My relief at the news of my sister’s survival had been near overwhelming. I had always been fond of Rie, but perhaps I had not altogether understood exactly how fond. The fact that neither of us has laid eyes on each other in over fifteen years did not seem to matter at all. Lord Yoshiie’s interest was, undoubtedly, of an entirely different nature, and his expression of it, while kind enough, helped bring me back to the task at hand.
“If I know Tomotoki, he’ll be here in less than two days with a considerable force behind him—the Shibata will not take an attack on their family temple lightly. It would be best if we have as complete a picture of the events leading up to this sad day as possible,” he said.
“With your permission, Yoshiie-sama, I will question my sister in this matter.”
“Thank you. While I’m pleased anyone survived this abomination, that it was your sister makes it doubly fortuitous. I had no idea any of your kinsfolk were present here.”
“Very few did know,” I said, bowing low, “or would be concerned at such a trifling matter. But I thank you.”
“There were other survivors,” Kenji said. “Two others so far, and I still hope for more. Apparently the nunnery was attacked last, giving some of the residents time to either hide or flee. Clearly the attackers did not think they had the time or necessity to be more thorough . . . although they were certainly vicious enough.”
“Also with your permission, I will question the other survivors as well,” I said.
Yoshiie grunted assent. “Be as gentle as the urgency allows.”
I bowed again. “You may depend on it.”
Kenji and I took our leave then. Outside, now that the fighting was over, the grimmer work of the aftermath was well under way. The bodies of our attackers were being gathered and carried out the front gates to be deposited in a temporary pile, after first being stripped in search of any identifying marks or items. So far nothing had been found, and I was not surprised—it stood to reason whoever ordered this travesty would not want anything remaining to link them to the sacrilege in any way. If Lord Yoshiie was correct, however, it would scarcely matter so far as his own opinion was concerned. The bodies of the actual priests were being treated with more respect. Cloth taken from the temple’s storerooms was being used to make temporary coverings for them. As Kenji and I approached the gate to the nunnery, it was clear a similar procedure was in place there.
“I had to bruise the skull of one of Yoshiie’s men who was, shall we say, being disrespectful. You may have to plead my case with his lord.”
“Somehow I doubt it. It’s more likely any complaint from the fellow would result in one more body on the outside pile, and probably not yours. Yoshiie has no intention of letting this opportunity go to waste. Such a lack of judgment on the part of one his men might endanger this.”
Kenji scowled. “Opportunity . . . ? Oh. You mean the Shibata.”
“Just so.”
Kenji finally sighed. “Well, it stands to reason they’ll want revenge. This isn’t my temple, and I want revenge. Do you really believe Lord Tenshin was behind this?”
“I don’t think Lord Yoshiie believes Lord Sadato would have sanctioned the attack if he had known the extent of the plan. Whereas I’m not convinced of Lord Tenshin’s scruples about any detail necessary for removing the obstacle Lord Yoshiie represents. Still, so far we have found no evidence of shikigami. All our attackers left corpses and thus must have been human. Whatever I may think, there is no proof either way.”
“Considering the timing, as you pointed out earlier, and the complexity, I would not have chosen shikigami to carry out this attack in the first place. And there are always provincial bushi for hire,” Kenji pointed out. “Even so, it would certainly take a low or desperate lot to do this.”
“All true,” I said, but my mind was elsewhere. Perhaps shikigami were not directly involved, but Lord Tenshin would not have been taking advantage of all his resources if he had not used them in some capacity. But what? I had the feeling the answer was close by, if only I had the eyes to see it. At the moment, the answer was eluding me.
In some ways, the nunnery attached to the Yahiko temple was a mirror of its larger neighbor—there was a temple proper, plus a lecture hall, storerooms, and barracks for the residents. The survivors had been gathered into the lecture hall under guard, but to Kenji’s—and my own—disappointment, no more had yet been located.
“Kenji—” I began, but he anticipated me.
