The Convict's Sword (29 page)

It was much lighter outside than in the house and Tora looked curiously at the plants and small fish pond that filled the enclosed space. The fish in the pond were dead, bloated forms that floated on the surface, and the plants needed water. He sat down and looked dubiously at his food. He had not eaten for more than a day, but the sight of the dead fish made him feel queasy again. He took a small bite of the vegetables. It was good, and he tried some rice. “But there must have been women and servants once,” he said between mouthfuls.

“Don’t know. We haven’t been here long.” Kinjiro did not bother to empty his mouth but talked around the food. “There was nobody here but the old man when we came. The old man’s gone away on a trip.”

Tora had an uncomfortable feeling about the place. His encounter with the vicious Matsue had been bad enough. Now he was involved with a gang of thugs and thieves who would not think twice about killing him if they found out what he was up to. Though he was not precisely working for the police, the criminals would certainly see it that way.

And then there was a chance that the police might be tipped off by a neighbor and decide to raid this place. The guard was not at the door for nothing. If Tora, already a defendant in a murder case, were caught living with a gang so soon after his arrest, he would not have a chance in hell to prove his innocence. But it was a little late to back out now. He reminded himself that he was on the trail of Tomoe’s killer.

Kinjiro departed with his empty bowl and returned with a large pitcher of wine and two cups. Tora, who was making little headway with his food, refused the wine. His head pounded until he was nearly cross-eyed with the pain. What he needed was water. He watched the boy pour down several brimming cups in quick succession. “Are you allowed to drink all that?”

“Sure,” boasted Kinjiro, belching. “It’s the best. Kata
Sensei
gets it from one of his clients. Here! Try some.”

“I need water,” croaked Tora, staggering to his feet, “and the outhouse.”

Kinjiro got up. “I’ll show you.”

They passed down another dark corridor and through a back door into a fenced service area with several smaller buildings. Kinjiro pointed out the latrine, but Tora made straight for the well. When he reached it, he ran out of strength and sat down heavily. Kinjiro pulled up a pail of water, dipped a ladle in and offered it to Tora. “You don’t look too good,” he said needlessly.

Tora drank and handed the ladle back. “I’ll be all right in a minute,” he muttered, closing his eyes.

“Are you sure? Because I can’t stay.”

Tora’s eyes flew open. “You’re leaving?” he yelped. He had visions of a gang of bandits jumping on the strange intruder and asking questions later. “Who’s going to explain to the others what I’m doing here?”

Kinjiro narrowed his eyes. “You aren’t afraid, are you?”

Tora flushed. Of course he was afraid, but he could not disillusion his only ally. “Don’t be an idiot,” he snapped. “I want to get some sleep and I don’t want every fool who trails in to shake me awake because he’s never seen me before.”

“Oh.” The boy relaxed and grinned. “I’ll tell the guy at the door to warn them. See you in the morning then.”

Tora nodded and watched him disappear into the house. Actually, the situation was not without interest. He was alone in a robber’s den—well, alone except for the character at the street door, and he would hardly leave his post except for an emergency, such as a trip to the outhouse. Tora eyed the latrine and decided to use it himself.

When he emerged, he investigated the service yard. It was nearly dark by now. Wishing he had a lantern, Tora poked around in the large shed. It held household goods. He made out firewood, tools, spare buckets, a ragged broom, a coil of rope, a couple of braziers, a ladder, and an abandoned bathtub filled with sacks of beans, strings of onions, root vegetables, and a lot of other unidentifiable household goods.

A storehouse stood in the middle of the yard. It was the most substantial of the outbuildings, covered with plaster and roofed with tiles. Storehouses protected family valuables from the fires that often consumed the wooden dwellings, and this one was securely locked. No doubt the gang kept its ill-gotten gains in it.

Night was falling rapidly and already the unfamiliar place was full of black shadows and eerie sounds. Something knocked and something else scrabbled. When Tora thought he heard a groan, he retreated into the house.

