Hoshina drew near, looked up, and bowed in greeting. “I left the banquet as soon as I could. My apologies if I’ve kept you waiting,” he called.

“Not at all. Come up.”

Hoshina climbed the stairs to the balcony. They left the guards outside and entered the house, which was a holiday home borrowed from one of Yanagisawa’s local agents. The cool river breeze filtered through bamboo blinds that covered the windows of a summer parlor bathed in the light of a round lantern. Yanagisawa and Hoshina knelt opposite each other. Yanagisawa could smell Hoshina’s masculine scent of wintergreen hair oil, tobacco smoke, liquor, and sweat. The atmosphere between them felt simultaneously intimate and threatening. As he poured sake from a decanter on a table beside him, Yanagisawa’s hands trembled. He passed Hoshina a cup, careful not to touch the yoriki this time.

“Well?” he said, meeting Hoshina’s predatory gaze with forced control. “What have you to report?”

Hoshina described what Sano had done and said that day.

Nodding in satisfaction, Yanagisawa said, “Sano has saved me the tedious work of investigating the minor suspects. That he hasn’t built a strong case against any of them supports their innocence. What else have you got?”

“While I was making inquiries around the palace today, I learned a few interesting things.”

“Such as?”

“Lady Jokyōden has a caller who comes every day at the hour of the sheep. It’s a young man, probably of the merchant class, from the description of his hairstyle and clothes. He brings letters and waits at the palace gate while they’re conveyed to her, then takes her replies away with him.”

“Who is he?” Yanagisawa asked.

“He identifies himself as Hiro,” said Hoshina. “No one seems to know who he is. The guards have tried to follow him a few times, but he got away.”

“What’s in these letters?”

“No one knows that, either. Jokyōden’s chief lady-in-waiting always carries the messages. She’s very loyal to her mistress. If she knows what’s going on, she’s not saying.”

“Whatever Jokyōden is doing may or may not have any relevance to Left Minister Konoe’s murder,” Yanagisawa said thoughtfully. “Assign spies to find out who Hiro is and what those messages say.”

“Yes, Honorable Chamberlain,” Hoshina said. “What I discovered about Right Minister Ichijo may be more helpful, however. Ichijo leaves the palace about once a month, after dark, alone. Sometimes he stays away for a day or two; sometimes he comes back the same night.”

“Where does he go?”

“Again, no one knows.”

Although Yanagisawa could think of innocuous reasons for a noble to sneak out of the palace at night, Hoshina’s discovery might have serious ramifications for the murder case. “If Ichijo was away at the time of the murder, then he couldn’t have killed Konoe,” Yanagisawa said.

“I couldn’t find any witnesses who can swear he was in the palace that night,” Hoshina said, “so he may indeed have been gone, but the fact that no one saw him doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t there. Even if he did leave, he could have killed Konoe first.”

“True,” Yanagisawa said. “Ichijo is still the prime suspect, with the strongest motive and a personality that fits the crime.”

Hoshina mused, “I wonder what Ichijo does that’s so secret he doesn’t want anyone to know?”

“It might be worth looking into,” Yanagisawa said, “but what interests me most about Ichijo is that he lied to give his daughter an alibi. My guess is that he would go much further to protect her. We can use his motives to trap him and destroy Sano at the same time.”

“How?” asked Hoshina.

Yanagisawa described the plan he’d devised.

“That’s good.” Hoshina gazed at him in frank admiration. “Really brilliant.”

The spontaneous praise pleased Yanagisawa more than all Aisu’s lavish compliments ever had, and Hoshina was proving to be more competent than Aisu had been lately. It occurred to Yanagisawa that Hoshina might be the new chief retainer he needed.

“Timing is critical,” Yanagisawa said, refocusing his thoughts on his plan. "What’s Sano’s schedule for tomorrow?”

“He’s going to see Kozeri in the morning,” Hoshina said.

“I have agents checking on her, but they haven’t reported in yet. Hopefully, she won’t matter to the case.” Yanagisawa added, “It’s good that Sano won’t be at the Imperial Palace.”

“However, his wife is going to visit Lady Asagao.”

“You’ll have to act fast, then.”

“I’ll start tonight,” Hoshina said. “On my way home, I’ll get what I need, then stop at the police stables.”

“This has to look just right,” Yanagisawa warned.

“A little heat should do the trick.” Hoshina smiled, proud of his own ingenuity.

“The problem is getting inside,” Yanagisawa said. “You shouldn’t attempt it yourself.”

Hoshina nodded. “I have someone who can do it for me.”

“But the next step requires your personal attention as well as secrecy,” Yanagisawa said.

“I’ll use the bakufu chambers in the palace, and send a trusted messenger with the summons. No one else will know I’m there, or what I’m doing.”

“What Sano will do is predictable,” Yanagisawa said, “but the question is when he’ll do it. Send hourly status reports to me at Nijō Castle. We’ll have to be ready to act immediately, or wait indefinitely. However, my guess is that we’ll have results within a day or so. Then we can set up the final phase of the plan.”

“Yes, Honorable Chamberlain,” said Hoshina.

“Until tomorrow, then,” Yanagisawa said, rising.

Hoshina also rose, but instead of taking his cue to leave, he said, “Unless there’s something more I can do for you tonight?”

His tone was husky with sexual invitation, his full mouth not quite smiling. That he should attempt seduction again, after last night’s rejection! His nerve both offended and excited Yanagisawa. Of equal height, they stood face to face; Yanagisawa met Hoshina’s stare without looking down. Their mutual desire was like a third presence in the room, charging the air. Yet Yanagisawa also sensed that this was different from the sexual dalliances of the past, and not only because Hoshina differed from his former partners.

He wanted more from Hoshina than sex, though he couldn’t have said exactly what. A need greater than lust deepened the void he’d carried inside him since the death of Shichisaburō. And the need frightened him, because need represented weakness; it gave other men power over him. Now Yanagisawa’s fear turned to anger at Hoshina.

“Do you think of me as a rung in your ladder to power?” he demanded. “Would you use me the way you did Shoshidai Matsudaira?” From Hoshina’s dossier, Yanagisawa knew that Hoshina had achieved his position by seducing the shoshidai and taking advantage of the malleable older man. Yanagisawa also knew that Hoshina’s career, forged on looks, wits, and sex, had begun some twenty-five years ago. “Or do you confuse me with Arima Nagisa, Miyako inspector of buildings?”

Hoshina flinched, as if Yanagisawa had struck him. “So you know all about me,” he said with a forced laugh. “Well, mine is a common story, isn’t it?”

But something had broken in his gaze. In it, Yanagisawa saw the misery of the eight-year-old Hoshina, apprenticed to Inspector Arima, who’d used him sexually and then passed him around to other men. At age sixteen, Hoshina had become the paramour of the Miyako chief police commissioner and worked his way up to the rank of yoriki before attracting the shoshidai’s attention. But as Yanagisawa saw through Hoshina, his own eyes must have revealed something inside himself, because Hoshina’s expression turned to one of wonder.

“Yes, it is a common story.” Hoshina answered his own question in a voice hushed with dawning comprehension.

Yanagisawa had never revealed his own past to anyone; he’d suppressed the history of his apprenticeship to the daimyo his clan had once served, threatening death to anyone who gossiped about him. Therefore, his boyhood of forced sex and cruel discipline at the mercy of Lord Takei weren’t common knowledge. He could tell that Hoshina hadn’t known, until now. In samurai culture, where stoicism was the rule, men didn’t talk of personal matters. Now Yanagisawa felt naked before Hoshina.