The Snow Empress: A Thriller (2 page)

While Sano was gone, Lord Matsudaira would steal his allies and build up his own power base. Then there would be no place left at court for Sano. If he went to Ezogashima, he might as well never come back.

“I’m eager to be of service, but if I go, who will help you run the government, Your Excellency?” Sano said, appealing to the shogun’s self-interest.

That ploy usually worked, but this time the shogun said, “My dear cousin has assured me that he will, ahh, fill your shoes in your absence.” He smiled gratefully at Lord Matsudaira, who smirked.

But Sano had another, more urgent reason besides politics for wanting to get out of the trip. Desperation drove him to beg for special consideration even though he never had before. “Your Excellency, this is a bad time for me to leave Edo. My son is missing.”

“Ahh, yes, I recall,” the shogun said, diverted. “Poor little boy. How terrible for you and Lady Reiko.”

Sano hastened to press his advantage: “I have to be here to lead the search for him.”

The shogun wavered but then turned to Lord Matsudaira. “What do you think?”

“I think that perhaps his wish to find his son gives Chamberlain Sano all the more motive to go to Ezogashima,” Lord Matsudaira said in a portentous tone. “Before you argue anymore, Chamberlain Sano, I have something to show you.”

He stood, reached under his sash, pulled out an object, and handed it to Sano. It was the hilt of a miniature sword, the wooden blade broken off. As Sano gazed at the flying-crane crest stamped on the brass guard, recognition and puzzlement stunned him. The hilt came from one toy sword of a pair he’d given Masahiro. The sword was the mate of the longer one that Reiko had found at the temple. Masahiro had worn both weapons that night.

“Where did you get this?” Sano demanded.

Shrugging, Lord Matsudaira smiled, his expression innocent. “I think you can guess.”

Sano pictured Lord Matsudaira’s soldiers emerging from the woods at the temple, grabbing Masahiro. He saw Masahiro struggle to defend himself, his blade breaking. The soldiers smuggled Masahiro away from town, under the cover of darkness, careful to leave no trail. Revelation confirmed what Sano had suspected from the start despite a lack of evidence.

Lord Matsudaira had kidnapped Masahiro.

Such rage beset Sano that a shrieking noise blared in his ears and blood crimsoned his vision. Lord Matsudaira had taken his son, put him and Reiko through two months of hell.

“You!” Sano lunged at Lord Matsudaira.

The shogun exclaimed in fright. The guards dragged Sano away from Lord Matsudaira, who was unfazed. Sano fought them, shouting, “What did you do to him? Where is he?”

“What’s going on?” the shogun cried.

Sano drew a breath to say that Lord Matsudaira had kidnapped his son as yet another move against him in their ongoing strife, to tell the shogun, at long last, that his cousin was after his place at the head of the dictatorship.

“Beware, Chamberlain Sano,” Lord Matsudaira cautioned, shaking his head, his voice ominous, his smile gone. “Speak, and you’ll hurt yourself more than me.”

Prudence grappled with anger in Sano and won. He exhaled his intentions in a gust of air, because he knew Lord Matsudaira was right.

The shogun was still unaware that his cousin had seized control of Japan and Sano was contesting Lord Matsudaira. No one had told him, and he wasn’t observant enough to have noticed. Sano and Lord Matsudaira enforced a nationwide conspiracy of silence because if he did find out, the precarious balance of power could tip in a direction that favored neither of them. Their rivalry could become a three-way civil war if the
daimyo
on their sides shifted their backing to the shogun, who had the hereditary right to rule. They would see the advantage of grouping together under one leader versus dividing their strength between two. The shogun could emerge the victor in spite of his personal shortcomings. And defeat would be worse for Sano than Lord Matsudaira.

Even if Lord Matsudaira lost his domains, his army, and his political position in a war, his blood ties to the shogun could shield him from execution for treason. He could live to fight another day. But Sano, an outsider, would be put to death, as would his family and all his close associates.

Now Sano’s tongue was silenced, his hands chained. He could only stare with bitter hatred at his foe who’d struck him the lowest blow in his most vulnerable spot.

“I won’t forget this,” he said in a voice so harsh, so threatening, that Lord Matsudaira flinched.

“Forget what?” the shogun piped up timidly.

“Where is he?” Sano demanded again.

Lord Matsudaira recovered his swagger, his smile. “In Ezogashima.”

Although Sano was stunned by fresh shock, he realized he shouldn’t be. The news of where Lord Matsudaira had sent his son had a feeling of inevitability. All the strands of conflict and misfortune in his life had braided together. This whole discussion had been leading up to this moment.

“In Ezogashima,” Lord Matsudaira repeated, “where trouble is waiting for you to investigate.” His eyes shone with evil triumph. “He should have arrived in the castle town of Fukuyama City a month ago. You mustn’t lose any time getting there.”

