To win any battle, you must fight as though you were already dead.

—Miyamoto Musashi, Go Rin no Sho

Paulo

As Sai and I left the restaurant and walked back through the darkening streets to the kimono shop, I fought my inner demons. I have always had a terrible temper, it was my defiant anger as much as anything else that had resulted in my expulsion from the family and my five-year exile from Edo. I had spent long years working to control my rages and thought that I had made good progress. This sudden blazing fury caught me by surprise.

Of course, the anger itself was not the real problem. Anger can be a spur to action or motivation for change. The issue was that my rage demanded a target to spend itself on. I felt an almost uncontrollable urge to kill someone, anyone who might have had something to do with the death of my brother.

The only target available was Sai.

She had nothing to do with Estêvão’s death. The fact that he was murdered by a shinobi assassin has nothing to do with her, and even the assassin who killed him was nothing more than a tool for the person really responsible.

Those arguments were all true, but they did nothing to blunt my murderous wrath. I think that Sai sensed my emotional struggle. She kept looking at me sideways and was uncharacteristically quiet.

With an extraordinary effort, I managed to curb my anger and stuff it back down into the darkness of my soul from whence it came. I shuddered as something resembling calm filled my thoughts.

“Yujirō-san, are you all right?” Sai ventured in a soft voice.

I took a deep breath. “Yes, I am fine.”

I could feel the pulsing anger still, but I had it under control. I needed to find the true villain responsible for Estêvão’s death, then I could unleash my fury on him instead of an innocent girl.

Which left the key question. “Why was Estêvão killed?” It had to have something to do with the machi-bugyō. And maybe that book of Estêvão’s.

“Brother, where did you hide your book?” I said, under my breath.

Sai looked at me sharply. “Book? What book?”

I hadn’t actually intended to say anything aloud, but she might as well know. “My brother had a book that he carried with him and kept notes in. We think that it might have some answers as to what he was doing and why he was killed. We have been unable to find it.”

Sai seemed confused. “A book? Not a scroll?”

My hopes suddenly shot up. “Yes, a book. He would have written various things in it.”

She nodded her head. “Oh yes, I remember that. He carried it with him most of the time. But it made no sense.”

“Made no sense?”

“Yes, when I looked at it in his office—”

I stopped dead and turned fully to face her. “You looked at it?”

“Yes, I saw it in his office one day while he was out dealing with one of the students, so I opened it up and took a quick look at it.”

The news so excited me that I took her by the shoulders. “What did it say?”

“I have no idea. As I said, it made no sense.”

I wanted to shake her, to get some answers, but that wouldn’t help her remember. “Why did it make no sense?”

“It wasn’t real writing. It was in a secret code or something. There were just strange squiggles on the pages.”

Strange squiggles? What could she be talking about—the Roman alphabet!

I knelt down in the light of a lantern and wiped a small section of the road smooth. People flowed around us, looking on curiously. I took a writing brush from my kimono. Reversing it and using the tip of the handle, I began writing letters in the dirt. “A,” “B,” and “C.” I couldn’t remember the next letter of the alphabet, so I switched to numbers. “1,” “2”—

“Yes,” Sai interrupted my writing, “those look like what was in the book. What are those?”

“That is how the Dutch and other Europeans write their languages. My father taught my brother and me when we were children.”

“Maeda-sensei knew how to read and write European languages?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“Yes, our father is an expert. He reads the European books and translates them for the bakufu,” I said.

“Maeda-sensei truly was a brilliant man,” Sai said softly. She looked at me in awe. “Can you read those, too?”

My face grew red. “No, I just remember a few of them from when my father tried to teach me as a child.”

“Oh.” I could hear the disappointment in her voice.

I felt ashamed at her disappointment, then irritated at my shame. Who cared what a silly kunoichi thought?

“We need to find that book,” I said, my voice a bit harsher than I intended. “When was the last time you saw it?”

Sai thought for a bit. “I didn’t see your brother with it the day he was killed. Inspector Asano asked me to try and get it, so I was looking. But he might have had it in his kimono. I didn’t get a chance to search the office. I know that he had it the day before because that is when I looked at it. We could go to the Academy and search the offices.”

