The Dragon King's Palace

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “You’re a coward who fears any risk, and too incompetent to deserve any part in this matter. Do not listen to him, Your Excellency,” Hoshina said, leaping to defend his own plan and make Sano look bad.

  “Don’t you insult my master!” Hirata glared at the police commissioner.

  With great effort, Sano ignored Hoshina and said to the shogun, “We must obey the kidnappers’ instructions.”

  A storm of voices raised in protest greeted his words. “But if we, ahh, wait for a letter, what might those, ahh, criminals do to my mother in the meantime?” the shogun wailed.

  “Surely you don’t expect us to give the kidnappers whatever they ask in exchange for the women’s release,” Chamberlain Yanagisawa said in outraged scorn.

  “Or to let them get away with their crime.” Hoshina matched his lover’s tone.

  “To bow down to the kidnappers would portray the Tokugawa regime as weak and vulnerable,” Senior Elder Makino said, and his colleagues nodded their agreement.

  Hirata turned a wounded gaze on Sano, as if Sano had betrayed him. “We can’t just do nothing. Let’s fetch our detectives and go!”

  Sano hated to deny Hirata’s wishes. He hated to bide time while Midori and Reiko were in peril; yet he believed he must convince the assembly that they had no reasonable choice but delay.

  “The women are the kidnappers’ insurance against retaliation from us,” he said. “Criminals who are intelligent enough to plan and carry out that ambush know better than to kill the hostages. They won’t harm the women as long as they think they can get what they want.”

  Observing the other men’s skepticism, Sano wished he had more faith in his own argument. He said, “Whatever price the kidnappers ask should be a small price to pay for the return of the Honorable Lady Keisho-in.”

  Antipathy narrowed Yanagisawa’s and Hoshina’s eyes, but the shogun knelt; his resolve visibly waned. “Indeed,” he said.

  “We can hunt down and punish the kidnappers after the women are safe,” Sano said, then addressed the elders. “That the procession was ambushed, the troops slain, and the women taken has already shown that the regime is vulnerable. Denying it now would be senseless. The news will spread across the country before we can stop it. A hasty, blind rescue attempt is likely to fail, and if it does, the bakufu will look even worse.”

  Makino nodded grudgingly; the other elders followed suit. Chamberlain Yanagisawa conceded with a faint grimace, and the shogun set his weak jaw. “Sano-san is right,” he declared. “We shall wait for the, ahh, ransom demand.”

  “And in the meantime, do nothing,” Hoshina said, glowering at Sano, obviously hating to lose his big chance to be a hero.

  Sano gleaned no triumph from this victory, because his real enemies were the kidnappers, against whom he felt helpless. “On the contrary,” he said. “We must work together to figure out who’s behind the crime, so we can locate and capture him when the time is right.”

  Crisis demanded unity. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi nodded his approval, calmer now that argument had ceased and Sano had reduced the disaster to a solvable problem. An uneasy concord settled upon the other men. The atmosphere in the chamber was hot and stuffy, acrid with smoke and the stink of nerves.

  “I propose that we begin the investigation by identifying potential suspects,” Sano said.

  “The leader of the kidnappers must be someone who has enough troops to massacre an armed procession, or enough money to hire them.” Hirata, though clearly opposed to Sano’s strategy, was duty-bound to support his master.

  “He had to have known in advance that the women were going on the trip, so he could position troops to lie in wait for them,” Hoshina said. Sano noted how quickly the police commissioner had turned the investigation into an opportunity to display his detective talent. “Since the trip was a sudden impulse of Lady Keisho-in’s, and the news didn’t have time to spread far, he must live in or near Edo.”

  Sano had an unfounded but powerful sense that the crime wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed. “I wonder who is the real target of the kidnapping plot,” he said.

  Surprise lifted eyebrows on the faces around him. The shogun said, “How can there be, ahh, any doubt that I am the target, and the kidnapping is an act of war against me?”

  “The kidnapper must be an enemy of the regime, who seeks to humble His Excellency and extort ransom money from the treasury,” said Senior Elder Makino.

  Candidates included citizens who chafed under the bakufu’s strict laws, and daimyo—feudal lords—oppressed by the Tokugawa. Disgruntled rMnin—masterless samurai—were a continuing source of trouble. Yet Sano saw other possibilities.

