“Can the Shima not control their women?” Sogamori whispered harshly. At the sudden change of tone Ryuichi’s innards froze with terror.

“Your miserable servant begs forgiveness if we have offended,” he mumbled, bowing his head.

“If you have offended?” Sogamori growled. “You should be ashamed to show your face before me, Ryuichi. You should have thrown yourself into the Kamo on the way here.”

“She is overcome with grief,” Ryuichi pleaded. “She does not know what she is saying.”

Horigawa spoke. “I have warned my lord Sogamori that the woman is both wilful and wicked.”

Ryuichi was outraged. He wanted to cry out, to demand that Horigawa apologize. The Shima family was being insulted here. But he remained silent. He was too frightened to speak.

Sogamori held up the sword again. “This will belong to Atsue when he performs his manhood ceremony as a Takashi.”

“We are overwhelmed by my lord’s offer to adopt the boy Atsue,” Ryuichi said. “Only, we plead for time. The boy’s mother is so newly bereaved.”

“Do you compare her suffering with mine?” Sogamori rasped. “What was she to my son but another courtesan? What right does she have to mourn? We will have the boy here today.”

The realization that he would have to face Taniko drove Ryuichi to make one last effort. “But she is the boy’s mother. She loves him.”

“She is still married to me,” Horigawa cut in. “By law I am the boy’s father. I say he shall go to Lord Sogamori.”

Ryuichi stared at Horigawa, astonished.

“Thus the woman is no obstacle, Ryuichi-san,” said Sogamori.

“I have a further thought, Your Excellency,” said Horigawa. “To ensure that she is kept under proper control, I shall take her back into my household.” He turned to Ryuichi and bared his blackened teeth. “You have borne the burden of caring for her long enough.”

Ryuichi was overcome with horror. She’ll kill herself, he thought. “No, no, that will not be necessary.”

“Let her be taken to Horigawa’s house at the same time Atsue comes here.” Sogamori laughed mirthlessly. “Peace will be restored to Ryuichi’s household.”

Horigawa said, “My journey to China on Your Excellency’s behalf will be an arduous one. It may be a year or more before I return. I will need the companionship and help of a wife. I have so immersed myself in my duties that I have not had time to seek one. On this voyage I shall have to make do with the one I have.”

But Taniko hates you, Ryuichi thought. You killed her baby daughter, now you are helping to steal her son. Merciful Buddha, she has lost Kiyosi, and now she will lose Atsue. And then to fall into the hands of Horigawa again—she will surely go mad.

“Yukio has escaped to China after killing my son,” Sogamori brooded. “Well, there is one Muratomo on whom I can avenge myself. Listen, Ryuichi.”

Ryuichi shrank back. “Yes, my lord.”

“Send your swiftest messenger to your brother Shima Bokuden in Kamakura. Tell him the Imperial chancellor finds the continued existence of Muratomo no Hideyori a danger to the serenity of the realm. He is commanded to execute Hideyori immediately. I want the head brought back to me by the same messenger.”

If only Bokuden were here, Ryuichi thought. He would know what to do. In the midst of all his anguish, the prospect of Hideyori’s death troubled Ryuichi least of all. Hideyori had never brought any good to the Shima house, and Yukio had destroyed their entire little world. Ryuichi had no tears to spare for the Muratomo.

“As you wish, my lord.”

Horigawa said, “The other Muratomo will not escape your wrath in China, Your Excellency. Through me, your vengeance will follow him to the Central Kingdom.”

“Prince Horigawa is a remarkable man, Ryuichi-san,” said Sogamori. “He is small in body, but within that small head of his is encompassed the entire Chinese language, not only all its literary classics but all its terms of trade and warfare. The prince can equally well address the Sung Emperor or bandy words with the lowliest sailor on the docks. The messages he carries to China and the information he brings back will be precious to me. If he needs your niece, he must have her.”

“I understand, my lord,” Ryuichi quavered.

“I will send a carriage with you for the boy, Ryuichi-san. Do not let your family trouble me again.”

Horigawa rose. “I will go along myself, with my own carriage, to bring my wife back to my house.” He bowed to Sogamori. “Would His Excellency be pleased to send some of his samurai with us as an escort?”

“Tell the captain of the guard to assign twenty outriders to you.” Filled with despair, Ryuichi bowed, turned and shuffled out of Sogamori’s presence.

