Raiko's eyebrows arced. "My guest?"

"Yes, Mistress."

Meikin frowned. "Does he usually greet visitors?"

"Only the most important and no doubt you are most important, your presence honors us all. Certainly he would have been told of your arrival. His web of informants is far-reaching, Meikin-chan, he is absolutely to be trusted --and also head of the Gyokoyama in Yokohama.

Shall we see him?"

"Yes, but only for a moment. I will pretend a headache then we can continue our chat until the evening meal."

"Little one," Raiko ordered, "bring the shoya here, but first tell maids to bring fresh tea and hot sak`e--and to take these glasses away and hide my brandy. Meikin-chan, if he knew I had such a source he would be a daily pest!"

It was quickly done and the table made clean and perfect, their breath cleansed with herbs, before he was bowed in. "Please excuse me, Ladies," he said with untoward anxiety, kneeling and bowing and being bowed to. "Please excuse my bad manners arriving without an appointment but I wanted to bow to such an august person and welcome her to my village."

Both were surprised that he appeared so forbidding, for this was not a serious occasion. Meikin had never met him before but her own Gyokoyama official had mentioned him and that he was a man of integrity, so her reply was as polite and enthusiastic as befitted an eminent person from the biggest city in the world, complimenting him on the state of the Yoshiwara, and the little she had seen of the village.

"You are a man of great reputation, shoya."

"Thank you, thank you."

"Tea, or sak`e?" Raiko asked.

He hesitated, began to talk, stopped. The mood in the room changed. Raiko spoke into the silence. "Please excuse me, shoya, but what is the matter?"

"So sorry..." He turned to Meikin, "So sorry, Lady, you are a most cherished client for our company. I, I..." Shakily he reached into his sleeve and handed her the little piece of paper. She squinted at it. "What is it? What does it say? I cannot read writing so small."

"It's a carr... carrier pigeon message." The shoya tried to speak again, could not, numbly pointing at the paper.

Jolted, Raiko took it and moved to the light. Her eyes scanned the tiny writing. She blanched, wavered almost fainting, and sank to her knees. "It says, An assassination attempt on Lord Yoshi at dawn at Hamamatsu village failed. Lone shishi assassin slain by him. Lady Koiko also dead in skirmish. Inform House of Wisteria our great sadness. More information soon as possible. Namu Amida Butsu..."

Meikin had gone sallow. She mouthed, Koiko dead?

"It must be a mistake," Raiko cried out in anguish, "Must be! Koiko dead? When did it happen? There's no date! Shoya, how did you ... It must be lies, must be lies..."

"So sorry, the date is in code at the top," he mumbled. "This happened yesterday, near dawn. The Tokaido way station, Hamamatsu. No mistake, Lady, oh no, so sorry."

"Namu Amida Butsu! Koiko?

Koiko's dead?"

Meikin looked at her blankly, tears pouring down her cheeks, and fainted.

"Maids!"

They came running and brought smelling salts and cold towels and ministered to her and to Raiko as she tried to collect herself, groping to discover how this would affect her. For the first time she was uncertain if Meikin was now to be trusted or had become a hazard to be avoided.

The shoya knelt motionlessly. It had been necessary, and was still necessary for him to pretend to be frightened and aghast to be the bringer of bad tidings, but he was glad to be alive to witness these amazing happenings.

He had not given them the second slip of paper. It was private to him and in code and read: Assassin was Sumomo. Koiko believed to be implicated in plot, wounded with shuriken, then beheaded by Yoshi. Prepare to close Meikin accounts. Avoid mentioning Sumomo. Guard Hiraga as a national treasure, his information is invaluable. Press him for more, his family is being refinanced as agreed. We urgently require gai-jin war plans at whatever cost.

The moment he had received the message he had checked his books for Meikin's accounts that his branch owed her, even though he knew the amount to the hundredth part of a bronze coin. No need to worry. When she was moved onwards by Lord Yoshi, or if she wriggled out of the trap, either way the bank would profit. If she failed, another mama-san would take her place--they would use her residual wealth to sponsor the replacement. The Gyokoyama monopolized all Yoshiwara banking--an immense and permanent source of revenue.

How ironic life is, he thought, wondering what these two would think if they knew the reason for Gyokoyama's unbreakable hold. One of the most inner secrets of their zaibatsu was that their founder was not only a mama-san, but a woman of genius.

In the early 1600's, with the enthusiastic approval of Shogun Toranaga, she designed a walled district where, in future, all of Yedo's Pleasure Houses, high and low, had to conduct their business exclusively-- at that time brothels were spread all over the city-- calling it the Yoshiwara, the Place of Reeds, after the area Toranaga had allocated to her.

Next she created a new class of courtesan, geisha, those trained and qualified in the arts, who were not, routinely, available for pillowing.

Then she began moneylending, concentrating on Yedo's Yoshiwara, soon to spread her tentacles to all others as they were institutionalized throughout the land, Shogun Toranaga wisely having foreseen that in such districts the purveyors, and their clients, would be more easily monitored, and taxed.

Lastly, incredible in those days, somehow or another--no one still knew how--she persuaded Shogun Toranaga to make her eldest son samurai. In short order her other sons prospered: in shipbuilding, as rice dealers, sak`e and beer makers, their descendants today owners or silent controllers of a vast network of businesses. In a few years she obtained permission for the samurai branch to take the name Shimoda. Now the Shimoda were hereditary daimyo of the small but affluent fief of the same name, in Izu. It was she who coined the inscription over the Yoshiwara gateway: Lust cannot wait, it must be satisfied. She was ninety-two when she died. Her mama-san name Gyoko, Lady Luck.

"Shoya," Meikin said between broken sobs, "please advise me what I should do, please."

"You must wait, Lady, be patient and wait," he said hesitantly, still wearing his mask of disquiet, noticing, at once, though the sobs were loud and heartbreaking, her eyes were more pitiless than he had ever seen them.

"Wait? Wait for what? Of course wait but what else?"

"We, we do not yet know, know all the details, Lady, what happened. So sorry, but is there a chance the Lady Koiko would be part of the plot?" he asked, twisting a knife in the ready wound for the sake of twisting it. Though Gyokoyama had no proof, Meikin was suspected of dangerous sonno-joi affiliations and a connection with the Raven--against their oblique warnings--another reason why she had been advised to buy rice futures, not only as a wise investment but also as a bank-controlled hedge against her being accused and condemned.

"Koiko in a plot? My beauty, my treasure? Of course not," Meikin burst out.

"Of course not."

"Meikin-san, when Lord Yoshi returns, surely as her mama-san, he will send for you. In case, so sorry, in case enemies have whispered against you, it would be wise to have... to have ready tokens of... of your respect."

There was no reason for either woman to ask, What enemies? Success bred jealousy and secret hatreds everywhere--particularly in best friends--and in the Floating World, a world of women, more than anywhere. And both were successful.

Meikin was over her initial shock now, her mind concentrating on means of escape--in case Yoshi suspected, or Koiko had denounced her, or he had proof that both she and Koiko supported sonno-joi, shishi, and knew Katsumata. There was no real way to escape, not into another identity or to another place, Nippon was too well compartmentalized. Throughout the land, ten family heads formed the basic unit responsible for their own behavior and obedience to law, ten of these units formed another grouping equally responsible, ten of these the same and so on, up to the ultimate giver of law: the daimyo.