When the procession reached the Hibiya administrative district, Reiko unwrapped her quilt, jumped off the oxcart, and ran. The walls outside the mansions and the lights from inside streaked past her. Her breath puffed white vapor into the frigid darkness. She caught up with Sano and his men at her father’s mansion. A sentry opened the gate. Reiko rushed in; Sano and Hirata hurried after her. The low, half-timbered mansion where Reiko had grown up was lit with lanterns burning on the veranda and in the windows. Inside, Reiko ran down the corridors. Servants stood back to let her pass. She avoided their gazes for fear of seeing terrible news written there. Reaching her father’s chamber, she burst through the door and halted.
Magistrate Ueda lay in bed, covered up to his chin with a brown quilt. His head was wrapped in a white cloth bandage, his face so battered that Reiko barely recognized him. Reddish-purple bruises covered his eyes, which were swollen and shut. His nose and mouth were also swollen, with blood crusted around the nostrils and oozing from a cut on his lip. A doctor sat nearby, an old man dressed in the dark blue coat of the medical profession, with a chest full of medicines and instruments. He measured herbs into a cup of steaming water.
Reiko moaned in horror even while her legs buckled with relief that her father was alive. She fell on her knees at his bedside. “Father!”
Magistrate Ueda didn’t speak, open his eyes, or seem to hear her. His breath gurgled in and out of his mouth. Reiko looked anxiously at the doctor.
“He’s unconscious,” the doctor said. “That’s quite a severe injury to his head.”
The tears that Reiko had suppressed during the trip now streamed down her face. She reached under the quilt, found her father’s hand, and squeezed his fingers. They were cold, inert.
Sano and Hirata came in with the magistrate’s longtime chief retainer, an old samurai named Ikeda. He’d taught Reiko to ride a horse when she was young.
“Don’t cry yet, little one,” he said, kind but brisk. “Your father is too strong and stubborn to be killed so easily.”
Reiko felt braced up, the way she had when she’d fallen off her horse and Ikeda had lifted her back into the saddle. She dried her tears.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Sano asked, his face drawn with concern.
“The magistrate and his bodyguards were ambushed on their way home from Edo Castle.” Ikeda explained that the guards had been killed by arrows shot at them. “The magistrate must have tried to run away. He was beaten in an alley not far from here.”
“How did he get home?” Hirata asked.
“A doshin happened to be passing by on his rounds,” Ikeda said. “He found the magistrate and brought him home.”
“Thank the gods,” Reiko murmured, but she was aghast at the thought of the terror and pain her father had suffered. Rage at his attacker began to burn within her. “Who did this?”
“I don’t know. The magistrate was unconscious when the doshin found him, and he hasn’t come to yet.” Ikeda told Sano, “The doshin is still here. I figured you would want to talk to him, so I told him to stick around.”
“Good. I do.” Sano’s expression darkened with the same anger that enflamed Reiko. “Whoever it was, will pay.”
24
Sano and Hirata found the doshin in an empty chamber, fast asleep. Beside him lay his sword and his jitte. When Hirata shook him, he yelled and bolted upright; his hand scrabbled for the weapons.
“It’s all right, we’re friends,” Hirata said, then introduced Sano and himself.
The doshin was about Sano’s age; he had a weathered, genial face. “I remember you both from when you were in the police department. But I don’t suppose you remember me.”
“I do,” Hirata said. “You’re Nomura.”
“That’s right.” Nomura beamed, flattered.
“Thank you for rescuing my father-in-law,” Sano said.
“My pleasure,” Nomura said. “I’d like to help catch the bastard who did this.”
“Good,” Sano said. “Tell us what happened.”
“Well, I was making my rounds with my two assistants. We heard shouts, and we went to see what was going on. We came out on the path beside the canal, and a horse charged past us. It was dragging the rider. I sent my assistants to help him. Then I saw two other horses on the bridge, and a samurai lying there dead with an arrow in his neck. I figured that there’d been three men riding together and they’d been ambushed by thieves.”
That was a common enough crime in Edo, but thieves usually avoided the samurai quarters because of all the armed troops there. Sano had never heard of an ambush in the administrative district.
“But where was the other man?” Nomura asked himself. “Then I heard shouting, from an alley on the other side of the bridge. I ran over there. It was so dark, I could barely see. There was one man on the ground. Another man was beating him. I shouted, ‘Stop! Police!’ The man doing the beating ran away. The man on the ground was moaning. I figured he’d be all right by himself for a little while, so I chased after the other fellow.”
Nomura said regretfully, “I wish I hadn’t left him. I didn’t know he was Magistrate Ueda, and I didn’t know how bad he was hurt. When I came back, he was unconscious. I dragged him out of the alley, and that’s when I recognized him. My assistants caught the runaway horse. The rider was dead. We brought Magistrate Ueda home and they took the two dead men to Edo Morgue.” Shamefaced, Nomura added, “The attacker got away. I’m sorry.”
“I’m glad you were there,” Sano said. “If not for you, Magistrate Ueda might not have survived.”
“Did you get a good look at the attacker?” Hirata asked.
“No. It was too dark.”
Sano tamped down his disappointment and his rage toward the man who’d beaten his father-in-law so savagely. Giving in to emotion wouldn’t help him catch the culprit.
“Maybe I can track him,” Hirata said. “First, I need to see the crime scene.”
“I’ll show you.” Nomura stood.
“You go,” Sano told Hirata. “You’re better equipped to find clues at the scene than I am. And I have another line of inquiry that I want to pursue.”
* * *
Dawn began to lighten the sky when Hirata and the doshin arrived at the bridge. They found a street-cleaner at work with a bucket and a brush, scrubbing the blood off the bridge’s planks. Red-tinted snow and water slopped into the canal below.
“Hey! This is a crime scene!” Nomura said. “Stop!”
The street-cleaner halted, afraid he was in trouble. Hirata said, “It’s all right. Keep working.” The blood wasn’t the evidence he needed. He paced along the path, then the bridge, his eyes scanning the area, his other senses alert.
Nomura trailed him eagerly. “Are you using magic to find the criminal?”
“I’m looking for clues he left behind. It could be a trace of his aura.” Hirata explained what auras were and that he could detect them and use them to track people.
They paced together in silence. After a while Nomura said, “Are you getting anything?”
“I’m getting too much. So many people have passed by here. I can’t tell which aura belongs to the attacker. It would help if I could find something else he left.” Hirata spotted an arrow lying beside the street-cleaner’s bucket. “Hey! Did you find that here today?”
“Yes, master,” the street-cleaner said. “It was stuck in the railing.”
Hirata closed his fingers around the arrow’s shaft. He felt the faint aura of the man who had drawn the arrow in the bow and let it fly. The aura evoked a dull red color shot with flinty sparks. Hirata read a distinctive combination of weakness, brutality, and sullen resentment.