Uzaemon refuses to believe. I’ve known Shuzai for ten years.

‘He is a loyal friend,’ Enomoto tries not to smile, ‘but not your loyal friend.’

A lie, Uzaemon insists, a lie. A key to pick the lock of my mind…

‘Why would I lie?’ Midnight-blue watered silk flows upwards as Enomoto reseats himself much closer. ‘No, the cautionary tale of Ogawa Uzaemon pertains to discontent. Adopted into a once-illustrious family, he climbed by talent to a high rank, enjoying the respect of the Shirandô Academy, a secure stipend, a pretty wife and enviable trading opportunities with the Dutch. Who could want more? Ogawa Uzaemon wanted more! He was infected with that sickness the world calls True Love. In the end, it killed him.’

The human forms around the edges bestir themselves.

I shan’t beg for my life, Uzaemon avows, but I shall learn why and how. ‘How much did you pay Shuzai to betray me?’

‘Come! The Lord of Kyôga’s favour is worth more than a hunter’s bounty.’

‘There was a young man, a guard, who died at the Halfway Gate…’

‘A spy in the pay of the Lord of Saga: your adventure gave us a pleasing way to kill him.’

‘Why bother bringing me all the way up Mount Shiranui?’

‘Assassinations in Nagasaki can lead to awkward questions, and the poetry of your dying so very near your Beloved – mere rooms away! – was irresistible.’

‘Let me see her,’ the wasps swarm in Uzaemon’s brain, ‘or I will kill you from the other side.’

‘How gratifying: a dying curse from a Shirandô scholar! Alas, I have empirical proof enough to satisfy a Descartes or even a Marinus that dying curses don’t work. Down the ages, many hundreds of men, women and even quite small children have all vowed to drag me down to Hell. Yet, as you see, I am still here, walking this beautiful Earth.’

He wants to taste my fear. ‘So you believe your Order’s demented Creeds?’

‘Ah, yes. We found some pleasant letters on your person, but not a certain dogwood scroll-tube. Now, I shan’t pretend you can save yourself: your death became pre-ordained from the hour the herbalist came knocking on your gate. But you can save the Ogawa Residence from the ruinous fire that shall incinerate it in the Sixth Month of this year. What do you say?’

‘Two letters,’ Uzaemon lies, ‘were delivered to Ogawa Mimasaku today. One removes me from the Ogawa family register. The other divorces my wife. Why destroy a house that has no connection to me?’

‘Pure spite. Give me the scroll, or die knowing they die too.’

‘Tell me why you abducted Dr Aibagawa’s daughter when you did.’

Enomoto decides to indulge him. ‘I feared I might lose her. A page from a Dutchman’s notebook came into my possession, thanks to your colleague Kobayashi’s good offices. Look. I brought it.’

Enomoto unfolds a sheet of European paper and holds it up:

Retain this, Uzaemon tells his memory. Show me her, at the end.

‘De Zoet draws a fair likeness.’ Enomoto folds it up. ‘Fair enough to worry Aibagawa Seian’s widow that a Dutchman had designs on the family’s best asset. The dictionary your servant smuggled to Orito settled the matter. My bailiff persuaded the widow to ignore funerary protocol and settle her stepdaughter’s future without further delay.’

‘Did you tell that wretched woman about your demented practices?’

‘What an earthworm knows of Copernicus you know of the Creeds.’

‘You keep a harem of deformities for your monks’ pleasure-’

‘Can you hear how like a child trying to postpone his bedtime you sound?’

‘Why not present a paper to the Academy,’ Uzaemon asks, ‘about-’

‘Why do you mortal gnats suppose that your incredulity matters?’

‘- about murdering your “Harvested Gifts” to “Distil their Souls”?’

‘This is your last opportunity to save the Ogawa house from-’

‘And then bottling them, like perfume, and “imbibing” them, like medicine, and cheating death? Why not share your magical revelation with the world?’ Uzaemon scowls at the shifting figures. ‘Here’s my guess: because there’s one small part of you that’s still sane, an inner Jiritsu who says, “This is evil”.’

