"I wish to search."

"With pleasure, please follow."

"Go to the kitchen."

"Kitchen? Please, please to follow." She led the way pleasantly. When she saw Hiraga head down in the dirt amongst the dozen cooks and workers, her knees almost failed her.

Hiraga was filthy, his head covered by the matted wig Katsumata had worn in Hodogaya, and naked except for a soiled loincloth and ragged singlet. "Tie a pebble under your instep, Hiraga," Katsumata advised.

"Your walk as much as your face will give you away, smear dirt on your face and armpits, dung is better, pretend to be a scullion, do not act, be one. Meanwhile make incendiaries, instruct Takeda how to do it, and be ready for when I return..."

The leather-faced sergeant stood with his hands on his hips in the silence and looked around.

Painstakingly. Every corner, cupboard or storeroom was scrutinized. Rows of rare spices, teas, barrels of sak`e and bottles of gai-jin liquor and bags of the finest rice.

He grunted to hide his envy.

"You! Head cook!" The portly, terrified man raised his head. "Stand over there! Line up, all of you." In their haste to obey they stumbled over one another, Hiraga limping badly, dirty, naked but for the grimy loincloth and ragged singlet, shoved his way into line. Muttering curses, the samurai stared at each man as he went down the line. When he came up to Hiraga his nostrils wrinkled with disgust at the stench, then he moved to the next man to the next man and the next, vented his pent-up rage by shouting at the last man who collapsed in a petrified heap.

Then the Sergeant stalked back and stood in front of Hiraga, feet planted.

"You!" he bellowed. "You!"

Raiko cried out and nearly swooned, everyone stopped breathing, Hiraga fell on his face, grovelling and moaning, bracing his feet against the wall to hurl himself forward at the Sergeant's legs. But the man began raving, "You are a disgrace to a kitchen, and you," he whirled on Raiko who backed against the wall, terrified, Hiraga just managing to stop his lunge in time, "You should be ashamed to have a dung-covered scum like this in a kitchen for the rich." His iron-hard toe kicked the befouled in the neck and shoulder joint and Hiraga cried out in real pain, the wig almost came off and he grabbed it in panic, hands over his head. "Get rid of him. If this lice bag is here or in the Yoshiwara by sundown, I will close you for filth! Shave his head!" Another kick and he stalked out.

No one moved until the all-clear came.

Even then they started to pick themselves up warily, maids rushed in with smelling salts for Raiko who tottered away leaning on them, while kitchen workers helped Hiraga to his feet. He was in pain but did not show it. At once he stripped and went out to the servants' area and washed himself, scrubbing and scrubbing, filled with revulsion--he had had only enough time to dig his hands into the nearest bucket of night soil and smear himself and rush to a place near the fires.

When he was partially satisfied he stalked naked for his house, to bathe again, this time in hot water, certain he would never feel clean again.

Raiko intercepted him on the veranda, not fully recovered from her alarm.

"So sorry, Hiraga-sama, the lookout failed to warn us but the samurai in that garden...

Hot water and a bath maid is waiting for you inside but now, so sorry, perhaps you should go, it's too dangerou--"

"I am waiting for Katsumata, then I shall leave. He has paid you well."

"Yes but the Enforc--"

"Baka! You are responsible for the warning system. If there is another mistake, your head goes in the bucket!"

Grim-visaged he stalked into the bathhouse where the maid knelt and bowed so fast she banged her head. "Baka!" he snarled, not yet over his utter fright, the foul taste of fear still with him. He squatted on the tiny stool, ready for the maid to begin scrubbing. "Hurry up!"

Baka, he thought enraged. Everyone is baka, Raiko is baka, but not Katsumata --he is not baka, he was right again: without the shit I would be dead, or worse, captured alive.

YEDO Dusk was a busy time for the inhabitants of Yedo's Yoshiwara, the biggest and finest in all Nippon, a maze of tiny streets and pleasant places on the edge of the city, covering almost two hundred acres, where Katsumata and other shishi, or ronin, could hide in safety--if acceptable.

Katsumata was particularly acceptable.

Money was not a problem for him. He paid the waitress for his soup and noodles and strolled unhurried towards the House of Wisteria, still disguised as a bonze though now he wore a false mustache and was clad differently, his shoulders made wider with pads, his robe richer.

Colorful lanterns were being lit everywhere, gardens and paths given their last brushing, fresh flower arrangements finished. Inside the Teahouses and Inns of greater or lesser importance, geisha and courtesans and mama-sans were being bathed and dressed, chattering and preparing for tonight's entertainment. Kitchens abuzz, men chopping and dicing and preparing sauces and sweetmeats and decorations and cauldrons of the choicest rice, cleaning fish and caressing marinades into them.

Lots of friendly laughter. Misery here and there, some in tears thinking of clients allocated or strangers who must be received and welcomed with smiles and laughter, and satisfied--and not the young lovers many hearts yearned for, the yearning to be left alone and allowed to sleep. As always, mama-sans and older, more experienced courtesans gentled them, repeating the same dogma that Meikin was saying to Teko, Koiko's maiko, now in tears, who was to make her debut as a courtesan this night, "Dry your tears, Moonbeam, accept without thinking the sad impermanence of life, accept what lies ahead, laugh with your sisters, enjoy wine and song and your pretty clothes, gaze at the moon or at a flower and drift with the current of life like a gourd drifting downstream. Run along now."

I will not accept that Katsumata betrayed my Koiko with just cause, Meikin thought, her heart aching. He had no need or justification to compromise my precious with that woman shishi, however brave! Worse, he was baka to end such a marvelous source of influence and private information from Yoshi's shadow, stupid stupid stupid! But it is done. Finished. Take your own advice, Meikin: Drift, what does it matter, truly?

I accept that it matters. Koiko mattered to all of us, not the least to Yoshi, now pitilessly against all shishi.

Again the mama-san sat at her mirror. The reflection stared back at her. Her makeup, heavier than usual, no longer hid the shadows and sagging care lines.

I accept, too, that I have aged horribly since the shoya interrupted us, Raiko and me-- Eleventh Day of Twelfth Month, Last Month, the last day of my life. Just thirty-three days ago. Only thirty-three days and I look like a crone, long past the normal span of fifty years. Thirty-three days of tears, a lake of tears when I thought I was safely beyond tears, sure that I had used up all my tears long ago, over lovers I can hardly remember, over one I can still feel and smell and taste and yearn for, my penniless young samurai who left without warning, without a word or letter, for another Teahouse and another woman, taking the little money I had saved and the broken pieces of my spirit that he cast into the gutter. And later then more tears over my baby son, dead in the house fire of his foster parents, his rich old merchant father wandering off like the other, my suicide unsuccessful.

Too many Floating years. Thirty-three years drifting, one for each of the harrowing days.

Now I have forty-three years, forty-three years today I was born. What should I do now? Soon the Lord Yoshi will demand payment. Karma.

I accept that I trained Koiko, offered her, guaranteed her. What more can I offer in supplication? What can I do?