  “Maybe the kidnappers want more than just to strike at the regime, or money for freeing the hostages,” Chamberlain Yanagisawa said; his expression turned speculative as he voiced Sano’s thought.

  “That they didn’t bother to loot the baggage and steal the gold indicates that lucre isn’t their main concern,” Hoshina said.

  “Maybe there’s a more personal motive behind the crime.” Yanagisawa’s gaze moved from Sano to Hirata, then to the shogun. “Your Excellency is not the only one of us with enemies who might attack us through our women.”

  Sano knew that few people alive had as many enemies as did Yanagisawa. A long list included men he’d ousted from power, the kin of rivals he’d demoted, executed, or assassinated, and lovers used then spurned by him.

  Ominous intent darkened Yanagisawa’s eyes. “I can think of a few people who bear checking into,” he said.

  Hirata sat openmouthed and frozen, as if thunderstruck by inspiration. His voice emerged bitter with hatred: “Lord Niu.”

  “Your father-in-law, the daimyo of Satsuma Province,” Hoshina clarified. “The two of you have been at odds since you married Lady Midori.” Proudly showing off his knowledge, the police commissioner added, “Perhaps the kidnapping is his method of reclaiming his daughter.”

  “If he’s behind this, I’ll kill him!” Hirata exclaimed.

  Sano wasn’t ready to focus the investigation on Lord Niu, or Yanagisawa’s political enemies. “Let’s not forget the Black Lotus,” he said.

  The name tainted the air like poison. The elders averted their eyes and compressed their lips in distasteful memory; Hirata nodded grimly. Wary interest tensed Yanagisawa and Hoshina, while the shogun looked confused as to what a defunct Buddhist sect could have to do with the crime.

  “The sect has been banned since its uprising eight months ago,” Sano said, “but although most of the priests, nuns, and followers have been captured and executed for their attempt to destroy Japan, some remain at large, and they’ve recruited new members. They hate me for my part in crushing the sect, and my wife for killing their leader. They’ve sworn revenge.”

  During the past decade, the Black Lotus had tortured and murdered countless people who’d crossed it. The fanatical members, responsible for a conflagration with a death toll of over seven hundred, were capable of slaughtering a procession while sacrificing their own lives. The thought of Reiko caught by them panicked Sano. The sect might have a fate worse than death in store for her.

  “It seems we have an abundance of suspects to investigate,” Chamberlain Yanagisawa said.

  “Well, I, ahh, order you to begin work at once, get my mother back, and execute whoever kidnapped her as soon as possible.” The shogun waved his hand at everyone. “Dismissed.”

  Sano and Hirata left the palace. Hirata brooded in silence until they entered the walled courtyard of Sano’s estate. Then he blurted, “Forgive me for speaking boldly, but I don’t think we’re doing enough to save the women. Limiting our attention to Edo and investigating our enemies may or may not prove worthwhile. Besides, any evidence the kidnappers left is far away on the Tkaid.”

  “You’re right,” Sano said. “That’s why I’m giving you a secret assignment.”

  Hirata’s features, illuminated by the torches that flared in the courtyard, sharpened with eager h
ope.

  “Go to the site of the abduction,” Sano said. “Take along Detectives Marume and Fukida. Wear disguises, travel under aliases. No one must know you’re investigating the crime because we don’t want the kidnappers to find out we’re pursuing them and disobeying their orders. Examine the crime scene, look for witnesses, and try to pick up the kidnappers’ trail.”

  “Yes, ssakan-sama!” Hirata said with ardent gratitude.

  “Bring me word of any clues you find,” Sano said. “But promise me that you won’t approach the kidnappers or do anything else that might endanger the women.”

  “I promise.” The mantle of fear and helplessness dropped from Hirata; he glowed with confidence. “We’ll be ready to go by dawn. And I promise we’ll find the kidnappers.”

  Hirata rushed off toward the barracks. Sano stood alone in the courtyard, listening to the sounds of cicadas humming, dogs barking, and mounted soldiers patrolling in the night that spread dark and wide around him. His mind yearned across the distance toward Reiko.

