Laura Joh Rowland - Sano Ichiro 08 - Dragon King's Palace

by Dragon King's Palace(lit)

  The shared miracle of a new life raised their downcast spirits; new hope for the future banished the pall of fear, misery, and danger. But Midori's face crumpled. She began sobbing as if heartbroken.

  "What's wrong?" Reiko said.

  "I wish Hirata-san could see his daughter," Midori cried. "Maybe he never will."

  Harsh reality shattered the joyous mood. Reiko, Lady Yanagisawa, and Keisho-in bowed their heads, unable to look at the innocent child that had been born into peril. Even while Reiko remembered the nearby boats, she knew that running away would be more difficult now than ever, with the fragile newborn. And since she couldn't count on anyone to rescue her and her companions before they came to harm, their lives depended on her manipulating the Dragon King into freeing them.

  "Your Excellency, we bring good news," said Chamberlain Yanagisawa. He and Sano knelt before the dais in the audience hall and bowed to the shogun. "We've found proof that Dannoshin Minoru is the Dragon King. And we've discovered the location of a piece of property he owns. We believe he has imprisoned your mother there."

  "You're too late!" the shogun crowed. There was rosy color in his usually pale cheeks, and an uncharacteristic sparkle in his eyes. "I, ahh, already know!" Hopping up and down in a little dance of triumph, he said, "The Dragon King has taken my mother to a castle on an island in a lake on the Izu Peninsula."

  Sano reared back in surprise to hear the shogun name the site that he and Yanagisawa had just found on the map in the archives. He felt his mouth open and a frown contract his forehead. He glanced sideways and saw Yanagisawa reacting in the same manner.

  "How did you find out?" Completely flummoxed for once in his life, Yanagisawa stared at the shogun.

  "The maid Suiren is conscious," the shogun said. "I, ahh, talked to her." He giggled in delight at Yanagisawa's and Sano's discomposure; his attendants hid smiles. "She told me she'd overheard the, ahh, kidnappers say where they were going."

  Sano and Yanagisawa exchanged a look of amazement. That their lord should take such initiative was something Sano had never expected. That Suiren should turn out to possess vital information, after he'd virtually given up hope on her, was almost beyond belief.

  "Well," Yanagisawa said, recovering his poise. "Now that we all know who and where the Dragon King is, I ask that Your Excellency allow me to lead my troops on an expedition to rescue Lady Keisho-in."

  "You're too late again!" The shogun gleefully beheld Sano and Yanagisawa. "I've already sent out the army. They're riding toward Izu at this moment."

  Now Sano's amazement turned to horror. There was another reason he hadn't wanted the army involved, aside from the fact that the Dragon King had threatened to kill the hostages if he were pursued.

  Tokugawa soldiers were good at keeping order because their sheer numbers inspired fear among the public, and good at ganging up against troublemakers in the streets; but most of them had no battle experience. Their commanders had only commanded wars on the martial arts training ground. Sano didn't trust the army with a mission that required superior fighting skill or strategy. When they got to Izu, they wouldn't bother negotiating for the hostages' freedom; they would simply overrun the island. Even if they vastly outnumbered the defense, the Black Lotus mercenaries could kill enough Tokugawa troops and stave off defeat long enough for Dannoshin to kill Lady Keisho-in, Lady Yanagisawa, Midori, and Reiko. There was only one way to prevent this calamity.

  "I request Your Excellency's permission to join the expedition to Izu," Sano said.

  "Myself, too," Yanagisawa said, and Sano saw that he, too, understood that the shogun had jeopardized the hostages' survival. Furthermore, Sano reckoned that the chamberlain still wanted to be the hero, as well as earn back their lord's esteem.

  "What for?" the shogun said with sly malice. "The army can, ahh, manage very well without you. Better that you should, ahh, stay here and attend to the duties you've, ahh, neglected lately. Sano-san, don't you have crimes to investigate? And Yanagisawa-san, I'm getting tired of, ahh, ruling the country by myself. I could use your help."

