“Hiroshi-san had gone there on business and stayed so late that the gates were closed and he couldn’t get home. He went to an inn to ask for lodging. A man came to the door and said, ‘There’s no room left.’ Hiroshi-san thought that was strange, because the place was so quiet, it seemed empty. He looked past the man, into the building, and saw Mariko sitting there.”

A signal chimed in Sano’s mind, alerting him to a possible clue. He resisted the urge to interrupt Yuka with questions.

“I was so glad to find out where Mariko was,” she said. “I begged Hiroshi-san to take me to her and help me bring her home. He’s a kind man, so he agreed. The next day, we went to the inn together. We walked up to the door, and the man came out to meet us. I said, ‘I’ve come to fetch my daughter, Mariko.’ He said, ‘She’s not here.’ I got angry because the moment I laid eyes on him, I knew he’d fathered the child. ‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘Bring Mariko to me. I won’t leave without her.’

“But then he called two big, mean-looking fellows out of the house and told them to get rid of me. They threw Hiroshi-san and me out the gate. He said, ‘If you come back, they’ll kill you.’ Hiroshi-san and I went home. I knew Mariko had gotten mixed up with bad people, and I wanted to save her, but I didn’t know what to do, where to turn. I just hoped she would be all right. I prayed for her to come home.”

Yuka sat with head bowed and eyes downcast. “A whole year I waited, until last autumn. It was during the eighth month. Mariko came stumbling into our room at daybreak. She was panting, as if she’d run a long way. There were cuts and bruises on her face. Her clothes were torn and stained with blood. She smelled like smoke. She wouldn’t tell me what had happened, but she clung to me and cried.”

Last autumn… the eighth month. That time was indelibly etched into Sano’s memory, associated with events he would never forget. A possible explanation for Mariko’s strange behavior, and her condition that morning, occurred to him. He frowned as his perceptions shifted with an eerie feeling that the case had folded back upon itself and returned him to ground he’d abandoned after the ransom letter arrived. His heart began racing with excitement countered by disbelief.

“I washed Mariko and put her to bed,” Yuka said. “For four days she wouldn’t eat or do anything but lie there and weep. When she slept, she would cry out, ‘No, no!’ and act as if someone was attacking her.” Yuka pantomimed, tossing her head and thrashing her arms. “She would wake up screaming.”

Sano cautioned himself against seeing connections where none existed. He needed more evidence before he reverted to a theory that circumstances had proven wrong.

“I comforted her,” Yuka said, “and after awhile, she seemed calmer. Her wounds healed. She started eating and washing and dressing herself. I told her, ‘The world is dangerous. If you go, you’ll get hurt even worse. Stay here, where you’ll be safe.’ I thought Mariko understood. She stayed a month. She was polite and obedient and helped me with my work. But just as I began to believe she’d changed, she left again. The next time she came back was just before the New Year. There were two samurai with her. She said, ‘Mother, I’ve come to say good-bye.’

Weariness inflected Yuka’s voice. “By that time I wasn’t surprised by anything Mariko did. I said, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To Edo Castle,’ she said. One of the samurai said, ‘She’s going to be a maid to the shogun’s mother,’ and they took her away. That’s the last time I ever saw Mariko.”

Another signal rang in Sano’s head as he perceived another clue that tied Mariko to the kidnapping. He let a moment pass in silence, allowing Yuka her sad thoughts. Then he said, “The shogun has ordered me to find the person responsible for crimes that include the murder of your daughter. I need your help.”

“Help?” Yuka looked up. Her face, streaked and mottled red by tears, seemed to have aged a decade. “What could I do to help you?”

“Give me directions to the inn where you went looking for Mariko.” Sano conjectured that the inn was where Mariko had gone the night before the trip.

“It’s on a road that crosses the main Ginza street, eight blocks past the silver mint,” Yuka said. “Turn left on the road. There’s a picture of a carp on the sign at the inn.”

“Can you describe the man you met there?” Sano said. Perhaps the man was the Dragon King or his henchman, as well as the father of Mariko’s stillborn child.

Yuka pondered. “He was maybe thirty-five years old, and tall.” Sano noted that almost anyone probably seemed tall to her. “He was handsome, but there was something about him that frightened me.” She frowned in an effort to articulate her impression. “It was his eyes. They were so black, like he could see out of them, but I couldn’t see in. I felt as if they could pull me into their darkness.”

“Did you get his name?” Sano asked.

Yuka shook her head. Although Sano questioned her at length, she couldn’t remember any more about the man. But perhaps the strange eyes would better serve to identify him than would details on his other features or his clothing.

“Who were the two samurai that came with Mariko the last time you saw her?” Sano said.

“I don’t know,” Yuka said. “They didn’t introduce themselves. And I was too afraid to even look closely at them. But they wore crests like yours.”

She pointed to the Tokugawa triple-hollyhock-leaf insignias on Sano’s surcoat. A chill of dismay stole through Sano. If the men who’d taken Mariko to Edo Castle were indeed Tokugawa retainers, then here was more evidence that someone in the bakufu had planted her as a spy in the Large Interior. Sano quailed at the thought of telling the shogun that a traitor lurked within the regime. He dreaded extending the search for the Dragon King into the ranks of his comrades, and the peril that would result. Yet Sano had never backed away from danger while in pursuit of the truth. To save Reiko and his lord’s mother, he would take the investigation wherever he must.

“Mariko must have done terrible things that I never knew about.” Yuka began to weep again. “Her death must have been the punishment she deserved.”

“Perhaps not,” Sano said, rising. “I think your daughter got involved with someone who forced her to do things she shouldn’t have.”

No matter if the evidence suggested that Mariko had been an accomplice in the kidnapping, Sano believed she’d also been an innocent victim, unaware of the Dragon King’s evil schemes and in thrall to him. The mystery surrounding her life hinted at how she’d become his unwitting tool, and how various threads of the crime intertwined. Sano also believed Mariko had brought him a step closer to the Dragon King. Now he had additional reasons to persevere with his investigation, no matter the risk to himself.

“I promise to bring Mariko’s killers to justice and avenge her murder,” Sano told Yuka.