They’d reached the garden outside the guest quarters when five soldiers appeared. Wente yanked Reiko to the ground behind a snowdrift. They lay on their stomachs, holding their breath and listening to the soldiers’ voices.
“She can’t have gotten out of the castle.”
“And she can’t hide forever. We’ll find her eventually.”
“You three stay here and watch the chamberlain’s men. The last thing we need is more prisoners on the loose. We’ll keep looking for her.”
Footsteps crunched through the snow near Reiko and Wente. Reiko was horrified to realize that the guards had discovered she’d escaped. She lost all hope of sneaking back into the guest quarters undetected. With her chin pressed into the icy snow crystals, she thought fast and hard.
“What you do?” Wente whispered.
Giving herself up wasn’t an option. The guards would lock her in and watch her more closely than before. Reiko would sit in her room, helpless. This was her one chance to reach Masahiro. She couldn’t waste it.
“I’m going back to the keep,” she told Wente.
Although her expression said what a rash plan she thought this was, Wente gamely accompanied Reiko. But search parties swarmed the castle. Reiko and Wente dived behind bushes, darted around buildings, narrowly evading one patrol after another. They circled the keep from a distance, like a moon orbiting a planet, never getting any closer. Out of breath, gasping with fatigue, they paused in the shadow of a storehouse to rest.
Its door burst open. A soldier came out and spotted Reiko. “There she is!” he shouted.
Reiko fled. Too late she noticed that Wente had run in a different direction. Separated from her guide, on her own now, Reiko ran for her life.
10
Granted permission to interrogate the gold merchant, Hi-rata headed into town with the soldiers assigned to guard him. They were two samurai about eighteen years old. Filled with youthful masculine gusto yet insecure about their abilities, they were anxious to prove themselves superior to other men, including Hirata, their closest target.
“Try to get away from us,” one said, as they escorted him along the road down the hill from the castle. He had a round, pimpled, mischievous face. “Come on, try.”
“We’ll give you a head start.” The other was tall and lanky with an overbite, hopping in his eagerness for a fight. “But you won’t get very far.”
Hirata kept silent and kept walking.
“Of course he won’t,” said the first guard. “Look at him. He limps.
“What happened? Did you fall and break your leg?” the second guard asked.
Even though they must know that Hirata had killed several of their fellows yesterday, they felt safe teasing him because his comrades back at the castle were hostage to his good behavior. When he didn’t answer, the first man jeered “Cripple!” and shoved him.
Hirata, trained to stay in equilibrium under any conditions, let the energy from the shove pass through and out of his muscles. His step didn’t even falter. The guard gave him another, harder shove. This time Hirata flashed its energy back at his tormenter. The guard went reeling as if struck. He landed on his buttocks on a patch of ice and slid.
“Hey!” he cried.
He and his companion lunged at Hirata. Hirata dodged so fast that he seemed to vanish from the place he’d been standing. They collided and fell facedown. Scrambling up, they stared at Hirata with expressions now sober and frightened. Snow clung to their cheeks like sugar on cakes.
“If you try any more nonsense, I’ll have to hurt you,” Hirata said. “Understood?”
They proceeded into town without further incident.
Fukuyama City was a poor excuse for a capital. Along the main street, people fought a losing battle with winter, shoveling the snow from two days ago off their roofs. The stores were identified only by names carved on plaques, and when the few customers passed through the doors, Hirata could see nothing inside except dim lantern light. Wolfish dogs prowled, leaving yellow marks in the snow. Down the side streets nearest the castle, walls surrounded mansions that must belong to Matsumae officials. Farther away, fences enclosed houses where the rich merchants probably lived. The whole place had a shut-in, unwelcoming aspect. Men with what Hirata now recognized as the typical weathered, prematurely aged Ezogashima complexion loitered outside a teahouse, smoking pipes. They regarded Hirata with suspicious curiosity.
His escorts led him to a storefront that took up an entire corner and looked more prosperous than the other businesses. Thick pillars supported the eaves over the veranda. The chimney spewed smoke. Iron filigree lanterns hung on either side of the door. Inside was a Japanese shop modified for the northern climate, its walls lined with the ubiquitous woven mats. A large, square fire pit in the center held burning logs. Around the fire, three clerks sat at tables strewn with coins, soroban for counting money, brushes, ink, and paper for recording transactions. One customer emptied a pouch of gold nuggets in front of a clerk. They haggled about the exchange rate. The other clerks and their customers bargained over debt payment schedules. Daigoro was evidently a banker and money-lender as well as a gold merchant. Two samurai, who looked to be ronin hired to guard the shop, lounged nearby, playing cards. As everyone looked up at Hirata, business and talk ceased.
One of Hirata’s escorts announced, “This is Hirata-san, chief retainer of Chamberlain Sano from Edo. He wants to talk to Daigoro-san.”
A clerk went through a passage hidden by a mat at the back of the shop. Soon he returned and said, “He’ll see you in his private office.”
“You wait here,” Hirata told his escorts.
He went down the passage. At the end was a door covered by another mat. He stopped short of it, revolted by a powerful sense of death. Below the faint stench of decayed flesh vibrated the echo of pain and violence.
When Hirata cautiously entered the room, a man seated behind a desk near a fire pit bowed and said, “Greetings.”
Small, thin, and some forty years old, he wore a lush brown fur coat. His features were neat and well-proportioned, but the gleam in his eyes, the flare of his nostrils, and the wetness of his lips expressed pure avarice.
“At your service, master,” Daigoro said.
Hirata felt an odd, plushy texture under his feet. Glancing down, he saw a bear pelt, complete with claws. He looked up at the head mounted on the wall alongside a stuffed eagle. Other, smaller creatures-rabbits, foxes, and otters-stared at Hirata with eyes made from black beads. Antlers attached to fur-covered bits of skull branched over them. No wonder Hirata had sensed death. This office was a tomb for slain animals.
“What a collection,” Hirata said.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Daigoro said modestly.
“Is this a local custom, displaying them like trophies?”
“No, I thought up the idea.” Daigoro sounded proud of his originality.
“Did you kill them all?” Hirata pictured the merchant setting a spring-bow, felling a woman instead of wild game.
“Of course not. I buy them from the Ezo. But I do stuff them myself.”
The very idea repulsed Hirata. The man totally lacked the traditional concern about cleanliness and purity. He seemed more feral than Japanese, more barbarous than the Ezo.
“I don’t just collect animals.” Rising, Daigoro pointed to an exhibit of wands with shaved tassels at the ends, such as Hirata had seen in the Ezo chieftain’s hut. “These are inau-the barbarians’ messengers to their gods. Those are ikupasuy.” He showed Hirata some sticks carved with geometric designs, animal figures, and strange symbols. “Prayer sticks, used in Ezo religious rituals. And look here.”
He opened a cabinet. On a shelf inside lay what looked like belts made of multiple woven cords cinched with black twine at different intervals. Attached to them by black cords were square black cloth tabs in varying numbers.