“Who are you?” she demanded of her captors. “Why are you doing this?”

No answer came. She’d not heard the men utter a single word. Their strange, menacing silence increased her terror. They held her head still. One crouched over her and jammed a small flask between her lips. Reiko tasted thick, bitter liquid opium. She clamped her mouth shut. As she squealed and bucked, she heard the other women retching. The men forced her jaws open and poured in the potion.

Reiko spat and coughed, but the bitter ooze gurgled down her throat. Hands yanked a black hood over her head. Blinded, Reiko struggled in darkness for moments that seemed eternal. The sounds of the other women faded; the pain from the cords biting into her skin dulled as a smothering cloud of sleep encroached. Terror receded; unconsciousness descended. Reiko ceased struggling, felt her body lifted by unseen hands and carried briskly away. Images of Sano and Masahiro briefly illuminated the black oblivion spreading in her mind. As she yearned for her family, one last thought occurred to Reiko.

If she lived, she would be more careful what she wished for next time.

Excuse me, Sōsakan-sama, but you must get up at once.”

Sano, roused from sleep by instincts ever attuned to the world around him, had opened his eyes just before he’d heard Hirata’s urgent call outside his door. His bedchamber was dark, but the corridor was lit by the lantern Hirata carried, and Sano saw his chief retainer’s shadow through the paper wall. Sano automatically reached for his wife but found emptiness beside him on the futon. Though Reiko had been gone almost five days, her absence startled him. Sano sat up under the thin sheet that covered his naked body.

“Come in, Hirata-san,” Sano said. “What is it?”

Entering the room, Hirata said, “A castle messenger just brought word that the shogun has summoned us to the palace.”

“What for?” Sano said, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“The messenger didn’t know. But it’s an emergency.”

Sano and Hirata looked toward the open window. A warm breeze wafted from the garden, where a gibbous moon floated in a black sky above pine trees and silvered the shrubs and grass. Fireflies winked; crickets sang. The dark hush of the atmosphere signified a time equidistant from midnight and dawn.

“That His Excellency wants us at this hour means the problem must be dire indeed,” Sano said.

As soon as he’d dressed, he and Hirata left the estate and hurried up through the winding stonewalled passages and the security checkpoints of Edo Castle to the palace. Its half-timbered structures and peaked roofs slumbered in the moonlight. Inside the formal audience chamber, Sano and Hirata found an assembly of men waiting.

Guards stood along the walls of the long room, whose floor was divided into two levels. On the lower level knelt a samurai clad in a blue armor tunic that bore the insignia of the Tokugawa highway patrol. On the upper level, in two rows facing each other, knelt the Council of Elders- Japan ’s supreme governing body, comprised of the shogun’s five elderly chief advisors. Beyond them sat Chamberlain Yanagisawa and his lover Police Commissioner Hoshina, to the right of the shogun, who occupied the dais. All wore troubled expressions; everyone silently watched Sano and Hirata approach. The tension in the room was as thick as the smoke that drifted from the metal lanterns hung from the ceiling.

Sano and Hirata knelt on the upper level of the floor at the shogun’s left. They bowed to their lord and the assembly. “How may we be of service, Your Excellency?” Sano said.

Incoherent sputters issued from Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. His refined face was deathly pale and his frail, slender body trembled under his white silk night robe. His usually mild eyes blazed, and Sano realized that he was furious as well as distraught.

“You tell them, Yanagisawa-san,” he said at last.

Chamberlain Yanagisawa nodded. In his beige summer kimono, he looked as suavely handsome as always. His enigmatic gaze encompassed Sano and Hirata. “This is Lieutenant Ibe,” he said, indicating the highway patrol guard. “He has just brought news that His Excellency’s honorable mother was abducted on the Tōkaidō yesterday, along with your wives and mine.”

Shock imploded in Sano. His mind resisted believing what he’d heard. He shook his head while Hirata uttered a sound of vehement denial. But the grave faces of the assembly told them that Yanagisawa had spoken the truth.

“How did this happen?” Sano said, fighting an onslaught of wild anxiety.

“The procession was ambushed on a deserted stretch of road between Odawara and Hakone post stations,” Yanagisawa said.

“Who did it?” Hirata demanded. His face was stricken with terror for Midori and his unborn child.

“We don’t know,” Yanagisawa said. “At present we have no witnesses.”

Sano stared in disbelief. “But there were some hundred attendants in the entourage. One of them must have seen something.”

Police Commissioner Hoshina and the Council of Elders bowed their heads. Yanagisawa said, “The entourage was massacred during the ambush.”

The audacity and violence of the crime struck Sano and Hirata speechless with horror. Sano regretted the deaths of his two detectives. Yanagisawa looked toward the highway patrol guard and said, “Lieutenant Ibe discovered the crime. He shall describe what he found.”

Lieutenant Ibe was a lean, sinewy man in his twenties. His bare arms and legs and his earnest face bore streaks of grime and perspiration from what must have been a swift, grueling ride to Edo. “There were bodies strewn along the road and in the forest,” he said, his eyes haunted by memory of what he’d seen. “They’d died of sword wounds. Blood was everywhere. The baggage seemed untouched-I found cash boxes full of gold coins in the chests. But the palanquins were empty, and the four ladies gone.”

A dreadful thought occurred to Sano. “How can you be sure they were abducted and not-” Killed, he thought, but he couldn’t say it. Hirata emitted a low, involuntary groan.

“We found a letter inside the Honorable Lady Keisho-in’s palanquin,” said the guard.

Chamberlain Yanagisawa handed Sano a sheet of ordinary white paper that had been folded, crumpled, then smoothed. Dirt and blood smeared a message crudely scrawled in black ink.

Your Excellency the Shogun,

We have Lady Keisho-in and her three friends. Let no one pursue us, or we will kill the women. You will be told what you must do to get them back alive. Expect a letter soon.

The message bore no signature. Stunned by fresh shock, Sano passed the letter to Hirata, who read it and gaped in astonishment. Lieutenant Ibe continued, “I fetched officials from Odawara, the last checkpoint that the procession passed. They matched the bodies to the names in the records.”

Checkpoint officials inspected the persons of everyone who passed through their stations, looking for hidden weapons or other contraband. Female inspectors were employed to search the women. Because the Tokugawa restricted the movements of women to prevent samurai clans from sending their families to the countryside in preparation for revolt, the law required female travelers to have travel passes. The officials copied the information on each pass, which listed the social position, physical appearance, and identifying birthmarks or scars of its owner.

“The female inspectors remembered the four ladies well,” said Lieutenant Ibe. “Everyone else was accounted for. The ladies were definitely not among the dead.”

This was inadequate comfort to Sano and Hirata, when their wives’ fate was unknown. They exchanged apprehensive glances.

“One survivor was found,” Police Commissioner Hoshina said. He was broad-shouldered and muscular, with an angular, handsome face. Ambitious to rise in the bakufu-the military government that ruled Japan -he took every opportunity to draw his superiors’ attention to himself. Now he conveyed facts he’d apparently learned from the highway patrol guard before Sano and Hirata arrived: “The officials identified the survivor as Lady Keisho-in’s personal maid, a woman named Suiren. She was badly wounded, and unconscious. Troops are bringing her to Edo. With luck, she’ll be here tomorrow.”