[Continuing chapter 13]
“There is no question of it, my lord. I have seen his face every time I have escorted my superiors to your mansion. The dead man was one of your guards.”
Arms Master Lord Miyoshi Takahashi scowled, smacking his folded fan against his thigh, but he said nothing, could say nothing. The lord looked if anything worse today than he had the last time Hiroki had been granted an audience. He is not sleeping, or not well, Hiroki thought. Is his sense of honour keeping him awake at nights? Or does he fear his cousin Motonaga so much?
Hiroki had ordered Saburo, the teashop man, to remove Katsumi to their rented mansion, with himself and his wife going with her to care for her. This way the three would have a roof over their heads until such time as the teashop could be rebuilt. And Hiroki would better be able to watch over Katsumi, if only to make up for his failure to protect her today.
With Katsumi safe, or at least safer, he had come to the arms master’s compound and outright ordered the astonished secretary, Kanegawa, to present him immediately to his lord.
“I am not suggesting that you ordered this attack,” Hiroki said to the lord, quietly and with, he hoped, sufficient respect. “Which does lead me to wonder: who else did this man serve? I have identified the leader of the attack, my lord: Nakamura Yutai, a clerk in the administration of the Sakai shogunate.”
“My cousin Motonaga’s man,” the arms master said after a long silence. “As was the guard Tadao.” The folded fan smacked into the lord’s thigh again, then once more. “Motonaga confuses me in many ways,” he said, “but in one respect I understand him perfectly: he trusts no one, suspects everyone. And so he watches us all. He has spies everywhere.” The arms master looked at his bodyguard, then at Kanegawa, as if expecting one or both of them to confess immediately.
“I can understand why he might do so,” Hiroki said.
“And so you ought, my good spy,” the arms master said. Smack-smack went the fan again. “Spies are all alike, are they not?”
No, they are not. Hiroki kept the thought to himself. “I am with you,” he said, “in not understanding your cousin. Why should he take an interest in me and my work on your behalf? Surely you do not suspect him of any involvement in your lady sister’s death.”
“If he had wanted Tomiko dead,” the arms master said with heavy finality, “he would have commanded it of me and I would have obeyed.”
“So I understand.” Hiroki shook his head. “Which brings me back to the beginning of the circle again: why would he attack my superiors, and then attack me, and now attack the woman who was helping me to investigate on your behalf?”
The frequency with which the arms master slammed his fan against his thigh increased, and the scowl on his face deepened, and Hiroki knew two things: first, that there was a deeper story here than just the murder of one kindly but ultimately unimportant woman.
And second, that he was not going to learn anything about that deeper story from the arms master, at least not today.
As he was leaving the audience-chamber, Hiroki only just managed to avoid being run into by a nervous-looking young monk. The boy was newly minted enough that his robe was still a bright orange, and his head gleamed from the tonsure. “My sincere apologies,” Hiroki said, using a tone that should leave little doubt about who really should be apologizing.
“So sorry,” said the monk, turning to bow and nearly tripping over his robe. He fumbled at a set of prayer beads. “Have to make sure everything is ready when the master arrives.”
“The master?”
“He’s been summoned,” the monk said, “to do another exorcism.”
Next Characters Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13
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