Gesturing for Marume and Fukida to follow him, Hirata crept around the castle’s perimeter, staying within the cover of the forest. He saw collapsed structures, a pavilion in an overgrown garden, and more sentries. Breaching the kidnappers’ defenses and rescuing the women began to seem impossible.
Fukida leaned close to Hirata and murmured in his ear: “If we go to Edo, we can bring back more troops.”
This idea had occurred to Hirata, but he couldn’t bear to retreat after he’d come this far. “Not yet,” he whispered.
They resumed circling the castle. Outside a wing that was joined to the main palace by a covered walkway, a lone samurai crouched on the veranda. His two swords jutted at his waist. The clouds shifted, unveiling the moon, which shone on the peeling plaster wall behind him. Above him to his right, in a rectangular window, vertical bars alternated with stripes of dark interior space. As Hirata sidled onward in search of an unguarded access to the castle, a pale shape moved into the frame of the window.
It was a woman, her face framed by long hair that streamed down her shoulders. The moon illuminated her features. Hirata’s heart slammed inside his chest. Recognition froze him so abruptly that Fukida and Marume bumped against him.
“Midori,” he whispered. Jubilation surged within him. He’d found his wife! Giddy with relief, he clung to a tree trunk and stared at her.
She gazed out through the window, her expression pensive and melancholy. Hirata knew she was thinking of him, longing for him. He stifled the impulse to shout her name and run to her. Then Midori turned away from the window. Hirata reached out his hand to stop her, but she vanished into the darkness inside the room. Anguish and frustration flooded him. Even though he and Marume and Fukida could easily overpower the guard, the noise would bring the other kidnappers running. He mustn’t start a battle that he would certainly lose because the enemy outnumbered his side.
“We’ve got to find a way inside the castle and sneak Midori and the other women out,” he whispered.
28
My influence over the Dragon King is too weak to make him abandon his plans,” Reiko told Lady Yanagisawa.
They sat in their room, while the night immersed them in shadow and the light coming in the window glowed pale with the moon’s cold rays. The Dragon King had sent Reiko back to the room, and she’d just told Lady Yanagisawa what had happened between her and their captor. Nearby, the baby wailed, and Midori rocked her.
“She’s hungry,” Keisho-in said. “Time to feed her again.”
“She eats a lot,” Midori said, opening her kimono and suckling the baby. “That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes.” Keisho-in sniffed the baby’s bottom and wrinkled her nose. “She also makes lots of dung. That’s a good sign, too.”
Lady Yanagisawa said to Reiko, “Perhaps if you ask the Dragon King again…?”
Reiko shook her head as desolation overwhelmed her. “I’m afraid that if I continue begging him to leave the island, he’ll get angry. Maybe angry enough to do something terrible.” She touched her cheek, which was still bruised where the Dragon King had struck her. She watched Midori and Keisho-in fuss over the baby; she spoke quietly so that they wouldn’t hear: “Lady Keisho-in is the only one of us that he can use to force the shogun to execute Police Commissioner Hoshina. The rest of us are expendable.”
“Surely he wouldn’t want to harm you or your friends?” As horror crept over her features, Lady Yanagisawa moved closer to Reiko. “Not while he’s in love with you because he thinks you’re possessed by the spirit of his dead mother?”
“He’s a madman,” Reiko said, easing away from Lady Yanagisawa’s suffocating nearness. “However he seems to feel about me, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”
Lady Yanagisawa said, “But even if you can’t trick him into leaving… now that there’s only one man guarding us, perhaps we can get away?”
They looked toward the window that Reiko had identified as an escape route. At that moment Ota’s scowling face peered through the rotten bars she’d hoped to break.
“Listen to me, you little witch,” Ota said, pointing a finger at Reiko. “Even if you’ve fooled my master by playing up to him, you can’t fool me. I know you’re up to no good. I’ll be watching you. So be warned.” His hostile gaze flickered over Midori. “One wrong step, and that baby is dead.”
He disappeared from view. Midori shrieked in terror. As Keisho-in shouted curses after Ota and enfolded Midori and the baby in her arms, Lady Yanagisawa turned to Reiko. “What shall we do?” she said anxiously. “Wait for someone to rescue us?”
“We can’t.” Reiko sat mired in the awful conviction that they would all die unless they got away before the Dragon King discovered that he wasn’t going to get the revenge he wanted. But Ota made sneaking out of their prison impossible. An even worse dread filled Reiko as her mind lit on an alternative.
“I can think of only one way to free us,” she whispered. “The next time I’m with the Dragon King, I must steal his sword and kill him. Then I must get us all out of the palace and into the boats.”
Lady Yanagisawa nodded, her faith in Reiko shining in her eyes. But Reiko experienced a dire, sinking sensation because she also could think of only one way to conquer the Dragon King. It would surely bring her ruination. And even if she defeated him, she still must contend with Ota and any other guards who tried to prevent her and her friends from leaving.
“Your life is in danger, and I haven’t even named you yet,” Midori lamented to the baby clasped against her bosom. Tradition required that parents wait until the sixth day after the birth to name a child and celebrate its arrival. “Oh, Reiko-san, will we be home for her naming day?”
As Reiko beheld Midori and the baby, resignation spread through her, as if turning the blood in her veins to stone. The need to save the innocent child outweighed all the hazards and sacrifices associated with her new plot against the Dragon King.
“I promise we’ll be home by then,” Reiko said.
As Hirata, Marume, and Fukida rounded the curve of the clearing, the castle’s revolving view presented more wings, guarded by more sentries. Then Hirata saw a section where roofs had caved in on structures with gaping holes in the walls and trees growing out of the rooms. Vegetation enmeshed scattered rubble in what appeared to be an utter, deserted ruin that the kidnappers neglected to guard.
“Let’s try there,” Hirata said.
They sprinted across the narrow strip of open ground in the clearing and darted into the ruins. They thrashed through high weeds and stumbled amid debris. Fukida tripped on a pile of wreckage and fell; Marume yanked him to his feet. As they circumnavigated a corner formed by two broken walls on an exposed foundation, sudden light dazzled Hirata.
Toward him marched a brawny young samurai, carrying a lantern. Hirata, Fukida, and Marume faltered to a standstill. The samurai saw them and froze; his eyes registered that they were intruders. He drew his sword. His mouth opened to call his comrades.
Marume lunged. He lashed out his sword. It cut the samurai across the throat. A look of horror came over his face as the wound spurted blood. He gurgled, and the lantern dropped from his hand. He collapsed dead on the ground.
Hirata and the detectives stared at the corpse, then each other, unnerved by the sudden violence and their narrow escape. Then Hirata took a closer look at the dead man’s face. A disturbing chord resounded through him because he didn’t recognize the man-this wasn’t one of Lord Niu’s. Hirata reasoned that he didn’t know all his father-in-law’s many retainers, but he felt increasing doubt that the daimyo was responsible for the kidnapping.