Dragon's King Palace Read Online Free PDF Page A

lantern Hirata carried, and Sano saw his chief retainer’s shadow through the paper wall. Sano automatically reached for his wife but found emptiness beside him on the futon. Though Reiko had been gone almost five days, her absence startled him. Sano sat up under the thin sheet that covered his naked body.
    “Come in, Hirata- san ,” Sano said. “What is it?”
    Entering the room, Hirata said, “A castle messenger just brought word that the shogun has summoned us to the palace.”
    “What for?” Sano said, yawning and rubbing his eyes.
    “The messenger didn’t know. But it’s an emergency.”
    Sano and Hirata looked toward the open window. A warm breeze wafted from the garden, where a gibbous moon floated in a black sky above pine trees and silvered the shrubs and grass. Fireflies winked; crickets san g. The dark hush of the atmosphere signified a time equidistant from midnight and dawn.
    “That His Excellency wants us at this hour means the problem must be dire indeed,” Sano said.
    As soon as he’d dressed, he and Hirata left the estate and hurried up through the winding stonewalled passages and the security checkpoints of Edo Castle to the palace. Its half-timbered structures and peaked roofs slumbered in the moonlight. Inside the formal audience chamber, Sano and Hirata found an assembly of men waiting.
    Guards stood along the walls of the long room, whose floor was divided into two levels. On the lower level knelt a samurai clad in a blue armor tunic that bore the insignia of the Tokugawa highway patrol. On the upper level, in two rows facing each other, knelt the Council of Elders—Japan’s supreme governing body, comprised of the shogun’s five elderly chief advisors. Beyond them sat Chamberlain Yanagisawa and his lover Police Commissioner Hoshina, to the right of the shogun, who occupied the dais. All wore troubled expressions; everyone silently watched Sano and Hirata approach. The tension in the room was as thick as the smoke that drifted from the metal lanterns hung from the ceiling.
    Sano and Hirata knelt on the upper level of the floor at the shogun’s left. They bowed to their lord and the assembly. “How may we be of service, Your Excellency?” Sano said.
    Incoherent sputters issued from Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. His refined face was deathly pale and his frail, slender body trembled under his white silk night robe. His usually mild eyes blazed, and Sano realized that he was furious as well as distraught.
    “You tell them, Yanagisawa- san ,” he said at last.
    Chamberlain Yanagisawa nodded. In his beige summer kimono, he looked as suavely handsome as always. His enigmatic gaze encompassed Sano and Hirata. “This is Lieutenant Ibe,” he said, indicating the highway patrol guard. “He has just brought news that His Excellency’s honorable mother was abducted on the Tōkaidō yesterday, along with your wives and mine.”
    Shock imploded in Sano. His mind resisted believing what he’d heard. He shook his head while Hirata uttered a sound of vehement denial. But the grave faces of the assembly told them that Yanagisawa had spoken the truth.
    “How did this happen?” Sano said, fighting an onslaught of wild anxiety.
    “The procession was ambushed on a deserted stretch of road between Odawara and Hakone post stations,” Yanagisawa said.
    “Who did it?” Hirata demanded. His face was stricken with terror for Midori and his unborn child.
    “We don’t know,” Yanagisawa said. “At present we have no witnesses.”
    Sano stared in disbelief. “But there were some hundred attendants in the entourage. One of them must have seen something.”
    Police Commissioner Hoshina and the Council of Elders bowed their heads. Yanagisawa said, “The entourage was massacred during the ambush.”
    The audacity and violence of the crime struck Sano and Hirata speechless with horror. Sano regretted the deaths of his two detectives. Yanagisawa looked toward the highway patrol guard and said, “Lieutenant Ibe