Assassin's Touch (18 page)

He had to find out what had happened while he’d been gone, and attend to any urgent business. He also expected Lord Matsudaira to summon him to report on the progress of his investigation. His workload had increased a hundredfold since it began. The murder case had rejuvenated him, but his energy was flagging.

As he and Reiko and Masahiro entered the mansion together, Sano looked around and upward. The stars in the black sky sparkled, as bright as the fireflies, above the rooftops. Night hid from his view the palace up the hill. All was serene, but Sano imagined he heard the echo of war drums. The smell of gunpowder mingled with the floral scents.

“At least there hasn’t been another murder,” he said.

As night deepened, the moon swelled, white and round and luminescent, over Edo. Night-watchmen stood guard outside warehouses, while soldiers on horseback patrolled the rapidly emptying streets. Inside the windows of the houses, lamps winked out as if extinguished by a vast breath that swept through town. Sentries barred the gates to each neighborhood; the howling of stray dogs echoed in the gathering silence. The city slumbered. Darkness spread across hills and rice fields outside town.

But the Asakusa Temple district up the river blazed with light. Colored lanterns hung from the eaves of the temple buildings, shrines, and roofs of stalls in the marketplace. Hordes gathered to celebrate Sanja Matsuri, the festival that honored the founding of the temple a thousand years ago. People streamed into the main hall to pray for a good harvest, while outside, men performed ancient sacred dances. Village elders from the district paraded through boisterous, drunken throngs that jammed the precinct. Men pushed carts that transported huge drums and gongs, which they beat to produce a thunderous, clanging din. Priests led portable miniature shrines, each decorated with tingling brass bells, gilded ornaments, purple silk cords, and crowned with a gold phoenix. Each shrine rode atop stout wooden crossbeams borne on the shoulders of some hundred youths clad in loincloths and headbands. The bearers chanted in loud, hoarse voices as they labored under their heavy burdens. Sweat glistened on their naked flesh. Cheering crowds engulfed and followed the shrines. Beggars roved, their wooden bowls in hand, beseeching rich folk moved to generosity by the festive atmosphere.

One beggar among the legions made no effort to collect alms. His bowl was empty, his voice silent. Costumed in a tattered kimono and a wicker hat that hid his face, he ignored the merrymakers. His feet, clad in frayed straw sandals, trod a straight path through the crowd, following a group of samurai who walked ten paces ahead of him.

The group stopped at a wine vendor’s stall. The beggar halted a short distance away. His intent gaze focused on the samurai at the center of the group, a stout man with a fleshy face already red from liquor. He wore lavish silk robes and ornate swords. The others were simply dressed; his attendants. He and his men bought cups of wine, toasted one another, drank, and roared with laughter. Rage ignited inside the beggar while he watched them. The samurai, a high-ranked
bakufu
official, was one of the enemy that had trampled his honor in the dirt. His spirit roiled with the hot, bloodthirsty lust for revenge that had inspired his one-man crusade.

The drums throbbed and the gongs rang in louder, escalating tempo. Two shrines converged upon each other. Shouts erupted from the bearers, who quickened their steps and the cadence of their chants. The shrines rocked and tilted perilously above the cheering spectators. They charged in ritualistic duel. The official and his attendants moved closer to watch. The beggar followed, unobserved by them, just one insignificant man among thousands. Vengeance would be his tonight—if only he could get close enough to touch his foe.

As he walked, he dropped his begging bowl. He inhaled and exhaled deep, slow, rhythmic breaths. His mind calmed, like the smooth, unruffled surface of a lake. Thoughts and emotions fell away from him. His internal forces aligned, and he slipped into a trance that he’d learned to achieve through endless meditation and years of practice. His vision simultaneously broadened and narrowed. He saw the entire, vast, glittery panorama of Asakusa Temple district, with his enemy’s moving figure at its center. His senses grew so acute that he heard his enemy’s pulse above the chants, the tinkling bells on the shrines, and the general pandemonium.