  Sano and Yanagisawa looked at each other, and between them passed the tacit understanding that they must go to Izu, or woe betide everyone.

  "Please allow us to congratulate you on your cleverness and prompt action, Your Excellency," began Yanagisawa.

  As the shogun preened, Sano continued, "But we must express some concerns about your strategy."

  "Ahh?" Self-doubt deflated the shogun's triumph.

  "The army isn't trained to handle sensitive situations like this," Yanagisawa said.

  "Nor do the commanders know anything about Dannoshin," Sano said.

  "They won't be prepared for how determined he is to get revenge on Police Commissioner Hoshina or die trying," said Yanagisawa.

  "A siege will provoke Dannoshin to kill your mother before the army can rescue her," Sano said.

  The shogun gazed aghast at Sano and Yanagisawa. He wilted like a kite when the wind dies. "I never, ahh, thought of that," he mumbled. Falling to his knees, he clutched his head in both hands. "What have I done?" he said, his voice rising in panic. "Has my haste doomed my mother?"

  His attendants averted their eyes from his misery. Although Sano pitied the shogun, whose stab at independent action had gone wrong, and hated to run roughshod over his lord, there was no time to cosset him. "It's not too late to correct your mistake," Sano said. "Just send us to Izu."

  "We'll get there ahead of the army and prevent it from doing anything to endanger Lady Keisho-in," Yanagisawa said.

  "We'll bring her home safe." And Reiko and Midori with her, thought Sano.

  Now, seized by urgency, the shogun cried, "Yes! Yes! What are you waiting for?" His hands flapped, shooing Yanagisawa and Sano away from him. "Go!"

  As Sano strode out of the room beside Yanagisawa, he looked back and saw the shogun slumped on the dais, face buried in his hands, mourning his own rashness.

  27

  The Dragon King regarded Reiko with stern disapproval. "There is blood on your clothing," he said.

  Again he'd summoned her from the women's quarters, where Keisho-in and Lady Yanagisawa were bathing the baby and Midori slept. Reiko surmised that he'd brought her to his chambers to satisfy the passions she'd aroused in him earlier. Mustering the courage for another attempt to maneuver him, swallowing her fear, she looked down at her kimono and the red stains from Midori's childbirth.

  "You must wash," said the Dragon King. "Come with me."

  He led Reiko downstairs, into a room that smelled of decay and contained a bathtub sunken in a floor of wooden slats. Vines growing on lattice-covered windows imparted a murky green hue to the evening light. Black mold dotted the plank walls.

  "Take off your clothes," the Dragon King said.

  Reiko abhorred the very thought, but she was keenly aware of his power to hurt her should she displease him. And unless she proved her willingness to obey, she would never overcome his distrust, and her plan to free herself and her friends would never work. She turned her back to him, untied her sash, and dropped her outer robe.

  He didn't speak, but she heard his breathing grow harsh. She reluctantly slipped off the white under-kimono and stood naked within the aura of his palpable lust. Her flesh rippled, and her muscles tensed; her spirit withered as she thought of Sano and deplored that this man should see what only her husband had the right to behold.

  "Exquisite," the Dragon King murmured, trailing his fingers along her torso, down the curve of her hip.

  Involuntarily clenching her buttocks, Reiko winced and braced herself for the assault that she'd feared since she'd first met him. Her throat constricted, nearly choking her.

  The Dragon King snatched away his hand. "Go ahead and bathe now," he said in a subdued voice. "There's soap and a bucket on the shelf. Excuse me."

  Reiko heard him leave the room. Her fear eased, although minimally. For some reason he kept skirting the brink of ravishing her, then retreating, but this might be h
er last reprieve before he yielded to desire. She noticed that he'd taken her clothes. She would have run away stark naked, if not for the guards she heard outside, and her captive friends. Reiko filled the bucket from the tub of water that smelled of the lake. She poured the water over herself, then scrubbed her body and hair with the cloth bag of rice-bran soap. Despite the circumstances, she found relief in washing after days without a bath. She rinsed, then immersed herself in the tub.

