The Fires of the Gods Read Online Free PDF

The person who complained about you to the chancellor is Junior Controller Kiyowara Kane. And I wouldn’t recommend approaching him. You might find yourself thrown out of his house.’ With that, Munefusa turned and ducked back into his office.
    Akitada looked after him with a smile. ‘Good!’ he said and winked at the audience before walking away. He was nearlyoutside when quick footsteps sounded and an elderly clerk caught up with him.
    ‘Sir,’ he said, a little out of breath, ‘we wanted you to know that we all think very highly of you and pray that justice will be done. Munefusa will be the death of us all. He doesn’t know anything.’
    Akitada was very touched, but he said only, ‘Thank you, Shinkai, but you mustn’t let me, or anyone else, hear you speak this way about a superior again.’
    They bowed to each other and parted.
    Who was Kiyowara Kane? The name seemed vaguely familiar: not because he had met the man, but rather because someone had mentioned him as being one of the new chancellor’s supporters or friends. Akitada, who was excessively non-political for a civil servant, had paid little attention to the recent shifts of power in the administration. Now he stopped at the tax office, a place he visited occasionally when he needed to consult its archives for cases involving property disputes.
    The archives were just as dim, dry, and dusty as he remembered. ‘Kunyoshi?’ he called. There was no answer. It was too silent. On the other hand, the head archivist was old and nearly deaf. Akitada had long since expected him to leave the service to become a monk. He went to look for him, making his way through a warren of rooms filled with shelving, down narrow halls lined with more shelving, into larger spaces divided by yet more tall stacks of shelving. The shelves were stacked high with dusty boxes and tagged with wooden markers.
    He found Kunyoshi in the last room: a small cubbyhole with a desk. Kunyoshi was folded forward over the desk, his white head resting on a stack of papers. His brush had dropped from lifeless fingers to the floor.
    Akitada felt the familiar tightness in his belly when in the presence of death and took a deep breath. Poor Kunyoshi – taken in the midst of a loyal service to the emperor that must have exceeded fifty years. It would have been what he wanted. Too many of the dead in Akitada’s past had died prematurely, violently, because they stood in someone’s way. This made him suspicious of all sudden deaths. So he peered more closely, then felt very foolish; Kunyoshi’s breath caused one of the sheets of paper to flutter slightly. The old man was asleep, drooling a little on one of his documents.
    Akitada touched his shoulder, and Kunyoshi came upright with a cry. Staring up at Akitada, he clutched his thin chest. ‘Wha— what? Who… Is something the matter?’
    ‘I beg your pardon, Kunyoshi.’ Akitada felt guilty. ‘I only wanted to ask a question, but you were so preoccupied that you did not hear me call out.’
    ‘Ah. Ah so. Yes, quite,’ mumbled Kunyoshi, glancing down at the half-finished document and brushing at the spittle with his sleeve. He looked around for his brush, then gave up. ‘It’s you, Lord Sugawara,’ he said and made an attempt to struggle up, but Akitada gently pushed him back.
    ‘Don’t disturb yourself. It’s a small thing and hardly worth interrupting your work. Still, I would be very grateful for the information. Do you happen to know anything about a Kiyowara Kane?’
    Kunyoshi blinked. ‘Certainly. He’s a new man. His first lady is the chancellor’s second lady’s sister. You haven’t met? He’s very eager, they say.’ Kunyoshi compressed his lips. ‘Being a provincial no doubt has something to do with it.’
    Some of this made sense to Akitada. Kiyowara had garnered an important position in the central government because of his connections to the new chancellor’s wife. Since life in the provinces held little charm for