“I suppose I could try.” Eagerness vibrated beneath Reiko’s tentative words. “Tomorrow I’ll begin asking questions. Maybe I can also discover what became of Lady Wisteria. I know women who follow the Yoshiwara gossip, and they may have ideas where she could be.”

The conversation suddenly became a landscape of perilous chasms around Sano. He’d never told Reiko about his affair with Lady Wisteria. He assumed that Reiko assumed he’d had lovers before her, because men enjoyed the freedom to satisfy their desires at will. However, he and Reiko had a tacit agreement never to discuss the women in his past, because they liked to believe they were kindred spirits bonded in exclusive togetherness. And although Sano didn’t think an affair that predated their marriage should matter, he worried about how Reiko would feel if she learned about him and Wisteria at a time when their union was troubled. If he said he’d freed Wisteria, his wife might think there’d been more to the affair than just a few nights of sex. Furthermore, honesty was integral to their relationship, and keeping a secret from Reiko bothered him.

Reiko shimmered with an exuberance she couldn’t suppress. “What is known about Lady Wisteria? Have you any information on what kind of person she is, or about her past, that might help us find her?”

Sano couldn’t tell Reiko that he’d personally known Wisteria, because she would wonder why he hadn’t mentioned it sooner, and might guess the reason. Now he had second thoughts about involving Reiko in the case. He got to his feet, stalling while he thought what to say.

“Wisteria came from Dewa Province,” he said, remembering what Wisteria herself had told him, on their first night together. “Her father was a farmer who sold her to a brothel procurer because his crops failed and he couldn’t support all his children.”

These were facts he could have learned in Yoshiwara today, and Reiko seemed so absorbed in the case that she didn’t notice his agitation. “Then Wisteria probably has no family in Edo,” she said, “but since she’s a popular tayu, her business must be the subject of much talk. I’m sure I’ll find someone who can tell me about her.”

Reiko embraced Sano with an ardor typical of happier days. “I’ll help you solve this case, and things will be as they were before.”

Sano held his wife, hoping that their bad experience on the Black Lotus case wouldn’t repeat itself, and Reiko need never learn more about Wisteria than would benefit the investigation.

Unbroken snow covered the empty streets of Edo. Shutters sealed the windows and storefronts of buildings. Stray dogs cowered in alleys, where puddles glazed to ice as the night’s cold deepened. On the banks of canals, itinerant beggars slumbered beside smoldering bonfires. Starlight shimmered along the black curve of the Sumida River, and boats moored at wharves stood as if frozen. Night had paralyzed most of the city, but in certain areas of the Nihonbashi merchant district, life flourished most busily after dark.

A ramshackle building situated between a public bathhouse and a noodle stand housed a nameless gambling den. Inside sat peasants and samurai, gangsters with arms and chests covered by tattoos, and even a few priests in saffron robes. They dealt, shuffled, and flung down cards. Shouts and laughter accompanied the games. Piles of coins shifted, while slovenly maids served sake. Tobacco smoke from the gamblers’ pipes filled the room with an acrid haze that wreathed the ceiling lanterns.

Beyond a curtained doorway, in the dim back room of the gambling den, Lady Wisteria sat on a straw mattress. Her head was wrapped in a blue kerchief, and her lovely eyes gleamed with anxiety in the light that shone through the curtain. She shivered beneath her cloak as she listened to the clink of coins and the men’s raucous voices. Whenever arguments and curses erupted, she winced. Her fearful gaze roved the bare rafters, the sake urns that lined the walls, and the barred window.

A day had passed since Wisteria had left Yoshiwara, and she’d traded one prison for another. This pause between her old life and new seemed almost harder to bear than had the prospect of years in the brothel. Impatience unfurled in her like a growing thistle plant. Her solitude frightened her, and she puckered her sensuous mouth in an ironic smile. How often had she yearned for solitude! She’d not anticipated how defenseless she would be.

The silhouette of a man appeared on the curtain. Alarmed, Wisteria shrank into the corner. Then he flung aside the curtain and entered the room, carrying a large bundle tied in a cloth. He was short but powerfully built, his shoulders broad beneath his cloak, and his calves knotted with muscles in his leggings. His neck resembled a stone column, and his face was all hard lines and angles: slanted brows that met over a bladelike nose; chin and jaws hewn; hair in a topknot crowning a slab of a forehead.

“That’s a poor welcome,” he said, striding toward Wisteria with a quick, animal grace. His eyes, dark gashes in his face, looked everywhere at once, watching for threats, calculating his next step. “Something wrong?”

Wisteria breathed easier, though not quite in relief. “Lightning,” she said. “You startled me, that’s all.”

She rose to meet him, feeling the attraction that his strange, mercurial beauty inspired in her, and fear of his edgy temper. “Where have you been?”

“Out,” he said curtly, his brows slanting farther downward. “I had business to take care of.”

He didn’t like accounting for himself to anyone, Wisteria knew. “I’m sorry for asking,” she said. “It’s just that you were gone all day, and I’m afraid to be alone.” In the outer room, a brawl had started; the sounds of punches, crashes, coins scattering, and loud cheering clamored.

Lightning laughed. “You’re safer than you were last night.”

Wisteria wished she could believe him. Though she’d traveled far away from the room where Lord Mitsuyoshi had died, life outside the walls of Yoshiwara promised new hazards. The police would have begun looking for her by now. And while she’d escaped her brothel master, she was now at the mercy of Lightning, nicknamed for the way no one knew what he was going to do until it was too late.

“What’s the matter?” He regarded her suspiciously. “You don’t like it here?” Hurling down the bundle, he advanced on Wisteria. “Don’t like the company either? Miss your fine rooms and fancy friends?”

“No, it’s fine,” Wisteria said, stumbling backward from the menace in his voice. “I’m happy to be here, with you-”

“Do you know what would have happened to me if I’d gotten caught smuggling you out of Yoshiwara?” He seized her wrist, and his painful grasp provoked a yelp from Wisteria. “I’d have been arrested, beaten, maybe even killed. I risked my life for you, and you ought to be satisfied with whatever I give you, and not complain.”

“I am satisfied.” Wisteria hastened to placate Lightning. “I thank you for all you’ve done for me.” Lowering her eyelids, she smiled provocatively and dropped her voice to a husky whisper: “A man as strong and brave as you can satisfy me in every way.”

Years of practice had made her adept at coaxing men, and as she grazed her fingertips across Lightning’s cheek, lust replaced the anger in his eyes. “That’s better,” he said.

“Please let me show my appreciation by satisfying you.” Wisteria didn’t have to pretend eagerness, for Lightning’s touch, his strength, and his flashing gaze awakened in her an urgent need for him.

His sardonic smile acknowledged his power over her. Releasing her wrist, he said, “Later.” He squatted and opened the bundle. “I’ve got food here, and I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”

He’d brought cooked rice, smoked eel and salmon, pickles, grilled prawns, steamed dumplings, and different kinds of sweet cakes. Wisteria had spent much of the day sleeping, and the rest too nervous to eat; but now the sight and smell of the food made her ravenous. She and Lightning sat on the floor, gobbling with their fingers, gulping sake between bites. This seemed the best meal she’d ever eaten, with no need to mind her manners as a tayu should, and no brothel master tallying the cost of what she ate and adding it to her debt. Giddy with pleasure, she laughed. She fed morsels to Lightning. He grinned and sucked her fingers.