"You make such a good team," the shogun said. "I think I, ahh, made the right decision when I appointed both of you as my chamberlains."
They shared the post of chamberlain and second-in-command to the shogun. That honor, which had first belonged solely to Yanagisawa, had passed to Sano when Yanagisawa had been exiled. When Yanagisawa returned, he'd expected to regain the post, and Sano had been ready to fight to keep it. But the shogun, always loath to exercise his judgment, had been unable to choose which one of them he preferred and made the unprecedented move of splitting the job between two men.
Two men whose antagonism could wreak havoc in the government and tear Japan apart.
Some said it was the most foolish decision ever made by this dictator not known for wisdom. Nobody thought the partnership between Sano and Yanagisawa would last a day without a blowup. But it had defied the odds.
Sano had expected Yanagisawa to oppose everything he did, to undermine his standing with the shogun, to try to turn every powerful man inside and outside the regime against him and run him out of office. But Yanagisawa had cooperated fully and, to all appearances, gladly with Sano. Together they'd overseen the huge, complicated machine of the bakufu-Japan's military government-with smooth, startling efficiency.
Yanagisawa lifted his eyebrow at Sano. "Imagine all the good we could have accomplished years ago if we'd been working together."
Instead of you trying to kill me and me trying to fend you off, Sano thought. "Two heads are better than one," he said out loud.
"Yes, yes," the shogun agreed happily.
Because he hated and feared conflict, he was glad to see his two dearest friends getting along so well. He didn't know they'd ever been enemies or had once vied for control of his regime, which was tantamount to treason. He was astoundingly oblivious to what went on around him, and Sano and Yanagisawa enforced a conspiracy of silence to keep the shogun ignorant.
Often Sano suspected the shogun knew the truth perfectly well, but acknowledging it would require him to take action for which he hadn't the stomach.
"Well, the fun's over," Yanagisawa said. "It's back to business for us, Honorable Chamberlain Sano."
"Yes, Honorable Chamberlain Yanagisawa," Sano said.
Although his former enemy's words were spoken with no trace of a threat, Sano searched them for hidden meanings. He knew the game between him and Yanagisawa was still on, and he was at a serious disadvantage.
Sano's spies hadn't managed to dig up a single clue as to what Yanagisawa was plotting. To all appearances, Yanagisawa had decided that it was better to join forces with Sano instead of risking his neck again. Yanagisawa had reportedly told his allies among the top officials and the daimyo-feudal lords who governed Japan's provinces-that he wasn't interested in fighting Sano anymore. And he'd not tried to recruit Sano's allies to his side.
Yanagisawa had changed the rules of the game, but Sano didn't know what they were. He felt like a blind samurai heading into battle. He could only wait, a sitting target.
The audience departed; the armies dispersed. Waterlogged troops trudged off to drink, celebrate, commiserate, or bathe. Grooms took charge of the horses. The shogun climbed into his palanquin, and his bearers carried him toward the palace. Yanagisawa looked past Sano and said, "I believe there's someone who would like your attention."
Sano turned. He saw, some thirty paces away, an elderly samurai waiting alone beside the stands, watching him. Recognition jolted Sano. Into his heart crept a cold sensation of dread.
2
Sano stood perfectly still as the samurai walked across the martial arts ground toward him. Everyone else receded to the edges of his awareness. Sano felt as if he and the samurai were alone on the muddy, trampled field. He suppressed an irrational urge to draw his sword. Its blade was wooden, and this encounter wasn't a duel.
Then again, perhaps it was.
The samurai stopped a few paces from Sano. He was in his sixties, his physique lean but strong, his shoulders held squarely rigid. He wore a metal helmet, and a leather armor tunic with the Tokugawa triple-hollyhock-leaf crest embossed on its breastplate over a silk robe and trousers striped in dark gray and black. An insignia on his helmet showed that he held the rank of major in the army. His forehead was severely creased, as if from too much frowning. Harsh lines bracketed his tight mouth.
"Good day," he said, bowing. "Please permit me to introduce myself." His deep voice had a faint quaver of old age and an oddly familiar ring. "I am Kumazawa Hiroyuki."
"I know," Sano said.
He'd never met Major Kumazawa face-to-face; they'd never spoken. But he'd observed the man from a distance and knew everything about him that the official government records, and Sano's own spies, could tell. In Sano's desk was a dossier on the entire Kumazawa clan. Sano had compiled it after a murder investigation that had revealed secret facts about his own background.
His parents had led him to believe that his mother came from humble peasant stock. Not until last spring, when she'd been accused of a crime hidden in her past, had Sano learned the truth: Her kin were high-ranking Tokugawa vassals. They'd disowned her because of a mistake she'd made when she was a girl, and she'd never seen them again.
