The Incense Game Read Free

a while. I’m aware that their offices in the palace were damaged and they have to, ahh, work from wherever they’re living, but I should think they would come and see me every so often. Where have they gone?”
    No one wanted to tell the shogun how many casualties his regime had sustained during the earthquake. Soon after it, he’d greeted the news of each death with attacks of hysteria that made him so ill, everyone feared he would die. The Council of Elders, Japan’s chief governing body, had ordered that he wasn’t to be apprised of any more deaths. He’d calmed down and been satisfied to believe that the people he missed were simply busy elsewhere.
    Until now.
    Ienobu hunched forward. He reminded Sano of a vulture. Sano gave up on deception, partly because he didn’t like lying, partly because he was tired of cosseting the shogun. “They’re dead, Your Excellency.”
    A strange look came over the shogun’s face, a mixture of horror and chagrin. Sano saw that he’d known all along but hoped it wasn’t true. “How many people in the government died?” the shogun asked in a small voice.
    “Three hundred and fifty-one, so far,” Sano said. “Some are still unaccounted for.” He recited the names of dead ministers, functionaries, and army officers, onetime pillars of the regime.
    “Merciful Buddha,” the shogun whispered, his complexion ashen. “This is a terrible, terrible blow for me!” Stress and fatigue undermined Sano’s tendency to hope for compassion from the shogun. He’d expected the shogun to care less about the deaths than their consequences for him. “Who is running my government?”
    “The rest of us who are still alive,” Sano said, thinking, with no help from you . He quashed that thought as unbecoming to himself as well as disrespectful to his lord. “There’s no need to worry, Your Excellency.”
    “But the government has been reduced to a skeleton,” Ienobu said.
    Panic filled the shogun’s eyes. “Who is protecting me? How many troops did I lose?”
    “Over a thousand,” Sano said, “but your army is still huge.”
    “The army is spread very thin,” Ienobu said, “trying to maintain order in the city.”
    Sano narrowed his eyes at Ienobu. Was Ienobu deliberately trying to frighten the shogun so that he would become even more dependent on his nephew?
    “Is the castle fixed yet?” the shogun asked.
    “Unfortunately, no,” Sano said.
    “The castle wasn’t built in a day. It can’t be rebuilt in a day.” Ienobu’s soothing manner didn’t soften the truth of his words.
    Maybe Ienobu was trying to tip the shogun into his grave. Sano was so tired he could barely think straight.
    “I’m so afraid!” The shogun cowered. “What if I should be attacked?”
    “Nobody is going to attack you,” Sano said, although an insurrection was a possibility that the government feared. “Nobody knows exactly how vulnerable you are. The number of deaths within the regime is being kept secret.”
    Even as the shogun looked relieved, he lamented, “The court astronomer just told me that the cosmos is displeased about something. He read it in the constellations. He says they say the earthquake was sent as a message.” His eyes were round and shiny with terror. “There will be more trouble, I just know it!” He toppled onto the dais, writhed in his quilt like a silkworm in its cocoon, and groaned. “I’m so miserable, I feel a sick spell coming on!”
    Astrology was serious business. A dictator must look to the stars for explanations for natural disasters and other calamities. He must heed their warnings, which were interpreted by his astronomer, that his regime was out of harmony with the cosmos. Sano knew this and felt alarmed himself, but his patience snapped like a stretched rope frayed down to its last thread. After fifteen years of listening to the shogun whine, of catering to him, of enduring insults and death threats, the shogun’s reaction was too much. After seeing