  The Dragon King appeared at the door. He carried a bundle of folded fabric. "Here are some cloths to dry yourself, and fresh robes to wear," he said.

  "Thank you," Reiko said, shivering in the chilly water as he stared through it at her body beneath the surface.

  "Are your new quarters satisfactory?" he said.

  "Yes, very." The sliding door and wall panels were solid and firmly locked by vertical beams inserted through the latches and floor on the outside; but Reiko had discovered that the wooden bars on the window were rotted and breakable.

  "I've been thinking about what you said earlier." Squatting at the edge of the tub, the Dragon King spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone: "From now on, when you're not with me, you'll be guarded only by Ota, whom I trust. The others won't be allowed near you."

  "Many thanks," Reiko said, glad to hear he'd reduced the watch on her. "I feel much safer now."

  The Dragon King nodded absently, watching Reiko. "You look cold. You'd better come out."

  He stepped back from the tub and waited. Reiko turned away from him as she rose, then climbed out of the water. Quickly she dried herself and put on the clothes he'd brought-a white under-robe and a teal silk kimono printed with white flowers. She tied the aqua sash, wondering where he'd gotten women's clothes. As she combed her fingers through her wet hair, the flowers on the kimono caught her eye.

  They were anemones.

  The clothes the Dragon King had given her had belonged to his dead beloved.

  A chill passed through Reiko as she realized that he must have kept them during the twelve years since Anemone had died. She smelled a faint, stale whiff of perfume and body odor on the robes: They'd not been washed after Anemone last wore them. Reiko pictured the Dragon King fondling the clothes, sniffing their scent, arousing himself. She understood he was perpetuating the illusion that she was the embodiment of Anemone by dressing her in them. Revolted, she turned to face him.

  His strange features were luminous with admiration. He intoned, "The pale wraith of your spirit departed its lifeless body. You drifted in enchanted slumber, down unfathomable depths, through watery channels, to the palace where we reunited." He touched Reiko's wet hair. "Come. There's something I must show you."

  He led her up to his chamber and beyond the sliding partition. There, in a smaller room, Reiko saw the source of the incense odor that pervaded the palace and shrouded him. Brown sticks smoked in a brass bowl atop a small iron trunk. Near the bowl, candles burned around a painted color portrait of a young woman.

  "This is you during the prime of your life, Anemone," the Dragon King told Reiko. "You are as beautiful now as you were then."

  Reiko discerned a vague likeness to herself in the stylized portrait.

  "I've kept your funeral altar since you died," he said. "My faithfulness has brought you back to life."

  Glancing around the room, Reiko saw his bedding rolled up in a corner. Here was morbid evidence that he slept with the altar, worshiping the dead.

  "Who was she?" Reiko said, driven by curiosity to risk disrupting the charade that she herself was Anemone.

  The Dragon King gazed at the portrait. "She was my mother."

  "Your mother?" Surprise struck Reiko, because his behavior toward her wasn't filial in the least. "But I thought... "

  "That she was my lover?" The Dragon King smiled at Reiko's reaction. "Indeed she was." He'd switched from speaking to her as if she were Anemone to addressing her as the stranger in whom he thought Anemone's spirit reposed. "We were much closer than mothers and sons usually are."

  He had engaged in carnal relations with his own mother! Reiko was shocked into silence. She recalled the Dragon King telling her about his dream in which Anemone had taught him calligraphy. Her mental image of the scene underwent a sudden alteration. Instead of an adult couple indulging in love play, Reiko saw a mother fondling an adolescent son, initiating him into forbidden sex. And now the son, grown into this evil, tortured man, wanted to recreate his sordid past with her. The magnitude of his perversion and insanity horrified Reiko.

  "Anemone is the only woman I've ever loved," the Dragon King said, ignoring Reiko's discomfiture. "I never married because I couldn't forget her."