Now Sano felt a flame of anger heat his blood. Major Kumazawa was the head of the clan that had treated Sano's mother so cruelly. Sano said, "Do you know who I am?"
Major Kumazawa didn't pretend to misunderstand, didn't give the obvious answer that everybody knew the famous Chamberlain Sano. "Yes. You are the son of my younger sister Etsuko." He spoke as if the words tasted bad. "That makes you my nephew."
It was just as Sano had suspected: Although he had long been ignorant of his connection with the Kumazawa, they had been aware that their blood ran in his veins. They must have kept track of his mother and her son through the years; they must have followed his career.
The flame of Sano's anger grew. The Kumazawa had spied on him and never deigned to seek his acquaintance. That casting off his mother and refusing to recognize her offspring was what any high-society family would have done under the circumstances did not appease Sano. He was insulted that his uncle should treat him with such disdain. He also experienced other emotions he hadn't expected.
Since learning about his new relatives, he had intended to get in touch with them, but kept putting it off. He was busy running the government and advising the shogun; he didn't have time. Or so he'd told himself. But he'd entertained secret fantasies about summoning his uncle to his mansion and impressing him with how well he had done without any help from their clan. The fantasies shamed Sano; he knew they were childish. Now, here he was, face-to-face with his uncle, soaked with water polluted by horse dung. He felt less like the shogun's second-in-command than an outcast.
"I don't suppose you approached me in order to inquire about my mother," he said in his coldest, most formal tone.
"No," Major Kumazawa said, equally cold. "But I will ask. How is she?"
"Quite well." No thanks to you, Sano thought. "She was widowed eleven years ago, when my father died." My father was the rnin-the lowly masterless samurai-that your family forced her to marry, to get her off your hands. "But she remarried last fall." To the man with whom she had an illicit affair, the results of which caused your clan to disown her. "She and her new husband are living in Yamato."
The murder investigation had re united Sano's mother with the onetime monk she'd fallen in love with as a girl. Loving him still, she'd happily given up her home and her old life in Edo to join him in the village where he'd settled.
"So I've heard," said Major Kumazawa. "Of course, I'm not responsible for what became of your mother."
Sano was glad she'd found happiness after years of disgrace and misery inflicted by her relatives, but she'd left him with unfinished business. "Not directly responsible, perhaps."
Major Kumazawa frowned, deepening the wrinkles in his forehead, at Sano's bitter tone. "My father disowned Etsuko. When he died and I became head of the clan, I merely honored his wishes. Were you in my position, you'd have no choice but to do the same."
Sano didn't think he'd have been so unyielding for the sake of mere convention. He knew it was unreasonable for him to be disturbed about something that had happened so long ago, which his mother had forgiven. Yet he felt that a personal injury had been done to him by Major Kumazawa. He had the strange sensation that they'd met before, although he knew they had not.
"So you upheld your family's ban on contact with my mother, which extended to me," Sano said. "Why break it now?"
Major Kumazawa spoke reluctantly, as if fighting an internal struggle against tradition and duty. "Because I need a favor."
"Ah," Sano said. "I should have guessed." Since he'd become chamberlain, thousands of people had lined up outside his door to ask for favors. Sano regarded his uncle with disgust.
"Do you think I like crawling to you, the son of my disgraced sister?" Major Kumazawa said, angry himself now. "Do you think I want to ask you for anything?"
"Obviously not," Sano retorted, "so I'll spare you the grief."
He turned and started to walk away toward the gate in the stone wall that enclosed the martial arts ground. Beyond the gate lay the shogun's palace, the official quarter, and Sano's own spacious compound-the rarefied world in which he'd earned a place. He wasn't even curious about what his uncle wanted. It had to be money, a promotion, or a job for a friend or relative. It always was.
"Wait. Don't go," Major Kumazawa called.
The anger had disappeared from his voice, which now resonated with such pleading that Sano halted. "I can understand why you don't like me or want to help me," Major Kumazawa said. "But the favor I need isn't for my benefit. It's for someone who had nothing to do with what happened to your mother, who's never done wrong to you or anybody else. Someone who is in serious danger."
That got Sano's attention. His conscience and his honor wouldn't let him walk away from an innocent person in danger. Facing his uncle, he said, "Who is it?"
The sternness of Major Kumazawa's expression had hardened, as though he were trying to keep his emotions at bay. "It's my daughter."
Sano knew that Major Kumazawa had three daughters and two sons-Sano's cousins. All of whom Sano had never seen.