She hugged him. "I'll hold your hand and tell you a bedtime story. Come along."
Tyrer opened his eyes and found himself in hell, every bone aching, every breath abrading his chest, eyes burning and skin tormented. In the acrid, smoky black he could see disembodied Japanese faces peering at him, two of them, their mouths twisted with cruel smiles and any moment they would pull up their pitchforks and begin to torture him again. A face moved closer. He backed, and let out a cry of pain. Through the mist he heard Japanese and then in English, "Taira-sama, wake, you safe!"
The fog enveloping his mind dissipated.
"Nakama?"
"Yes. You safe."
Now he perceived the light was from an oil lamp, they seemed to be in a cave and Nakama was smiling at him. So was the other face. Saito!
Nakama's cousin, the one interested in ships...
No, this isn't Nakama, this is Hiraga the assassin!
He jerked up and fell back against the wall of the tunnel, his headache blinding him for a moment, and coughed and coughed, bile and a foul taste of smoke making him heave. When there was no more to come up and the spasm had passed, he felt a cup pressed to his lips. He drank the icy water eagerly, choking a little. "Sorry," he murmured. Again Hiraga wrapped the blanket around his half-burnt sleeping kimono. "Thanks."
In a minute he had caught his breath, mind slowly moving from blank to a kaleidoscope of images, coalescing into more pictures, blazing walls, Hiraga grabbing him out of a blaze and running, falling and being helped up, Teahouses collapsing around him, shrubs exploding in their faces, can't breathe, gagging, can't breathe, Hiraga shouting, "Quick, this way... no, this way, no back, this way..." something missing but picking himself up again, fleeing this way and that, guided through walls of fire in front and behind and to the side, women screaming, smoke, and then at the well head, the fire reaching for them, almost at them, "Down, down there, hurry," ducking into it, fire searing, a light below, an orb in the darkness, Saito's face, and then like a thunderbolt...
Fujiko!
"Where's Fujiko?"' he had screamed.
Gasping for breath, Hiraga shouted above the roaring flames, "Quick, go down, she dead in room, Fujiko dead when find you... quick or you dead!"
He remembered that part clearly now. He had leapt out of the well and began to rush back, the fire worse than before, certain death ahead but he had to reach her to make sure and then he was flat on his face, a blinding pain in his neck, he tried to scramble up, the heat monstrous, and all he remembered seeing was the edge of a rock-hard hand driving for the side of his neck. "You... I was going for her but you stopped me?"
"Yes. No way save. Fujiko dead, so sorry, I saw. She dead, you too if go back so hit and carry here. Fujiko dead in room." Hiraga said it flat, still disgusted with Tyrer for risking both their lives on such a stupidity. He had only just had time to lift Tyrer onto his shoulder and clamber down, almost losing his footing to reach safety, saving his own life by a paper thickness from the flames. And he was thinking, fuming, even the most baka man must have known there no chance to find her, no way to survive with the whole garden, entire Teahouses afire, and even if she hadn't been dead then, she was dead fifteen times now. "If no hit, you dead. Is dead better?"
"No." Tyrer's grief swamped him.
"Sorry. I owe you my life again." He wiped his face to try, unsuccessfully, to stop the anguish. Fujiko dead, oh God oh God.
"Sorry, Nak--sorry Hiraga-sama, where are we?"
"Tunn'er. Near Three Carp. It go to vi'rrage, under fence, moat." Hiraga motioned up the well. "It day now."
Tyrer clambered painfully to his feet.
Once upright he felt a little better. Daylight at the well head was muted by billowing smoke, but he could see that it was about dawn.
"Dozo." With a smile Akimoto handed him a loincloth and a spare kimono.
"Domo," Tyrer said, shocked by the amount his own had been burned. There were some burn patches on his legs, nothing truly bad. Hiraga was climbing the rickety handholds to peer out, to be driven back by the heat.
Once more in the tunnel, Hiraga said, "No good. Too hot. Here." He offered him the water again and it was accepted gratefully.
"Taira-sama, best go that way." He pointed down the tunnel. "You a'we right?"
"Yes. Fujiko, she was dead? You're quite sure."
"Yes."
"What happened? I was asleep and then... was it a bomb? I can remember... I think I was blown the other side of the room from... from Fujiko. It felt as if a bomb went off below the house. Was it and why the fire, everything on fire?"
Akimoto touched Tyrer with a smile and said in Japanese, "Taira-sama, you were lucky.
If it wasn't for Hiraga you'd be dead. Do you understand?"
"Hai, wakarimasen." Tyrer bowed solemnly to Hiraga, adding in Japanese, "Thank you, Hiraga-sama, again in debt.
Thank you for life." Sickness went through him.
"Sorry, first rest little." Awkwardly he sat down. "What happen?"
"We speak Ing'erish. Why fires? Bad man have fire bomb. Set fire here, wind take fire to Yokohama and th--"
Tyrer was shocked into life. "The Settlement's gone too?"
"Don't know, Taira-sama. No time to 'rook but Yoshiwara gone, think vi'rrage too. Maybe Yokohama too."
Tyrer scrambled to his feet and went for the well.
"No, not up, this way." Hiraga lit another lamp. "You fo'rrow, yes?" In Japanese he said to Akimoto, "You stay here, I'll take him part of the way, I want to see what's happened, then I'll come back." Leading the way down the tunnel he said again in English, "Bad man have fire bomb. Want hurt gai-jin. South wind make 'ritter fire big fire."
At once Tyrer understood the significance of the south wind pattern: "My God, everything's so combustible, it'll blaze like nothing on earth.
My God, if..." He stopped, frantic with worry. Water was running down the tunnel wall. He scooped some up to cool his head. The cold helped. "Sorry, go on, a bad man?
What bad man?"
"Bad man," Hiraga repeated darkly, but disoriented, of two minds: he was both filled with fury that Takeda had taken the initiative and demolished his own safe haven, and at the same time delighted with the success of the fire bombs that he had seen. With the south wind and the Yoshiwara fired, the village had to go and the gai-jin's houses too. And with their Yokohama base gone gai-jin would have to leave as Ori, first, and then Katsumata had predicted. Sonno-joi had been advanced.
An hour or so ago he had tried to peer out of the Drunk Town well head to see for himself but the heat was too much and had driven him back. Perhaps the bricks had cooled enough for him to see the extent of the devastation there. He held in his hope.
Tyrer still had to be dealt with.
The success of his story depended on whether or not Takeda had been caught alive. It was a good gamble that Takeda had not been and then his version, mostly true, would be logical: "Bad man want destroy all gai-jin, drive away from Nippon. Man from Bakufu. Bakufu want all gai-jin away, Yoshi want all gai-jin gone. Pay spy to start fire, blame shishi, but man from Bakufu."
"You know this man?"
Hiraga shook his head. "A Satsuma man, mama-san say me."
"Raiko-san?"
"No, Wakiko, another Teahouse."