The commander bravely proffered his arm at Huygens’s request. He winced as the canula entered his flesh, and blood trickled out. Huygens slipped one end of the dog’s limp vein over the canula’s blunt exposed portion. The other he attached to the canula protruding from the boy’s arm.

“Open and close your fist,” he told Nirin, demonstrating.

The dog’s vein reddened as blood flowed through it. From outside drifted the voices of the guards, who had gone out to hide the dog’s corpse—another of Deshima’s many secrets. A waiting silence pervaded the surgery. Nirin watched his son’s face. Huygens felt the pulse in the boy’s neck gradually strengthen. Color returned to his skin; his eyelids fluttered open.

“Father,” he whispered.

Nirin’s hard features softened; he touched his son’s cheek. The interpreter cheered. For a moment Huygens felt the elation that saving a life always brought him.

Then dread and misery returned. Even medical miracles didn’t compensate for everything lost when he’d joined the East India Company. Spaen’s death couldn’t restore what was gone forever, or end the hatred that Huygens still felt for him. If Investigator Sano learned the truth about Huygens, he would look no further for the killer of Jan Spaen.

27

二七

The rain-drenched cityscape of Nagasaki blurred past Hirata as he trudged through wet streets, down fetid alleys, and up slippery staircases. Cold and exhausted, he yearned for a hot bath, food, and sleep. But he had no money, and he had to keep moving to evade capture by the troops who still combed the city in search of him, despite the threat of war.

Last night, while hunting for the smugglers, he’d heard noises in the cove and returned just in time to see the police arrest Sano and Kiyoshi. Then the harbor patrol had stormed after him. More troops had later joined the chase. He’d spent the night running through the forest, climbing hills, crawling over fields, and wading across streams in a desperate attempt to escape. If he didn’t remain free, who would save Sano? Toward dawn, exhausted to the brink of collapse, Hirata had snatched an hour’s rest in a tree. Yet sleep had brought no peace, because he’d dreamed of his former mentor, the ambush in the teahouse, and his own cowardly flight, which had given him a second chance to prove his worth as a samurai.

Hirata had sneaked back into the city just as the gates opened. Now he was glad that he wore the costume in which he was most comfortable: his old dōshin uniform of short kimono, cotton leggings, wicker hat, short sword, and jitte. As long as he kept his face hidden, he could pass for a Nagasaki police officer. And for a while, his disguise had served his purpose.