“Well,” Tsuzuki said, smiling with sardonic merriment. “Funny meeting you again.”

Reiko cautiously relaxed, but Asukai stayed close to her. She said, “My congratulations on your marriage.”

“So you know about it. Did my mother tell you?”

“Yes,” Reiko said. “I asked her where to find you, and she said your in-laws might know. I came to see them. But I didn’t expect you to be here.” She’d thought he and his bride had run away together, as star-crossed lovers did.

He pantomimed a laugh: His smile opened and his eyes narrowed, without sound. “Oh, I’ve been here ever since my parents disowned me. My father not only cut me off with no money, but he got me kicked out of the army. Luckily, my wife’s parents were more accepting. They took me in even though I was a worthless ronin. Now I’m a clerk and apprentice.”

Roaming around the shop, he touched several baskets. “These are my work. Not bad, eh?” Genuine pride underlay his self-mocking tone. “But it’ll be a long time before I can do anything like this.” His manner turned reverent as he pointed to the cricket cages. “My father-in-law did those.”

Tsuzuki tilted his head and studied Reiko. “Say, why are you here? To see what became of me?”

“That’s one reason. This is the other.” Reiko handed him the letter he’d written.

As he read it, bitter nostalgia darkened his face for a moment before he smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” he said, giving the letter back to Reiko. “But I was so mad at you, I had to get it off my chest.”

“You’re not mad anymore?” Reiko suggested.

Again came his soundless laugh. “Oh, I was for a while. But pretty soon I started to think you did me favor.

“I used to be a good-for-nothing lout. My friends were just like me. We didn’t care that we were wasting our lives. Now I’ve lost my gang as well as my family. I don’t get drunk every night, or pick fights, or gamble and run up debts. I earn my own living instead of mooching off the Tokugawa regime. And you know what? I used to think merchants were beneath samurai, but my in-laws are fine people.” His voice expressed genuine respect for them. “Finer man my parents, who care more about status and customs than what’s inside people’s hearts.”

Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I’d like you to meet someone.”

A young woman hovered in a doorway that led to the rear of the shop. She cradled a baby in her arms. When Tsuzuki beckoned, she shyly approached.

“This is my wife, Ume,” he said, “and our son.”

Ume bowed; he introduced Reiko to her. As they murmured polite greetings, Reiko noticed that Ume was strong, robust, and beautiful, the child plump and rosy with good health. She also noticed the affection with which Tsuzuki regarded them.

“I’m glad you came,” he told her. “If not for you, things wouldn’t have turned out this well. I’m glad for a chance to thank you.”

“I must thank you for keeping my family’s secret,” his wife said. “If there’s anything we can do to repay you, just ask.”

It would have been proper for Reiko to tell the authorities that the family were eta, which would have resulted in them losing their business and being sent to the outcast slum. But she’d not wanted to destroy everything they’d worked so hard to achieve.

“Please forget the letter I wrote you,” Tsuzuki said. “That’s not how I feel anymore. You don’t have to be afraid that I’ll hurt you.” He regarded Reiko with curiosity. “What else did you want?”

“I’m not going to find it here.” Despair washed through Reiko because she’d finished her inquiries and they’d come to nothing. Owing Tsuzuki an explanation, she said, “Maybe you’ve heard that Lord Mori has been murdered and I’m the principal suspect?”

“No, I haven’t. News from up high takes awhile to trickle down here.”

“I’m looking for the person who killed Lord Mori and framed me,” Reiko continued. “I thought it might be you.”

She’d been counting on that, but Tsuzuki was truly happy with his lot in life. She believed that he had indeed cut his ties with samurai society and would have had no way inside the Mori estate. Her search for the murderer must end at herself.

“Well, I’m sorry I can’t oblige,” Tsuzuki said. “There must be other people who had it in for you. Who else did you run afoul of with your investigating?”

“There’s Colonel Kubota.”

“I know him. A powerful man, and pretty mean. What did you do to him?”

When Reiko explained, Tsuzuki whistled in amazement. “You really know how to offend people. You’d better watch out for Kubota.”

“There’s also the family of a clerk named Goro. He was executed for a murder that I investigated,” Reiko said. “But I haven’t been able to locate them.”

Tsuzuki started to shake his head, then stopped. “Wait. Did he strangle a pregnant girl?”

“Yes,” Reiko said. “How did you know?”

“It was in the news broadsheets,” his wife said. “I remember.”

“That’s not how I heard about it.” Tsuzuki lit up with surprise and glee. “Hey, I may be able to help you after all.” Irony twisted his mouth. “Who’d have thought I would ever want to? But listen to this:

“One night about a year ago, in the old days, my gang had a party at Lord Mori’s. I drank a lot, and I passed out in the garden. When I woke up the next morning, I heard two women talking. One was complaining that her son, Goro, had been put to death for strangling a girl that he’d raped and gotten pregnant and throwing her body in a canal. The other woman said maybe he deserved it. But the first one insisted that he was innocent even though he’d confessed.”

Reiko stared in astonishment. “His mother was inside the Mori estate? How can that be?”

“I don’t know,” Tsuzuki said.

“Who was the woman she was talking to?”

“Sorry.”

A wisp of memory from her visits to the Mori estate solidified in Reiko’s mind. She pictured the gray-haired woman who’d seemed familiar, whom she hadn’t been able to place. Revelation exploded in her mind like a bomb.

She had an enemy inside that estate, one who’d been plotting retribution against her for two years, and had somehow ended up in the right position to exact it. The clerk’s mother was Lady Mori’s personal maid. Here was the connection between her past experiences and her present troubles.

Ginkgo Street resembled an abscess in a line of rotting teeth. The fire had burned an entire square block in a poor neighborhood on the edge of the Nihonbashi merchant quarter, which was hemmed in by canals that had kept the blaze from spreading. Buildings were reduced to black fragments of walls, charred beams, broken roof tiles, and cinders. Ashes blackened the puddles through which Sano and his men rode. The odor of smoke lingered. The area was deserted; the rains had delayed the rebuilding. It was eerily silent, as though haunted by the spirits of people who’d died in the fire. It was a good place for fugitives to hide.

Lightning crooked a finger down the heavens; thunder crashed. Drops pelted Sano as he noticed one building in better shape than the rest, located across the ruins by the canal at the northern edge. It looked to have all its walls and part of its roof, which was made of heavy, fireproof tiles.

“That must be where Lily is hiding,” Sano said. He pulled back on the reins. “We’d better not let her see us coming.”

He and his men jumped off their horses. Sano, Marume, and Fukida ran along the road, past the burned houses, to approach the building from the front. Hirata, Inoue, and Arai stole through the ruins toward the back. Sano slipped around the corner, treading softly on the footpath by the canal, above houseboats battened down against the storms. The building rose above piles of debris. The roof had caved in; the remains of a balcony dangled from the front. During a lull in the thunder, a high-pitched, frantic scream shrilled from the building.

“What was that?” Sano said.