“I understand. I believe I am needed elsewhere.”
Kenji took his leave, and I sent the guard outside. I was left alone with the three surviving nuns. There was an old woman, at least in her sixties, with her head bowed, counting her prayer beads. Another was a young girl, perhaps no more than thirteen or so. She did not kneel but was rather curled up in a ball like a cat, slowly rocking back and forth, shivering. Someone had draped a coverlet over her, but it didn’t seem to help. The third woman was my sister.
Rie had changed very little. She was a small, delicate-appearing woman. In her forties now, she was still as striking as her mother had been, as best I could remember—she had died when we were both very young. Rie’s head was cowled in white cloth like the others, and I wondered how much gray was now in the night-black hair I remembered. I recognized her instantly, and she apparently did the same of me. I heard a faint gasp. In a moment she was on her feet and had grabbed me in what I imagined a bear hug to be like. I was having some trouble breathing.
“Goji-kun! Is it really you?”
“Elder Sister, you had best hope so,” I said, attempting to make her ease her grip. “It would be unseemly for one of your station to be embracing strange men. It . . . it is good to see you.”
For a moment it was as if we were both twelve again, and the horror that had just occurred was no more than a bad dream. We were the children of the same father but different mothers, and even though she was the elder, it was only by the space of a few months. We had been raised together, and she, like myself, had planned for a very different life before the disgrace and death of our father. When her mother died, Rie had been adopted by father’s First Wife, my mother, as if she had been her own. Before my father’s death, they had been discussing suitable marriages, but afterward my mother had taken holy orders, and Rie had made the decision to join her. My mother had barely lived another year as a nun before a pestilence took her.
Rie finally let go, and when she did, she staggered. I helped her kneel back down on one of the available cushions.
“Are you injured?”
“No. I’m just . . . ooh, my poor sisters . . . ”
The guards had brought water, and I offered some to Rie, but she demurred. “I’m afraid I might not be able to keep it down. Perhaps later. We . . . we understood Lord Yoshiie would be making a pilgrimage here, but I never suspected you would be with him. You should have written me.”
“There was no time, and too much chance of any letter being read by the wrong people. Besides, you know why I have kept my distance.”
“I’ve never agreed with your reasoning,” Rie said softly. “But I do understand it. Yet danger has found me anyway, has it not?”
I had no reply. Even as a child Rie had a knack for pointing out the obviously true things one might not want to admit. It was clear this was something about her which had not changed. “Lady Rie, we will speak of other matters later, but for right now I need to know what happened here. Anything you can tell me might be useful, however insignificant it may appear to you.”
“The prioress sent me on an errand to Yahiko . . . ” She paused and looked to the older woman. “Tomoko-ana? Do you know if she . . . ?”
She had addressed the old woman with the honorific for a woman who had taken holy orders, and I wondered if I should be thinking of my sister as “Rie-ana,” since she had not adopted a new name for her new life, as so many others did. For her part, the old woman just looked down and continued fingering her prayer beads. She appeared to be weeping. Rie looked away. “I had just returned when the attack on the monastery began . . . and ended very quickly, it seems. The gate was barred, but one of those worthless men must have already been inside, because the next thing we knew, the gate was open and the murderers were among us. I didn’t know what to do . . . I don’t think any of us had time to really grasp what was happening. Some of the women didn’t even run . . . I hid in a storage building, but our supplies were depleted—that’s what I went to Yahiko about—and there was no good place to conceal myself. I heard the screams getting closer, I knew they were searching the buildings . . . I was certain I was going to die. But then everything stopped.”
“What did you do then?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Rie said. “I was too terrified to leave the storeroom, afraid someone would see me. I’m not sure how long I was in there . . . not long, I think, before I heard the fighting start up again. It must have been when Lord Yoshiie’s party was attacked. Is he . . . ?”
“Lord Yoshiie wasn’t harmed. Fortunately we detected the deception before the trap was fully sprung. But it was a close thing.”