The official and his attendants slowed down, their progress hindered by shoving, close-packed humanity. But the beggar slipped through it like water flowing between rocks. People glanced in his direction, then made way for him, as if repelled by some threatening aura that he emanated. He curved his spine, rounded his shoulders, and hollowed his chest in a ritual posture that drew energy from the deepest, most primitive part of him. His limbs felt relaxed and fluid, but alertness tingled through them. The energy thrummed in his blood. The moon and stars seemed to slow their journey across the heavens; the world seemed his to command. He sighted on his enemy and closed the distance between them while the energy inside him radiated outward. His intentions manipulated reality. People moved as if they were puppets under his control, shoving against the man he pursued. They separated him from his attendants and bore him along on their tide. He looked backward at his men, who tried in vain to catch up with him, but the crowd deterred them. The beggar easily followed.

The shrines loomed above their heads, beneath the heaving, writhing, shouting bearers. Now the beggar walked four paces directly behind his enemy. Power rose, like steam inside a volcano, up his spine. He was its vessel, his mind its master. His image of his enemy’s back expanded to fill his vision; his surroundings faded. His gaze penetrated the garments that his enemy wore. He saw bare skin and the underlying musculature, skeleton, organs, and blood vessels. Nerve pathways formed a glowing, silvery network that united and animated the whole. They intersected at nodes throughout the body. His eye targeted a node between two vertebrae on his enemy’s backbone. He hurried his steps until a mere arm’s length divided him from his prey. He inhaled a breath so large that his ribs almost cracked. Spiritual and physical power thundered in him, building to a lethal strength.

Time halted.

His prey and everyone except himself froze motionless.

External sounds faded into abrupt, preternatural silence.

He exhaled at the same moment that he unleashed his control over his body. His arm shot out with such speed that it blurred, propelling his fist, which unclenched an instant before reaching its target.

The tip of his index finger touched the node on his enemy’s spine with a pressure as light as if from a feather wafted against it by a breeze. The energy exploded from him. The force of its release lifted his feet momentarily off the ground. His vision shattered into bright fragments of light. His body shuddered violently. He swooned as rapture akin to a sexual climax possessed him.

Life reanimated the world. The shrines resumed their dueling; the bearers chanted; the gongs rang, the drums pounded, and the bells tinkled; the crowds applauded and surged. The beggar gasped, spent from his exertion. He saw his foe turn toward him.

The official’s expression was one of wary puzzlement: He’d sensed if not actually felt the touch against his back and the presence of danger. It had caused him no pain; he hadn’t even flinched. The beggar let the crowd come between them and carry him away. From a distance he watched the official spot his attendants and push through the melee with them. He looked as ruddy, vigorous, and high-spirited as ever. But the beggar imagined the energy from his strike racing along the man’s nerve pathways and piercing a vein in his brain. He envisioned the blood beginning to leak, the life-force slowly draining. Triumph elated him.

His enemy was a dead man walking, another casualty of his crusade.

16

Sunrise found Sano at his desk, reading documents by the glow of a lantern that had burned all night. As he affixed his signature seal to a document, he noticed that the crickets had ceased to chirp in the garden outside and birds were singing. He heard chatter and bustle from the servants as his estate awakened to life. Detectives Marume and Fukida entered his office, followed by Hirata and Detectives Inoue and Arai.

“Did you forget to go to bed yesterday?” Marume asked.

Sano yawned, stretched his cramped muscles, and rubbed his bleary eyes. “I had some work to catch up on.”

He’d made barely a dent in the correspondence and reports that had filled up his office while he’d been gone, even though his principal aide Kozawa had dealt with much business. And last night, when he’d briefed Lord Matsudaira on the progress of his investigation, Lord Matsudaira had ordered him to continue giving it top priority. Now Sano wished there were two of him, or more hours in the day.

Kozawa appeared, and Sano gave orders that included postponing all his conferences. He dismissed his aide with instructions to attend to minor matters. Then he explained to Hirata and the detectives his plan for today’s inquiries.

