“Can’t you see I’m busy?” Ohira snapped. “Get out!”

Nirin glanced at Sano and frowned, then said, “Sorry to interrupt, but this can’t wait. We have to tighten Deshima security at night to prevent future thefts. I need your permission to assign more troops to the warehouses.” He touched his sword. “Is the sōsakan-sama giving you trouble?”

“I was just leaving,” Sano told them.

As he walked out the door, a sense of vindication energized him. The second watch commander had dissembled quickly, but Sano guessed that what he’d really meant to ask Chief Ohira was how they would continue smuggling now that their operation had been exposed.

Then despair eclipsed Sano’s elation. He mounted his horse and stared at the rain.

Even if Ohira was guilty of treason as Sano now believed—and possibly of murder, too—he would never confess, because it wouldn’t save Kiyoshi. The law demanded that a criminal’s entire family share his punishment for these serious offenses. Should Ohira admit his crimes, he would condemn himself, Kiyoshi, his wife, and five other children to death. Without hard evidence, Sano would never break Chief Ohira.

Therefore, he must try to break the other Japanese suspects—or the Dutchmen.

22

二二

From the house on Deshima where Jan Spaen’s body had lain since its recovery from the sea, guards brought out the plain wooden coffin draped with black cloth and set it in the street. Across the bridge milled gawkers waiting to see the barbarians’ funeral procession, and the officials who attended all diplomatic functions. The rain had diminished to a drizzle. A holiday atmosphere belied the solemnity of the occasion.

Dutch East India Company Assistant Director Maarten deGraeff watched the scene from the roof of his residence, where he went whenever he couldn’t bear the prison of his rooms. For years he’d longed for Jan Spaen’s death, yet the murder of his partner had not freed him as he’d hoped, but only multiplied his troubles. He should have known he could never escape the evil inside his soul, though he’d tried since his nineteenth year, when he’d joined the company.

He’d left the Netherlands, abandoning his parents, university studies, and a future career in the church not for money or adventure, but because of his crimes: the profane desire that prayer could not banish; sordid encounters with sailors in Amsterdam’s alleys; and an affair with a fellow student that had ended when the other youth, torn by guilt, hanged himself in their dormitory. If his true nature was ever exposed, deGraeff wanted to be far away, so his family needn’t witness the disgrace of a son executed for the sin of forbidden love.

Now a bitter laugh caught in deGraeff’s throat. What had he achieved by his self-imposed exile? Here he was, half a world away, still a sinner, and a murder suspect besides.