“I am grateful for his safety and for your own, brother. At least the cowards didn’t get what they came for,” Rie said.
While I did not have the greatest respect for our attackers, I would not have described them as cowards. Vicious, certainly, and without scruple or piety, to murder priests and nuns without hesitation, but cowards? They had to know their chances of carrying out their mission and withdrawing safely to Mutsu were slim at best. Even if they’d managed to wipe out Lord Yoshiie’s personal guard as well as Yoshiie himself, that still left an entire army at the temple gates, most of it mounted and able to move swiftly and dominated by Minamoto loyalists keen on revenge. There was another, smaller gate on the east side, but no northern gate, and the east gate was in full view of the main road, so there would have been no means of escape
Unless . . .
“My sister, you said there must have been someone already inside the nunnery, but no one saw who it was or how they entered?”
“Yes.” Rie frowned, and then she sifted positions to place herself next to the old nun. “Tomoko-ana, did you see anything? Please, it’s important. Try to answer.”
“I-I hid under the guest quarters,” the old woman said finally. “When the gate was first barred. I didn’t see what happened. I heard . . . oooh.” Her voice dropped. “You can ask Mai-chan, but I don’t think she’s come back to herself yet.”
That much was clear. The young nun still lay on her side, holding her knees, making no more sound than the occasional whimper. When Rie tried to touch her, the girl shied away from her, terror in her eyes. Rie sighed. “My brother, I’m afraid you’ll learn nothing more from us for now. Perhaps if . . . when, Mai has had time to recover?”
I turned and summoned the guard back into the room. “I am Lord Yamada, acting on behalf of Lord Yoshiie in this matter. What is your name and what are your instructions?”
The man bowed. “I am Hojo no Toshiro. I was to hold these women until they had been interrogated, and await further orders.”
“Just so. Your orders now are simply this—you will continue your duties until you are relieved, but these women are not to be considered prisoners. You are here for their continued protection only. See they are provided with whatever necessities they may require. Understood?”
“Yes, Yamada-sama.”
I spoke again to Rie. “I have matters to attend to, but for now I need you and your companions to stay together. Do what you can for Mai-chan, as I would still like to speak to her when possible. I will see you again, soon.”
“Until then, go with Amada.”
I went, but I wasn’t sure if the Buddha had decided to join me or not. Back outside in the main compound, the grim work of gathering the bodies continued. I found Kenji serving in his priestly capacity by a row of draped bodies. “No other survivors among the priests?” I asked.
Kenji looked grim. “If there are, they are well-hidden indeed. Before you ask, I did have the walls inspected. There’s no sign of a breach, and if anyone scaled the wall, they did it without so much as breaking a tile.”
“Which doesn’t mean it did not happen, but whoever did manage to get in was very skilled. I need to look for myself.”
“Do you need my assistance?”
“I can see you are needed more here. I will send for you if my situation changes.”
The bodies of the real monks were being moved into the main temple to join those of the murdered abbot and the other priest we’d discovered inside. Lord Yoshiie had withdrawn from the first hall and had commandeered the main lecture hall as a temporary headquarters. I presented myself to him there.
“Your men have located no other survivors?” I asked.
“None, I’m afraid. What did you find out from the nuns?”
I summarized what little I had learned from Rie and the elder nun. “The one called Mai is still overcome by the terror of what happened to her. If she comes back to herself, I will question her as well, but it’s not likely she knows any more than we’ve already learned.”
He sighed. “I was hoping for more.”
I shared his disappointment. “Have your men found where the attackers entered?”
Yoshiie scowled. “I had assumed they came in through the main gate. It’s normally not barred, and we know they were in disguise.”
“In which case they would have knowingly committed suicide, whether they succeeded or not, as they must have known the only means of escape would be blocked by your army. While certainly conceivable, I think we should check out the alternative—they had another way out.”