  Where was she? As anguish gripped him, Sano hoped she was unharmed. He prayed that she and the other women would come home safely and soon, and that fortune combined with hard work would negate the premonition of calamity that chilled him.

  4

  The sound of sobbing aroused Reiko to groggy consciousness. She thought Masahiro must have wakened in the night from a bad dream. Maternal instinct compelled her to go to him—but she couldn’t move.

  A force like bands of steel locked her legs against each other and her arms at her sides. Confusion blinked her eyes open, but thick, rough material covered her face, and all she saw was blackness. She drew a gasp of surprise, then gagged on something coarse and dry that filled her mouth. Now Reiko became aware that she was moving in rapid, jouncing rhythm, carried by hands that gripped her armpits and ankles. The sobbing continued, accompanied by moans. Panic seized Reiko; her heart lurched.

  Where was she? What had happened to her?

  Then memory seeped, hideous and dreadful, through the fog of sleep that clung to her mind. Visions of the ambush, the massacre, and the kidnapping assailed Reiko. The cries she heard must belong to Keisho-in, Midori, or Lady Yanagisawa. They were still captive, somewhere that defied imagination.

  Terror exploded in Reiko. She wanted to thrash and scream, but that would only waste her strength. Reiko forced herself to be still, urged her somnolent brain to rational thought. She must marshal her wits and learn what she could of her circumstances, discover anything that might prove useful for survival, and keep terror at bay.

  Reiko focused her attention first on herself. Ropes tied around her immobilized her body. The material covering her face was the black hood the kidnappers had put on her head. Her tongue tasted the dryness of cotton fabric stuffed in her mouth as a gag. She felt nausea and a throbbing headache that she attributed to the opium the men had poured down her throat, but otherwise she seemed unhurt. Stiffness in her muscles, and a need to urinate, indicated that she’d slept for a time long enough to have traveled a great distance beyond the scene of the abduction and beyond the reach of anyone looking for her.

  But perhaps nobody knew yet what had happened. Perhaps she would die before someone came to the rescue.

  Fresh panic agitated Reiko like wings fluttering inside her chest. She experienced such an intense stab of longing for Sano and Masahiro that she nearly wept. But she willed herself calm. She directed her senses outward.

  Through the thick cloth of the hood, she heard footsteps treading dry leaves. Twigs cracked. Grass rustled. Men’s breaths rasped. Those noises pierced a mesh of sound composed of crickets and cicadas singing and wind rustling through trees. Owls hooted. Ahead of Reiko erupted phlegmy coughs from Lady Keisho-in; behind her, Midori wept. Where Lady Yanagisawa was, Reiko couldn’t tell. She felt branches snag her garments, and cool, damp air; mosquitoes hummed around her. Pine-scented smoke filtered through the hood. Reiko formed a mental picture of the kidnappers carrying her and the other women through a forest at night, their way lit by torches. The commotion signified many more men following. Reiko’s imagination showed her an endless line of hooded, stealthy marching figures.

  Suddenly the footsteps slowed; movement halted. In the brief quiet Reiko heard a heavy door scrape open. Motion then resumed, and the atmosphere changed. The forest sounds were muted; the men’s feet shuffled on a stone surface; echoes reverberated. The air was still, warmer, and suffused with a musty odor: They’d entered a building.

  As the door thudded shut, Reiko’s body tilted, head upward. The abrupt change of position nauseated her so much that she thought she would vomit and choke. She felt herself ascending, borne by the men whose weight creaked wooden stairs under their feet. They tipped her horizontal at a landing, then climbed more stairs. From above her came the coos of nesting birds frightened by the intrusion, the screech and flutter of bats. The men remained ominously silent. Reiko visualized an abandoned dungeon. Escalating fear prickled her skin.

  They reached another landing, mounted another flight of steps, then stopped in a space where the men, redolent of sweat, crowded around Reiko. She heard thuds as they set down burdens. They thumped her onto the floor and released her. The metallic rasp of blades withdrawn from scabbards struck terror into her heart. Hands groped across her body. She keened and writhed helplessly, certain that the kidnappers meant to kill her and her friends. Mews of protest arose from the other women.

  The hands on Reiko grasped the ropes that bound her. She felt tugs while a blade sliced through the thick cords. As they fell away, she blindly launched herself toward freedom while grabbing for the dagger under her sleeve.