The Takashi headquarters was across the Kamo River, east of the original limits of Heian Kyo, outside the city’s walls. The land had been given to Sogamori’s grandfather after a victory over pirates on the Inland Sea. In those days the Takashi estate was out in the countryside. Over the years, with each new acquisition of power and wealth, the stronghold grew, as a coral reef rises out of the sea. At the same time the capital spread eastwards, and now the Rokuhara was surrounded by innumerable lesser buildings, like a black rock in a swiftly moving current.

It was palace, fortress, barracks and prison all in one. Between the samurai quartered within its walls and those who lived near by with families and retainers of their own, the Takashi could call up ten thousand warriors at a moment’s notice.

Even after crossing the moat and passing through the fortified western gate, Ryuichi travelled a long time through a labyrinth of inner walls before he finally came to the hall where Sogamori awaited him. Ryuichi dismounted and dismissed his outriders, who looked thoroughly cowed now that they were in the Takashi stronghold. A group of Sogamori’s red-robed youths eyed Ryuichi’s party with a threatening casualness.

Approached by two Takashi samurai, Ryuichi tried to appear calm and superior, a difficult feat for a sweating, trembling fat man. Despite their deferential manner, the hard-faced warriors frightened him. The Shima were supposedly samurai themselves, but Ryuichi was more at home with ink, brush and account books than with bow and sword. He allowed the guards to lead him to Sogamori.

The chieftain of the Takashi clan, dressed in a billowing white silk robe, sat on a raised platform, a naked sword in his lap. His round skull was completely shaved; he had entered the priesthood several years earlier after a nearly fatal illness. Behind him, brightly lit by oil lamps, hung an enormous gold banner bearing an angry Red Dragon, its eyes blazing, claws extended, wings flapping, the scaly body, coil upon coil, seeming about to leap out of golden silk and destroy all in the room.

Ryuichi was grateful for the excuse to fall on his knees and press his forehead to the cedar floor. He was shaking so violently he felt he could no longer stand. Why did Sogamori have a sword in his lap? Was it for him?

“You are welcome here, Shima no Ryuichi,” said Sogamori in his grating voice. Ryuichi looked up. The lines of Sogamori’s broad face were deep and shadowed. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. The man must have been weeping for days, Ryuichi thought. There were tears glistening on Sogamori’s brown cheeks even now.

Below the platform, to Sogamori’s right and left, sat the men of his family. The place just below and to the left, where Kiyosi had always sat, was occupied by Sogamori’s second son, Notaro, his puffy, white-powdered features drooping with a faint boredom. Beside Notaro sat the third son, Tadanori, a famous dandy and poet, but not known to be good at much else. Sogamori’s other sons by his principal wife and his other wives sat facing each other in two rows leading up to the platform. Dullards, weaklings, and fops, thought Ryuichi. Other nobles, favourites of Sogamori, sat around the room. With surprise, Ryuichi recognized Prince Sasaki no Horigawa, smiling and gently fanning himself.

Sogamori took a sheet of paper from his sleeve. “We have been reading my son’s poems, Ryuichi-san. This is the last one he wrote, aboard ship on his way to Kyushu.

The shadow of the sail is my palace,
These cedar planks my bed,
My host, a seagull.

“Exquisite,” Ryuichi whispered, dry-mouthed. Sogamori sighed and wiped his face with his sleeve. In the silence Ryuichi thought how Taniko would love to have one of Kiyosi’s poems. But it was obvious Taniko had no friends here. Horigawa waved his fan before his face and smiled his secretive smile at Ryuichi.

Sogamori raised the sword, holding it by its gold and silver-mounted hilt. The blade glistened in the lamplight. It was sharply curved and double-edged for more than half its length.

“His sword,” said Sogamori. “Kogarasu. He didn’t want to risk losing it at sea, so he left it behind. If he had worn it, it would have gone down with him to the bottom of Hakata Bay. Kogarasu once belonged to our ancestor, Emperor Kammu, who received it from the priestess of the Grand Isle Shrine. I gave it to my son when he cut his hair and tied it in the topknot.”

Ryuichi bowed his head. “The grief of your house is the grief of my house.”

A silence fell. Sogamori studied Kogarasu, turning the sword this way and that to catch the light on its shadowy temper lines. Wrapping his white silk sleeve around his hand, he polished the blade lovingly. Gently, as if cradling a sleeping baby, he laid the sword in his lap.

