Shinjū

The other men crashed into him. They fell back, uttering yells of outraged surprise. Before they could recover and set upon him with their weapons, Sano fled. As he swerved around them, he recognized the doshin whose arson investigation he’d commandeered, the day he’d heard of the shinjū. How long ago it seemed! Seeing the lust for revenge in the small, cruel eyes, he charged down the shoreline and up the steep bank toward the bridge. He wished he could look back to make sure that the man he’d cut was only superficially wounded, as he’d intended, and not dead. Had he misjudged the pressure of his stroke? But the others were already hot in pursuit.

“Stop! I order you to stop!” the doshin yelled.

His unhurt assistant, younger and quicker, bounded up behind Sano. Blows landed on Sano’s shoulders. He gasped as the barbed staff bit his flesh, and kept ru

Tsunehiko’s, and O-hisa’s murders go unavenged. And now he had another, even more critical reason to live. He was the only person who believed that Lord Niu meant to assassinate the shogun, and hence the only person capable of thwarting him.

His feet hit the bridge. There onlookers greeted him with shrieks of terror.

“It’s Sano Shutarō’s son!”

“What’s he done?”

“Killed someone, it looks like.”

That the people he’d known all his life should think him a murderer filled Sano’s heart with shame. He wanted to stop and explain that he’d been framed, but he couldn’t. He must run for his life, or forever lose the chance to prove his i

“Someone stop him!” the assistant shouted, panting as he landed another blow to Sano’s shoulder.

The doshin, falling far behind now, shouted, “You are a dead man, Sano Ichirō! You can’t run forever!”

Sano waved his bloody sword. The crowd scattered. People shrank back against the bridge’s railings to get out of his way. One man jumped over the rail and landed in the canal with a splash. Sano sped across the bridge. Desperation drove his legs to pump faster. The staff no longer battered him as he pulled ahead of his pursuers. But when he reached the gate, he saw trouble waiting for him: the two guards.

“That man is a murderer,” the assistant yelled to them. “Catch him!”

Sano had hardly cleared the gate when the guards joined in the chase. His heart was pounding furiously now; his chest heaved with each frantic breath. He heard more shouts. Heard swords rasp free of their scabbards, and the stamp of four instead of two pairs of ru

Then he spotted his salvation: one of his neighbors, an elderly samurai mounted on a brown horse, ambling toward him.

“I’m sorry, Wada-san,” he cried. “Please forgive me, but I must borrow your horse.”

The old man gave a startled grunt as Sano dragged him off his mount.

“I promise I’ll return it,” Sano shouted as he mounted the horse and slapped the reins. Would that he lived long enough!

Urging the horse to a gallop, he risked a backward glance. He saw the men still following, but falling rapidly behind him. The doshin waved his jitte, shouted something, then stopped, a hand pressed to his middle.

Triumph pulsed through Sano’s veins. He was free! For how long, though, he didn’t know. The doshin would alert his comrades across the city; soon they and their men would join the hunt for the murderer Sano Ichirō. And exactly how he would use his temporary freedom, he didn’t know either.

The alley was dim, deserted, and forbidding. On either side, rows of ramshackle buildings leaned inward, blocking much of the sky to form a short tu

His wild, directionless gallop through Edo had consumed the remainder of the afternoon. He’d had no time to think past his immediate aim of putting as much distance as possible between himself and the canal where he’d found O-hisa’s body. He had no plan except to lose himself in the crowds and avoid the police. In this he’d succeeded, barely. The teeming Setsubun revelers offered plenty of cover, but he’d sensed a heightened watchfulness about the police he’d spotted. Unusually tolerant of the antics taking place around them, they’d sca

For him. Already.

Sano passed a trembling hand over his face. He had to plan his next move now. He couldn’t afford to waste a moment of his precious freedom. But the noise from the street clamored at his aching head; desolation paralyzed his mind. The wounds on his shoulders throbbed, and blood plastered them to his clothing. Already the underlying muscles had swelled and stiffened; he couldn’t turn his head or move his arms without pain. Fear had solidified in him like an iron skeleton. His whole body sagged with fatigue, and he’d never felt more alone. Shivering in his cloak, he reflected with amazement upon the changes that a few hours had wrought in his life.

Before finding O-hisa’s body, he’d had a choice whether to continue pursuing Lord Niu. Now he had none. He couldn’t turn his back on the events of the past fourteen days and go home. The doshin would be waiting for him there, no doubt with a small army of reinforcements to help carry him off to jail or kill him on the spot. Compared to this reality, the past disgrace he’d brought upon his family seemed insignificant.

He couldn’t sink back into comfortable obscurity. As a fugitive, he would spend the rest of his days on the run while the whole country hunted him. Even if he’d possessed the cash to provision himself and Wada-san’s horse for a journey, he knew that a flight to the provinces was futile. By now Magistrate Ogyu would have dispatched messengers to the highway checkpoint guards and village headmen, warning them to be on the watch for him. His quest for vengeance had merged with the simpler, more powerful desire for survival.

From deep inside himself, Sano summoned what strength he had left, a small but brave force now reduced to the bare samurai steel his father’s training had given him. He had no choice but to prove his i