Saburo woke in a ruin, looking up through the broken roof high above him. Blue sky and golden clouds shimmered beyond the age-darkened beams and broken spars. He watched the clouds passing across the blue, and wondered if he was glimpsing a distant paradise.

Gradually, he became aware of his other senses. Unpleasant odors assailed his nose. He tried to analyze them while watching the pretty clouds. Dirt, he thought. I’m smelling dirt and rotten things. Nothing in particular stands out.

His arms were laid across his chest. He was quite comfortable except for an ache in the back of his head. He moved and hissed at the acute stab of pain that brought tears to his eyes.

Somewhere close by, someone cleared his throat of phlegm and spat. Saburo swiveled his good eye as far as he could without moving his head. No good. He saw a dark, stained wall with a doorway into deeper darkness. Nothing else.

The contrast between the golden clouds and this rotten, stinking place where he found himself struck him as ominous. Had he died? And was this his own hell, deserved for a multitude of sins?

A rattling cough and more sounds of spitting.

“Who’s there?” he croaked.

“Me.”

An old man’s voice.

“Where am I?”

A rasping laugh. “Honkoku-ji.”

Not hell, then. And not death.

Honkoku-ji was the ruin of an old temple compound. Saburo carefully lifted his head to turn it. This also hurt, but not as much. A strange figure sat near him in a Buddha pose. White-haired and white-bearded, the old man wore a red silk gown, a woman’s gown, with a priest’s stole over it. Many strands of prayer beads hung about his neck. He looked quite feeble. His eyes were dim with age and his hands resembled the claws of a chicken with their long yellow nails.

Saburo asked, “Who are you?”

“You can call me Kenko, Saburo.”

“You know me?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. What’s to know?”

Did this mad old man expect an answer? “My head hurts,” Saburo said.

“Put it from your mind.”

“How did I get here?”

“Too many questions.” With the help of a staff lying beside him, the old man got up with much groaning and coughing. He spat again, then, leaning on his staff, he limped away.

Saburo sat up and cautiously felt the back of his head. He encountered a good deal of half-dried blood and a very tender lump. Checking the rest of his body was more reassuring. Memory returned. Some bastard had attacked him inside the brothel.

Who? Tokuzo’s mother and brother could not have returned. He would have heard them. No, the attacker in the dark hallway had been someone silent and furtive. A thief.

Or rather, someone like himself, for most thieves would have given themselves away sooner.

But that made no sense whatsoever.

Saburo tested his limbs and turned his mind to another puzzle. He was certain his attacker had not been there earlier. Unless it was an accidental encounter, he must have followed him into Tokuzo’s place and waited for him in the hallway. Saburo doubted that their visits had coincided by chance.

Then why had the other man been there? The obvious answer was the gold that Tokuzo’s brother and mother had carried away earlier. But a good thief, and this man was very good, would have watched the house and known he was too late for the money.

Perhaps he had wanted something else.

Or someone else. If the stranger had watched carefully, he would have known Saburo had entered the brothel. But what had he wanted?

Frustrated, Saburo dropped the matter and wondered instead how he had got to this place. Had his attacker brought him here? Surely not. It didn’t make any sense to knock someone out and then carry him all that far. The distance from the Willow Quarter to the temple was too great.

Saburo was brushing the dust off his clothes when he realized he was missing something. The thick sheaf of papers, the brothel’s contracts he had tucked inside his shirt, was gone. And that caused him to check his sleeves.

His tools and the assassin’s needle were also gone!

So that had been what the stranger wanted.

The contracts could perhaps be explained. They were valuable. But why take the tools and the needle? And how had the unknown man known where to look for them? They had been inserted into the seams of his shirt. Now those seams were undone and threads hung loose. Unless his attacker had felt them by accident, he must have known where to search.

It began to look more and more as though he had encountered a colleague. Most likely the professional assassin Genba had tangled with the night before. The assassin had a personal interest in the Sasaya.

Saburo got to his feet, fought a bout of dizziness, and looked around him.

In spite of the huge hole in the roof, the floor of the abandoned temple was in partial darkness. It seemed to be strewn with debris and garbage. Fallen columns, leaning walls, piles of broken roof tiles were everywhere. So were broken dishes, rags, and rotting food remnants. He was in a section that still had a partial roof over it and walls on three sides. But here, too, a lot of rubble and garbage had collected. Bundles of rags were piled in corners here and there. A charred section showed someone had made a fire on the wooden floor, perhaps to cook, for an iron pot and some other utensils stood nearby.

Then Saburo remembered that Honkokuji was the beggars’ den.

A bout of dizziness seized him, and a sudden retching took him forward to a corner to vomit.

“Hey!”

The filthy pile of rags disintegrated into two separate segments that flew to either side. The shock stopped his nausea. He swallowed and stared.

Curses assaulted his ears from both sides. Other voices sounded from a distance, and here and there piles of garbage took on substance and life as if they had been magically transformed into creatures.

Saburo apologized to the two old men he had disturbed. They grumbled and sat down again. One of them had lost an arm.

“How did I get here?” Saburo asked them. “Did you see who brought me?”

The cripple jerked his head toward the left. There sat a giant of a man with bushy black hair and beard. He was watching Saburo with a wide grin.

Saburo, his head hurting as if it meant to split open, walked over. “Hello,” he said, nodding his head in greeting and flinching at the pain. “I’m Saburo. I hear you brought me here last night. Is that right?”

The giant mouthed something incomprehensible. Saburo squatted down before him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. I’m very grateful, though. I wondered where you found me.”

One of the old men joined them. “He can’t talk. They cut out his tongue. Most people don’t know what he’s saying.”

The giant nodded. His eyes went from Saburo to the old man. He mumbled. Spittle dripped from the corners of his mouth into his beard as he struggled with the words.

The old man translated, “He says you looked like one of us, so he picked you up and brought you here. He says you were in an alley in the Willow Quarter. He works there.”

“He works? You mean he isn’t a beggar?” Saburo was still trying to understand why this man had carried him all the way across the city.

The old man frowned at him. “We all work,” he pointed out. “We got our places, and there we sit or stand every day to pick up a few coppers. Jinsai keeps late hours because the Willow Quarter stays busy till dawn, but he makes good money there. He does odd jobs sometimes.”

The giant nodded and grinned.

The old man scowled back. “He needs to,” he said snidely. “Look at the size of the beast. He eats his weight in food every day.”

The giant smiled more broadly.

“Would you ask him if he saw anyone near me?”

“He can hear you well enough,” snapped the old man.

Saburo made the giant an apologetic bow, groaned, and reached for his head.