I started to tell her I’d go myself before I noticed the stubborn set of her jaw. I wouldn’t get her to help me if I didn’t take her along. Of course, it was impossible for her to walk to the Academy in her current outfit. Forcing down my exasperation, I called for a palanquin to take Sai to the Edo Workers Association.

There was only room for one in the palanquin, so I walked alongside as the two bearers carried Sai. She seemed recovered from her earlier reticence and was prattling on about the amazing new style of puppet theater that had just arrived from Kyoto. She had apparently given up on kabuki and was trying to talk me into taking her to see the puppets, instead.

I shook my head in disbelief. Who would think that this chattering young woman was actually a deadly kunoichi?

Sai stuck her head out the window of the palanquin and watched as I hurried to catch up. “Did you ever get another kettle?”

“What?”

“We were discussing the night you were captured by the secret police, and I remembered your kettle broke.”

We were? I must not have been listening.

“I was just wondering if you got a new one, because there’s a shop near the Academy.”

“No, I haven’t. I still don’t have one.”

“What kind of a kettle are you looking for?” she asked.

“Something that will last more than one or two days before it breaks.”

She cocked her head for a moment, thinking. “The shop has iron teapots. They won’t break.”

“Really? Where is it?”

I had her give the address to the bearers. We would stop at the shop and then walk the short distance to the Academy.

Our destination was another store filled with everything for performing the tea ceremony. It reminded me unpleasantly of my job frightening the owner of the chadogu shop near Nihonbashi so he would pay his debt to the widow Sanesaki. I shook off the memories and concentrated on the task at hand. After some dickering with the proprietor, I got a small metal tea kettle for fifteen monme. The price was exorbitant, but I comforted myself with the thought that I wouldn’t need to buy another one for years, if ever.

Sai and I exited the shop and headed up the road to the Academy. It was dark and the shops along the street were closing for the day. The tea shop was located off the main thoroughfare, so our path to the Workers Association lay along narrow roads.

We came around a corner and almost ran head-on into a group of six samurai. Our sudden appearance startled them and they whirled to see who we were.

At the sight of me, one of them grinned widely and said, “Well, look at what we have here. The famed ronin Sleeping Tiger has graced us with his presence.”

One of the others got down on his knees, lowered his head to the road and said, in a voice full of faux humility, “O, Honorable Sleeping Tiger-sama, we don’t deserve to be in your presence. Please forgive us!”

I heard Sai mutter under her breath, “White Hilts.”

The group moved to surround Sai and me. The few other people on the streets hurried off and shutters closed on the nearby shops. There was no way that Sai could outrun the samurai in that tight kimono. I handed her the package containing my new teapot so that I would have both hands free if I needed to fight.

The anger and rage festering inside me bubbled up once more. I shoved it down and made one last attempt to work things out peaceably.

“Do you really want to do this?” I asked. “It’s a very bad idea.”

The White Hilts pretended terror.

One of the White Hilts dressed in a green kimono spoke to Sai. “You are interested in experts with a katana?” He thrust his hips forward and grabbed his crotch. “I have a meat katana here I can handle like you wouldn’t believe.”

“A meat katana?” Sai asked in an innocent voice. “It looks more like a tantō to me.”

The other White Hilts hooted and jeered at the insult. Green kimono’s face got ugly with rage. “I am going to make you regret those words, woman.”

The only cure for stupidity is death and I am ready to administer the medicine.

I let the rage loose and gave myself over to it.

The White Hilt in the green kimono started to draw his weapon. I made a quick-draw and interposed myself between him and Sai, catching his strike on the back of my katana. Behind me, I heard the sound of other katana leaving their sheaths. Still holding the first White Hilt’s blade with mine, I glanced over my shoulder. All the rest of the group were advancing, weapons out.

CLANG! “Owww!”

Sai had stepped around me and smashed in the temple of the White Hilt in green with my teapot. He screamed in pain and dropped his weapon as he grabbed his head with both hands. She hiked her kimono up over her knees, then took one step forward and kicked him in-between his legs with great force. He let go of his head, grabbed his crotch, and collapsed to the road, wheezing.

A whisper of sound came from behind me. I spun about and dropped to one knee, the blade of a weapon whistling as it passed just over my head. A White Hilt in black stumbled past me, thrown off-balance when his wild lunge failed to connect.

