The island loomed larger. Soon the raft bumped to a halt in the shallows near the end of the island opposite the dock. Hirata saw the sloping bank and dense trees articulated by the moonlight, and luminous reflections breaking at the shoreline. He and his companions climbed off the raft. Cold water immersed them up to their shins. Mud sucked at Hirata’s sandals as he waded ashore. He and Fukida and Marume hauled the dripping raft out of the lake, into the forest, and leaned it upright against a tree. They draped vines over the raft and buried the oars under fallen leaves. Then they crept through the woods, toward the castle.

The light from the stars and moon barely pierced the dense shadows in the forest. Hirata and the detectives groped their way around trees, over dead logs. His fear of getting caught magnified every crackle of twigs under his feet, and every rustle of leafy branches against him, into a thunderous noise. The atmosphere tingled with the presence of nearby humans. A sudden sense of danger and malevolence stirred Hirata’s nerves. At the same moment, he smelled burning oil and spied a light flickering in the near distance.

Hirata froze, his arm flung out to halt Marume and Fukida behind him. They all crouched in the underbrush as footsteps tramped toward them. The light was a flame that guttered in a metal lantern carried by a tough-looking samurai. His visage, eerily lit by the lantern, disappeared and reappeared between the trees. Hirata held his breath until the samurai passed. With his heart pounding from the close call, Hirata cautiously rose. He and his men continued their advance for some twenty more paces, until they spied more lights, traversing the island in multiple directions. Again and again they paused to hide as more samurai patrolled around them. Hirata was dismayed that so many of the kidnappers maintained a vigilant watch even at night, when he’d hoped they would be asleep.

Could he find Midori before they found him?

Ages seemed to pass while he and his comrades crept across the island. Finally, a lessening in the darkness ahead of them signaled an open space. Hirata, Fukida, and Marume stopped within the fringes of the forest and peered out at the castle. The glow of the moon limned buildings that squatted like a mausoleum in a graveyard. Their damaged roofs pointed jagged peaks toward the sky. At intervals along the dilapidated, vine-covered walls stood many sentries, guarding the place. The occasional low rumble of their voices underlay the distant splashing of the waves.

Gesturing for Marume and Fukida to follow him, Hirata crept around the castle’s perimeter, staying within the cover of the forest. He saw collapsed structures, a pavilion in an overgrown garden, and more sentries. Breaching the kidnappers’ defenses and rescuing the women began to seem impossible.

Fukida leaned close to Hirata and murmured in his ear: “If we go to Edo, we can bring back more troops.”

This idea had occurred to Hirata, but he couldn’t bear to retreat after he’d come this far. “Not yet,” he whispered.

They resumed circling the castle. Outside a wing that was joined to the main palace by a covered walkway, a lone samurai crouched on the veranda. His two swords jutted at his waist. The clouds shifted, unveiling the moon, which shone on the peeling plaster wall behind him. Above him to his right, in a rectangular window, vertical bars alternated with stripes of dark interior space. As Hirata sidled onward in search of an unguarded access to the castle, a pale shape moved into the frame of the window.

It was a woman, her face framed by long hair that streamed down her shoulders. The moon illuminated her features. Hirata’s heart slammed inside his chest. Recognition froze him so abruptly that Fukida and Marume bumped against him.

“Midori,” he whispered. Jubilation surged within him. He’d found his wife! Giddy with relief, he clung to a tree trunk and stared at her.

She gazed out through the window, her expression pensive and melancholy. Hirata knew she was thinking of him, longing for him. He stifled the impulse to shout her name and run to her. Then Midori turned away from the window. Hirata reached out his hand to stop her, but she vanished into the darkness inside the room. Anguish and frustration flooded him. Even though he and Marume and Fukida could easily overpower the guard, the noise would bring the other kidnappers running. He mustn’t start a battle that he would certainly lose because the enemy outnumbered his side.

“We’ve got to find a way inside the castle and sneak Midori and the other women out,” he whispered.

28

My influence over the Dragon King is too weak to make him abandon his plans,” Reiko told Lady Yanagisawa.

They sat in their room, while the night immersed them in shadow and the light coming in the window glowed pale with the moon’s cold rays. The Dragon King had sent Reiko back to the room, and she’d just told Lady Yanagisawa what had happened between her and their captor. Nearby, the baby wailed, and Midori rocked her.

“She’s hungry,” Keisho-in said. “Time to feed her again.”

“She eats a lot,” Midori said, opening her kimono and suckling the baby. “That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes.” Keisho-in sniffed the baby’s bottom and wrinkled her nose. “She also makes lots of dung. That’s a good sign, too.”

Lady Yanagisawa said to Reiko, “Perhaps if you ask the Dragon King again…?”

Reiko shook her head as desolation overwhelmed her. “I’m afraid that if I continue begging him to leave the island, he’ll get angry. Maybe angry enough to do something terrible.” She touched her cheek, which was still bruised where the Dragon King had struck her. She watched Midori and Keisho-in fuss over the baby; she spoke quietly so that they wouldn’t hear: “Lady Keisho-in is the only one of us that he can use to force the shogun to execute Police Commissioner Hoshina. The rest of us are expendable.”

“Surely he wouldn’t want to harm you or your friends?” As horror crept over her features, Lady Yanagisawa moved closer to Reiko. “Not while he’s in love with you because he thinks you’re possessed by the spirit of his dead mother?”

“He’s a madman,” Reiko said, easing away from Lady Yanagisawa’s suffocating nearness. “However he seems to feel about me, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

Lady Yanagisawa said, “But even if you can’t trick him into leaving… now that there’s only one man guarding us, perhaps we can get away?”

They looked toward the window that Reiko had identified as an escape route. At that moment Ota’s scowling face peered through the rotten bars she’d hoped to break.

“Listen to me, you little witch,” Ota said, pointing a finger at Reiko. “Even if you’ve fooled my master by playing up to him, you can’t fool me. I know you’re up to no good. I’ll be watching you. So be warned.” His hostile gaze flickered over Midori. “One wrong step, and that baby is dead.”

He disappeared from view. Midori shrieked in terror. As Keisho-in shouted curses after Ota and enfolded Midori and the baby in her arms, Lady Yanagisawa turned to Reiko. “What shall we do?” she said anxiously. “Wait for someone to rescue us?”

“We can’t.” Reiko sat mired in the awful conviction that they would all die unless they got away before the Dragon King discovered that he wasn’t going to get the revenge he wanted. But Ota made sneaking out of their prison impossible. An even worse dread filled Reiko as her mind lit on an alternative.

“I can think of only one way to free us,” she whispered. “The next time I’m with the Dragon King, I must steal his sword and kill him. Then I must get us all out of the palace and into the boats.”

Lady Yanagisawa nodded, her faith in Reiko shining in her eyes. But Reiko experienced a dire, sinking sensation because she also could think of only one way to conquer the Dragon King. It would surely bring her ruination. And even if she defeated him, she still must contend with Ota and any other guards who tried to prevent her and her friends from leaving.