“Greetings, Sano-san,” he said. His voice was quiet, his manner subdued. Dressed in an old cotton robe and trousers, minus his swords, his hands working in dirt, he looked like a peasant instead of a powerful warlord.
Sano bowed, returned the greeting, and entered the shed. It smelled of earth and manure. Why had Lord Matsudaira summoned him here?
Lord Matsudaira said, “I want to talk to you alone.”
Yet Sano knew they weren’t really alone. There would be guards stationed nearby, although out of sight and earshot. Lord Matsudaira took no chances with his safety.
“Morning is the most pleasant time of day.” He gently set the little tree in a new pot and packed soil around its roots. “It’s the time before a man is caught up in business, when he can relax and enjoy life. Don’t you agree?”
“… Yes.” Sano doubted that Lord Matsudaira had brought him here to share a peaceful moment.
“I thought this would be a good chance for you to tell me what progress you’ve made on investigating the murder.”
Sano obliged with a report that skirted the truth. He told Lord Matsudaira that he’d done preliminary interviews with the residents of the Mori estate, but didn’t say they’d confirmed Lady Mori’s story and contradicted Reiko’s. He described how Hirata had traced the anonymous tip and found the stash of guns in Lord Mori’s warehouse, but left out what else Hirata had found. He said he’d begun a search for the medium, who’d suspiciously vanished before he could interrogate her.
When he finished, Lord Matsudaira was silent a moment, planting moss around the base of his tree. “Is there anything more?”
Before Sano could answer, Lord Matsudaira turned to him, held up a hand, and said, “Stop. You’re going to lie, and I am sick of lies.” His mood turned suddenly vicious. “There’s no use trying to hide the truth from me. I know about the messages from you to Lord Mori that have come to light. I know they indicate that you and he were planning a rebellion.”
A chord of dismay reverberated through Sano, and not just because Lord Matsudaira knew about the evidence he’d wanted to keep under wraps. “How did you find out about the messages?” he asked as calmly as he could manage.
“That’s not important,” Lord Matsudaira said. “What have you to say for yourself?”
The evidence must have been leaked to Lord Matsudaira by someone in Sano’s retinue or Hirata’s. “Those messages aren’t what they seem.” He should have told Lord Matsudaira about them himself, presented his side of the story, and cut off an attempt to use them against him. Maybe the leak hadn’t come from within his camp, but from the person who’d planted the messages in the warehouse. No matter what, Sano should have known he couldn’t keep them secret. “I can explain.”
Lord Matsudaira slashed his hand through Sano’s words. “Just tell me if it’s true.” Hostility set his features in angry lines. “Were you and Lord Mori conspiring to overthrow me? Are you still?”
“No,” Sano declared, as sick of wrongful accusations as Lord Matsudaira was of deceit.
Lord Matsudaira stepped closer to Sano. His direct, unblinking gaze measured Sano’s honesty; a twitch of his lips dismissed it as false. “Drop your pretenses. There’s no shogun here for you to trick. We might as well get to the bottom of this because there’s nobody here except ourselves.”
Ourselves and your hidden guards who are ready to jump on me as soon as you call them. Sano said, “I told you yesterday that I wasn’t plotting against you. I’ll tell you again today that I wasn’t-and I’m not. Believe me or don’t; it’s your choice.”
An abrupt change of expression transformed Lord Matsudaira. Now he looked torn between wanting to believe Sano and wanting to prove his suspicions correct. He shook his head, turned away from Sano, and leaned with his hands on the table.
“I don’t know whom to trust anymore,” he muttered. “I used to pride myself on my instincts, but now I can’t tell whether someone is friend or enemy.” A sad chuckle heaved his body. “Every day I seem to have more enemies and fewer friends.”
Sano felt an unexpected pity for Lord Matsudaira, perched on a mountaintop surrounded by people trying to push him off. But although the crisis had passed, Sano knew he wasn’t out of danger yet.
“Merciful gods, how did things come to this?” Lord Matsudaira said in a voice hushed with astonishment.
You overstepped yourself when you made your bid for power, Sano thought but didn’t say.
“I made my bid for power because I thought it was the right thing to do, not just for me, but for the country. I wanted to foster prosperity, harmony, and honor.” Lord Matsudaira gazed at his array of bonsai. The trees stood aligned in perfect rows, like troops at attention. Their limbs were bent and tied into unnatural positions by his hand.
“I thought I could do a better job running the country than my cousin has done. He let that scoundrel Yanagisawa take over.” Contempt for them both wrenched Lord Matsudaira’s mouth. “I thought that bringing Yanagisawa down would end the corruption and purify the regime. But too many people preferred things as they were. They opposed my efforts instead of working with me to rebuild the government after the war.”
And you underestimated your opponents.
“They’ve forced me to crush them or die,” Lord Matsudaira said.
Sano marveled at his combination of intelligence and naivete, idealism and ruthlessness, all crowned by arrogance. Perhaps those were the very qualities that transformed a samurai into a warlord.
“They’ve all but destroyed my dream of forging a new, better, more honorable Japan.”
In a sudden fit of violence, Lord Matsudaira swept the pine tree he’d just repotted off the table. It crashed onto the stone floor. The dish shattered. The tree lay with its roots exposed amid spilled dirt. Sano noticed that it was a valuable living antique, perhaps as old as the Tokugawa regime, which had been founded ninety-five years ago. Lord Matsudaira gazed down at the tree as though appalled by what his temper had wrought. Then he turned to Sano, his features contorted by emotion.
“If those messages aren’t proof that you’re a traitor to me, what are they?” he said.
“Trash scavenged from my garbage and placed out of context,” Sano said.
“Then why didn’t you tell me about them instead of letting me find out from other sources?”
Sano spoke the truth: “Because I thought you would jump to conclusions without listening to my side of the story. Because it seemed wiser to keep the messages a secret than risk that you would send me and my family straight to the executioner.”
Wry self-awareness lightened Lord Matsudaira’s mood, although not much. “Fair enough. But that leaves us right where we started. Are you a traitor or aren’t you? Do I believe you or heed my suspicions?” His gaze measured Sano. “Give me a reason why I should let you continue investigating Lord Mori’s murder even though you’re a suspect yourself.”
Sano recognized this as a critical juncture where one wrong step could irretrievably doom him, Reiko, their son, and all their close associates. While he pondered his options, he picked up the pine tree. Its branches were intact, but it wouldn’t survive if not properly tended. He could say, Because I’ve saved you in the past, which was true; had he not slain the assassin known as the Ghost, Lord Matsudaira’s regime might have fallen before now. But Lord Matsudaira wouldn’t like this reminder of his vulnerability.
Instead Sano said, “Because who else is there that you can trust any more than you do me?”
Lord Matsudaira gravely considered his answer for a long, suspenseful moment. Sano offered him the tree. He hesitated, then took it, but his eyes flashed a warning at Sano.