His friend in red followed closely behind him, katana held over his head, ready to deliver a killing blow. I erupted up from the ground, using the momentum from my legs to add energy to my thrust. My blade pierced the left side of his chest just below the rib cage. Frothy blood came bubbling from his lips. He staggered around in an attempt to stay upright, but his legs folded under him, bringing him to his knees. He fell to the road, body bending forward as he dropped.

I yanked my weapon loose and stepped over my foe. The last two White Hilts, one is yellow, the other in gray, charged me, one in front of the other. As the White Hilt in yellow began his downstroke, I pivoted in a half-circle on my left foot. His stroke sliced the air off to my left side, and he stumbled past me.

Making a quarter turn back to the right, I cut open the belly of the White Hilt in gray. He gave a scream and dropped his katana, clutching at his bleeding stomach. Turning again, I stabbed my katana through the back of the White Hilt in yellow just above the kidneys as he was still attempting to recover from his mistimed blow.

I heard another clang.

The White Hilt in black had recovered and attacked Sai. All she had to defend herself was the teapot in her left hand and what looked like a hairpin in her right. She had used the teapot to block the White Hilt’s katana, and the blade was now buried to its full width in the body of the pot.

With a vicious twist of the kettle, Sai broke the katana into two pieces, then stabbed him through the eye with one of her hairpins. He reeled backwards, screaming, then collapsed to the road.

For a moment, we two stood there, the only sound coming from the moaning of the White Hilt lying curled in a ball clutching his crotch and the bubbling wheeze of the man I had stabbed in the chest.

Sai dropped the tea kettle and tucked the bottom of her kimono into her obi, exposing her legs halfway up her thighs. “We need to get out of here,” she said. “One of the White Hilts ran away before the fight started. He is probably going to get help.”

I took a quick count of the dead and wounded on the ground. She was right, there were only five White Hilts there. Somehow, I had missed the one running off.

She headed towards a wall that gave over to a large house bordering the main street. “Come on,” she said, placing her hands on the wall. “We can get to the Confucius Academy through here. They won’t follow.”

I was still feeling euphoric from the excitement of the fight. The rage that had been coiled in my stomach now sang a war song in my veins.

The White Hilts are nothing but scum. If they want a fight, I’ll be happy to oblige.

Four White Hilts came running around a corner, heading towards us. I pointed at them and laughed. “I’m not worried,” I told Sai. “The Sleeping Tiger doesn’t run from enemies like the White Hilts.”

Sai boosted herself up to the top of the wall climbing like a little monkey.

At the top, she turned and shouted, “More coming!” scrambled onto the roof, and disappeared over the crest of the house.

A stream of White Hilts came racing around the corner after the four I had first seen. I watched in as more and more kept coming, the line of ronin stretched out like caterpillar.

I wondered how I was going to kill all these idiots. I began to regret my decision to stay, but when I glanced back up at the wall, Sai was already gone. I supposed it was for the best, she didn’t have any decent weapons, but I still felt vaguely disappointed. I had somehow expected better from Sai than just running off and leaving me. I would probably just have needed to protect her if she had stayed, though. The situation was bad enough without having to worry about her.

Fortunately for me, these White Hilts weren’t very skilled. Instead of a coordinated attack, several tried to rush me at once. They got in each other’s way and made it almost impossible to strike at me. Two of the White Hilts cut each other while trying to get to me.

Regrettably, the leader of the White Hilts arrived. He began shouting directions to his milling gang members, trying to whip them into some sort of order. His plan was quickly apparent. The White Hilts were going to surround me and attack from all sides, making it impossible for me to respond to everyone at once.

I had trained extensively on techniques for dealing with multiple opponents, but it required space for me to evade and counterattack. In the narrow alley with my back against the wall, I would be at a severe disadvantage. I needed room. I had to get through their ranks before they got organized.

I sprang forward, screaming at the top of my lungs. My target barely had time to register his shock before I slashed deeply into his left side, just below the armpit. He fell away, bleeding.

Then, I was in the middle of the White Hilts, cutting, turning, dodging, stabbing, and, most importantly, always moving. If I slowed down for even a moment, they would overwhelm me with sheer numbers. They struggled to get out of my way, none of them wanting to be the next target of my katana.

