The coins lie heavy in your palm. This is also what Lord Ishikawa's silence costs him. He owns you by a greater bond than fealty, by the knowledge of what you once were, what you have done, your greatest shame. For a moment, the alley's reek of rotting vegetables surrenders to a memory of sandalwood incense, burning wax and low chanting in a hidden chamber, and the weight of impending doom.

The next day, a girl with dirt-caked feet collides with you in the fishmongers' crush. She lets her hand be caught in yours for a brief moment, pressing a folded paper note into your palm. No characters mark the page--only charcoal strokes sketching Nihonbashi's familiar arch and a sickle moon.

You arrive as the sun sinks behind Edo's walls, turning the canal's scum crimson. Lord Ishikawa stands at the bridge's midpoint, studying the sluggish water as if it holds his own reflection. A cargo boat poles past, its pilot singing off-key. The samurai doesn't turn.

"That seed you planted barely breaks the soil," he says, his voice flat. "I require a full harvest, ripe by dawn." He finally turns his head. "Obliterate Matsuda. The method is immaterial. Report to me only when you have something of consequence. You have till new moon. "

With no other details proffered, he means to say that the method is yours to choose--not that he has any confidence in your skills, but that your failure will be that much easier to deny.

Seven days pass. You become something less than a man. A quality, a stillness in a crowded teahouse, a held breath in a tavern ringing with drunken laughter. You trace the tangle of Matsuda’s life, searching for that one thread you can pull to unravel it all.

By week's end, you have found three.

[Choices next post]