Shuzai and Tsuru discuss how best to sabotage it later.

An owl cries, in this cedar or that fir… once, twice, nearby… gone.

The shrine’s last chime of the day, loud and close, announces the late Hour of the Rooster. Before it rings again, Uzaemon thinks, Orito will be freed. The men wrap their faces in black cloth, leaving only a narrow band for their eyes and noses. They proceed stealthily, not expecting an ambush but not discounting the possibility. When Uzaemon snaps a twig underfoot the others turn around, glaring. The incline lessens. A fox barks. The tunnel-like succession of torî gates begins, slicing the cross-wind. The men stop and gather around Shuzai. ‘The Shrine is four hundred paces uphill…’

‘Junrei-san.’ Shuzai turns to Uzaemon. ‘Here is where you wait. Remember your sage: “One pays an army for a thousand days to use it for one.” That day is now. Hide away from the path, but stay warm. You’ve come further than most “clients” ever do, so there’s no dishonour in waiting here. Once our business in the monastery is accomplished, I’ll send for you, but don’t approach the Shrine until then. Don’t worry. We are warriors. They are a handful of monks.’

Uzaemon climbs a short distance through stony ice and drifts of pine-needles, to a sheltered bowl out of the worst of the wind: he crouches and stands repeatedly until his hamstrings ache but his legs and torso are warmed through. The night sky is an indecipherable manuscript. Uzaemon remembers last studying the stars with de Zoet on Dejima’s Watchtower, back in the summer, when the world was simpler. He tries to imagine a sequence of pictures entitled, The Bloodless Liberation of Aibagawa Orito: here are Shuzai and three samurai scaling the wall; here, three monks in the gatehouse, surprised into submission; and here comes the head monk, hurrying across the ancient courtyard, muttering, ‘Lord Enomoto will be displeased, but what choice have we?’ Orito is woken and ordered to dress for a journey. She ties her headscarf around her beautiful burnt face. The last picture gives her expression when she recognises her rescuer. Uzaemon shivers, and performs some exercises with his sword, but it is too cold to concentrate, so he turns his thoughts to choosing a name for his new life. Unwittingly, Shuzai has selected his given name – Junrei, the pilgrim – but what about a family name? He may discuss this with Orito: perhaps he could adopt her Aibagawa. I am tempting Fate, he warns himself, to snatch my prize away. He rubs his cold-gnawed hands, wondering how much time has passed since Shuzai led the attack, and finds he has no inkling. An eighth of an hour? A quarter? The Shrine bell hasn’t rung since they crossed Todoroki Bridge, but the monks have no reason to mark the hours of the night. How long should he wait before concluding that the rescue has foundered? Then what? If Shuzai’s masterless samurai were overcome by force, what chance would a former Interpreter of the Third Rank have?

Thoughts of death creep through the pine trees towards Uzaemon.

He wishes the human mind were a scroll that could be rolled up…

‘Junrei-san, we have the-’

Uzaemon is so startled by the speaking tree that he falls on his backside.

‘Did we startle you?’ A boulder’s shadow turns into the mercenary Tanuki.

‘Just a little, yes.’ Uzaemon steadies his breathing.

‘We have the woman,’ Kenka appears from the tree, ‘safe and sound.’

‘That’s good,’ says Uzaemon. ‘That’s very, very good.’

A calloused hand finds Uzaemon’s and lifts him to his feet. ‘Was anyone hurt?’ Uzaemon meant to ask, ‘In what state is Orito?’

‘Nobody whatsoever,’ says Tanuki. ‘Master Genmu’s a man of peace.’

‘Meaning,’ adds Kenka, ‘he shan’t have his Shrine polluted by bloodshed for the sake of one nun. But he’s also a wily old fox, and Deguchi-san wants you to come and check that the man of peace isn’t fobbing us off with a decoy before we leave and they barricade the gate.’

‘There are two nuns with burnt faces.’ Tanuki uncorks a small flask and drinks from it. ‘I went inside the House of Sisters. What a strange menagerie Enomoto’s assembled! Here, drink this: it’ll protect you from the cold and bolster your strength. Waiting is worse than doing.’

‘I’m warm enough,’ Uzaemon shivers. ‘There’s no need.’

‘You have three days to put a hundred miles between yourself and Kyôga Domain, preferably on Honshu. You won’t get that far with a chill in your lungs. Drink!’

Uzaemon accepts the mercenary’s gruff kindness. The spirit scalds his throat. ‘Thank you.’

The trio make their way back down to the tunnel of torî gates.

‘Assuming you saw the correct Aibagawa-san, in what state is she?’

The pause is long enough for Uzaemon to fear the worst.

‘Gaunt,’ answers Tanuki, ‘but well enough, I’d say. Calm.’

‘Her mind’s sharp,’ adds Kenka. ‘She’s not asking us who we are: she knows her captors might overhear. I can see why a man might go to all this time and expense for a woman like that.’

They arrive at the track and begin the final climb through the torî gates.

Uzaemon notices a strange elasticity in his legs. Nerves, he thinks, are natural.

But soon the path is undulating like the slow swell of waves.

The last two days have been taxing. He steadies his breathing. The worst is over.

Past the torî gates, the ground flattens. The Shrine of Mount Shiranui rears up.

Roofs hunker behind high walls. Weak light escapes a gap in the gates.

He hears Dr Marinus’s harpsichord. He thinks, Impossible.

His cheek presses the frosted leaf-mould, soft as a woman’s midriff.

Awareness begins in the membranes of his nose and spreads through his head, but his body cannot move. Questions and statements assert themselves like a throng of sickbed visitors: ‘You fainted again,’ says one. ‘You are indoors in Mount Shiranui Shrine,’ says another, and then they all speak at once: ‘Were you drugged?’; ‘You are sitting upright on a cold floor of beaten earth’; ‘Yes, you were drugged: Tanuki’s drink?’; ‘Your wrists are bound behind a pillar and your ankles are tied’; ‘Was Shuzai betrayed by some of his men?’

‘He can hear us now, Abbot,’ says an unknown voice.

The tip of a glass bottle brushes Uzaemon’s nostril.

‘Thank you, Suzaku,’ says a voice he knows, but cannot yet place.

The smell of rice, sake and pickled vegetables suggest a storehouse.

Orito’s letters. There is an emptiness at his midriff. They’re gone.

Wasps of pain crawl in and out through the stump of his brain.

‘Open your eyes, Ogawa the Younger,’ says Enomoto. ‘We aren’t children.’

He obeys, and the Lord of Kyôga’s face rises in the lantern-lit darkness.

‘You are an estimable scholar,’ says the face. ‘You are a risible thief.’

Three or four human shapes watch from the edges of the storeroom.

‘I didn’t come here,’ Uzaemon tells his captor, ‘to steal anything that is yours.’

‘Why oblige me to spell out what is obvious? Mount Shiranui Shrine is an organ in the body of the Domain of Kyôga. The Sisters belong to that Shrine.’

‘She was neither her stepmother’s to sell nor yours to buy.’

‘Sister Aibagawa is a glad servant of the Goddess. She has no wish to leave.’

‘Let her tell me so from her own lips.’

‘No. Some habits of mind from her old life had to be…’ Enomoto pretends to search for the right verb ‘… cauterised. Her scars are healed, but only a negligent Lord Abbot would allow a dithering one-time sweetheart to pick at them.’

The others, thinks Uzaemon. What about Shuzai and the others?

‘Shuzai is alive, well,’ says Enomoto, ‘and drinking soup in the kitchen with my other ten men. Your plot put them all to some trouble.’