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Without warning, I turned and leapt to my right, into the middle of a new group of White Hilts. One, two, three went down before my weapon as the White Hilts melted before me, trying to clear out of my path. I broke through the ring of White Hilts into the open street. There was room here to fight. I turned to face the remaining ronin, breathing hard from my exertions.

“Fight me if you dare. I warn you, though, this is a very bad idea.”

For a moment, I thought I had won. Instead of attacking, they stood looking at one another, without moving. Despite their overwhelming numbers, they had been cowed by the way I had laid out seven or eight of them without taking a single wound.

Their inactivity was shattered when the leader screamed, “Kill him!”

I stopped thinking and gave myself over to the battle and the rage. Everything became a blur. Attack, evade, parry, thrust, strike. Time seemed suspended. I had no perception of duration. There was only the eternal now. It was a beautiful and deadly dance.

I stabbed a White Hilt through the left lung, but the katana got hung up on something and wouldn’t come loose. I gave a frantic pull on weapon to extract it.

The break in the rhythm of the fight shattered my focus. A sound behind me presaged an attack. I abandoned the attempt to recover the katana and drew my wakizashi.

White Hilts closed in. My evident distress heartened them and they and circled like sharks scenting blood from wounded prey.

I was nearly surrounded. To escape, I made a desperate lunge forward, surprising the White Hilt in front of me and driving my wakizashi into his stomach.

A loud THUMP and a scream came from behind me. Yanking the wakizashi free, I whirled around and … Sai stood there with a naginata she had driven completely through the torso of a White Hilt. The rest of the White Hilts, shocked by her sudden and deadly reappearance, had stepped back slightly, leaving the two of us alone in a small space in the center of the group.

“I’m back,” she said brightly. “I thought you might need some help”

“Where did you go?”

“I went and got Hitoshi.”

What good is one more person going to do us?

The leader of the White Hilts started screaming at his men. “Kill them!”

Lashed by his imprecations, they readied themselves for another attack.

“Sai, I will try and keep them occupied. You get—”

Sai sprang forward into the White Hilts with a wild scream, spinning the naginata above her head.

I desperately tugged at my stuck katana. It came free with sucking noise.

Sai made short work two White Hilts with an acrobatic fighting style the like of which I had never seen before.

I jumped in beside her, cutting down a White Hilt about to stab her from behind.

The sound of running feet came from further up the street. More White Hilts? We don’t have a chance!

Hundreds of chonin carrying torches and weapons rounded the corner. When they spotted the White Hilts, they gave an earth-shattering roar and charged.

Most of the White Hilts forgot all about Sai and me as they turned to meet this new threat. Sai and I dispatched the three that continued to fight us, then took a moment to catch our breath.

I looked at Sai. “You went and got Hitoshi?”

She shrugged. “I got Hitoshi. He brought some friends.”

There weren’t actually hundreds of chonin in the new group, it had only appeared that way as they came streaming around the corner in the flickering light and weirdly shaped shadows of the burning torches. However, there were more than enough chonin to take care of the remaining White Hilts.

Screaming at the top of my lungs, I turned and charged the White Hilts from behind. Spinning and slashing with both my weapons I cut a swath through the surprised and confused group. To my surprise, Sai stayed with me, her naginata a blur. Hitoshi and his chonin battered them from the other side.

It was too much for the White Hilts. Those who could still run broke and disappeared down a nearby alley. I stopped, my breathing harsh and labored after the exertions of the battle.

The chonin began to run after the White Hilts.

“Hold!” I yelled.

Sai stopped at the entrance to the alley, and held her naginata across her hips to block others from passing. Some of the men had reached the alley before her and continued the chase.

“Stop now!” Hitoshi bellowed in an authoritative voice that I would swear was heard all the way to Edo Castle. In an army, he might have been put in charge of a warband for his voice alone.

Everyone stopped. They looked at each other and, riding high on the excitement of the battle, started cheering.

I looked at the ground. There were more than twenty men down, either dead or wounded. I was astonished.

All this because Sai insulted one of them?

I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t make sense.

Hitoshi was also staring at the ground. “Gather up our wounded. Get back to the Association before the gates close.”

The cheering and hooting died down as people moved to obey him.

That boy is going to be oyabun someday.

I picked up my new tea kettle and sighed. It was ruined. The dent, I could have ignored, but the cut from the White Hilt’s katana went completely through the metal. It would no longer hold water. I threw it away in disgust.

