“No!” The woman’s voice rapped out the order.

To Sano’s immense relief, his assailant let go of him. The weight lifted from his body. Weakly he flopped over onto his back-sore, but unbroken-to face his captors.

Lady Niu stood over him. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, and her grim face, with its layer of white makeup, looked ghostly in the flickering lantern light. The shimmering folds of her dark, sashless kimono enhanced her eerie appearance. With both hands she held a wicked-looking spear poised over his chest.

Then she smiled, lips parting to reveal her gleaming black teeth. She withdrew the spear.

“Bring him into the house, Eii-chan,” she said to the hulking manservant who stood beside her. “We will not kill him… yet.”

Chapter 27

The cruel triumph Sano saw in Lady Niu’s eyes obliterated the slight relief he’d felt at being caught by her instead of her son. Hope died within him. Then Lady Niu turned and walked away. Her dark garments rustled against the ground and trailed up the steps of the veranda after her as she entered the house.

Eii-chan was leaning over him, reaching for him. Sano fumbled for his long sword. He dug his heels into the ground, pushing himself backward in a frantic attempt to evade the manservant. But his sword was tangled in the folds of his cloak, and the worsening pain in his wounds made his movements clumsy. Finally he kicked out at Eii-chan. His feet hit legs as solid as wood and just as unyielding. Eii-chan grabbed him and yanked him to his feet so hard that his arm nearly left its socket. A brutal shove sent him reeling toward the house. His foot struck the bottom step, and he gave a yelp of pain as he crashed against the veranda. Then Eii-chan lifted him by the collar, almost off his feet. One strong hand pinioned both of his behind his back; an arm locked across his chest. Sano struggled, then went rigid when the cold edge of a steel blade touched his neck.

As Eii-chan propelled him up the steps and through the door, Sano tasted his own death. A wild, animal terror surged through him. He fought it by forcing himself to concentrate on the minute details of his surroundings. Wind-bells tinkling from the eaves.

The corridor, no longer dark, but brightened by lamplight from the translucent windowed walls of the room where Lady Niu waited. The manservant’s musty odor, strange but oddly familiar, that provoked in him an urge to sneeze. A faint memory swam just beyond Sano’s grasp. He lost it when Eii-chan thrust him into Lady Niu’s room and pushed him onto his knees.

He formed a quick impression of the room: spacious, with a wall of painted murals and another of built-in cabinets; several lacquer chests; a vase of flowers in the alcove. Then he focused his attention on its occupant.

“Tie him,” Lady Niu ordered. She knelt upon a silk cushion, with more cushions supporting her back and arms. In spite of the heat that rose from the sunken braziers, she had wrapped a thick quilt around her shoulders.

Sano hid his discomfort as Eii-chan bound his wrists and ankles, although the cords dug into his skin and almost immediately began to numb his hands and feet. He suppressed a cry of protest when the manservant took his long sword-symbol of his class and honor-and tossed it on the floor like a piece of trash. All the while he never took his eyes off Lady Niu. He saw that her face was white not with makeup, as he’d thought at first, but with the pallor of illness. Beside her was a steaming cup of liquid that smelled like the sour herb broth Sano’s father took for headaches. How unlucky for him that Lady Niu should happen to be sick at home tonight instead of out celebrating Setsubun! His senses sharpened by fear, he studied her, seeking clues that would tell him how to convince her to release him unharmed.

Her face revealed nothing except the same impassive control she’d displayed during their first meeting. The only words he could think of sounded too much like begging, which would only humiliate him further. He tried to take courage from the fact that she’d brought him inside instead of having him killed at once. Was she open to negotiation? Or did she want to enjoy seeing him tortured?

“Eii-chan,” Lady Niu said, lifting her chin.

After one last tug on Sano’s bindings, the manservant stepped back. He crossed the room to stand at a point halfway between and to one side of Sano and Lady Niu. He shot Sano a brief but eloquent glance that warned of the punishment he would administer should Sano try to escape or harm his mistress. Then his face hardened to its usual stony blankness, as though he didn’t care that he’d just almost killed a man, or that he soon would. Raising one hand to his chest, he lifted a small pouch that hung on a cord around his neck and held it briefly to his nose. Then he folded his arms and looked straight ahead, immobile but with a waiting tension, ready to spring into action at any moment.

“You interest me, Sano-san,” Lady Niu said as blandly as if this were an ordinary social occasion. She sipped her broth, then continued. “Before Eii-chan disposes of you, I would like to know why you have continued to pursue a course of action that has already cost you your position and will now cost you your life. Why do you compound your troubles by breaking into my house like a common thief? You are not, I think, an unintelligent man. Please explain yourself.

Although the amount of time remaining to him might depend upon his answer, Sano resisted revealing his inner self to her. He didn’t want to try to articulate the insatiable desire for the truth that he barely understood himself. Anger burned in him as he realized that she was toying with him. But he would have to play along with her and hope she gave him an opening that would allow him to bargain.

“I came here tonight to collect evidence that proves your son guilty of at least one of the crimes that I know he has committed,” he said, ignoring her first question and keeping his voice even.

“Oh?” Lady Niu’s eyebrows rose in polite surprise. “And what crimes are those?”

How much did she know? Could he throw her off guard by giving her unwelcome news about young Lord Niu?

“The murders of his sister Yukiko and the artist Noriyoshi. The murder of my secretary, Hamada Tsunehiko, whom he mistook for me. The murder of a certain samurai boy, and of your maid O-hisa. And… ”

He stopped when he saw Lady Niu regarding him with a complacent smile on her unpainted lips. Her relaxed posture reflected a total lack of concern. She didn’t seem the least bit shocked, or even dismayed.

“You know all this already,” he said, unable to keep the amazement out of his voice. “You know what your son has done, and you don’t care.”

Lady Niu’s smile deepened as she shook her head. “Really, Sano-san, I am disappointed in you. Perhaps I have overestimated your intelligence.”

Then Sano experienced one of those great intuitive leaps that come so seldom and never fail to stun. His mind reeled with shock as minor facts that he’d overlooked came together to form a pattern entirely different from the one he’d assembled using only the major facts.

Lord Niu, although as strong as rigorous training and self-discipline could make him, nevertheless had a physical handicap. He could-and did-kill, but could he have disposed of Yukiko’s and Noriyoshi’s dead bodies alone? His men had helped him get rid of the boy he’d decapitated in a fit of anger, but would he have trusted them to assist in a double premeditated murder-especially when one of the victims was their lord’s own daughter? Sano thought not.

Midori’s stepmother, not her stepbrother, had sent her to Hakone. And Lady Niu had been the one to complain to Magistrate Ogyu about Sano. Then there was the manservant’s strange odor. It came from the pouch that Eii-chan wore, which probably held medicinal herbs. Sano now recognized the smell from his room in Totsuka the night of Tsunehiko’s murder. He noticed the unhealed scratches on Eii-chan’s hands-inflicted by O-hisa and the night-watchman he’d strangled. Sano had believed that Lord Niu had committed the murders to protect himself. Now he realized that Lady Niu had ordered Eii-chan to kill Yukiko, Noriyoshi, and O-hisa. She had sent the manservant to kill him on the Tōkaido, then had him dismissed and framed for murder. All to protect Lord Niu. He’d assigned the right motive to the wrong person. Shaking his head in wonder, Sano beheld the miracle of finally arriving at the truth he’d sought, and finding it so different from what he’d expected.