CHAPTER SEVEN
INQUIRY
“Hiroki, have you found yourself a woman you’re not telling us about?” Shiro smiled as he spoke, but his voice accused.
“Why shouldn’t he have?” Tetsuo responded. He flexed his shoulder a bit. “If the weather keeps warming up, Hiroki, I’m going to feel limber enough to start working out with the swords again.”
“Don’t be in any hurry, Tetsuo.” Hiroki took a deep breath; the wind was from the south for a change, and so the scent it carried owed more to vegetation and less to conflagration. It would be nice to believe that spring was getting ready to make its appearance, but Hiroki knew the capital and so he knew better. Spring would arrive hear earlier in the year than it did in the highlands of Kozuke province, but it still arrived at its own convenience, and not that of people who didn’t like cold weather. He shifted his staff so that it rested on his shoulder. The end stayed pointed down, the tip just above the surface of the street, as was polite.
“But have you?” Shiro’s voice took on a whiny edge. “And if so, does she have a sister?”
“Shiro, nothing is stopping you from paying for sex, which is what I have been doing,” Hiroki said. It didn’t really feel as if this was a purely mercenary transaction, but there was no need to tell Shiro that. “There are women—and boys—all over the East Market selling their bodies. And there seem to be a lot of sake shops in the capital despite all the fighting. Presumably you could find partners in one of those as well. It’s not my fault if you stay in the mansion every night.”
“I don’t want to pay for sex. I’m handsome and I dress well and women should be prepared to pay me for sex.” Hiroki looked carefully at Shiro; that should have been a joke, but Shiro was sufficiently pleased with himself that you couldn’t always be sure.
It had been a wasted morning. The wakashū still hadn’t returned to his wretched home, and the old gardener-gatekeeper hadn’t even acknowledged their presence when they’d called. Lords Naitō and Matsukata had stayed in the rented mansion because the arms master had made it clear there would be no negotiations while his mansion was polluted and his sister’s murder unsolved. That news had in turn led Lord Naitō to increase the pressure on Hiroki to present at least some evidence of progress in his investigation. They were trying to learn the location of Akamatsu Noritoyo, the Lady Tomiko’s mysterious lover and the arms master’s apparent enemy. But nobody at the arms master’s house could—or would—tell them where Akamatsu lived. Aki, the lady’s personal maid, supposedly knew. But nobody in the women’s quarters could say where Aki was this morning.
“Instead of thinking about women you could tumble,” Hiroki told Shiro, “why don’t you make yourself useful? Why not go back to the arms master’s mansion and dig a little bit deeper into the question of Aki, the little maid who told us about Akamatsu? If we can’t question the wakashū then we have to focus on the others who might be suspects. And I am in no hurry to try to force the imperial household to tell us about that vicious old woman I found with the body. Which means we have to find Akematsu.”
“I’ll bet the women who run the palace would be thrilled by a visit from Shiro,” Tetsuo said. “You could send him to the palace, Hiroki, and I’ll have fun with the arms master’s maids.”
“Too late!” Shiro shouted, turning and dashing off to the west.
“Nobody is to have fun with the maids!” Hiroki called after him. Shiro made no acknowledgment and Hiroki sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother with him.”
“Most of the time I wonder,” Tetsuo said. “He does surprise me sometimes, though.”
Hiroki nodded. Shiro had potential, whatever his faults. However numerous his faults, he corrected himself silently. “Well, he can only learn by doing. In the meantime, what shall we do next? I was telling the truth when I said I had no interest in visiting the palace. It’s bad enough that woman knows I exist.”
“Does it have to have something to do with the lady’s death? We still don’t know which of the factions is trying to kill Lord Naitō.” Tetsuo flexed his wounded shoulder again. “It really is healing well,” he said—mostly to himself. And mostly, Hiroki guessed, to convince himself of something he didn’t truly believe yet.
Hiroki was about to ask Tetsuo to elaborate on his question when four men tumbled out of the sake brewery they had just passed. The four screamed obscenities—“Miyoshi bastards” was one of the few comprehensible phrases Hiroki heard. Without thinking, he shifted—even as he felt Tetsuo change position as well. They were now, Hiroki knew, pretty much back-to-back, protecting each other.
