Sowing Ghosts 3.4

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[Continuing chapter 3]

Hiroki found Katsumi in the tea-shop, an empty cup on the table in front of her and a grim, blank expression on her face. He was certain he knew the reason for her expression: with the weather as wretched as it was, and threatening worse, there were few people in the streets and that meant little or no business for her. “Hello,” he said. “Could we talk?”

She looked up at him but it seemed to take a moment for his presence to fully register with her. The smile that touched her face then looked more like an expression of relief than of pleasure, but Hiroki couldn’t grudge her that. “Talk?” she asked. “That’s not a request I hear much.”

“I have a proposition for you.”

“Now that is something I am more familiar with.”


She did not just look grim; there was a pinched quality to her face. Turning to the boy who approached with a cup for him he said, “I am hungry. Please go out and bring us each a bowl of noodles in broth.” He opened the purse hanging from his sash. “Oh, and dumplings. Unless you object to eating meat?” he said to Katsumi.

“I object to not eating,” she said, and Hiroki handed the boy an extra coin.

She took him back to her room, through the smells of decaying leaves and boiling soybeans. She took her futon from the shelf and spread it out, then knelt on it and gestured for him to do the same. “I take it you have changed your mind about the poetry,” she said.

“Quite the opposite, in fact.” She must be having a very bad day, he decided. “Not only do I intend to teach you to the best of my ability, I will provide you with some texts for your use.”

“Interesting.” She kept her face controlled, but Hiroki could read the eagerness. Reading faces was something he had become good at. “Please continue, my lord.”

He shifted, finding the hard floor and thin futon harder on his knees than what he had lately become accustomed to. “I have been given two assignments by my masters and find that I have time and experience enough to do only one of them. I am prepared to teach you about poetry — and to pay for your time — if you consent to help me with the other task.”

“And that task is—?”

“Somebody tried to kill my superior last night. From what we could see of the man, I believe him to be a rōnin. I also believe that your experience with — shall we say — the less-exalted layers of society in the capital would make it easier for you to learn something, anything, about the possible identity of this assassin.”

Her eyes narrowed, brows angling in suspicion. “What do you propose to do with any information I give you?”

“Learn who was behind the attack. I do not believe for an instant that a rōnin would attack our embassy unprovoked. In addition, a man with a reason for wanting any of us dead would have confronted us directly and issued a challenge: that is the warrior way. This attack was made from a distance, using a bow, and without warning. Therefore I have concluded that somebody paid the man who attacked us. I am prepared to ignore that man if he can tell me who paid him.”

“How much will you pay me to help you find out who paid him?”

Hiroki lifted his eyebrows. “If you are going to attract a more cultured clientele you will have to learn to speak more evasively where money is concerned.”

She laughed. “There will be plenty of time in which to learn evasiveness. In the meantime this person has to eat.”

“Very well,” he said. “I will pay you two mon for every day you give me information on which I can act. Find the rōnin I need and I will give you a string of cash — one hundred mon.”

She sucked in a long, slow breath. “Yes,” he said. “That, I suspect, will feed you for a good two months. And I don’t demand your time exclusively, either. You are free to continue your own business so long as you also work on mine.”

“Tell me about these texts you spoke of.”

He looked around the room, saw no paper, scrolls or books, and asked, “Can you read?”

“Some,” she said. “I cannot read Chinese characters at all. I was hoping you would recite to me; I have a very good memory.”

“You are like the lady Sei Shonagon, then. Whereas I have no memory to speak of, and if I am to recite to you it will have to be from books or scrolls.”

“I have heard of this lady. She lived long ago, yes?”

“She was a great writer,” he said, “and yes, a long time ago — five hundred years or so. I will show you some of her work, all of it written using Japanese characters.” He got to his feet, and saw her face flush and her eyebrows descend.

“Are we not to begin today?” she asked. She did not get up. “If not now, when do we begin?”

“I will send word to you here,” he said. “I cannot say precisely when I can come next. I will try to come tomorrow or the day after, all things being equal.”

She looked up at him, appraising now, rather than angry. “You are in a hurry, my lord?”

He laughed. “It’s not that. My knees hurt.”

“You have been living too soft a life, perhaps?”

“I would not have thought so, until now.” He wondered what sort of life Katsumi was living that a warrior’s life seemed soft in comparison to. Then he decided it didn’t warrant getting back to his knees. “Let us eat our noodles and dumplings in the shop, where we can sit.”

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