‘Oh, Evil. Evil, evil, evil. You always wield that word as if it were a sword and not a vapid conceit. When you suck the yolk from an egg, is this “evil”? Survival is Nature’s law, and my Order holds – or, better, is – the secret of surviving mortality. Newborn infants are a messy requisite – after the first two weeks of life, the enmeshed soul can’t be extracted – and a fifty-strong Order needs a constant supply for its own use, and to purchase the favours of an elite few. Your Adam Smith would understand. Without the Order, moreover, the Gifts wouldn’t exist in the first place. They are an ingredient we manufacture. Where is your “evil”?’

‘Eloquent lunacy, Lord Abbot Enomoto, is still lunacy.’

‘I am more than six hundred years old. You shall die, in minutes…’

He believes his Creeds, Uzaemon sees. He believes every single word.

‘… so which is stronger, in the end? Your Reason? Or My Eloquent Lunacy?’

‘Free me,’ Uzaemon says, ‘free Miss Aibagawa, and I’ll tell you where the scr-’

‘No, no, there can be no bargaining. Nobody outside the Order may know the Creeds and live. You must die, just as Jiritsu did, and that busy old herbalist…’

Uzaemon groans with grief. ‘She was harmless.’

‘She wanted to harm my Order. We defend ourselves. But I want you to look at this – an artefact that Fate, in the guise of Vorstenbosch the Dutchman, sold me.’ Enomoto exhibits a foreign-made pistol, inches from Uzaemon’s face. ‘A pearl-inlaid handle, and craftsmanship exquisite enough to confound the Confucianists’ claim that Europeans lack souls. Since Shuzai told me of your heroic plans, it has been waiting. See – see, Ogawa, this concerns you – how one raises this “hammer” to “half-cock”, loads the gun down the “muzzle” thus: first, the gunpowder, and then with a lead ball wrapped in paper. One pushes it down with this “ramrod” stored on the underside of the barrel…’

It’s now, Uzaemon’s heart knocks like a bloodied fist, it’s now, it’s now…

‘… then one supplies the “flash-pan”, here, with a little powder, shuts its lid, and now our pistol is “primed and ready”. Done, in half a Hollander’s minute. Yes, a master archer can string another arrow in the blink of an eye, but guns are manufactured more quickly than master archers. Any son of a shit-carrier could wield one of these and bring down a mounted samurai. The day is coming – you shan’t see it, but I shall – when such firearms transform even our secretive world. When one squeezes the trigger, a flint strikes this “frizzen” as the flash-pan lid opens. The spark ignites the priming powder, sending a flame through this “touch-hole” into the combustion chamber. The main powder ignites, like a miniature cannon, and the lead ball bores through your-’

Enomoto presses the pistol’s muzzle against Uzaemon’s beating heart.

Uzaemon is aware of urine warming his thighs but is too scared for shame.

It’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now, it’s now…

‘- or maybe…’ The pistol’s mouth plants a kiss on Uzaemon’s temple.

It’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now it’s now

‘Animal terror,’ a murmur enters Uzaemon’s ear, ‘has half dissolved your mind, so I shall provide you with a thought. Music, as it were, to die to. The acolytes of the Order of Mount Shiranui are initiated into the Twelve Creeds, but they stay ignorant of the Thirteenth until they become masters – one of whom you met this morning, the landlord at the Harubayashi Inn. The Thirteenth Creed pertains to an untidy loose end. Were our Sisters – and housekeepers, in fact – to descend to the World Below and discover that not one of their Gifts, their children, is alive or known, questions may be asked. To avoid such unpleasantness, Suzaku administers a gentle drug at their Rite of Departure. This drug ensures a dreamless death, long before their palanquin reaches the foot of Mekura Gorge. They are then buried in that very bamboo grove into which you blundered this morning. So here is your final thought: your childlike failure to rescue Aibagawa Orito sentences her not only to twenty years of servitude – your ineptitude has, literally, killed her.’