To make peace, he contented himself with saying, “Then we must find the real arsonist. You and your men and I will question the witnesses.”

Sano watched the doshin and his men move off to mingle with the crowd. A curious elation came over him. He’d corrected an injustice and probably saved a man’s life. For the first time, he realized that being a yoriki offered many opportunities for seeking the truth, and just as many rewards for finding it. More, perhaps, than his work as a scholar, poring over old documents. But he wondered uneasily how many more enemies he would make.

It was early afternoon by the time Sano returned to the administrative district, located in Hibiya, southeast of Edo Castle. There the city’s high officials had their office-mansions, where they both lived and worked. Messengers bearing rolled documents passed Sano as he rode along the narrow lanes between earthen walls that shielded the tile-roofed, half-timbered houses. Dignitaries dressed in bright, flowing silk garments walked in pairs or groups; fragments of conversation dealing with affairs of state and the latest political gossip reached Sano’s ears. Servants scurried in and out of the gates, carrying trays stacked high with lacquer lunchboxes. The thought of those delicacies made Sano regret the greasy noodles he’d eaten at a food stall on his way back. But the arson investigation had taken longer than he’d anticipated, and the quick though unpleasant meal he’d had would let him return to his other duties without further delay. Turning the corner, he headed toward police headquarters.

“Yoriki Sano-san!” A breathless messenger ran up to him, ducking in a hasty bow. “Please, sir, Magistrate Ogyu would like to see you at once. In the Court of Justice, sir.” He raised questioning eyes for Sano’s response.

“Very well. You’re dismissed.”

A summons from the magistrate could not go ignored. Sano changed course.

Magistrate Ogyu’s mansion was one of the largest in the district. At the roofed portals of its gate, Sano identified himself to a pair of guards dressed in leather armor and headgear. He left his horse with them, then entered the mansion’s grounds and threaded his way through a small crowd of townspeople gathered in the courtyard. Some were waiting to bring their disputes before the magistrate; others, accompanied by doshin and with their hands bound by ropes, were obviously prisoners awaiting trial.

Sano paused at the main entrance of the long, low building. Barred wooden lattices covered the windows. The roof’s projecting eaves cast deep shadows over the veranda. Seeing the mansion for the first time, he had imagined its dark, brooding appearance symbolic of the often harsh sentences pronounced inside. The surrounding garden, with its unlit stone lanterns and skeletal winter trees, reminded him of a graveyard. Shaking off his fancy, he climbed the wooden steps. At a nod from the two guards stationed there, he opened the massive carved door.

“Blacksmith Goro.” Magistrate Ogyu’s reedy voice echoed across the long hall as Sano paused in the entry way. “I have considered all the evidence brought before me regarding the crime with which you are charged.”

Sano went to wait at the back of the hall with the samurai courtroom attendants. At the far end, Magistrate Ogyu knelt upon the dais. A thin, stoop-shouldered old man, he seemed lost in his voluminous red and black silk robes. Lamps on either side of his black lacquer desk lit him like a figure on stage. The rest of the room was dim; sunlight filtering through the latticed rice-paper windows provided the only other illumination. Directly before the dais was the shirasu , an area of floor covered with white sand, symbol of truth. There the accused man, bound at wrists and ankles, knelt on a mat. Two doshin knelt on either side of the shirasu . A small audience-witnesses, the accused’s family, and the headman of his neighborhood-formed a row toward the back of the hall.

“That evidence indicates beyond all doubt that you are guilty of the murder of your father-in-law,” Ogyu continued.

“No!” The scream burst from the accused man. He writhed on the mat, straining at his bonds.

Several of the spectators cried out. A woman collapsed weeping onto the floor.

Ogyu raised his voice above the din, saying, “I sentence you to death. So that they may share in your disgrace, your family is to be banished from the province.” He nodded to the doshin , who leaped up and bore the screaming, struggling prisoner out the back door. The attendants hurried forward and escorted the spectators from the room, one dragging the weeping woman by her armpits. Then Ogyu called, “Sano Ichirō. Come forward.”

Sano walked to the front of the room and knelt behind the shirasu , a little shaken. Ogyu had just sentenced a man to death and his family to exile, but he was as calm as could be. Sano reminded himself that Ogyu had served as one of Edo ’s two magistrates for thirty years. He’d handled so many trials that he had grown inured to sights that would disturb others. He bowed deeply to Ogyu and said, “How may I serve you, Honorable Magistrate?”

Ogyu’s pale, spidery hands toyed with his magisterial seal, an oblong chunk of alabaster that bore the characters of his name and rank. His pinched face with its drooping eyelids gleamed sallow and sickly in the flickering lamplight, and his age-spotted bald pate looked like a diseased melon.

