text: "There was also a head body fished out of a canal in Shimogamo." Saga, the elderly counsellor, continued his litany of the night's events. "Craftsman. No positive ID. The local police officers are investigating. He died by violence: strangulation."
  
  The governor and chief magistrate of the Imperial City of Miyako was only half listening to the litany of the night's events. His sharp, handsome face bore an unusually abstracted expression. The counsellor forced back a grin. The boy was developing well since his accession to his father's office. He was proving to be a prudent governor and an astute magistrate. The source of his distraction was a well-known secret. Mildly illegal, but then good administrators and chiefs were difficult to find and must be allowed their minor peccadillos.
  
  Matsudaira Konnosuke was indeed thinking of his chief distraction. She had given him a hard time the previous night, refusing him her normal favors merely because he had been delayed several hours in the performance of one and then another of the onerous duties that were his occupation as well as privilege.
  
  Matsudaira felt a tightening of his loins at the thought of his chief problem and delight. The memory of her golden hair, full white breasts, the rose tattooed between her thighs, and above all her enthusiasm and delight in all things erotic excited his imagination. He wished he could simply stand up, dismiss the clerks and counsellors, and storm into the inner rooms for a session with Rosamund: his prisoner and ruler. He forced himself to patience and concentrated on the night's murder.
  
  "What about his effects?" Matsudaira asked.
  
  "That's one problem," the bulky counsellor nodded. He gestured behind him and one of the lower ranking samurai serving as a clerk crept forward and placed a tray on the golden tatami between the two men. Saga, the elderly counsellor who had served Matsudaira's father ably, lifted the plain cloth cover and slid the tray forward towards his lord.
  
  Matsudaira examined the objects on the tray carefully. A nugget of gold, cut off from a larger piece, the chisel marks clear. Several pieces of silver, ditto. Some small steel burins used in the gilding and cabinetmaking trade for which the city was famous. A kerchief. He raised his brows.
  
  "We're examining. Asking among the gilders to see who is missing."
  
  "Let me know." Matsudaira said. They moved on to discussions of other matters.
  
  A mile or so away across the city of Miyako a slim, slight-looking woman walked through the gate of an unpretentious warrior-class villa. Her kimono was inexpensive but well made and clean. Her hair was simply coiffed in a rather old-fashioned female topknot that had been slightly disarrayed. She walked with a confident stride rather than the normal pigeon-toed patter of a town woman.
  
  Her plump maidservant greeted her from the genkan entryway and told her that the master was in the back, endlessly practicing with his sword as usual.
  
  "Has the kimono material I ordered from the weavers arrived yet?"
  
  "No, mistress Okiku. Momoe, the girl who usually delivers, has not been around today."
  
  Okiku nodded in dismissal and made her way to the small bamboo grove in the back, carefully avoiding the puddles from the previous night's rain. She stopped, slightly hidden by the thick boles of the bamboo, to admire her man.
  
  Miura Jiro was a giant by the standards of his day and place. His six-foot plus of muscle and bone moved with a liquid smoothness as he drew, sheathed, then redrew his large two-handed katana from its black lacquered sheath. He resheathed the blade, grunted doubtfully as if unsatisfied with his own performance, then saw Okiku between the bamboos. He walked towards her, admiring as usual her perfect poise, and the unconscious posture she had taken which hid her body behind the bole of a handsbreadth-thick bamboo.
  
  "Did you find the teapot you wanted?" he asked in greeting.
  
  "No. Only this new Satsuma stuff around, which I don't care for. And we're going to need the gardener to come around again ..."
  
  He nodded indifferently. Domestic matters were her own affair.
  
  "Someone attacked me this morning," Okiku said casually.
  
  Jiro turned to her in surprise. "Where?" he asked. Knowing her, he forebore asking if she had been injured. Odds were the other side were nursing more than bruises.
  
  "I took a short-cut through the old Imaura villa lands. Three men stepped out behind me and tried to throw a sack over my head. Judging by their manner, I'd think they were interested in more than an hour's fun. White slavers. Looking for a woman for the brothels, I would imagine. I hurt all three of them, one badly, I think."
  
  Jiro said nothing, waiting for her to elucidate.
  
  "There have been a number of such incidents over the past year. I wonder if we should do something about it?"
  
  "Maybe we should," Jiro rumbled. "Why didn't you kill them?" He was nominally a teacher of fencing and of Western Barbarian knowledge. Unofficially he was also an onmitsu: a covert private agent of the shogun, ruler of the Japans. Kidnapped women could mean a number of things, all bad.
  
  She grinned. "Very fast fellows. Except the one with the knife in him. Theirs, not mine. I left him there but the others were gone."