If you want to rescue your son,
said his unspoken words. The ransom for Masahiro was Sano’s mission to Ezogashima, his absence from Edo. Despite the circumstances, Sano felt the burden of his misery lighten. At last he knew where Masahiro was. Lord Matsudaira could be lying, but Sano’s samurai instincts told him otherwise. His political instincts said that although Lord Matsudaira could easily have had Masahiro killed, that wasn’t the case, because Masahiro was too valuable alive, as a hostage.

Now Sano’s mind shifted focus away from the present scene, to his top priority of retrieving his son. The people around him seemed to shrink as if viewed from the far end of a spyglass. His new sense of mission dwarfed even Lord Matsudaira. Sano would deal with him later.

“If you’ll excuse me, Your Excellency,” Sano said, bowing to the shogun, “I must prepare for a trip to Ezogashima.”

“Ahh, are you going, then?” The shogun sounded relieved. All he’d gleaned from their conversation was that Sano had decided to obey his orders. Yoritomo gave Sano a strange, tormented, apologetic look, as if he thought himself to blame for Sano’s whole predicament. “Well, ahh, have a good voyage.”

Sano was already out the door. He would rush headlong up north, as if he were a dog and Lord Matsudaira had thrown a stick for him to fetch.

The waterfall cascaded from a high cliff top. The setting sun gilded the water spilling past the twisted pine trees that shaded the damp, eroded rocks. Cold water splashed onto Hirata, who sat immersed up to his waist in a pool in a forest so remote that few ever ventured there.

His naked body was numb beneath the pool’s surface; he couldn’t feel his buttocks, legs, or feet. His upper half shivered in the freezing wind, and his teeth chattered despite his clenched jaws. His skin was as pale as ice, his lips and fingernails blue. His hair was plastered to his head; his muscles and veins stood out like iron cords beneath his taut flesh. His closed eyelids quivered as he tried to ignore his physical distress.

This was a ritual necessary to reaching the next level in mastering the secrets of
dim-mak,
the ancient mystic martial art that he’d been studying for four years.

During his last lesson, he’d fought his teacher, the old priest Ozuno, in a practice match that had begun at dawn. They’d wielded swords, staffs, knives, bare hands, and magic spells at each other. It was afternoon when Ozuno finally knocked Hirata to the ground and held a blade to his throat. They’d both collapsed on the ground, exhausted.

“I hate to admit it, but you almost beat me,” Ozuno said grudgingly. But his pride in his pupil and his own teaching showed on his stern face. Beneath his unkempt gray hair, his shrewd eyes twinkled. “You’re ready for your ordeal by waterfall.”

Hirata groaned. “What good will it do me to freeze my rear end for ten days?”

“What good will this do, what good will that do?” Ozuno mimicked him. “For once in your stupid life, can’t you accept instructions without questioning them?” But he explained, “Your body is a prison that holds your mind captive. To be truly at one with the cosmos and the wisdom there, we must set our minds free. We do that by overwhelming the senses, by subjecting the body to a state of near death. Then the spirit can move to a higher level of enlightenment.”

“What does true enlightenment feel like?” Hirata asked.

“It can’t be described, only experienced,” Ozuno said. “You’ll know when you achieve it.”

Now Hirata was locked in a struggle to slow his heartbeat, to confine the flow of blood to his vital organs, to shut down his bodily processes to the minimum functioning required for survival, as Ozuno had taught him. Finally the cold, the sound, and the deluge of the waterfall receded from his consciousness. His spirit poised on the narrow line between life and death. The borders between himself and the environment dissolved. His mind floated in pure, liberated tranquility.

He sensed the people in distant villages. He felt himself climbing up and up, beyond the vast human world that echoed with a million voices, thoughts, and emotions. Stars and planets appeared at the far reaches of his inner vision. Faster and faster he ascended. His spirit soared with the certainty that it verged on a breakthrough to a higher plane of consciousness.

Suddenly his propulsion shuddered to a halt. Sensory manifestations intruded. Flashes of the water spilling down on him and pangs from the chill in his bones pierced his tranquility. Stars and planets winked out like snuffed candles. Then he was falling, his mind a rock dropping from a great height toward the body that shivered in the pool. Disappointment crushed Hirata.

The breakthrough had eluded him. His perceptions were too limited. His spirit lacked some unknown, crucial dimension.

As he plummeted into the human world, one pattern of thought and emotion among legions snagged his mind. He hung suspended long enough to recognize that pattern, that unique life-energy. He knew the man to whom it belonged. It resonated across space to him. At the same moment that his mind reinhabited his body, realization flashed through every cold, wet, trembling fiber of him.

Sano is in trouble.

