Assassin's Touch Read Free

ally of Chamberlain Yanagisawa.
    The shogun heaved a tired sigh. “There are so many new people in the, ahh, government these days. I can’t keep them straight.” Annoyance pinched his features. “It would be much easier for me if the same men would stay in the same posts. I don’t know why they can’t.”
    Nobody offered an explanation. The shogun didn’t know about the war between Lord Matsudaira and Chamberlain Yanagisawa, or Lord Matsudaira’s victory and the ensuing purge; no one had told him, and since he rarely left the palace, he saw little of what went on around him. He knew Yanagisawa had been exiled, but he wasn’t clear as to why. Neither Lord Matsudaira nor Yanagisawa had wanted him to know that they aspired to control the regime, lest he put them to death for treason. And now Lord Matsudaira wanted the shogun kept ignorant of the fact that he’d seized power and virtually ruled Japan. No one dared disobey his orders against telling the shogun. A conspiracy of silence pervaded Edo Castle.
    “How did Ejima die?” Sano asked Lord Matsudaira.
    “He fell off his horse during a race at the Edo Castle track,” Lord Matsudaira said.
    “Dear me,” the shogun said. “Horse racing is such a dangerous sport, perhaps it should be, ahh, prohibited.”
    “I recall hearing that Ejima was a particularly reckless rider,” Sano said, “and he’d been in accidents before.”
    “I don’t believe this was an accident,” Lord Matsudaira said, his tone sharp. “I suspect foul play.”
    “Oh?” Sano saw his surprise mirrored on his men’s faces. “Why?”
    “This isn’t the only recent, sudden death of a high official,” Lord Matsudaira said. “First there was Ono Shinnosuke, the supervisor of court ceremony, on New Year’s Day. In the spring, Sasamura Tomoya, highway commissioner, died. And just last month, Treasury Minister Moriwaki.”
    “But Ono and Sasamura died in their sleep, at home in bed,” Sano said. “The treasury minister fell in the bathtub and hit his head. Their deaths seem unrelated to Ejima’s.”
    “Don’t you see a pattern?” Lord Matsudaira’s manner was ominous with insinuation.
    “They were all, ahh, new to their posts, weren’t they?” the shogun piped up timidly. He had the air of a child playing a guessing game, hoping he had the right answer. “And they died soon after taking office?”
    “Precisely,” Lord Matsudaira said, surprised that the shogun remembered the men, let alone knew anything about them.
    They were all Lord Matsudaira’s trusted cronies, installed after the coup, Sano could have added, but didn’t.
    “These deaths may not have been as natural as they appeared,” said Lord Matsudaira. “They may be part of a plot to undermine the regime by eliminating key officials.”
    While Lord Matsudaira’s enemies inside and outside the bakufu were constantly plotting his downfall, Sano didn’t know what to think about a conspiracy to weaken the regime within a regime that he’d established. During the past six months, Sano had watched him change from a confident leader of a major Tokugawa branch clan to a nervous, distrustful man insecure in his new position. Frequent sabotage and violent attacks against his army by Yanagisawa’s outlaws fed his insecurity. Stolen power could be stolen from the thief, Sano supposed.
    “A plot against the regime?” Always susceptible to warnings about danger, the shogun gasped. He looked around as though he, not Lord Matsudaira, were under attack. “You must do something!” he exclaimed to his cousin.
    “Indeed I will,” Lord Matsudaira said. “Chamberlain Sano, I order you to investigate the deaths.” Although Sano was second-in-command to the shogun, he answered to Lord Matsudaira, as did everyone else in the government. In his haste to protect himself, Lord Matsudaira forgot to manipulate the shogun into giving the order. “Should they prove to be murders, you will identify and apprehend the killer before