The Iris Fan Read Online Free

ō nin —masterless samurai—and strip him of his livelihood and his place in society. Thrown out on the streets, his family would starve and Sano would forever lose his chance to bring Lord Ienobu to justice. Yanagisawa wore a strange smile—glee mixed with pain. Before Ienobu could speak or Sano could protest, Manabe rushed into the room.
    “Excuse me, my lord. There’s an emergency in the palace. The shogun has been stabbed!”

 
     
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    SHOCKED SILENCE GREETED the news that Sano couldn’t believe. Security in the palace was the tightest in Japan. How could someone have stabbed the shogun? Sano’s shock turned to horror, and not just because his lord, the reason for a samurai’s existence, had been attacked. If the shogun was dead, then Lord Ienobu was the new dictator. Sano wouldn’t just lose his place in the regime and his samurai status, Lord Ienobu would put Sano and his family to death before the funeral rites for the old shogun were over.
    Ienobu gaped. Elation visibly rose up in him like gas bubbles in stagnant pond water as he saw his dream of ruling Japan within reach.
    Yanagisawa looked like he’d been shot. His handsome face was pale, drained of blood. Sano frowned in surprise. After supporting Ienobu for more than four years, Yanagisawa should be thrilled by the news of the stabbing, but he obviously wasn’t. He didn’t even seem glad that Ienobu’s rise to power would mean the end of Sano. His stricken eyes focused inward.
    “Is my uncle…?” Lord Ienobu’s voice trailed off as if he dared not speak the word. He held it in his mouth like a child savoring a piece of candy.
    “Dead?” Manabe said. “No. But he’s seriously injured.”
    An avalanche of relief overwhelmed Sano.
    “What happened?” Yanagisawa spoke in a strange, toneless voice.
    Manabe shook his head. Lord Ienobu said, “We’d better go to the palace and find out.” He scuttled out the door faster than Sano had ever seen him move.
    Yanagisawa hurried after him; Sano followed. Manabe stuck close behind Sano, in case Sano should decide to bolt. The night echoed with yells as troops stationed throughout the castle spread the news. Ienobu’s hunched figure led the rush along the dim passage up the hill through falling snow. The palace compound was lit up as if for an unholy festival. Soldiers stood around the tile-roofed, half-timbered building. Their lanterns and torches splayed yellow light on the snowy grass, shrubs, and paths. Their silence was eerie, their anxiety palpable.
    “Let us through!” Yanagisawa said.
    He and Lord Ienobu, Sano, and Manabe sped into the palace, through a maze of corridors where frightened servants huddled and more troops stood guard. Sentries admitted them to the shogun’s private quarters. Moans filled the passage along which Sano and his companions raced. The paper wall of the shogun’s bedchamber was bright with lights behind it. The lattice crisscrossed the moving shadows of people inside. The sliding door was open; the moans issued from it. Lord Ienobu and Yanagisawa bumped against each other in their hurry to enter. When Sano crossed the threshold, the smells hit him—diarrhea and the salty sweet, iron odor of blood. The shogun lay facedown and naked on the futon with two deep, ragged, bleeding cuts between his ribs and two lower ones on either side of his spine. The white sheet under him and the quilt at the foot of the bed were red with blood and foul with excrement released from his bowels. The chief palace physician—an elderly man dressed in the long, dark blue coat of his profession—hovered by a medicine chest. Two male servants were trying to remove the soiled sheet. As they pulled on it and lifted the shogun, he screamed.
    “Stop! It hurts!”
    Alarmed by the shogun’s injuries, Sano was also amazed at how much the shogun had aged since he’d last seen him four years ago. His hair was all gray, his body spindly. Lord Ienobu struggled to hide his disappointment—he