefully,” Kumashiro ordered the group.
The priests moved in a staggered line toward him, dummies extended. Kumashiro charged at the dummies. He swung his dagger right, left, and right, slashing tears across the dummies’ middles.
“Form a line, run up one at time, and do as I showed you,” Kumashiro said.
Midori and the others jostled into position. The monk at the head of the line ran forward. The priests thrust the dummies at him, and he whacked his wooden dagger against the stuffed figures. Other monks and nuns followed his example. As the line moved up, Midori fidgeted in anxiety. The violence of the exercise disturbed her, as did the ferocity with which her comrades attacked the dummies. Dreading her turn, she watched Toshiko, who stood four places ahead of her.
Suddenly Toshiko let out a loud cry. Midori’s heart jumped. Everyone looked at Toshiko as she dropped her dagger and clutched her stomach.
“Ow, ow, it hurts!” she screamed, toppling to the ground.
The nuns on the sidelines hurried toward her. Toshiko rolled back and forth, grimacing in pain, and her gaze briefly met Midori’s. She winked.
Overjoyed, Midori turned and ran into the grounds. Trees screened the light from the moon and the buildings, and she could barely see where she was going. She plunged into a passage between solid walls, then through a patch of woods, and emerged into open space. Her foot struck a stone or fallen branch. She tripped, sprawling flat on the grass.