Free Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate by Richard Parks

really quite astonishing,” the Widow Tamahara said, correctly interpreting my blank stare as total incomprehension. “You have not heard? The news is all over the city!”
    I wasn’t so certain of that. Counting my travels to the northeast and southeast gates,
I
had been “all over the city” and had heard no great news. Then again, I had spoke to no one save Kenji and Nidai. “What is it?”
    “One of Princess Ai’s attendants has been murdered! Within the Palace Compound itself! Can you imagine?”
    I could imagine, and from what I knew of life at Court, I was just surprised that it happened so seldom. Princess Ai I also knew, or at least remembered. She was a principal wife of the current Emperor and known as much for her bad temper as her beauty. If one of her attendants had been murdered, I’d have placed odds that Ai herself was responsible, acting on some fit of pique or another. Perhaps this explained why the western gate of the Imperial Compound had been sealed off; priests would have been summoned and purification rites begun as soon as the body was removed. Even so, the Princess and all her attendants would be ritually impure for the next month and probably “exiled” from the Compound proper to one of the various outlying mansions within the city until said impurity was removed. I could also imagine what a good humor that would place Her Highness in.
    “A tragedy,” I said. Considering that the Widow Tamahara had just brought me my evening meal despite my being late with the rent, I had no wish to antagonize her by revealing my disinterest. “I’m afraid I spoke to no one today who had heard the news. If it’s not indelicate to ask, how was this done? Do they know who is responsible?”
    Tamahara-san rubbed her scrawny neck. “That’s the strangest part of all. What I have heard suggests that there were no marks on the poor girl, no wounds. Even most poisons leave some sign, but there was nothing. Perhaps she was smothered in her sleep.”
    I frowned. “Most poisons” perhaps, but not all by any means. Still . . . “This happened during the night? Among the other attendants?”
    “Yes, as I understand it.”
    Now that was indeed a bit strange. If the girl in question had slipped from Ai’s chambers to, say, keep an assignation with a lover then her separation from the others made the possibility of an attack much more likely. Yet if the girl had been sleeping in a group with the other close attendants, as was usual, then for someone to slip inside and do violence to one without alerting the rest the culprit would either have to be very stealthy or everyone else present had to be complicit.
    “If there were no wounds, why is it presumed the poor girl was murdered?”
    “That’s a good question, Lord Yamada. I do not know. Yet my sources were quite emphatic on that point.”
    The incident was more than a little curious, assuming that the Widow Tamahara’s information was good, but I knew better than to put too much faith in the old woman’s sources; in general they were no better than the typical street gossips. No doubt the unfortunate girl had died of some unknown but virulent ailment; the gods and demons of disease were a busy lot and sometimes not detected and exorcised quickly enough, even among the upper classes.
    “Doubtless the one responsible will be found out,” I said. “The Palace has great means at its disposal.”
    “I suppose,” Tamahara-san said, chewing a fingernail thoughtfully. “Is there a possibility you will be engaged in this matter?”
    Again, the rent; I knew we’d get back to the subject sooner or later. “It’s possible. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
    The Widow Tamahara looked almost hopeful as she left me to my rice. For my own part, I put what remained of my faith in the Widow Tamahara’s rice and fish. It was all I could really count on, though probably not for very much longer. Given that reality, I took time to savor my simple meal,