Hiraga stared at his head fascinated, still bewildered by the astonishing change. "If anything makes you safe that should, except that now all samurai will take you for a common man. How can you wear swords?"

"When I need swords I will wear a hat.

When I am disguised I have this." Ori slipped his good hand into his sleeve and brought out a two-shot derringer.

Again Hiraga's face lit up. "Eeee, brilliant! Where did you get it?"

"Fujiko. She sold it to me, with a box of cartridges. A client gave it to her as a present when he left Yokohama.

Imagine! A low-class whore with such a treasure."

Hiraga held it carefully, weighing it in his hand, pointing it then lifting the catch to see the two bronze cartridges neatly in the barrels. "You could certainly kill two men before you were killed, if you were close enough."

"One is enough to give you time to run off and get some swords." Ori peered at Hiraga. "We heard about the soldiers. I wanted to see if you were all right. Baka! We will go to Kyoto together and leave this place to the dogs until we can come back in force."

Hiraga shook his head and told what really happened, then about Tyrer and discovering the enmity between the French and English, adding excitedly, "This is one of the wedges we can drive between them. We get them fighting amongst themselves, let them kill each other for us, eh? I must stay, Ori. It is only the beginning. We must learn all they know, be able to think like them and then we can destroy them."

Ori frowned, considering the reasons forandthe reasons against--though he had not forgiven Hiraga for forcing him to lose face and remove her cross, he still had to protect sonno-joi. "In that case, if you are to be our spy, you will have to be like them in every way, and burrow into their society like a bedbug, outwardly become friends, even wear gai-jin clothes." At Hiraga's blank look he added, "Why not? That will further protect you, and make it easier for them to accept you, neh?"

"But why should they accept me?"

"They should not, but they are fools. Taira will be your spearhead. He can arrange it, order it.

He could insist."

"Why should he?"

"Barter Fujiko."

"Eh?"

"Raiko gave us the key: gai-jin are different. They prefer to bed the same woman.

Help Raiko to wrap him in their net, then he is your running dog because you are his indispensable go-between. Tomorrow tell him, even though you were furious with the soldiers, it was not his fault. With great difficulty you sneaked back to the Yoshiwara and arranged Fujiko for him for tomorrow evening and "so sorry Taira-sama, it would be simpler for me to arrange these trysts if I had proper European clothes to pass the barriers, and so on." Make her available, or not, get him on her barb, and twist it. Eh?"

Hiraga began laughing quietly. "Better you stay here and not go to Kyoto, your counsel is too valuable."

"Katsumata must be forewarned. Now, the gai-jin woman?"

"Tomorrow I will find out exactly where she is."

"Good." The wind picked up and a gust passed through the house, crackling the paper in the frames and setting the oil flame dancing. Ori watched him. "Have you seen her?"

"Not yet. Taira's servants, a filthy lot of Chinese, don't speak any language I can understand so I could not find out from them, but the biggest building in the Settlement belongs to the man she is to marry."

"She lives there?"

"I am not sure but--" Hiraga stopped as an idea barreled into his head. "Listen, if I could become accepted, I could go everywhere, could find out all about their defenses, could go aboard their warships and..."

"And on a certain night," Ori said at once, jumping ahead, "perhaps we could capture one, or sink one."

"Yes." Both men glowed at the thought, the candle fluttering and casting strange shadows.

"With the right wind," Ori said softly, "a south wind like tonight, with five or six shishi, a few kegs of oil already planted in the right warehouses ... even that is not necessary: we can make incendiaries and start fires in the Yoshiwara. The wind would jump those fires into the village and those would spread to the Settlement and burn it up!

Neh?"

"And the ship?"

"In the confusion we row out to the big one. We could do it, easily, neh?"

"Not easily, but what a coup!"

"Sonno-joi!"

Thursday, 16th October

Thursday, 16th October: "Come in! Ah, good morning, Andr`e,"

Angelique said with a warmth that belied her anxiety. "You're very punctual. All's well with you?"

He nodded, closed the door of the small ground-floor room adjoining her bedroom that served as her boudoir in the French Legation, once more astonished that she appeared so calm and could make small talk. Politely he bent over her hand and kissed it, then sat opposite her.

The room was drab with old chairs and chaise and writing desk, plaster walls with a few cheap oils by current French painters, Delacroix and Corot. "The army taught me, Punctuality is next to Godliness."

She smiled at the pleasantry. "La! I didn't know you had been in the army."

"I had a commission in Algeria for a year when I was twenty-two, after university--nothing very grand, just helping to crush one of the usual rebellions. The sooner we really stamp out the troublemakers and annex all North Africa as French territory the better." He waved absently at the flies, and studied her. "You look more beautiful than ever. Your, your state suits you."

Her eyes lost their color and became flinty.

Last night had been bad for her, the bed here in the untidy, seedy bedroom uncomfortable. During the dark time her anxieties had overridden her confidence and she had become increasingly nervous about leaving her suite next to Struan and all her comfort, so hastily. In the dawn her humor had not improved and again the all-consuming idea pervaded her: men caused all her woes. Revenge will be sweet. "You mean my marriage state to be, no?"

"Of course," he said after the barest pause, and she wondered, aggravated, what was the matter with him and why he was so boorish and distant like last night when the music had gone on and on, without his usual touch. He had dark rings under his eyes and his features seemed sharper than usual.

"Is anything wrong, my dear friend?"

"No, dear Angelique, nothing, nothing at all."

Liar, she thought. Why is it men lie so much, to others and to themselves? "You were successful?"

"Yes and no."

He knew that she was twisting on the spit andofa sudden he wanted to make her squirm, wanted to fan the flames to make her scream and pay for Hana.

You're mad, he thought. It's not Angelique's fault. That is true but because of her, last night I went to the Three Carp and saw Raiko and while we talked in our mixture of Japanese and English and pidgin I suddenly felt that the other had just been a rotten nightmare and that any moment Hana would appear, the laugh in her eyes, and my heart would swirl as always and we would leave Raiko and bathe together, play there, eat in private and love without haste. And when I realized the truth, with Hana gone forever, my entrails and brain crawled with spawning worms, I almost vomited. "Raiko, got to know who three clients were."

"So sorry, Furansu-san, I said before: her mama-san is dead, people of house scattered, Inn of Forty-seven Ronin dead."

"There must be some way to find th--"' "None. So sorry."

"Then tell me the truth... the truth, of how she died."

"With your knife in her throat, so sorry."

"She did it? Hara-kiri?"' Raiko had answered with the same patient voice, the same voice that had told the same story and given the same answer to the same questions a dozen times before: "Hara-kiri is the ancient way, honorable way, the only way atone a wrong. Hana betrayed you and us, owners, patrons and herself--that was her karma in this life.