The Incense Game Read Online Free PDF Page B

to succeed. “Don’t stand out.”
    “Yes, Father,” Masahiro said.
    At the time he couldn’t have foreseen the earthquake or how hard it would be to sit by and watch other people do badly what he could do well. Now he handed the broom and dustpan to the other pages. He surreptitiously wiped the floor mats with a cloth while they made a show of sweeping up the china fragments. He stood in a corner instead of taking over for the two boys who were poking at the coals in the brazier, trying to restart the fire.
    “I’m bored,” the shogun announced. “Somebody read to me.”
    The twins took turns reading aloud from a book of poems. They faltered and made mistakes. Masahiro winced.
    “Enough!” the shogun cried. “I can’t bear to listen to you mangle fine literature!” The twins fell silent. “Why am I surrounded by idiots?”
    Everyone looked at the floor while he began ranting. No one dared say a word. Into the room shuffled Lord Ienobu, the shogun’s nephew. He climbed onto the dais, knelt, took the book from the twins, and said, “Please allow me, Honorable Uncle.”
    His voice was raspy, but he read every word perfectly. The shogun nodded, appeased. The sight of the hunchback with the ugly, toothy face gave Masahiro the same creepy feeling he got when he saw a toad. Ienobu flicked his gaze around the room, as if looking for prey to eat. Masahiro sat still and quiet among the other boys. He reminded himself of his father’s advice. He must avoid standing out, even if it killed him.
    *   *   *
    “I’LL PAY MY call on Lord Hosokawa,” Sano said to Hirata as they stood by the bodies on the ground by the sunken house. “You take the women to Edo Morgue.”
    Hirata understood that Sano wanted the bodies examined by his friend Dr. Ito, the morgue custodian. Dr. Ito would use his scientific expertise to determine the cause of death. But Sano couldn’t say that in public. Nor could he personally seek Dr. Ito’s advice.
    An empty oxcart rolled by. Hirata beckoned the driver, a tough peasant youth. The townsmen left their sick comrade and wrapped the bodies in hemp sacking, then loaded them into the open cart. Hirata mounted his horse. As he rode off leading the oxcart, he saw Sano watching him and felt a stab of guilt. He remembered how often he’d shirked his duties during the past year. He guessed that Sano didn’t believe the excuses he made; he understood that Sano was making allowances for him that other masters wouldn’t. He knew he should tell Sano the truth about what he was up to and face the consequences, but the time never seemed right.
    While he traveled through the city, Hirata noticed soldiers patrolling on foot rather than horseback. Hundreds of horses had been killed by the earthquake or injured so badly they’d had to be put down, their carcasses cremated. Hirata saw an ash heap littered with their blackened skeletons; he smelled rotting and burned flesh. He also observed things that were beyond ordinary human perception.
    His training in the mystic martial arts had sharpened his senses until he could see the cracks in the walls of Edo Castle as if they were as close as his hand, smell the green life dormant in winter mountain forests, and hear a man across town coaxing another man to invest in a scheme for buying liquor in Osaka and selling it for a huge profit in Edo. He could taste salt from the ocean far down past the mouth of the Sumida River, and feel against his cheeks the minute, invisible dust particles in the air. He could also sense the auras of living things, the energy that their bodies emitted. Each human had a unique aura that signaled his personality, health, and emotions. The landscape of Hirata’s mind hummed, blazed, and crackled with the auras from the city’s million people. He could pick out those that belonged to people he knew, and the misery-laced, fading energy of victims trapped in earthquake rubble. That plus his supernatural strength had made him useful