“I am told that your own son, Munetoki, is well and is on his way home to you,” said Sogamori softly. “I hear he performed bravely in the battle at Hakata Bay. The joy of your house is the joy of my house.”

Was there irony in Sogamori’s tone? “A thousand years would not be enough time for me to express my gratitude to the chancellor for noticing my son,” said Ryuichi, bowing deeply.

“Can the Shima not control their women?” Sogamori whispered harshly. At the sudden change of tone Ryuichi’s innards froze with terror.

“Your miserable servant begs forgiveness if we have offended,” he mumbled, bowing his head.

“If you have offended?” Sogamori growled. “You should be ashamed to show your face before me, Ryuichi. You should have thrown yourself into the Kamo on the way here.”

For hours they cried together in each other’s arms.

In the evening the maids brought food to them. Taniko could not eat. She watched Atsue pick at the small slivers of fish with his chopsticks. In his green silk tunic and black trousers he looked like a replica of Kiyosi.

Why didn’t they chop me to bits with swords and be done with it? Taniko thought. How long could she feel this pain before she went mad?

“Homage to Amida Buddha.” Taniko started to recite the invocation. Atsue put down his chopsticks and joined her.

After the maid took away their dishes, Ryuichi pushed back the screen to Taniko’s chamber and peered in at them. His face was pale. In the dim corridor he looked like a goldfish trying to see up through the surface of a pond. Taniko, murmuring the homage to Buddha, looked back at him.

“You never went to Yasugi, Uncle.”

“Forgive me, Taniko-san. I remembered how you were when Horigawa brought you here. I couldn’t bear to see you like that again.”

“So, instead of telling me yourself, you mercifully allowed one of Sogamori’s lackeys to give me the news by accident.”

“Do not torment me, Taniko-san.”

“Ah, are you the one who is being tormented? I see. Well, don’t stand there in the doorway like a frightened peasant. Sit down with us.”

Ryuichi snapped his fingers at a maid. “Sake.” Still looking apologetically at Taniko, he sat down.

Taniko said, “Atsue, go to your bedchamber. I have something to discuss with your uncle.”

“Why can’t I hear? I’m the head of our family now.”

The words brought Taniko a renewed realization of her loss. She burst into a storm of weeping, while Ryuichi sat looking sadly at her. Atsue crept into her arms.

The maid brought hot sake. Taniko poured for Ryuichi and herself. “All right,” she said. “You will also have to decide what you want, Atsue-chan.” Atsue did not object to the term of endearment for a child. “Stay and listen.” The boy sat down again, facing his mother and his uncle. She turned to Ryuichi. “Sogamori has asked that I send the boy to him. He wants to take him from me and adopt him, make him a Takashi.”

Ryuichi nodded. “This afternoon I received a summons to the Rokuhara. Of course, it was worded as an invitation. What did you say to Sogamori’s secretary?”

“I refused. I want Atsue to stay with me.”

Ryuichi quickly drained another cup of sake. “You refused?”

“Yes. But Atsue must be the one to decide in the end.”

“Children do not decide their futures,” Ryuichi cut in. “Of course he will want to stay with his mother. But he has no idea of what he would lose. What can you give him that would compare with the station in life he would have as Sogamori’s son?”

“Kiyosi gave Sogamori other grandsons, and Kiyosi’s younger brothers still live,” said Taniko. “Why must Sogamori, who has so much, take this child from me?” Tears ran down her cheeks.

Ryuichi shrugged. “Aside from the late Kiyosi, Sogamori’s male descendants are a rather undistinguished lot. This boy, on the other hand, is a paragon. Perhaps it is because you and Kiyosi enjoyed some powerful bond in a former life. You must be aware that Atsue’s musicianship and his knowledge of the classics are remarkable. And his face—” Ryuichi sipped his sake and contemplated the boy. Atsue, his eyes downcast, flushed a deep scarlet. That’s one trait he gets from me, Taniko thought.

Ryuichi went on. “Anyone who knows anything about physiognomy can see Atsue has the face of one destined to hold a high place in the realm. In all respects, even at this young age, Atsue outshines Sogamori’s other descendants. That cannot have escaped you, Taniko. Be sure that Sogamori himself is well aware of it.”