“Considering how close they came to accomplishing their mission, perhaps I have underestimated them,” Lord Yoshiie said. He immediately summoned three of his bushi and ordered them to accompany me. I led them toward the rear of the compound where there were no buildings, only the trees which had taken it over. I felt my suspicions intensify.
“Was this area searched?”
“Yes, Lord Yamada,” said the leader of the bushi, a stolid, forty-ish man named Akimasa. “Lord Yoshiie wanted to be certain we had accounted for all the fallen monks and any attackers who might have hidden themselves.”
“And so you concentrated your efforts among the trees then? Not the wall?”
Akimasa frowned. “We did look for a breach, but that was all, my lord.”
As I had surmised. “Spread out,” I said to all three. “Search the wall and the area just under it.”
Akimasa looked puzzled. “Your pardon, Lord Yamada, but what are we looking for?”
“Gentlemen, I promise you will know it if you find it.”
It did not take long. One of the bushi discovered three long bamboo poles lying on the ground by the side of the wall nearly opposite the main gate. Each had an iron hook affixed to the end. “Does anyone know the purpose of these items?” Akimasa asked.
I picked one up and examined it. The pole was far too flimsy to support the weight of a man, so any idea I might have had of the assassins sliding down on them from the wall was easy to dismiss. Yet the hook on the end was suggestive. I took three steps back from the wall itself and looked up. At first I could see nothing but the tiled roof covering the top of the wall, but then I noticed a piece of rope barely visible above the roofline, I tested the flex of the pole.
“Let’s see.”
The pole was long enough to reach the top of the roofline, and when I snapped it forward against the tiles, the hook swung around over it just like a fishing pole. When I pulled it back it was dragging a rope ladder. “There should be at least two more. Find them,” I said.
The bushi took the other two bamboo poles, and in short order there were four rope ladders hanging down into the compound. I seized the first. “Follow me.”
The command was a bit redundant. One of the younger bushi had reached the top of the wall before I was barely halfway up. “They were here,” he said.
When I reached the top of the wall, I could see what he meant—the assassins had made an encampment within the shadow of the wall itself. While there was no sign of a fire, such proximity seemed rather reckless to me until I realized, judging from the undergrowth and tree litter nearby and the vines on the wall itself, this area of the compound was very lightly patrolled, if at all.
The attackers knew that. I’m beginning to think they knew nearly everything there was to know about this temple. They picked their spot and waited until the time was exactly right.
None of this should have been a surprise to me. It was likely the temple had been visited many times in the past by Abe partisans, and even guileless pilgrims would have had useful information to impart to someone more interested in tactical concerns than in the Yahiko temple’s traveler facilities. The question still on my mind was how had they timed the attack so precisely? I had no answer for that.
The ladders had been spiked to the beams beneath the tile roof, but on the outside just past the apex, so they were inconspicuous from inside the compound itself. Clearly, they had used these to gain entry. Concealing them afterwards seemed a bit overcautious to me, but it was always possible that someone might stumble upon them and sound an alarm, plus the ability to hide the ladders after they had completed their mission would have slowed down any pursuers for the time it would have taken them to discover where the assassins had gone. In context, the attempted slaughter of everyone inside the temple compound made perfect sense; locking everyone within the nunnery instead would require posting guards since the gates were designed to be barred from the inside, not the outside, which would have cost them manpower they could not spare. Nor could the victims have been confined inside even the larger buildings, since none of those structures were designed to act as prisons and could be easily escaped, and in any case their shouts almost certainly would have been heard. No, the more I understood, the more it became clear to me the massacre of the priests and nuns had been dispassionately and ruthlessly calculated as the price for achieving Yoshiie’s death. As much as I tried not to let my personal feelings intrude, I could see no other hand save Lord Tenshin’s at work here.
I turned to Akimasa. “Please report what we have found to Lord Yoshiie. Also, have the walls of the nunnery searched. There should be at least one such ladder there. You two,” I said to the other bushi, “are to come with me.”
