“I already told you everything yesterday.”
“Not everything,” Hirata said. The path had disappeared, and they were forging through dense woods. The slope of the terrain rose into the hills. Hirata had a sense of moving deeper out of his own element. “You said Lord Matsumae stole your wife from you. But that’s not true, is it? You didn’t tell me that she went to him voluntarily.”
A terse, defiant reply came from Urahenka. “He stole her.”
“She not only went to live with Lord Matsumae, but she had many other Japanese men before him,” Hirata said.
When the Rat translated, Urahenka didn’t answer. His mouth compressed behind his whiskers.
“Tekare left you,” Hirata goaded him. “She preferred Japanese men because they gave her more than you could. She whored herself to Lord Matsumae, the highest bidder.”
Snowflakes pelted Urahenka’s forehead and disappeared, as if vaporized by the heat of his anger. But was his anger directed at his dead wife or toward Hirata for insulting her memory? At last he began speaking rapidly. “I have nothing else to say about Tekare. It’s time to hunt now. Be quiet or you’ll scare away the deer.”
Primitive didn’t equal stupid, Hirata noted; refusal to talk was a good way for a suspect to avoid being trapped into admitting guilt, and Urahenka obviously knew it.
The chieftain and Detective Marume joined them. The Ainu men left the dogs with the sled, then led the way farther into the forest. Stay behind us so you don’t get shot,“ the chieftain told Hirata, Marume, and the Rat.
He and Urahenka carefully placed one snowshoe in front of the other, easing down their weight. Hirata and his comrades followed suit as best they could. The Ainu men aimed their bows and arrows from side to side, scanning the landscape for prey. The forest was so quiet that Hirata could hear the snow patter on a dead leaf here, plop onto the ground from a branch there. He watched and listened for movement, but the trees and the dense curtains of snow obscured his view. The land seemed empty, lifeless.
Suddenly the Ainu men froze. They simultaneously released their arrows, which zoomed into a stand of pines. Hirata heard thumps as the arrows struck wood. A deer with a silvery pelt bounded out from the trees and scampered away unharmed.
Urahenka muttered what sounded like a curse. Chieftain Awetok merely drew another arrow from his quiver. Amazed, Hirata said, “I didn’t even know the deer was there. If it had been a man, I would have sensed his presence.” His mystic martial arts training had taught him to detect the energy that people gave off. Nobody could sneak up on him.
Awetok chuckled. “You samurai focus too much on the world of humans. You ignore the world of nature, which is just as important. Until you learn to pay attention to what nature has to show you and tell you, you are as good as blind and deaf and crippled.”
A sense of revelation struck Hirata. Was nature the dimension missing from his awareness? Did it hold the key to enlightenment? The idea seemed too simple, yet alluring. Was oneness with nature and the entirety of the cosmos what he’d come to Ainu Mosir to learn from the chieftain?
As the hunt resumed, Hirata strayed away from the other men. He inhaled and exhaled deep, slow breaths in the meditation technique that he’d learned from Ozuno. Fresh, wintry air flowed through every fiber of him, stimulating yet calming. He let his thoughts drift up into the gray sky. The cold whiteness of the landscape and the sting of snowflakes on his face overwhelmed his senses, liberated his spirit. A trance possessed him.
His spirit inhabited the body trudging through the woods yet floated in a dimension free of himself. He felt his awareness expand as though his mind’s energy had burst out of his skull that confined it. He had a terrifying, awesome perception of the world as much vaster, richer, and more complex than he’d ever dreamed. Around him and through him flowed the spirit of Ainu Mosir. Her heartbeat drummed powerfully in rhythm with his own. The forest became animated with forces he hadn’t noticed before-the life dormant in the leafless trees and in the animals hibernating in burrows, the energy bound up in rocks, earth, and ice. Nature clamored at Hirata in voices beyond the range of normal hearing, in languages he didn’t know. Arms spread, face lifted to the sky, he grasped for comprehension.
A human presence suddenly intruded upon his awareness. His trance shattered. The voices were silenced. Nature’s dimension withdrew from Hirata as fast as a hermit crab scuttling into its shell. His spirit snapped back into the iron cage of his body. A premonition of danger blared through Hirata’s mind. He whirled in the direction from which it came.
Urahenka stood amid the trees some ten paces away. He held his bow vertical, string pulled back, sighting along the arrow aimed at Hirata. As their gazes met, Urahenka grinned. Hirata was looking death straight in the face.
Triumphant shouts startled them both. The Rat came thrashing through the trees. “Hey!” he yelled. “The chieftain’s shot a deer!”
Urahenka quickly lowered his bow and arrow.
“It’s a big one,” the Rat said happily. “We can go home now, thank heaven.” He looked from Hirata to Urahenka and frowned. “What’s going on?”
Urahenka gestured at Hirata and spoke. Hirata didn’t need to know Ainu language to understand that the man was saying, “He got lost. I found him.”
Hirata stared at Urahenka as he walked past him. Urahenka met his eyes, innocently bland. Had he intended to warn Hirata off investigating him and the chieftain? Or had he really meant to kill Hirata-then claim it was an accident-because he was guilty of murder and eager to prevent Hirata from finding out?
17
Reiko sank to her knees in her chamber, exhausted from her visit with Lady Matsumae.
In the past she’d held her own against bigger, tougher adversaries who’d threatened and attacked her, but this encounter had battered her emotions. She’d had her heart rubbed in her worst fears about her son. Although she’d promised to help Sano with the murder investigation, and she knew that solving the crime was their best hope of freeing themselves and Masahiro, she didn’t think she could bear to go on with it.
She looked at her hands: They were shaking. Even though the room was freezing cold, her clothes were damp with sweat. A headache pounded in her temples, and nerves twisted her stomach into a tight, nauseous coil.
Lilac added coal to the braziers. “It’ll be warm soon.”
“Thank you,” Reiko murmured. Sick and dizzy, she doubled over to keep from fainting.
“What’s the matter?” Lilac asked. “Don’t you feel good? I’ll get you something.” She hurried from the room and returned with a ceramic jar and cup. Kneeling, she poured amber-colored liquid. “Here. Drink this.”
Reiko took the cup and sniffed. Alcoholic fumes stung her nostrils. “What is it?”
“Native wine. Made from millet and rice. It’ll make you feel better.”
It could hardly make her feel any worse. Reiko drank it down. The liquor was tart and strong. It burned her throat, but her nausea abated, and a calming, sedative relief crept through her. “Thank you.”
Lilac beamed, happy to be of service. As she took the cup from Reiko, their fingers touched. “Your hands are like ice. Here, let’s warm them up.” She pulled a brazier close to Reiko.
“You’re very kind,” Reiko said, gratefully holding her hands over the heat.
Yet she still didn’t care much for Lilac. She felt the pressure of an ulterior motive behind the girl’s kindness. But if the girl wanted to be useful, Reiko would give her the opportunity.
“What do you have to tell me that you couldn’t when we were with Lady Matsumae?” Reiko asked.
Lilac’s eyes sparkled with eagerness, but she hesitated. “I don’t know if I should say.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll get in trouble if I talk about Lady Matsumae.”
That was an understandable fear for a servant at the mercy of her mistress, but Reiko suspected a less admirable reason behind Lilac’s sudden reticence. “In that case, I’d like to be by myself,” she said, not in the mood for games. “You’re dismissed.”