“Wait for a time when you’ll have a better chance of success,” Ihara said.

That time would never come. The number of Yanagisawa’s partisans would shrink as Lord Matsudaira persecuted them. The longer Yanagisawa remained absent from the political scene, the easier for people to forget him. Besides, Yoritomo was getting too old to hold the interest of the shogun, who preferred younger males. Yanagisawa would lose his chance to put Yoritomo at the head of the regime unless he made his comeback soon.

He hid his despair behind a cool, stoic expression. “Since we’ve nothing more to say, I’ll bid you good night.”

The elders bowed. Yoritomo told them, “You can start back toward Edo Castle. I’ll catch up.” After they’d left, he said, “Father, I’m sorry they disappointed you.”

His sympathy moved Yanagisawa. “It’s all right.” The elders would pay for letting him down in his time of need. “There’s more than one way for me to rise again.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Yoritomo asked.

He’d always been a loyal, devoted son, eager to please. Yanagisawa smiled, heartened by his support. “Oh, yes, indeed.” He put his arm around Yoritomo as they walked toward the gate. “Here’s what we’ll do.” He whispered in Yoritomo’s ear.

The medium had vanished.

“Where did she go?” Sano asked Madam Chizuru, the chief lady official of the Large Interior, the women’s quarters of Edo Castle.

“I don’t know,” Madam Chizuru said. She was in her fifties, with a masculine build and a hint of whiskers on her upper lip. “Lady Nyogo wouldn’t say.”

They stood with Detectives Marume and Fukida in the corridor of the palace that led to the Large Interior. Two sentries guarded the heavy oak door, banded with iron and decorated with carved flowers, behind which lived the shogun’s mother, wife, concubines, their attendants, and the palace’s female servants. A loud babble of their voices, like twitters from caged birds, penetrated the door.

“When did she leave?” Sano asked, disturbed that the medium had fled before he could question her.

“About an hour ago,” said Madam Chizuru.

Right after her fraudulent seance. “When do you expect her back?”

“Not soon. She took a trunk full of clothes.”

“She intends to stay gone long enough to avoid you,” Detective Marume commented to Sano.

“If I were her, I’d do the same,” said Detective Fukida.

“Did anyone go with her?” Sano asked.

“Yes,” Madam Chizuru said. “Four bearers and two porters to carry her palanquin and her trunk.” Such an unwieldy procession couldn’t travel very far very fast. Determined to find out why the medium had incriminated him, Sano said to his detectives, “Let’s catch them.”

Speeding downhill through the wet passages, they found no sign of Nyogo. They stopped at the first checkpoint, whose guards told Sano, “Her escorts hurried her through as if wolves had been chasing them.”

At the main gate, the sentries couldn’t agree on which way Lady Nyogo had gone. Sano and the detectives stood beneath the gate’s roof, while pouring rain hid Edo from their view.

“We’ll send out search parties,” Sano said. “Then we’ll go back to the scene of the crime.”

He hoped that they would find clues to implicate someone else besides Reiko, especially since the first step in his attempt to exonerate her had failed.

The Nihonbashi merchant district was deserted except for soldiers on patrol and civilian sentries at neighborhood gates. Although the rain had paused, the air was so humid that the clouded sky seemed to engulf the earth. Hirata and Detectives Inoue and Arai rode along winding streets where water dripped down the tile roofs, off balconies, and through drain spouts. Lanterns glowed weakly in a few windows, their reflections shimmering in puddles. Hirata turned a corner, and a lone pedestrian came walking toward him. The man appeared in and out of view as he passed through the lights from the windows then merged into the shadows between them. He limped on a lame right leg, leaned on a wooden staff. Hirata jumped off his horse and hurried to meet him.

“Ozuno!” he called, surprised and delighted to see his teacher. “You’re here!”

“You have a habit of stating the obvious.” The priest halted. He carried a wooden chest hung from a shoulder harness decorated with orange bobbles. He didn’t look pleased to see Hirata.

Hirata was too glad to see Ozuno to care. “This is so convenient, that you’re in town. Now we can continue my training.”

Ozuno snorted. “Training isn’t a matter of convenience. But if you’re so eager for more lessons, then come with me. We have a lot of time to make up.”

“I can’t right now,” Hirata said, abashed. “I’m in the middle of an investigation. How about tomorrow?”

Now Ozuno looked gravely disapproving. “The trouble with tomorrow is that it may never come.”

“But my master is in danger, and I have to help him.”

“You must choose between your training and your duties. I won’t waste my effort on someone who merely dabbles in the martial arts instead of dedicating his life to them.” Ozuno started to shuffle away.

“Wait!” Hirata hurried after him. “I can’t quit my training.”.

“It wouldn’t be much of a loss if you quit,” Ozuno retorted as he kept walking. “You’ve been doing so poorly that I think I made a mistake accepting you as a pupil.”

Hirata was desperate to cling to his dream of becoming a great fighter and the teacher upon whom it depended. Exercising the authority that his rank conferred upon him, he grabbed Ozuno and commanded, “I forbid you to go! I order you to come live in my house and train me when my schedule permits!”

They stood in a blur of light that filtered through a window. Ozuno’s expression was fierce. “Take your hand off me,” he said in a voice quiet yet terrible.

Through his body thundered a blast of energy. It struck Hirata. He snatched his hand away and stepped backward as Ozuno’s shield pulsated waves of power at him. His fingers smarted, as if burned.

“You would arrest your teacher, hold him captive, and force him to train you against his will?” Ozuno said, his voice now laced with incredulity. “Merciful gods, there’s no end to your pigheadedness!”

“Forgive me,” Hirata said, anxious to placate Ozuno, regretting his own behavior. “A thousand apologies!”

“A single ‘farewell’ would be more to my taste.” Ozuno stomped down the wet street.

Hirata followed, horrified by the turn of events. “Do you mean it’s over? Just like that, after three years?”

“Three years are even more precious to an old man than to a young one. I shan’t waste more of my time on you because unless you change radically, you’ll never succeed at dim-mak.”

“Please give me another chance,” Hirata begged.

“Life is full of chances,” Ozuno said, limping faster, pounding his staff on the ground. “If by some miracle you make a major breakthrough, I’ll take up your training again.”

Hirata halted in defeat. “But where are you going?” he called to Ozuno’s receding figure. “Where will I find you?”

“Don’t worry,” Ozuno called over his shoulder as he disappeared through a neighborhood gate. “Should you ever be ready for another try, I’ll find you.”

Hirata and his men arrived in a rundown neighborhood crisscrossed by a malodorous canals. Voices quarreled inside the tenements whose thatched roofs sagged under the weight of the rain. A peasant emptied a bucket of slops into a street already mired in floodwater and sewage. Sullen men and boys loitered, smoking pipes and drinking cheap sake, on plank sidewalks above the filth. The desolate scene matched Hirata’s mood. He consoled himself with the thought that since his martial arts training had been suspended, at least he could focus on getting Sano and Reiko out of trouble.