  But the weapon was gone, taken by the kidnappers during the fight. A whirlpool of dizziness drowned Reiko. Her sore muscles collapsed under her weight. She fell back, gasping as the nausea roiled her stomach, awash in cold perspiration. She heard the men bustle away, a door bang shut, and the clank of iron bars dropping into iron latches. Footsteps retreated down the stairs. Tears flooded Reiko’s eyes as she mourned the lost opportunity for escape and cursed her own weakness.

  But she squandered no more energy on regret; her concern shifted to her comrades. With hands that felt thick and awkward Reiko tore the hood off her head, the gag from her mouth. She squinted at pale, meager light that came from vertical cracks in the shutters of windows set in the four walls of a square room in which she lay. Outside, far below her, waves splashed, and she smelled the marine scent of the water. As her eyes adjusted, she saw three prone figures on the floor around her.

  “Lady Keisho-in!” she called. “Midori-san! Lady Yanagisawa!” Feeble cries answered her. Reiko pushed herself upright and breathed deeply for a long moment until the nausea and dizziness ebbed. Then she crawled over to the figure nearest her and removed its hood and gag.

  “Ugh!” Lady Keisho-in coughed and sputtered. Her frightened eyes blinked in her haggard, sunken face. “This feels like the worst hangover I’ve ever had. What’s happened to us? What is this place?”

  “We’ve been abducted, drugged, and imprisoned,” Reiko said, glad that the shogun’s mother was a tough old woman capable of surviving the experience. “I don’t know where we are, except high up near a lake or sea in the middle of a forest.”

  Lady Keisho-in made a clumsy attempt to rise. She said, “I need to make water.”

  Reiko looked around the room. It was unfurnished, the floor made of bare planks, the walls surfaced with peeling white plaster. Two metal buckets sat in a corner. Reiko fetched a bucket and helped Lady Keisho-in sit upon it.

  After she’d urinated, Keisho-in said, “I’m so thirsty. I must have a drink.”

  Reiko also felt a terrible thirst that parched her mouth and throat. Searching the room, she found a ceramic jar of water in another corner. She and Keisho-in drank eagerly, though the water was lukewarm and tasted of minerals.

  Groans emanated from the prone figure whose mountainous belly identified her as Midori. She’d rid
herself of the hood and gag, and as Reiko hurried to her, she retched.

  “I’m going to be sick,” she said.

  Reiko dashed for a bucket. Midori vomited while Reiko held her head. Afterward, Midori sat up and clutched her stomach, hands frantically pressing, rubbing.

  “My baby.” Fright thinned her voice, widened her eyes. “It hasn’t moved since I woke up.”

  She and Reiko sat in momentary speechless terror that the opium—or the trauma suffered by Midori—had killed the unborn child. Then Midori began to sob.

  “No, oh, please, no!” she wailed.

  “The baby will be fine,” Reiko said, hoping she spoke the truth. “It’s just asleep. Lie down and rest. Don’t worry.”

  After she settled Midori on the floor, Reiko hastened to Lady Yanagisawa. The woman lay quiet and still, legs straight, her hands fallen at her sides. When Reiko pulled the hood off her and yanked the cloth gag from her mouth, Lady Yanagisawa blinked up at Reiko. Her tongue slowly moistened her lips.

  “Are you all right?” Reiko asked.

  Lady Yanagisawa murmured, “Yes, thank you.”

  Her face was strangely blank, her tone calm and polite as if this were an ordinary social occasion. She made a feeble motion to rise. When Reiko helped her sit up, she said, “I must be going home now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  An eerie apprehension stole through Reiko.

  “You can’t go home,” Keisho-in said to Lady Yanagisawa. “We’ve been kidnapped.” She peered quizzically into Lady Yanagisawa’s face. “Don’t you remember?”

  Lady Yanagisawa frowned in bewilderment, shaking her head. “My apologies . . . I don’t understand what you’re saying.” She seemed oblivious to their surroundings; she ignored Midori, who moaned and wept across the room. As Reiko and Keisho-in regarded Lady Yanagisawa with speechless confusion, she repeated, “I must be going home now. Kikuko-chan needs me.”