Hirata staggered up from the water. Frozen and dripping, he clambered onto the bank. Sano, his master whom he was honor-bound to serve, who’d generously released him from his duties so that he could pursue his martial arts studies, now needed him. Hirata couldn’t resist the summons even though it was an involuntary cry for help that he’d sensed, not a direct order from Sano. No matter how much he desired enlightenment, it would have to wait.

The path he must follow was the road to Edo.

Evenings were the hardest times for Reiko. Each one ushered in the end of another day without Masahiro. Ahead of her stretched many long, dark hours before morning brought new hope that he would be found. Now, as she knelt in the lamplit nursery with her one-year-old daughter on her lap, she sank into despair. Not even her baby could comfort her. Akiko squirmed and bawled. She wouldn’t stop even though Reiko rocked her and sang to her. Her little face was bright red with temper, her mouth wide, her eyes squeezed shut and streaming tears.

“Shh, Akiko, it’s all right,” Reiko murmured.

But Akiko cried harder, for no apparent reason. She was a fussy child who gave Reiko not a moment of peace. Reiko often wondered if certain troubles she’d experienced during her pregnancy were to blame. Akiko was so unlike her brother, who’d been a lively yet much easier infant.

The thought of Masahiro as a baby provoked such anguish in Reiko that she moaned as if physically struck. She knew she should be thankful to have one child left, but her heart was so full of pain that there was no room for gratitude.

“Please stop crying, Akiko!” she wailed.

Her friend Midori hurried into the chamber. “Let me have the baby.” She knelt, took Akiko in one arm, and enfolded Reiko in the other. “Don’t worry,” she said. “They’ll find him.”

“But it’s been so long!” Weeping quaked Reiko. Every time she thought she’d run out of tears, she rediscovered that the well was bottomless. Akiko bawled louder, and Reiko knew that her own distress was worsening her child’s, but she couldn’t stop crying. “I’m so afraid I’ll never see him again.”

“Of course you will,” Midori said, forceful and certain. “He’ll be back soon.” She hugged Reiko. “But I don’t know how he’ll recognize you. You’re so thin I can feel your bones. Have you eaten today?”

Reiko shook her head. When she put food in her mouth, her throat closed up; she could hardly swallow. The flesh had melted from her body. She was as emaciated and weak as she’d been plump and healthy while pregnant with Masahiro. It was as if she were now pregnant with grief.

“You have to keep up your strength,” Midori said. “I’ll bring you some soup.”

“No thank you.” Reiko gulped while tears bled down her face. She wiped them away with a skeletal hand. Once she’d been full of vitality, practicing martial arts and traveling around town to help people in trouble in a manner unheard of for any woman, let alone the wife of a high official. Now she felt fragile and vulnerable, as if when she went outside she would fall and break her bones or be run down by a galloping horse. But although it was grief that debilitated her body, it was terror that consumed her spirit.

Oh, Midori-san,“ she cried, ”what if Masahiro is-what if he’s-?“

She couldn’t speak the awful word.

Midori turned and said, “Here’s Chamberlain Sano.”

Reiko looked up to see her husband standing in the doorway, “he baby stopped crying; she thrust out her little arms at him. He entered the chamber and took her from Midori. Akiko adored her father. She cooed and played with his topknot. Reiko’s sobs paused while she searched Sano’s face, as she did every day, for a sign of good news. She braced herself for another disappointment.

This time she saw his familiar concern for her as he knelt before her, but his eyes were bright with elation. The tears dried on Reiko’s cheeks. Her heart began to pound furiously.

“What is it?” she asked, breathless with hope.

“I know where Masahiro is,” Sano said.

A gasp choked Reiko. She pressed her hand to her chest. “Merciful gods!” Her spirits skyrocketed from the depths of misery to the heights of joy.

“That’s wonderful!” Midori exclaimed. “Oh, Reiko-san, I’m so happy for you.”

Reiko wept so hard with relief that a moment passed before she realized that Sano hadn’t actually said he’d found Masahiro. “Where is he?” she said, jumping to her feet. “Why haven’t you brought him to me?”

Sano reached for her hand, drew her back down to the floor. “He’s in Ezogashima.”

“Ezogashima?” Puzzled surprise arrested Reiko’s joy in midflight.

“How in the world did he get there?” Midori asked.

“Lord Matsudaira had him kidnapped.” Anger suffused Sano’s features. “That’s where he’s been taken.”

As he elaborated, Reiko experienced two reactions that rushed upon her like waves coming from opposite directions. The first was gladness that her son was alive and she knew where. The second was horror that he was so far away, that such a thing had been done to him, that he was in terrible danger. She imagined Masahiro attacked by bandits on the highway or pirates at sea while he was under the dubious protection of Lord Matsudaira’s men, who would steal a little boy in order to further their master’s political aims.

