“Arashi was supposed to leave town as soon as he’d testified against your mother.” A tremor in his voice betrayed how frantic Yanagisawa was to save Yoritomo. “Instead, he hung around, and he couldn’t keep his big mouth shut. Sooner or later he’d have told someone I’d hired him. He’d have spread the word that I was back from exile. He had to go.”
“I take it that means yes, you ordered his death,” Sano said.
Yanagisawa hastily added, “He was a peasant, a nobody. What does it matter?”
A samurai had the legal right to kill a peasant. “It matters that you interfered with a murder investigation ordered by His Excellency, and this particular peasant was a key witness.” Sano turned to the shogun. “Yanagisawa told Lord Arima to arrange the murder. Lord Arima recruited two of my soldiers and sent them to do Yanagisawa’s dirty work. They killed Arashi, but on his orders, not mine. His confession is the proof of my innocence.”
“Yes, I see,” the shogun said, trying to sound as if he did. “Chamberlain Sano, excuse me for suspecting you. Consider the accusation against you, ahh, dropped.”
“How nice for you,” Yanagisawa said spitefully to Sano. “Enough already! Free my son!”
“One more question,” Sano said. “Was it your troops, and not Lord Matsudaira’s, who attacked His Excellency’s yesterday?”
Yanagisawa’s face went livid with anger and fright because Sano had named the final price for his son’s freedom: He must admit to the attack, which constituted treason. He said, “I most certainly did not.”
“Tell the truth, or your son dies,” Sano said. “You ordered Lord Arima to tell His Excellency that his cousin wanted to overthrow him. You sent your troops after his, wearing Lord Matsudaira’s crest. You wanted His Excellency to go to war with Lord Matsudaira and crush him. It was all part of your plan.”
“You’re dreaming,” Yanagisawa said contemptuously.
Sano shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He nodded to the executioner, who applied the saw to Yoritomo’s neck. “Here we go.”
“No!” squealed the shogun.
“Stop!” Yanagisawa charged at the executioner.
The executioner dodged. Yanagisawa’s troops galloped around the pit, scattering the assistants. Sano, the detectives, and their troops rushed Yanagisawa, swords drawn. The fray swirled around Yoritomo’s head like a storm circling its eye. Sano and his forces drove Yanagisawa away from Yoritomo. With an outraged cry, Yanagisawa rode at the townsfolk. He jumped off his horse and caught a little girl. He drew his sword, held it against her throat, and shouted, “Let Yoritomo go, or she’s dead!”
Sano stared in horror. The girl was perhaps six years old, with round cheeks, hair tied in two ponytails, chubby in her padded blue kimono. Helpless in Yanagisawa’s grasp, she cried, “Mama, Mama!”
Her parents begged Yanagisawa to let her go. The crowd around them agitated because the drama had suddenly turned too real. Sano couldn’t sacrifice an innocent child, and Yanagisawa knew it, just as Sano had known Yanagisawa would come to rescue his son. They were aware of each other’s weaknesses after their many years as sometimes rivals, sometimes comrades.
Yanagisawa bared his teeth in a fierce smile. “Her life in exchange for Yoritomo’s.”
“All right.” Sano dismounted beside Yoritomo’s head, beckoned to Yanagisawa, and said, “Put her down, and I’ll call off the execution.”
Gripping his terrified little hostage, Yanagisawa walked toward Sano. Their troops and the spectators moved back in a wide circle around them. “That’s not all I want,” Yanagisawa said. “I want a safe passage out of here for Yoritomo and me. I want your promise that you won’t touch us.”
“I promise,” Sano said.
Grumbles from the samurai in the audience said they deplored Sano’s caving in. Sano nodded to the executioner’s assistants. They took up their shovels.
Yanagisawa’s lip curled with contempt. “If you were any other man, I wouldn’t trust your promise, Sano-san. But your honor has always been your downfall and my blessing.”
