“Walk ahead of us,” Kajikawa said. “Whoever we meet, tell them to get out of the way, or I’ll kill the shogun.”
With an agonized glance at his father, Yoritomo fell into step. Sano called, “Kajikawa-san.” He squeezed his voice through the pain growing in his bent spine. He tried not to strain against his bonds and make it worse. “You won’t get away with this.”
“Why not?” Kajikawa kept moving. “I’ve already gotten away with plenty that you never thought I would.” But his steps slowed as he neared the door.
Sano hoped it meant he wanted to be stopped. “By now everybody knows what’s happened. The palace will be surrounded by troops.”
“They won’t touch me as long as I’ve got His Excellency.”
The shogun moaned. “Somebody help me!”
Sano wriggled across the floor and blocked Kajikawa’s path. Agony shot through his spine. His muscles contracted. The sash pulled tighter. He gasped.
“You can’t stop me.” Kajikawa edged around Sano.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Sano asked.
“Someplace. Anyplace away from Edo.” Kajikawa sounded forlorn.
“You obviously haven’t thought it through. Let me tell you what will happen when you get outside.” The sash cut into Sano’s flesh. His fingers and toes were going numb. “The army will surround you and follow you wherever you go.”
“I don’t want to die!” the shogun blubbered. “Please!”
The other people in the room lay silent, listening. Sano felt them depending on him. The air stank with their fear of what would happen if he failed to save the shogun. Everyone present would surely be punished. And then a war for control of the regime would begin. Yanagisawa’s gaze shot daggers of hatred, rage, and hope at Sano.
“The army won’t touch me.” Kajikawa grunted with exertion as he pushed the shogun ahead. “As long as I’ve got His Excellency, I’m safe.”
“You can’t hang on to him forever,” Sano pointed out. “You’ll have to rest sooner or later. And then it’ll be over. You should surrender now, while you can.”
Kajikawa abruptly stopped a few paces from the door. Sarcasm, terror, and desperation played with his face like wicked ghosts. His eyes watered. “You’re such a know-it-all! So tell me: I’m doomed if I go through with this, but what good will it do me not to?”
Even though Sano saw how badly Kajikawa wanted to be persuaded to surrender, he had nothing to offer Kajikawa in return. Kajikawa wouldn’t believe false promises; Yanagisawa had proved that. Sano ransacked his imagination.
“You wanted to explain why you did what you did,” Sano said. “If you go out there, you’ll be too busy trying to fend off the army.” Muscle spasms tortured him. His back was breaking. “This might be your last chance. Why not take it? You have a captive audience.”
Kajikawa hesitated. Sano heard the people on the floor draw their breath. He said, “When you die, it will be too late.”
Kajikawa’s eyes revealed the inner battle between his urge to flee and his desire to justify himself.
“Wouldn’t you rather talk while you can?” Sano coaxed. There was no feeling left in his hands or feet, and he knew Masahiro wasn’t any better off. A tremendous guilt crushed him. He was responsible for Masahiro being here. He’d done no better by his son than Yanagisawa had by Yoritomo or Oishi by Chikara. “Wouldn’t you like everybody to know what happened to your son?”
Kajikawa’s rage flared. “Don’t drag Tsunamori into this.”
“Tsunamori is already in the middle of it,” Sano said. “He’s the reason you manipulated Oishi into a vendetta against Kira.”
“How do you know?”
“Your assistant told me that you blamed Kira for Tsunamori’s suicide.”
Kajikawa shook his head, and tears flew from his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He clasped the shogun as tightly as a drowning man would his rescuer.
“Expose Kira for what he was, a monster who fed on the pain he caused other people,” Sano urged. “It’s the only way for you to get justice for your son.”
“Justice was done when Oishi killed Kira!”
“Not quite,” Sano said. “The forty-seven ronin’s score is settled, but yours won’t be until your story is out in the open.”
The battle in Kajikawa’s eyes waged, shame versus his need for retaliation. Then Kajikawa said, “You’re right.” His voice broke. “I need the world to know.”
* * *
The underside of the palace was a cold, dark maze that smelled of earth. Guided by diamond-shaped patterns of light from the openings in the lattice, Reiko crawled past stone piers that supported the building, over rough ground that scraped her knees, gouged her hands, and snagged her robes. Cobwebs dangling from the floor joists brushed her face. Reiko had never been in the shogun’s private chambers, but she knew they were at the center of the palace. She inched along, trying not to make a sound. She ducked to avoid bumping her head on braziers suspended under the floor. Stinking basins set on the ground marked the locations of privies. No sound came from the rooms above her until she saw a square patch of light on the ground ahead. The light came from an opening in the floor, as did voices. Reiko looked up the hole, through the room above her, to a ceiling crisscrossed with carved beams. The hole was a space where a brazier had been removed. Reiko felt a draft as the room’s heated atmosphere sucked cold air up through the hole. A man stammered and ranted. Was it Kajikawa?
Were Sano and Masahiro there?
The urge to raise her head through the hole and peek was almost irresistible. But if Kajikawa should see her, there was no telling what would happen. Reiko crept toward the side of the building. She pushed and pulled the lattice until it loosened. Crawling from beneath the palace, she emerged in a courtyard garden that resembled a frozen sea studded with boulders like black icebergs. She climbed the steps to a veranda, moved sideways between curtains of icicles, and slipped through the door.
Inside, she tiptoed along dim corridors. The voice led her around a corner. Here the passage was suffused with lantern light that shone through a paper-and-lattice wall. Reiko saw indistinct shadows on the other side. The voice that she took to be Kajikawa’s broke into sobs. Desperate to know what had become of her husband and son, Reiko pulled her dagger out of its sheath under her sleeve and poked it through the paper pane. She winced at the faint noise of the blade slicing the stiff, brittle rice paper. Ages seemed to pass before she’d cut the top and sides of a square no wider than her eye. She peeled down the flap and peeked through the hole.
On the other side was a room, a vacant platform to her right. Yoritomo stood by the opposite wall. His shoulders were slumped; his beautiful face wore a look of misery. Reiko’s eye darted left, toward the voice that spoke words too low for her to understand. It came from a short, dumpy samurai who stood with his back toward her. He must be Kajikawa. With his left arm he held someone pressed against him. His body partially hid the other man. But she could see the cylindrical black cap that the other man wore. It was the shogun. Kajikawa’s right elbow was cocked upward; he held a sword against the shogun’s throat.
Alarm flashed through Reiko. What had become of Sano and Masahiro?
Her gaze dropped to the floor. Human bodies lay, in contorted positions, strewn across it. Blood gleamed in a shocking red puddle around one body. Reiko’s heart gave a sickening thump. Were all those men dead? Had Kajikawa murdered everyone?
She heard whimpering and thought it came from her, but it was the shogun’s. She peered more closely at the bodies and noticed that their feet and hands were bound with cloth strips. Their eyes blinked. Their faces twisted in expressions of woe. Everyone was alive but the gray-haired old man lying in the blood.
It was Ihara. Not Sano or Masahiro.
Relief cheered Reiko. She scrutinized the other men. Some had the cropped hair and cotton garb of servants. Some were youths-the shogun’s boys. Reiko couldn’t find Sano, but she recognized the brown-and-orange-striped kimono that Masahiro had been wearing this morning.