Now Aoi closed her mind to the still-sharp pain of that parting, forcing her thoughts back to the present.
“Sano must not be allowed to solve this murder case, and he will not.” Yanagisawa laughed, a sound of pure, exuberant enjoyment. “How fortunate that I managed to plant the idea of you in His Excellency’s mind!”
That he would sabotage a murder investigation to serve his own purposes seemed criminal to Aoi. Why did he wish the case to remain unsolved? Because he wanted to eliminate Sano as a future rival? Or for some other, even more sinister reason directly related to the murder? But it wasn’t Aoi’s place to question her superior’s motives, or to dwell upon what happened to his unfortunate victims. To do so would only make her work less bearable. Fifteen long years had taught her that.
She’d begun her servitude as a kitchen maid, spying on her fellow servants; desperately homesick, forever isolated from those whom she befriended in order to learn their secrets; lying awake in bed until the maids who shared her room fell asleep, then silently slipping through deserted moonlit courtyards and stone passages to the Momijiyama.
“Ah, Aoi.” Old Michiko’s voice crackled like a wood fire in the great mausoleum’s shadowed entranceway. Bent and wizened, but with bright, youthful eyes, she was a kunoichi from Aoi’s village. She’d been chief shrine attendant-and commander of the palace’s female spy network-since Tokugawa Ieyasu had founded Edo Castle. “What have you to report tonight?”
“The nightwatchmen are planning to steal rice from the shogun’s warehouse,” Aoi would report. Or whatever other crimes she’d discovered.
Michiko’s answer was always the same. “Very good, child. Your father would be proud of you.”
Now, fifteen years later, the thought of her father still made tears sting Aoi’s eyes. He might accept, but never condone the ruin his child had wrought: the men and women beaten, or even executed for petty offenses against the government. As in the past, she toyed with the idea of failing at the task before her, and sparing the new victim. Death would provide the release she sought. But to fail was dishonorable, impossible, and unthinkable. She listened closely to Yanagisawa’s orders.
Yanagisawa’s pacing quickened; the turbulence around him intensified. “You will keep me informed on Sano’s progress. But more important, you must mislead him with false spirit messages. Use your intelligence to gain his respect; his loneliness to secure his affection and trust.”
Ryakuhon no jitsu: the ninja art of winning an enemy’s confidence by pretending to be a comrade. Aoi had perfected this during her first three years at Edo Castle, as she rose from maid to attendant to the women of the shogun’s top officials. Her sympathetic manner, knowledge of medicine, and skills as a masseuse made her popular. Instead of the trivial offenses of servants, she reported to Michiko tales of madness, adultery, perversion, and dissipation at the bakufu’s highest levels. In time, resignation replaced grief; homesickness dulled to a constant but bearable ache. Aoi found a certain fulfillment in exercising her talents. She, like her female ancestors, enjoyed a freedom and mobility greater than that of ordinary women-if only to do her master’s bidding. She lived from day to day, focusing on the work at hand, not allowing herself to think of the future.
Just as she must now. She would help Sano just enough to convince him that her intentions were good and her counsel worth heeding. Then she would betray his trust, destroy him, and never think of him again.
“Another idea has just occurred to me.” Yanagisawa’s intense dark eyes sparkled, lending his face a vibrant charm. Such beauty, wasted on a man so evil. “Perhaps if you seduce Sano and distract him from his work, the shogun will remove him from the case- or even dismiss him for neglecting his duties. And the ruin of his marriage negotiations would be a bonus.”
Yanagisawa laughed again. “I dare say I need not tell you how to destroy a man, kunoichi.”
Aoi kept her face calm, her breathing steady. But ice crystals formed in her blood at the thought of performing monomi no jitsu: finding and attacking the weak point in the enemy’s defenses.
At age twenty, she’d begun spying directly upon the shogun’s men, entertaining-and bedding-high bakufu officials in order to discover their acts of disloyalty and corruption, or to exploit their secret vices until they ruined themselves. She despised their weakness and stupidity; she never thought of the demotions, banishments, or suicides that followed her disclosures. Selective memory erased each victim from her conscience, much the same way that the poisonous herbs she took rid her body of unwanted pregnancies. Until six years ago, when she had destroyed the one man who’d mattered to her.
Fusei Matsugae. An influential member of the Council of Elders when Tokugawa Tsunayoshi had become shogun, he’d encouraged the new dictator’s early efforts at government reform and opposed Yanagisawa’s attempts to usurp power. His intelligence, integrity, and striking physical appearance had attracted Aoi. In him, she finally discovered a samurai worth her regard. For the first time, she experienced sexual pleasure with a man. Unlike the others who had often treated her with callous disrespect, he was kind. And he somehow satisfied her longing for her father and home.
In the beginning, she’d thought her happiness simply meant that the cruelty of her work no longer bothered her. Seeing Fusei grow infatuated with her, she’d believed her satisfaction purely professional. The sexual ecstasy gave her qualms, which she dismissed in her eagerness to explore a new delight. Never having been in love before, she didn’t recognize the danger until it was too late.
Now guilt and self-loathing choked Aoi as Yanagisawa’s innuendo conjured up the image of herself and Fusei on their last night together. The dim lamplight of his bedchamber had failed to obscure the signs of his physical deterioration: the lean, fit body gone weak and stringy; the once-keen eyes bloodshot; the trembling mouth and hands. He reeked of the sake that had ravaged him. She could always identify those men with a dangerous affinity for liquor by the unique smell they gave off as it mixed with their blood, and she’d deliberately encouraged Fusei to drink as she charmed him. But that night, she realized that she missed the man he’d once been, and that she loved him.
“No,” she whispered, stricken by the sudden knowledge of how much bleaker her life would be when she finished destroying the only person in Edo she cared for.
Seated on the floor, Fusei gazed at her, eyes glassy with drunkenness and incipient dementia. “Perform the ritual, Aoi,” he said, his words slurred.
She had often exploited her victims’ religious beliefs and filial piety by evoking the spirits of their beloved dead to influence them. It wasn’t a trick. The dead did speak-through their possessions, through the minds of living persons who had known them. She need only focus her concentration to hear their voices, then use her excellent acting skill to recreate their personae and manipulate vulnerable men like Fusei. But her heart rebelled against performing the act that would complete her lover’s ruin.
“Not tonight, dearest,” she murmured, stroking his face.
Fusei ignored her attempts to entice him to bed. With shaky hands, he lit the incense on the altar. “I am losing all my allies,” he complained. He couldn’t see that his drunken ravings had alienated them, any more than he could see that she was helping him destroy himself. “The whole council has joined Yanagisawa’s clique. I don’t know how to stop this madness. Aoi, I must have my mother’s advice.”
Amid the smoking incense burners, he set the sash that had belonged to his deceased mother, then waited in the same anticipation with which he’d once greeted sex.