CHAPTER FIVE
INVESTIGATION
The eighth day of the second month
“What you are telling me, I think, is that I wasted my time yesterday.” Tetsuo stabbed at a pickled plum. “And now we have three jobs to do and any single one of them would be enough to occupy all of us. Even if you are right about that woman, Hiroki, we can’t do two things at once. Not and do them well.”
“Nonsense,” said Shiro, his face alight. “We can do it all. Any one of us is a better man than any ten of the men we’ve met this week, Tetsuo. Even you.”
“Let’s match you up against the arms master’s guard and see, then.”
“Put your mouths to better use, and finish eating,” Hiroki said. Lifting his bowl to his mouth he shoveled in a clump of millet porridge. With a bit of miso stirred into it, he told himself, it was nearly as good as rice. He needed to get food into himself as quickly as possible; even with two braziers burning the room was cold this morning.
“Sorry,” Tetsuo said. “I think I’m still frozen from last night. And I’m sure our handsome friend here” — he nodded at Shiro — “spent the entire storm in a cozy monastery full of fat, happy monks.” What Shiro had learned in Sakai was that the Lotus sect had an enormous temple in that city—and that the biggest patron of the temple was Miyoshi Motonaga, the arms master’s brother and Yanagimoto’s fierce opponent. Which wasn’t of much use, because it wasn’t anything they hadn’t already known.
“The next time I need somebody to ride to Sakai or Mt. Hiei,” Hiroki told him as Shiro smirked, “I’ll be sure to send you.” He put down his bowl, had a mouthful of tea, and went on. “You are correct, though, about our inability to do two things at once and do both well. So I believe our first responsibility is to learn as much as we can about the death of Lady Tomiko. That is the wish of the arms master, and assisting the arms master is the primary wish of Lord Naitō. If we fail in this task and anger the arms master, learning more about Yanagimoto will not help us much. Whereas if we succeed…”
“I understand,” Tetsuo said. “But if we cannot investigate this Yanagimoto for the time being we can still keep our eyes open for any hint he might be trying to stop our lords’ embassy to the Miyoshi clan.”
“In the meantime, Hiroki,” Shiro said with his mouth full of porridge, “what have you learned? What do we do next?”
Hiroki began telling them what he had learned from his abbreviated investigations of the previous evening, taking care to underplay his description of his mother’s presence beside the body. Despite his care, though, Shiro seized on the point happily. “A woman from the palace? An aristocrat visiting a samurai house? That’s extremely suspicious, don’t you think? Everything I know about the kuge tells me the aristocrats would rather starve to death than admit that they had any reason to speak to one of us.”
“You are right about that,” Tetsuo said. “But she worries me, that woman.”
You have no idea, Hiroki thought. “She represents a danger to us, yes,” he said. “Not because she is kuge — there are plenty of poor aristocrats now and we need not fear them — but because she is somehow connected with the imperial household. We cannot simply barge into the palace and insist on interrogating her — or even speaking to her. I agree that she is a suspicious person, but we will have to be very careful in our dealings with her and the palace. It’s best, I think, that we forget about her for now and focus on what we can do most easily.”
“Such as interrogating all the maids,” Shiro said, smiling broadly.
“As a matter of fact, yes. We don’t know enough yet about Lady Tomiko to be able to guess why anyone might want to kill her. From what I have seen so far I am certain her brother did not know her so well as her maids did. So we will begin with them.”
He turned to Tetsuo. “Or at least Shiro will. I am going to have a conversation with the arms master’s secretary.
“And your task this morning, my good Tetsuo, is to try to sneak into the grounds of the arms master’s mansion without being caught.”
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