It was even darker there. Suppressing irrational fears about ghosts and goblins, Tora felt his way down the dark corridor to the main room, where he could barely make out the piles of bedding. Helping himself to one of the quilts, he curled up in a corner and went to sleep.

He slept fitfully because he was nervous and because his head bothered him. At one point he thought he heard voices and steps, but nobody came to disturb him. Toward morning he fell into a deeper sleep and did not wake until well after daylight. To his surprise, he was still alone.

He sat up and gave a tentative shout, but no one appeared. After rolling up his bedding and tossing it back on the pile, he went to take a look around, but the rest of the house was as empty as the main room. Even the guard had disappeared.

This last discovery made Tora very uncomfortable. Where had the guard gone? And why? And why had he been left behind? He could not rid himself of a sense of impending disaster. Did they expect a raid? Perhaps he had been left to be arrested for some crime the others had committed during the night. He listened for the pounding boots and whistles of police constables, but all remained still.

Much too still! The sun was up. Where were the normal sounds of a neighborhood waking to another work day?

The urge to run warred with Tora’s curiosity. He stood uncertain for a moment, then decided that he would at least do a quick search of the rooms first.

In the kitchen he found evidence that someone had visited the house during the night. The rice pot was empty and on a shelf was a paper containing two square rice cakes and a lot of crumbs. Tora helped himself to the cakes, then checked the rest of the house. He found little of interest, apart from some spare clothing and one or two weapons of the type common among criminals, until he opened the door to a room that was furnished better than the rest. It had thick grass mats on the floor, its own small garden court, and a few pieces of well-made furniture. Apparently it was used as a guest room for an honored visitor.

Among the furnishings stood a large ironbound chest of the type used by traveling merchants to carry precious goods. Tora checked it. It was locked. The police would force the lock, he thought, and listened again for the sound of their pounding feet, but the same eerie silence prevailed. He was about to open a clothes chest, when he heard an odd little bump in the corridor outside. He peered cautiously out the door. The corridor was empty. Deciding he must have imagined it, Tora turned back to the clothes chest. And here he finally made a discovery, though what it meant was more than he could understand. On the bottom of the clothes chest, underneath the folded jackets, shirts, and pants, he found some documents. They seemed to belong to Matsue. Tora had no wish to be caught rifling through that character’s private property and quickly flipped through them. Some were about his training and qualifications as a swordsman and some were old travel permits. But two pieces of paper made him whistle softly in surprise.

One was a formal transfer of rice land in the Tsuzuki district between a Lord Tomonari and his maid. The other was the title of ownership to a small farm. Tora was familiar with such legal papers, because his family had once owned a farm. This particular farm was slightly larger and probably on much better land, and it belonged to someone called Sangoro.

Sangoro was the name Kinjiro had used for Matsue before correcting himself quickly. Nothing unusual about that. Many an aspiring swordsman changed his name for any number of reasons. Perhaps Matsue wanted to hide his peasant background. What startled Tora was another word that jumped up at him from among the lines of spidery writing. It looked like the family name of the dead Haseo: Utsunomiya.

Tora was still trying to decipher this paper when he heard a distant squeaking noise followed by the clicking of a latch: the street door. Slipping the document inside his shirt, he hurriedly replaced the rest of the papers and closed the trunk. Then he stepped out into the corridor and listened. The house was as still as before. He checked the main room and then the entry, but found nobody. Belatedly it occurred to him that the door could have been closed by someone leaving the house. The thought that he had been watched made him nervous. Tora opened the door, verified the squeak, and looked up and down the street. Nobody. The neighborhood lay deserted.

Remembering the service yard, he went back to check there. It was as empty as the house. A couple of sparrows were bathing in the dust beside the storehouse. Tall walls screened out all but the roof of the neighbor’s house and some treetops. Tora pulled up a pail of water, drank thirstily, and splashed some on his face and head. His headache had dulled considerably.