  That was why he had no children and blamed Anemone for his lack, thought Reiko.

  A pained smile twisted his face. "She was less faithful than I. She gave her love to someone else."

  And that explained the anger with which he'd lashed out at Reiko and cursed her as a whore.

  "But I can't entirely blame her," he said. "Women are weak, and susceptible to villains bent on seduction. When that man came along, she was helpless to resist him."

  Reiko listened, compelled by morbid fascination, yet sure that the rest of the Dragon King's story couldn't top his earlier revelation.

  "The man was my father's lover first," continued the Dragon King. "But he wasn't satisfied to make one conquest in our household. When he visited my father, he would sneak flirtatious looks at Anemone. He paid her compliments. When she served tea, he would touch her hand as he accepted the bowl from her and gaze into her eyes. My father was oblivious, but not I." The Dragon King's expression turned resentful. "I saw that man trying to win Anemone's affection. I saw her blush and smile. I saw her sneak him into the garden late at night and make love with him in the summer cottage."

  She'd underestimated the Dragon King, Reiko thought, as she experienced fresh shock that the story involved an adulterous three-way love triangle as well as incest.

  "Anemone was fooled by the man's ardor, but I knew better. I tried to tell her that he was just toying with her to feed his own vanity. I warned her that their affair would come to a bad end. But Anemone wouldn't listen. We never lay together again, because she abandoned me for him." Clenching his hands, the Dragon King flared in indignation: "She abandoned me, her own son, who loved her as that man never did!"

  "What happened to Anemone?" Reiko asked, certain that these events had somehow led to the woman's death.

  "My father learned of the affair between his wife and lover," the Dragon King said, his voice tight with the effort to control his emotions. "One night he took Anemone out on Lake Biwa in their pleasure boat. He drowned her, then killed himself."

  A gasp caught in Reiko's throat.

  "That man not only stole my beloved," the Dragon King said; "he was the cause of her death, and my father's." Rancor harshened his features. "He destroyed my family."

  Reiko felt an unexpected pity toward the Dragon King, tormented by his memories, a prisoner of his torment. Then he said, "If not for Hoshina, my mother would still be alive. Anemone and I would be together."

  Hearing a familiar name startled Reiko. "Anemone's lover was Hoshina? Do you mean Police Commissioner Hoshina, of Edo?"

  "I do," the Dragon King said. He reeked of bitterness, as though it oozed like venom from his pores. "Hoshina was never punished for his part in Anemone's death. Everyone blamed her, because she was an adulteress who deserved to die, and my father, because he killed her. Not only did Hoshina walk away unscathed-he has prospered."

  The Dragon King gnashed his teeth, consumed by rage. Reiko marveled that Hoshina, someone she knew, was the man who'd come between the Dragon King and Anemone, deprived them of their togetherness, and stolen the life from her.

  "These twelve years, I've watched Hoshina rise in the bakufu," the Dragon King said. "I've watched him gain wealth, influence, and power, while I grieved for Anemone. I swore that someday I would make him pay for destroying her."

  "Why d
id you wait so long?" Reiko said, puzzled.

  "When Anemone died I was a mere boy, while Hoshina was an officer on the Miyako police force," the Dragon King said. "He had a powerful patron and other friends in high places; I had none. There was nothing I could do to hurt him then, so I bided my time. I kept my eye on Hoshina. Nine years passed without the right opportunity to attack. Then Hoshina moved to Edo. I followed him, and there I finally conceived my plan.

  "One day, when I was riding through the city, I saw Lady Keisho-in traveling in her palanquin. I asked myself, `What does the shogun value enough that if it were stolen from him, he would do anything to get it back?' The answer was right before my eyes. I decided to kidnap Lady Keisho-in and demand that the shogun execute Hoshina for murder in exchange for her return." The Dragon King gloated; the flames of the candles on the altar reflected in his eyes. "And that's exactly what I've done."