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[continuing chapter 17]
The guards escorted all of them to the mansion’s largest audience chamber, which was now brightly lit and beginning to warm through the efforts of braziers kindled in all four corners. Hiroki ensured that he entered the room first, having surrendered all of his weapons to the guards, and walked directly up to the dais where the master of the house sat, squeezing his temples with crooked fingers.
Arms Master Lord Miyoshi Takahashi looked distressingly like a ghost himself in the lantern-light. His face, never that attractive, was now pale and lined. The evidence of his fingers and cheeks showed he had not been eating. And was that …? Ah, yes. Of course it is. The liquid had dried, but the track it had made on his temple was still visible.
“My lord,” Hiroki told him softly as he straightened from his bow, “I believe your sister would be pleased if you would not use dye to disguise the mark she has given you.”
Lord Miyoshi’s hand flew to his temple. “How did you — ?”
“She has come to visit me as well,” Hiroki said. “I suspect that her spirit has become as frustrated with me as I have been myself, over my inability to obtain the justice she needs in order to continue on the great wheel.”
The others — Tetsuo, Shiro, Hosokawa, the guards, even Lords Naitō and Matsukata — had begun to file into the chamber and seat themselves on the floor. Leaning toward him, Lord Miyoshi whispered, “If you see her again, please beg her to let me be.” The lord’s voice sounded every bit as anguished — and petulant — as had the wakashū Togashi Shokan as he had uttered his dying complaint. “I did not do this to her. She must know I did not.”
“I cannot presume to speak for the dead,” Hiroki told him, “but I am sure that she knows you did not murder her. However, as much as it pains me to say this, my lord, you do carry some of the responsibility for her death. Have the priests not told you that this is why her onryō interrupts your sleep?”
“Priests are useless people,” he snapped. “They have told me nothing, and still ask for donations in payment for their failed attempts to help me.”
You’ll get no disagreement from me about the uselessness of Buddhists, Hiroki thought. Aloud he said, “I believe that once you have apologized to your sister’s spirit and purified your house, her onryō will cease to visit.”
“How do I apologize?”
“You can begin by having me escorted to the women’s quarters, my lord. I must speak to Jitsuko, the senior maid. And then you can summon your secretary. You are going to require a record of what I will tell you when I return to this place.”
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 Chapter 16 Chapter 17
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