Taniko turned to the boy. “Atsue-chan, what your uncle says is true. You can become an important member of the most powerful clan in the land. If you remain here, you’ll merely be a fatherless boy, part of a rather undistinguished provincial family.”

“I want to stay with you, Mother,” Atsue said instantly. “I love you, and you love me. I am afraid of Lord Sogamori. They say he is cruel and has a terrible temper. I don’t want to live in the Rokuhara. I don’t like the Rokuhara.”

“This is not childish prattle,” said Taniko. “The boy knows perfectly well what he is saying.”

“We dare not defy Lord Sogamori,” Ryuichi muttered.

“If Sogamori can take a child from us, he can take anything and everything from us.”

That thought made Ryuichi frown. “But there is nothing I can do. What can I say to Lord Sogamori at the Rokuhara tomorrow?”

“You are a samurai, Uncle, as much as he is. You can present the case to him and let him make what he will of it. When you go to the Rokuhara, tell Sogamori that the boy does not want to go and his mother does not want to send him.”

“Madness,” said Ryuichi.

“Uncle-san,” said Taniko, the tears coming again, “My champion is dead. You are the only defender I have left. If you won’t protect me, I am lost.”

Shaking his head, Ryuichi rose. “I will do what I can. Drink more sake. It will help you to sleep.”

It was a sweltering morning when Ryuichi went to the Rokuhara. Alone, sweating and trembling in his carriage, he fanned himself incessantly. Six armed, mounted men escorted him, but their presence did nothing to make him feel more secure. He was going, perhaps, to his death. What else could he expect if he disobeyed the command of Lord Sogamori, who could annihilate him as a careless sandal crushes an ant?

The Rokuhara was at once magnificent and frightening. Its three donjon towers, bedecked with proud red Takashi banners, dominated the surrounding district. Ryuichi saw them as soon as his carriage crossed the Gojo Bridge. The stone outer walls with their tile-roofed turrets were taller than those around the Imperial Palace. The walls girdled a spacious park bounded by four avenues. Three streams diverted from the Kamo River fed the moat, itself wide as a river, and ran through the park over beds of carefully chosen pebbles, beneath tiny ornamental bridges. Interior walls divided the grounds into parade fields, gardens and gravelled courts. The main buildings of the Rokuhara were imposing structures in the Chinese style, with red and green tiled roofs. Mixed in among these were a Buddhist temple, a Shinto shrine and many stables.

The Takashi headquarters was across the Kamo River, east of the original limits of Heian Kyo, outside the city’s walls. The land had been given to Sogamori’s grandfather after a victory over pirates on the Inland Sea. In those days the Takashi estate was out in the countryside. Over the years, with each new acquisition of power and wealth, the stronghold grew, as a coral reef rises out of the sea. At the same time the capital spread eastwards, and now the Rokuhara was surrounded by innumerable lesser buildings, like a black rock in a swiftly moving current.

“There was no message,” he said hastily. “Lord Kiyosi sent no message.” There was something in his voice that frightened Taniko. “What is it then?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Lord Sogamori desires that his grandson be sent to him.”

The secretary’s words surprised Taniko and intensified the dread she felt. “For how long?”

Again the secretary seemed surprised. “Why, for the rest of his life, my lady. Lord Sogamori wants to give the boy the Takashi name and adopt him as his own son.”

“His son? But he is Lord Kiyosi’s son. He, if anybody, should adopt him.”

“My lady,” the secretary said, then stopped. He seemed at a loss for words. At last he blurted out, “A dead man cannot adopt a child.”

It was as if he had plunged a sword into her body. She sat paralysed, impaled on his words. At last, as the numbness of shock faded away, she began to feel pain and struggled to free herself.

“No, no, he is not dead. Someone would have told me. You can’t come here and say that he is dead. I would have known about it if something had happened. You’re wrong. You must be mistaken.”

Even as she denied his words, it struck her with overwhelming force: Kiyosi had been killed in the fighting in Kyushu, and no one had told her.

The secretary blushed a deep scarlet. “Don’t you know what happened, my lady?”

“I have heard nothing. Surely I would have heard if anything had happened to Lord Kiyosi.”