“We’ll focus on identifying people that the victims had contact with but were strangers to them, and finding martial artists who might know
dim-mak
.” Sano checked the notes that he and Hirata and the detectives had written. “We’ve determined that all the victims spent time outside the castle and administrative district during the two days prior to their deaths. Hirata-
san
, I want you and your men to go where they went and find out who, if anyone, besides their friends, families and associates, came close enough to touch them.”

He had a disturbing premonition that the killer would strike again unless they worked fast. “Marume, Fukida, and I will go fishing for martial arts experts. I know a good place to start.”

Sano and the detectives rode through a gate into a neighborhood on an edge of the Nihonbashi merchant district. The sentry greeted him by name. The district was populated by families of samurai blood who’d lost their status through war and other misfortunes, merged with the commoners, and gone into trade. He led the familiar way across a bridge that spanned a canal lined with willows. Whenever he came here it seemed as if he’d traveled a great distance. Along the street of modest shops, houses, and food stalls, people smiled and bowed to him. Receiving such courtesies here always made him feel like an impostor. Some of those old folks had once scolded him for making mischief. He passed little boys who were playing and laughing. Had it really been thirty years since he’d been one of them?

He dismounted in a narrow side lane. Fences enclosed the rear lots of businesses and the proprietors’ living quarters. A gate opened. Two women carrying baskets emerged. One was in her fifties, gray-haired and dressed in a plain gray kimono, the other white-haired and elderly. Sano approached them while his men waited down the lane.

“Hello, Mother,” he said.

The gray-haired woman looked up at him in surprise. “Ichirō!” An affectionate smile brightened her lined face.

Sano greeted his mother’s maid and companion, who’d worked for his family since before his birth: “Hello, Hana-
san
.”

They had just come out of Sano’s childhood home. His father had become a
rōnin
when the third Tokugawa shogun had confiscated his master Lord Kii’s lands forty years ago, turning the Sano clan and the lord’s other retainers out to fend for themselves. Before his death six years ago, Sano’s father had approached a family connection, called in a favor, and obtained for his only son a post as a police commander. An extraordinary chain of events had led Sano from there to his present station.

“It’s good to see you,” his mother said. “You haven’t been home for more than two months.”

“I know,” Sano said, feeling guilty because he’d neglected his duty to her.

When he’d become the shogun’s
sōsakan-sama
after a brief stint on the police force, he’d moved to Edo Castle and taken her with him. But the change had upset her so much that Sano had been forced to move her back to the house where she’d spent almost her entire life. Now she lived here contentedly, on the generous allowance he provided .

“How are my grandson and my honorable daughter-in-law?” His mother adored Masahiro, but was awed by Reiko and shy with her. After Sano replied that they were well, she said, “Hana and I were on our way to the market, but we can go later. Come inside and have something to eat.”

“Thank you, but I can’t stay,” Sano said.

She noticed his men waiting on their horses down the street. “Ah. You’re busy. I mustn’t keep you.”

They parted, and Sano walked to the corner. There stood the Sano Martial Arts Academy, which occupied a long, low, wooden building with a brown tile roof and barred windows. Like many
rōnin
, Sano’s father had been cut loose with no skills except in the martial arts. He’d founded the academy and scratched out a meager livelihood for himself and his family. During Sano’s youth, the school had lacked the prestige to attract samurai from beyond the lower ranks. But today he saw boys and young men who wore the crests of the Tokugawa and great
daimyo
clans streaming in the door. His name, his high position, and the fact that he’d learned his own acclaimed fighting skills here had boosted the school’s reputation. Now it was one of the top places to train in Edo.

Sano entered the school. Inside the practice room, students dressed in loose cotton trousers and jackets sparred against one another. Amid a din of clacking wooden swords, stamping feet, and battle cries, instructors shouted directions. The
sensei
, Aoki Koemon, hastened over to Sano.

“Greetings,” he said with a welcoming smile.

He was a stocky, genial samurai, near Sano’s own age of thirty-six. They’d grown up together, and Koemon had once been an apprentice to Sano’s father, who had left the school to him. Sano sometimes envied his friend and childhood playmate the simple life that would have been his if not for his father’s ambitions for him.