"Oh. I'd forgotten," he had said, hiding the truth.

"Even if she's set up she could still have a lover on the side if she wants. Who's to know?"' "I suppose so." More anguish.

"Don't fall in love, my friend, not with a courtesan. Take them for what they are, pleasure persons. Enjoy them, like them but don't love them--and never let them fall in love with you..."

Tyrer shivered, hating the truth, hating the idea of her being with another, and bedding as they had bedded, hating that it was for money, hating the ache that was in his loins. My God she really was so special, lovely, liquid, a sweet chatterbox, gentle, kind, so young and only in the House for such a short time. Should I set her up? Not should, could I? I'm sure Andr`e has his own place with his special friend though he's never said, nor would I ever ask. Christ, how much would that cost? Bound to be more than I could afford....

Don't think about that now! Or her.

With an effort he put his attention on the garden below but the ache remained. Part of the Highland detachment were assembling around the flagstaff, the trumpeter and four kettledrummers already in position for the lowering of the flag. Routine. The motley group of gardeners were collecting by the gate to be counted and then dismissed. They grovelled their way through the gates and through the samurai and were gone. Routine. Sentries closed and bolted the iron gates. Routine.

Drums and trumpet sounding as the Union Jack was slowly lowered--no sun sets on the British flag was British law throughout the world. Routine.

Most of the samurai marching away now, leaving only a token force for the night. Routine.

Tyrer shivered.

If everything's routine why am I so nervous?

The Legation gardeners trooped into their dormitory hovel that adjoined the other side of the Buddhist temple. None of them met Hiraga's gaze. All had been warned that their lives, and the lives of all their generations depended on his safety.

"Beware of talking to strangers," he had told them. "If the Bakufu find you've harbored me your reward will be just the same, except you will be crucified, not killed cleanly."

With all their abject protestations that he was safe, that he could trust them, Hiraga knew that he was never secure. Since the Anjo ambush ten days ago, most of the time he had been at their Kanagawa safe house, the Inn of the Midnight Blossoms. That the attack had failed and all but one of his companions killed was karma, nothing else.

Yesterday a letter had arrived from Katsumata, the leading, though clandestine, Satsuma shishi, now in Kyoto: Urgent: in a few weeks, Shogun Nobusada will create an unheard-of precedent by coming here to pay the Emperor a state visit. All shishi are advised to gather here at once to plan how to intercept him, to send him onwards, then to take possession of the Palace Gates. Katsumata had signed his code name: Raven.

Hiraga had discussed what to do with Ori, then decided to return here to Yedo, determined to act alone to destroy the British Legation, furious that the Council of Elders seemed to have been bamboozled and neutralized by the gai-jin.

"Kyoto can wait, Ori. We've got to press home our attack on the gai-jin. We must infuriate them until they bombard Yedo.

Others can deal with the Shogun and Kyoto."

He would have brought Ori but Ori was helpless, his wound worse, with no help from any doctor.

"What about your arm?"' "When it's unbearable, I'll commit seppuku," Ori had said, his words slurred from the sak`e he was using to dampen the pain--the three of them, he, Ori and the mama-san, having a final drink together. "Don't worry."

"Isn't there another doctor, a safe one?"' "No, Hiraga-san," the mama-san, Noriko, said. She was a tiny woman of fifty, her voice soft. "I even sent for a Korean acupuncturist and herbalist, both friends, but the poultices have been no value.

There's the giant gai-jin..."

"You're stupid," Ori shouted. "How many times must I tell you? This is a bullet wound, one of their bullets, and they saw me at Kanagawa!"

"Please excuse me," the mama-san said humbly, her head to the tatami, "please excuse this stupid person." She bowed again and left, but in her secret heart she was cursing Ori for failing to be a true shishi and not committing seppuku while Hiraga was here, the most perfect second a man could wish for, and so lessen the awful danger surrounding her and her House. News of the fate of the Inn of the Forty-seven Ronin had rushed fifty ri and beyond --an outrageous retribution to kill all patrons, courtesans and servants and to spike the head of the mama-san.

Monstrous, she thought, inflamed. How can a House forbid any samurai entrance, shishi or not? In olden days samurai killed much more than today, yes, but that was centuries ago and mostly only when it was merited and not women or children. That was when the law of the land was just, Shogun Toranaga just, his son and grandson just, before corruption and dissipation became a way of life for descendant Shoguns, daimyo and samurai alike, who for a century and more have spread their rapacious taxations over us like pus! The shishi are our only hope! Sonno-joi!

"Anjo must die before we die," she said fervently when Hiraga had at length returned safely two days after the attack. "We've been petrified you'd been caught and burnt with the others. It was all done on Anjo's orders, Hiraga-san, on his orders--in fact he was returning from the Inn when you attacked him near the castle gates, he had personally ordered and witnessed the executions, leaving men there in ambush in case all you shishi returned unawares."

"Who betrayed us, Hiraga?"' Ori had asked.

"The Mori samurai."

"But Akimoto said he saw them engulfed and killed."

"It must have been one of them. Did anyone else escape?"' "Akimoto--he hid out in another Inn for a day and a night."

"Where is he now?"' Noriko said, "He's occupied--shall I send for him?"' "No. Tomorrow I will see him."

"Anjo must pay in blood for the Inn--that's against all custom!"

"He will. So will the roju. So will Shogun Nobusada. And so will Yoshi."

In his private quarters high up in the castle keep, Yoshi was composing a poem. He wore a blue silk kimono and sat at a low table, an oil lamp on it and sheets of rice paper, brushes of different thicknesses, water to soften the block of jet ink that now had a tiny, inviting pool in the hollowed-out center.

Twilight was becoming night. From outside the hum of Yedo's million souls ever present. A few houses on fire as usual.

From the castle below the comforting, muted noise of soldiers, hooves on cobblestones, an occasional throaty laugh wafting upwards with the smoke and smells of the cooking fires through the decorative, bowman openings in the vast walls, not yet shuttered against the night chill.

This was his inner sanctum. Spartan.

Tatamis, a takoyama, the shoji door in front of him so positioned and lit that he could see the shape of any figure outside but no one there could look within.

Outside this room was a larger anteroom with corridors leading off it to sleeping quarters, empty at present except for retainers, maids and Koiko, his special favorite. His family--his wife, two sons and a daughter, his consort and her son--were all safe and heavily guarded in his hereditary, fortress castle, Dragon's Tooth, in the mountains some twenty ri northwards. Beyond this antechamber were guards and other rooms with other guards, all sworn to his personal service.

His brush dipped into the ink pool. He poised the point over the delicate rice paper then wrote firmly: Sword of my fathers When in my hands Twists uneasily The writing was in three short, flowing vertical lines of characters, strong where they should be strong and soft where softness would enhance the picture that the characters made--never a second chance to refine or change or correct even the slightest fault, the texture of the rice paper sucking in the ink at once to become indelibly a part of it, varying the black to grey depending how the brush was used and the amount of water therein.