“Where are you going, in case Lord Yoshiie asks?”
“Where our would-be assassins intended to go, once they had your master’s head.”
I reached for the nearest rope ladder and clambered down the far side of the wall, and the other bushi quickly followed. After a moment of apparent uncertainty, Akimasa climbed back down into the compound to do as I had asked. Unlike the rope ladders meant to be lowered into the compound side, these had been anchored to the ground with spikes and were thus much easier to negotiate. Doubtless they had planned to leave them in place, as they could not be seen from within, simply pulling up the part hanging down into the compound, just as we had discovered them now.
We stood at the mouth of a deep ravine running through the hills surrounding the compound on the northwest side. We found sleeping blankets and food, and judging from the original size of casks and their remnants, it was clear the assassins had been in place for several days. A quick glance up left and right showed hillsides choked with trees and undergrowth with no paths visible—there was essentially no chance at all someone could have stumbled upon the assassin’s encampment by accident.
I had assumed the assassins had planned to descend into the ravine after hiding their ladders again to throw off searchers and, while the Minamoto were still trying to figure out where the attackers could possibly have escaped to, been well on their way to the Mutsu barrier before the Minamoto had the presence of mind to send a force to cover the border. Yet the defile on the northeast side was nearly impassable, and even if the assassins could scale it, chances are they would have emerged into the open too close to the temple to avoid detection.
It’s clear they did have a plan to escape, but in order to do so they would have to follow the ravine for some distance, and it’s going the wrong way.
The ravine snaked through the trees, following the lines of the hills behind the temple, and that way lead to the northwest, away from the safety of the border. I wanted to know if the ravine changed direction farther on, and there was one quick way to find out.
“We’re going hunting,” I said to the two bushi accompanying me. “Be on your guard—we don’t know if any of the assassins escaped the battle.”
Not that I considered this likely. If any assassins had managed to escape the carnage, the sensible thing for them to do would have been to throw the bamboo poles back over the wall into the ravine once they had used them to retrieve the ladders. The poles wouldn’t have been needed again, and removing them would have been the work of a moment or two at most and would have helped cover their escape. Granted, such a fine detail might have been missed in the heat of the moment by men running for their lives, so it was still best to be on guard.
I led the way along the ravine, looking for any signs of prior travel. I didn’t have to look long. Runoff from the surrounding hills left the ravine muddy in some spots and sandy in others, and there were the prints of sandals in many places, all heading toward the temple, but none heading in the opposite direction. We kept moving, but neither the ravine’s direction nor the difficulty of scaling its sides changed much, except possibly in the latter’s case to become even more difficult, as the ravine began to deepen as we moved through it. Nor had the footprints ceased or shown a point of origin other than the way we were traveling. I became more and more convinced climbing out of the ravine this close to the temple had not been their plan. All that remained was to find where the ravine led and, more to the point, what we might discover there.
In time the wall on the northwest side of the ravine began to slant rather than dropping straight down. It would have been easy for the assassins to climb out now, but they would be on the wrong side of the temple and have to double back across the main road—far too risky an endeavor in such numbers. The trail of footprints we followed still pointed to an origin farther along in the ravine.
The younger of the two bushi stopped, sniffing the air like a deer. “Do you smell that, Yamada-sama?”
I did. And of all the things I might have expected to smell in this particular situation, this scent was not one of them. “That’s the ocean.”
The northwest coast of Echigo, famous in poetry and legend—I had not realized we were so close. We had not gone more than a bowshot farther before we could hear the muffled roar of the waves breaking on sand. Now the assassins’ escape plan was suddenly clear. What wasn’t clear was if there was anything else to gain from this knowledge.