“Arson is a serious crime,” Ogyu murmured, studying the seal with elaborate concern. He paused, then added, “Though not an uncommon one.”

“Yes, Honorable Magistrate,” Sano answered, wondering why Ogyu had summoned him. Surely not to exchange trivialities. But Ogyu, like many other members of the refined upper classes, never came directly to the point. Kneeling in the Court of Justice, Sano felt as though he-or rather his powers of comprehension- were on trial.

“Such important but distasteful matters are best left to the devices of the lower classes. And one’s actions have a most unfortunate way of reflecting unfavorably on others.” Ogyu turned his head to gaze toward the north windows, in the direction of the castle.

Then Sano understood. Spies and informers abounded in Edo; they were part of an intelligence network that helped the shogun maintain the Tokugawas’ unchallenged control over the nation. Someone had undoubtedly begun reporting to Ogyu on Sano’s activities the day he assumed his position as yoriki . That someone must have been in the crowd at the site of the fire. And Ogyu had just told him that for a man of his rank to do doshin ’s work shamed the entire government, all the way up to the shogun. Although he didn’t want to contradict his superior, Sano felt compelled to defend himself.

“Honorable Magistrate, the doshin and his men would have arrested an innocent man if I hadn’t stopped them,” he said. “By questioning the witnesses, we got a description of the real arsonist, and-”

Ogyu lifted a finger, silencing Sano. The gesture came as close to an open rebuke as Sano had ever seen him make. But instead of speaking about the investigation, Ogyu changed the subject. “I had the privilege of taking tea with Katsuragawa Shundai yesterday.”

The syllables of the name fell over Sano like an iron blanket. All further protests died on his lips. Katsuragawa Shundai was his patron, the man who had gotten him this position.

During the civil wars of the last century, Sano’s great-grandfather, a vassal in the service of Lord Kū, had saved the life of a fellow soldier, head of the Katsuragawa family. The Katsuragawa fortunes had risen while the Sanos’ declined, but that act had bound the two families inextricably. Sano remembered the day when his father had called in that old debt…

His father had taken him to see Katsuragawa Shundai at the city treasury. Kneeling in Katsuragawa’s sumptuous office, they had accepted bowls of tea.

“I do not have much longer to live, Katsuragawa-san ,” his father said. “That is why I must request your assistance in the matter of my son. I have no fortune to leave him, and he is a mere tutor with no prospects and no special talents. But surely, with your influence…?”

Katsuragawa did not reply at once to the unspoken question. He lit his pipe, then cast a measuring glance at Sano. Finally he said, “I will see what I can do.”

Sano kept his eyes on his bowl. He hoped that Katsuragawa would do nothing, because he knew that his duty to his father required that he accept whatever was offered. However, he could live with the idea of benefiting from Katsuragawa’s patronage. In peacetime, samurai no longer made their fortunes by the sword. Their hope for success lay in getting a position in the government bureaucracy, through some combination of ability and connections. But he hated the thought of leaving his beloved profession for another that would suit him as little as he suited it.

Ogyu’s voice recalled Sano to the present. “I trust that we understand each other?”

“Yes, Honorable Magistrate,” Sano said heavily. Ogyu had reminded him of his obligation to his father and to Katsuragawa. To fulfill that obligation, he’d agreed to serve as a senior police commander when Ogyu, at Katsuragawa’s request, had offered him the post. It left no room for argument, independent action, or unconventional behavior. Duty, loyalty, and filial piety were the cardinal principles of Bushido-the Way of the Warrior-the strict code that governed a samurai’s conduct. His honor, highest and most important of all virtues, depended on his adherence to the code. And the military government Sano served valued conformity and obedience more than it did the pursuit of truth and justice, which were, by comparison, fluid and negotiable. Sano must defer to his superior’s desires at the expense of his own. He also felt deeply disgraced by Ogyu’s implied criticism. Never again would he venture out of the administrative district to investigate firsthand the cases that crossed his desk. From now on, those cases would remain words on paper. He bowed again, expecting Ogyu to dismiss him.

But Ogyu had not finished. “A small matter has come to my attention,” he said, “one that must be handled with the utmost discretion. You will do exactly as I say.”

His uncharacteristic directness piqued Sano’s curiosity.

“A fisherman pulled two bodies, a man and a woman, from the river this morning,” Ogyu continued. His small mouth pursed in disgust. “A shinjū .”

Sano’s curiosity grew. Double love suicides were almost as common as, and surely even more distasteful than, the fires that Ogyu had told him to leave to the doshin . Often lovers who couldn’t marry due to family opposition chose to die together in the hope that they might spend eternity in the Buddhist paradise. Why did Ogyu want to involve him in a petty shinjū ?