“Thank you for coming to my aid,” I said to Hitoshi and the others.

“It was an honor,” replied Hitoshi. “We could do even better with some training, though. I have spoken with the oyabun. He will allow the academy building to be used as a dojo during the afternoon. We can also set up a practice yard behind the building.”

I considered the offer. At least I was qualified to teach that. I had often wanted to open a dojo, I just didn’t have the money to buy a building.

“I will speak to the oyabun about it,” I replied.

Sai was dancing with excitement. She drove the butt of her weapon into the ground and used the haft to do a flip.

Several men cheered her acrobatics. “Hitoshi, who is your friend here?” a man called.

Hitoshi was directing the evacuation of the wounded. He stopped and looked at Sai. Dropping his eyes, he said, “I don’t know, she is a friend of the sensei.”

The men smiled at us and gave her knowing looks.

Sai froze. She shot a dark look at Hitoshi, then turned to me. “Oh, Yujirō-san I have blood all over my kimono. Look at it! I must wash it at once. My sensei will kill me if I have ruined it.” She hurried off.

With a glare at Hitoshi, I followed her. “Sai, people often make stupid mistakes when they are young. They value the wrong things. I did, and I have paid a high price for it.”

Sai turned to me and wiped her eye with a bloody hand. “I understand. He doesn’t want to be associated with a kunoichi, it would look bad.” Her voice shook. “I don’t mind.”

Her kimono was hiked up, showing an indecent amount of leg and covered with blood. Her wig was askew. Her make-up was smeared and mixed with blood and tears. She looked ridiculous. But deadly.

“You’re a tigress,” I told her. “You hide your claws well, but you have shown them tonight.” I gave her a deep bow of respect. “This tiger honors you.”

With an astonished look on her face, she returned the bow

I turned and started toward the Worker’s Association.

“You could kill any one of them if you chose to,” I stated as I glanced backwards at Hitoshi and his workers.

Sai looked at me strangely. “Yes.”

Two passersby stopped and stared at us, then quickly turned and went the other way.

I struggled to explain.

“They know that. What they need to know, and more importantly, what you need to decide, is under what circumstances you will kill.”

“Well, when I get an assignment…” she began.

“Why?” I asked.

“I have to. Akiyo-sensei bought my contract. I have to do as she says.” She scuffed the ground. “I would anyway. I owe her so much.”

“So, you kill to fulfill your duty to your sensei. That is an honorable answer. It’s the way of the samurai as well. And if she orders you to kill one of the people here at the association?”

“She wouldn’t!”

“They are out there, an armed mob. They could be seen as a danger to the shogun. If the secret police were aware of this, they would want to stomp it out. They don’t like chonin thinking they can fight.”

“They are not a danger! They came to help you,” she said.

“This time. But that is not important. The real question is, are you a weapon in someone else’s hand or will you decide who dies? And if you take control, once again I ask, under what circumstances will you kill?”

She stopped and raised her hands in exasperation. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. I almost didn’t kill my last target,” she whispered.

I looked at her curiously. “Why?”

“I was stupid. I thought he didn’t deserve it.” She laughed bitterly. “He did.”

She had no hesitation about killing me, I thought, with some asperity. I squashed my irritation.

“If you wish to kill only those who deserve it, you can’t stay with the shinobi. And if you don’t, how will you know when to fight?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t have to decide tonight.” I went through the gate to the Worker’s Association. “My family denied me once, but I deserved it. I was like a wild animal, feral and without control. People fear wild animals and they should.

“Hitoshi also needs to decide who he is. He is no tiger, but I see some dragon in him. He has great potential as a leader. We will see if he has the wisdom and the strength to fulfill that potential. If he continues to deny you, it will be because he let fear rule him. Someone like that is not worth your time.”

Well, listen to the all-knowing old man. If an old samurai had tried to tell me this when I was seventeen, I would have laughed in his face. At least she looks like she is listening, even if she is not.

I yawned. We had arrived at the Workers’ Association and exhaustion fell over me like a heavy blanket. “I am done lecturing. I think I will go into the teacher’s office and sit down.”

“Oh, no, you are covered with blood and you must take that kimono off or it will be ruined.”

