"Not without cannon and knowledge."
"Without cannon, yes, Hiraga-san."
Hiraga shrugged and poured for both of them. There were many shishi who shared Ori's zeal--and had forgotten Sun-tzu: Know your enemy as you know yourself and you will win a hundred battles. "I hope you are right, meanwhile I will find out as much as I can. Tomorrow he promised to let me look at a map of the world--he called it an "at'ras."
"How do you know it will not be false, made up?"
"That is not likely, not falsifying one. Perhaps I could even get a copy, we could have it translated--and some of their school books."
Hiraga's excitement picked up. "Taira said they have new skills in counting, taught in ordinary schools, and astronomy measurers called 'rong-tit-tude, 'ra-tit-ude,"
Hiraga pronounced the English words with difficulty, "that somehow guide them with fantastic accuracy on the oceans, a thousand ri from land.
Baka that I know so little! Baka that I cannot read English!"
"You will," Ori said, "I never will. You will be part of our new government--I never will."
"Why say that?"
"I worship sonno-joi, I have already thought of my death poem, and spoken it. I told it to Shorin, the night of the attack.
Baka that he got himself killed too soon."
Ori drained his cup and poured the last drops and ordered a new flask. He looked at Hiraga narrowly. "I heard your Lord Ogama will pardon any Choshu shishi who publicly forswears sonno-joi."
Hiraga nodded. "My father wrote to me about that. It means nothing to us--to Choshu shishi."
"There is a rumor that Ogama controls the Gates, excluding everyone else--even that there's new fighting between his troops and Satsumas."
"Many daimyos are misguided, from time to time,"
Hiraga said levelly, not liking the way the conversation was going, noticing that, in his cups, Ori was ever more quarrelsome. Tonight Raiko had again warned him that Ori was a smoking volcano. "We all agreed long ago not to be bound by the deeds or misdeeds of our hereditary leaders."
"If Ogama holds the Gates he could give back power to the Emperor and make sonno-joi a fact."
"Perhaps he will, perhaps he has already."
Ori drained the cup. "I will be glad to leave Yokohama. Poison is in the air. Better you come to Kyoto with me. This nest of liars may infect you."
"You will be safer on the road to Kyoto without me. Even without my hair I could be recognized."
A sudden gust tugged at the roof thatch and rattled a half-opened shutter. They glanced at it momentarily, then went back to drinking. The sak`e had loosened them but had not dispelled the undercurrents, thoughts of death and the net tightening around them, or of the planned ambush on Shogun Nobusada, of Shorin and Sumomo, and most of all, what about the gai-jin girl? Hiraga had not yet mentioned her nor had Ori yet asked about her but both were waiting, both circling this central issue, both impatient and still undecided.
Ori broke the silence. "When Akimoto arrives tomorrow how much are you going to tell him?"
"Everything we know. He will travel to Kyoto with you."
"No, better he stays, you will need a fighter here."
"Why?"
Again Ori shrugged. "Two is better than one. Now," he said it flat, "tell me where she is."
Hiraga described the place. Exactly.
"There were no bars on the windows or side door I could see." All day he had been wondering what to do about Ori--if Ori broke in to the house and killed her, whether he lived or died, the whole Settlement would be in uproar and their venom would first turn on every Japanese within reach.
"I agree she is a correct target for sonno-joi but not yet, not while I am accepted by them and learning so many of their secrets."
"Such a perfect target should be dealt with at once, Katsumata said to hesitate is to lose. We can get those secrets out of books."
"I have already said: I do not agree."
"At the same time I kill her we fire the Yoshiwara and thus the Settlement, the three of us, and retreat in the confusion. We do it two days from now."
"No."
"I say yes! Two or three days, no more!"
Hiraga thought about that, and Ori, very carefully.
Icily. Then again he decided: "It-is-forbidden."
The finality of the words washed over Ori. For the second time in as few days. Both times over her.
No sound in the room now. Both impassive.
Outside they could hear the wind. It had dropped a little. From time to time it crackled the shoji's oiled paper. Ori sipped, seething, implacably committed but showing none of it, knowing that if both his arms were as strong as before and he was as agile as before, he would be readying to dive for his sword to fend off the attack that, unless he surrendered, was inevitable.
Never mind. In a direct fight, even if I was totally fit, Hiraga would always beat me to the first cut. Therefore he must be removed from my path in another way.
With a will to match the new enemy who was determined to thwart him, Ori vowed he would not be the first to break the silence and so lose face. Pressure between them soared. In seconds it became unbearable, now cresting...
Running footsteps. The shoji slid back. Raiko was chalky. "Bakufu Enforcer patrols are on the bridge and at the Gate.
You must leave. Hurry!"
Both were aghast, all else forgotten. They went for their swords. "Will they come into the Yoshiwara?" Ori asked.
"Yes, in twos and threes, they have before, avoiding gai-jin but not us." Her voice trembled like her hands.
"Is there a safe way out through the paddy?"
"Everywhere and nowhere, Ori," Hiraga said for her, having examined that as a possible escape route yesterday. "The land's flat with no cover for a ri. If they're blocking the gate and the bridge they'll be there too."
"What about the gai-jin area, Raiko?"
"The Settlement? They're never gone there. You mus--" She whirled, even more frightened. Both men jerked their swords half out, while a white-faced maid rushed up. "They are in the lane making a house-to-house search," she whimpered.
"Warn the others."
The girl fled. Hiraga tried to get his brain working. "Raiko, where is your safe place, your secret cellar?"
"We have none," she said wringing her hands.
"There must be one somewhere."
Abruptly Ori snaked over to her and she backed off, terrified. "Where's the secret way into the Settlement? Quick!"
Raiko almost fainted as he shifted his grip on his sword hilt and though not actually menaced, she knew she was near death. "I... into the Settlement? I, I'm not sure but, but years ago I was, was told... I'd forgotten," she said trembling, "I'm not sure but, but please follow quietly."
They stayed close to her, going deep in the bushes, careless of the branches that fought to prevent their passage, the moon still good and high between skudding clouds, the wind tugging at them. When she reached a hidden part of the fence between her Inn and the next, she pressed a knot in the wood. A section creaked open, the wooden hinges grimed and unused.
Without disturbing the carousers, she crossed this garden to the far side, through a gate into another garden and around the back, past the low, bricked, fireproof structure that served as a safe for valuables, to where the large water tanks, or wells were--the tanks part filled by rainwater, part by daily lines of water coolies.
Panting, she motioned at the wooden cover over a well. "I think, I think it is there."
Hiraga eased the cover aside. Crude, rusty iron bars as foot and handholds were hammered into the mud brick walls, no sign of water below. Still frightened she whispered, "I was told it leads to a tunnel... I am not sure but I was told it goes under the canal but where it comes out I do not know. I had forgotten about it...