“I know better,” Lady Miyagi snapped. “They could have taken you away from me and ruined everything. But I got rid of them. And now I’m going to make sure this one never comes between us, either.”
The urgency of demented purpose must have been building rapidly inside Lady Miyagi since Harume’s death, driving her to murder again and again. Sudden panic infused Reiko’s body with strength. Now the woman meant to kill her, too! Wrenching out of Lady Miyagi’s grip, she sprang to her feet and lunged toward the open front of the pavilion. But Lady Miyagi caught the end of her sash and yanked, whipping her around. She grabbed Reiko’s ankle. Losing her balance, Reiko fell backward across the table. Food and crockery went flying. As the crash shot pain through Reiko’s spine, Lady Miyagi jumped on top of her.
“Snowflake, Wren,” the daimyo moaned, huddling in the corner. “No, no… Cousin, you’ve lost your senses. Stop, please. Stop!”
Reiko tried to throw off the daimyo’s wife, but her arms were ensnared by the voluminous folds of her kimono, her legs twisted between Lady Miyagi’s. She couldn’t reach the dagger. She thrashed helplessly as the older woman grappled for her throat. Butting her forehead hard against Lady Miyagi’s face, she felt the painful crack of bone against bone. Her vision went black for an instant. Lady Miyagi cried out and reared back. Reiko heaved herself upright, but Lady Miyagi recovered before she could grab the knife. Blood streaming from her mouth, front teeth broken at the gums, she flew at Reiko, eyes crazed. Together they crashed against the lattice wall, splintering it. Cold air rushed into the pavilion.
“Cousin, stop,” keened Lord Miyagi.
With great chagrin, Reiko realized that she, a believer in the power of women, had underestimated the daimyo’s wife. Lady Miyagi’s urge to protect her husband equalled Reiko’s determination to share Sano’s work. Sano had considered Lady Miyagi a mere slave of her husband and not a serious suspect; like a thoughtless fool, Reiko had followed his example. She’d dismissed Lady Miyagi as old and weak, hardly capable of violence or killing. Now Reiko deplored her own stupidity. She’d correctly placed the blame for the murders within the Miyagi household, but failed to identify the actual culprit. She’d mistaken Lady Miyagi’s murderous mania for sexual arousal, overlooking every clue provided by her behavior. Even the poem, an oblique, chilling confession, had slipped past Reiko. Social mores had blinded her as much as Sano.
“Help!” Reiko shouted. At this moment, she would welcome the protection of a man. “Detective Fujisawa. Detective Ota. Help!”
Lady Miyagi laughed breathlessly as she clawed and kicked and pummeled. She tore at Reiko’s hair, scattering pins and combs. “Scream all you want. They won’t come.”
She clamped a hand over Reiko’s chin, forcing it back. Reiko fought to free herself, but Lady Miyagi possessed the unnatural strength of madness. Her knees pinned Reiko down. She whipped a dagger from beneath her robe and held the blade to Reiko’s face, touching her lips.
At once Reiko ceased struggling and went rigid. Eyes riveted on the length of sharp steel, she couldn’t breathe. She pictured the two concubines, slaughtered like animals, and felt her whole spirit recoil from the blade that could spill her own blood. The only other time she’d faced such danger was during that long-ago sword battle in Nihonbashi. She’d felt invincible then-she’d been so young, so foolish. Now the terrible fact of her own mortality struck Reiko. Yearning for Sano, she bitterly rued the error of confronting a murderer alone. But Sano was back in Edo; regrets wouldn’t save her.
Reiko forced herself to look past the dagger at Lady Miyagi, who knelt atop her, face hovering so close that Reiko could see the jagged edges of her broken teeth, the red veins in the whites of her hate-filled eyes. “Please don’t hurt me.” Despite her effort to sound brave, Reiko’s voice came out a tearful whisper. “I won’t tell anyone what you did, I promise.”
Lord Miyagi cried, “See, she wants to cooperate. Set her free. We can all go home and forget about this.”
“You mustn’t believe her lies, dearest Cousin.” Tenderness momentarily softened Lady Miyagi’s voice as she addressed her husband. “You must trust me to take care of everything, the way I always do.” She angled the knife downward, until it lay across Reiko’s throat.
“Please, let her go,” the daimyo moaned. “I’m scared.” His fascination with death had either been just a pose, or hadn’t withstood the spectacle of real violence. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“I told my husband where I was going,” Reiko said, longing for her own, inaccessible weapon. “You may get away with killing Harume and Choyei, but not me.”
Lady Miyagi laughed. “Oh, but I’m not going to kill you, Lady Sano.” Keeping the knife positioned, she eased sideways off Reiko. “You’re going to do it for me.”
She wound a thick skein of Reiko’s hair around her free hand, then stood. Yanked upright, Reiko cried out as pain shot through her scalp. She stumbled to her feet. Lady Miyagi held her tight; the knife grazed her neck.
“You were so enchanted by the moon,” the daimyo’s wife said, “that you decided to take a walk along the precipice.” Breathing hard, she forced Reiko to walk over scattered food and poems, past the cowering Lord Miyagi. “You tripped and fell to your death.”
“No!” Fresh horror weakened Reiko. “My husband will never believe it.”
“Oh, yes, he will.” Ruthless determination filled Lady Miyagi’s voice. She propelled Reiko down the steps of the pavilion and into the vast, windswept night. “So tragic, but accidents do happen. Move!”
39
I should never have let Reiko go anywhere near the Miyagi!” Sano shouted over the pounding of his horse’s hooves.
“But there was no way you could have foreseen this happening,” Hirata shouted back.
They were galloping up a winding road into the hills. Burning lanterns swayed on poles attached to their horses’ saddles. Their shadows flew over the packed earth. Stone embankments and dark forest blurred past on their left; to the right, lower hills cascaded down to the city, now invisible except for specks of brightness at Edo Castle, neighborhood gates, and along the river. His voice jarred by the gait of his horse, Sano called to Hirata, “I should have gone home to see Reiko after leaving Asakusa, instead of heading straight for the eta settlement. Then I could have prevented her from going on the moon-viewing trip.”
“But if you hadn’t seen Danzaemon, you wouldn’t have known that it was a woman who threw the dagger at Harume.” Hirata’s words echoed across the night. “And I wouldn’t have made the connection between the Rat and Lady Miyagi. We wouldn’t have found the dead concubines. We would have thought it was safe for Reiko to go to the villa.”
Cold wind tore at Sano’s cloak; oily smoke from the lanterns filled his lungs. The full moon followed them like a malevolent, gloating eye. “I wouldn’t have let her go alone,” said Sano, refusing comfort as if it would only make him feel better at Reiko’s expense. “I’d be with her now.”
“They don’t know she’s working for you,” Hirata said. “She’ll be all right.”
“If we don’t get there in time, I’ll kill myself.” Sano couldn’t bear the thought of life without Reiko. How he wished he’d stuck to his original position, even if it meant imprisoning her at home and alienating her forever. At least she would have been safe. “I never should have agreed to let her help with the investigation!”
His rash decision, made at a moment when love had impaired his judgment, could destroy Reiko. She was brave and smart, but also inexperienced and impulsive; it was his responsibility to protect her, and he’d failed. Forging ahead, Sano steered his horse into a narrow cut that angled off the main road. Before leaving town, he’d forced the Miyagi guards to give him directions to the summer villa. Hirata had sent a message summoning detectives to help, but they couldn’t afford to wait for reinforcements.