Saburo hesitated a moment. “I’m nobody now, but once I was a monk, a warrior, and an informer.”
“A full life,” commented Akitada, raising his brows. “Those two men who attacked me. Did you kill them?”
The ugly man shook his head. “The first one bled badly, but that was an accident. Call it age and lack of practice. The angle wasn’t right and I had no time to move. His friend must’ve helped him away. Anyway, their tracks showed they walked.”
“I’m relieved,” Akitada said dryly. “The police could have blamed me. So you went back after you left me?”
Saburo nodded.
“You didn’t by any chance find the silver I threw to the robbers?”
“No. Just footsteps and blood, and I got rid of those.”
It might be a lie, but considering that the man had saved his life, Akitada did not persist. Still, the amulet was another matter. “The money can be replaced, but I accidentally dropped a small amulet, a family heirloom. It’s important to me.”
“Sorry. They must’ve found it.” Saburo paused, giving him a sideways glance something like an evil leer. “I could try to get it back for you.”
Aha, thought Akitada, so he does have it. He said, “Surely that would be difficult, even impossible.”
The other man grinned crookedly. “Perhaps not. I shall try.”
“Good. It’s worth two pieces of silver to me.”
The ugly man waved the offer away grandly. “Don’t mention it. It’s all part of the job.”
“How did you manage to overcome two armed men so quickly? They were younger and stronger than you and armed. It almost looked like a magic trick.”
Saburo smirked and shoved a hand into the jacket that was drying on the floor near him. He brought out a curious metal disk with prongs around its circumference. It was about the size of an orange. This he handed to Akitada. The disk was quite heavy and the prongs were sharp.
“What is it?”
“A shuriken. It is thrown like a knife. It isn’t as efficient as a knife, but then no one takes it for a weapon. That’s useful when a man is caught and searched.”
Akitada gave back the disk and glanced up at the beams. Saburo reminded him of the clever thief Tora had rescued from a vicious gang of youths a few years back. “You mean you’re a thief?”
Saburo smiled. “Never a common thief. I was a shinobi-mono. These days, I’m getting too old for such work.”
“What brought down the second man?”
Saburo reached again into his wet jacket and drew out two slender black sticks about a foot long. “This,” he said, taking them apart to show that they were connected at one end by a thin chain.
“How?”
Saburo chuckled. “It’s a nunchaku.” He held one of the sticks and whirled the other through the air. It made a strange humming noise, and the cricket outside answered. Catching the flying stick deftly, he passed both to Akitada. They were surprisingly heavy.
“Steel,” said Saburo. “Small enough to hide inside my sleeve, but deadly when they strike a man’s head. Also useful for strangling.”
Akitada dropped the sticks. “So you’re a killer,” he said flatly. “Why did you save my life?”
Saburo sighed and tucked the nunchaku away. “I’m not a killer. Those two who attacked you were the killers. I did not kill them.”
Akitada grunted in disbelief, but the sound reminded him of the governor’s insulting huffing, and he cleared his throat. “Perhaps you’d better explain yourself.”
“I told you I was a monk once. It was the time when the great monasteries were jealous of each other. I was very young then and an acolyte.”
Since he did not regard the Buddhist faith with the same reverence as the court did, Akitada was not favorably impressed by this, but he said nothing.
“My monastery trained its own warriors. I wasn’t big and strong enough for battle, but I was quick and agile, so they sent me to Mount Koya.”
This did not help either. Akitada thought that the arming of monks in order to kill other monks was disgusting behavior for someone who professed to live by the Buddha’s teachings. The existence of heavily armed monks furthermore was dangerous to maintaining peace and harmony among the people and posed a threat to the government.
Saburo must have read his face, because he said apologetically, “I was very young and found the excitement of this training very much more to my taste than the constant round of praying, instruction, and meditation.”
Akitada nodded. “To become a shinobu-mono, a shadow warrior?”
“Yes. The monks taught me the skills. I was a scout.”
“You mean you were a spy,” Akitada snapped. Many people considered spying a particularly cowardly way to fight in a war. As an agent for Fujiwara Hidesato, the young Koharumaru had spied out Taira Masakado’s sleeping quarters in order to let his enemies surprise him. Masakado discovered the plot in time, won the battle, and then hunted Koharomaru down and cut off his head.
Saburo leered at him with his crooked smile. “We don’t all have choices in what we do. I was very good once, but I had to give up spying after I was caught.” He gestured to his face.
As the daylight outside grew stronger, Akitada could see his visitor more clearly. Since he wore nothing but his loincloth, he also saw that many scars made odd patterns across his narrow chest and belly. Shocked, Akitada said, “You were tortured. Did you talk?”
Saburo looked away. “Oh, yes. Eventually. It made them even angrier. That’s when they popped out my eye. After that, I was no longer any use to my monastery as a scout, and I certainly didn’t relish becoming an ordinary monk.”
“But you still carry those strange weapons, climb into people’s houses, and, if I’m not mistaken, you offer to work for me.”
The ugly man looked at him. “A man must eat,” he said. “And you need help. I thought I’d offer, but I see I was wrong about you.” He reached for his shirt, felt it, made a face, and put it on. Getting up, he reached for his pants.
Akitada faced a dilemma. He despised men like Saburo and wanted nothing to do with them, but he had been left without an attendant, and – more importantly – Saburo had saved his life. “Hmm,” he said reluctantly, “what do you propose to do for me?”
The ugly man paused for a moment to glance at Akitada. “I made a mistake,” he said dully. “The fact that you offered me food made me forget how the good people regard us. I may have given up my past life, but it appears it clings to me like pitch. As far as you’re concerned, I’m as much an untouchable as if I’d been born one.”
He sounded bitter, perhaps resentful, and this added to Akitada’s sense of having repaid a gift (that of his life) with insult and rejection. He softened his manner. “Look, I did not mean to offend you, and I’m deeply in your debt, of course, but I cannot represent the Emperor and the Ministry of Justice if I hire men with a criminal past.”
This was not quite true. He had done so before. Three of his retainers had had a criminal past when he had taken them on. Tora had been arrested with a gang of highway robbers, and Genba and Hitomaro had both killed men to avenge great wrongs done to them. But surely that was a far cry from this man, who had devoted his life to nefarious doings.
Saburo finished putting on his pants, then made him a mocking bow. “Good luck, my Lord. May you find your clerk and also the man who betrays secrets to the pirates. Setting a thief to catch a thief may be clever, but unfortunately it offends your sense of righteousness.”
He used one of the shutters for a toehold and swung himself up to a crossbeam like a cat.
Chafing under the other man’s ridicule, Akitada watched him run along the beam like a tightrope walker at a temple fair and disappear into the darkness under the eaves.
He wondered if he had made another bad mistake.
Chapter Eleven