"Who is he? What's his name?"
"He... wouldn't give a name, and he didn't ask for you by name, Lord, but kept on saying: "Say to the samurai: Todo is the brother of Joun."
Instantly Hiraga was on his feet. As he slipped on his yukata, he asked the masseuse to come back tomorrow at the same time and dismissed her, moved closer to the two swords he had borrowed until the shoya could obtain better, and knelt in a defensive-attack position facing the door.
"Send him here, and keep everyone else away."
The slight, dirty young peasant with a tattered kimono grovelled along the passageway and went onto his knees outside the door. "Thank you Lord, thank you for seeing me," the youth mumbled then looked up and beamed inanely, his front teeth missing. "Thank you, Lord."
Hiraga glowered at him, then gasped with disbelief: "Ori? But, but it's impossible!" then peered closer and saw that his tooth had just been blacked out as part of his disguise, in this light the illusion perfect. But no mistaking that Ori was no longer obviously samurai: his topknot had been cut off and all hair on the back and sides of his head roughly trimmed to the same length as the two-week stubble that covered his pate.
"Why?" he asked helplessly.
Ori grinned and sat close to him. "Bakufu are looking for ronin, eh?" he whispered, keeping his voice down against ears they both knew would be listening. "I'm not less a samurai but now I can pass any barrier, eh?"
The air hissed out of Hiraga's mouth with admiration. "You are right. You are brilliant, sonno-joi doesn't depend on a hairstyle. So simple--I would never have thought of it."
"It occurred to me last night. I was thinking about your problem, Hiraga, an--"
"Careful. Here my name's Nakama Otami."
"Ah, so that's it! Good." Ori smiled. "I did not know what to use, hence the code."
"Have they found Todo and the others?"
"No, no they are still missing. They have to be dead. We heard Joun was executed like a common criminal, but still don't know how he was caught."
"Why come here, Ori? It's too dangerous."
"Not like this, nor at night, and I needed to test the new Ori and to see you." Squeamishly he ran his hand over his head stubble, scratching his scalp, his face freshly shaven. "It feels awful, and dirty, somehow obscene, but never mind, now I am safe to get to Kyoto. I will leave in two days."
Hiraga stared at his head fascinated, still bewildered by the astonishing change. "If anything makes you safe that should, except that now all samurai will take you for a common man. How can you wear swords?"
"When I need swords I will wear a hat.
When I am disguised I have this." Ori slipped his good hand into his sleeve and brought out a two-shot derringer.
Again Hiraga's face lit up. "Eeee, brilliant! Where did you get it?"
"Fujiko. She sold it to me, with a box of cartridges. A client gave it to her as a present when he left Yokohama.
Imagine! A low-class whore with such a treasure."
Hiraga held it carefully, weighing it in his hand, pointing it then lifting the catch to see the two bronze cartridges neatly in the barrels. "You could certainly kill two men before you were killed, if you were close enough."
"One is enough to give you time to run off and get some swords." Ori peered at Hiraga. "We heard about the soldiers. I wanted to see if you were all right. Baka! We will go to Kyoto together and leave this place to the dogs until we can come back in force."
Hiraga shook his head and told what really happened, then about Tyrer and discovering the enmity between the French and English, adding excitedly, "This is one of the wedges we can drive between them. We get them fighting amongst themselves, let them kill each other for us, eh? I must stay, Ori. It is only the beginning. We must learn all they know, be able to think like them and then we can destroy them."
Ori frowned, considering the reasons forandthe reasons against--though he had not forgiven Hiraga for forcing him to lose face and remove her cross, he still had to protect sonno-joi. "In that case, if you are to be our spy, you will have to be like them in every way, and burrow into their society like a bedbug, outwardly become friends, even wear gai-jin clothes." At Hiraga's blank look he added, "Why not? That will further protect you, and make it easier for them to accept you, neh?"
"But why should they accept me?"
"They should not, but they are fools. Taira will be your spearhead. He can arrange it, order it.
He could insist."
"Why should he?"
"Barter Fujiko."
"Eh?"
"Raiko gave us the key: gai-jin are different. They prefer to bed the same woman.
Help Raiko to wrap him in their net, then he is your running dog because you are his indispensable go-between. Tomorrow tell him, even though you were furious with the soldiers, it was not his fault. With great difficulty you sneaked back to the Yoshiwara and arranged Fujiko for him for tomorrow evening and "so sorry Taira-sama, it would be simpler for me to arrange these trysts if I had proper European clothes to pass the barriers, and so on." Make her available, or not, get him on her barb, and twist it. Eh?"
Hiraga began laughing quietly. "Better you stay here and not go to Kyoto, your counsel is too valuable."
"Katsumata must be forewarned. Now, the gai-jin woman?"
"Tomorrow I will find out exactly where she is."
"Good." The wind picked up and a gust passed through the house, crackling the paper in the frames and setting the oil flame dancing. Ori watched him. "Have you seen her?"
"Not yet. Taira's servants, a filthy lot of Chinese, don't speak any language I can understand so I could not find out from them, but the biggest building in the Settlement belongs to the man she is to marry."
"She lives there?"
"I am not sure but--" Hiraga stopped as an idea barreled into his head. "Listen, if I could become accepted, I could go everywhere, could find out all about their defenses, could go aboard their warships and..."
"And on a certain night," Ori said at once, jumping ahead, "perhaps we could capture one, or sink one."
"Yes." Both men glowed at the thought, the candle fluttering and casting strange shadows.
"With the right wind," Ori said softly, "a south wind like tonight, with five or six shishi, a few kegs of oil already planted in the right warehouses ... even that is not necessary: we can make incendiaries and start fires in the Yoshiwara. The wind would jump those fires into the village and those would spread to the Settlement and burn it up!
Neh?"
"And the ship?"
"In the confusion we row out to the big one. We could do it, easily, neh?"
"Not easily, but what a coup!"
"Sonno-joi!"