The silence made him jumpy. He should have been hearing the voices of children and the sounds of men and women at work beyond the fence, but there was nothing but the soft twitter of small sparrows and the cooing of a few pigeons on the roof. He listened, then heard another sound. It was very faint, a sort of scrabbling accompanied by a whimper. Only a dog, he decided. It must be locked up somewhere. Perhaps it was thirsty. He filled the bucket again and left it on the well coping while he looked around. He peered behind the latrine and into the storage shack. No dog, but the whimpering continued. That left the storehouse. Storehouses were windowless because they were not intended for habitation, human or animal, yet it was from inside the storehouse that the sounds came.

Who would lock an animal in a storehouse? It was dark and airless in there. Was the dog being punished? Or was it supposed to guard some particularly costly haul the thugs had hidden there? He grinned at the thought of robbers afraid of being robbed. Poor beast, but he could do nothing about it.

As he turned away, he remembered the eerie groan the night before. Come to think of it, this faint wailing did not sound like a dog. Tora pressed his ear to the storehouse wall and gasped. Whatever was wailing in there did not sound human, either. He recoiled from the wall, a slow horror building inside his chest and taking his breath away.

It must be a ghost—the ghost of somebody the robbers had killed. That’s why they had taken to their heels without their clothes and valuables. Tora backed away slowly.

Another faint but horrible wail struck his ear, and he reached for his amulet before remembering that he had left it at home.

Home. That’s where he should be. Tora feared ghosts much more than a whole army of cutthroats in the flesh.

But it was broad daylight, and he had second thoughts about this particular ghost. What if the man inside was still alive?

He approached the storehouse again and checked the lock. It was heavy and unbreakable. Inside, the wailing stopped. A cracked voice called out, “Buntaro?” Tora skipped back a pace, thought about it, and decided that a ghost would not get his name wrong. And this Buntaro was one of the thugs, the owner of this place.

Relieved that he was not dealing with the supernatural, Tora put his mouth to the door, and shouted, “I’m not Buntaro. What are you doing in there?”

The voice inside broke into an agitated and incomprehensible babble and he heard fingernails scrabbling at the door.

“I don’t have a key and can’t understand you,” Tora shouted.

The babbling rose a few decibels but was still too agitated to make out. He thought he heard the word “police.” Did the person inside want him to get the police? A gangster, no matter how desperate, would never make such a request.

This cast a different light on the situation. It was one thing if gangsters dealt harshly with one of their own, but if they held an innocent person in there, Tora had an obligation to help him.

He considered the storehouse. Like all such buildings, it was made of very thick plaster walls, its roof was tiled, and its single door was of thick wooden planks. It had been built to withstand fire and robbers, and the lock was hopeless without a key.

He was taking another look at the lock when the door behind him flew open and someone cursed. A tall, thin man stood on the threshold. “What are you doing there?” he bellowed, adding another curse for emphasis.

Tora remembered him now. He had been the one with Matsue when they had found him giving the boy a lesson in sword fighting. Tora had nicknamed him the “Scarecrow” because he was ugly and his clothes hung like rags on his thin frame. The situation was awkward, but at least the fellow would remember him. He said quickly, “Oh, hello. I wondered where everyone was. I thought I heard a dog in there. Must’ve been mistaken.”

In reply, the Scarecrow pulled a knife from his jacket and started across the yard. Tora stepped back and crouched to defend himself, but the thug only checked the lock, then glared at him. “You’d better not be making trouble,” he shouted, pounding his fist against the door for emphasis, “if you know what’s good for you. Kata
Sensei
doesn’t like meddlers and neither do I.”

Tora straightened up. “Don’t worry, I don’t care what you keep in there. The emperor’s treasures, for all I care. I was washing myself at the well when I thought I heard a dog whining.”

The other man looked at the bucket and at Tora’s wet hair. “All right,” he said grudgingly, shoving the knife back into his belt. “Just keep your nose out of our business in the future. You’d better come along now. Kata
Sensei
wants you.” He took Tora’s arm, but kept the other hand on the knife handle.

“Where’s everybody gone to?” Tora asked, allowing himself to be dragged along.