He flung the girl away from him. As her parents rushed up and carried her to safety, he hastened toward Yoritomo.
“Not this time,” Sano said.
He gripped his sword in both hands, swung it up, and brought it down in a vicious arc. The blade struck Yoritomo’s neck, slicing through flesh and bone. Yoritomo’s head fell on the ground with a thud that drowned in the cries of astonishment that rose from the crowd.
“No!” Yanagisawa screamed.
His face was so twisted by rage and grief that he barely looked human. He fell on his knees beside Yoritomo’s head. Sano saw everyone including his own troops, except for his detectives, gazing at him in shock: They hadn’t thought him capable of what he’d done. Vengeful satisfaction filled Sano. Let Yanagisawa suffer the worst agony that a father who loved his son could. Let him pay the price for all the trouble he’d ever caused Sano, the political strife he’d fomented, the violence his actions had provoked.
As Yanagisawa cradled the head in his lap, sobbed, and tugged off the hood, the spectators’ expressions changed from shock to puzzlement. “There’s no blood,” someone said.
Blood hadn’t gushed from Yoritomo’s neck as it should have; none stained the ground. Sano’s sword was clean except for a dark smudge on the blade. Another cry rang from Yanagisawa as he beheld the head he’d uncovered.
“This isn’t my son!”
The head belonged to a man with cropped, bushy hair and missing teeth. His eyeballs were purplish and deflated like rotten berries, swarming with maggots. The neck of the body buried in the ground resembled a cut of old meat, shriveled and juiceless. The wind blew up a powerful stench of decayed flesh. The shogun turned away, doubled over, and retched.
Marume and Fukida grinned at Sano. They alone in the audience had known Sano’s whole plan. Sano had decided not to bring Yoritomo to the execution ground. He’d wanted to hold Yoritomo in reserve in case he needed further leverage against Yanagisawa. He and his detectives had obtained a body from Edo Morgue, dressed it in Yoritomo’s clothes, and covered its face with the hood. Sano had decapitated a corpse.
The assembly gasped, murmured, and exclaimed like a crowd awed by a magician. Yanagisawa hurled the head at Sano and leaped to his feet, his grief transformed into rage. “A curse on you for your blasted trickery!”
He lunged at Sano, drawing his sword. Sano’s troops rode into the circle to stop him, but Yanagisawa’s headed them off. Sano raised his blade and deflected Yanagisawa’s cut. The field erupted in riotous action. The commoners ran for their lives while Yanagisawa’s troops assailed Sano’s. The shogun staggered around, crying, “Help! Somebody save me!”
As he and Yanagisawa lashed at each other, Sano felt a bloodlust hotter than any he’d known in previous battles. It stemmed from their turbulent history together. And he felt the same heat, the same murderous intent, flaming from Yanagisawa.
“Where’s my son?” Yanagisawa demanded as he dodged Sano’s cuts. He pivoted, then struck and struck again, driving Sano backward into the battle that raged between their armies. “What have you done with him?”
“Yoritomo is alive,” Sano said as he parried, sliced, and forced Yanagisawa to retreat across the execution ground. He’d hidden the young man in his rice warehouse. “Surrender, and I’ll let you see him.”
But Sano hoped Yanagisawa wouldn’t surrender. He wanted to fight to the finish even though he’d intended to take Yanagisawa alive. His samurai heritage compelled him to conquer and kill.
Yanagisawa laughed with bitter scorn. “I won’t. Not after you’ve shown me what your promises are worth.”
As they fought, Sano experienced a strange sensation that the boundary between himself and Yanagisawa had dissolved. He knew every move that Yanagisawa was going to make. He parried by instinct; he effortlessly evaded strikes. This was what the martial arts masters called “oneness with the opponent,” the concept that a samurai and his adversary are partners in battle. Sano had always been skeptical about it, for how could he be partners with someone who was trying to kill him? But now Sano and Yanagisawa merged into one person. Their history fused with the mystical energy of warfare.