“Can’t take that chance.”
A shrill whistle split the air. To Sano’s dismay, one of the guards left the front entrance and hurried to meet the others. Twigs snapped as they converged on him. They were less than a hundred paces away.
Sano turned and ran, away from the house, into the dark woods. He tried to move silently, but he couldn’t see where he was going. Invisible branches shot out to rasp against him; unseen puddles splashed under his feet.
“I think I hear something over there.”
The guards came thrashing through the woods after him. An arrow sang past his ear to land in the ground somewhere beyond his sight. Another thunked into a tree he’d just passed. Sano lunged for cover, falling flat on his belly. He lay still as the guards’ footsteps stopped, then began to approach again, cautiously, stealthily. Fighting panic, he half-crawled, half-slithered over grass and mud. He bit back a cry as he tumbled down a short but steep incline. His hands and knees struck stony ground. Nearby a small brook gleamed faintly, reflecting starlight from patches of clear sky between the fleeing rain clouds. Then Sano found sanctuary in the form of a great dead tree stump that stood at the top of the incline. Its gnarled roots made a cave at the water’s edge. He scuttled into the cave, drawing as far back from the entrance as he could.
Quiet footfalls halted above him: all three guards, by the sound. Their lights flashed yellow over the brook. Sano held his breath, fearful that they would see its thin vapor rising from within the cave of roots. Then someone said, “I think he came this way.”
“No,” said the voice that had called the housekeeper a stupid hen. “He’d have jumped the wall.”
The first voice: “We’ll keep looking until we’re sure. The young master’s orders-no trespassers.”
Their voices grew fainter as they moved off. Sano crept from his hiding place and peered over the incline. He saw the lights bobbing through the trees, one toward the front wall, the other deeper into the woods. He relaxed, safe for the moment, although he faced another problem. The guards’ presence made his familiar escape route too risky. He had to find another way out, but he didn’t know how far it was to the rear wall, if he could find his way to it through the woods, or where other guards might be stationed.
An idea came to him. With these three men out chasing him, the house was less heavily guarded. And they would expect him to run away from it, not toward it. He could pass under the buildings and head for the wall on the far side of the gate.
Sano began a slow advance on the house. He felt each step of the way with his hands and feet so he wouldn’t make any noise. Finally he reached the edge of the clearing. Lying there, he scanned the house.
The front-door guard remained at his post, gazing after his companions. Another guard was patrolling the side of the villa. Sano watched the man complete two rounds of inspection to learn the pattern. Walk to front of house, pause, look around. Turn. Walk along side of house, all the way past covered corridor to pavilion, while scrutinizing woods. Turn, repeat. Sano waited until the guard had almost reached the turnaround point at the pavilion. Then he hurried across the open space in a crouching run and dived under the house.
He traversed the side house and its covered corridor. He’d reached the shinden when he heard muffled voices and creaking wood overhead. Lord Niu and his guests. Crawling to the shinden‘s rear corner, Sano poked his head out from under the house. He saw no one on the back veranda or in the garden. Those guards must be the ones now searching the woods for him. He eased the rest of his body free. The voices grew louder, carrying through the flimsy paper panes between the lattice bars. The men sounded agitated, all talking at once, their words unintelligible. Tense in anticipation of more flying arrows, Sano knew he should go before the guards came. He reminded himself that he had the sandal and the rope and O-hisa’s testimony. What more could he expect?
Instead of running, Sano drew his dagger. He’d come too far and risked too much to leave without learning all he could. Emboldened by the noise in the house, he cut a hole in the window. Cautiously he put his eye to it.
Oil lamps and charcoal braziers filled the vast room with an eerie, flickering light and a smoky haze. In the center, twenty young men sat in a semicircle, arguing, oblivious to anything outside. Sano recognized some of them as men Lord Niu had met at the swordmaker’s shop and the martial arts academy. So Lord Niu’s movements hadn’t been as aimless as they’d seemed. He’d arranged the “chance” encounters to summon the men to this meeting. Now they faced him as he knelt upon a platform, a painted screen at his back. An uneasy quiet, punctuated by throat clearings, fell over the group, as if they feared his response.
Although the remains of a meal lay on trays scattered among the men, Sano found the scene more suggestive of a haphazard picnic than of a banquet. Their serious expressions and the almost palpable tension in the room told him this was no ordinary social occasion. Also, the men were armed, as they normally wouldn’t be in a private house. Sano pursed his lips in surprise when he recognized the crests on their kimonos: those of the Maeda, Date, and Hosokawa families among them. Lord Niu had assembled representatives from every major daimyo clan except for the Tokugawas.
The Maeda man spoke. “I think the plan is too risky,” he said. “It won’t work. I propose we reconsider the alternatives.”
Immediately the others joined their voices again in furious dissent.
“He’s right!”
“No! It will work!”
“There’s no time to lose, we have to act!”
“I don’t like it, either.”
“That’s enough.” Lord Niu, who had watched with a thin smile as his companions argued, now silenced them with one peremptory command.
They turned to him, faces reflecting various degrees of fear, respect, and admiration. Sano could understand how Lord Niu inspired such emotions. The daimyo’s son fairly shimmered with a passion that lit his eyes and made his small body seem larger. Even his skin, flushed perhaps by his recent sexual release, suggested an inner fire that drew the men to its warmth. For what scheme had he recruited them? Sano wondered whether it had any bearing on the murders, or if he was risking his life needlessly by eavesdropping.
“There will be no more discussion of the plan,” Lord Niu said, disappointing Sano. He stood, a slight jerkiness of movement the only sign of his deformity. “But in case you have forgotten, let me remind you why our action is necessary, and what we stand to gain from it.”
His voice rose in both pitch and volume; he dominated the room, holding the other men motionless as he paced the platform. “Are we not sick unto death of the repression and humiliation that our oppressors have perpetrated upon us? Have our fathers and grandfathers not been stripped of their ancestral fiefs and moved to lesser ones at the ends of the earth? Have they not suffered the indignities of alternate attendance in Edo and imprisonment on their estates? Are they not unable to come and go freely?”
An angry rumble passed through the men. Backs straightened; fists clenched.
“Must we continue to let the Tokugawas drain our wealth away by forcing us to subsidize the maintenance of their castles, their roads, their waterworks?” Lord Niu shouted, eyes blazing. “Why should we finance the government while the shogun wastes his own money on his harem of boy actors and peasants? Why should we let him dictate how we should furnish our homes, and even how we should dress? Should we endure his spying upon us? Or the abominable harassment by his inspectors when we travel on the Tōkaido?”
The rumble became a roar. “We won’t stand for it any longer!” someone shouted. Other men took up the cry, quieting only when Lord Niu raised his voice over theirs.