“Merciful Buddha.” His lips moved in automatic prayer.
The black dog barked and suddenly lunged at Sano, stopping just short of actual contact. At this signal, the other two began growling. Sharp teeth gleamed in their red mouths as they pressed close to him, driving him away from their prize.
Released from his horror-stricken paralysis, Sano found his voice. “Get away!” he yelled. He aimed a kick at them. “Go!”
Still growling, the dogs retreated. Sano knelt beside the corpse. After seeing Noriyoshi’s dissection and finding Tsunehiko’s body, he’d thought himself inured to further shock. But the dissection had had a purpose, and Tsunehiko’s death, however terrible, had been caused by a single cut. This meaningless savagery shook him to the core. What kind of monster would do such a thing?
Sano looked back toward the bridge and the street. He should call the guard, and the police. But first he wanted to see the woman’s face. If she was a neighbor, better that he should notify her family than some doshin or other official. Carefully positioning his hands on her hip and shoulder so as to avoid the worst gashes, he rolled her over onto her back. His stomach twisted when he saw that both her nipples had been cut off, leaving raw circular wounds. Nauseated, he looked at her face.
He saw bulging eyes that still held an expression of sheer terror. Swollen cheeks and nose. A trickle of dried blood at each corner of her mouth. Familiar features, altered by death, but not beyond recognition.
“O-hisa,” he whispered.
Chapter 25
The world receded from Sano’s consciousness as he struggled to comprehend his terrible discovery. The dogs barked and growled on the bank of the canal; ravens shrieked overhead as they circled the kill. These sounds merely brushed against the surface of his mind. Who had killed O-hisa, and why?
The guilt and self-hatred Sano had felt after Tsunehiko’s murder returned in full force. O-hisa had died because of him. Now he had another death on his hands, this one worse because he’d known the risks. But what was she doing here? She couldn’t have been coming to see him; he hadn’t told her where he lived. Sano quickly scanned the surrounding area. There was very little blood on the ground beside the body, and no sign of her severed hands or legs, or her clothing. The fences shielded the canal from view of the houses, but surely someone would have heard screams and rushed to see the murder taking place. They would have summoned the police, if not in time to stop the murder, then at at least to remove the corpse afterward. So she’d been killed elsewhere. But then why had her body been dumped here, not much more than a hundred paces from his home?
Footsteps clattered across the wooden bridge above and behind Sano. He turned. Realization struck him in a wave of chilling sickness when he saw the three men hurrying toward him: a doshin accompanied by two assistants, one carrying a coiled rope, both waving barbed staves. He understood now why Lord Niu had left O-hisa here for him to find.
The doshin reached the end of the bridge. A heavy, muscular man, he clambered awkwardly down the bank of the canal. “Murderer!” he shouted. “For this you will die like a common criminal, Sano Ichirō. We’ll have your head on a pike beside the river by next dawn!”
It was a setup. Lord Niu, not satisfied with seeing him relieved of his position as yoriki, intended to stop his investigation by framing him for O-hisa’s murder. No matter that there was no blood on his sword, no witness to his supposed crime, and no reason for him to kill her. The Nius’ wealth and influence had already purchased his fate. Magistrate Ogyu would seal it. Although a samurai wouldn’t normally be treated like a criminal for killing a peasant, the hideous mutilation of O-hisa’s body made her otherwise unimportant murder an atrocity, a punishable offense. Not even his rank would save him from execution. Lord Niu need never worry about his interference again.
This awareness hit Sano in a flash of searing, inarticulate comprehension. While he stood immobilized by shock and horror, the doshin’s assistants slid down the slope ahead of their master. Sano knew that whatever he did, he couldn’t let them catch him. In Edo Jail, he, like Raiden and countless others, would eventually confess under torture. His only hope of survival lay in remaining free long enough to prove that he hadn’t killed O-hisa, and that Lord Niu was both murderer and traitor.
“Come along with us easy, now,” the doshin called as he lumbered and panted behind his men. “No use fighting. There’re three of us and only one of you. Accept your destiny like a true samurai.”
The assistants ran toward Sano. One began to uncoil the rope. The other raised his staff. Sano backed away as he cast about wildly for a way to escape. Simply running-the obvious, cowardly solution-would do him no good. He knew his home terrain. Just a few steps behind him, the canal’s banks grew steeper, almost vertical. Surfaced with smooth stone, they offered no footholds. He’d tried to climb them often enough in his youth, but had always failed and fallen into the water. The water itself was shallow at this time of year, no more than waist high, but with a muddy bottom that would grasp and hold his feet. And there was no use running upward. They would catch him before he could scale those high fences at the crest of the bank. Trapped, he did the only thing he could: He drew his sword.
Perhaps taking his initial hesitation as a sign that he didn’t mean to fight, the nearest assistant rushed Sano, body wide open to attack. Too late he saw the sword; too late he skidded to a stop and lowered his staff to protect himself.
Sano’s blade cut him diagonally from neck to waist. He screamed and sank to the ground, hands clutching the torn front of his kimono, which immediately darkened with blood.
The other men crashed into him. They fell back, uttering yells of outraged surprise. Before they could recover and set upon him with their weapons, Sano fled. As he swerved around them, he recognized the doshin whose arson investigation he’d commandeered, the day he’d heard of the shinjū. How long ago it seemed! Seeing the lust for revenge in the small, cruel eyes, he charged down the shoreline and up the steep bank toward the bridge. He wished he could look back to make sure that the man he’d cut was only superficially wounded, as he’d intended, and not dead. Had he misjudged the pressure of his stroke? But the others were already hot in pursuit.
“Stop! I order you to stop!” the doshin yelled.
His unhurt assistant, younger and quicker, bounded up behind Sano. Blows landed on Sano’s shoulders. He gasped as the barbed staff bit his flesh, and kept running. He didn’t want to fight and kill the man, but he refused to die for a crime he hadn’t committed. The added trauma of his arrest, conviction, and execution would hasten his father’s death. Nor could he let Noriyoshi’s, Yukiko’s,
Tsunehiko’s, and O-hisa’s murders go unavenged. And now he had another, even more critical reason to live. He was the only person who believed that Lord Niu meant to assassinate the shogun, and hence the only person capable of thwarting him.
His feet hit the bridge. There onlookers greeted him with shrieks of terror.
“It’s Sano Shutarō’s son!”
“What’s he done?”
“Killed someone, it looks like.”
That the people he’d known all his life should think him a murderer filled Sano’s heart with shame. He wanted to stop and explain that he’d been framed, but he couldn’t. He must run for his life, or forever lose the chance to prove his innocence.
“Someone stop him!” the assistant shouted, panting as he landed another blow to Sano’s shoulder.
The doshin, falling far behind now, shouted, “You are a dead man, Sano Ichirō! You can’t run forever!”