“Them or the old lord?”

“Either, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind as long as you make plain what you mean.”

Akitada almost apologized. “Very well. Were you surprised when Lord Sukenori gave them both a piece of land of their own?”

“No.”

“But it seems unlikely that he would reward laziness.”

The old man said darkly, “Not if it suits him.”

“Ah. So why did it suit him in their case?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t there.”

“You weren’t there when?”

The old man snapped, “I can’t be everywhere. Only the kami can do that.”

Akitada detected a steely glint in the old eyes and got a premonition that he was not going to get any more information. He tried anyway.

“I take it that something happened involving Wakiya and Juro. You weren’t there at the time, but you have a notion that they performed some service for which Lord Sukemichi gave them their land. Am I right?”

The old man cocked his head. “Have it your way. I wasn’t there, but I know they were lazy bastards.”

With an inward sigh, Akitada gave up. When the old man had gone, he said to Kosehira, “I wish we had the time to delve more deeply into the story of Sukemichi’s father’s surprising generosity, but I’m afraid it will take too much time and may well be irrelevant.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Pact

Saburo was aware that something was wrong with Tora. He had realized it quickly after they had brought him back from the mountain. Once or twice, he had tried to ask him what had happened, but Tora had shaken his head and said, “Nothing.”

Tora’s glum mood had deepened greatly after the raid on the tribunal. At first, Saburo thought this was due to Sergeant Okura’s condition, but the sergeant had improved and Tora had not. His return to the capital and his wife and son had done little to lift his mood.

Not that Saburo did not have his own troubles. There was his mother for example. Only this morning, she had informed Hanae that it was high time she had another child. Pretty Hanae had burst into tears.

Saburo had told his mother, “I don’t want you to say hurtful things to my friends. You’ve made Hanae cry. Why did you do that?”

His mother had scoffed, “Women are a good deal tougher than you think. We are made to bear children. You should be glad I bore you. But I get little thanks from you or from your sister. I’ve slaved away my best years so you should have everything, and look at you! You went away never to return, and your sister threw me out of her house. But do I cry? No. I came from her to you to offer my help and support, because that is what mothers do.”

Saburo wished fervently she had not come. He had to watch her constantly lest she make more trouble. Cook would have walked out several times already if Saburo had not bribed her with pieces of silver from his savings.

As for his leaving her, it had been she who had given him to the monks who had made him a spy and sent him among their enemies.

He touched his scarred face. These days, he felt little beyond a scruffy growth of beard and greasy makeup to cover the worst. But those wounds had gone deep. And his visit to Enryakuji had brought back the horrors of that torture and given him nightmares again. And now he also worried about Tora’s moodiness. He had seemed all right when they brought him back, but Saburo knew some wounds go below the surface. And the fact that Tora would not talk about his stay even to him, suggested that something had left permanent scars beyond the bruises to his face and the wounds to his wrists.

The incident between his mother and Hanae convinced him to make another attempt to find out what was going on with Tora. He found him outside his small house, just sitting there on the steps to the veranda and staring down at his hands.

“There you are,” Saburo said in a tone of false cheer. “I came to apologize for my mother once again. I’m afraid she upset Hanae.”

Tora looked up. “It doesn’t take much these days,” he said listlessly. “Don’t worry. It’s not your mother. It’s me.”

Well, it was an opening.

Saburo sat down next to Tora. “So, what’s up with you then?”

Tora sighed. “Everything. I’m no good to anyone anymore.”

Saburo raised his brows. “What makes you think so?”

“It’s nothing to do with you.”

So he had been shut out again. Saburo thought a moment, then said, “I think it has everything to do with me.”

Tora raised his head. “Don’t be silly. How could my problems have anything to do with you? I tell you, it’s not your mother.”

“All right. I’m glad about that anyway. She’s a great trial to me.”

Tora’s lip twitched.

Encouraged, Saburo forged on. “I think it has something to do with what happened on the mountain.”

Tora turned away and started to get up.

Right, thought Saburo. That’s it. I thought so. He said, “Sit down, brother. I feel responsible for letting you go into that place when I knew better. If I tell you what happened to me, will you talk about what happened to you?”

Tora turned his head away. “Nothing happened to me.”

Saburo heaved a sigh. “I know it’s hard to talk about. I’ve kept it in for five years. But at some point it wants out, or it eats you from the inside. As if you’d swallowed a snake and it was chewing up your insides.”

Tora snorted. “You’ve got a way with words. You may have swallowed a snake, but I didn’t. Nothing’s eating me.”

“Will you listen? I’ve never talked about this to anyone.”

Tora nodded, but it was clear that he had no intention of sharing secrets.

“I was thirteen when my mother decided I should become a monk. It was obvious by then that I was short and scrawny and would never be much good in the army. She sent me to Nara. The monks there were good to me. They taught me how to read and write, how to keep accounts, and all the most important prayers. At first they sent me out to ask for food and money. I was still a child and looked so hungry and pitiful that people were always generous. But then I got older and was not quite so scrawny anymore. It was at that time that they noticed my only skill. I could climb just about anything and used to run along the monastery roofs like a cat, jumping from one building to the next. That’s when they decided to send me to Mount Koya to be trained by the sohei there. Only I wasn’t trained as a soldier monk. I was trained as a spy. I was very good at spying.”

“We’ve known that you were a monk and a spy,” Tora said dismissively. “The master didn’t like it.”

“No. I can see his point, and I don’t have much else to offer. As it is, I’m much older now and out of practice, so I’m not what I once was. But I haven’t told you what ended my career.”

“You got caught and carved up,” Tora supplied.

“Yes. That was later. Five years later. By then I’d made a reputation for myself. One day, my temple decided to send me to Onjo-ji. The two abbots were friends, you see, and Onjo-ji was having some problems with Mount Hiei. They wanted to know how many warriors Enryakuji had hired. There’d been rumors that they’d built a separate monastery on the mountain to accommodate their army. Onjo-ji’s abbot was afraid and wanted proof so he could petition the emperor to intercede.”

Saburo had Tora’s attention now. “And you went up there and found them?”

Saburo grimaced. “Yes. I got what Onjo-ji wanted, but I decided it wasn’t good enough, that I could get more by getting inside. I did get inside one night and climbed around the buildings without learning much. So I went back again and again. Once I almost got caught when a guard heard me jump down from a roof. I got away. The next night I found the hall where they had their meetings. I overheard plenty. They were planning to provoke a fight with the Onjo-ji monks and then attack the temple and burn it down.”