“Why don’t you get yourselves back where you came from?” one of the fighters yelled. Hiroki narrowed his eyes, taking it all in, and shifted his staff so he held it upright. Two of the four appeared to be ashigaru and carried nothing more than long daggers. The other two were warriors, but not very well dressed. Each carried a sword tucked into his sash, and each had a hand on his sword-hilt.
They’re frightened, Hiroki thought. Neither had drawn yet, and the shouting was presumably meant to substitute for more direct action. Are they Yanagimoto partisans?
“Are they worth the trouble?” Hiroki asked Tetsuo, his voice pitched low.
“No.”
“How do we get rid of them, then?”
Before Tetsuo could offer a suggestion, a large woman came rumbling out of the brewery, screaming like a fish-seller. The opposing quartet had not fully realized what was happening when a different, deeper voice joined in; looking over his shoulder Hiroki saw a man rushing out of a workshop, a large and mean-looking chisel in his hand.
In the space of a few breaths the street was full of people, all of them shouting and many of them threatening all of the samurai and ashigaru with dismemberment or worse. “What is this?” Tetsuo asked, leaning close to Hiroki. “I have never seen the underclasses act like this.”
“I have never experienced this either.” Hiroki looked around him; the crowd was growing, but its anger seemed to be focused on the other men. It’s in our favour, he thought, that these people have no idea who we are. “Let’s see if we can back away.” The people behind them seemed inclined to let them pass, but their opponents, seeing them moving, took immediate offence.
One of the Yanagimoto warriors drew his sword and the crowd around him suddenly flowed outward, screaming like crows. Screaming back at them, the man lifted his sword over his head, spreading his feet in a stance Hiroki realized was defensive rather than attacking. The crowd’s movement left Hiroki and Tetsuo exposed; the screaming stopped.
“Enough!” Hiroki shouted into the silence. He used the voice Tetsuo knew from numerous fights and a few unavoidable battles; the Yanagimoto men were sufficiently startled by it that even the sword-wielding warrior stopped his gesturing to stare.
“These good people are correct,” Hiroki shouted at the Yanagimoto men. “It is illegal to fight in their streets and you should know this.” He lowered the butt-end of his staff to the street and used it to support himself, not that he needed the support but more to imply to the Yanagimoto men that he posed no threat. “I don’t care what you may think of us or what you may have heard. But you can tell Lord Yanagimoto that we are visitors to the city and that’s all we are, or intend to be. You should have no quarrel with us. We have none with you.”
“You killed our men!” the man with the drawn sword shouted. “That makes you my enemy!”
“We defended a neutral lord who was being attacked by five cowards,” Hiroki told him. “I will gladly make an enemy of anyone who thinks such an unfair fight is honourable.” He shifted into an alert stance and tightened his grip on his staff. “Is this what you want? Is this the sort of person you want people to think you are?”
“Lord Yanagimoto’s honour—” the man began.
“Is not affected by this,” Hiroko said, keeping his voice calm. “Unless you chose to drag your lord’s honour down into the mud with you.” He stepped to the side, lifting his staff. Tetsuo stepped forward to stand beside him. “If you do not apologize to these good people, the four of you will die here and not even outcastes will touch your corpses.” A loud click announced that Tetsuo had loosened his tachi in its scabbard.
“Well?” Hiroki glared at the man with the raised sword.
After a long moment the sword wavered, drooped, seemed to find its own way back into the scabbard. “If we have offended,” the warrior began.
“My companion and I are not affected by this,” Hiroki told him. “It is to these people you must apologize.”
“But they are not—they are just—”
“They are the people who sell you sake,” Hiroki said quietly. “Most every day, from the looks of it. If I were you I wouldn’t want to make such persons unhappy with me.”
The Yanagimoto men made the most perfunctory of apologetic bows, but they made them. Hiroki was pleasantly surprised at this; normally samurai were too proud to bow to anyone not their military superior.
“I don’t believe it,” Tetsuo said as the Yanagimoto men walked, as quickly as self-respect allowed, to the north-east.
“Nor do I,” Hiroki replied. “I want to know more about what just happened, though. Don’t you?”
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