But Yanagisawa had failed to find evidence that Lord Kii was the Dragon King, or leads to Lady Keisho-in’s whereabouts. He’d gotten himself thrown out of the estate before he could even look for clues, and if he dared return, he might start a war that he couldn’t win, because his power was on the downslide. The pounding of his heart, and the thunder of his blood, produced a roar in his ears like a distant avalanche tumbling toward him. Yanagisawa knew not what to do, except hope for Sano to solve the case, prevent Hoshina’s execution, and spare Yanagisawa the downfall that would begin if no one rescued Lady Keisho-in.

21

Umbrellas, patterned in hues of red, pink, yellow, orange, blue, and green, bloomed like giant round flowers outside shops along the narrow street in the Nihonbashi merchant district. Inside the shops, the umbrella makers cut bamboo handles, glued paper to spokes, and painted designs. Customers haggled with clerks and departed carrying portable shade to protect themselves from the afternoon sun that rained heat upon the city. Sano and a squadron of detectives left their horses outside the neighborhood gate. They walked up Umbrella-maker’s Street, jostling past an itinerant tea seller. Sano stopped a boy who toted a load of bamboo poles and asked, “Where can I find Yuka?”

The boy pointed down the block. Sano looked, and saw what he at first thought was a little girl wielding a straw broom, sweeping debris out of a shop. He led his men toward her, and closer appraisal showed her to be a diminutive woman, dressed in a faded indigo robe and white head kerchief. When Sano called her name, she stopped sweeping and lifted a round, pleasant face to him. Brown spots and faint wrinkles on its tanned skin marked her age at some thirty-five years. Sano observed that she seemed in good health, and certainly not on her deathbed, as her daughter, Mariko, had told Madam Chizuru.

“Yes?” She bobbed a quick bow. Her bright eyes regarded Sano and his men with shy curiosity.

Sano introduced himself, then said, “I’ve come to talk to you about your daughter.”

“My daughter?” Yuka’s gaze dimmed.

“You are the mother of Mariko, aren’t you?” Sano said.

“Mariko?” The woman clutched her broom to her stubby, childlike body. Sano couldn’t tell whether fright or simplemindedness caused her to echo his words without apparent comprehension. Then she nodded, her expression wary.

“I must ask you some questions about Mariko,” said Sano. “Did she come to visit you seven days ago?”

“Visit me? No, master.” Confusion wrinkled Yuka’s brow.

Sano decided that Yuka wasn’t simpleminded; she just feared authority, as did many peasants, and her repetition was a nervous habit. Yet although Sano recognized that this would be a difficult interview, and he must exercise restraint while asking a bereaved mother for information about her dead child, he felt none of the impatience that had hounded him while questioning the merchant Naraya.

He now knew that Mariko had lied about visiting her mother. The lie, coupled with the gold coins she’d hidden, fueled his suspicion that she was the Dragon King’s accomplice. A growing certainty that he’d found a path to the truth infused Sano with an energy that calmed as well as elated him. Even while each passing moment heightened his desperation to find Reiko, for the first time he had faith that he would succeed.

“Then you didn’t see Mariko before she went away on the trip,” Sano clarified.

“Trip? What trip?” Yuka shook her head. “I didn’t know Mariko was going away. I thought she was working at Edo Castle. I haven’t seen her in six months.” A shadow crossed her good-natured countenance: She’d begun to understand that a visit from the shogun’s investigator boded ill for her. “Has Mariko done something wrong?”

Sano realized with dismay that Yuka didn’t know her daughter was dead. Perhaps the Edo Castle officials who were responsible for notifying the families of Lady Keisho-in’s murdered attendants hadn’t gotten around to Yuka. She probably couldn’t read and would have ignored the news broadsheets that had reported the massacre. The task of delivering the bad news fell to Sano.

“Come, let’s sit down,” he said, gesturing for his detectives to move away and give him and Yuka privacy.

He took the broom from Yuka and leaned it against the wall of the umbrella shop. They sat together on the edge of the shop’s raised floor, in the shade beneath the eaves, and Sano gently explained to Yuka that her daughter had been killed. As he spoke, he watched shock and disbelief glaze her eyes, and horror part her lips. A whimper of anguish arose from her. Quickly she turned her face away to hide her grief.

“Please excuse me, master,” she whispered.

Sano saw tears glisten down the curve of her cheek. His heart ached because he could imagine himself in her place, losing his own child. Feeling helpless to comfort her, he called to the tea seller and bought her a bowl of tea. Yuka drank, swallowing sobs, then hunched over the bowl in her hands, as though she craved its warmth even on this hot day. After she’d calmed, she began to speak in a wan, desolate voice.

“I knew Mariko would come to a bad end someday. But I don’t know what went wrong.”

Time pressed against Sano, and questions percolated in his mind, but he waited and listened. Yuka deserved the solace of speaking about her child, and he had a hunch that letting her tell her story in her own way could produce more valuable facts than would a formal interrogation.

“Her father died when Mariko was seven,” Yuka said. “He used to work in the umbrella shop. The proprietor took pity on me and hired me as a servant. He let Mariko and me live in the back room. I have to work day and night. I couldn’t watch Mariko. But at first I didn’t worry, because she was so quiet, so obedient, so good. Even when she got older, I trusted her to look after herself. She wasn’t a pretty girl-not the kind that boys chase.”

Nor did Mariko sound like the kind of girl who would accept bribes to spy on her mistress. Sano experienced a qualm of doubt that she’d been the Dragon King’s spy in Edo Castle. Would she turn out to be yet another dead end, despite her lie and her stash of gold coins?

“But two years ago, when she was thirteen, she started going out and staying away for days at a time. When I asked where she’d been, she wouldn’t tell me. She got quieter and quieter as the months went by.” Yuka’s tone recalled the anger, puzzlement, and frustration that her daughter’s behavior had caused her. “Even when I scolded and hit her, she kept her mouth shut and stared into space.”

Sano’s instincts quickened with the sense that he was going to learn something important. Here, he felt certain, began Mariko’s odyssey from Umbrella-maker’s Street to the Dragon King.

“One night, after Mariko had been away five days, I was wakened by the sound of moaning. I saw Mariko lying on the floor, writhing in pain and clutching her stomach and calling for help. I got up to see what was wrong. I thought she was sick. But a little while later, she gave birth to a baby boy. It was no bigger than my hand. It was born dead.”

Yuka stared, her teary gaze remote, as though she watched the scene in her memory. “I’d had no idea that Mariko was with child. I asked who the father was. She just closed her eyes. I wrapped up the baby and put it in the garbage bin. I didn’t want anyone to know she’d disgraced herself. I hoped she’d learned a lesson and would stop running around.”

This common tale of a girl gone bad had a mysterious undertone that whetted Sano’s appetite to hear more.

“But the next day, Mariko sneaked off again,” Yuka continued. “She hadn’t said a word about what happened! I only found out who the man was by accident, from a clerk in the shop. He said to me, ‘I saw your girl in Ginza the other day.’