“Didn’t you make me your devoted slave, and all the while you bestowed your favors elsewhere?” he demanded. “Didn’t I suffer agonizing heartbreak because of you? Didn’t you break my spirit, then abandon me?” He shouted, “Whore! She-devil!”

He slapped her cheek so hard that her head snapped and her vision blurred. Reiko screamed in pain and shock as she fell on her side with a bone-jarring crash. Then the Dragon King was bending over her, murmuring tender consolations.

“Forgive me for hurting you,” he said. “How can I make amends?”

Comfort from him scared Reiko as much as his violence did. She felt the tingling soreness in her cheek; she tasted blood in her mouth. As she gazed up at him, tears flooded her eyes. “You can let us go.”

His brows bunched together. “Why do you want to leave me? Do you find me so repulsive?”

“No, not at all,” Reiko hastened to say. Cautiously she sat up, aware that she must not enrage him again, lest he do her greater injury. “I think you’re very… handsome. But the tower is unfit for people to live in. Lady Keisho-in is old and sick. Midori is going to have a baby soon, Lady Yanagisawa is the mother of a little daughter who needs her.”

Ennui shaded the Dragon King’s countenance: His interest in Reiko didn’t extend to the other women.

“I have a child, too.” Reiko’s voice trembled as she thought of Masahiro. “We all want to go home!”

The Dragon King folded his arms and straightened his posture. “That’s impossible.” Coldness edged his gruff voice.

“Have you any children of your own? Don’t you miss your own family?” Reiko said, trying to draw him onto common ground and thereby win his sympathy. “Wouldn’t you rather be with them instead of in this miserable place?”

“I have no children. I have no family.” He spoke in an accusatory tone that said his lack was somehow her fault.

Reiko despaired of reasoning with him, for she comprehended that he was irrational. “Who is it that you want revenge against?” she asked. “What did they do to you that you would kill and kidnap innocent people?”

His superior smile mocked her. “The truth will soon become known to everyone in Japan.”

Thwarted, Reiko tried another tack: “How can you serve justice by keeping us imprisoned?”

“You will see,” he said, replete with private satisfaction.

“Kidnapping the shogun’s mother and slaughtering her entourage is treason against the Tokugawa regime. You’ll never get away with it.” In her growing anxiety, Reiko resorted to threats: “The army will hunt you down. You’ll die in disgrace, while your enemy goes free.”

“The army won’t touch me.” The Dragon King lifted his receding chin and rested a hand on his swords. “I’ve warned the shogun that if he sends the army after me, I’ll kill you all. He must grant my wish, or lose his beloved mother.”

Reiko couldn’t fathom what wish had spurred this man to such extreme behavior. “What did you ask the shogun to do?” she said, her curiosity almost equaling her fear.

“Be patient,” the Dragon King said with an air of condescension. “Time will tell.”

Although Reiko had learned the futility of expecting the answers she wanted from him, she said, “What will happen to us?”

“That depends on the shogun. For now, you will stay here with me. We might as well enjoy this time we have together.”

He crept close behind her. His feverish warmth and odor of incense engulfed Reiko; his breaths rasped loudly. An urge to flee almost launched Reiko to her feet, but she saw Ota hovering in the doorway and the men on the veranda, all watching. The Dragon King’s fingers tangled in her hair, fumbling and stroking. Reiko felt her skin ripple with revulsion.

No man except her husband had ever touched her in such an intimate manner. She wanted no man except Sano. She would have turned on the Dragon King, grabbed for his sword, and fought him off, but if she did, Keisho-in, Lady Yanagisawa, and Midori would pay.

The Dragon King brushed her hair to one side. His hot, moist breath fanned the back of her neck, that erotic, intimate zone of the female body. His fingertips grazed her nape. Reiko went rigid with terror of ravishment-the worst injury, short of death, that a man could inflict upon a woman.

“The dragon lifts his spiny tail,” he whispered. “His majestic body swells and pulsates. Steam bursts from between his glittering scales. His flaming breath ignites passion.”

Reiko shuddered at this obscene parody of a love poem. She gagged on bile as she anticipated the agonizing ravishment, and the terrible disgrace.

“An ocean of desire envelops the princess in the underwater palace. Her ivory skin flushes scarlet. She parts her rosy coral lips. Her will drowns in his power. She must surrender.”

His moving lips touched Reiko’s ear. His hand quivered while he stroked her neck. “Surrender to me now, Anemone, my beautiful drowned princess,” he muttered. “Reward me for the justice I will bring you.”

Now Reiko comprehended with horror that he wasn’t just playing a game. He had such a tenuous grip on reality that he kept forgetting who she was and actually believing she was the woman he called Anemone. He wasn’t merely eccentric and irrational-he was insane. What sense could she hope to make of a madman’s purpose?

Indecision paralyzed Reiko. If she resisted him, her friends might lose their lives, but enduring his advances might not guarantee their survival. Must she submit to him? Should she fight instead? If she fought, would he or his men kill her?

“You’re trembling,” the Dragon King said. “You recoil from my touch. Why do you seem not to want me?”

Hurt and confusion echoed in his words. Reiko dared not move or speak. His hand continued stroking her. Then he said, “Ah,” in a glad tone of enlightenment. “My haste has offended your feminine sensibility. You would prefer that we delay our lovemaking until we become reacquainted. And your wish is my privilege to honor. Waiting will enhance our pleasure.”

The Dragon King’s hand dropped from her neck. He stood and called to his men: “Take her back to the keep.”

Such overwhelming relief swept through Reiko that her muscles went weak and a sigh gushed from her. Yet even as she silently thanked the gods, she knew the reprieve was only temporary.

The men entered the room and surrounded Reiko. The Dragon King gazed upon her, his eyes burning and face dark with lust. “Good-bye until next time, my dearest Anemone,” he said.

As the men led her away, Reiko prayed for a miracle to save her before the next time came.

18

The route to Izu branched southwest off the Tōkaidō and wound through mountainous, sparsely populated landscape. While Hirata and the detectives galloped along the road, the clouds dispersed, revealing brilliant blue sky, and the afternoon grew warm. Sunlight and shadow painted the cypress forests in vivid shades of green. Steam issued from cracks in the cliffs; hot springs bubbled across the rocky terrain; volcanoes breathed wisps of smoke. Tiny villages, clinging to hillsides, flashed past Hirata as his horse’s hooves thrummed under him. The wind roaring in his ears, the tumultuous speed, and the certainty that he was following the path to Midori, elated his spirit. Now he and Marume and Fukida brought their horses to a skittering halt at the junction between the main road and a narrower track that extended west and east into wilderness.

In the sudden quiet stillness, Hirata heard birds singing. He saw, on the west side of the road, a niche carved into a cliff. The niche held a little stone statue of Jizo, the Shinto patron god of travelers.

“There’s the shrine Goro mentioned,” said Fukida.

“The kidnappers sent away the porters because they didn’t want anyone to see where they went from here,” Marume deduced. “They carried the chests themselves, down that crossroad. Which way do you think they went?”