“I tore it on the side anyway.” I just wanted to lie down but I couldn’t defile the workers association building with blood. We both had to clean up.

Sai inspected the kimono. “That is just the seam. We can fix it easily.” Loosen your hakama.” She scurried off and returned with a bucket full of water and some rags.

Too tired to argue, I complied. I pulled the kimono off and handed it to Sai, then started washing myself off.

“Oh!” Sai was staring at my shoulder in horror.

I looked down. My under kimono was stained with blood. Apparently, some of it was mine. The kimono was sliced open from the shoulder across the chest.

Sai checked the shoulder of the kimono she had just taken from me. It had a cut so large, she could pass her full hand through it.

“Shimatta.” I pulled my under kimono off and looked at my shoulder. I had a wound running from just outside my collarbone to my breastbone. It wasn’t the first time I had been wounded in battle and not noticed until after everything was over. Fortunately, the cut was not deep, although it had bled extensively, and was still oozing blood. Pulling a handkerchief out from my obi, I pressed it against the cut. I found a rag and used it to tie the handkerchief in place to stanch the bleeding.

I looked at the kimono Sai was holding and shrugged. I pulled my purse out of my obi and dug out a koban. “I guess I just bought a ruined kimono.” I handed the coin to Sai. “Give that to your sensei.”

She looked at the kimono and chewed her lip. “Perhaps we can do something with it. I will give it to Hanae. She is very good with the needle.” She dumped the kimono in the bucket of water.

Hitoshi and the others arrived and started cleaning up as well. Someone brought out a bunch of kimono and hakama. I put some of the borrowed garments on. They were small, but I didn’t care. I grabbed the bucket containing the kimono and stumbled into the teacher’s office.

I lay on the tatami mat, ignoring its rough surface. I was nearly asleep when I heard a splash.

Sai was in an oversized kimono and was putting her clothes into the bucket. She had found some place to clean up.

“Could you stop killing?” Sai asked.

My eyes snapped open. “What?”

“My sensei asked me that the other night. I didn’t think I could, but I don’t know why.”

I sat up and looked at her. “No. I’ve tried. But things happen that shouldn’t be allowed to happen, and I know of only one way to stop it, so I fight.”

Sai nodded as she considered my answer. The kimono she wore was big on her and she had to hold the hakama legs up to keep from walking on them. I chuckled as I looked at her. Something about her made me think of Estêvão when we were young. I couldn’t figure out what. Maybe, the way she made me feel.

“Sai, if you need help, or just to ask a question, talk to me. I will help if I can.”

She sat down. “When do you fight?”

I flopped back down on the mat.

I didn’t mean right now.

“To protect someone, when I am doing it right. If I fight because I am angry, I usually do something I shouldn’t.”

“Like when someone kills your brother?”

I stared at the ceiling, but didn’t answer.

Am I wrong to hunt my brother’s killers? Who am I protecting?

*****

I was awakened by a light step in the hall outside the office. I leapt to my feet drawing my katana. Emiko came through the door and shrieked and dropped the papers she was carrying when she saw me.

My face grew red. “Oh, Emiko-sensei. Pardon me. You startled me.”

Emiko looked at me and then at something to my right. I followed her gaze to see Sai sitting up on a sleeping robe, her hair loose around her face. She was surreptitiously trying to palm something, probably a weapon she had drawn.

Sai smiled brightly. “Good morning, Emiko-sensei.”

Emiko’s eyes flicked between Sai and me with a growing expression of confusion.

This is wonderful. How am I going to explain why I am sleeping in the teacher’s office at the Academy with a woman?

I looked at Sai again.

Make that a boy.

“We got attacked by White Hilts!” Sai exclaimed. “I was showing Matsura-sensei where the tea shop was and they came after us. Dozens of them. It was a huge battle. It was so exciting!”

She jumped up and slashed around with an imaginary sword.

She does a boy much better than a young woman.

“Then Hitoshi came with a bunch of men from the association and they all fought.” More twirling and slashing accompanied the explanation. She stepped on the leg of her oversize hakama that was dragging on the floor and tripped.

I noted that her landing was a perfect roll and wondered if the pratfall was planned.

“Seiji! Be careful.” Emiko said. “Why are you wearing clothes that are too big on you anyway?”

