Sowing Ghosts 9.3

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[continuing chapter 9]

“I can spare you only a few minutes,” the arms master said as he entered the room. Sitting cross-legged on the dais, he added in a manner not quite so curt, “Please accept my thanks for the report you sent me yesterday. Though it seems you have given me more questions than answers.” The arms master, thought Hiroki, did not look good today. There were blue-gray smudges under both eyes, and the eyes themselves looked swollen and sore. The last time Hiroki had seen the arms-master, he had sat erect and alert; this afternoon he seemed almost to sag into the cushion on which he sat.

“I regret my failures, lord,” Hiroki said. “And I beg your forgiveness. But I have been unable to find a single person with a believable reason to wish your sister’s death. Even the wakashū, Togashi Shokan, who seems never to have been anything but rude to her, had much more to gain from her life than from her death.”


“Have you spoken to that boy yet? I understood he could not be found.”

“He seems to have returned to the capital last night,” Hiroki said. And how is it that I knew this but you did not? “I spoke with him this morning. He claims to have been at a temple on Mount Hiei these past few days — but he refuses to tell me which temple, so I cannot confirm the truth of his story.”

“Yet you say you do not believe him to have killed my sister.”

“What I said, lord, was that I cannot understand how he would benefit from her death. Whereas he was clearly a beneficiary of her generousness while she lived.”

“Spending my money on a wakashū, as if she were some rice-broker’s wife,” the arms master said with a snort. But he did not deny what Hiroki had alleged. For a moment he glared at Hiroki. Then he said, “I have connections at Mount Hiei. I will ask them to confirm Togashi’s claim. You will be told what I discover.”

“Thank you, my lord. If it is any consolation to you, nothing I have learned suggests that the relationship between your sister and Togashi was anything but a source of amusement to her. I believe her true friendship was with Lord Hosokawa Katsunata. She seems more to have tolerated than liked the wakashū.” The arms master grunted; Hiroki could not guess what that signified.

He took a deep breath. Time to jump into the sea, he thought, and learn whether or not I know how to swim.

“Forgive my rudeness, my lord,” he said, “but I have questions about your sister’s death that I believe only you can answer.”

“As I told you, I do not have much time to spare you today.”

“This will not take long, my lord.” I hope. “I am given to understand that your sister had wished to remarry, and that you had forbidden this.” Lord Miyoshi said nothing, but his colour heightened and his breathing for a moment became noticeably irregular.

“Have I understood this correctly, lord?”

“You have,” the arms master said after a long, hostile silence. “Though I fail to see why it should be any interest of yours.”

“I should have explained myself better,” Hiroki said, while thinking to himself that his interest in the matter ought to have been obvious. “In the absence of any motive I can ascribe to either the wakashū or to your secretary, Kanegawa, I am now considering whether the man she chose to be her husband might have had something to do with her death.”

“The Akamatsu are allies of the Sakai shogunate, just as we are,” the arms master said. “If Akamatsu Noritoyo had conspired to murder my sister I think I would know.”

“They are allies, and yet you refused to allow your sister to marry the man?”

“Yes!” The lord’s anger jerked him into the upright posture that had thus far eluded him, and he glared death at Hiroki — a reaction that made no sense, given the obvious truth of what Hiroki had said to him.

The shout also brought an armed guard into the room, and for a terrifying moment Hiroki worried that he might be cut down because of the guard’s failure to understand the situation. But the arms master, regaining his self-control, waved the guard away. When the man had gone the lord apologized, grudgingly, to Hiroki.

“You are a stranger here,” the arms master said, “and so I should forgive your not understanding. Yes, we and the Akamatsu are allies of the Sakai Hosokawa. But while we as a clan have come to achieve a certain convergence of understanding with the shōgun and the Hosokawa — “

What an elegant way of saying you have usurped the Hosokawa power, Hiroki thought. Aloud, he said: “You do not wish to give the Akamatsu any opportunities to, ah, disturb that convergence. I understand, and I apologize for my failure to do so before. However, I must confess I am still confused as to why you believe Akamatsu Noritoyo to be unworthy of suspicion but have locked up Kanegawa Akihiro, your own secretary.”

Now the arms master looked embarrassed — and then angry at his embarrassment. “I seized on him simply because he was closest to hand. He was in the habit of attending on my sister, and I knew he had seen her the morning of her death. Akamatsu is a warrior and an honourable man for all that he is unsuitable. I am confident he could not have done this thing, even had he been able to invade my compound. Which he could not.

“Kanegawa is — well, a clerk. He bears a sword, but he is not really a warrior.”

Hardly a good reason to suspect the man of a violent act, then, Hiroki thought. Bowing as low as he could manage from his position on his knees, he said, “I thank you for sparing the time to speak with me. Please accept my apologies for my lack of success so far. I hope to have more news for you by this time tomorrow.” If Tetsuo and Shiro are having better fortune than I have.

The arms master dismissed him with a nod. As he backed out of the room, Hiroki tried to avoid looking directly at the lord’s worn, unhappy face. There is too much hidden about this story, he thought as he left.

Next    Characters    Chapter 1    Chapter 2    Chapter 3    Chapter 4    Chapter 5    Chapter 6
Chapter 7    Chapter 8    Chapter 9