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[continuing chapter 15]
“You’re hardly limping at all this morning,” Tetsuo said as they passed the Imperial Palace. “Did Lady Tomiko’s ghost heal you?”
“It’s possible,” Hiroki told him. “Certainly something happened last night, because I felt almost my old self this morning when I woke. I still hurt, of course, and probably will for days yet.” If not weeks. “But the hurt is more of an ache now. The way your muscles feel after a long day’s walking, you know?”
“Or a short day’s fighting.”
“That as well. But without the blood. Speaking of which, how is your shoulder? I apologize for not having asked sooner.”
Tetsuo laughed, an abrupt bark. “I could do with some simple fighting. Like you I feel a bit of stiffness, but it is clear to me the muscles weren’t damaged by that arrow. I can raise a sword easily now. And as I said, I’d love a chance to fight. This skulking around in shadows isn’t to my taste, Hiroki.”
“It’s not the skulking, Tetsuo. We do that all the time when we’re gathering information for Lord Tanuma. It’s the city that bothers you.”
“You’re probably right about that. I’m not used to this many people, Hiroki. They get on my nerves.”
“I’m told the capital was once a truly beautiful place, Tetsuo. A joy to behold and a spiritually uplifting place in which to live.” He nodded at the overgrown field that, he thought, had once been a temple. “Of course, that was long ago. Before my grandfather’s time, and possibly before my great-grandfather’s. Long enough ago that only scholars can remember it now, and then only through books and scrolls.”
“You speak of this place as if you were very familiar with it,” Tetsuo said, in a carefully neutral tone.
“I have been here before, of course,” Hiroki told him. “You should have remembered; I’ve made no secret of it.”
“Not what I meant,” Tetsuo said. Then he added, “But never mind. It doesn’t matter, and anyway we’ve got more important things to talk about. Do you think Shiro will be all right?”
“I do.” Hiroki couldn’t help smiling. “He’s just selfish enough that he’ll be able to learn from this without taking it too much to heart. And I really believe he’ll be more careful next time.”
“I sort of wish you hadn’t made that speech about us all being connected. Now I feel a little bad about what we have to do to that poor girl.”
“I wouldn’t feel too badly about her,” Hiroki said, feeling his smile freeze and shatter. “Whatever else she might be, she is not an innocent. She has been working with somebody to get in our way and even to harm us.”
“She never struck me as all that smart. You have to agree, Hiroki, that it’s very possible she doesn’t realize how she’s being used. After all, she was dim enough to fall for whatever persuasion Shiro tried on her.”
“You have a point,” Hiroki said. “So I will ask the arms master to spare her life if it becomes clear that she is more of a dupe than a conspirator.”
When they reached the the arms master’s compound they learned they would not be allowed to speak with the lord. He was, a page told them, unwell and his doctors had confined him to bed. I know why he’s unwell, Hiroki thought, and decided that he was content to leave the lord to his guilty conscience provided he could speak to Aki anyway.
“Aki?” the page asked. “Oh, you mean Lady” — his face fell for a moment, before he remembered his duty and wiped all expression from his features — “the youngest maid. She’s not here.”
“Where did she go?” Hiroki asked him.
The boy stepped back, and Hiroki realized too late how harsh his tone must have been. “I don’t know,” the page said. “I didn’t ask her where she was going.”
“Summon the other maids, then,” Hiroki said. “I have to know where she’s gone.”
“Ask for Jitsuko,” Shiro said from behind him.
“For whom?”
“She’s the senior maid,” Shiro said. “We talked with her and Aki when we first started on this assignment.”
Hiroki remembered a misshapen face and reddened, angular hands. And a calm presence when set against the flightiness of the child Aki. “Yes, that will do. Go and get her, please.”
At first, Jitsuko wasn’t any more helpful than the page had been. “Sorry, sirs, but I do not know where that brat goes. All I know is that she seems to be gone a lot of the time these days, and even though her mistress is dead there’s still work for her to do. And I wind up doing it.”
“Don’t you have any idea where she might have gone?” Shiro asked. “Anything you might have noticed, no matter how insignificant, can help us find her.”
“She in trouble?” Jitsuko’s features set into stony reluctance.
“Perhaps not,” Hiroki lied, jumping in before Shiro could betray them with scrupulousness. “If we can reach her in time.”
“Well,” Jitsuko said, drawing out the word, “she was carrying a basket when she left. And she does sometimes run errands to the big market for the family.” An hour’s walk from here at my speed, Hiroki thought, cursing his injury.
“And she did say something, at morning rice, about doing one last service for her mistress. Something about a final offering to love, but I don’t know what she was talking about.”
“I do,” said Shiro.
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 Chapter 14
Chapter 15
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