“Oh.” Sai looked at her clothes. “I got blood on me, so I had to borrow some.”

“You were fighting?” Emiko asked in horror.

“No, I was hiding, but there was blood everywhere,” Sai said with a big smile.

“I see.” Emiko seemed more confused than accusing.

“And then Matsura-sensei fell asleep, and it was too late to walk home alone. So I got a robe and went to sleep too.”

Emiko looked embarrassed. “Oh, well that sounds like quite the adventure. Let me fix that hakama for you before you hurt yourself.” Trying to avoid looking at me, Emiko pulled a needle and thread from her desk and tacked up the legs on Sai’s hakama.

That was smooth. Sai is an accomplished liar. I need to remember that.

Once Emiko finished with the hakama, Sai ran out of the room.

Emiko looked at me. “I am sorry, Matsura-sensei. It just looked … well, you know how some samurai are … so I thought—” Unable to finish the thought, her face bright scarlet, she fled the room.

Outside the window, the courtyard was alive with activity. The oyabun and his officers gathered men into work crews and matched them with employers. I could see Sai telling her story of the attack the night before to a growing circle of boys. She was jumping back and forth, stabbing left and right. Her audience was enthralled.

Emiko-sensei appeared and chased all the boys into the schoolroom.

I have something I need to do as well. The book.

I searched the desks, but found nothing of interest. There was no avoiding it. I pulled up the tatami mats, carefully checking the floorboards before lifting them to look at the ground below. Still, no book. I replaced the floorboards and mats and looked around.

Where else might Estêvão have hidden something?

Climbing up on the bench surrounding the fire pit I reached to feel the corner of the ceiling joists. My fingers brushed cloth. I grabbed it and pulled it down. It was a purple silk bag. Excitedly, I looked inside.

A Maria Kannon and a rosary were inside. There was a tiny cross on the rosary. Possession of such thinly disguised symbols of Christianity was dangerous.

These have to be Estêvão’s. Emiko couldn’t reach this high.

Disappointed, I was tempted to throw them into the fire, but they had been Estêvão’s and very precious to him, no doubt. I broke the cross off, replaced everything else in the bag, and returned it to its place where the ceiling joists met. The next time I went to Grandfather’s, I would come retrieve them and take them to Gracia.

I sat on the bench and surveyed the room again. The book was simply nowhere to be found.

I sighed and walked over to my desk. At least if I got some of my paperwork done the morning wouldn’t be a complete waste. I signed off on requisitions for supplies and went through the accounts to make sure all the funds balanced.

I looked up to find the oyabun standing at the door. I rose to my feet and bowed. “Oyabun, may I help you?”

He smiled and entered the room. “Ah, Matsura-sensei. You are the talk of the district today. My people are so excited that no one is getting any work done.” He sat down.

I sat as well. “I am sorry to have caused any trouble, Oyabun.”

“Trouble that gets rid of White Hilts is trouble that I am willing to deal with. But, I don’t understand how it all started.”

I shook my head. “I am not sure I understand myself. They attacked me.”

“They normally leave you alone?”

“Well, I haven’t actually met them much before this, but they seemed to know who I was. I think it might have been an attempt to stop my investigation.”

The oyabun lowered his eyes. “So, you are following in your brother’s footsteps. Have you learned yet why he was killed?”

“No. I have bits and pieces, but no clear idea of what is going on. It’s frustrating. It clearly had something to do with his investigation into rice prices, but Grandfather doesn’t think that is all of it.”

The oyabun nodded slowly. “You have spoken about this with your grandfather then?”

“Yes. I am working with him.”

“Good. Your brother seemed unwilling to go to him until he had enough evidence. I suspect that was a mistake.”

I nodded. Difficult as working with Grandfather was, working without him would be like going blind into unfamiliar territory.

The oyabun leaned forward. “There will be riots soon if nothing is done. I have headed off several flare-ups already. The merchants claim that their storehouses are nearly empty and they are paying a fortune for what they can get. Your brother said that wasn’t true.” He shook his head. “So much trouble. This is an inauspicious beginning for a new shogun. Some are saying that he does not have the mandate of heaven.”

He stood up. “Hitoshi tells me that you are interested in opening a dojo here. I would like my men to be better able to defend my people. We can talk about that later. The matter of the rice is much more important. I will leave you to that.”