Dragon's King Palace by Laura Joh Rowland

shogun’s favor, while Sano and other rivals sink. Your power will be greater than ever.”
    As would Hoshina’s, thought Yanagisawa. His lover was so transparent in his ambition, and so focused on his goals, that he ignored the pitfalls before him. Yet love excused worse flaws than greed, impulsiveness, or lack of vision.
    “If we fail, and Sano succeeds, I’ll lose face and standing in the bakufu ,” Yanagisawa reminded Hoshina. “Neither my skill at manipulating the shogun nor my history as his paramour will preserve his good opinion of me. This crime is a potential catastrophe for me- and for you.”
    “We won’t fail,” Hoshina said staunchly.
    His reassurance heartened Yanagisawa, who’d suffered agonies of fear alone before Hoshina came into his life. Having someone in whom to confide lessened the torment. But Hoshina’s confidence quickly faded into doubt.
    “Do you worry because you think Sano is a better detective than I, or that his troops are better than those I’ve trained for you?” he said.
    “Of course not,” Yanagisawa said, though he did rate Sano’s expertise higher than Hoshina’s. He wasn’t blind to fact; yet lying came naturally to him, and he would lie to serve affection as well as political necessity. “You’ve satisfied all my expectations.”
    Inclining his head modestly, Hoshina basked in the praise.
    “I worry because we’ve met our match in the kidnapper,” Yanagisawa said. Possessed of ruthless cunning himself, he could well recognize it in his adversary.
    Hoshina nodded, pondered a moment, then said, “What if everyone’s efforts fail? What if Lady Keisho-in and the other women never come back?”
    They looked across the garden to the palace. The shogun lay on his back, moaning, while physicians applied herbal poultices to his chest. “If he should lose his mother,” Yanagisawa said, “grief may ruin his health.”
    “Should he die soon, his reign would end without a direct heir to succeed him,” Hoshina said. The shogun had a wife and a hundred concubines, but he preferred sex with men, and he had no children. “Who would become the next shogun?”
    Long before the kidnapping, many contenders had already begun to plan for his death. Tokugawa relatives connived to raise themselves or their sons to the throne. Yanagisawa and Hoshina had their own plans that they dared not openly voice, because spies abounded in Edo, and not even Yanagisawa’s own domain was guaranteed safe from them.
    “The timing is wrong,” Yanagisawa said, answering Hoshina’s unspoken hint that the kidnapping could benefit their plans. “If the crime had happened a year or so later, then we might have cause to celebrate. But right now we aren’t ready for a change of regime.”
    “Your bonuses and favors that I’ve distributed have won you a large following,” Hoshina murmured. “Many daimyo , Tokugawa vassals, and a third of the soldiers in the army consider you their master.”
    Yanagisawa had made Hoshina a partner in his scheme to transfer the allegiance of the army, vassals, and feudal lords from the shogun to himself, and Hoshina was performing superbly. But Yanagisawa frowned, dismissing their achievement. “That isn’t enough.” The success of their plans required a large majority of influential men on his side. “And the crucial basis for our future is by no means secure.”
    Down in the palace, a tall, slender young samurai dressed in brilliant silk robes walked across the veranda toward the shogun. Yanagisawa and Hoshina watched the shogun sit up, his face brighten. The samurai gracefully knelt before the shogun and bowed. His handsome profile was a mirror of Yanagisawa’s.
    “The shogun likes your son,” Hoshina said.
    Yanagisawa contemplated his son, Yoritomo, born sixteen years ago, the illegitimate product of his affair with a palace lady-in-waiting. Because she was a Tokugawa cousin, Yoritomo was blood kin to the shogun and eligible for the succession.