“Stay here,” I said. I went forward alone. The floor of the defile had already started to rise, and I could have climbed out to either side now, but I kept following the footprints. The defile ended on a high bluff overlooking the beach. I slipped forward carefully and kept hidden as best I could as I peered out toward the water. Below me I could see a steep but negotiable path down to the sand. Anchored about three bowshots offshore was a ship in the Chinese style, bearing no mon or other markers. On the beach itself, there were five boats, fishing skiffs by the look of them, beached but only enough to keep them from being carried out by a falling tide. It would take the work of only a few moments to get them underway, I estimated.
The sun was getting low in the sky. I heard voices, but at first I saw no one. Then I realized the voices were coming from almost directly below me. Two men, fishermen from the look of them, had made camp under the lee of the bluff. I breathed a silent prayer of gratitude that I had heard them before they had spotted me, but apparently they had been gathering firewood from farther up the beach. They were an older and a younger man, possibly father and son from the resemblance. Their voices drifted up to me, and I listened.
“ . . . how much longer?” said the younger.
“As long as it may take,” said his companion. “Have some patience. There’s no more reward if we leave without them.”
“We should have heard something by now. And I do not trust those pirates,” the younger man said, nodding at the ship.
“Perhaps there was a delay. As for the pirates, there’s no need. They won’t come ashore, and all we need do is see their boats safely launched once those men return. What happens to the fools then is not our concern.”
“Likely they’ll drown—you saw them when we brought them from the ship, there’s not one among them who knows how to handle a skiff. We already have their gold for arranging the boats. I say we leave now and save our heads.”
“They promised us double, son. So your father says we will wait, and that’s an end to it.”
So that man is your father. Well, you are wiser than he is, for all the good it would have done you. I do not think those men would have left either of you alive if they had returned.
I carefully pulled myself away from the edge of the bluff and made my way back to where the two bushi were waiting. “Gentlemen, bring your bows. Quietly, if you please.”
We slipped back to the edge of the bluff. I considered the matter for a moment, then had one of the bushi fire an arrow which struck within inches of the older man’s feet. Startled, the two immediately glanced up, to find me and my two companions, one of whom already had his second arrow nocked.
“Gentlemen, you may not believe me when I tell you this, but as of now, you are both potentially lucky men. And in case you were thinking of running, I would advise against it. As you’ve seen, these men are very good archers,” I said clearly. “Kindly wait for me.”
I made my way down the trail, followed by one of the archers. The second bushi remained on the bluff, his bow ready in case the men decided to test us. That proved unnecessary. The two fishermen had immediately kneeled and placed their faces to the sand. The bushi with me now had an arrow ready as well.
“Sit up,” I said. “I can’t talk to you if you’re buried in the sand like crabs.”
Blinking, they obeyed, and the terror in their eyes would have been proof enough of their fear, even if they were not shaking so. I didn’t mind. Fear was sometimes a useful tool, and I fully intended to make use of it now.
“As I see matters, you two have a problem,” I said. “If I take you back with me to the temple, the only question in regards to your fate is whether Lord Yoshiie or the Chief of the Shibata Clan or the governor of Echigo will have the privilege of ordering your torture and execution. Any delay would only last as long as it took those three to agree on the matter.”
The older man could barely speak. “But . . . my lord, we have done nothing!”
“You mean other than assisting in an attempted assassination of the Minamoto Clan chief’s son and the slaughter of priests and nuns in holy orders? You were hired to land those men and then see them safely back to their pirate transport, were you not? If you deny it again, this conversation is at an end.”
I was not bluffing about delivering the pair of them to Yoshiie. Distasteful as such an action would be, the slaughter I had witnessed at the Yahiko temple and the near-loss of my own sister had put me in the right frame of mind to carry it out.
“My lord,” said the younger man, “What did you say about Yahiko temple . . . ?”
“Slaughter,” I repeated, being very careful to enunciate each syllable. “Almost everyone who had resided at the temple is now dead. Murdered by your friends.”
“They were not our friends!” the old man said. “We were hired—” he stopped.
I smiled then. “No, please continue.”
The old man took a long, slow breath, apparently trying to calm himself. “It’s true, we were hired to get several men ashore here, but we did not know who they were or what they intended.”