Again the man seemed to grope for words. “Then I—I must tell you? How unfortunate. But seemingly it falls to me to do this duty where others have failed.” He drew himself up and composed himself into a picture of Confucian rectitude. “My lady, it grieves me greatly to be the bearer of this news. Six days ago, we received word that there had been a great sea battle at Hakata Bay. The rebellious Muratomo forces were trying to escape. My lord Kiyosi was on the flagship of the Takashi fleet. During the fighting he was struck in the chest by an armour-piercing arrow. Those who were near say he died instantly. One arrow, no pain. His body fell into the sea and disappeared immediately. He is gone, my lady. He died faithfully carrying out his father’s orders. You may take pride in that.”

Taniko heard the man out. Then she stood up.

The next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor, her maid kneeling beside her, wiping her face with a damp cloth. She struggled to sit up. The screen was knocked over, and the Takashi family secretary was standing in a corner of the room with his face politely averted.

Then it came back to her. Kiyosi was dead.

She looked up at the maid, one of the women who had come with her to Heian Kyo years ago. The maid was crying.

“You knew,” said Taniko. “You knew days ago and you didn’t tell me.”

“I could not, my lady,” the maid sobbed. “I could not bear to be the one. Why should it have to be me?”

In spite of the shock of grief, Taniko’s mind was still working. “Set up the screen.” The first thing she must do was get rid of this man with his talk of taking Atsue. When the screen was raised, Taniko composed herself and sat behind it.

“Please tell Lord Sogamori that I am overwhelmed with gratitude at his offer to adopt the boy Atsue. However, with the greatest respect, the Takashi family has no obligation to do anything for either Atsue or me. Atsue is my son, and it is my desire that he stay with me.”

The secretary stared. “My lady, the boy is Lord Kiyosi’s son. Lord Sogamori has lost his own son, his eldest-the son he loved best in the world. He wants his grandson. You cannot deny him.”

It was agony to sit upright, agony to hold her voice to a soft, polite tone, agony to speak at all. She clenched her hands in her lap, digging the fingernails of one into the back of the other. “I am very sorry, but Lord Sogamori has other children and grandchildren. I have only Atsue. I am sure he would not want to take my only child from me.”

“Excuse me, Lady Taniko, but this is most unwise. You only bring more suffering upon yourself. Lord Sogamori is the most powerful man in the Sacred Islands.”

“My son does not belong to Lord Sogamori. I do not belong to Lord Sogamori. I have nothing more to say.”

His mouth drawn down, the secretary left her. Taniko sat without moving for as long as she could, while her grief welled up inside her until she felt it would tear her apart. She began to gasp like a deer with an arrow in its chest. Her gasps became sobs. At last she screamed. She threw herself full length on the floor, tearing at her robes and beating upon the polished floor with her fists.

Her maids rushed in and tried to hold her. She struck them away. Drawing her body into a knot, she shrieked and wept.

Atsue came in. Horrified at the sight of his mother, he turned to the maids, who stood whimpering and wringing their hands.

“What’s happened to my mother?”

Still sobbing, Taniko pulled herself to a sitting position. Thank Amida Buddha I can be the first to tell him, she thought. At least he won’t get the news from some servant. She reached out and pulled the boy to her, fighting for breath, trying to get her voice under control.

“Your father has left us. He has gone to the Pure Land. He died in battle at sea off Kyushu. I have just heard it.”

“Oh no, Mother, no, no, no.” The boy’s arms tightened around her neck until she thought he would break it. But she endured the small pain gladly. She had only Atsue to live for.

For hours they cried together in each other’s arms.

In the evening the maids brought food to them. Taniko could not eat. She watched Atsue pick at the small slivers of fish with his chopsticks. In his green silk tunic and black trousers he looked like a replica of Kiyosi.

Why didn’t they chop me to bits with swords and be done with it? Taniko thought. How long could she feel this pain before she went mad?

“Homage to Amida Buddha.” Taniko started to recite the invocation. Atsue put down his chopsticks and joined her.

After the maid took away their dishes, Ryuichi pushed back the screen to Taniko’s chamber and peered in at them. His face was pale. In the dim corridor he looked like a goldfish trying to see up through the surface of a pond. Taniko, murmuring the homage to Buddha, looked back at him.

And perhaps, too, the great distances would help him forget for a time that small, white, lovely face that had haunted him ever since that journey down the Tokaido.

With trembling fingers he reached into his robe for the Jewel of Life and Death.

Part Two: The Book Of Kublai

Because men suffer, they fight and kill one another. The innocent, who begin by fighting to defend themselves against robbers and murderers, become robbers and murderers themselves. Someone must protect them, both from what happens to them and from what they become. It is our hope that we can take upon ourselves the duty of necessary fighting and killing. We think we can be trusted.