“You have to rescue him!” Reiko said, clutching at Sano.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Sano said. “As soon as I can outfit a ship, I’ll sail for Ezogashima.”

Reiko wasn’t satisfied. “I’m going with you.”

Sano looked as if he’d expected this but was resistant. “That’s out of the question. There are serious problems in Ezogashima.” He described the breakdown in communication and the possible reasons. “It’s too dangerous for you to go.”

“Not any more for me than for Masahiro,” Reiko said. Her maternal urge to be with her son overrode all concerns for her own safety.

“It’s a difficult journey even at the best of times. The winters are harsh up north,” Sano warned.

“I don’t care!”

“I’ll bring him back. Trust me. You’ll be better off waiting here.”

“For how long?” Impatience agitated Reiko. “A month? Two? Three?”

“Under the circumstances, I can’t say,” Sano admitted. “Before I come back, I have to fix whatever’s wrong in Ezogashima, which could take more time than finding Masahiro.”

“Then I can’t wait. I can’t just sit here wondering when you’ll be back.” The idea of such unendurable suspense! Reiko insisted, “I must go. I have to see Masahiro the moment you find him, not later. Besides, he’ll need me.”

The baby in Sano’s arms let out a plaintive squeal. She’d noticed her parents ignoring her, and she didn’t like it.

“Akiko needs you,” Sano said. “You have to stay home.”

As if she knew her mother wanted to leave her, Akiko started bawling again. Reiko felt stricken by guilt because she would abandon her daughter for the sake of her son. She loved them both with equal passion, yet her firstborn had the strongest claim on her heart. This shamed Reiko, but she couldn’t deny it.

“I’ll take care of Akiko for you.” Midori gave Reiko a look of painful, understanding sympathy.

Reiko remembered that Midori knew what it was like to have a husband go off without her, without a hint of when he might return. Hirata had been gone a year, with no word from him. Midori was offering to free Reiko so that at least one of them could be happy.

Thank you,“ Reiko said with fervent gratitude, then turned to Sano.

I don’t go, I might not live to welcome you and Masahiro home.“

Their gazes met.

Hers said she’d made up her mind.

His appraised her frail body and said he wouldn’t argue, even though he was concerned about her safety, because he feared the wait would kill her.

He slowly, reluctantly, nodded his assent.

It took Sano eight days to locate a seaworthy vessel, bring it to Edo, and equip and man it. Now, on a bright, unseasonably warm morning, the war junk floated at dock on the Sumida River. Made of cedar, it had two masts with multiple white sails, a complex web of rigging, and banners bearing the Tokugawa triple-hollyhock-leaf crest. A dragon figurehead snarled. The deck bristled with cannons. Oars protruded from below deck,, where rowers sat ready to propel the ship down the river to the sea. Detective Marume supervised porters lugging provisions up the gangplank. Sano’s other personal bodyguard, Detective Fukida, peered down from the crow’s nest at the two smaller ships that would carry troops and servants. The junk’s cabin was a house with a curved roof, like a miniature temple. Inside, Reiko paced amid bedding and chests of clothes. She peered out the window, eager to be off.

She felt better than she had since Masahiro had disappeared. She breathed the heady air of hope that revived her appetite and strengthened her muscles. The wait was almost over. Restless with energy, she watched impatiently for Sano.

He strode up the gangplank, accompanied by a man of such odd appearance that spectators gathered outside nearby warehouses pointed and laughed. Reiko recognized him as an acquaintance known as the Rat. He was short, with a thick, shaggy beard and mustache that were rare in Japan. He carried a bundle on his back. His feral face wore a look of misery.

“The Rat doesn’t like Ezogashima even though it’s his native land,” he said. “That’s why I left. I hope you know what a big favor I’m doing you by coming along with you.”

“Favor, nothing,” Sano said. “I’m paying you handsomely.”

“As well you should,” the Rat said. “I’m the only one of my kind in town. Who else can serve as your guide and interpreter in Ezogashima?”

The sailors hauled up the gangplank behind Sano and the Rat; they raised the anchor. Reiko’s heart beat fast while anticipation reverberated through her spirit. Soon she would be with Masahiro. The captain shouted to the rowers. From below deck rose their chanting as their oars propelled the junk away from the riverbank. The spectators waved and cheered.

“Wait!”

The cry came from the dock. Reiko saw a man running along it toward the ship. The two swords at his waist marked him as a samurai. His long, ungroomed hair, his worn cotton garments, and the pack on his back suggested that he was an itinerant
ronin,
a masterless warrior. At first Reiko wondered who he was and what he wanted. Then, as he neared her, she noticed his slight limp. She recognized his familiar features masked by whisker stubble. Exclaiming, she ran outside onto the deck, where Sano beheld the man in surprise.