“First the sect attacked Haru, and now us,” Reiko said, her voice deliberately calm. “They must have followed us from the jail and set up the ambush. They wanted to keep us from discovering the truth about the Black Lotus.”

Sano agreed with her logic, and he began reassessing his opinion of the attack on Haru, but before he could reply, his men returned. “You lost the last two?” Sano said.

“We cornered them in an alley,” Hirata said,”but they cut their own throats to avoid capture.” Eyeing the corpse beside Reiko, he added,”They’re both priests, with that same tattoo.”

Reiko turned a bleak gaze on Sano. “They’ll stop at nothing to destroy their enemies and protect their secrets.”

30

Iridescent pink cloud glowed in the twilight sky above the Zōjō temple district. Bells clamored, heralding evening rites. Peddlers and late worshippers trudged homeward from the marketplace, while nuns and priests streamed into temples. But the gates to the Black Lotus Temple were closed; no one passed in or out. Shrouded in secrecy, the walled compound gathered the night around itself.

Inside the temple precinct, monks armed with spears guarded the gates and patrolled the grounds. Lights burned behind the windows of the buildings. Flames flickered in stone lanterns along the main path, where a hundred nuns and priests stood in rows, each holding a wooden dagger. Priest Kumashiro, armed with a steel dagger, headed the group. He whirled, slashing the air in ritualistic combat. The nuns and priests imitated his actions like an army of shadows.

Midori clutched her dagger, panting as she tried to keep up with her comrades. She wondered why they needed to learn how to fight. Kumashiro had merely told them it was vital to their future. Her comrades mimicked him with rapt concentration, as if they shared his secret purpose. The lesson, which reminded Midori of military drills at Edo Castle, intensified her fears about the Black Lotus. As she darted and stabbed, she tried to keep an eye on Toshiko, in the next row.

All day she’d waited for her friend to create a diversion so she could escape the sect’s supervision, but Toshiko had done nothing. She hadn’t winked; she hadn’t even spoken to Midori. Now Midori was starving because she didn’t want to be poisoned by eating the sect’s food. She wanted to finish spying and avoid spending another night at the temple, but she feared that Toshiko had changed her mind about helping.

Beyond the rows of moving figures Midori saw nuns stationed along both sides of the path, watching the group. She would never get past them without Toshiko’s cooperation. Despair filled her.

The lesson halted, and the group stood at attention while three priests joined Kumashiro. Each carried a horizontal pole with a life-sized human dummy at the end. The dummies had wooden heads and wore men’s kimonos and wicker hats.

“Watch carefully,” Kumashiro ordered the group.

The priests moved in a staggered line toward him, dummies extended. Kumashiro charged at the dummies. He swung his dagger right, left, and right, slashing tears across the dummies’ middles.

“Form a line, run up one at time, and do as I showed you,” Kumashiro said.

Midori and the others jostled into position. The monk at the head of the line ran forward. The priests thrust the dummies at him, and he whacked his wooden dagger against the stuffed figures. Other monks and nuns followed his example. As the line moved up, Midori fidgeted in anxiety. The violence of the exercise disturbed her, as did the ferocity with which her comrades attacked the dummies. Dreading her turn, she watched Toshiko, who stood four places ahead of her.

Suddenly Toshiko let out a loud cry. Midori’s heart jumped. Everyone looked at Toshiko as she dropped her dagger and clutched her stomach.

“Ow, ow, it hurts!” she screamed, toppling to the ground.

The nuns on the sidelines hurried toward her. Toshiko rolled back and forth, grimacing in pain, and her gaze briefly met Midori’s. She winked.

Overjoyed, Midori turned and ran into the grounds. Trees screened the light from the moon and the buildings, and she could barely see where she was going. She plunged into a passage between solid walls, then through a patch of woods, and emerged into open space. Her foot struck a stone or fallen branch. She tripped, sprawling flat on the grass.

The fall knocked the dagger out of her hand and the breath from her lungs. Midori lay stunned for a moment, heart pounding. Then she scrambled up, aware that she hadn’t thought what to do after escaping. Where should she go? Uncertainty immobilized her. She felt very small and alone and scared.

Now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she saw that she was in a garden. Jagged pine trees stood out against the indigo sky, and a pond reflected the moon’s bleached circle. Midori smelled the odor of burnt wood and saw a large square of bare, charred earth. A chill tingled her skin. This must be where the cottage had been burned with Commander Oyama, the woman, and the little boy inside, and the debris cleared away.

Rapid footsteps rustled through fallen leaves, coming toward Midori. Panic ripped a gasp from her throat. She whirled, raising her hands to fend off the dark figure approaching her.

The person halted and whispered loudly, “It’s me!”

“Oh!” Midori went limp with relief as she recognized Toshiko. “I’m so glad to see you. How did you get here?”

“I told them I had cramps,” Toshiko said, “and then pretended to get better. After the lesson started up again, I sneaked away. So, what’s next?”

Before Midori could admit that she didn’t know, a creaking noise came from the site of the fire. They both started. Midori saw an eerie glow issuing from the burnt ground.

“It’s the ghosts of the people who died here!” she whispered as superstitious fright shot through her.

She and Toshiko hugged each other, cowering behind a tree. Up from the ground rose a hand, bearing a lantern; then an entire figure emerged. It was a woman dressed in a gray kimono and long white head drape: Abbess Junketsu-in. She held the lantern over a large hole out of which she’d climbed.

“That must be an opening to the underground tunnels Lady Reiko told me about,” Midori whispered to Toshiko. Apparently, it had once led into the cottage.

As they watched, there were more creaking sounds, and two male figures climbed from the hole. They had shaved crowns and wore swords. Midori recognized the crest of the Kuroda clan on their glossy silk robes. They and Junketsu-in walked away down a path toward the main precinct.

“Do you want to see what’s inside the hole?” Toshiko whispered.

Midori shuddered at the idea of going down there. “Let’s find out what the abbess and those men are doing.” Reiko would want to know why Junketsu-in had sneaked two high-ranking samurai from a powerful clan into the temple. “Come on!”

They followed the trio, creeping along behind the shrubs that bordered the path. The abbess led the samurai up the stairs to the veranda of a secondary worship hall. Dim light shone through the barred windows. Midori and Toshiko hid behind a prayer board outside and watched one samurai open the door.

“Not so fast,” Junketsu-in said irately. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

The men reached inside their kimonos, removed objects too small for Midori to see, and handed them to the abbess. Then the three vanished into the building.

Midori said to Toshiko, “We’ll listen at the windows.”