The Zinja Manual

Chapter One

Summer came to Heian Kyo. The screens and lattices of houses were opened to the air as the days grew longer and the nights warmer. Rain and sun alternated to deepen the green of the huge old willows that grew along the avenues and canals. Moon and fireflies lit the night. Taniko found that she missed Kiyosi terribly. She wanted to share this beauty with him. Unable to talk to him, she wrote poems, two or three a day, and imagined herself reading them to him.

The sun warms the wind,
The wind strokes the willows,
The willows reach down to caress the river.

She had little to record in her pillow book. She liked to write about the gossip of palace and Court, the problems of the country’s rulers, the struggles of powerful men. About all this, she had heard in abundance from Kiyosi. Since he had sailed south to Kyushu her life had been one of isolation, monotony and boredom. It was no consolation to her that it was the same for almost all women of her station, except the few lucky enough to have duties at Court. She had no idea how other women managed to tolerate such lives.

Her one source of daily joy was the companionship of Atsue. The boy had quite forgotten his horror at seeing his mother stab a man to death, and the two spent hours together every day. Atsue was growing to look more and more like his grave, square-jawed father. Every fifth day she took him by carriage to the Buddhist temple on Mount Hiei for lessons on the flute and koto with a famous master. Daily she listened to his practice on these instruments. She finally convinced him the samisen was worth learning and gave him lessons herself. Kiyosi had taught him go, saying that every samurai should play the game well, and Taniko played it with Atsue night after night. She took him for walks through the garden, teaching him the names of summer herbs and flowers. Late in the evening, just before he went to bed, they would sit and watch the moon rise. Atsue would play on his flute just for pleasure, and his playing was often so beautiful it brought tears to her eyes.

A strange silence fell over the Shima household in the middle of the Fifth Month. Taniko’s maids seemed nervous and chattered less than usual while helping her dress and undress. There was something furtive in the way her aunt and cousins greeted her in the women’s quarters and hurried past on business of their own. Ryuichi’s oldest son, Munetoki, now a fierce young samurai of nineteen, had gone off with Kiyosi’s expedition to hunt down the last of the Muratomo. Uncle Ryuichi seemed to have disappeared completely. When she asked about him, Aunt Chogao said he had gone on a long journey by sea to Yasugi on the west coast. Yasugi, Taniko knew, was a stronghold for the pirates who preyed on the Korean coast and shipping. All her life she had been hearing rumours that her family was involved with pirates; this seemed to confirm it.

One afternoon a servant announced that the first secretary to Lord Takashi no Sogamori was in the main hall and had asked to visit her. She felt a little leap of pleasure. She had not had a letter from Kiyosi in nearly a month. She hurriedly prepared herself with her maid’s help, set out the screen of state in her chamber and sent her maid for Sogamori’s secretary.

She immediately noticed the willow-wood taboo tag tied to the secretary’s black head-dress and dangling down the side of his face. She wondered if the evil that beset him was a personal misfortune or something that had fallen upon the entire house of Takashi. It would not be polite to enquire. It was surprising that a man under taboo would even leave his house. He must consider the visit essential.

She had never seen the man before, but she recognized the type. His prim manner and old-fashioned, slightly tattered robe and trousers proclaimed him a Confucian scholar. Doubtless a man of good family whose declining fortunes had forced him to go into service with a rising clan like the Takashi.

They exchanged greetings, the secretary peering nervously at the screen as if trying to see through it. He wants a look at the famous lady who delights Kiyosi, she thought.

At last the secretary said, “Lord Sogamori has sent me to you to inform you of his wishes.”

“I am honoured,” said Taniko. “But I had hoped you might have a message for me from Lord Kiyosi.” Through the openings near the top of the screen she could see that the man’s eyes had widened in surprise—and possibly fear—at the mention of Kiyosi’s name.

“There was no message,” he said hastily. “Lord Kiyosi sent no message.” There was something in his voice that frightened Taniko. “What is it then?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Lord Sogamori desires that his grandson be sent to him.”

The secretary’s words surprised Taniko and intensified the dread she felt. “For how long?”

Again the secretary seemed surprised. “Why, for the rest of his life, my lady. Lord Sogamori wants to give the boy the Takashi name and adopt him as his own son.”