“We had no idea they meant to attack the temple!” the young man said. “We didn’t know . . . ”
“You land a heavily armed group of men at the back door of a temple with few defenses. What did you think was going to happen? Or were you thinking only of the gold?”
Their silence was answer enough. I was not entirely without sympathy, since I understood what desperation mixed with greed could make a man do. I had only one more question. “The ravine in this bluff isn’t visible from the sea. Did you tell them about it? Did you hand them the lives of those innocents?”
“We barely spoke to them, or they to us. They seemed to know exactly where they were going, and they made straight for the path up to the ravine,” the younger man said. “Only one man returned, but he ordered us to wait for the rest, which we were doing. My lord, I swear this is true.”
“What about the man who returned?”
“He was well-dressed, and thin . . . a bit hawkish about the face. He appeared to be in command. We rowed him back to the ship. I don’t remember much else about him, except I had the impression he might have been ill. He seemed a bit feverish.”
The possible illness was interesting enough, and the man he was describing certainly sounded like Lord Tenshin, but this was hardly proof. I had clearly learned everything I was going to learn from the fisherman. The only thing I had now to consider was whether I believed him. I decided I did. It would have been easy enough to miss one man’s track returning to the sea among so many going the other direction.
In order for the attempt to work, they had to already know about the ravine. All their planning depended upon it.
“Get out of my sight,” I said. “If I see either of you again, ever, I will make you wish I’d handed you over to Lord Yoshiie. Do you understand me?”
Apparently they did. They took to their heels and had soon disappeared toward the north. The younger of the two archers frowned. “My lord, was it wise to let them go?”
“Perhaps not,” I said, “but killing them would have gained us nothing. We have greater prey to hunt.”
Out on the water, the pirate ship was unfurling its sails. If the ones who had planned the attack did not yet know it had failed, they soon would. For the moment there was little to do save to find out if Lord Yoshiie’s diplomatic skills were as well honed as the ones he used for fighting the enemies of the Emperor. We made our way back to the temple wall and climbed over the wall to find Akimasa waiting for us.
“I was about to go after you when I heard you returning. Did you find anything, my lord?”
“Just a pair of foolish fishermen and the boats the assassins had planned to escape in. And a Chinese pirate ship.”
Akimasa put his hand on his sword hilt as if the pirates were coming up the ladder behind us. “Pirates?!”
“So I surmise, but they were leaving, so of no concern. Have you completed your search of the nunnery walls?”
Akimasa relaxed a little, but he still seemed somewhat nervous. “Yes, my lord. We even had some of our more nimble companions scale the walls and examine every inch of them from the roof itself.”
“How many ladders did you find there?”
“There were no ladders, my lord,” Akimasa said.
“None? You’re certain?”
“Yes, Lord Yamada. As I said, we were very thorough.”
That was curious. I had expected the attacker who had opened the gate to the nunnery had used the same method to gain entry as his companions, but apparently this was not the case. Still, the trees did grow close to the wall there. It was entirely possible one had simply climbed over. Most likely it wasn’t important, in the scope of things, but it was something which didn’t quite make sense, and such things worried me like a splinter one could feel but not quite locate.
“I believe I need to take another look at the gate to the nunnery,” I said.
“Forgive me, my lord, but the mention of the pirates distracted me. The reason I was going to follow you is Lord Yoshiie wants to see you.”
“Then obviously I must answer his summons before I do anything else.” I bowed to all three men. “Thank you for your assistance.”
I made my way to the lecture hall as quickly as I could, since I knew Lord Yoshiie was not a man who liked to be kept waiting. On the way there I saw a flash of white in the trees, no more, but I knew, when my immediate business with Lord Yoshiie was done, there was yet another person requiring my presence, but I considered it fortunate. I had questions for Lady Kuzunoha as well, and this way it would not be necessary for me to go looking for her. I just hoped the answers were ones we could both live with.