“I don’t provide whores,” snapped the host. “You get your own around here.” One of the customers snickered.
“She’s my sister,” said Tora, improvising. “Our mother’s dying and she’s asking for her, so I came to the capital to look for her. I was told she works this part of town.”
The one-eyed man said gruffly, “She must be hard up. Sorry about your troubles. What does she look like?”
This could not be answered easily, so Tora said vaguely, “About this high, kinda small bones, pretty hair. Ordinary, you know.”
“It’s not fat Mitsu,” volunteered one of the guests.
“And Kazuko’s a good lay, but bald as an egg,” added another.
The one-eyed man turned to the old hag stirring the cauldron. “What do you think, Mother?”
She wiped the sweat from her face with her sleeve. “Maybe she’s the sickly little thing. Only came a few times. Seems like her name was Yukiyo.”
Tora asked eagerly, “Any idea who she went with?”
The old woman said, “Nobody. She came in, but there were no takers. She looked so sick I gave her some soup on account and she left.”
Tora dug out another copper. “Here. We may be poor, but we pay our debts.”
This gesture worked wonders. They all fell to a serious discussion of every man or woman Yukiyo might have talked to, but the men who visited the brothel were mostly transients, nameless laborers, vendors, porters, beggars, or monks.
“Monks?” Tora asked. “Looking for women?”
His naïveté caused general hilarity. “Some of ‘em are worse than ordinary men,” cackled the old woman, “and, come to think, there was one who kept looking at the girl. Getting up his courage, I guess. But he never talked to her that I could see.”
“Is there a monastery around here?” Tora asked, thinking of the pagoda.
There was not. It was a dead end. Tora thanked them and left.
He walked northward, passing through alleys and poor streets, and began to suspect that the slasher had avoided landmarks which his victim might recall. He had zigzagged through quarters, always skirting their main gates. No wonder Yukiyo could not give a clear account of their route.
He wished he could have talked to her some more, but after his master had returned, Yukiyo had refused to visit again. Miss Plumblossom had snorted. “I don’t know what’s come over the girl. When we were leaving, she grabbed my arm and started rushing for the gate. And now she won’t come back!”
But her unexplained fright was not the only thing troubling Tora. Apparently all the slasher did was cut her. Yukiyo was certain that she had not been raped. Lust, even perverted and sadistic lust, Tora could understand, but this was something else entirely.
The quarter he was entering now was more depressing than the previous one. People lived here, if you could call it that, but there were far too many loitering men. No work meant high crime or slow starvation. And that reminded Tora of another troubling fact. The slasher had offered Yukiyo thirty coppers to go home with him. That was a lot of money for an employed laborer, let alone an outcast or mendicant monk.
He raised his eyes to scan the rooftops once again for the spire of a pagoda, when he was suddenly jostled, and a string of curses rang in his ears. Before he could blink, he was flung violently against a house wall, and punches rained on his head and chest. Tora raised his arms to protect his face and waited for his chance. But the onslaught ended as abruptly as it had begun. His assailant spat disgustedly and turned to walk off.
Hot fury washed over Tora. He raised himself from his half -prone position and rushed after his assailant. Grabbing his elbow, he spun him about, cried, “That’s for hitting a man for no reason, bastard,” and landed a fist squarely on the other’s chin. He stepped back instantly. The other man, young and poorly dressed, wore a bloody bandage over part of his face.
He raised his arm to protect himself, but Tora said, “Never mind! I wasn’t done with you for the thrashing you gave me, but I’ll put it on your account, seeing that someone else has already done the job. I don’t like an uneven fight.”
The other man growled, “Don’t let that stop you. I can beat you any day, turd.”
He was slightly taller and much wider in the shoulders than Tora, but the fight had gone out of him.
“Why did you hit me.’
Slowly the other man lowered his arm. “You pushed me, bastard. Nobody does that to me.”
“I didn’t see you. I was looking for a pagoda.”
The eye not covered by the bloody bandage narrowed, looking Tora up and down. “You’re a stranger here?”
There was no sense in inventing new lies. Tora told the story of his dying mother and lost sister again, adding some heartrending detail which brought tears to his own eyes.
The ruffian rubbed his bristly chin, reddened from Tora’s fist. “Sorry, buddy,” he said hoarsely. “Looks like you’re worse off than me. Didn’t mean to lay into you, but I’ve had a bad day with some rough fellows. My head’s sore as hell itself and when you bumped into me I was seeing stars.”
“Oh, in that case,” said Tora, “allow me to make up for it with a cup of wine. My name’s Tora, by the way.”
“Junshi.” The other man grinned, revealing a large recent gap in his front teeth. “Thanks. I won’t say no. There’s a place around the corner sells some decent muck.”
The place was worse than the Crane Terrace, being smaller, dirtier, and smellier, but the wine was slightly better.
“Now, about your sister,” said Junshi awkwardly. “She may be dead, you know. I work for the warden and I can tell you, street girls have a hard life in this quarter.”
“I know, but I’ve got to keep looking till I know one way or another.”
Junshi sighed. “Most men here can’t pay more than a copper or two for a woman, and there’s a lot of rough stuff. My boss could tell you how many dead girls they fish out of the canals or find among the garbage in the alleys.”
“By heaven! The warden!” Tora slapped his forehead with his hand. “Why didn’t I think of that? Where’s his office?”
Junshi snorted. “A warden with an office? In this quarter? If there ever was one, it’s long gone. The position is what you might call ‘by popular acclaim.’ My boss runs things here and he’s usually somewhere around the temple in the daytime.”
Tora sat up. “What temple? Does it have a pagoda? And monks?”
Junshi laughed. “They call it the Temple of Boundless Mercy—which is a laugh, seeing that mercy’s the last thing you expect to find there—but yes, it’s got a pagoda. The monks left long ago. There’s only the one hall and the pagoda left. People think demons roam about at night there. That makes it a fine meeting place for thugs. Either way, it’s unhealthy after dark.” He touched his bandage and grimaced.
Tora shuddered. However, he merely needed to find the house where the slasher had taken Yukiyo, and it was still broad daylight. “Can you introduce me to your boss?”
Junshi guffawed. “Not today. He’ll send me back after the bastards tonight. I’ll show you the way to the temple, but you’ll have to find him yourself. And don’t mention you’ve seen me.”
Tora paid for their wine, and they walked northwestward through slums and open fields with squatters’ shacks. People glanced at them and crossed the street. Junshi filled Tora in on the dangers of the quarter. “Bodies in the street almost every day,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “If it wasn’t for the boss, it’d be worse. The police don’t come here. They don’t like to deal with outcasts. The boss doesn’t care what a man is or has, so long as he doesn’t hurt people.”