The day was overcast and cold. Tora walked at a comfortable pace to avoid undue strain to his recent injuries and thought about Yukiyo. She had tried her best to describe her ordeal. In a shamefaced whisper, she had spoken of her wounds, the horrible disfigurement of her face, the deep slashes across her breasts and abdomen. The monster had taken pleasure in the cutting, it seemed, but was not bent on killing her, or he would have stabbed or disemboweled her. Appalled by the viciousness of it, Tora had wondered if she encountered a demon instead of a man. His small size, his superhuman strength and cruelty, and his acrid stench all pointed to it. But Yukiyo had shaken her head stubbornly. He had been a man. As for the smell, it been more like hot lacquer or lamp oil, maybe.

Some sort of craftsman, thought Tora as he walked. It was not a useful clue. There were too many of them in the city. Tora planned to retrace Yukiyo’s steps that night, beginning with the place where she had met the slasher, at a cheap brothel. She had been soliciting there without any luck, but as she was walking away a hooded figure had reached out from an alley and drawn her into the shadows. In a hoarse whisper, the man had offered to pay her thirty coppers to go home with him. Thirty coppers was wealth; it would pay for food for weeks, and she had agreed eagerly.

They had walked a long way, through a warren of back alleys in the far western city wards. Once she had glimpsed the roof ornament of a pagoda, and not long after that they had come to a grove of bamboo and entered an empty unlit house. There, in the darkness, he had given her a cup of wine. After that she remembered nothing until she woke in another alley in horrible pain, looking up into the horrified eyes of people who found her half-naked and bleeding.

Tora found the brothel easily. It was a rickety wooden building with the impressive name Crane Terrace. A cheap wineshop occupied the street level and a few rooms above served prostitutes and their customers. The entrance was remarkable only for the stained and torn door curtain with a misshapen bird painted on it. Tora noted the narrow passage along the side of the building. Here, among the remnants of broken sake casks and vegetable peelings, the slasher had lurked that dark night, catching his victim by the simple expedient of grabbing her arm as she passed by. Tora shook his head. Even a half-starved whore should have had the good sense to run.

He ducked under the curtain into the semidarkness of the wineshop. A thick, fetid vapor of food smells and smoke almost took his breath away.

He stood on a dirt floor. On his right, a set of steep stairs led above. Straight ahead a fire pit was putting out the smoke and the indescribable smells from a large cauldron stirred by a shaggy-haired hag. On his left, a one-eyed brute sat next to a keg. Three ragged creatures eyed the newcomer blearily. The innkeeper growled, “Wine’s a copper, take it or leave it. For another copper, you can eat.”

Tora suppressed his revulsion. “Wine,” he said gruffly, joining the three guests.

“Show me the money first!”

Tora dug out a copper coin. The man snatched it from his hand, held it up to his eye, and nodded. Dropping the coin down the front of his shirt, he dipped out a measure of dark, cloudy liquid from the keg. It was easily the worst wine Tora had ever tasted and almost choked him. “I’m looking for a girl,” he said when he found his voice.

“I don’t provide whores,” snapped the host. “You get your own around here.” One of the customers snickered.

“She’s my sister,” said Tora, improvising. “Our mother’s dying and she’s asking for her, so I came to the capital to look for her. I was told she works this part of town.”

The one-eyed man said gruffly, “She must be hard up. Sorry about your troubles. What does she look like?”

This could not be answered easily, so Tora said vaguely, “About this high, kinda small bones, pretty hair. Ordinary, you know.”

“It’s not fat Mitsu,” volunteered one of the guests.

“And Kazuko’s a good lay, but bald as an egg,” added another.

The one-eyed man turned to the old hag stirring the cauldron. “What do you think, Mother?”

She wiped the sweat from her face with her sleeve. “Maybe she’s the sickly little thing. Only came a few times. Seems like her name was Yukiyo.”

Tora asked eagerly, “Any idea who she went with?”

The old woman said, “Nobody. She came in, but there were no takers. She looked so sick I gave her some soup on account and she left.”

Tora dug out another copper. “Here. We may be poor, but we pay our debts.”

This gesture worked wonders. They all fell to a serious discussion of every man or woman Yukiyo might have talked to, but the men who visited the brothel were mostly transients, nameless laborers, vendors, porters, beggars, or monks.

“Monks?” Tora asked. “Looking for women?”

His naïveté caused general hilarity. “Some of ‘em are worse than ordinary men,” cackled the old woman, “and, come to think, there was one who kept looking at the girl. Getting up his courage, I guess. But he never talked to her that I could see.”

“Is there a monastery around here?” Tora asked, thinking of the pagoda.

There was not. It was a dead end. Tora thanked them and left.

He walked northward, passing through alleys and poor streets, and began to suspect that the slasher had avoided landmarks which his victim might recall. He had zigzagged through quarters, always skirting their main gates. No wonder Yukiyo could not give a clear account of their route.

He wished he could have talked to her some more, but after his master had returned, Yukiyo had refused to visit again. Miss Plumblossom had snorted. “I don’t know what’s come over the girl. When we were leaving, she grabbed my arm and started rushing for the gate. And now she won’t come back!”

But her unexplained fright was not the only thing troubling Tora. Apparently all the slasher did was cut her. Yukiyo was certain that she had not been raped. Lust, even perverted and sadistic lust, Tora could understand, but this was something else entirely.

The quarter he was entering now was more depressing than the previous one. People lived here, if you could call it that, but there were far too many loitering men. No work meant high crime or slow starvation. And that reminded Tora of another troubling fact. The slasher had offered Yukiyo thirty coppers to go home with him. That was a lot of money for an employed laborer, let alone an outcast or mendicant monk.

He raised his eyes to scan the rooftops once again for the spire of a pagoda, when he was suddenly jostled, and a string of curses rang in his ears. Before he could blink, he was flung violently against a house wall, and punches rained on his head and chest. Tora raised his arms to protect his face and waited for his chance. But the onslaught ended as abruptly as it had begun. His assailant spat disgustedly and turned to walk off.

Hot fury washed over Tora. He raised himself from his half -prone position and rushed after his assailant. Grabbing his elbow, he spun him about, cried, “That’s for hitting a man for no reason, bastard,” and landed a fist squarely on the other’s chin. He stepped back instantly. The other man, young and poorly dressed, wore a bloody bandage over part of his face.

He raised his arm to protect himself, but Tora said, “Never mind! I wasn’t done with you for the thrashing you gave me, but I’ll put it on your account, seeing that someone else has already done the job. I don’t like an uneven fight.”

The other man growled, “Don’t let that stop you. I can beat you any day, turd.”

He was slightly taller and much wider in the shoulders than Tora, but the fight had gone out of him.

“Why did you hit me.’

Slowly the other man lowered his arm. “You pushed me, bastard. Nobody does that to me.”