“I’ll begin immediately.” As Sano bowed to the envoys, duty settled upon his shoulders like a weight that he wasn’t sure he could bear. Though detective work was his vocation and his spirit required the challenge of delivering killers to justice, he wasn’t ready for another big case. The Black Lotus investigation had depleted him physically and mentally. He felt like an injured warrior heading into battle again before his wounds had healed. And he knew that this case had as serious a potential for disaster as had the Black Lotus.

A long, cold ride brought Sano, Hirata, and five men from Sano’s detective corps to the pleasure quarter by mid-morning. Snowflakes drifted onto the tiled rooftops of Yoshiwara; its surrounding moat reflected the overcast sky. The cawing of crows above the fallow fields sounded shrilly metallic. Sano and his men dismounted outside the quarter’s high wall that kept the revelry contained and the courtesans from escaping. Their breath puffed out in white clouds into the icy wind. They left the horses with a stable boy and strode across the bridge to the gate, which was painted bright red and barred shut. A noisy commotion greeted them.

“Let us out!” Inside the quarter, men had climbed the gate and thrust their heads between the thick wooden bars below the roof. “We want to go home!”

Outside the gate stood four Yoshiwara guards. One of them told the prisoners, “Nobody leaves. Police orders.”

Loud protests arose; a furious pounding shook the gate’s heavy wooden planks.

“So the police have beat us to the scene,” Hirata said to Sano. An expression of concern crossed his youthful face.

Sano’s heart plunged, for in spite of his high rank and position close to the shogun, he could expect hindrance, rather than cooperation, from Edo ’s police. “At least they’ve contained the people who were in Yoshiwara last night. That will save us the trouble of tracking down witnesses.”

He approached the guards, who hastily bowed to him and his men. After introducing himself and announcing his purpose, Sano asked, “Where did Lord Mitsuyoshi die?”

“In the Owariya ageya,” came the answer.

Yoshiwara was a world unto itself, Sano knew, with a unique protocol. Some five hundred courtesans ranked in a hierarchy of beauty, elegance, and price. The top-ranking women were known as tayu. A popular epithet for them was keisei-castle topplers-because their influence could ruin men and destroy kingdoms. Though all the prostitutes lived in brothels and most received clients there, the tayu entertained men in ageya, houses of assignation, used for that purpose but not as homes for the women. The Owariya was a prestigious ageya, reserved for the wealthiest, most prominent men.

“Open the gate and let us in,” Sano ordered the guards.

They complied. Sano and his men entered the pleasure quarter, while the guards held back the pushing, shouting crowd inside. As Sano led his party down Nakanochō, the main avenue that bisected Yoshiwara, the wind buffeted unlit lanterns hanging from the eaves of the wooden buildings and stirred up an odor of urine. Teahouses were filled with sullen, disheveled men. Women peeked out through window bars, their painted faces avid. Nervous murmurs arose as Sano and his men passed, while Tokugawa troops patrolled Nakanochō and the six streets perpendicular to it.

The murder of the shogun’s heir had put a temporary halt to the festivities that ordinarily never ended.

Sano turned onto Ageyachō, a street lined with the houses of assignation. These were attached buildings, their facades and balconies screened with wooden lattices. Servants loitered in the recessed doorways. Smoke from charcoal braziers swirled in the wind, mingling with the snowflakes. A group of samurai stood guard outside the Owariya, smoking tobacco pipes. Some wore the Tokugawa triple-hollyhock-leaf crest on their cloaks; others wore leggings and short kimonos and carried jitte-steel parrying wands, the weapon of the police force. They all fixed level gazes upon Sano.

“Guess who brought them here,” Hirata murmured to Sano in a voice replete with ire.

As they reached the Owariya, the door slid open, and out stepped a tall, broad-shouldered samurai dressed in a sumptuous cloak of padded black silk. He was in his thirties, his bearing arrogant, his angular face strikingly handsome. When he saw Sano, his full, sensual mouth curved in a humorless smile.

“Greetings, Sōsakan-sama,” he said.

“Greetings, Honorable Chief Police Commissioner Hoshina,” Sano said. As they exchanged bows, the air vibrated with their antagonism.

They’d first met in Miyako, the imperial capital, where Sano had gone to investigate the death of a court noble. Hoshina had been head of the local police, and pretended to assist Sano on the case-while conspiring against him with Chamberlain Yanagisawa, the shogun’s powerful second-in-command. Yanagisawa and Hoshina had become lovers, and Yanagisawa had appointed Hoshina as Edo ’s Chief Police Commissioner.

“What brings you here?” Hoshina’s tone implied that Sano was a trespasser in his territory.

“The shogun’s orders,” Sano said, accustomed to Hoshina’s hostility. During their clash in Miyako, Sano had defeated Hoshina, who had never forgotten. “I’ve come to investigate the murder. Unless you’ve already found the killer?”

“No,” Hoshina said with a reluctance that indicated how much he would like to say he had. Arms folded, he blocked the door of the ageya. “But you’ve traveled here for nothing, because I already have an investigation underway. Whatever you want to know, just ask me.”

The Miyako case had resulted in a truce between Sano and Yanagisawa-formerly bitter enemies-but Hoshina refused to let matters lie, because he viewed Sano as a threat to his own rise in the bakufu, the military government that ruled Japan. Now, having settled into his new position and cultivated allies, Hoshina had begun his campaign against Sano. Their paths crossed often when Sano investigated crimes, and Hoshina always sought to prove himself the superior detective while undermining Sano. He conducted his own inquiries into Sano’s cases, hoping to solve them first and take the credit. Obviously, Hoshina meant to extend their rivalry into this case, and there was little that Sano could do to stop him. Although Sano was a high official of the shogun, Hoshina had the favor of Chamberlain Yanagisawa, who controlled the shogun and virtually ruled Japan. Thus, Hoshina could treat Sano however he pleased, short of causing open warfare that would disturb their superiors.

“I prefer to see for myself.” Speaking quietly but firmly, Sano held his adversary’s gaze.

Hirata and his detectives clustered around him, as the police moved nearer Hoshina. The wind keened, and angry voices yelled curses somewhere in the quarter. Then Hoshina chuckled, as though his defiance against Sano had been a mere joke.

“As you wish,” he said, and stepped away from the door.

But he followed Sano’s party into the ageya. Beyond the entryway, which contained a guard stationed at a podium, a corridor extended between rooms separated by lattice and paper partitions. A lantern glowed in a luxurious front parlor. There sat two pretty courtesans, eight surly-looking samurai, several plainly dressed women who looked to be servants, and a squat older man in gray robes. All regarded Sano and Hirata with apprehension. The older man rose and hurried over to kneel at Sano’s feet.

“Please allow me to introduce myself, master,” he said, bowing low. “I am Eigoro, proprietor of the Owariya. Please let me say that nothing like this has ever happened here before.” His body quaked with his terror that the shogun’s sōsakan-sama would blame him for the murder. “Please believe that no one in my establishment did this evil thing.”